Sometimes a little Kannism is all we need (EOI #5)

 

What is a kanni?

Kanni is a person who has a huge amount of obsession towards something he/she likes which leads them to stand up to their liking even for the negative aspects about them.

Since I had an upbringing which involved cinema, I was hugely influenced by commercial cinema and the absurdities of it. But I overcame those cringe-y feelings. Sort of!

This was the same with anime too. When Goku asked us to rise our hands to give him our powers for firing up the spirit bomb, I raised my hands. I buried all these kannism as I grew up.

I am not saying that I love Fairy Tail because I was an anime Kanni. I couldn’t able to bring myself to hate Fairy Tail because I was an anime kanni.

I am no more an anime kanni because the negative aspects of FT would not affect me or I would never defend FT for its animation (especially in its final arc), the character development or all the illogical fights and power ups.

I would still accept its flaws, but I would also never accept Fairy Tail as a bad anime.

That’s my justification for loving Fairy Tail and the second most important reason would be its characters and the catharsis I feel towards them.

The Nakama Power

Almost all the Shonen animes showcases a friendship theme. FT does a great job. I can tolerate all the logic holes or any insane powerups or even the weak character development. But the only thing that I don’t like about FT is its fan service.

I am not sure how the concept of misogyny is received in Japan, but personally as a misogynist myself, the fan service showed in FT was way too sexual. Most of the animes portray these kinds of vulgarities in the name of fan service.

Even the female mangakas exhibit internalized misogyny (Akira Amano, The mangaka of Katekyo Hitman Reborn)

Taking this ideology in a fun way is a good way to combat these thoughts for me. But even it has a contradiction. In simpler terms, knowing these are wrong and constantly viewing these makes me cringe and over time turn into irritation. 

Sometimes, watching cringe-y stuff is to restrict yourself from doing those things.

Misogyny is not the only case; it works both ways.

Hiro Mashima is a kind of guys who doesn’t take anything seriously. BTW, he is the mangaka (author) of Fairy Tail. In one of his interviews, he even said that Seinen series were beyond his understanding.

I was fascinated to know that Hiro Mashima had written a manga before Fairy Tail. Its known as Rave Master with a whopping 35 volumes. This came as a shock to me and I got more shocked when I heard that it was better than FT.

Even Hiro admitted that he had written Rave Master in a serious way that he wanted to write FT in a more light-hearted way. That would be the reason why the arc felt repetitive. Its all about the daily life of members of the Fairy Tail Guild.

When I think about it in that way, even judging the fan service was weird because that’s the way these characters behave. They won’t take any shit that we throw at them. There was even a scene where these two old geezers try to make out with a girl prisoner. Later they were beaten by Lucy and it was funny.

It was politically wrong when you think about it but that’s how they are and, in a way, showing their true shelf and belittling that shelf was kinda sarcastic to be honest. If they felt sorry for what they had done, then it would’ve been a cringe for me. But instead, they were shown frightened whenever Lucy was around which was funny, and it was even healthy to belittle these kinds of habits in a sarcastic way.

It was shown in many of Tarantino’s film. 

E-N-O-U-G-H of Preaches!!!

Hiro Mashima

Hiro Mashima made FT based on Friendship theme; all the friendship troupes such as know yourself troupe, I-will-die-for-my-friends troupe and a lot more were used extensively.

And that is also one of the reasons I love FT.

Even though I enjoyed watching all the FT characters despite all the cringes, I too attained that irritating saturation point at one time. It was when I took a break from Fairy Tail and watched 2 newly released movies.

It was long since I had watched a new movie. I had watched nearly 150 episodes of Fairy Tail and that same week, me and my friends did this conference call, and discussed about movies and stuff. 

One of friend, Elakiyan, suggested me to watch this Malayalam movie called Kappela. Also, I always wanted to watch this Kannada movie called Kirik Party. So, the next two paras would be dedicated for these two movies.

Kappela was a film about a guy and a girl who fell in love without seeing their faces. They’ve only talked through phone. Also, Bhashi (My favourite actor in Mollywood) plays a crooked guy role. It was the last 20 minutes of the film that intrigued me. All the twist was guessable and even the plot was an ordinary one. But what made this film great is its writing. This film would be a great example for a good screenplay writing for a film. Before this flick, I got the similar experience when I watched Iesha (Also a Malayalam movie). It is difficult to write a scene about tension building and this film nailed it. I watched it in Netflix, and I love watching anything via Netflix, but the sad thing is, I rarely use Netflix nowadays. It was a satisfying movie for me after taking a long hiatus on watching movies.

Now about Kirik Party, it was a weird coincidence because, watching Kirik Party gave me the Vibes of watching Fairy Tail. It was a feel-good movie with zero logics and I personally didn’t like the movie that much. I guess its because of my expectations towards this movie or something, but it was more like Premam. I felt Premam was a natural Drama and Kirik Party missed that naturalness. I mean, in some scenes, the writing was so artificial, that made me cringe-nauseas. Also, it was ridiculously long in duration. The only good thing about the movie is Saanvi played by Rashmika Mandonna. I am not a big fan of her, because I have only watched one movie of her before this one. It was Dear Comrade and I didn’t like that role she played in that movie. It was annoying for me. But this one, I loved it. The way the character handled and the way she played it was a bliss to watch. But her death was not good, I mean I am not saying this because of how much I liked this character but dying because of drinking alcohol was somewhat cringy for me. I felt a little message preaching there despite the intended emotionality of that scene. Second half was a total crap until the climax. Climax was full of catharsis. I cried the hell out of me and in the end, I loved Rakshit Shetty even more. 

In the end, it was a Plus Ultra!

Kirik Party reminding me of Fairy Tail so much and our break up didn’t last long more than 3 days, me and FT had our Patch up.

I didn’t stop watching FT until that event. More on that event later but for now, I stopped watching FT after 250^th episode.