On Cute and Tragic Anime

On Cute and Tragic Anime

It can be frustrating when the people in our lives who don’t watch anime boil it down to a single title or buzzword. When my issues of Otaku USA Magazine would come in, my grandfather would point at any image on the cover and ask, “Is that Pokémon?” On a visit to the British Museum during its manga exhibit, I overheard a fellow patron muse that “Naruto shouldn’t be in a museum gift shop.” That said, this tendency toward seeing anime as a monolith, and even the tendency of anime fans to see styles or genres as a monolith, is a powerful tool in a storyteller’s toolkit.

Take series like Takopi’s Original Sin, which just ended its run this weekend. The series weaponizes our expectations against us, starting hopeful and childish but eventually turning into one of the most tragic anime we’ve ever seen. And while the line between tragedy and brutality is a fine one, when it’s done right, it can be powerful.

Hopes and Dreams

This reflection comes on the heels of rewatching key episodes of Fairy Princess Minky Momo for an upcoming magazine review. While the gut punch of Momo getting hit by a car and killed 2/3 of the way through season 1 is well known by now, many people don’t automatically think of it as a “tragic anime.” It’s one horrifying moment buried in the midst of lighthearted magical antics. But this adorable magical girl series is far less happy than most realize.

Across the show’s 1982 and 1991 seasons, both Momos (because they are two separate entities) fail in their quest to restore humanity’s hopes and dreams. One dies in her quest to do so. The other, Megumi Hayashibara’s “Sea Momo,” is thwarted by a four-way war centered on her home. And eventually, she realizes that Earth has simply become so detached from hope that there’s nothing she can actually do. So, why do we remember it happily?

Catharsis

In modern media, we’re beginning to lose sight of when tragedy crosses over into simply being “grimdark.” We may often mistake one from the other in either direction. Something that is dark simply for the sake of being dark… well, it piles that darkness on. People suffer and suffer and suffer. And why? There is no upshot; no catharsis. Nothing comes of the suffering. Now, if you’re into that, that’s fine. We all have our own tastes. But an anime that is all suffering with no light is not a “tragic anime.”

Let’s look at another heavy magical girl series: Madoka Magica. Character die over and over again in every timeline. Girls full of hope and dreams and good intentions have those intentions used against them. Why? To be alien food. And yet, Madoka overcomes. She uses a wish to grant hope, of a sort. There is a light at the end. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s something. While tragedy doesn’t need a “light at the end” (look at just about any Shakespearean tragedy), it needs a reason. Why did we watch this happen? Was it to show us how to cope in dark times? To demonstrate how the “right” circumstances can tip us over the edge? Or to tell us a truth about our world? That moment of realization lets us release that tension, bringing catharsis, or at the very least understanding.

What We Learn

Funnily enough, Fairy Princess Minky Momo and Takopi’s Original Sin come armed with a similar lesson: you can’t fix everything. Sometimes hurt is too deep, too broad, and too systemic for even a magic wand to do away with. The end result of both eras of Minky Momo is the same: neither Momo can save the world, but both Momos can concentrate on their own dreams. And Takopi learns, albeit more quickly and more brutally, a similar lesson: sometimes what you can do and what you wish you could do are worlds apart.

The tonal dissonance of these cute, tragic anime drives this point home even harder. We’re in the sort of show where the power of friendship should work, and yet people are dying. But they, like Madoka Magica between them, also ask us to redefine “hope.” Is it a perfect solution? A dissolution of every bad thing? Or is it claiming what little light we can in the midst of darkness? And, more importantly, what will we do in our own lives now that we’ve received the message? It’s that final question that draws the line between darkness for darkness’s sake and a tragic tale that helps us grow.