How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love Anidala
I am rewriting the Anidala essay I wrote and deleted to try and streamline it while keeping the same basic points. This is a ship I definitely have complicated feelings over where it seems like I go back and forth on yet lately I am warming up to the version presented in the films and 2003 CW despite the negative thoughts biting in the back of my head. I’d like get into what made me dislike the pairing and what has pushed to accept it including how my own favorite OTP helped me understand the appeal of anidala that I hadn’t before.
Two factors that soured me on anidala for a while was the way it was presented in TCW and that one video that pigeonholed it as a tradwife romance between a liberal white woman and her republican boyfriend which the anti anakin/jedi uncritical fandom grabbed and ran with. Thus, for a while I was stuck on the idea of anidala as this picket fence 1950s nuclear family and didn’t really consider how anyone could like it. I also think the dynamic in TCW made me treat it as just another generic action series romance yet now I have started to understand what my issue with TCW’s interpretation was by comparing it to another ship I have grown to be critical of.
A lot of the issues with TCW anidala strike me as similar to those of Ben and Julie’s relationship in Ben 10. Alien Force and Ultimate Alien aired during the same time period on Cartoon Network as TCW (2008-2012) and I think both shows had some of the same flaws. Ben 10 was my big show when I first came to tumblr yet as I’ve moved onto different interests, I’ve been able to look at the series with a more critical eye. Benlie and TCW anidala were alike in the sense that there would be some episodic conflict for the sake of drama that never amounted to any real development and they would have cute moments but there was always the feeling that just one fight was enough to cause a divorce or breakup. Ben would act quite insensitive and dismissive towards Julie and on her end, she would often put herself in danger while acting like she knew better than him. Some of her grievances about him taking her for granted were valid yet she also didn’t seem prepared for the challenges of dating a hero. A lot of that feels like TCW anidala especially when Clovis was involved. Not even Gwen and Kevin, the *best* couple of AF/UA were exempt from this kind of writing. TCW anidala’s flaws came from writing it as if it were this high school romance that was doomed to fail and making it into a generic slap kiss kind of dynamic.
A criticism that could be applied to both TCW and Ultimate Alien Force was them biting off more than they could chew as whenever they tried to address more mature subjects, it came off as too tryhard or edgy. The old Clone Wars Multimedia project was able to address themes of war, trauma and political instability in a more adequate way because it was targeted at an older demographic. That’s not to say a lighthearted children’s show can’t have more complicated themes as Steven Universe, Adventure Time and The Owl House are examples of it being done well while still feeling more genuine but TCW didn’t really feel like it addressed the scale and nightmare of the Clone Wars as well as the older CWMMP. The older CW stories like Jabiim feel more in line with Lucas’ criticism of the Military Industrial Complex which was influenced by Vietnam and Iraq and the corruption in the Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations.
Another issue I’ve noticed while looking at both TCW and UAF was this need to simultaneously appeal to dudebros while also pandering to the “girl boss” crowd. TCW has been criticized by prequel and CWMMP fans for making Anakin more superficially masculine and more like Han Solo. Ultimate Alien started giving Ben a harem of love interests which got worse in Omniverse. Yet there was also this misunderstanding of what feminism is when writing characters like Gwen, Julie, Ahsoka, Padme and Satine. Hence why we got girl boss Padme and “Chad” Anakin. I am not a fan of slap-kiss-slap kind of ships which is what TCW anidala kind of is. I dislike percabeth and hiccstrid for that same reason. There’s something about movie and CW 2003 anidala that makes it feel like one needs a certain amount of maturity to really understand the ship.
That one clip from the 2003 cartoon feels so much more in line with AOTC and ROTS. Prequel anidala has this feeling of a tragic fairytale akin to Shakespeare which is fitting as James Earl Jones and Sebastian Shaw were Shakespearean actors. It’s deep devotion and forbidden love between two young, hopeless romantics. It did not need to be changed to pander to the prequel haters. There’s a feeling that TCW made Anakin look and sound older because people are uncomfortable with the woman being older than the man in the patriarchal society we live in. TCW is complicated for me because I do like some of the characters including Fives and Rex but it was essentially the precursor to Disney SW with it erasing and retconning the original CWMMP. That old Clone Wars lore fit better with the films while Disney canon with Rebels, TBB and the Mandoverse is basically built around TCW.
What has started to force me to reckon with my feelings towards anidala has been to as Obi Wan said in the 2003 series “look inside one’s self” and to feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling anidala shippers have. Reading the forbidden love aspect of anidala hits different as a trans woman, with everyone telling you that your passions, your devotion and your true self are immoral and being angry with having to hide yourself and live a lie in the name of a greater good. I also want to gush a bit about two of my favorite anime movies before getting to the subject of my OTP as they helped me understand the appeal of anidala.
Wolf Children became one of my favorite movies when it was rereleased by GKIDS and I was able to watch it in theaters. It’s a very tragic and moving film with that same kind of forbidden fairytale love between Hana and the Wolf man that anidala has. I suggest that shippers watch it and write AUs because it will make you tear up.
The other movie in question is one that forced me to reflect on the attachment discourse and the notion that Anakin’s love for Padme is greedy and toxic. The film I am referring to Weathering With You, Makoto Shinkai’s more divisive follow up to Your Name. A lot of people didn’t like this movie and were calling the main character, Hodaka, a simp for choosing to save Hina at the expense of Tokyo being flooded by rainfall. Yet the question the movie begs is how is it fair for this 15 year old girl to die for everyone else’s happiness and why should this boy have to sacrifice his only friend? It’s an Omelas situation that forces one to ask how far will you go for love, why should we let people suffer for a greater good and I’ve grown to be a sucker for these kinds of romances.
When I first watched this movie, I justified liking it while still hating anidala because Hodaka didn’t kill anyone nor did he assault Hina in a nervous breakdown but looking at it now has forced me to recognize it’s that same kind of love over duty theme. Over time I have slowly acquiesced more and more to admitting there’s aspects of anidala I adore in other ships yet felt like I had to justify them as healthier and better. Is it better to hide yourself and your feelings for the sake of duty when being truthful will free your soul?
What has really changed my view on anidala has come from my love for my favorite series of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion. I do speculate that with how big a weeb he is, Lucas may have watched this series when writing the prequels. First I want to talk a bit about Gendo and Yui in relation to Anidala because they are ironically what a lot of antis say the latter is. Gendo is like Vader in the in sense that he’s a negative foil to his son, a strongly pathetic character and a man deeply broken by his wife’s death. He’s wracked and destroyed by his self loathing and obsession yet unlike Vader, Gendo was shown to have been a cold hearted person even before meeting Yui and being much older than her, there’s a disturbing element to his dynamics with women. Their dynamic was closer to what was hinted at in the pre-prequel concept of young Vader by Ashmore. Furthermore, while Vader wanted Luke to rule with him, Gendo willfully abandoned Shinji after Yui was trapped in the EVA while using him as a tool in his plans to end the world via the Third Impact and reunite with Yui. He does admit in EoE that he abandoned Shinji because he feared that he would cause him pain but ended up doing so anyway and had no problem using Shinji as a means to an end instead of a redemptive force, at least in the original series, rebuild is a completely different ending.
Shinji’s character and my OTP are the subjects I really want to focus on. He succeeds where his father failed but not in the same way as Luke with Vader as Shinji isn’t this wide eyed hero. Instead of a triumph over evil story, Shinji’s conflict is much more psychological and internal. Shinji as character is a divisive subject due to how he’s perceived as a coward and Tumblr discourse either portrays him as a smol gay bean to ship with Kaworu or a misogynistic incel due to his actions towards Asuka in EoE but I want to focus on the dynamic between him and Rei as she forces him to accept the pain in life from connecting with others while learning to love himself which is how he grows beyond his father. He’s a complex character that is a realistic take on what happens when you draft a 14 year old into a war and throw him in a meat grinder. Rei too is an actual strong female character despite often being dismissed for seeming more passive and unemotional than Asuka and Misato.
Rei and Shinji as a ship is a subject that often ruffles some feathers. Asushin is the preferred m/f pairing while Kawoshin is favored among many here. Because of the idea that Rei is Yui’s clone, people act as if it’s akin to shipping Luke and Leia and paint Shinji’s despair over learning Rei’s origins as akin to Luke realizing he made out with his sister when it was really about him believing the Rei he knew was seemingly gone. Most LRS shippers are critical of that notion that it’s an incest ship by pointing to the amount of DNA that was actually used, as well as them never being treated as siblings by the narrative. There’s also this pseudo feminist narrative in much of the fandom that Rei is meant to be a creepy trap as a metaphor for escapism while Asuka represents the pain of real life when Rei also could be an example of accepting the harsh reality of those you love. Much of the fandom is quick to paint it as a sibling relationship while discrediting any romantic readings yet I have grown to be deeply attached to it because it’s different from the typical slap-kiss dynamic and as I said before, I am a sucker for moments like these:
The reason I ramble about being an LRS stan here is because it forced me to emphasize with anidala shippers in a sense. I came to realize that I loved this ship for the same reasons anidala fans love theirs. I think it’s a ship that one needs to have a bit more maturity to understand and one that appeals more to fans in the eastern hemisphere. Whenever I talk about it, even in this essay, it feels like I have to write a million disclaimers to justify liking it and can be quick to get defensive. There are days where I have a hard time holding very lefty politics while defending a ship many view as heteronormative and conservative. Yet I feel as passionate about it as I do because I think it’s a tragic, cute, mature and beautiful love story that is misunderstood. In many ways, I began to get why anidala resonates with people by reflecting on why I love Reishin so much. A boy with a fear of abandonment and deep self loathing who is hated for not being a typical self insert male power fantasy, falls for a beautiful angel who is very emotionally repressed herself and grows to understand emotions by falling in love. There is a maternal aspect and room for discussion about a Madonna-whore complex but that doesn’t discount the possibility of intimacy just because it’s more complicated than a simple crush. A lot of which one could say about prequel/CWMMP anidala’s dynamic.
IMO a lot of the dislike of anidala may stem from the growth of moralism in fandom and the rise in political polarization. I think the conception of it as a liberal woman and MAGA boyfriend may be in part due to the rise of tradwife-incel culture in my generation and people projecting that onto the ship with the amount of fanboys who love Anakin for shallow reasons. Most anidala fans are also critical of Filoni and Disney while preferring the original 6 films and I think with all the alt right grifters, people are quick to associate criticism of Disney SW with those who hate anything “woke” when Disney is an evil corporation which if anything deserves far more scrutiny.
Anidala is a different kind of romance than most are used to that requires more maturity to grasp and people don’t like that while praising TCW for making them more of a generic Hanleia expy. No one has to like it but understanding the tragedy and beauty of it as presented in the prequels allows one to really look at it differently. I think one has to learn a certain amount of empathy to understand why it appeals to people instead of writing them off as all fascists and unpack their moralism towards anything that’s not 100% unproblematic as that’s what I had to do to really get it. It’s a forbidden love story that resonates with a more diverse audience than given credit for and while some of its writing is influenced by Lucas’s misogyny, there’s a beauty to it that makes it compelling.
