12 Days of Aniblogging 2019, Day 9While we’re on the topic of tropes, glasses. While in other stories glasses represent positive traits such as vision, intelligence, and dignity, in coming-of-age media they often represent negative traits such as isolation and dorkiness. A character taking off their glasses then represents growth and maturity. Unfortunately, this association doesn’t work at all because glasses are cute and I’m always sad to see them go, ok fine I might have a thing the loss of a character’s glasses often represents the loss of their individuality and relevance to the plot. Here’s the last two times it happened while I was watching anime.Hanayo from Love LiveI’m not a huge Love Live fan, but shit happens. Anyways, Hanayo is the first member to join µ’s after the initial trio, with her arc contained entirely in Episode 4. Her three traits are Shy, Loves Rice, and Takes Care of Alpacas. That’s only like half of a character right there, but at least it’s something? Anyways, after the singular alpaca scene occurs, her shyness overtakes all and the rest of the episode is dedicated to the other girls helping her Get Over It. And that works! She becomes confident enough in herself to join their idol group, and to signify this she…takes off her glasses, removing any differentiation from the rest of the group. After this symbolic act, Hanayo essentially becomes a non-character. She gets the least focus out of any of the girls, as most focus on her is just tangential to her friendship with Rin. The Rice character trait really only gets used to have her get self-conscious about her weight once or twice, and the alpaca-caretaking is bizarrely ignored for something so unique to this anime series. Ironically, upon removing her glasses to signify that she is a Real Girl now, Hanayo stops being one. tragiqueRika from O Maidens Rika, one of the main characters of the recent show O Maidens in your Savage Season, fares a little better. She’s the president of the Literature Club at her school, which mostly boils down to analyzing extremely sexual books and poetry with her girl friends. Her perfect split of prudishness and perversion causes no shortage of social misanthropy for her, nor does her physical lanky awkwardness and tightly tied-back hair. Her glasses finish the look, further emphasizing her bookishness and closed-off nature. However, all it takes is one compliment on her appearance from a boy to open her right up, which makes sense given all her neuroses about sex and attraction. Seeking to emulate a model the boy compares her too, she gives herself a makeover, switching from ponytail to letting her hair fall straight, as well as getting questionable looking bangs? She also switches from glasses to contacts. None of this represents an overnight transformation to her social skills, but because of this appearance shift she’s able to strike up a friendship with the gyaru girl in her class, which eventually leads to the furthering of her relationship with the boy. This whole situation works far better than the previous Love Live example because it’s realistic – dramatic appearance reworks of oneself don’t lead to overnight personality shifts, but it can help start them down that path. Also, it’s an extremely realistic chain of events given how hormonal and horny the teens in O Maidens are.sure ya didSo that’s that! A shorter blog post this time, but I just wanted to get those stray thoughts onto text so I could finally move on.
Dec 22, 2019 • Subscribe
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