Yosuga no Sora and the Point of Media

Why do we engage with art? To feel something? To learn something? To be enriched? To be challenged? All of the above and more to be sure, but that answer feels incomplete to me. Media is defined as "a means of communication," and media communicates information through "mediums" which includes artistic mediums. At the center of media is communication. And as people who examine media, we engage with the ideas, aesthetics, messages, feelings, etc. that it communicates, and try to make sense of the media itself, and use that media as a basis for understanding the world and each other.

Each medium has a particular method of conveying information, which makes it very good at one particular thing, though less good at others. Drawings can capture a personal, subjective image of something we can all see, or represent one's subjective interpretation of an idea. Sculptures can give a more complete, three dimensional view of an aesthetic idea. Music can evoke reactions that allow us to intuitively feel things on a deep level through association and tone. Live action film can condense narrative ideas while conveying more nuanced and realistic reactions to stories that may or may not be applicable to our world. Animation can capture a caricature of narrative and personal emotional experience in a way that visually represents how something subjectively feels rather than how it literally looks. Literature takes advantage of human imagination to cultivate very personal visions of a narrative. Video games manipulate the agency of the player to provide complex emotional experiences. Stand-up comedy captures the absurdity of the human experience in a unique way. Vlogs and streams can provide unique kayfabe's that cultivate very personal feeling interactions with artists in an evolving interactive narrative. The potential of media to communicate is limitless, no matter what idea you have there's some way to at least relatively effectively communicate it to others in a way that can help them understand it on some level. 

Naturally, some of these mediums will have more sway over certain people than others. I personally struggle to find myself immersed by print media like literature and comics, and am somewhat lukewarm towards paintings and music, but am easily engrossed in more controlled narrative experiences via film, animation, and games. For some, it's the other way around, and the lack of control and necessity to imagine makes it more immersive. But no matter your preferences, art communicates. What it communicates, well I wonder how much that matters. I see art as something to understand, not ideas to be judged. As Roger Ebert put it: "It's not what a movie is about, but how it is about it," though we can replace "movie" with any medium. 

When I think about the reasons that I love my favorite pieces of art, there are a few things that generally come to my mind as commonalities in the way things are communicated. Sometimes, it's about engaging with an extremely tightly crafted piece of storytelling. I'll always love the way 12 Angry Men effortlessly directs our eye around a small room full of arguments while slowly building a tense and perfectly paced story where every line of the script feels relevant, or how Madoka Magica has absolutely zero fat and utilizes every character, setting, and aesthetic as integral to its themes and narrative, or the way Yuru Camp is so perfectly paced and plotted as to have complete control over my emotional state and the level of relaxation it can evoke just through well timed build-ups and gags. Sometimes, it's about engaging with levels of creativity so incredible that I can get swept up in something wholly unique and evocative, and maybe even specific to its medium. I'll always love the way Kyousougiga weaves its wild aesthetic and grand setting to craft such an emotionally rich and intimately personal story about family, or the time I went through Chrono Trigger's grand fair and got jailed for my own actions without even realizing how wrong and avoidable they were, or getting swept up in Everything Everywhere All At Once's surreal, inventive, and hopeful yet nihilistic kung-fu action story and crying over rocks with googly eyes. Sometimes, it's about being faced with uncomfortable feelings and ideas that challenge me. I'll always remember how Clannad forced me to confront long-held beliefs about the nature of family and tragedy, or how Perfect Blue disturbed me to my core with its mind-bending imagery and raw violence, or how Fire Emblem Three Houses' overwhelming moral ambiguity made every battle feel like it may not have been worth it regardless of which route I chose. And sometimes, just being really fucking fun is more than meaningful enough. I haven't stopped thinking about the absolute joy ride of Baccano's flighty violence and how satisfying it was to see its story come together, or how every act of this year's RRR kept escalating into an even more epic blockbuster of hyper-masculine angst and bromance, or how being a part of the mundane days of Hidamari Sketch brought me an inescapable stream of pure joy and warmth. 

I think that all of those are generally agreed to be good reasons to enjoy art and media, even if the examples I chose are personal to myself. Having given three examples of each, I hope that most readers will understand my feelings towards each of the concepts through at least one of my examples, even if they don't like every work I listed. I feel like all of this is uncontroversial, easy, simple. Perhaps my style of writing doesn't always make for an easy read, but I think the content of this post so far, at the very least, makes for a stream of ideas you probably already understand or agree with. So why do I bring any of this up then? Well for one, I'd like to think that there's something unique and personal to my writing and examples that makes this appealing to at least someone. Although this blog is largely self-indulgent, it still makes me feel good to see anyone enjoying or better understanding something from my posts. But the real reason for all of this is because I've been recently challenged on all of this as well. 

Is that all it takes for a work to be great? Does being tightly crafted, creative, challenging, and/or fun make something I love? I mean, sure, we can think of some other potential criteria as well (being ambitious or thought provoking are some others I can think of), but that's not what I mean. What if there were something that, in some ways, captures most or all of those traits, but is really hard to actually call good for one reason or another? I mean, even with my own examples, while they all embody one of those traits particularly well, and have some overlap with one or two others, none of them embody all of them. Yuru Camp is tightly crafted, and also very fun, but it's not very challenging and isn't particularly creative. Everything Everywhere All At Once is extremely creative, and also absurdly fun and even challenging, but it's definitely not among the most tightly crafted movies I've seen. This isn't a flaw for any of them, they only lack something that's opposite of what they're trying to be, and so don't need it to be great. So I'm thinking about how much of any of these one needs to embody to be truly great. 

Recently, I watched the anime Yosuga no Sora: In Solitude Where we are Least Alone. For those who are aware of this anime's reputation, I'm sure you'll have some idea of where I'm going with this (and feel free to skip ahead a paragraph or two if you don't want a re-explanation), but for those who don't, allow me to explain some of what happens in this show. Yosuga no Sora is an adaptation of what is essentially an interactive romance novel. The player character gets to make many difference choices, and each of his choices leads into a different route, where he romances a different girl, helps them with their problems via soapy melodrama, and by the end, has sex with them for an intimate and emotional payoff (sometimes multiple times). The anime adapts each story separately, and has to cram 4 different romance melodramas into just 12 episodes, which makes for awkwardly paced and lopsided storytelling, as it has to choose which routes to focus on most and which to truncate. The series strengths come in the form of its visuals, boasting very solid animation and surprisingly thoughtful cinematography, and its surprisingly well crafted atmosphere, which captures both the bittersweet nostalgia and the burning loneliness of long-past summers. As an anthology of romance stories, it fares more inconsistent though. I won't get too much into the early parts of the show, which consists of one arc that's rushed to the point of completely lacking impact, and another arc that's actually pretty good and contains the series most interesting and endearing character. 

Warning: I am about to talk about sensitive topics, including rape, incest, and cheating. If you do not want to read about these topics, I will leave another warning later in the piece denoting where I no longer make mention of those topics. Please feel free to skip over this section if you don't want to engage with these topics, or feel free to stop reading entirely. 

Where this one gets weird though, is in its final two arcs, which are some of the most utterly bizarre and insane stories that I've ever encountered in any non-pornographic media (although there's enough weird sex in the last three episodes that it might as well be porn). Episodes 7-9 center around the protagonist's childhood friend, who he just starts dating for basically no reason, and we work through drama surrounding them and their relationship with the protagonist's younger sister, who is extremely attached to her brother due to him being his only remaining family member, and seems to particularly hate this childhood friend. We find out that the childhood friend (who's name is Nao) had parents who constantly fought over accusations of adultery, and in one fit of frustration, ran over to our protagonist's (who's name is Haruka) house and raped him. And since our little sister character (who's name is Sora) watched this happen, she grew to particularly despise Nao for fear that she'll steal her brother from her. The actual story of this arc is painfully dull, as we basically wait around for Sora to accept their relationship (though a spot of hilariously hammy melodrama makes the finale memorable). But it sets up the next arc, where the player character presumably makes a different choice in the visual novel and ends up choosing his sister over his girlfriend. What results, is just... ridiculous. 

To try and sum it up quickly, Haruka saw Sora masturbating to him, and got really emotional about it to the point that he couldn't stop thinking about her, and when he went on a date with Nao, he raped her because he was too horny thinking about his sister. Then Haruka and Sora start getting really close, and eventually start regularly having sex despite Haruka still dating Nao. Realizing that this relationship is taboo, Haruka does research on how incestuous relationships are accepted throughout history, and eventually him and Sora have sex in front of their door, when Nao and their class president walk in on them and run away in disgust and horror. Haruka gets upset at the notion of this taboo relationship and starts raping Sora, but she accepts it and he runs away and then slaps her. But when his uncle suggests that he and his sister live separately, and Haruka thinks it's a good idea, Sora runs away and tries to drown herself in the lake behind a shrine. Haruka fails to save her, but they both get saved by the goddess and find some way to live together overseas happy together, while their friends question if that was the right choice and how much of a right they have to question the way two people find happiness together. 

Warning: It is safe to read from here on, I will make no explicit mentions of any sensitive topics starting here.

Having been watching one episode of this story every day over 12 days, I have to say that it was quite a ride. There was an extreme jump in absurdity from episodes 1-9 and the final three episodes. And my feelings about this show are equally pretty bizarre. For one, I need to make it clear that I have a fascination with fetish media. If media communicates, then fetish media communicates some of the deepest, most private, most intimate fantasies that we can possibly have as humans. I find it interesting to explore those depths, to see the depravity of human imagination from behind the safe wall of fiction, where immoral topics can be shown, explored, and fetishized while being viewed wholly differently than if we were to see them in real life. I don't think fetish media is lesser than any other media, and I critique it using the same ethos I described earlier: judging it not by what it is about, but how it is about it. Yosuga no Sora, though also a moody, tear jerking soap opera, is absolutely a piece of fetish media, not only in this ridiculous final arc. My opinion on each arc individually varies wildly, but I would say that the vast majority of the show is pretty bad and boring, both as a soap opera and as fetish art. But aside from the series second arc (comprising episodes 5 and 6, which I liked with little caveat), the positive feelings I have towards this series are also very strong, and also eerily similar to what I described above as some reasons I love some of my favorite art. 

Tightness of craft, creativity, challenging and uncomfortable feelings, and pure fun: Those are four reasons that I often generalize to for describing why I love some of my favorite pieces of media. When I finished Yosuga no Sora, contemplated the experience, thought about what was actually communicated to me and how I perceived it, I decided ultimately that I don't like it. I scored it a 3/10 on Myanimelist, wrote about how it was mostly pretty boring and dull, how most of its drama failed to land for me, and hoped I'd feel content to leave it at that. But I couldn't. Something was nagging at me, something felt off. I thought again about what this story made me feel. Boredom came up often, but other things came up too. I liked the series atmosphere, the way it always felt hot, and how it used its summer tones in such variable ways. Sometimes it effortlessly captured the appeal of spending a hot summer day at the beach with friends, and other times the heat felt completely overwhelming and isolating. If nothing else about it is tightly crafted, it's atmosphere genuinely is, and it persists throughout its entire run. Likewise, its sex scenes feel genuinely intimate and erotic in how they're directed and animated, mostly without feeling overly gratuitous believe it or not (bar the final arc, but I'd argue that's a boon for that arc), and that too is a tightness in craft. Maybe this show isn't particularly creative, its stories are all familiar trashy soap operas consistent in style and tone with classic 2000's visual novels and telenovela shows. But then I remembered how much I enjoyed some of the direction. One episode was styled in such a way that it felt like it was being filmed on a tripod, which I think is pretty cool and creative for an animated show. And honestly, the story gets ridiculous enough that I might have to call it creative in some ways. 

Is this story challenging and uncomfortable? Its final two arcs definitely are. Episodes 7-9 try to invest me in a relationship between a character who has wronged another character in a very major way. The series doesn't necessarily handle it well, and there are other reasons that I couldn't get invested, but I have to think about how I would feel if the writing were sharper. It was a conflict where I found myself in agreement with the character who I was meant to see as an antagonist, hoping that they would change and accept that relationship even though I struggled to accept it myself. In a better show, that would have been challenging to me: how much should it take to forgive someone for past wrongdoing and how far should we accept them when they seem to have felt remorse and changed? And the final arc, as trashy as it is, genuinely does ask the question of how far we should go to find happiness. Is it my place to judge and condemn a happy relationship between two people in love just because it's taboo and socially unacceptable? My gut reaction is that it might be, and that I should think the show nothing but fetish bait for those with certain sensibilities. But when the show itself doesn't even end on a fully happy ending, and has the characters leave their lives behind to pursue this in the face of a society that won't accept it, with even their friends questioning if this is a good choice and not having any clear answer or moral for the audience, it does make me confront an uncomfortable question. And as for being fun, I had a fucking blast. The story is crazy, absurd, deranged, even beautiful in some way. I laughed my ass off at all the absurd twists and turns it took, and all the scenes so crazy that I couldn't believe they were allowed to air on television. For at least the last three episodes, I can't say with a straight face that I didn't enjoy what I was watching, and the intense emotional journey it took me on. 

Maybe the entire story isn't tightly crafted, but it has tight craft within it. Maybe most of it wasn't super creative, but creativity exists within it. Maybe most of the story is kind of boring, but the parts that aren't boring are so gloriously entertaining and fascinating. Doesn't that mean something? What am I supposed to make of this? How do I judge and critique a show that makes me react that way? My first thought is to default to my usual ethos: it's not what a show is about, but how it is about it. Did I have the intended reaction to Yosuga no Sora? For most shows, that's an easy question, but for this one, I'm honestly not sure. Sure, outside of episodes 5 and 6, I was pretty bored any time something crazy wasn't happening, and I'm sure that wasn't intended. But the crazy stuff itself... was I supposed to think it was crazy? One part of me thinks that I was supposed to be wholeheartedly invested in this story. It's not like the show doesn't have genuine fans, lots of people who were watching it alongside me really loved it. I saw one blog post from someone I generally think similarly too calling the show mature, and other people expressed genuine emotional attachment to all of the arcs. One person even told me they liked the show's first arc for the exact reason that I didn't like it. That's probably what they wanted to happen, hoping it would convince people to buy the source material. But on the other hand, did they really not anticipate a reaction like mine when writing a story this bonkers? I find it improbable that they didn't. Part of me thinks they wanted me to go insane over this absurd story full of soft-core fetish porn and hammy theatrics. They must have... right? 

Media communicates, and how I interpret its communication is entirely up to me. I don't know what the creators of this story were thinking, and I'll never know, and even if they all told me I might think they failed at their goal. For all I know, the staff behind the source material and the staff behind the adaptation had entirely different ideas about how they wanted me to feel while telling the same stories. It's my job as a viewer, as a critic, to be an interpreter for this media. How did it make me feel, and why did it make me feel that way, and what did it make me think about, and what do I think it's trying to do? I don't usually find this too hard to answer, I usually have an intuitive feelings based on my enjoyment. I have a whole blog about it, dedicated to exploring the things that a piece of media made me feel, and how I think it achieved that. It's never been so hard to fully grasp my feelings on a piece of media before, this show has refused to leave my mind for all of what it is, for better and for worse. Is Yosuga no Sora a good show? Conventionally speaking, I don't think so. But I don't think something has to be conventionally well made to be well made, unconventional is good too and I'd gladly praise other media for being great in unconventional ways. I've long advocated for honing our ability to separate our perception of the media itself, and our perception of the experience of that media. Sometimes, something is enjoyable not for what it is, but for the fact that it exists the way it does. I loved binge watching High School DxD with friends at 2 in the morning, but that enjoyment came from laughing and sharing in frustration about how bad we thought the show was. Where I'm happy to positively critique other kinds of fetish shows for their strengths as fetish media, I greatly enjoyed both the experience and the communication of Interspecies Reviewers. But Yosuga no Sora exists in this strange space in between, where the experience almost feels tied to the message. It feels wrong to give something I enjoyed for its own sake a low score, but it feels just as wrong to give something I found so dull a high score. 

Maybe this is just a skill I have to hone more. I'm sure I'll work this out over time. But at this moment in time, the me that is writing this post right now, finds that this piece of art has challenged the way I think about and criticize media. And some part of me thinks: that's a sign of great art. Because great art stokes the mind, enriches our view of the world, makes us feel strong feelings, and challenges us to think differently; and who am I to decide what thoughts, views, feelings, and challenges should count? If the point of media is to make the viewer feel strong and complex feelings, then Yosuga no Sora may have done that better than any piece of art I've ever seen. Even if I come to think that I don't like this show, just the experience of its existence, I have to say that I'm happy it exists. The world is a better place and I am a better person for this piece of art, and this story communicating these ideas, existing within it.