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zazzander · 6 months

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Dogsred Disappoints – Chapter 1

So I’m a big fan of the sports manga genre and I read a lot of the new stories coming out on the Shounen Jump app. Typically, if it’s a sports manga I’ll pick it up. And I’ll stick around even if the story isn’t amazing (which I won’t do for most other genres).

Obviously, that includes Dogsred. Now, I’m not saying this is a particularly bad story, I just think it’s poorly executed. And once I started thinking about how poorly executed it is…it was hard to stop.

To begin with, Dogsred struggles to connect its reader to its characters. There are several reasons for this which I’ll get into. Getting this right is so important in a story. It’s about answering the classic “why should I care?” question. And Dogsred fumbles that answer over and over again.

Disconnect from the Main Character

This manga has a dire inability to tell us the inner thoughts of its lead and an ambivalence towards his personality and backstory. This is, by far, the greatest sin of its writing. It this begins within first few pages of chapter one.

We open at the All-Japan Junior Championships, a pretty high-level contest. Our main character, Rou, is up. He stands on the ice, determined.

So far, so good – but the second half of this page is the first of many times the author stumbles. The opening is from the POV of the crowd. Of Rou’s fans (who aren’t important enough to warrant names nor do they appear later in any importance). These girls info-dump information at us:

They are big fans of his, indicted by the photos of his face on their shirts and the banners with his name. They are all implied to know what’s happened to him – this isn’t gossip one girl is sharing. It’s just her telling phantom listener (the reader) what has happened. This is poor writing.

Now, I’m not saying an outsider POV is bad for the beginning. It isn’t. Many mangas have used this effectively to set the stage for their story. However. In this case, Rou is by the far the most likely person to be thinking about this. Instead of fan-girls chatting to each other, the opening sequence would have carried far more weight if instead, we were aware of Rou’s thoughts and feelings regarding the routine, his potential stiffness, his fear of getting the routine wrong, his desire to make this flawless to honour his mother’s memory – whatever it is.

We could have a flashback to the moment’s leading up to the crash. The trauma of that moment. Maybe he feels survivor’s guilt because she died and he didn’t! Maybe they stayed up late to train for this very competition for him. He’s probably got some stiffness still, even if his injuries were light.

The opening sequence has plenty of pages dedicated to this routine. But instead of using it to get into Rou’s head, we waste several pages looking at the crowd and hear their thoughts. Through this info dump we learn a few things:

Rou is described as shining ‘like a prince’.

Rou has a twin sister, who hasn’t come to his performances for years.

It’s possible he won’t have the funds to continue to skate, as his mother was his coach and now she’s dead.

He is ‘undiscovered’ (considering the number of fan-girls this seems like a stretch, they don’t seem to be his friends just random girls hear to watch him skate) but that is likely to change soon

People think he’s got the potential to get to the Olympics one day.

Now, this isn’t to say there is never anything given to the reader about Rou’s thoughts. He thinks, “This is the last program my mother created. I got to give it everything!”, but it literally rehashes what was already said by the girls in the crowd. He does successfully do this and is like “yes!” when he gets in first place.

BUT THEN! All of a sudden, Rou rage-quits. He goes berserk while still in front of the characters. He evens slaps a guy.

This stunt ends up on the news:

Once again, the outsider POV is used to establish what is going on. We have random reporters discussing his reasons instead of us learning it directly from him. We hear that Rou set a record for that competition – since we barely know anything about the twins and considering their later dynamic – all of this information could have been conveyed through an argument between the siblings!

Instead, all we get is shots of them both getting a plane.

Now, I know what the author was going for here: intrigue. They wanted us to ask, as the people of this world are asking: why? However, that would have been better served as the introduction for a rival, not a main character. Intrigue like this rarely works for main characters!

And so, this introduction as failed to establish the dynamics between the three pivotal characters that have so far been introduced: Rou, his twin, and his dead mum. But not to worry, we’re only on page 29! There’s plenty of room for us to learn about these characters and who they are…. Right?

You’d think.

Unfortunately, at this point, we switch to a completely different sequence and setting:

The Hockey Match

After failing to give us more indication of Rou’s emotions than simply ‘I’ve got to do this!’ and ‘I did it’, we are once more placed into the POV of the crowd. There is an unseen announcer who is explaining what is going on to the reader. As we look over a seemingly irrelevant hockey match, the announcer explains what Ice Hockey is. Once again, the reader must suspend their disbelief, because surely the people at this event (a high school hockey match) would already know.

Anyway, we learn that this high school team, Oino, is attempting to win the inter-high champions for the 20th year in a row. It takes several pages before we meet an actual character.

Keiichi Genma has come to the game to support his older brother. From some random passers-by (that’s outsider POV #4 for those keeping track) we learn that he’s a good player. More info-dumping ensues, this time about the school and the general area.

This entire section of the manga is unnecessary to the story.

It’s so frustrating. We did not need to meet Keiichi here. We did not need to know about the Oino team trying for a 20th consecutive win. Plotting wise, these pages should have been used for something else.

However, I understand why this happened. This manga is about ice hockey – chapter one should show some ice hockey. Fair.

In which case, the POV should have been drilled into Keiichi and established his personality as the principal rival (as that’s what he is). Here’s an example of how these few pages could have been used to establish setting, character, and hockey:

Keiichi is on his way somewhere (we don’t need to know where yet) BUT he gets delayed for some reason. If he’s a bit of an airhead, this could be because he forgot to set an alarm. If he’s a hot-head who gets into trouble, maybe he ends up in a fight with some locals.

Regardless, Keiichi’s bus or train, whatever it is, leaves without him! Oh no!

Now, Keiichi has a problem. He needs to get to his brother’s match. He thinks: “the next bus won’t come for another hour!” (because this is hickville) and decides instead that he’s better off running.

This establishes quickly that Keiichi’s hometown is small.

We could also have him running through the streets, attracting notice. If he’s well-liked by his neighbours, people wave at him. If he’s known to be a troublemaker (which he is), they tell him off. We can get a quick sense of who he is, and what his community is like within a page. No info dumping necessary.

After running for a while, Keiichi manages to get to the stadium. This helps establish that he’s an athlete. Since running for a long time is physically taxing.

As he runs, Keiichi thinks about why he’s going. This is his brother’s game so we can establish their dynamic! If Keiichi is close to his brother and looks up to him, maybe he’s delivering his brother something for the game. If Keiichi is a bit bratty and sees his brother as a rival, maybe his mother made him go to the watch to film it so she can watch – as she’s busy at work.

Keiichi walks into the stadium and sees his brother playing. At this point, we could have him hear the voice over from the announcer who is talking about how this victory (which is pretty assured now as it’s late in the game) is one more step towards Oino taking the championships for the 20th year in a row. Again, if Keiichi looks up to his brother, he can think “you’ve got this, bro!” or he can be arrogant, “and I’m going to get the 21st!”

In this rewrite, we learn about Keiichi’s hometown (later Rou’s), build the foundation of his dynamic with his brother, and establish his personality.

Back to the Twins

We return to the twins arriving at a small town in the north of Japan. The twins have been picked up by their granddad and now learn all how life works in small town Japan (as opposed to Tokyo) on the drive to his house.

This drive takes them passed a frozen lake where some local kids are playing. We learn that the twin’s dead mum played on this lake as a child and get some meaningful looks from the twins. All in all, their arrival to town is actually pretty good! It sets the stage for later conflicts.

Haruna, Rou’s twin, even asks Rou outright why he rage-quit. He gives no answer.

(We don’t have a real confrontation between the two of them until chapter 12! Only then do they hash out what went down.)

Then we jump forward to Rou on the lake. Personally, I think this skip needed an intersecting panel where Rou picks up his stakes and goes to the lake. Arguably more. Rou is sorely lacking in any characterisation at this point. Instead of wasting pages on the hockey match, we should have been here, working through Rou’s thought process as he decides to head down to the lake.

Upon his arrival to this new town, Rou can really be one of three things:

Regretful over losing his temper and determined to restart his figure-skating, career by whatever means possible.

Listless over what to do with his life now, wandering the town streets with a lot of sighing and introspection. He’s dedicated his entire life, all his free time, to a sport he has decided to never play again and that leaves him without a direction.

Determined to jump-start a new life in a new town. Maybe he’s excited to do regular middle-schooler things, like hanging out with friends, because that’s something he had to sacrifice in the past.

The answer is… a secret fourth option! Rou has apparently given this no thought in the days between rage-quitting and getting to Hicksville. Instead, he only started thinking about what he’s going to do now once he gets on the ice. He tells us that he doesn’t want to disappoint his mother’s memory and that he still loves skating (both of these are somewhat contradicted later in the story).

This feels a lit soulless ngl. Rou doesn’t think about what his mother’s childhood might have been like. We don’t flashback to her teaching him to skate a kid. It’s just… blah.

The good news is we finally get some Rou characterisation: flippant and vain. Which is… not the most likable set of traits but at least it’s something! I was happy to finally get to this point because those two things would definitely cause trouble if he joined a hockey team! (spoilers: it hardly comes up).

Keiichi and Rou meet

As expected, the boys meet. Rou learns from the local children that Keiichi has previously beaten up a kid for touching ‘his’ section of the ice. This is obviously an asshole thing to do and Rou decides to pick a fight over it. Again, great characterisation.

This is the best part of the chapter. The future rivals really rile each other up and we learn a lot about them both in the process. They even start a cool skate off over this previously mention section of ice. Unfortunately, the fight only a couple pages and… the chapter ends. Sigh.

Other Notes:

I really, really dislike Rou’s character design. He’s supposed to be a beautiful boy, a figure-skater who looks like a ‘prince’ yet his design doesn’t show that. Especially in the beginning, he shouldn’t look that this. There should be an opportunity to make him more rugged later, but Rou is vain, he cares about looking ugly. By manga standards though, he’s naff.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Basically:

The author relies way too much on outsider POVs to info-dump, rather than presenting the world through the eyes of the characters.

Because the story decided to make Rou’s rage-quit one big question, his entire characterisation suffers. We fail to delve deep into Rou’s relationship with his sister and mother. The story moves on after this chapter, and because these questions aren’t answered now, they have to be addressed later (chapter 12) which hampers the pacing.

Rou’s personality is difficult to figure out despite him being the main character. Only by the last few pages (of a 62-page chapter!) do we learn even a few of his key traits: vain, flippant, and righteous.

The chapter spends way too much space giving useless bits of information they can be slowly fed to the reader, to the detriment to the story.

#dogsred manga #shounen jump manga #manga review #manga analysis

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delawaredetroit · 1 month

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I mean did Ochako get a good resolution? She failed her goal in saving Toga (who killed herself for her) after she vowed she wanted to save people after Nighteye was dying in her arms. Her arc of suppressing her feelings basically goes unaddressed and her feelings for Midoriya are essentially dropped despite being tied to that heavily (for better or for worse, and whether people ship them together or not that was a big part of her character). She doesn’t even get a chance to help Izuku in the climax, which doesn’t fulfill her resolve to help heroes when they’re suffering. She was dying from being stabbed, while all the other heroes with worse injuries (Bakugou) kept fighting. I would argue that her arc is basically nonexistent, which is a shame.

I'm sorry, I stopped listening to what you were saying after you claimed Bakugou played a more meaningful role in the last arc because he had more fights in the final war arc.

Now, all jokes aside, yes, Ochako did get a better character arc resolution compared to other key characters in the story (maybe excluding All Might and All for One).

Ochako starts out as a girl who went in to heroics, a job she believed was a performance to make the public happy, in order to provide for her parents. She was always a caring person, but Ochako didn't think structurally and she didn't think about the severity of what she was walking into with heroics.

After a few arcs, she really came to admire Izuku, a character who embodies an altruistic heroic ideal of saving others. After confronting life and death situations during a work context for the first time during the Overhaul Arc, she realized heroics was more than a performance. And despite that revelation that there were lives at stake - she wanted to continue moving forward to save people.

But hero society neatly divides people into those who save (heroes), those who are saved (civilians), and those to be defeated (villains). Once Ochako determined she wanted to save people, she quickly ran up against the limits of their society's framework of who gets to be saved. It started in the Joint Training Arc when she saved Izuku when he lost control of his quirk. She started with well then who saves the heroes? After seeing Toga cry during the first war arc, her next question became are villains also people who can be saved? Ochako was also the one to confront the civilians about their own complacency and to take initiative to help save others themselves at the end of the Villain Hunt Arc.

She did not have to fight with Izuku in the final fight and Toga was not required to survive to resolve her arc. The point of the "who helps heroes when they are hurting" with Izuku and reaching out to Toga was for Ochako to break down hero society's narrow, dehumanizing roles. Izuku and Toga embody some of the most self-destructive aspects of heroes and villains respectively. She reached out and recognized the humanity of each of them in their darkest moments - the Rogue Arc for Izuku and for Toga in the final war arc while Toga was still mourning Twice's (and what she believed to be Touya's) death(s).

As for the crush/feeling suppression plotline, she wasn't required to confess to Izuku to resolve that plot point. That plotline is intrinsically linked to her relationship with Toga. Because as I have said before, Ochako actually took Toga's advice for how to approach her crush. Toga wanted to become just like her crush. Izuku suppressed all emotions he believed interfered with his hero persona. Ochako then responded in kind by suppressing her feelings after she realized she liked Izuku in the Second Act. But in the final arc, Ochako acted according to her own feelings. She reached out to connect to the villain instead of defeating her because she wanted to do so. Trying to suppress her feelings of wanting to save Toga by looking at the destruction she caused didn't work. She freely admitted to Toga and herself that she liked Izuku.

This was a high school crush. Most people don't get married and have kids with their high school sweetheart. The crush plotline at the end of the day wasn't about Izuku. It was about Ochako and Toga and at a thematic level it was about restrictive norms around love and connection with others, especially as teenage girls.

And honestly, the epilogue also resolved Ochako's arc well. She gets to vent to her friends and let out her suppressed emotions surrounding Toga's death. She was able to connect with Izuku again without running away in fear of her own feelings as she had throughout the Second Act. And there is evidence she put her ideas of rejecting these narrow roles of who can be saved into practice through spearheading these systematic quirk counseling reforms.

#bnha #bnha manga spoilers #uraraka ochako #midoriya izuku #toga himiko #for a shounen jump written by a guy writing a lead girl - this is some solid character writing #but fandom misogyny is a heck of a drug i guess #asks

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