Elizabeth Tang: "Dear Vina Jie-Min Prasad: I Swear This Isn't Masochistic"

Dear Vina Jie-Min Prasad: I Swear this isn’t Masochistic

By: Elizabeth Tang

            Growing up with Chinese, immigrant parents, means I’ve watched countless Chinese dramas. This also means I’ve watched every terrible ending imaginable, and when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it definitely did. Perhaps this means I’m easily impressed by any semblance of a decent ending which I must admit is partially true. However, that also means I can fully appreciate and recognize a good ending when I see one. Even though it’s been over four years, I still remember the ending to Code Geass, the pinnacle of all anime. As someone who’s a sucker for total closure and fairytale endings, it’s strange to say that the ending I’ve enjoyed the most is one that involved some pain and raised more questions than it answered.

            First addressing my need for pain, I would like to say I am not a masochist. Instead, the pain that the characters experience make them all the more real for me, and it makes me emotionally invested in the fantastical world I’ve been immersed in. Perfect and happy endings that come without a bumpy road make me feel like the characters didn’t change and makes any change the characters may have gone through feel superficial. However, whenever the characters experience sacrifice and failure, they become more complex as they grow and push forward. Their emotions of sadness, anger, and loss make me wish desperately that they’ll succeed to experience the sweet taste of happiness. Pain is part of what makes the story interesting and makes reaping its benefits even more satisfying.  In the case of Code Geass, Lelouch chose to sacrifice his identity and the trust of his closest friends in order to reach his end goal. Along the way, he also had to face traitors, death, and the world’s strongest army. As a result, when he successfully liberated Japan from Britannia’s tyrannical rule, middle school me relished in the satisfaction just as much as he did and enjoyed every moment of that emotional rollercoaster.

           However, middle school me also experienced to most conflicting combination of emotions ever. On one hand, Lelouch had successfully lead a rebellion and freed Japan by sacrificing his life. On the other hand, the series reveals in the last half minute that Lelouch is, in fact, alive and staged his own death. To this day, I wonder what Lelouch plans to do in a post-Britannica Japan, if he’ll ever reveal himself again to his comrades, and a hundred other questions that will forever go unanswered. Although I dislike endings where there are lose strings hanging around, in its own way, this open ending tied everything it needed to. The series’ focus was Lelouch’s leadership and his comrades’ participation in Japan’s rebellion. Their journey through the rebellion had thoroughly been developed. By the end, we knew all the sacrifices as rewards that happened as a direct result of the rebellion. However, we’re only given a snippet of the very first step of our characters’ beginnings to their new journey. On the other hand, these first steps are also the final steps to the journey that the series intended us to follow our characters through. Part of the satisfaction that comes with this kind of ending is it makes the world feel as if it lives on and the wonder that comes with not knowing how the characters will live on. In its own way, the story ended so there were no loose strings or frayed edges left to the journey that we were meant to follow our characters through.

            Everyone wants happiness, but it’s not just some masochistic desire that makes me enjoy endings that entail pain. Instead, it’s a need for realism in seeing the characters grow through their pain so I can emotionally invest myself in their journey. It’s because of this investment that I require stories to package themselves without loose strings from our journey but makes me okay if questions from a new journey arise since I get to wonder the endless possibilities as the fantastical world lives on.