Re: Why so much Fushugi Yugi hate?

Metlhd3138 wrote:
> 
> I hear people complaining about Fushugi Yugi, complaining its
> "juvenile","sappy","annoying". Why? It, along with El Hazard, helped pioneer
> the "student gets pulled into magical world" stories that anchored escaflowne
> and inu-yasha (weirdly, FY haters dont mind those shows at all).

I think it's because "Fushigi Yugi" squanders an incredible
amount of promise.  The world of "FY" is very rich and detailed,
with an impressive cast of characters, and Yui is one of the
more interesting and conflicted anti-heroines I've seen.  And
as for Miaka, well she starts out as one of the more realistic,
believable teenaged girls I've seen in anime in a long time.  
Honestly, I can remember lots of girls just like Miaka back in
junior high school.  It's really nice to see somebody *average*,
rather than exceptional, as the lead character in a fantasy show.
(Hitomi from "Escaflowne" is another nicely "normal" character.
A teenage girl with average grades who belongs to the school 
track team and tells fortunes for fun.  We've all known somebody
like that, right?)

And then, it's all wasted.  Rather than growing and maturing, 
Miaka spends her time saying "Tamahome" and overeating, and
the Suzaku Seven all fixate on Miaka rather than forming a more 
diverse web of relationships, the actual storyline gets polluted 
with all sorts of hokey deus-ex-machina gimmicks, etc etc.  

That's why I was so disappointed by "Fushigi Yugi", and abandoned
the series after Nuriko's <spoiler> on the mountaintop.

- dbm