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rodeodeparis · 2 years ago

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another rambling tachioda analysis i impulsively wrote where i compare it to folk tales and talk about story structure. whoopee

so i’ve been working with the aarne-thompson-uther index lately. the atu is like tvtropes for folktales. it has two categorizations: one is for motifs, or common themes that can be found in folk tales. (ie wicked stepmother, shoe that only fits the true love, etc.) the other is for story types, which is common ways in which these motifs can be glued together. (cinderella is wicked stepmother + shoe that fits the true love, plus a bunch of other things.)

while browsing, this particular tale-type caught my eye:

lenore, the namesake for the type, is a ballad by german author gottfried august burger. inspired by the european renditions of this myth, it follows the tale type description to the letter. however, it includes an additional section where the human curses god for killing her lover, and is punished by the dead because of it. the deacon of myrka, an icelandic rendition, follows this as well to an extent, but keeps the human alive at the end and curses her with a haunting. in general, both involve a bare-bones 365 with different christian and local twists.

my first thought when i saw this was “tachioda”. probably just my fixation talking, but i recognized the story. not just in tachioda, and not in the way the description put it.

in a section below descriptions of types, it lists countries where the author found indications of this tale (with sources). i’ll save you the long list - it’s disproportionately european. despite recent efforts to internationalize it, the atu is still very euro-centric. (why go through the trouble of adding “walloon” as a distinct ethnic renderer of a story while you just put “iraq” or “morocco” to refer to those regions?) hence the “generic” description being of one of the tale’s most popular european forms. what’s more important here is the premise. so, when i saw a japanese version was listed, my suspicion was confirmed.

i think what i may have recognized was the peony lantern* (starts page 5), a famous “ghost story” in japan. i can’t find the book the atu lists as a source for the story having a japanese rendition so i don’t know this for sure.

the peony lantern is a literary adaption of a folk tale, written in 1666 by author ryoi asai. the original was a chinese story of the same name* from jiandeng xinhua ( something like ”new stories to tell after snuffing out the lamp”), a famous compilation of adapted folk tales by ming-era novelist you qu that’d come out some 300 years earlier. this makes asai’s peony lantern an adaption of an adaption of a story that’d probably been passed on and changed long before qu was born.

(*for the former - asai’s version is the first in japanese, but not the most popular - the plot summary goes from page 5-6. most of what you can find online is a translation of another, more popular japanese adaption that came after asai but added some things.

for the latter, yes, that was the only english translation i could find. they tend to be sparse for chinese literature unfortunately.)

the peony lantern - both qu’s and asai’s versions - is the same idea as 365, but with flipped genders. here’s a very very basic summary of both of them:

man finds ghost woman during festival. (lantern festival in qu’s, obon in asai’s.) she’s with her maid, who’s holding a peony lantern,

man falls in love with the woman ghost, and she tells him about her past,

discovered by neighbor peeping into his house, who suggests he travel to the village the woman was from for help,

he does, and discovers a coffin in her old house with an inscription that confirms the ghost’s identity. he then goes to get religious help (from a taoist disciple in qu’s, buddhist priest in asai’s),

despite having gotten help, the man is drunkenly lured to his death,

qu’s man is drunk after a friend’s banquet and wanders inside the temple he was staying at. he’s lured by the ghost inside and into a coffin.

asai’s man is called by the ghost from outside of his house. he drunkenly wanders with her into the temple.

people spot the man, now as a ghost, walking around with the woman ghost,

townspeople (qu) or the man’s family (asai) go to a (taoist in qu’s, buddhist in asai’s) priest (and in qu’s only, disciple) for help,

the priest banishes the ghosts,

in qu’s version only, the townspeople go to thank the priest and disciple who helped them, but find that the priest has disappeared, and the disciple is now mute.

don’t worry about the surface-level details not matching up to lenore or to each other. for example, i’m pretty sure that the horse is a european thing. the folk tale of oisin on tir an nog and the tale of urashima taro are listed under the same type - 470b - with the circumstances of how they happened as local flair. oisin’s stepping off the horse serves the same purpose as the box urashima receives. what matters here is the themes and main events, and those track.

lenore could have very well ended in the same way as the peony lantern - the human and ghost are spotted, and a christian priest banishes them - but it doesn’t. that’s because of a very important difference in the way these stories are set up.

if you know the difference between european five-act structure and east asian four-act structure, skip to the paragraph starting with “if the peony lantern followed”.

european five-act structure goes like this:

exposition - characters, setting, and conflict are set up.

bob needs to open the bottle of olive oil to make dinner. the cap is tight.

rising action(s) - conflict ramps up.

bob struggles to open the tight cap. he tries everything, but it doesn’t work.

climax - conflict comes to its highest point.

in frustration, he digs under the cap with a knife, and it flings open.

falling action(s) - conflict de-escelates and starts to wrap up.

bob closes the bottle and pours the olive oil in the pan.

resolution - conflict is resolved.

bob continues making dinner.

east asian four-act structure* differs by country, but the gist of it goes like this:

introduction - characters, setting, and pretense are set up.

bob is making dinner. he’s struggling to open an olive oil bottle with a tight cap.

development - situation is developed.

in frustration, he digs under the cap with a knife and it flings open. he pours oil in a pan.

pivot - story changes direction/introduces a new perspective.

alice comes to stand behind him. she sounds angry.

conclusion - story ends.

bob turns around and discovers that alice’s eye is swollen and red - the cap had flung into it. bob profusely apologizes while he cooks.

(*ctrl+f “east asian 4 act”.)

disclaimers:

4-act isn’t the only one used in east asia, and 5-act isn’t the only one used in europe

i’m not saying you can’t appreciate these if you didn’t grow up with them or something like that

these aren’t the end-all-be-all of story structures in general, but it’s easier explaining two than several. also, these ones are pretty big.

in a five-act structure, the protagonist affects the world around them. because of this, they need a problem - a conflict - to take care of. it’s probably best to think about conflict here more like “goal” or “motivation” - a character needs to want something, and that thing comes in conflict with something else. this isn’t always a character explicitly going after something or being pitted against an enemy - it can be internal as well. their goal/motivation needs to be at the center of the story.

five-act stories start with a character’s goal being solidified to the audience. after this, they can either do something about it, or something can happen to them which furthers complications. either way, they need “motivation” to keep going. if an antagonist is present, whether or not they’re out to get the protagonist doesn’t matter - the protagonist will end up confronting them since they’re in the way of their goal. in the end, a goal needs to be met or not met, antagonist defeated or not defeated. whatever won out in the end is the determiner of the theme the story’s ended on. this is why the ending is the “resolution.”

in a four-act structure, a character is affected by the world around them. the character can have a conflict and goals, but they need causality - significant events to happen to them - to move forward. the story is driven by how events take shape and how they compare to each other in the grand scheme of things. from there, a character’s reaction (or lack of a reaction) continues the chain of events while telling us what we need to know about them.

four-act stories start by something happening to the protagonist or the protagonist doing something that makes the story-starter happen. the story continues as the protagonist keeps reacting. what keeps them going is some sort of mental/emotional relation to the events at hand. if there’s an antagonist, it’s their goals that are propelling the story, as those goals inhibit the protagonist/their world in some way. when the protagonist seeks a fight, it’s related to the sequence of events - if they’re a goody two-shoes, for example, it’s when the antagonist’s violence goes too far. events lead to an ending that, no matter what it is, reflects the theme of the story. this is why the ending is the “conclusion”.

in the five-act example, the point of the story is bob opening the cap. in the four-act example, his opening the cap was a goal of his, but the point was that he wasn’t careful and hit alice in the eye. you can change the structure of these stories around to make one fit the other, but the focuses work because they’re tailored to those structures.

there’s philosophical/cultural/historical “backstories” as to why the four and five-act structures are the way they are that i don’t feel like i can articulate very well. they’re also a lot for a post about video game men. if there’s something i’m missing or not getting, please tell me. i’ll try my best otherwise.

if the peony lantern followed a five-act structure, i think it would go something like this:

introduction: man meets woman ghost at festival.

rising action: he falls in love with her. neighbor sees him and tells him this is dangerous. he goes to get help in her village. he discovers a tomb in her house with her name on it.

climax: he discovers a coffin in her house with her name on it.

falling action: although he got help, he’s drunkenly lured to his death.

resolution: his body is found and he’s buried. the ghost couple haunts the town. the townspeople/family ask for help, and the ghosts are banished.

feels weird, right? the peony lantern isn’t actually following a five-act structure. instead, it goes like this:

introduction: man meets woman ghost at festival. he falls in love with her. neighbor sees him and tells him this is dangerous.

development: he goes to the town where she’s from and discovers a tomb in her house with her name on it. he then goes to get religious help. even though got help, he’s drunkenly lured to his death.

pivot: the ghost couple haunts the town.

conclusion: the townspeople/family ask for help. the ghosts are banished.

four-act structure hinges on significant events to develop the situation, which leads to character development. we see this in two different ways - during the man’s life and after - because of the way four-act structure is set up to think about ideas: idea (thesis), opposition (antithesis), combination (synthesis). that’s why the “pivot” is the story giving him what he wants; the effect the man’s uniting with his love had on his fellow townspeople as they prowled the streets was not something he seemed to care about much. there’s no way he couldn’t have cared when he was banished. no matter how strong their love was, the story claims that there were more important things for him to consider.

compare this to lenore. if lenore followed a four-act structure, i think it’d go something like this:

introduction: human has a good relationship with her boyfriend. however, he dies. she is grief-stricken, and in mourning. her mourning is slowly escalating.

development: her mourning escalates to a point where she curses god at her loss.

pivot: later, his ghost shows up to her house, riding on a horse.

conclusion: ecstatic, she goes with him. she rides with him to the graveyard. she realizes he is really dead. she dies herself.

feels weird, right? lenore isn’t actually following a four-act structure. instead, it goes like this:

introduction: human’s boyfriend is dead. she’s grief-stricken, and curses god.

rising action: he shows up at her house. she goes with him. he asks her if she’s afraid twice, she says no twice. third time, they’re at the graveyard.

climax: she realizes he’s really dead.

falling action: she’s pulled to her death.

resolution: she’s dead.

like how the four-act structure hinges on character development, the five-act structures hinges on goals to drive a conflict. the five-act structure ideas as thesis vs. antithesis - goal vs. opposition. one has to win at the end, and this tension culminates in the climax. in lenore, the two opposing ideas are her love for the ghost vs. how she blasphemed. first, she blasphemes. then, her ghost lover comes back to take her, and it seems like the love will win out...but she soon faces the consequences of that love when she realizes her love was actually dead. when she dies, the latter triumphed, and her love is shown as not having been worth it.

so the peony lantern is a story which can only read as harrowing as it does because it’s told in a four-act structure. qu’s and asai’s versions differed quite a bit, though:

ghost appearing during the lantern festival (qu) vs obon (asai)

disciple and priest (qu) vs disciple’s role merged into priest (asai)

man lured to death (qu) vs leaves house on his own volition, then lured to death (asai)

village asking for help (qu) vs human’s family (asai)

taoist priest and disciple (qu) vs buddhist priest (asai)

taoist punishment big part of story (qu) vs buddhist punishment, smaller part (asai)

most of these choices look like localizations. the family instead of the townspeople was probably to make those localizations make more sense. as for the significance of the banishment and the way in which the man was lead to his death, i assume asai changed these because of the specific story he wanted to tell.

a buddhist priest himself, much of asai’s writing focused on subverting buddhist emphasis on the importance of spiritual matters. a previous book he’d written is named for the term ukiyo (浮世), or “floating world”. this term had started picking up meaning to refer to a contemporaneous emerging culture of boisterous, red light district-prowling city life. this term is homophonous to another term pronounced ukiyo (憂き世), or “this sorrowful world”, a japanese term for the buddhist concept of escape from earthly death and reincarnation. instead of that, why not hedonistic, earthly pleasures? this was a sentiment which fit into asai’s writing, his time’s relatively stable contemporary politics, and the ukiyo subculture. (also, yes, it’s that ukiyo.) you can read tales from a floating world translated here.

with that, it’s easy to see the sort of story he was trying to get out of the peony lantern. “floating” suggests that most of his writing is lighthearted, and it certainly is, but much of it ultimately focused on critiquing politics/society at large. (though not always expertly.) he was a particular fan of pointing out to the readers what he felt were injustices or what was right instead. qu’s peony lantern and its warning of not faltering to love was a perfect target for a writer like asai.

jiandeng xinhua was influential for the novel way in which qu combined folk tales, buddhist lessons, and his political context. despite this, it was banned (and later unbanned) in his home country for political reasons and was more popular in vietnam, korea, and japan. as a consequence, the peony lantern is most well-known in asai’s form, scoring adaptions from further written stories, to kabuki, to tv, to several movies. it’s one of the most popular japanese kaiban and it inspired others like it. why did it last so long?

asai’s story still operates in a the same buddhist framework as qu’s. in both stories, for lack of a better term, the man’s love with someone he shouldn’t have interacted with came back to bite him in the ass. he’s ultimately punished along with his ghost-lover for having faltered to her in the first place.

but qu’s man was coaxed into his coffin. asai’s man chose to leave his house. the buddhist prayer to banish the ghost is one sentence long, as opposed to qu’s detailed taoist banishment. i think the longevity of asai’s peony lantern is because of these changes. it draws attention to the events that got the story to this point and their ambiguity. with this, we’re left with a ghost and the man who loved her. the relationship is even more in focus than it was before.

the basis of the religious subversion builds a framework for further explorations of the nature of the man and ghost’s relationship - the ghost’s apparent intentions, and the man’s apparent “loss” of agency. subversions never question the danger of the ghost, and don’t go great lengths to change the main course of events or introduce a conflict. they subvert by showing the love inside of that danger, what could’ve happened within, before, after, or outside of it. the change of context changes our perceptions. some adaptions even include the human and ghost being reincarnated together or the human dying with a smile on his face.

by keeping the actions and changing the context, subversions of the peony lantern are about how much the ghost and human mean to each other. the world around the human faces the consequences of the human’s actions. the drawing, oppositional factor here is the “forbidden love” on the part of the relationship’s existence. the important question is “who are these people, and why do they love each other so much?”

lenore had a level of cultural influence in europe to jiandeng xinhua. it inspired a lot of 18th-19th century romantic and gothic literature, specifically early vampire literature; english author bram stoker mentioned it as an influence on dracula*. the plot of dracula revolves more around the group of men who kill him at the end. dracula stalks, seduces, and eventually feeds on women. when he curses the protagonist’s fiancee, the hunt ramps up, and dracula’s eventually staked through the heart.

(*it’s a whole book rather than a short story like lenore or the peony lantern, so just read the wikipedia page if you’d like a full summary.)

the ghost in the peony lantern wasn’t this polarizing a figure because stoker wasn’t in the business of subverting in the way asai was. stoker wrote dracula in the fashion of a shitty contemporary trend. vampires have a history in europe of being portrayed through symbols associated with antisemitism against ashkenazi jews that i’d rather not get into. dracula was so evil because he was so cunning and seductive, “luring” you in, a trope which echoed that sort of anti-semitism. dracula’s allure gives the story a conflict in the same way the human cursing god in lenore did. the emphasis of the conflict just changed.

in lenore, the ghost’s danger was as inherent as in the peony lantern, but the woman’s love - her motivation - was similarly pre-established. what stuck here is the emphasis on that conflict - the question of the human’s priorities between her safety and her love interest’s allure. making the monster appealing in some way complicates things, as it gives her a “rational” reason to be lead to her death. it’s a question of the “benefit” vs. the “cost”. thesis vs. antithesis.

like in the peony lantern, the ghost’s danger is never questioned, but their intentions are. this is why dracula’s contemporaries in anglophone tv shows, movies, and young adult romance novels fret over their danger as much as their human love interests do. by showing that they don’t want to hurt their human, they’re given goals that “salvage” their dangerous nature. this focus on their “goals” not only paints them as worthy of sympathy, but drives the romance on both sides instead of just one. this portrays the relationship as a matter of mismatched compatibility in the way subversions of the peony lantern do, but the focus of the relationship is on how the individual sides fit together, rather than why they fit together.

by changing the focus of the conflict to highlight motivations, subversions of lenore are about how much this ghost means to the human. the world around the human warns the human about what they’re doing. the drawing, oppositional factor here is in the “forbidden love” on the part of the human’s and ghost’s motivations. the important question is “who is this ghost, and why does the human love them so much?”

essentially, these stories teach the same lesson - engaging with ghosts is bad - in two different ways. the effects of the human’s wrongdoing culminate in his receiving the worst fate vs. the human’s wrongdoing is cemented in her receiving the worst fate. these story structures are so ingrained in us that they impact how stories are told, even today - since the stories are set up in the specific ways they are, things like “dangerous” romance can be cultivated from them differently.

(second, completely unrelated side note: i doubt a 365-type story could exist in this form in the me/na. "spirits” are thought of differently. it’d have to change a lot.)

back to tachioda. no matter whether you’re more used to the peony lantern-type stories or lenore-type ones, this motif can be recognized. isn’t someone you care for betraying you with a secret which endangers your life sort of like a realistic rendition of a ghost dragging you into your grave? isn’t tachibana sort of like the human in those stories, where his love care for oda was what inspired him to not run away from his problems anymore by “sacrificing” himself?

oda’s something like the human, too - he did something he knew was against tachibana’s interest out of said poor judgement, which was blinded by his love. and just like both the human and the ghost were banished, oda’s judgement led to events that got tachibana killed.

regardless of who’s who, oda carried both tachibana and himself to their deaths. but is it more similar to the peony lantern, or to lenore?

let’s see if tachioda follows a five-act structure, for one:

introduction: oda works with tachibana. we know they’re very close, but not how. oda seems antagonistic towards kiryu for some reason. oda begrudgingly works with kiryu.

rising action: the search for the owner of the lot goes on. eventually, it’s discovered that it’s makoto, and they head to sotenbori to get her. we learn some stuff about their backstory from the video store owner. makoto and oda encounter each other, and seem to recognize one another. he’s antagonistic towards her.

climax: he eventually tries to kill her. kiryu stops him.

falling action: he spills and is left to fend for himself.

resolution: oda is dead. tachibana learns about it.

completely unrelated post-resolution occurrence: tachibana is inspired to stop running away from his problems.

in the five-act structure, the climax is the most intense moment - the moment where the main character’s goal and what it came in conflict with is at its peak. oda’s attempt to kill makoto is very intense, and where his antagonism both towards her and kiryu comes to a head. but what’s the conflict here?

if you want to find a conflict, you have two options: oda vs. makoto and oda vs. kiryu. since oda’s reveal is seen in the form of a buildup of antagonism that comes near his death, with his death serving as a resolution, there’s one conclusion here - oda is a twist villain. he dies, and makoto and kiryu won.

interpreting the story this way skews things a bit. namely, for a twist villain to work in a 5-act structure, they need to have been involved in the conflict that was driving the story all along. oda was a mole for shibusawa all along, yes, but...that’s it. it didn’t really go any further than him having given shibusawa’s men their location. in terms of a conflict of oda vs. makoto or kiryu, his death wasn’t the culmination of those things - not directly, at least. it didn’t “resolve” any arcs.

makoto’s main situation in the game is dealing with her life on the line with the empty lot in her hands and wanting to meet with her brother, not to mention grappling with everything she’s faced. within that, the identity of the person who trafficked her isn’t represented in a conflict. it’s a conflict - a question. that doesn’t mean it didn’t cause her significant trauma, and that doesn’t mean she isn’t struggling with it; it means that it was presented in a specific way. think about how she found oda - by chance when oda and kiryu came for her. after everything happened, and oda died, she had her answer. we see her reaction to it and everything else she’d faced in the rest of the game.

oda came across makoto so we would know what would happen when she saw him. makoto’s writing...could be better, to say the least, but i think this is a more harrowing presentation of what trauma can feel like. it’s not something that you overcome in a decisive conversation or battle, it’s something that sticks with you, even if you have all the pieces together.

kiryu’s conflict with oda pre-reveal was...nothing, really. even in 5-act structure terms. oda was just an ass to him. if anything, oda had been begrudgingly helping kiryu this far. nothing much other than that going on there, really.

with tachibana, the “conflict” between them isn’t so explicit. we may have some indication that tachibana knows something is going on with oda (which i talked about in my last post from a while ago), and we learn about their past together. until he learns about oda’s death, that’s the most of it. their on-screen interaction is mostly bare-bones.

so, yes, this is a conflict, but we only really see one party propelling the events in it. oda’s also going against tachibana’s interests, but tachibana isn’t involved, and doesn’t even know until it’s too late. he has no “goal” against oda. oda’s also trying to kill makoto, but even that’s only one-sided. she’s no big fan of oda, but she has no “goal” against him. if you see oda vs. tachibana as a conflict that’s driving the story, how tachibana reacts to oda’s death seems out of place - it has nothing to do with any sort of “goal” against oda, let alone resolving any goals, so we can’t say tachibana’s reaction is a resolution to a conflict that came before it. that’s why i put it as a “completely unrelated post-resolution occurrence”.

but oda had reason to be apprehensive - is an oda vs. himself conflict propelling the story? nope. even though it was something he chose to do under specific circumstances, oda’s already made his decision. he’s not convinced out of it until he’s caught. he’s conflicted, but his misguided perceptions motivate him to continue, so what’s driving him forward is not his internal conflict against anyone. it’s his goal.

he’s following his goal, which comes in conflict with tachibana and makoto’s goals, which is what makes events occur, which means that in terms of the four-act structure...he’s a twist villain? not so fast.

like pretty much every yakuza subplot that lasts throughout the whole game, the tachioda subplot follows a jo-ha-kyu structure:

jo: tachibana seems eager to get close to kiryu. he relays that he’s had difficulty trusting people in the past. on the other hand, oda seems antagonistic towards kiryu for some reason, but begrudgingly works with him. the search for the owner of the lot goes on. meanwhile, from makoto and wei han lee, we learn that she was trafficked while looking for her brother. the person who trafficked her had a bat tattoo. in a later scene, it’s revealed that tachibana has the same bat tattoo. later, kiryu and oda go to sotenbori. we learn about their (mostly tachibana’s) past from the video store owner.

ha: makoto and oda encounter each other, and seem to recognize one another. he’s antagonistic towards her, which climbs in severity as oda drives them to a “safe spot”.

kyu: oda tries to kill makoto, but he’s stopped. oda spills everything. kiryu leaves him to fend for himself. tachibana learns about his death and stops running away from his problems.

yes, that’s a new thing i didn’t talk about before. jo-ha-kyu is a japanese artistic structure extrapolated from the chinese literary concepts of fu-bi-xing. by “artistic structure” i mean that it’s a structure that’s applied to a lot of stuff. in our case, it’s a narrative structure used in movies, tv shows, and games.

progression-wise, jo-ha-kyu is similar to four-act, when you think about it. (sort of like how the five-act structure generally follows a larger pattern of “beginning-climax-resolution.) jo-ha-kyu is about a slow development of actions and context (jo), a sudden and quick dramatic heightening of the tension (ha), and an even quicker finish (kyu). the point of this is to show exactly how the “conflict” affects the story before it’s taken care of. the something it leads up to (or doesn’t) isn’t the “climax” - it’s as much of the point as the events are. like with four and five act structures, there’s a philosophy-based reason as to why this exists in the way it does but i’m not sure i could articulate it well.

what happens is that we’re presented with context and later get some indications of what’s “really” going on. then, oda and makoto see each other, and the pace heightens. as they escape from being pursued, oda’s antagonism builds until he tries to kill her. our questions are answered when he’s stopped and reveals everything, giving us context to everything we’ve seen. the conclusion is the rest - it’s not entirely linear because this plot affects both makoto and tachibana. with jo-ha-kyu, like with four-act, plots often don’t “resolve” and can lead to others.

the fun part about this is that you can incorporate a four-act sequence into a part of a larger jo-ha-kyu story to build it up even more. this manifests itself via the oda vs. makoto subplot like this:

introduction: makoto and oda encounter each other, and seem to recognize one another. he’s antagonistic towards her, and that antagonism builds.

development: oda takes them to the “safe spot”. eventually, he tries to kill her. he’s stopped.

pivot: oda spills everything.

conclusion: oda is left to his fate.

this is essentially the “ha” and “kyu” in the larger jo-ha-kyu of the tachioda subplot, and a part of the development makoto’s plot. with makoto, what happened to her was a significant part of her past, so knowing what would happen when she saw oda allows her to take matters into her own hands. (even though the writers screwed that up.)

with tachioda, it "pivots” from oda’s devotion to tachibana (thesis) and takes us to something that seems to contradict it (antithesis) before putting this in context of the devotion established beforehand (synthesis). oda and makoto’s relationship is also the “antithesis” to the thesis of oda and tachibana’s relationship and oda’s characterization as tachibana’s right hand arm man. the synthesis is oda choosing to leave himself to his fate. this also happens so tachibana can learn about his death, and we receive another confirmation - tachibana wanted to trust him.

tachibana’s death is also not a “resolution” to anything. since tachibana is tied to the main plot, this leads to complications for kiryu and makoto both. long story short, makoto confronts the lieutenants, and kiryu later confronts shibusawa. it wouldn’t have been so direct if tachibana hadn’t died, if oda hadn’t died, if oda had better judgement, if oda and tachibana hadn’t bumped into each other in the street in sotenbori, if oda hadn’t trafficked people. but still...

is oda a twist villain here? i’ll answer this by stating what i’ve been implying the whole time: oda as a character doesn’t work in a five-act structure. he’s also not important enough to the game’s plot for a neat yes or no answer. this leads us to some semantics. since we’re speaking in english, “antagonist” implies a character who’s an opposing force to the hero/protagonist, and “villain” implies that the force is tied to nefarious motivations or morals. the two are different, but there’s always some sort of opposition, like with five-act structure.

since we’re talking about a japanese game, japanese has these:

katakiyaku (敵役) - a character who’s role is to be against the protagonist

akuyaku (悪役) - someone who’s considered morally evil in a specific scene/incident/plot

akujin (悪人) - someone who’s very existence is evil; warumono (悪者) - a bad person

the first two japanese definitions are mutually exclusive from the third. they refer to context because they’re translations of the vaguer, european (or specifically anglo here) concept that these are intrinsic story roles. it’s not that villains or antagonists didn’t exist in japanese stories beforehand. it’s that in four-act, a villain doesn’t have to be there for “bad” to happen. see how those kabuki stock character descriptions primarily detail what characters do in a story? compare them to these commedia dell’arte stock character descriptions which primarily detail traits. a four-act villain is morally “bad” because that’s a reflection, not an explanation, of who they are in the story as a whole. that linkage serves as a counterpoint to the hero’s goodness and amplifier of their dastardly actions rather than as two inherently connected forces.

hero vs. villain is still a conflict in jo-ha-kyu and four-act story structure. you fight shibusawa at the end of the game, don’t you? he went out of his way to do what he did, which his less than “moral” backstory gives context to. the only things oda has in that regard are a checkered past and poor judgement. oda was propelled by his goal to do things that went against tachibana and makoto...after he and tachibana saw the latter’s family in a documentary. he came across it, and he reacted to it. oda’s association with the antagonists and former sex trafficking were bad, but he’s not a “villain” like shibusawa is - it’s not his role in the story.

if anything, i’d say that oda was absolutely intended to be a twist “bad guy”, as in twist “guy who did a succession of really bad things, realized the scope of them almost by chance each time, and paid the price.” but we can’t call him a “villain” in the english/five-act way because what he did, his role as a character, and his goals are entirely separate. the last we see of him is his rebuffing shibusawa when he asks why oda “screwed up” - even without kiryu and makoto there, we’re shown that his regret is real. the best we have to describe this in english is “morally gray”.

that doesn’t mean he’s portrayed as being in the right, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re supposed to sympathize with or even like him, though. the game doesn’t deny that oda’s actions were bad, but it’s not in the business of exploring this through oda as a “ghost” figure pit against the “humans”. like i said in my last post, if they wanted to do this, they easily could have. the main story could happen without oda - his role is to flesh out the world tachibana and makoto find themselves in. he’s a plot device. that’s it.

part of this is done through makoto’s journey. the other part is through tachibana and oda’s feelings about each other. (and also in that they’re foils but that’s another post.) they’re in a chain of events that implies animosity - betrayal - but something is different from what we expect. oda’s devotion to tachibana is the obvious thing. the scene with the car that i already talked about in my last post, a little less so.

other than that, most of what we know about how they behaved, felt, and thought until the “ha” is implied or summarized through anecdotes outside of them. the one thing underlying all of this doesn’t come out until it’s too late. oda realizes the gravity of keeping this secret and chooses to “redeem”* himself by divulging and staying behind. once tachibana reacts to that knowledge, we truly know.

(*another semantics thing - “redeem” in english has the meaning of “redemption arc”, as if it negates bad things or makes up for them. i mean “redeem” here in the “culmination of everything he’d done” way.)

we see oda first as someone who’s close to tachibana, and we only find out what he did and why as he’s dying. in turn, his death is used to confirm something about tachibana that had only been hinted at - his fear and his vulnerability. his priorities in the people he cares about and how he wants to do right by them despite those. (he lost his arm for oda.) by focusing on how tachibana and oda felt about each other within the context of what happened to them, we’re given a story about two people who were close, and one of them trying to work against the inevitable by keeping it that way. the tachioda subplot follows the same style of subversion as the peony lantern.

regardless, oda didn’t come into the game as a “ghost”; he becomes one, both in the plot and in our perception. the focus is on their relationship within what’s happening. like in the peony lantern, what makes this so appealing is that you can connect the emotional dots yourself. both oda and tachibana’s deaths were inevitable, but whether or not they were “deserved” serves to deepen the emotional significance of their deaths on the part of the player, rather than clarified universally to drive the plot. for people like me who ship them, it’s not in spite of what oda did, but in tandem with it.

i think part of the reason why tachioda may be so contentious with english-speaking fans is because of all of this. remember: your view of the world is, more likely than not, never going to be perfectly objective.

tldr: intentionally or not, tachioda is framed in the same way supernatural romances like twilight typically are. pretty cool!

#btw i just do this for fun and for myself #tachioda #i guess .

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