Hey, Koori, Can u make a Meta about Medaka Box? I just ended the manga and I want to know if I learned something. My fav character is Kumagawa too, but I want to know more about the others like Hito, Medaka, Akune, etc. Thanks!
Actually, my face claim is Kumagawa.
However, I am a Koori Ui Stan so I will accept that title as well. (This is a joke I don’t actually care what I’m called call me whatever you want).
I’m going to talk about Kumagawa in another post so let’s just focus on the three you asked me for. Hitoyoshi, Medaka and Akune. Medaka Box is a deconstruction of shonen manga by nature, so as in with a lot of NisioIsin’s writing, just as the characters are people they’re also meant to represent certain literary tropes and ideals.
So, there’s a lot to gain in understanding their characters by udnerstanding the tropes that went into making those characters so let’s piece those apart one by one. Where are the tropes and where is the humanity.
So, Akune is presented to us as a prince. Design wise, despite being in a shonen manga he takes pretty obvious design cues from classical shojo heroes. He has long hair, feminine eyes, good looks and a princely demeanor. If I were to make a comparison for another character (I’m not saying that Akune takes direct inspiration, it’s just a connection that just happens to make them similiar). Akune’s characterization reminds me a lot of Touga Kiryuu’s. He’s somebody who perfectly plays the role of a prince, he’s talented, handsome, strong, and fights for the sake of ladies and earns their affection effortlessly. Yet at the same time despite perfectly comforting to that role it doesn’t satisfy him at all due to his own inner emptiness and because of that, while his image is that of a princess his actions and his personal motivations directly contradict the princely role that others perceive him as.
So, to elaborate more on that and to once again reiterate this is a trope deconstruction and a character at the same time. Akune is somebody who, appeals to the broad extremes of both the shonen and the shojo genre.
The love interests of Shojo tend to act like this, they’re extremely talented at everything they try (they’re usually super rich but with a brooding backstory), they’re effortlessly charming.
Compare the love interest from Maid Sama! He’s a beautiful and charming, and also extremely talented, rich, top of the line man who act smooth and charismatic exactly like this and usually has the heroine tripping all over him.
The difference of course being Akune views Medaka as his heorine, and Medaka doesn’t give him that sort of reaction at all, no matter how much he cultivates himself into being an ideal, princely man as informed to him by the shojo genre.
And even from his introduction chapters we’re given hints that the princely thing is just an act for Akune, and he can turn quite nasty when he wants to. (Boys calm down you’re both pretty).
SO, from his introduction forward Akune’s basically a parody of this classic shojo hero. He’s prince like,he’s constantly followed by sparkles, he’s an ideal that rises to the top of everything he does unlike Zenkichi. He’s even used for fanservice to build him up as a masculine ideal the same way Medaka’s body is presented as a feminine ideal.
Also, in a traditionally shonen setting Akune’s goals are really shojo. He doesn’t want to work hard and achieve things like Zenkichi and Medaka, he’s there to make Medaka fall for him even if it means breaking friendship and promises or whatever, he adds a shoujo element a love triangle into a what was a really classical shonen premise. And there are even characters who purposefully avoid doing this, Shiranui in the future remarks that to her love doesn’t matter and doesn’t always have to win in a shonen manga and that’s why she can let go, however for Akune it’s the opposite case.
Then, we get into Akune’s backstory and specifically why he’s driven to be like this. Why he works so hard to play at being prince, and why he wants to become Medaka’s prince more than anything else. We learn why the prince thing rings so fake with him, why it’s just an act, because in the past he put on an opposite act.
During HIgh School he’s a perfect shojo hero, but during middle school he puton an act of being a perfect shonen hero. Remember, a lot of shonen heroes are boyish, violence and rebellion are glorified in shonen heroes, and a lot of them tend to just get in fights and destroy things with little regards to the damage they cause. Akune physically looks like Yusuke Yurameshi.
Shonen protagonists can glorify this kind of youthful rebellion, getting in aimless fights, being the strongest. If the shoujo hero is what girls think is cool in a man, then the shonen hero is what boys think is cool in a man, uncompromising violence, being the strongest, being somebody that destroys others and somebody nobody can mess with. It’s a power fantasy basically, but one that he literally was living. He also wasn’t even doing it for himself, he was doing it because it gave him something to do, and because somebody told him to do so it allowed for him to live for a purpose other than himself.
Basically, there’s something off about Akune. It’s an idea that NisioIsin plays with a lot, that people can be born fundamentally empty and are constantly looking for something to fulfill themselves. However, on a trope level what is being said is basically this, Akune tried to craft himself twice to suit the ideals of other people. First, he played the ideal shonen protagonist, the strongest person that destroyed everythingin their path and that nobody could mess with. Then he played the ideal shojo protagonist, a charming figure, that reads like a little girl’s fantasy, talented, strong, handsome, and spends all of his time in pursuit of the lovely heroine.
Yet, both acts of his are equally empty. Neither one of those satisfies Akune. He never resolved his internal issues, he just swapped the person who he was clinging to, and he ended up clinging to someone with slightly better intentions than middle school Kumagawa.
However, clinging to people doesn’t fulfill him, the same way clinging to roles doesn’t fulfill him. Yet, Akune genuinely tries to live his life built around the expectations of other people, and that’s why playing to genre expectations shoujo/shonen he has a complete lack of his own real personality.
So really, the final moment of Akune’s development comes when he comes face to face with a previous fan of his, the kind of person that Akune would have changed his whole personality to appeal to in the past.
And instead of playing the role somebody else expects from him, Akune has to unabashedly be himself. Even if he still has shaky footing and doesn’t know how to guide others and doesn’t know what he himself is or wants at this point, it’s better for him to make mistakes when acting as himself then to be the perfect mentor that she expects out of him.
It’s better for Akune to try things as himself then to force himself to live up to some ideal. Even when he screws up and has his advice totally ignored. .
And then of course there’s the question of why Medaka never thought to reutnr Akune’s affections, and the answer is simple, because Akune is too close to Medaka and Medaka loathes herself. FUndamentally unable to become her own person, she saw Akune playing ideal and clinging to others just as she did (though Akune clung to one person and Medaka clung to the entirety of humanity) and knew that Akune would never be satsified like that. Even Akune’s special is most like The End, he as the ability to imitate near perfectly the talents of others. Medaka’s desire was to be her own person, not to be an ideal and she saw Akune was struggling with that, and he was also much closer to reaching being his own person than she was, and because of that she encouraged him to go the opposite way. She thought Akune was better because he was so much more easily able to become his own person than she was, despite being a genius of similiar caliber who could stretch his personality to become those ideals.
and with that wrapped up we can transition to Kurokami Medaka.
So, Medaka as helpfully pointed out to us by Ajimu is a deconstruction of the trope that the main character always wins.
Basically the idea that inevitably in shonen jump, the main character always wins and gets what they want, by the property of them being the main character and nothing else. Goku always gets stronger when he fights and usually wins in the end. Medaka is that idea but taken to an extreme, of course Medaka always wins because she has the most powers the most perfect powers, and the strongest abilities out of anyone.
It basically drops the pretense that most serial manga keep up in order for their to appear that there are stakes. Usually the expectation is for the main character to win in the end no matter what, but at the same time they’re usually presented as an udnerdog.
Medaka is never once an underdog right from the very beginning. In fact her enemies have to keep getting more and more ridiculous in order to fight her, to the point where her forms and power ups become totally meaningless.
It’s sort of like in Naruto where Naruto started out as someone with little natural talent who tries too hard, and then over time became literally the reincarnation of half of a god, had a demon sealed within him, and was given the root of all chakra magic to assist his powers. Now all of that slow escalation into getting rid of the underdog protagonist and replacing them with somebody whose basically playing in epic levels in DND and godmodding with their character, all that pretense is dropped and right from the beginning Medaka is capable of doing anything she wants to do the instant she wants to do it, because she’s the strongest, magical, chosen one, main character.
However, in shonen manga being this powerful is always a good thing. Whereas right from the start this is presented as a flaw of Medaka’s, something that prevents her from understanding others, and in turn dehumanizes her.
In the pilot it’s even more explicit, though in the proper manga it takes Medaka a little while to get to this point.
She’s like… 100 times more self aware in the pilot, whereas actual series Medaka lacks this self awareness, but regardless it’s a good point. Medaka has every talent in the world, but it basically means nothing to her, because she doesn’t know the fulfillment of struggle, and she also doesn’t know what it’s like to simply live as a person because barely anybody has ever treated her as one. Even her closest childhood friends views herself as a goal to reach half the time and only recognizes she’s a noral girl the other half. So, Medaka Box puts forth this statement, if there were such a person to exist who as a main character always wins and always gets what they want, it would be just as corrupting as always losing and always getting what they want.
Wanting everyone to be happy, wanting everyone to be sad, they’re both chaining themselves to a goal and both of the don’t see people as people. Kumagawa even calls this as out as much that Medaka’s unable to love others as individuals.
While she technically is on the side of good, Medaka doesn’t view herself as a person and as a result she also views others around her not as people as well, and Ajimu continually brings up how dangerous this behavior could become if Medaka were not so fight happy that she was constantly keeping her own destructive impulses in check. ANd once again the point of NisioIsin’s writing is to analyze the trope, what kind of person would actually be able to do what most shone protagonists do and actually be able to accept everybody with open arms and no reservations. it’s because they’re not individuals with rough edges, and spines that could poke her if they got close, Medaka is at a comfortable enough distance to most people that she can see them al as just a part of humanity. Even though she doesn’t extend herself that luxury. And so the plot progresses that Medaka is forced to accept more and more inhuman enemies, first the ridiculously driven Akune and Mogana, then the violently destructive public morals committee, then the abnormals who were like her in nature, then the minuses who purposefully acted as bad victims as they possibly could to lash out against society, and then a literal non-human with a quadrillion powers and Medaka was forced to see humanity in all of them until she could accept something as ridiculous as herself was human. Once again these aren’t just character archetype motivations though, they’re intrinsic ones, it comes from Medaka’s backgrund and how she was treated.
Medaka had kind older siblings,a nd she was treated well enough but she wasn’t really valued as a person, or raised as a person, but an heir and a person with talent. She was pretty much experimented on from age five.
None of the adults around her treated her like a kid, and Medaka also started to feel guilty for her exstence because she felt like the people
And so, not treated as a person, Medaka began to loathe herself for being born because she existed to invalidate the hard work of others. She tries to escape from this self loathing, but instead what she ends up doing is rocketing between the philosophy of two boys. Kumagawa’s utter nihilism, and Zenkichi’s ideals of helping others.
However, in the end clinging to others is still clinging so even if Medaka ended up picking the slightly more positive version of the two escapes from her fundamental guilt over being born, she still was basically just clinging to others, even to the whole of humanity to escape from that guilt.
Medaka was just a human girl in th end, and it was cruel to force her to become the savior of all humanity and ignore her won feelings, just like Medaka always suppressing herself and humanity to help others was cruel to herself.
That there were people who wanted her around because she was Medaka, not because of what service or use she could be to them. That it was better for Medaka to be herself and fumble and strive to do that, then to be the perfect savior of all mankind. That ultimately the role of main character were shackles that were holding Medaka back, and ones that needed to be destroyed because it prevented her from being a human being first and foremost.
Zenkichi, beng the deuteragonist is another deconstruction of the idea of the main character. However if Medaka is the main character that always wins, then Zenkichi is the kind of average guy main character who always gets through his fights by hard work.
However, I will make the point that Zenkichi is a character who wins his fights not by training to be the strongest (which he often does and believes he has to force himself to do to be by Medaka’s side), but rather all his significant victories are ones of empathy.
So it’s pointed out right away that Zenkichi instead of being someone who loves all of humanity, instead likes people on a more normal basis. What wins the fight against Munakata is two fold, one that he cares about Medaka’s feelings and doesn’t want to hurt them which motivates him to stand up again.
Two, that he was willing to take the risk and become friends with Munakata, despite the fact that it could technically get him killed at any moment.
Which is empathy, that is struggling to see the circumstances of somebody who is not exactly like you, and sees the world differently. Munakata had to push people away to protect them from being killed by him, but Zenkichi says that Munakata is worth being friends with despite those risks. He’s able to reach past the dangers of others and accept them, even if he might be hurt by it. It’s something Zenkichi struggles to do again and again, and his victories are almost always victories of empathy, rather than beating people up by being really good at shonen fighting. Zenkichi is a character the fundamentally, tries to see the abnormal as normal, because he wants Medaka not to be left alone or treated differently just because she’s abnormal.
What wins the first fight against brainwashed Medaka isn’t Zenkichi being stronger than her, it’s a show of empathy. “Medaka, I don’t want you to be hurt, your happiness is just as important as others.’ Zenkichi feels her pain as his own and reaches out to her.
Even if it means his Medaka won’t come back, it’s not worth her destroying herself or paining herself over to make her happy, because there is someone whose concerned with her own happiness, just as much or even moreso than his own.
Zenkichi’s next fight after that however, is a parallel to the fight with Munakata. Rather than becoming friends he does everything he can and trains his hardest to reject Kumagawa with every part of his being, because Kumagawa is somebody who traumatized him in the past and terrifies him. He doesn’t want to see the humanty in Kumagawa, therefore they cannot become friends.
As a result, Zenkichi’s victory is entirely an empty one. Kumagawa just pops back up from the dead, he makes Medaka upset by nearly dying, and they end feeling no satisfaction from their victory.
Then, compare ths to what happens when Zenkichi fights Emukae. By understanding what she’s been through and seeing the world through her eyes, he wins a much more solid victory.
Parasite vision is specifically an empathy based super power, it allows him to see the world as others does, and after gaining it he realizes that Minuses have their own ways of viewing things too and they’re not just inhumanly cruel for no reason. Only then does he gain a true victory against Kumagawa, where Kumagawa is the one shaken and thrown on the defensive, because minuses being sympathized with was the last thing any of the minuses wanted because they too in a way were embracing their own inhumanity.
Zenkichi doesn’t train himself to get stronger to defeat Medaka-chan, he doesn’t unlock a new super power. All he does is reevaluate their relationship, and realize one that it wasn’t so healthy to always devote himself to her, and two that he loved her as a person, not as a person whose always right.
Then aftewards what Zenkichi fights for is that Medaka be free to be her own person, not be free to be his love interest, or anything else like that. He realizes first and foremost, Medaka’s emotions are important and they exist separate from his desires or anybody else’s and once again this an exercise of empathy.
Which is why the final message of Zenkichi’s character is not necessarily that hard work and shonen determination are what win the day, but rather it was because Zenkichi always strived to see the people around them as people, to humanize them that was why he was able to get along with them, and for a tropey shonen manga that’s such a beautiful message.
Medaka, Akune they’re referred to as empty existences over and over again but Zenkichi from the start has always been fulfilled in comparison to them and that’s exactly why, Zenkichi not only saw himself as a human being, he saw the others around him as human too and always strived to treat them that way and because of that his heart was practically full to bursting.
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