A quick Aside - Triangles and Bittersweetness

I've decided to talk about these two related cultural points now, because of the next anime i'll review will contain a very large "bittersweet" aspect, and because I'm also likely to review Evangelion, Macross and other anime that feature heavy "triangle" relationships.

So first, I want to talk about how different the general writing themes are between Japan and the West, because this is part of the reason why these points need extra explination in my opinion.

In the west, almost every story follows the same sort of path, you have "The Good Guys" who are righteous, correct and hold to their morals. Then you have "The Bad Guys" who do all the nasty things, hurt people and generally do wrong. The story comes from the inherant conflict between the protagonist (good guys) and the antagonist (bad guys), and is normally resolved when the good guys win, beating the bad guys and everybody goes home happy, with a pony and sparkly rainbows and shit..

Thats an over-simplification, but almost all western-written stories follow that path, with the good guys, by virtue of being the good guys alone, being victorious and having a "happy ever after" ending.

The thing I've noticed in my years of watching, reading and involvement in Japanese stories is the inter-twined themes of the love/relationship triangle, and the bittersweet feeling left with the third aspect who isnt chosen.

For example, a love story, with two girls both in love with one guy. Traditionally a western story will have one girl being "bad", trying underhanded tricks to win the guy, while the "good" girl will lose to begin with, being heartbroken and feeling rejected, in the end the guy will choose the "good" girl by virtue of her being good, because it outweighs the "bad" girl's behaviour, or he catches on to the underhand tricks used by the "bad" girl. The story ends with the good girl and guy riding off into a sunset, happy and with a joyful future ahead of them, while the bad girl is left to rue her behaviour and be punished for it. In Japan, the distinction is rarely so black-and-white. Often there wont be any real difference in the values of "Good or bad" between the two, and it all eventually comes down to the choice of the guy, which invariably leaves one girl broken-hearted. This gives the story a bittersweet feeling, its great the guy and one of the girls are happy, but at the same time you feel sorry for the rejected girl, its not that she did anything "wrong", she just wasnt the right one.

That bittersweet feeling is in a lot of Japanese stories, Fullmetal Alchemist, the Anime I review last, has it in places, such as Hoenheim abandoning his family to save the souls of all the people of the country or with Al sacrificing himself to give his brother his arm back so he can beat the head badguy. It surfaces a lot in high school anime too, as friend graduate and move on, leaving others behind.

The bittersweet/triangle aspect isnt just limited to anime however, who remembers Final Fantasy 7, with the emerging love-triangle between Cloud, Tifa and Aeris? and how bittersweet it was when Aeris sacrificed herself to save the world? same with the ending of FFX, which carried with it a similar sacrifice, leaving a bittersweet feeling to a lot of the motives and cut-scenes in FFX-2. Its in their films as well, with the masterpiece "The seven Samurai" having many scenes where former rogues and unpleasant people give their lives to protect simple villagers. That movie has had a lot of influence on western films too, because of the sheer impact of that bittersweet sacrifice. Influencing Star Wars - a new hope (the first film) with Obi-wan's sacrifice, and the attempt at a literal western remake, the Magnificent seven. I've mentioned before how Joss Wheden enjoys killing off characters we've grown attached to (like a leaf in the wind...), and that trend in western cinema and TV comes in a large part from that film.

To my understanding, one of the earliest times this aspect shows up in Japanese storytelling is in the tale behind their Tanabata festival, A story of two lovers seperated by the woman's father, allowed a single day of reunion every year (unless it rains). Associated with the "summer triangle" of stars, this tale dates back to an old Chinese folk story, called "the Princess and the cowherd" which spread out across most of asia. A tragic tale, sad and moving, it carries with it the hope of that one day of reunion. 

So many aspects of Japanese life can be represented in a triangle, its well worth looking into it. The theme of a three-sided aspect to most things crops up again and again and again, even their schooling system shows traces of it. (three schools, elementary school for 6 years [a multiple of 3], followed by junior high for 3 years, then high school for 3 years) Taking the theme back to stories, you can see how many of them also have three aspects to them.

For example, the massively popular macross franchise has three main elements to every series,
1-transforming mecha in battles against a near-unbeatable foe,
2-A love triangle between a pilot, a singer and a member of the military,
3-Music, playing a central and connecting part between the three aspects as well as being the method of resolution of the conflict.

Then we can look at the as popular but more well known in the west, Evangelion, which again has many triple-sided aspects to it, such as the three main pilots and the relationships between them, the whole messed up relationship between Shinji, Rei and Gendo... there's more but I'd need to refresh my memory on the series to stay specific.


So, in short, the connected themes of Three-sided aspects (triangles) and the bittersweet feelings caused by loss or sacrifice for the greater good are deeply ingrained into Japanese storytelling, as opposed to the duelistic good/evil or black/white absolutes ingrained in western culture due to literal millenia of domination by those themes in our tales, mostly due to the heavy influence of christian/islamic/judaic control of our societies across that time. Both cultures make use of both types of storytelling however, its not a strict divide between them, but when reviewing a Japanese story its well worth remembering that the storyline may often be driven not by conflicting viewpoints as western tales often are, but by this different point-of-view.



NEXT REVIEW - K-ON! and its sequal series called K-ON!!