AVOIDABLE DEATHS / TRAGEDY AND SOMETHING ELSE

ALEXANDRE HAÏOUN-PERDRIX - Writer, 3rd Year, Philosophy

Is there even such a thing as “unavoidable death”?

SPOILERS FOR MORIARTY THE PATRIOT & FOR MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM (FIRST SERIES)

Anime, some categories doubtlessly more than others, tend to include the death of some characters. A part of them is memorable — rarely because of the number involved, since most anime mass deaths happen in series known to feature a lot of such events, like Attack on Titan — more often because of the specific character whose death is concerned, in the way of a famous officer in Fullmetal Alchemist (be it the first one or Brotherhood). There are however ways to make a death impactful that do depend neither on the number nor even, or rather not directly, on the character’s importance. One way of such a kind is to have this death be, or seem, avoidable. An expected death in an anime may cause little sorrow: the characters, the viewer, sometimes even both, have been prepared for the fact and sad as its happening is, it is nonetheless easily accepted. An unexpected but also inevitable death (demanded for the scenario to continue, the logic of the anime to be conserved, et cætera) leaves one with bitter feelings but little anger. One’s dying without it being unavoidable or necessary sparks anger, frustration and their likes. It is tragic without being acceptable.

Cases can be found in Tanya the Evil, Moriarty the Patriot and Mobile Suit Gundam (that is, the original series — although for sure the complete universe does not lack its numerous other avoidable deaths), all of a different sort. In Tanya the Evil, those deaths (clearly not that death) are those of countless so-called soldiers but also civilians of Arène, a city where a revolt against the central State takes place (that is, in a hardly disguised Alsace where the rebels want to join the equivalent of Republican France, whilst they are under the control of what looks terribly like the German Empire) — and where the German-like army is sent to “tame” the native people by basically shooting everything and everyone. In Moriarty the Patriot, it is the disappearance of the protagonist, whose death was meant to be necessary for his plan, but with time, seemed increasingly less so. In Mobile Suit Gundam, it is a vengeance whereof the point had almost disappeared, even, indeed, to the eyes of its perpetrator who had found other causes for which to fight, other problems with which to deal and even other persons to sincerely hate. Those deaths are thus respectively, since avoidable, cruel, heart-breaking and absurd.

And that is where both the problem and its embedded solution are: it is not these events that are tragic, but us who think about it with, inside our minds, the scheme of tragedy. We often expect deaths to happen because they “have to” — because it was told and foretold, because it is necessary, because it is fitting, because it is logical, because it is right, et cætera. But as a matter of fact, these are not so frequent anime, wherein everything is ruled by divine fate, and events follow (more or less obviously) a written and irresistible script, in the way of xxxHolic. This fatalism, sometimes described as “Eastern” (see for instance Bellanger’s Le continent de la douceur) appears here to be more present on the side of the viewer (Eastern or Western) than on that of the Eastern scenarist. Deaths rather happen because it has been decided by something way more arbitrary — a god, chance, whatever — and a scenarist is all of that merged, if not even more.

Moreover, not only are there often reasons for those deaths which the viewer simply does not understand, but sometimes it is desired and preferable that he do not understand them, for it is the very point of the scenarist: would the viewer be so emotionally involved, if he were not that disturbed, that shocked, that frustrated? Would he understand so fully the characters, for whom too this death is by definition unexpected and unjust?

In the case of Tanya the Evil, the battle of Arène has its explanations — both within the series and for the sake of the series. The massacre is necessary, because the loss of the city would be a terrible event, with even more terrible consequences and repercussions — the Empire, so it seems at least to its generals, has hardly any other choice. It must show its strength and its determination, and extinguish the fire of rebellion before it has begun to spread. It is also a reminder of how simple and worthless lives become when they are, for someone, not even big enough to feature on the maps of the army. For Moriarty the Patriot, this death no longer belongs to the plan — it now obeys new principles which the other characters do not know and according to which they can not that much act and react. Finally, in the case of Mobile Suit Gundam, the revenge murder happens to be a last demonstration of the personality of a character who is to be used again for other anime — and a conclusion such that it perfectly closes what had been opened forty episodes earlier.