Over at Lazy Lily fansubs, the final chapter of Sakura Trick has finally been translated and released. The chapters came like pulling teeth by the end, but they came. Lazy Lily is a much better fansub group than Mittens, who translated Hataraku Maou-sama volume 0-II but then kept it password protected behind a password that's simply impossible to figure out with the hints provided. Lazy Lily actually wants their audience to enjoy their products, as opposed to Mittens who just wants to tease us with what we cannot have.
Hopefully someone will crack Mittens' password and then provide a non-password-protected copy over at nyaa.si, or novel updates, or just somewhere. But Sakura Trick can now be finished just by clicking on the lilyreader button.
The last chapter has some nice art but no real plot advancement. Just a nostalgic tour. The series never really advanced because in the anime Haruka was already planning to marry Yuu but suddenly in the manga afterwards they were 'just friends' and by the end had finally managed to become 'girlfriend-girlfriend.' This is so stupid. How does a relationship start at 'engaged' and then go steadily backwards from there?
The anime worked just fine as a standalone product. The manga only takes the characters backwards in their development so it's not useful. I guess the side characters improve their situations over the course of the manga so that's nice. But no one really cares about the side characters.
In addition they decided to go to different colleges so in the real world, non-anime-fantasy, that means they just broke up at the end. Because long distance relationships do not work. It's too difficult getting in contact with each other, and you have less and less in common as the days go by. No mutual group of friends, no mutual hobbies, no mutual environment, no shared activities, means there's nothing left to connect over or talk about when you do talk. Eventually you'll both feel extremely lonely and frustrated with the relationship and someone will find someone actually nearby who they can share things with, both topics of conversation that are relevant to their daily life and physical intimacy, and then the cheating begins. It will probably start with one of them finding a new 'friend' who's really fun to be around, and doing things 'friends' are allowed to do like 'outings' as opposed to dates, 'hugs' and 'sleepovers' as opposed to sex, etc. And then suddenly one day you, the long distance partner, will be informed that you're no longer wanted in their lives and the friend has mysteriously graduated to being their real lover.
In anime fantasy land, people can just swear their eternal love for someone and live happily ever after in long distance relationships, but in the real world love isn't eternal. Love, like memory, is a phenomena that at best lasts 30 minutes after the actual events that inspired the feelings. If you don't constantly refresh your memory of your feelings for each other, they'll just become a note in the attic, like, 'oh yeah, I guess I felt something like that once, long ago.' It's not even the feeling itself, just a memory of the feeling, with no ability to recall how that feeling actually even felt like.
People do not have long term memories or long term feelings, they live in the moment, and they live for the moment. If you spend the next four years apart in different colleges while just having flimsy memories like random stupid conversations about no present-term shared events or present-term shared people in your lives, then inevitably people will feel like the relationship is shallow and unrewarding. Why shouldn't they think that? It in fact is totally unrewarding. There's no deep understanding of what the other person is going through, thinking or feeling. Just two ships drifting by each other in the night.
Maybe 1 in 10 long distance relationships succeed. For a four year span, I feel like it's more likely 1 in 100. The moment you agree to get in a long distance relationship with someone, you're essentially declaring that you don't care about this relationship anymore, because you're willing to lose it, because all odds say you are now destined to break up. The moment you agree to a long distance relationship you've already broken up. And I do not like romances that end with breakups. What was the point of all that drama and all those feelings up until now, if they weren't strong enough to lead to a loving family? Obviously there was no point, it was just a bunch of useless posturing. When it came time to put up or shut up, they just gave up and left to a 'long distance relationship' which is code for 'so long, sucker.'
Now, sure, in anime fantasy land, I'm sure the girls of Sakura Trick will still be together after college, just like they showed in Kimi ni Todoke, who also had a long distance relationship throughout college. But that's just the author's convenience. That isn't real. That part of the story is filler. Because there is no realistic way these characters could actually get through the boredom, loneliness, isolation and frustration of never getting to be with the person you love. There is no realistic explanation of how they got through the long distance apart without being driven apart. If you don't explain how an event could realistically occur, as an author, you cannot with authority say that something actually 'happened' so the reader just needs to shut up and take your word for it.
Saying, 'oh these lovers are better than average so it's fine,' isn't good enough. Every loving couple feels like they're the most loving couple in the world before they break up. It isn't about how strong their feelings are for each other, it's whether they rely on proven dynamics that work in relationships versus doing things that are known to undermine and destroy relationships regardless of how people once felt. If you do things that work -- like marry, live together upon marriage, have the boy out-earn the girl and have the girl give birth and raise children, have a fun shared hobby you can enjoy together, have a peer group or church group you meet with regularly that is heavily invested in your marriage and continuously encourages you to stay married and lovey-dovey together, stay out of debt, stay in good health and good shape, be honest, kind and respectful to each other, don't cheat, don't suddenly spring new information or new deals on each other after the marriage, etc, etc. If you don't do the things and create the environment where love grows, then the sprout like any seed cast upon barren land will just wither and die. There is no 'strong feeling that can overcome anything.' Any feeling you have is just 'at the time.' It can overcome anything -- for the next 30 minutes. But love is for a lifetime.
For love to last a lifetime you need new strong feelings, new strong reasons to love the other person, every thirty minutes. There needs to be wind behind the sails. A motivating force that keeps things going. Not something that happened ten years ago, something that happened ten minutes ago.
Long distance relationships are like boats adrift on the sea who have run out of fuel. They wander wherever the tides or winds blow them, which usually is not back into a safe port. It can be, if you're incredibly lucky, but odds are it won't be. Real relationships are refueled constantly so the boat can go exactly where it planned to go and stay on course throughout. Happy moments, understanding moments, moments where you're impressed by the other person's high quality, and bonds of physical intimacy are the coaling stations that keep the ship a meaningful actor instead of just an adrift castaway.
If you're near each other, these events can occur spontaneously. You can suddenly get an idea in your head and immediately have a productive conversation about it. You can witness your partner being badass because he or she did it right in front of you as you just happened to be nearby watching. You can suddenly get the urge and then immediately placate it by rubbing up against each other. You can enjoy something together that was really special, like a movie or your kids winning a soccer game or wine looking at the Christmas tree all lit up and decorated in your living room.
If you are apart, you have nothing. A random text message saying vapid, non-new material like 'love you,' or 'have a nice day.' Understanding nothing, sharing nothing, and no chance of physical intimacy. The pain and frustration and cost of the long journey to meet again trumps whatever fun you could have for the brief moments you hook up again, making it impossible to bridge the divide.
So no, I will never accept a love story that breezes through a long distance relationship, without any struggle, any explanation how they managed such a miracle, and then just ends with 'happily ever after.' I"s in fact was a story of a long distance relationship, and it showed both sides struggling with it, desperately unhappy, going through a lot due to it, and eventually overcoming it and truly getting back together. I accept the plot of I"s. They earned that love. The girls of Sakura Trick and Kimi ni Todoke did not. Humorously, in GunOta, the guy embarks on a long distance relationship and promptly forgets his former girl, falls in love with a new, cuter loli vampire, and marries the new girl. By the time the former lover gets back from the long distance relationship the new harem is presented to her as a fait accompli, she can either get on board or be the third wheel. I guess that's a realistic long distance relationship, but I still resent Lute for choosing to have one, because that's exactly what happens when you make these sorts of choices.
In any event, that's one more franchise I can finally put behind me. As I've mentioned before:
Only 4 of my 27 favorite light novel series have both been finished by the author satisfactorily and completely translated.
Only 28 of my favorite 75 manga series have both been finished by the author satisfactorily and completely translated.
Only 5 of my top 10 visual novel franchises have both been finished by the author satisfactorily and completely translated.
Only 81 of my top 200 anime franchises have reached a satisfactory conclusion to their tales and been completely translated.
So endings are always in short supply over here, and each time I get one the angels start singing 'hallelujah' in chorus above my head, but at least that moved the ticker up, from 27 completed manga series to 28. Progress! 2019 has finally delivered on something concrete and certain. No one can ever take the full story of Sakura Trick from me anymore. I've experienced it from beginning to end. Unlike Hataraku Maou-sama volume 0-II, which Mittens thought would be hilarious to take away from me, Sakura Trick is now mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment