#the concept is contrived but i find it very appealing sue me

[gunnerpalace]

Let's Talk About Orihime

This is a bit long, so I’m putting it under a cut:

But first, because this requires some setup, let's talk about Mace Windu. Now, someone a lot more famous than me has already had this discussion, if a bit crudely:

So, in short, Jackson was cast not because he was good for the part, but because his name would bring in extra dollars and an audience that might not have come otherwise.

Anyway, keep in mind the quoted section.

Now let’s talk about Bella Swan. This is by no means the most exhaustive breakdown of her character, but it will suffice.

Throughout the series, Bella is only defined by her relationship with Edward. That is what sets her apart from the other characters. She has no special traits or defining hobbies or characteristics. She could just as easily be replaced with a secondary character and the only difference would be the name.

[...]

This is a product of the bad writing evident throughout the series. Meyer never shows, she just tells. She tells the reader Bella is smart, though, over the series, a veritable mountain of evidence stacks up against this fact.

[...]

Bella's main problem, however, is not her lack of depth, Twilight is a poorly written romance novel after all, you cannot expect too much, the main problem is Bella's essentially anti-feminist characterisation.

Keep this in mind too.

Last, but not least, let’s talk about healers in JRPGs, specifically, Final Fantasy. Now, when people think of White Mages, they think of something like this. And of course this image of healers as chaste, pure, pretty maidens is quite the trope, and begat its own offspring.

This became so rote that eons (almost 20 years) ago, PSM had an article on trying to change up the tropes in JRPGs to keep them fresh. I can’t find the article, but here was their concept art. (The female lead was a black mage, not a healer, and the healer was actually pretty into violence.)

The pinnacle of this trend was, of course, Aeris:

Now, everybody thinks of Aeris as a pure princess because of FFVII: Advent Children, and the associated following Kirk Drift. But Aeris was street-smart and loved to crack innuendo, so this is largely a mass-misremembering of her actual personality in FFVII. (The definitive screenshot LP of FFVII makes the case for this handily.)

Still, you get the idea: healers are pure, pretty princesses.

Speaking of pure, pretty princesses:

(Gee, you wonder if that color-scheme is a coincidence?)

So here’s the thing: Orihime is bait. She didn’t start off that way, but that’s what she became very quickly, certainly by the end of the SS arc.

She is a very shoujo character in a shounen. Who do you suppose that she is designed to attract? The answer, of course, is women, specifically teenage girls who can identify with her. (This is analogous to Mace Windu being introduced to expand market capture.) She serves an auxiliary role through her design, as IH has lately seen fit to constantly crow about: her huge chest also makes her fan service for male readers. (This is like Mace Windu being the “only” Jedi who can balance between light side and dark side and the only one with a purple lightsaber.)

Not only is she perfectly designed to appeal to a non-traditional demographic in addition to shoring up a traditional one, she’s designed to do so through insidious means. Put simply, much like Bella Swan, she was largely designed to be, or became, a tabula rasa. She is a blank slate. What few personality quirks she had to begin with were eliminated to focus her existence entirely upon pursuing Ichigo. We’re told that she’s smart, just like Bella, we’re told that she has an interesting interiority, we’re told this, we’re told that... All of that is systematically eliminated for the sake of her pursuit of Ichigo. She exists for no other purpose. She is the girl seeking to get the guy.

And much like Bella Swan, she is successful in that appeal, because by being so thoroughly bland, and sympathetic in a rudimentary way (that is to say, relatable, because she is aimed at an age-group when people are figuring out how to pursue relationships), she is the perfect template onto which to project one’s desires. She exists for the reader to use as a self-insert.

Unlike Bella Swan, she does have one special trait: she’s the healer. Orihime is practically an archetypal example of the pure maiden/princess archetype of a healer. And of course, her powers are routinely hyped up as something truly astonishing (the, to paraphrase, “transgressing into God’s domain” quote that gets bandied about) even as they are simultaneously dismissed. (Hachi doesn’t regard her powers as special, Kisuke considers her powers dispensable, Aizen ultimately had no use for her except bait, etc.)

Orihime isn’t powerful. For all of her vaunted ability to reject events, she is neutralized by differentials in reiatsu, just like Soi Fon is by Aizen. Against a more powerful opponent, she’s ineffective. Further, she lacks a killer instinct, and was only able to muster it once. (This being in the defense of Tatsuki; some will argue she was ready to hurt Moe if he had been the one to injure Uryuu, but close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and global thermonuclear war.)

What she is, is fast. Soul Society’s healers are able to reproduce her results or better with time, but she can do the same very quickly. This makes her convenient, particularly to the plot. She is an expedient deus ex machina for enabling our heroes to do what they do, and this gives her an air of necessity to their adventure. She seems very important as a result! But we must remember that this is a story with an author, not a record of events, and that stories can be incredibly contrived.

Hanatarou couldn’t fix the degree of injuries she could, or fix them as quickly, but he could largely fulfill the same role—and in fact did during the Soul Society arc. She could be swapped out for another healer, like Unohana, and very little would change except the necessary pacing of events. She exists to speed up the plot.

In other words, Orihime is the perfect synthesis of the three examples I lead off this essay with: she is a cynical readership-expanding token character, she is rather featureless and designed to facilitate audience self-insertion, and she is a Mary Sue with an overstated importance to the plot that conceals her weaknesses. (With the last point: I don’t refer to Aeris in actuality, but more the idea of her that was built up by the extended universe ex post facto.)

She basically became a plot and marketing device.

And the hilarious thing is, she worked perfectly. Her popularity poll numbers were acceptable enough, but it’s the zealotry and rancor of her supposed fans that really tells the tale:

There is the continued focus on her physical form, particularly her breasts; this reduction of her to her character design is a gleeful admission that such was her function in appealing to men.

There is the lack of concern toward her ending showing the final destruction of her early dreams and personality: this reduction of her to her relationship with Ichigo is a gleeful admission that such was her function in appealing to women.

There is the constant defense that she “deserved” Ichigo’s affection because her chaste love was so pure and selfless: this is a gleeful admission that she achieved her objective of standing in for the speaker’s own estimate of their self-worth and value.

Orihime is ultimately utilized as a surrogate for happiness by those who identified with her. She “won,” therefore they “won.” She “deserves” Ichigo, just like they “deserve” their own figurative Ichigo (that is to say, “love”). They extol her “importance” because it means they are “important.”

Not everyone who likes Orihime identified with her to this extent, of course. But I think it’s rather obvious that the diehard core of IH—that is to say, the faction that is presently occupied with making fools of themselves in the ask boxes of IRs—did.

And this is, of course, exactly why this faction of IH is so aggrieved. Orihime does not really exist as a character to them (just as Ichigo doesn’t; but Ichigo at least has a character), she exists only within the matrix of IH, because that is her purpose. When IR, or the fandom in general, rejects IH, they view it as a rejection of themselves. It’s a repudiation of the commitment they made, and of their core being, and thus they lash out. When they demand recognition for their ship, what they are really demanding is recognition of themselves. They are trying to compel respect and love.

The tragedy and irony of this is of course self-evident, but nonetheless noteworthy, for they are in effect being told the one thing they cannot actually cope with:

Santen Kesshun: I Reject!