What do Love Fights, Maison Ikkoku, and Sideways have to do with each other? Not much, at least outside my tortured brain. Suffice to say timing and other triggers have led me to think about the ways they overlap.
(Big honking SPOILERS wait below about all of them.)
So a package comes from the Big Internet Bookstore containing the second volume of Oni’s Love Fights. I’d been a little ambivalent about the first volume, but I decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did, though I’m still ambivalent. It’s a different kind of ambivalence, though.
Backing up a bit: after finishing the first volume of Love Fights, I thought it felt rote. It seemed like another “how do normal people live in a super-heroic world” story with a modicum of quirky charm to distinguish it from a fairly thick pack. I liked Watson’s illustrations a lot, and I liked the supporting cast. I immediately connected with Nora, with her mix ambition and pragmatism.
I didn’t like Jack, though. And I realized later that I didn’t like Jack for some of the same reasons I didn’t like the men in Sideways. I found him immature in some fairly unpleasant ways, particularly in regard to his sense of entitlement. It wasn’t hard for me to see why he hadn’t had a date in years, what with his jealousy and pettiness. While I didn’t particularly admire the way his co-workers handled the break-up of their artistic partnership with Jack, I couldn’t exactly blame them, either.
It made sense to me that Nora might spark with Jack initially, and it made sense that she’d pull away when she got to know him better. Sure, his jealousy and bad behavior were driven partly by outside forces, but they seemed consistent with what I’d already decided about his character. Good for Nora for putting some daylight between them, I thought.
By the time I finished the first volume, I didn’t feel a burning desire to read much more. The super-hero stuff was nice, funny window dressing for a romance I didn’t really support. Weeks passed, I saw the solicitation for the second volume, and I thought about passing on it. But people whose opinions I trust liked it a lot, the Big Internet Bookstore was offering free shipping, and I needed a third item to meet the “for orders of…” requirement.
I read it shortly after reading the sixth volume of Maison Ikkoku, which also features an immature man pursuing a woman who’s probably much too good for him (though to generally heartwarming effect… Godai is immature because he’s young, not because he’s stunted). At one point in the digest, Godai’s grandmother tells a touching story of how she chose her husband over a richer man, feeling that her would-be husband’s devotion and love would sustain her for the rest of her days. Just as the reader (and Granny’s in-story audience) is getting a little sniffly, Granny mutters, “Biggest mistake I ever made! I just have been out of my mind!” It’s a tiny, tonal masterpiece of misdirection, from sentimental to ruefully hilarious in the space of a panel.
And I thought about that bit a lot as I read the second half of Love Fights. It reminded me of Nora’s position as the story progresses. Jack clearly loves her, but that’s all he offers. I’m not talking about financial security or material things. I’m talking about the ability to be a good companion in the long run. And then I realized that this was probably precisely what Watson had intended and how well it tied into the themes of the fan-hero-commerce dynamic.
I mean, look at the revelation about the Crisis analogue. How brilliant is the reason that the normal people have kept this defining event from the super-heroes? It’s so sweetly protective (and a little condescending), and it’s such a perfect embrace of the ways many comic fans feel about their fictional heroes. We accept their inconsistencies, their bad patches, almost by group consensus. We feel protective of them, in part because we know if they looked at their lives stretched out in a line, they’d probably go nuts. And we know them too well to take them seriously, instead blending nostalgia, irritation, optimism, and abiding (sometimes irrational) affection.
And that hero-fan relationship resonates for Nora and Jack. He loves her, though perhaps not wisely. The depth of his feeling probably won’t ever be returned. On Nora’s side, she responds believably, guardedly to Jack’s naked, problematic devotion. It’s nice to be loved, she knows, and she feels something for him, but do those feelings outweigh the buzz of being admired? Or the persistent flaws in his character, particularly since he never seems to fully own up to them? Is it fair to accept love from someone when you don’t know if you reciprocate? These are wonderfully complex questions, really meaty ideas.
Even the mechanics of plot dovetail so nicely with the story’s emotional core. The revelation of the child’s identity creates an emotional paradox. Does Nora cautiously acquiesce to Jack’s advances because she knows she won’t be with him forever? Does Jack really understand what he’s getting into, and would he care if he did? It’s Nora’s pragmatism and Jack’s immaturity in sweet, probably fleeting synch.
The ambivalence I’m left with now is driven by the story itself. Is this a happy ending? Bittersweet? Is it an ending at all, or is it just respite, which would resonate perfectly with the super-hero tropes the book employs. Everything ends eventually, but nothing ends forever.
As much as I ended up liking Love Fights, I wish I’d read it all in one sitting. I can’t imagine it working as well in monthly installments, though that might just be my natural impatience talking. But even in two halves, I still felt strangely robbed of Watson’s slow-burn intertwining of themes. It really seems like a story that should be collected and read all in one chunk. But that’s probably a whole different discussion.