Frankmunculus

Frankenstein and Fullmetal Alchemist both address the morality of artificial humans, termed Homunculi in the latter. In both novels, these creatures serve as the main antagonists of the story and their desires and emotions are discussed throughout the narratives.

The Homunculi serve as the major antagonists to Fullmetal Alchemist.

In Frankenstein, the monster is portrayed as a pure being who had descended to becoming a demon. Though he knew of virtue and kindness, he had become envious and possessed by the desire to destroy the bonds from which he has been forsaken.

The Homunculi from Fullmetal Alchemist differ from Frankenstein's monster starting from their creation. For one, these creatures cannot be generated using the remains of humans at no cost. Instead, a new life created is an old one lost. The main antagonist, known as Father and The Creature in the Flask, sacrifices souls order to create his Homunculi, each born from a fragment of his sins. His seven Homunculi are named after the seven deadly sins, but interestingly, although they are by nature evil, they are in fact as tragic as Frakenstein's monster. Envy is envious of human bonds, sloth wants to escape the creeping of death, lust desires the joys of family, pride wants to accept his true form, wrath wants to escape the violence of his creation, and greed wants to fill the lack of friendship within him.

Both Frakenstein and the Homuncluli can be considered slaves in one sense or another. Frankenstein became enslaved to his own rage and envy, despite feeling disgust for himself for it. He did not want to commit crimes and he felt remorse for his actions, yet he could not control himself and willingly continued. The Homunculi were all slaves to Father, the Homunculi that gave birth to them. Like Frankenstein's monster, they looked down on humans as lower beings, and found solace amongst each other. The Homunculi may well have represented what Frankenstein's monster had hoped to achieve by gaining a mate- a society of monsters that seeks to annihilate the ruling structure and usurp the regime.

Franken;Steiner

Frankenstein. Stein. Steins;Gate. To be fair, these two topics have absolutely nothing to do with each other besides the usage of the phrase "Stein", which means "stone" in German. "Franken" means "genetically engineered", which relates to how Frankenstein's monster is the product of human design of "stone", the hard, cold portions scavenged from graves by Victor Frankenstein.

What about Steins;Gate? What does Steins;Gate mean? If if you take it to mean "Stone Gate", well, that still doesn't make any sense because the concept of a significant "stone" exists neither figurtively nor literally in Steins;Gate. A quote from the main character, Rintarou Okabe, perfectly sums up the meaning of the title "Steins;Gate":

"It doesn't really mean anything."

Steins;Gate is a science fiction about a self-proclaimed mad scientist.

...Well that can't be right. For a science fiction narrative whose protagonist consistently advocates that the series of events that play out is the "choice of Steins;Gate", there must be some sort of meaning to the phrase, especially since it is the ultimate goal of the protagonist. Looking at it linguistically, Steins;Gate could be akin to some sort of "Stones;Gate". Perhaps a gate of stone? Then what are the stones? Two possible interpretations arise: the concept of World Lines as being vehicles of time and time travel is a river that carries the "stones", our characters, through to them; or the goal of reaching Steins;Gate is difficult because it is "made out of stone".

Neither of those interpretations are coherent with regards to the plot, the former unrelated to the struggles the protagonist undergoes and the latter unrelated to what the former is related to. The perhaps, since Steins;Gate was once a visual novel, the phrase "everything is the choice of Steins;Gate" refers to the fact that the plot is partially directed by the player character. While this is an interesting idea, it is also dismissed on the basis that such an interpretation is essentially a pun that adds no literary meaning to the story while also maintaining the basis that the title, in fact, doesn't really mean anything.

Just as I feel that Frankenstein is aptly named to capture its contents, so too is Steins;Gate. The whole basis of titling the novel Steins;Gate is on the basis that Steins;Gate doesn't really mean anything- if there is value in there being a meaning in the title, then the delibrate use of one that does not have a meaning can have an equal value. The point of Steins;Gate not having a particular meaning relates to Steins;Gate's ending.

"No one knows what the future holds. That's precisely why, just as this reunion demonstrates, the possibilities are infinite."

The value in the lack of meaning stems from the meanings that Steins;Gate takes otherwise. The phrase can mean several things to several characters, but its meaning is never set in "stone". Steins;Gate teaches that time can never be truly overcome, merely decieved, and the character's abilities to continue forth is the "gate" towards an unknown future. 

Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers reminds me of Great Teacher Onizuka, a manga about a thug who suddenly makes the decision to become a teacher as a result of a misguided impression that teachers get the ladies.

Great Teacher Onizuka is about a punk who becomes a teacher.

Onizuka soon learns to error of his ways however, when he sees that the students he is assigned to teach are as troubled and misguided as he is. Though he lacks knowledge, what Onizuka does have is life experience. He sets out to help each misfit in his class solve their problems through his own, strange methods.

Freedom Writers follows Erin Gruwell and her attempts to reform a class of misfits, much like Onizuka. She goes to extreme lengthes to educate the children and change their attitudes, empowering them to find the courage to overcome their own problems. Onizuka takes a similar attitude. Like Erin, he dislikes the condescending approach the school systems takes towards children and resolves himself to become the greatest teacher who ever lived, starting by breaking through to each of his students one by one. However, unlike Erin, his approaches are occasionally illegal and dangerous or otherwise completely illogical. He enlists his students in beauty contests and accepts challenges he cannot hope to succeed in, and yet is able to inspire his students regardless, teaching them life lessons they learn themselves instead of being taught directly.

Onizuka focuses on life lessons. He teaches children to be confident in themselves and to enjoy life. Erin teaches compassion and morals to the children. The both look out for the kids, though their methods are radically different Onizuka shows his kids how to have fun in life instead of being destructive while Erin gives her children history lessons and teaches them to forgive others.

Why don't we all just play more visual novels?

Visual Novels are extremely similar to regular novels in that they are primarily story driven, in addition to having other attributes including animated sprites, voice acting, and being able to choose your own adventure. 

So why is this artistic medium relatively unknown to the western world? Probably because of this:

This is a Visual Novel. Yeah...

The first stigma against visual novels is that the majority of them appeal to a niche audience enthralled with 2D girls. This results in a large majority of visual novels that are targeted towards that audience. In turn, the overall opinion of the general public towards this genre lowers, despite the potential for a powerful narrative.

The second stigma is correlated with the first. There is an inherrant lack of deep storylines and more emphasis on visuals novels that are targeted toward the audience described in the first stigma. In a positive feedback mechanism, these visual novels are less inspired from original concepts and its writers are less populated with those interested in literary fiction. Because, unfortunately, literary fiction doesn't sell as well, and, compounded by the fact that visuals become a primary production expense, literary fiction isn't as popular as topics as visual novels. The topics that are are generally twisted, like Saya no Uta, a story about a man who becomes a cannibal with an incomprehensible flesh monster:

Do not let this caption fool you. This is about an insane man who sees the world as a mass of flesh- imagine what normal looks like.

The final stigma is that several people who would appreciate these novels do not want to read in general. Reading is a time investment and the presence of dynamically updating sprites and a branching storyline is not enough to convince these people to read them. In fact, these aspects may in fact discourage them from reading them at all- since visual novels are relatively unknown in the western world, most of them are difficult to acquire legally and require torrenting. Most people are unwilling to learn how to or take the time to torret, much less read instructions for installing Daemon Tools and patching the game to install to their computer. And then comes actually reading the novel itself, which will take even longer since you are fed only one line of text at a time.

Maybe we will all play more visual novels in the future when books do not require high production costs to generate visual novels from literary novels. 

Linton has Sickle Cell Anemia

Everybody in Wuthering Heights is afflicted with either a mortal disease or crabs. As in, a crabby personality. Especially Linton, who has both. He loses the entirety of his stamina traversing a distance of six feet. 

Linton is worthless.

I imagine this seventeen year old man writhing on the ground pitifully and I begin to cringe at how undeserving he is of education in Hareton's place. It strikes me odd that Catherine still clings to him even when he establishes his stance against her after they are married and after the way he has treated her like a possession and a servant. This guy reminds me of Caren Hortensia from Fate/Hollow Ataraxia.

Caren is malevolent for no reason.

Both of them are fragile as glass and derive pleasure from others' sufferings. They also have their brief, single moments of goodness, like how Caren as a priestess is obligated to provide sanctuary for the defeated while Linton lets Catherine out of the Heights out of guilt. Both of them are horrible, horrible people that are loved for no palpable reason. Linton is something to cling to rather than something to be actually loved. In this respect, Catherine resembles Isabella in the way that they refuse to acknowledge reality and favor delusions instead. Caren at least has some redeeming qualities in that A. She doesn't explode upon walking halfway up the stairs and B. She like Catherine can find love loving someone equally as malevolent as her.

Heathcliff is an Anti-Hero

As the title strongly implies, Heathcliff in the book Wuthering Heights is an anti-hero in the way that he does not adhere to common virtues present in the majority of protagonists. He is vengeful, unpleasant, cruel, and lacks compassion, avoiding "just desserts" and failing to meet the stereotype of redemption before death.

I show a picture of Robert Pattinson here because Edward is apparently a representation of Heathcliff

Heathcliff reminds me of other anti-heroes, including Light Yagami from Death Note and Kiritsugu Emiya from Fate/Zero.

Light Yagami is the first human owner of the Death Note

Light Yagami is the epitome of a perfect human being. He is athletic, compassionate, ethical, intelligent, good looking, and strong willed. From every angle, it is clear that he lacks any glaring weakness what so ever. Except for one: pride. He is a model citizen, and he knows this. As such, he falls into a self delusion over his superiority to other humans and feels the right to judge them as evil or good and to purge all of this evil with the Death Note. In the end, he nearly succeeds in his goal. He nearly eradicates crime altogether, but the police force constantly pursues his persona Kira to end his murdering spree. And despite how righteous Light sounds, he is portrayed as maniacal as he continues to abuse the Death Note, beginning to quantify people's worth and desiring to ascend to the status of God. For all that he is worth, Light craves the top of the food chain. While he was the top of his class and the leader of the police force, once Light attained power beyond others' fathoms, he began to corrupt and rot. Light eventually meets his end, cornered, bloodied, and dishonored in a warehouse confronted with his misdeeds. To the very end of his life, he begged to be spared, despite his own cruelty in life. 

Kiritsugu Emiya follows an uncompromising sense of justice.

The protagonist of Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu, lost his entire village in his decision to not shoot his friend Shirley moments prior, who turned into a vampire as a result of his father's research. This left Kiritsugu empty and resolved to end tragedies before they can evolve, electing to immediately shoot and kill his father with no last words before joining a mercenary to hunt down other rouge mages that threaten the general populace. He is not afraid to take down entire hotels to eliminate his foes and makes the decision to sacrifice his wife in order to obtain the Holy Grail and grant his wish of "saving the world". His motto is "the needs of the many of the needs of the few"- thus, he is quickly judges the worth of something over the number of lives it would save in exchange for a fewer number. He seeks to not only follow his own sense of justice but fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an "ally of justice" in order to justify his actions and constantly remind himself of the choice he made with Shirley. To this end, he deceives everyone around him and willingly sacrifices the people he loves in order to "save the world". At the end, he is confronted with his own motto, which reveals that the inevitable result of his philosophy is the need to eliminated slightly less than half of the people in the world over and over again, until he can find solace in the number two, where he cannot divide lives into two unequal sections that forces a choice from Kiritsugu. In this way, the Holy Grail reveals to Kiritsugu that saving the world meant saving himself, living with his wife and daughter isolated from the remainder of the world. The narrative explores how holding onto childish ideals of righteousness is fairly impossible- that humans continue to replicate errors upon errors and that solutions are mere bandaid fixes that must be implemented despite the impossible nature of fixing problems.

All three anti-heroes express a similar trait: a strong sense of justice. In this respect, anti-heroes can be seen as the distortion of morals by taking them to the extreme. In having such a powerful sense of justice, Light Yagami deludes himself into thinking himself a divine being and imposing his will on others. But he was a good person innately. Light emphasizes the corruption that pride brings with power and an arrogance to play God.

Heathcliff seeks vengeance against the people who wronged him because he seeks his own variation of "just desserts". Though taken at our standpoint, Heathcliff appears boorish and disgusting, in his eyes he is simply exercising her right to torment others as they tormented him. We are unable to understand his capacity for cruelty because we cannot emphasize and truly understand the humiliation, degradation, and disappointment he felt in his life. The characters of Wuthering Heights have stripped him of everything, Hindley of his dignity, Edgar of his pride, and Catherine of his love. Heathcliff feels justice reigning down upon his foes rather than cruelty.

Emiya finds himself trapped in a cycle where he is forced to make two decisions that save larger amounts of people. However, making this choice twice results in him making the same choice as if he had chose to save the small amount of people. Kiritsugu resolves himself to prevent tragedy by enacting uncomprimsing methods, but he inevitably harms more than he saves because he cannot save himself.

How Long Should A Story Last? Endings as Capstones

At what point should we decide that a story has gone on "too long"? One of the most important aspects of a story is its ending, which can make or break a story. However, in addition to many writers failing to write a complex and satisfying conclusion, a few exploit their series far past their prime and do not write the ending to a story they should have concluded long ago.

Stigma of the Wind just kept going until its author died, leaving behind no conclusion.

To begin with authors that end their novels poorly, Haruki Murakami is one of the most notable, due to the stark contrast between his ability to write rising action and climaxes compared to the flimsy excuses of endings that he provides to them. After Dark is notable for telling a compelling tale of people experiencing supernatural, yet unmistakably human, occurrences in the dead of night. His metaphors are surreal yet natural and the provide for a suspenseful story throughout. Then, it abruptly ends. An innumerable number of loose ends are left lying on the ground, with only a single potential character relationship being established while everyone moves on with their lives. 

His novel 1Q84 was powerful and suspenseful, displaying the subtle insecurities of the lead characters supported by deep and interesting side characters. Then the ending happened and everything went to hell. Characters began randomly disappearing, one was encased in an "air chrysalis", plot points that suspended the climax amounted to nothing, and almost no issues regarding the world of 1Q84 were resolved. 

Murakami himself in an interview stated that he "doesn't write endings".

Haruki Murakami, one of the greatest worst writers of endings.

That's a pretty glaring flaw. In most of Murakami's stories, the plot falls apart because there is no ending capable of melding their elements together. He leaves it open ended and engaging but not memorable. I can't go back to one of Murakami's stories, say "this was wonderful", and then re-read the book and relive the action. In this sense, Twilight finds itself superior (as a memorable story). Though far inferior in terms of its execution, one of the most important aspects about the novel and the series itself was that it produced characters that, while they were comparatively shallow, stuck in the minds of the readers. And I attribute this to a narrative having a strong ending; when it came down to it, I cared more about Edward than I ever cared about Tengo in 1Q84, simply because Tengo just disappeared into the distance without resolving a single problem while Edward tried his best and ended his first book in satisfying fashion.

Endings should be fairly abstract, no doubt about that. But endings that are too abstract are meaningless, with too many valid interpretations for them to even mean moot. In turn, endings that are too concrete are too boring because they do not draw the reader in to ask any questions at all. 

Expansive Writing

Expanding upon the idea of commercial fiction vs literary fiction, the main point that the textbook Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense emphasized was the mastery of theme. Throughout the section, the author discusses theme as being a unifying element that reveals an inherent truth or theory about life.

Haruki Murakami notes an interesting trend: contrary to Perrine's bias that literary authors intentionally spread glitters of 'literature' throughout their works, more often literary fiction is just aged writing that have withstood the test of time. In Murakami's Norwegian Wood, the character Nagasawa refuses to read authors that have long since been dead, believing that time is the best judge of quality. 

Calling into question the value of the concept of "literary fiction" in general is John Updike, who claimed that the term suffocated him by placing expectations and generalizations on his writing. Do writers who write commercial fiction have to write commercial fiction? It has long been noted that Shakespeare's plays are clearly commercialized to appeal to a lower class but contain complex themes and layers that can intrigue the more educated.

In particular, I note that worlds that are expansively and creatively built oftentimes fall under the catch-all definition of commercial fiction as defined by Perrine. By no means do action and adventure detract from a story's literary value, but we tend to consider it as such. In particular, the Lore of a particular story tends to convolute the potential themes of a story, as it does in the world of League of Legends.

League of Legends is an extremely popular video game

League of Legends has already attained a vast fanbase- over its gameplay that is. Each player plays as a unique "Champion" with his or her original lore, stats, and skills (sounds like D&D, except in real time). I want to focus on the evolution of the League of Legends Lore as it progressed from its early beta phase into the international phenomenon as recognized sport it is today.

In the early beta-days, the Lore was shoddy and unoriginal, featuring 100% commercialized writing about dwarfs renamed as Yordles to appeal to small children (see lower left corner of the image), random fighting city-states, other worlds that nonsensically intrude on Runeterra, and characters that just... join the League of Legends for whatever reason they have. Compared to characters as simplistic with bare minimums complex layers like Superman (yes, Superman is pretty barebones), a character like Cho'Gath, Terror of the Void is but a butterfly in a hurricane. There seemed to be almost no attempt at complex Lore and every character felt like a means to an end.

As the game moved out of its beta stage, three major changes occurred to the Lore. First, serious characters like Vayne, The Night Hunter (who is a fusion of Bruce Wayne of Batman and Abraham Van Helsing of Dracula) who hunts creatures of the night began to be added. Second, The Journal of Justice, a fictional newspaper in the realm of League of Legends began to describe "current events" as they occurred in Runeterra was introduced. Third, Champion Judgements that described the moment in which a Champion was admitted to the League by confronting their past from a third person standpoint was briefly done for a select number of champions. These elements were Riot Games' attempt at conveying serious Lore that told an ever evolving story compared to the static nature that character bios provided, effectively evolving the characters from one dimensional... to two dimensional.

As Riot admits, this method of conveying Lore has extreme limitations. Characters are very surface-based and lack the depth that we generally associate with literature. So what did they do? They scrapped it all. 

One of the major weaknesses of Champion Lore was that every champion Lore ended with some line about "Why They Joined the League of Legends", making it appear as if the Champion had no meaningful interaction in current life past the League. As such, Riot began removing that clause in their current interaction of Champions as they wanted to focus on "personality and motivation", "more relationships", and "closer ties in the world." Since then, Riot has been finding more creative ways to communicate Lore through interactive comic books, report documents, wanted posters, and websites. But one underlying factor still detracts from the Lore:

It's too straightforward.

Everything that Riot has done up until now is quite amicable as they have successfully expanded their world to accommodate vivid locations, deeper character back stories, and stronger character relations. However, they have actually fallen into a commercial trap- their new characters are actually built completely on their relationship with another champion.

Lucian, The Purifier is defined by his love for his wife, Senna, and her death by the Champion Threshhttp://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/champions/lucian/

The most recently released Champion; Lucian, The Purifier; seems to be an Vayne with a hatred for Thresh, the undead man that sealed his wife in a spectral lantern. It seems that Riot has actually lost Lore complexity due to this relentless focus on improved character interactions. For example, the next Champion to be released; Jinx, The Loose Cannon; is a child that loves destroying things and has a random grudge with Vi, The Piltover Enforcer. 

Jinx is a one dimensional Champion that has little to no complex motivations
http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/champions-skins/champion-reveal/jinx-loose-cannon-revealed

Riot is completely missing the point of character interactions. They seemed to have tunneled on rivalry as a generic method of garnering intrigue. But the problem that Riot fails to address every time with their Lore is the character complexity- the layers, the depth, the theme. 

What is Jinx supposed to want? What are her goals? I know her personality well enough- on the surface. But what are the deeper, intertwining and often contradictory emotions that she suppresses on the inside? Surely, there must be some sort of underlying trauma that drove her to this?

Why does Ahri want to be human?

Why does Kha'Zix endlessly pursue evolution?

Despite Riot's attempts at improving the Lore, League of Legends lacks depth because its Champions' Lore is too simplistic, too commercialized per say. I want to think that Riot wants to make an effort at creating complex Lore that doesn't just interest people but entices them. The questions I ask above are very, very basic questions that don't even come close to nitpicking a theme out of a Champion story. 

It's very easy to get caught up in building a world to simply be cool or interesting rather than complex or have depth, as in League of Legends and Eragon. It is not always necessary to tell a story to have depth, but the character bios of League of Legends are so incredibly straightforward and devoid of any indirect characterization that it is impossible to call it anything other than commercial fiction.

But even seemingly childish concepts and worlds can have complexity to them. If League of Legends were to convey character emotions on a higher level compared to this flimsy work and shabby attempt at a character relation, then it can easily become a mixture of both literary and commercial fiction.

My point is that expansive worlds are dangerous because they are susceptible to falling into meaningless rabble. Not every aspect of a world needs a purpose to be there, but the characters that live in it are paramount to its depth. Oftentimes, commercial fiction merely has characters that explore and interact with their world on a surface level, riding the "cool" train that is their world. This is the case with League of Legends and if Riot Games wants the Lore to improve, then they are going to have to feature character interactions as being more than just one-dimensional rivalries. 

Commercial/Literary Fiction - Shiki

Shiki (translated as 'Corpse Demon') is a Japanese horror novel written by Ono, Fuyumi in 1998 which was published in two separate volumes (later reprinted into five in 2002).

The cover of the first Shiki reprint volume

If I had to categorize Shiki as either commercial or literary fiction, I would without a doubt deem it literary. Before one can review Shiki, it is important to take note of its setting. Shiki takes place in the village of Sotoba, which begins to see an epidemic kill the young and old alike in the dark of night. However, the true culprit are the Shiki, essentially classical vampires who are slowly increasing in number as a select few begin to rise from the dead. The Kirishiki family, a wealthy lot who established an ominous castle towering above the village, strangely almost never leave their house until dusk. 

If this sounds familiar, it is because Shiki clearly draws a significant amount of influence from Dracula. Like Dracula, the climax of the film cumulates with the villagers, armed with wooden stakes, banding together to brutally annihilate the Shiki. 

See title

Unlike Dracula, whose themes are questionable as evidenced by the numerous valid interpretations of homosexuality and feminism, Shiki primarily calls into question the morality and nature of the Shiki. Ono begins the story by the strange and emotionally straining terrorism that came about from the Shiki. The villagers are distressed by the sudden deaths of their children and of the elderly. Dr. Toshio Ozaki is frustrated as he is unable to save any of his patients, suspecting the presence of an epidemic. As the story continues, he realizes that his patients are dying of hemorrhagic shock and comes to the conclusion that there were vampires in the village. 

Toshio's best friend, Seishun Muroi, becomes a Shiki sympathizer, believing that Shiki eventually have to feed on humans in order to survive and tolerates them. He is frankly disgusted with Ozaki's obsession to eradicate the Shiki.

"What would you have preferred me to do? I made a decision. I cannot allow this contamination to keep growing, so I'll hunt the Shiki. This is justice to me."

-Toshio Ozaki

The moral controversy is that in the second half of the novel, there is a complete reversal, where the humans band together and ruthlessly murder the Shiki. In one scene, a pile of staked Shiki are hauled on a truck to be cremated by a group of everyday women. At this point, one of the bodies begins to squirm, prompting one of the women to very quickly claim that she "will handle it" and rams the stake in deeper with a smile on her face, after which the women collectively eat sandwiches while drenched in blood. In this half of the book, the humans are portrayed as relentless, unforgiving, genocidal, and unsympathizing. Keep in mind that the Shiki did not chose to be Shiki but have received a second chance at life through reanimation. They cling to their second life by feeding and though they feed on their loved ones, they do so with the vague consolation that they may rise.

However, I would like the focus on the the novel and compare it to the anime/manga adaptations, which take a stance closer to that of commercial fiction. Seishun and Toshio are the main characters of Shiki the novel and they express deeply contrasting viewpoints about the Shiki, where Seishun believes that the reason they can't coexist in only because of how humans are quick to vindicate the Shiki. However, there is another character known as Natsuno Yuuki, an introverted teenager who is determined to leave the village. He dies halfway through the story when he encounters his only friend, Toru, as a Shiki, and loses the willpower to fight back. Natsuno desperately wants to believe that Toru will spare him despite his numerous opportunities to stake him and willingly offers up his blood to him as a friend who understands, only to die. 

Natsuno Yuuki is a main character in the anime adaptation

In the manga and the anime, Natsuno revives as a Shiki that does not need to drink blood, much like two other Shiki in the original series, and plays a background role by targeting the biggest threats of the Kirishikis and reverse-hypnotizing Ozaki. Why would the creators drastically modify the plot this way? This is due to the nature of television and comic media as having to be profitable endeavors. Animation primarily appeals to a teenage audience and so Natsuno was selected to be revived for little reason other than allow the viewers a younger character to sympathize. And the result was clear- Natsuno had nearly no symbolic significance and was more of a character that was just 'there'. 

The overarching question I wanted to asked here isn't about whether anime or manga stories can be considered as manga nor is it an argument favoring yay or nay. The question I wanted to ask is what factors do not make anime literature and this comparison between the literary fiction of Shiki and the commercial anime of Shiki reveal the limitations of audience. Anime and manga require a far more substantial investment to produce compared to novels and are much more expensive to purchase for viewing pleasure. There is the potential that anime and manga are generally not viewed as literature due to the cluttering of commercial fiction that is required to sustain them.

Neuromancer Online

In 1984, William Gibson wrote the hit science fiction novel Neuromancer, a novel which would later be classified under a new sub-genre of science fiction known as cyberpunk.

Neuromancer tells a tale of Cyberspace and a hacker

Cyberspace is the manifestation of the internet as a virtual reality, a theme that recurs in the Japanese light novel Sword Art Online (which I admit has a much more lackluster plot in comparison). Sword Art Online follows the evolution of gaming into virtual reality massive multiplayer online role playing games (VRMMORPG's) as the latest form of entertainment.

Sword Art Online is currently an ongoing light novel series spawning over 14 volumes at approx. 250 pages each

Past this common connection, the stories are massively divergent from one another, starting with the technological limitations in Sword Art Online where consciousness cannot be saved and artificial intelligence is limited past the presence of outliers here and there. The second key difference is in the general theme and tone of the stories. SAO focuses less on darker present day problems and focuses more on expanding upon youth culture and its heavy influence on cyberspace as well as the way by which relationships develop over a less personal online community (though unfortunately many of these complex themes are obscured by cliches and teen fantasies). 

Neuromancer focuses on the reality portion of its universe and the scarred adults that rule it, where people exploit the Matrix for their personal gain, get high off of cocaine, and lose themselves immersed in the fanciful temptations of cyberspace. As William Gibson describes, Neuromancer was also a novel that was to make room for anti-heroes compared to stereotypical 'good guys' like the protagonist Kazuto Kirigaya is SAO. The main character of Neuromancer, Henry Case, is selfish and seeks nothing but personal gain in order to seclude himself in an Eden of drugs and guilty pleasures, as seen when he easily discards the heroine of the novel to pursue his cocaine addiction. Neuromancer seems to take influence from and add commentary to the self destructive nature of the counter culture.

SAO focuses on way that cyberspace has transformed our relationships with our peers, the meaningless yet quintessential aspects of gaming and the trending teen culture towards gaming as a form of accomplishment, social education/development, and medium for building complex relationships between one another through set goals and artificial adversity. Neuromancer discusses the implications such an internet centered lifestyle has on reality, where harsh truths must be forcibly accepted and naive ideals cannot survive. William Gibson promotes the anti-hero as a wake-up call to escapism and the self-destructive nature of man in the face of overwhelming convenience, perhaps countered by SAO's game-completionist aspect which states that people must overcome problems in order to become stronger?

Alchemical Destructors

                The Destructors by Graham Greene describes the meticulous process of converting a house into a pile of rubble, which reminds me of the popular manga and anime Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA). 

Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA) Anime Poster

                In FMA, there exists a set of principles by which alchemic reactions can take place, the most important and fundamental being that of equivalent exchange- that is, in order to gain, one must first lose. The process of alchemic transmutation involves the deconstruction of the material one wants to use as the base, followed by the construction of new substance. 

The product of Transmutation in FMA

The primary relation here is the parallel between destruction and transmutation. In Fullmetal Alchemist, destruction is a necessary precursor to creation. In the destructors, the destruction of the house represented the usurpation of the new generation and the trend of ‘deconstruction’ advocated by future modernists as the aftermath of World War II slowly faded into the background. Destruction is a necessary step to even generate rubble, the foothold by which a new symbol of the new age will take the place of the proud dwelling that once stood tall and then disappeared in the blink of an eye. This destruction is also portrayed as almost a force of nature, heavy handed where it strikes and impossible to prevent. 

The character Scar ends his Transmutation at destruction and abhors creation as trespassing into the realm of God

In Fullmetal Alchemist, the theme of equivalent exchange is frequently bypassed by the Philosopher’s Stone, a solid mass of human lives which are traded in exchange for boundless energy due to the immeasurable value of something as abstract as life, thus defying the need for destruction to generate creation. The symbolic value is the base substance that was traded to ‘bypass’ these laws; such is a statement of the path towards change. One can take transmutation to be a metaphor of compromises, of adherent to the law, of the essence by which a stagnant society operates. The sacrificing of lives represents change- the blood and sweat and passion, the everything, that a human has to devote in order to evolve into the new age. 

The Philosopher's Stone evolves lives into substance

Both The Destructors and Fullmetal Alchemist establish that destruction is the beginning of creation, but FMA identifies that defying laws of the world comes at the price of lives and all they have to give while The Destructors identify change as an unstoppable force that cannot be stopped once in motion; similar to the reasoning in FMA that one can convert human lives to mass but not mass into human lives. 

The Eye of Science

There was not anything in particular special about Dr. James Elmore. I’m sure that his friends and family could easily list off a series of good qualities, perhaps a minor flaw here in there, and portray him as a virtuous, devoted, and amicable man. But such things do not make a man unique. Regardless of how many percentiles on the IQ table you may be above your peers, there is absolutely nothing unique about it; almost every person has a ‘unique’ trait that makes them ‘interesting’. But in the larger picture, this is not so interesting at all.

But I say ‘was’ for a reason. Dr. Elmore is now interesting beyond belief, beyond reason, beyond what a normal person should be capable of. It is fascinating that often times, the circumstances of one’s death have the potential to be far more intriguing than the person ever was. But Dr. Elmore took such a concept to an entirely new level.

Dr. Elmore was working with the experimental new drug, Seraphin. Designed as a therapeutic treatment for lung cancer, Seraphin was not only expensive to produce but highly acidic and potentially lethal in large doses. Dr. Elmore had been at the laboratory for sixteen hours by now. It was his and my boss, Dr. Blaine, who had proposed the drug. Yet now that Dr. Elmore had successfully produced it, no one was satisfied with the data. Would it be Dr. Blaine or Dr. Elmore who would take responsibility for the subpar results? Dr. Elmore certainly didn’t want to. No, it was Dr. Blaine who had proposed the drug, the dummy and the waste of time, and it would be Dr. Elmore who extensively tested and reported in great and uncensored detail such a failure. Don’t shoot the messenger; such was the mentality that Dr. Elmore hoped the board of directors would take towards his efforts.

But though Dr. Elmore desperately desired career advancement; despite already being in his forties, hairline receding; he was only human, and a human cannot run sixteen hours on only the two hours of sleep they got the previous night after a twenty hour shift. And so he was careless; nothing ever happened in the lab anyway, regardless of whatever chemical was being used. Who says that a little carelessness here and there will kill anybody? Dr. Elmore certainly didn’t; he had seen many people simply rub their tritium covered gloves all over their desks and they didn’t develop skin cancer.

And so, after he had finished loading the Seraphin into the incubator, he dozed off for a quick nap in front of it while the automatic cycle completed itself in two hours.

But Dr. Elmore did not receive the luxury of two more hours of life. For he had been careless and left the incubator slightly ajar, allowing the Seraphin to vaporize under normal atmospheric pressure. As he dozed, his nose began to itch- A snort or two to get rid it. Then it became quite stuffy in the roam- a cough and a complaint to make himself feel better. But then he realized that he was not breathing at all. Desperately, he attempted to cough- to dislodge whatever was suffocating him. But it was too late. Tears streaming down his face, mucus flowing down his chin, he began a gradual and agonizing decent into the depths of despair, before he finally lost consciousness and doubled over on his chair and fell over his chair, crashing into a pile of molding cardboard that no one had bothered to throw away. The rest of it was history.