From: jly33321@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (John L.Yoon )
Subject: Re: Characters in Maison Ikkoku
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 00:06:10 GMT

rmc@wang.com (rmc) writes:

>This was sparked by an article by shimkevi@acs.bu.edu (Sergey Shimkevich)

>There are characters i get more involved with than Godai and Kyoko,
>Consider Mitaka Shun.  Right from the first panel where they see each
>other, there are anger lines and flames running around virtually every
>time they get together.  Godai-san certainly uses Soichiro to twit
>Mitaka-san at the beach.  

The  Desert Island OVA is a GREAT example of this! :)  

>But what happens when Godai has pneumonia
>after leaving Ikkoku-kan?  Mitaka Shun is there, cooking broth and
>feeding him.  (V5, probably about c3)  Now the rest of the denizens of
>Ikkoku-kan doing this makes some sense, as they do share the house.
>But Mitaka-san doesn't;  he has no reason to bother with Godai-san.
>He's not even doing it to show off to Kanrinin-san;  she doesn't
>appear in those scenes at all, and i think he did it during her normal
>"shopping time" to make sure she wouldn't show up.  (I have no
>evidence for this belief, it's just there.)

but Mitaka also broke his leg on purpose because he was jealous of
Godai (Godai broke his leg saving Kyoko when she fell off the roof
of Ikkoku-kan.  Kyoko felt...well she felt something and was giving
Godai a ton of attention..)

>Sure Otonashi Kyoko is not perfect.  She's trying to decide what to do
>now that Soichiro-san is gone.  There was a really good post in
>November on her dilema.  Should she be the romantic, virtuous woman
>who remembers her one love?  Should she accept the advances of
>Mitaka-san, who is closer to her station and clearly is compatible?
>Should she support Godai-san, who she likes better even though he's
>too low in station and needs a lot of work? 

>And you must admit that Godai-san does improve a lot during the course
>of the series.  He learns some responsibility from college and being
>employed.  He becomes less indecisive.  (I won't say he becomes
>decisive;  he doesn't manage to tell Yagami Ibuki about the marriage
>in the "Final Movie".  But on the other hand, the denizens are being
>themselves and interrupting him when he tries, too.  At the beginning
>of the series he wouldn't have even tried.

Kozue is probably a better example of this problem than Yagami.  
Near the end of the series (round episode 90?) Kozue accidentally
mistakes something that Godai says for a marrage proposal.  Godai
(of course) doesn't have the nerve to immediately tell her that it
was a mistake...and this of course blows up out of proportion over
time.  You can analyze why Godai didn't tell her the truth (the vision
of her crying when he tells her touching some sensitive spot, etc) but
the "meddling" of the three stooges aggrevated the situation (not to
mention Kyoko's mile-wide jealous streak).  Before the proposal,
the three were raking the coals (especially Ichinose) in an attempt
to motivate Kyoko to act and grab Godai before Kozue did.  

However, Kyoko's solution was to run away.  This would seem to peg Kyoko
as the most indecisive one.  She obvious felt strongly for Godai (she was
always snapping broomsticks, boiling over pots, etc when she saw or heard
about Godai with another woman) but she never acted on these feelings.
Godai on the other hand had made up his mind that Kyoko was the woman for
him.  He constantly constructed new schemes to win her love but was never
able to follow through (E for effort?).  Takahashi always gave insight 
into what Godai was thinking but Kyoko always remained a bit of a mystery.
We see her ripping hair out of Souchiro's head, breaking brooms but we
never get the thoughts that accompany them.  Since her thoughts aren't 
revealed, judging Kyoko considerably more dangerous than judging Godai....
maybe she's thinking something similar to Godai.  From one point of view,
Godai & Kozue could be considered close to Kyoko & Mintaka's relationship...
knowing Kyoko's thoughts thought would probably make it 
clearer, but then it wouldn't be any fun.  :)
  



-- 
John Yoon (std. disclaimer)   *   Advice is what we ask for when we already 
jly33321@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu     *   know the answer but wish we didn't. 
jyoon@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu        *                                 E. Jong 
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