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scans_daily2014-12-08 05:28 pm
lego_joker) wrote in scans_daily2014-12-08 05:28 pm
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31 Days of Scans - Least Favorite Female Character: Nabiki Tendo
I'm typically not the sort of guy who hates characters - any character - aggressively. This isn't because of some high-minded "every character has potential" philosophy, but rather because my limited attention span means that characters I dislike will typically slide off into the ether three minutes after I've read about them. Thus, it's rather hard for me to differentiate between characters I actively dislike and characters who just haven't made an impression on me either way.
As with all things, however, there are exceptions.
I. Cannot. Bloody. Stand. Nabiki. Tendo. Except maybe in extra-small doses.
Now, I got into Ranma well after its heyday on the Interwebs, and from what I've been able to piece together, making Nabiki into the hero is apparently a thing among fanfic writers. All I can say is... why?
In my opinion, there is little separating Nabiki from the likes of Happosai, save for the fact that the latter gets occasional comeuppance (hence why he won't be my choice for Least Favorite Male Character). She's amoral at best, actively immoral at worst, and an all-around ball of unpleasantness whose only function is making life harder for the characters.
Now, Ranma has many, many overplayed running gags, but Nabiki's underground market of girl!Ranma photographs has to be one of the most obnoxious. It's tawdry, it's tacky, and quite frankly, it's kinda creepy.
Nabiki's had a few stories centered around her sprinkled through the manga. Pretty much every one of them depict her as an unrepentant asshole. From the "Ranma's new fiancee" arc, where she casually tries to sell Ranma off to one of his other suitors, apparently solely to enrage them so that Ranma will come save her:
To the Ten-Yen Battle arc, which attempts to use her stinginess as its only punchline for about a hundred times in a row.
To the finale chapter, where she basically ruins the entire wedding by inviting every lunatic in Nerima-ku to it on the assumption that they'll all bring wedding presents (they do, but most of those presents are lethal, which she doesn't seem to understand).
All of this would be utterly forgivable if the manga actually had her come off worse at something - anything - in its 36-volume run. But no, according to author Rumiko Takahashi, the entire point of Nabiki is that she always comes out on top, even if the entire freaking universe has to bend to her whims. An unrepentant asshole is one thing, but one that the author openly admits to holding hands with is something that I can rarely stomach.
Mere scans don't quite do Nabiki's despicable nature justice, since it's more of an accumulation of every little moment of assholery she's committed over the course of the series. But trust me - once you've read to about volume 20 or so, you'll probably be itching to see her get so much as a grounding from her spineless wimp of a father.
Returning to fanfic writers for a moment - one of the most laughable pieces of fanon I've ever seen is that Nabiki somehow handles the house's finances (and that all her scams go into funding the dojo). Don't get me wrong - it's produced some great pieces of fanfic, but it's still hugely OOC. Nabiki might well be the only character in the Tendo household who has never been shown contributing to the family finances (save for maybe Kasumi). Soun sits on the Town Council, Genma works odd-jobs every now and then (he was Dr. Tofu's assistant for a brief while before Dr. Tofu got dropped), both of them - plus Ranma - sometimes take demon-exorcising missions, and even Akane has been shown to worry about the dojo's budget more than Nabiki ever has.
While not every piece of fanfic sings the praises of Saint Nabiki, Savior of the Family Finances, I've found that "Ice-Queen Nabiki" fanfics are, in their own way, almost as unpleasant. Nabiki is a decidedly nasty piece of work, but she's not some criminal mastermind with a Charles Augustus Milverton-esque spy and blackmail ring. She generally gets portrayed as such so it'll be that much more satisfying when Ranma (most of these fics are Ranma-takes-massive-bloody-revenge-on-all-of-Nerima stories) tells her to screw off, but in my opinion, she's not worth getting built up as a big bad villain.
She's a small-time opportunist with average intelligence, a single punchline, and a limited range of emotions. That's it.
As with all things, however, there are exceptions.
I. Cannot. Bloody. Stand. Nabiki. Tendo. Except maybe in extra-small doses.
Now, I got into Ranma well after its heyday on the Interwebs, and from what I've been able to piece together, making Nabiki into the hero is apparently a thing among fanfic writers. All I can say is... why?
In my opinion, there is little separating Nabiki from the likes of Happosai, save for the fact that the latter gets occasional comeuppance (hence why he won't be my choice for Least Favorite Male Character). She's amoral at best, actively immoral at worst, and an all-around ball of unpleasantness whose only function is making life harder for the characters.
Now, Ranma has many, many overplayed running gags, but Nabiki's underground market of girl!Ranma photographs has to be one of the most obnoxious. It's tawdry, it's tacky, and quite frankly, it's kinda creepy.
Nabiki's had a few stories centered around her sprinkled through the manga. Pretty much every one of them depict her as an unrepentant asshole. From the "Ranma's new fiancee" arc, where she casually tries to sell Ranma off to one of his other suitors, apparently solely to enrage them so that Ranma will come save her:
To the Ten-Yen Battle arc, which attempts to use her stinginess as its only punchline for about a hundred times in a row.
To the finale chapter, where she basically ruins the entire wedding by inviting every lunatic in Nerima-ku to it on the assumption that they'll all bring wedding presents (they do, but most of those presents are lethal, which she doesn't seem to understand).
All of this would be utterly forgivable if the manga actually had her come off worse at something - anything - in its 36-volume run. But no, according to author Rumiko Takahashi, the entire point of Nabiki is that she always comes out on top, even if the entire freaking universe has to bend to her whims. An unrepentant asshole is one thing, but one that the author openly admits to holding hands with is something that I can rarely stomach.
Mere scans don't quite do Nabiki's despicable nature justice, since it's more of an accumulation of every little moment of assholery she's committed over the course of the series. But trust me - once you've read to about volume 20 or so, you'll probably be itching to see her get so much as a grounding from her spineless wimp of a father.
Returning to fanfic writers for a moment - one of the most laughable pieces of fanon I've ever seen is that Nabiki somehow handles the house's finances (and that all her scams go into funding the dojo). Don't get me wrong - it's produced some great pieces of fanfic, but it's still hugely OOC. Nabiki might well be the only character in the Tendo household who has never been shown contributing to the family finances (save for maybe Kasumi). Soun sits on the Town Council, Genma works odd-jobs every now and then (he was Dr. Tofu's assistant for a brief while before Dr. Tofu got dropped), both of them - plus Ranma - sometimes take demon-exorcising missions, and even Akane has been shown to worry about the dojo's budget more than Nabiki ever has.
While not every piece of fanfic sings the praises of Saint Nabiki, Savior of the Family Finances, I've found that "Ice-Queen Nabiki" fanfics are, in their own way, almost as unpleasant. Nabiki is a decidedly nasty piece of work, but she's not some criminal mastermind with a Charles Augustus Milverton-esque spy and blackmail ring. She generally gets portrayed as such so it'll be that much more satisfying when Ranma (most of these fics are Ranma-takes-massive-bloody-revenge-on-all-of-Nerima stories) tells her to screw off, but in my opinion, she's not worth getting built up as a big bad villain.
She's a small-time opportunist with average intelligence, a single punchline, and a limited range of emotions. That's it.
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Admittedly I'd put all of Rumiko Takahashi's lead heroines in today's category for the fact that they all pretty much fall into the same archetype and conform to many of the same stereotypes. I think the only female character Takahashi created that I genuinely liked was Kikyou from Inuyasha. She was actually interesting and complex. (Also I know the Canadian voice actress who voiced her in the English dub and met her Japanese voice actress, so I may be biased).
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*Starts groveling*
We are not worthy we are not worthy we are not worthy...
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Nabiki is as you say a small time chiseler.
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Ukyo wasn't bad, as far as Ranma's gang goes a fair bit more transgressive than the other characters who only played at it. Not that she didn't fall into a lot of the tomboy strereotypes, but for Takahashi she was better than most.
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Which is why I always prefer Maison Ikkoku and Urusei Yatsura to Ranma.
Although Ranma has been described as like a Japanese Simpsons which makes sense. They're gag-strips, which also explains it's enduring popularity.
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One of my favourite scenes from the anime was when Ranma and Genma got in a fight, and Ranma started listing all the shitty things Genma did with a blatantly fake "I FORGIVE YOU DAD" speech, and all the onlookers were giving Genma a "wow what an asshole" look while he was visibly humiliated.
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I did, however, enjoy the Kikyou-centric Fateful Love Song Before We Met episode, which offered an in-depth look into Kikyou's life and why she fell in love with Inuyasha. It upset me so much that she was the woman constantly put in the refrigerator for the sole purpose of progressing the narratives of two men. Not one, but two.
Yeah...she deserved way better, especially considering that her replacement wasn't all that interesting and had the same personality archetype of basically all of Takahashi's other lead heroines. What a completely wasted opportunity with Kikyou.