So, The End Of Chapter 3 Pissed Me Off A Bit: A Mid-Point Review/Rant Of Sorts

When I finished Chapter 3 for the first time, my first thought was like, "okay, what the hell was the Zylo scene for, then???" Because yeah, up to Chapter 2, we have a pretty reasonable if cheesy buildup. Chapter 1 introduces Bleu as this sad and lonely protagonist, drifting away from his few friends due to being non-human. He's reluctant to be seen as a hero, and uncomfortable with the worship of Sacred Dragons, missing the time where he could just be friends with human children. Yet despite clearly cherishing his few friendships, he's also a shut-in who seems to avoid hanging too much with Karin and Krin, partly because he's comfortable with his introvert life, and partly because he seems to have accepted the irreconciliable difference between them. He does not have the resolve to seek a different way of living other than being what he's supposed to be, yet he also does not have the guts to cut ties with humanity completely. He just lets Karin or anyone else push him around, too unsure of himself to decide what he truly wants. Naturally, you expect this meekness of him to be the focus of the story, and for it to change or develop in some way.

Chapter 2 builds upon this in an interesting way, because we get to see Bleu fight for the first time, and suddenly none of his self-doubt is there, just an incredibly powerful dragon and hero rescuing the new girl without needing any help from his team. And from there on, it's clear that he wants to embrace that divide, that he sees "doing everything on his own" as the correct way to being a Sacred Dragon. And it sucks, but it also makes perfect sense. In the original game, Karin basically demanded this kind of strength from him. Everyone in Rudo worships him. Otrant, a great authority in this world, basically told him it's his right to decide anything about the Manual even though other lives are at stake. No one but Karin pushes against this view, and even then, she does it out of pure stubborness. She has only began to understand his loneliness, doesn't seem to have any idea on how to reach out to him, as most of their conversations are teasing and bickering only, and has hyped up his power and importance above others like everyone else. She's not even sure he needs her, she just wants to be with him out of pure devotion, and only knows to express that to him as a demand. A demand without any bite, because he's not a kid anymore, and she has no power over him.

But sure, that all blows up in the chapter's climax, in the most cliche way possible! Bleu rushes in ahead, abandoning his team, and that almost dooms them all, before Everyone's Favorite Wolfling descends from the heavens with his very loyal army and power-of-friendships all over the enemies, delivering the moral of the story with the subtlety of a battering ram. And I'm not making fun of it, it's the exact narrative I signed up for! The character flaw was built up as I mentioned before, the theme is similar to that of the original game both in terms of gameplay (as advancing your hero alone is a very basic mistake!) and story (at least if you're going by a translation that doesn't suck), the battle is cool as hell and everyone gets to do something, which further displays the theme. It's cool! It's good! It's the expected for a spinoff novel of this series! A fitting theme that leads to a climax with badass displays from many beloved characters! Yay!

So, where do we go from there?

The writer clearly didn't know, which is why as soon as Chapter 3 starts, Bleu continues to display the exact same hesitation from before about having a team following him. As if we hadn't just discussed it. Zylo's words do not come back to him at any moment, as if they never happened. But hey, maybe he just needs some time to absorb the lesson, right? After all, Randolf will mention it again during the Kraken battle, and we are then treated to more awesome action scenes that Bleu certainly wouldn't have handled alone, right? Right?

Yeah, you read the ending. It's not right. Despite being told to trust his allies above all, Bleu not only continues to resent them all coming, but has resorted to betraying their trust to push them away. And despite recognizing in some way how bad it was, and being called out that his decision was selfish and disrespectful of his friends' wishes, he still refuses to apologizes, and defends it to the end, only accepting their return because there was no choice, not because he learned anything from this. It is actually Karin who apologizes and tries to talk it out, with him only shutting her down for most of the time.

But, as I said, these were like, my impressions at first read. Looking back, there are a few things to consider from Bleu's perspective. Like I said before, it's not like a life lesson always sinks in instantly, and more importantly, Bleu hasn't really seen Karin and Karna in action during the Pao battle. All he saw was her almost dying inside the train for no apparent reason, and then he failed to deal with Ziduur as well. From the character's perspective, it makes sense that he's rattled.

So, does that change my first impression of the chapter's end? No. A narrative isn't made solely out of character actions, it is up to the writer to make those interesting for the audience to read. No matter how much sense it makes for Bleu to act as he does, the point remains that, at least how it is portrayed, this scene does not connect in any meaningful way with the previous chapter, making the reader feels like they just wasted their time caring about that conclusion. It also does not end or advance the conflict in any way, promising more of the same in the next chapter. The pacing of the scene is also incredibly awkward. Like, we go from an epic battle where the girls kinda dominated the action, to a charming moment of fun with the centaurs, straight into the cheap drama, where both Bleu's plotting and the girls' return are done off-screen and between very short chapter parts, almost as if trying to milk out twists out of a conflict that, again, is pure repetition, with Karna basically acknowledging it with her "How many times do I have to say it" line. The self awareness of the writer here does not make it less tiring to read. And then, with this tension between the team completely unresolved, we are thrown into the beginning of Chapter 4, which is... naked anime girl hijinks. Heehee. Who cares that we lied to and belitled these girls and almost just sent them miles away against their will? Nevermind all that, we're just gonna have some goofs now walking into their baths and talking about their silly beauty stuff.

I'm sorry, have I been saying girls? My bad, I mean allies. This is about the plot point of Bleu not respecting his allies. It's a neutral analysis with no gender in it, because genders is politics, and politics is not videos games, or so I've heard.

...Except Tyrin did bring up gender explicitly into this, so that's not on me! And while I hate him for it, as I began to write I did become almost glad he did, because otherwise some people could believe the last paragraph unironically. At least in some alternate timeline where this rant becomes a hot gaming topic. How glad am I that I do not live in that timeline, and that I've never heard bad gamer discourse in my life.

Anyway, don't worry, I'm not gonna waste your time with a wall of text on how misogyny is bad, because if you don't know that on at least a basic level, I simply Cannot Help You. What I want to discuss is more how the misogyny shows up here, because I feel lots of fandom discourse get stuck on a very simplistic level of "misogyny is when girls weak, feminism is when girls strong" only.

So! Tyrin believes in helpless maidens who need condescending protection and cannot understand the manly passion of wanting to adventure a little! Is that the message this novel wants to convey? Is that supported by the narrative? Of course not! I said it before, the girls were the main focus of the climatic battle of the chapter, and showed competent skills in it. Karin and Camallia have had multiple scenes from their perspective and as much relevance to the plot as Bleu himself, while Tyrin and Randolf, basically the only other guys around, haven't really done much. Tyrin's on-the-nose bigotry is exactly what it is, hammy and bad and proven wrong in the space of a few pages. Going by this chapter only, you could convince yourself that the whole thing is just a clunky attempt at a moral about this exact topic.

Which is why I wanted to wait until Chapter 4 to write this whole rant. You see, there is someone who is also relevant for the end of chapter 3 who I haven't mentioned yet. And that's Camallia. Camallia basically delivers the moral of the scene, that the guys' attempts of protection are purely self-serving because they refuse to work with what the girls wish as well. Camallia is the only one indignant at how Karin and Karna are treated, and their greatest ally in resolving the situation.

In a story about teamwork and unity, you would expect that to mean something.

Instead, they are immediately pit into a beauty comparison next chapter.

And they have nothing to talk about besides Bleu.

And Tyrin gets to keep pushing against their boundaries for a joke.

While Bleu gets to pretend that respecting them is just this too hard and too mystifying thing to ever do.

This goes beyond gender and is a very infuriating combo of traits from this novel. On one hand, the characters are all well written and charming in some way. They all have valid motivations, they all often get chances to express their thoughts on a situation, and their conversations flow well together. I can really feel them come alive in each scene, heck, it probably goes overshadowed in a rant where I'm complaining so much, but I love to translate this novel, I love to see colorful but shallow characters I loved as a 6 year old get this much extra content. On the other hand, they just... never effect each other. Karna has had like a billion declarations of how devoted to goodness she is and this bunch of supposed heroes don't care, Randolf had a whole spiel about what he wanted to get rich for and everyone just dismissed him as greedy, Camallia acts suspicious a bunch of times and no one points out a thing, there's a billion examples of this. So you have these very engaging interactions that, continue to not matter. And it reaches maximum terribleness at a moment like this, where a big internal conflict blows up and doesn't get much follow up.

"But Claire, there's half of the novel left, are you spoiling us by saying none of this will matter through it?" No, don't worry, I'm writing this based on my feelings when I first read this part only, because it felt like a slap in the face and I think it deserves some analysis or at least mention of it, since as I've mentioned, the novel feels too repetitive on some aspects, and it's exhausting to read even though a development may come later.

Part of what gets me on the start of Chapter 4 really, it's that it feels like the beach episode of the story, so to speak. The rest of the novel hardly brought up sexy/naked girl scenes of any kind (save for a very brief one with Camallia at Chapter 1), so having it shoved here, after a tense ending? On my first read I thought it felt out of place, like the writer was just hastily crossing off "mandatory bath scene" off his bucket list before proceeding. But thinking now, it might have had a purpose. The purpose of being some chill comic relief after the tension.

And what a coincidence, huh? That chilling out from a gender-based conflict means the girls just having to put up with a male character disrespecting their boundaries twice in a row because he refuses to see the point.

What a coincidence that it means calling the girl most fed up with things less graceful than the ones who put up with it more quietly. And that judgement is not passed by a sexist character, but by the narration itself in an objective way.

I keep sitting on this review for weeks and months because, honestly, how do people put up with writing this kind of analysis? Like, do I have to say anything? Do I have to say that it's bad to dedicate multiple lines about your teenage girl character not being as attractive in the same breath that you establish that yes, *of course* she has big breasts, and in the same breath that you call her childish for expressing too much anger, and within the context that *this* is what these girls get for a scene together instead of literally any other bond they could be forming over the course of this adventure. Are we gonna address the way Camallia and Karna have very different worldviews despite being both priests? Are we going to develop the beef from when Camallia kinda called the hell out of Karin's feelings back at the train? Are we gonna hear anything about how Karna and Karin feel about Camallia helping them out during the ship thing? No. No time for any of that. But plenty of time of bath hijinks.

Do I have to point out that a narrative with this kind of priorities sucks? Do I have to? I would like to not have to, one of these days. If Chapter 3 could convince you that maybe there was some attempt at a moral there, the bunch of carelessly sexist tropes brought at Chapter 4 for nothing but funsies kinda ruin any faith I'd have at that.

To finally get to the point I wanted at the beginning though, at no point are these girls weak. Or even like, unimportant to the narrative or anything, in fact, let's be real, the gender ratio on this book is kinda shocking to me at least. Shining Force games up to this point have a male to female playable character ratio of like, 5:1 or so. If the writer hated women, he had no shortage of men to write about instead, and I doubt many readers in the 90s would bat an eye at a mostly male cast, or at least a cast where the girls took on more passive roles. It is decidedly a choice that the writer has given them arguably as much focus and importance as Bleu, and decidedly more than the male side characters. The problems with the writing have nothing to do with how many girls are there or cool they are or how much the writer loves them. The other point that is dear to me and I wanted to get here, is that maybe it's exactly why and how they are loved that is the problem. Maybe they are loved exactly because they are the unbeatable, steadfast lover who will continue to prove herself no matter how many mistakes her boy makes, and still be ready to apologize first while he can't spare a moment for her feelings. Maybe they are loved because they keep up the teamwork and unity by sucking up every disrespect because god forbid the old man of the team change a behavior instead (hey btw remember how every game up to this point has at least one sexual harasser per HQ in the Japanese versions?)

Maybe they are loved and that love is comfy and at peace knowing that, if things ever get too tense, we can all just have a breather, and relax, because no matter how strong they are, in the end they know it too, nothing will change. They're just girls.

God that final line from Karna. I wasn't the only one thinking of the memes was I. I can't be.

Decades separate the writing of this novel from the screenshot above and myriads of TikTok "girl math/girl dinner/i'm just a girl" discourse. And yet.

The irony here is that I wouldn't even mind a story about a group that cannot get along but has to anyway for a greater cause. Actually, I'd say this ended up part of why this novel, and especially Karna as a character appealed to me so much. But, given how light-hearted most of the story and the character interactions are? I doubt it was the point. Maybe this is also a sore point to me because I've cared about one power-of-friendship shonen series too many in my past, but I feel sometimes a writer thinks of this kinda levity as the point. Like hey, no fight ever gets too serious, everyone's back to normal in a couple days, they all work together against the real threats, there's jokes, that means everything's super friendly, right? That sure is a way to dismiss every possible reason a friend has to fight you about, and make sure their daily life is a pain while you only come through for them "when it counts" (do you ever let them decide what counts?). It really sucks to see a theme so fundamental as friendship (and relationships in general) be portrayed like this so often, and this attitude extends to real life as well. I think we all deserve better. And we don't get any better until we start mulling over some issues and working out real solutions instead of just looking for the path where things "go back to normal" the fastest, you know?