Hakuouki on different levels

[waterscroll]

I've been chatting with scytale about Hakuouki and I realized it's time for more Hakuouki posts. One thing that has been on my mind: I keep saying that Hakuouki works on many different levels. So let me try to list them.

Levels on which I read Hakuouki:

1. Kinky porn. I never was into the whole vampire thing when I encountered it in western canons but Hakuouki made blood drinking sexy to me. No shame. :)

2. Character studies. Just about every route featured a character that was lovely and worth getting to know.

3. Love stories. Let's not forget the obvious. One thing I like about the genre of otome novels is that what love looks like and means is different on different routes, so it makes clear that there's no one (or no best) way to love. And since routes keep getting added, the possible ways to love are potentially infinite.

4. Thinking about history from different perspectives. The different routes experience the same historical events but the characters understand what is happening in different ways. I find this very powerful.

5. A philosophical dialogue about the meaning of honor and the nature of the good life. Each character embodies different virtues and has very strongly felt opinions about how to live honorably as a warrior in difficult and complex circumstances and they often change over the course of the route. Since I've been playing (and replaying) Haukuouki I've often found that when I'm dealing with a tough real-life question I feel an impulse to replay a certain route, and that might lead me to realize what virtue and what understanding of honor and the good life I need right now.

6. A meditation on the consequences of war and the struggle of living with war-related PTSD. This is a topic very close to my heart and I appreciate the varied possible responses to it in the different routes. Although reading it this way is part of what makes me partial to Sanan for obvious reasons.

Any I'm missing?

I find that my reactions to the routes can go back and forth depending on which level I'm reading on and what I'm looking for. Hijikata, for example, has swung back and forth from being one of my least favorites to one of my favorites.

Comments

[scytale]

I started with Rurouni Kenshin and ended up in Hakuouki.

I did not know what Rurouni Kenshin is about, and now I'm intrigued!

I've been also thinking of it as something of a Buddhist parable, in which human warriors, furies and demons all try to figure out who is strongest and the answer is that no one is because the cycle of suffering is inescapable. In the end all the warriors of all kinds end up putting down their swords because what else can you do.

I can see that.

None of the routes I've seen so far have really presented much of a middle ground between "fade into obscurity", "die in battle", and "raise an army, murder everyone, rule" (every single villain in the routes I've played).

The game feels very ambivalent on honor, to me (and I think proving who is strongest is tied to that, especially for both Sannan and Kazama, who tie strength to worthiness). It feels like the game sometimes glamorizes honor, but at the same time, it doesn't exactly present good things happening because of the honor, either. The characters get a happy ending only when they back away from the idea of their honor, and for Kondou and Hijikata, the honor seems muddled by their ambition. And there was that bit with Itou, which I think was supposed to be read as horrifying.

[waterscroll]

I thought Saito, and in a very different way Souma, had very interesting arcs around honor and finding new meanings for it.

and for Kondou and Hijikata, the honor seems muddled by their ambition

That was why I struggled so much with the Hijikata route. I kept calling him the Bad Decisions Bear because he not only makes consistently terrible decisions but drags everyone else into them. But at a certain point something shifted and I started seeing things from his perspective and reread his route and cried from beginning to end.

And I have zero patience for Kondou, and the hardest thing for me about the Okita route is that at no point do you get to explain to Okita that Kondou was a *terrible* foster dad who treated him very poorly. But I guess Okita will never be in a place to hear that and in a sense it doesn't matter.

[scytale]

I thought Saito, and in a very different way Souma, had very interesting arcs around honor and finding new meanings for it.

Hmm, I can see that. I was mostly thinking in terms of the warrior's honor, originally.

Oh, what did Kondou to do make him a terrible foster dad? I sped through that route really fast, so I think I forgot a lot of the backstory.

[waterscroll]

Okita was placed in Kondo's care as a small child and as far as I can tell Kondo never taught him much other than how to fight. I don't think Kondo had much interest in caring for the emotional needs of a traumatized child. When we meet him, Okita sees himself as Kondo's tool. Kondo strikes me as a fairly selfish person and I wonder if Kondo valued Okita as anything other than a tool.

Having said that, there are definitely more positive readings of the relationship in the fandom, and I've seen a lot of fics in which Kondo is great with young!Okita. You could also make the case that none of this was Kondo's responsibility, he didn't ask to be a dad.

[waterscroll]

Oh! Rurouni Kenshin is an anime and manga about an assassin working for the other side, so one of the Shinsengumi's worst enemies. It takes place ten years after the end of the war when he's trying to come to terms with everything he did and the new world. It co-stars middle-aged police officer Saito as an occasional antagonist and occasional reluctant ally.

Unfortunately I can't really recommend it because the creator is a pedophile (was convicted of possessing child pornography) and you can sort of tell in the work. The women characters are much younger than the men characters and while the men are all survivors of the war and dealing with its effects the women were too young to be in the war and their arcs mostly revolve around the men. So it is a very flawed piece of work. But there are some very good things in it, including its take on Saito.

[scytale]

Yikes. :| That's a good thing to know and not something I would probably have found out on my own, thank you.