{"id":6878,"date":"2015-12-22T14:39:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T19:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=6878"},"modified":"2015-12-22T14:39:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T19:39:08","slug":"small-differences-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2015\/12\/22\/small-differences-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Small differences matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/asterisk-war-01.jpg\" width=\"576\" height=\"323\" alt=\"When Ayato met Julis\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nIn <cite>Gakusen Toshi Asterisk<\/cite>, the protagonist is Ayato, a dark haired boy going to magic school to fight and win its annual fighting tournament for reasons. Due to circumstances, he ends up walking in upon a half naked, flame wielding pink haired tsundere girl, Julis, who calls him out for a duel to restore her honour. They fight, he wins, stuff happens and they fall in love while working towards the tournament together.\n<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/rakudai-kishi-no-cavalry-01.jpg\" width=\"576\" height=\"323\" alt=\"When Ikki met Stella\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nIn <cite>Rakudai Kishi No Cavalry<\/cite>, the protagonist is Ikki, a dark haired boy going to magic school to fight and win its annual fighting tournament for reasons. Due to circumstances, he ends up walking in upon a half naked, flame wielding red haired tsundere girl, Stella, who calls him out for a duel to restore her honour. They fight, he wins, stuff happens and they fall in love while working towards the tournament together. Wait, where did I hear this before?\n<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bz0IQslTe1U\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>\nYes, these two series, both of which were aired during the Fall 2015 anime season, at first glance look so similar it&#8217;s possible to set the ending theme of the first to a scene from the second and not look out of place. They&#8217;re so similar that even where they break from cliche, in resolving the sexual tension between the male and female lead, they do it in a similar way. A cynical person would explain this similarity by noting both are adaptions from a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Light_novel\">light novel<\/a> series, light novels of this type being notoriously rife with cliches. Aimed at younger readers, they&#8217;re sort of a cross between fan fiction, illustrated stories and young adult fiction, with many of the faults of these media. Over the past decade or so they&#8217;ve become an important source for anime adaptations and every season has at least one fantasy\/sci-fi light novel adaption starring a bland dark haired guy, usually teamed up with a red haired tsundere and one or more other potential hair colour coded love interests.\n<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/asterisk-war-02.jpg\" width=\"576\" height=\"323\" alt=\"When Ayato and Julis ready to fight\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nBut there&#8217;s one small difference between the two series. In <cite>Rakudai Kishi No Cavalry<\/cite> the tournament is based around solo fights, which each participant having to fight their way towards the final alone, but in <cite>Gakusen Toshi Asterisk<\/cite> the fights are based around two person teams. A small difference, but it matters a lot for how its show treats its love interests. In <cite>Cavalry<\/cite>, Stella&#8217;s fights are never shown as the focus is squarely on how Ikki progresses; because in <cite>Asterisk<\/cite> Ayato and Julis are a proper team, she gets to do a lot more. She&#8217;s much less of a damsel in distress or trophy than Stella gets to be in the later half of <cite>Cavalry<\/cite>, more of an equal partner,  making <cite>Asterisk<\/cite> ultimately the better series of the two.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite>(Post expanded from <a href=\"https:\/\/fantasticmemes.wordpress.com\/2015\/12\/19\/ikki-x-stella-is-not-a-good-ship\/#comment-14049\">this comment<\/a> over at <cite>Fantastic Memes<\/cites>.)<\/cite><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Gakusen Toshi Asterisk, the protagonist is Ayato, a dark haired boy going to magic school to fight and win its annual fighting tournament for reasons. Due to circumstances, he ends up walking in upon a half naked, flame wielding pink haired tsundere girl, Julis, who calls him out for a duel to restore her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497],"tags":[2363,2362],"class_list":["post-6878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anime","tag-gakusen-toshi-asterisk","tag-rakudai-kishi-no-cavalry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6878"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6882,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878\/revisions\/6882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}