rpanons | Too slow

Too slow

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yona's okay i guess but this series needs better female characters overall too

ao is the only female character we need

(no but yona is great! what's this "i guess", tsk tsk anon. there's also gi-gan and lili! but yeah, it would be nice to have more recurring female characters)

I have to suspend my disbelief that all those guys have feelings for her because they truly feel that way and not some sort of imposed reincarnation related reason. It comes off as if their feelings are forced. She's not interesting enough for so many to fall in love with her instantaneously, because the reasons they cite for them falling in love, e.g. personality traits like "determination" and "kindness" (and "leadership", apparently??) are so very standard. The guys (including Hak) do not come off as self aware. It's as if they've never been exposed to these qualities in a woman before meeting Yona... Which in some cases is true, but for the same reason I'm expecting them to fall in love with any other character or fem-mc in a game because Yona is another one of them. I'm talking shoujo bubbles, sparkles, the works when they happen to come across a kind, determined, and brave female character if it's so damn novel to them. Aside from Jae-ha, there is no big question for conflict between their supposed adopted feelings from a past life to her blending with what they truly feel. Even then Jae-ha falls for her so quickly anyway with no further questioning of how they truly feel.

The boys fall for her for really generic reasons and they're not really given a choice to feel any other way. Any internal conflict regarding that is rushed and discarded so that the author can complete Yona's harem. The characters do not have much in terms of fatal flaws. None of the other boys are developed like Hak is. Hak has little competition that the story isn't exciting as a harem genre for "who will MC end up with??" The dragon's introductions and development arcs are shallow. As a result Yona becomes a generic fem-mc for typical heroine qualities, and the audience is supposed to accept that all the men fall in unquestioningly fall in love with her. In short, this series suffers from generic harem manga syndrome.

I'm mad because this series could have been so much better. Give me more development with those dragons, or get them all other girlfriends or boyfriends that are more interesting than Yona. >:(

da

so basically it's just like fushigi yuugi in that regard. glad i never picked this up then.

is yona herself even useful or capable in any way?

lol nope. my friends and i jokingly agree that the guy who killed her dad and took the crown is a thousand times more useful than yona ever was.

...to be fair i personally believe that none of those dragons are useful at all because the author and almost every fan i've met continues to have a boner for hak. she makes him overly competent that the rest are useless.

ayrt

i've never or watched the series, but i've heard things about it. i can totally understand that she won't be a badass or immediately, since it is about her journey to reclaim the throne, growing up along the way. does she ever become capable in any capcity? as a leader, as a healer or whatever?

because if not, that's disappointing. the premise has so much potential and i could really go for a series where a spoiled princess is thrown into political chaos through coup d'etat, and struggles to regain her kingdom while growing as character. that shit is my jam and i was hoping akatsuki no yona would fill that void. instead, it just seems like another generic fantasy shoujo with reverse harem.

the series isn't actually about her reclaiming the throne, but more her struggle to survive, which then becomes a journey to help her kingdom. and she does grow a lot! not only does she become more mature and a better leader, she starts learning archery and later swordsmanship. whether it still falls into 'generic fantasy shoujo' depends on the person, but i think you should give it a try, anon.

"the series isn't actually about her reclaiming the throne"

okay this is how i know you're trolling.

i'm not up to date with the manga so maybe i've missed something in the more recent chapters, but from what i've read so far yona hasn't expressed any desire to take back the crown from soo-won

this. she isn't interested in taking the throne. she wants to fix all the wrongs that happened thanks to her father not doing anything when he was alive.

ayrt

haha, my bad. i guess i could have worded that a bit better. i thought that she did want to reclaim the throne. anyway, i guess i will give it a try and see if it's for me. thanks.

she gets a bow and tries to learn it but it seems like a shoed in training aspect to me, like the author only wants her to have some extra talent to show the readers look! she's learning something!! it comes off as mary sue to me. i hardly believe anyone would follow her if a) she wasn't the main character or b) she didn't have some innate red god dragon soul. if the story wants to play up the "divine right to rule", whatever, but it's not my cup of tea to like literal deux ex characteristics. the points where she's trying to be a leader are sloppy. it's like trying to get the audience believe that a sexist ancient society would follow her empathetic speeches.

there's another problem with the story. no male character can be better than hak and no female character can be better than yona. hak outperforms everyone in strength, snark, and cunning, and yona outpreforms everyone in kindness and resolve. her move from princess to fugitive is rushed. she cannot negatively be portrayed a brat, ever, because the narrative says that whining trait must be shown as endearing and innocent. besides some added angst, she seems exactly the same as she was as a princess.

if you want a much better story in which a royal person learns to cope with the new peasant life in a much more well-told story, watch Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. downside is that it's not shoujo, but they play out the action, political intrigue, and character development and training so much better.

Flatviewer here going to preface by saying I do enjoy AnY as a self indulgent series. It's a fun show that you don't have to think about, although I like the villain's team more than our heroine's. But if you're comparing it to Moribito it's going to fall short in almost all categories. Save for romance. Moribito doesn't have a romance, just a hint of unrequited love from a side character. :/ Moribito does everything else beautifully. I've watched it four times!! Definitely a favorite. The characters all get development, there is soooo much worldbuilding, nuances to the plot, deep themes, and the acting is phenomenal. Even the dub! Highly recommend it.

ayrt

thank you for giving me your opinion on the series, anon. i'm going to give it a shot anyway, but i will keep all of this in mind and keep my expectations low.

and thanks for the rec, moribito has now moved up on my backlog of series to watch.

mary sue

get out

but anon

she is one

TBF Yona is a generic character enough so that girls can self insert themselves into her, like how boys can self insert themselves into a male protagonist in their harem genre. I don't know if this is the author's intention of if it's part of the ploy of writing a harem, but it works.

I play one of the dragons for a yaoi ship because Yona is too dull to ship with, similar to how some people will play a yuri ship because the male protagonist is boring too.

I have an excuse though to play yaoi in game, though. The original red dragon in human form was male (to my knowledge) and the original dragons were in love with him. OOCly, I don't want to ship with any Yonas because she is Princess Kagome with Tragic Backstory. She's boring. ICly, I intend to explore my muse's conflict with his affection for Yona in game enough to realize it's only part of him being reincarnated, and it's a platonic sort of affection that was developed because he didn't have a choice in the matter. He'll still be loyal to Yona, but he won't be in love. From there I can ship him with someone else, maybe with another dragon. Maybe with another female character if she's interesting enough.

gonna start this off by saying that i don't think they are all in love with her. shin-ah and zeno have never displayed any romantic attraction to her, at least as far as i remember, and ki-ja has a crush on her but it isn't treated seriously enough by the narrative to be called love imo. and then there's jae-ha, who is definitely attracted to yona and makes joking comments about stealing her away, but honestly, i can't see him seriously pursuing her, even if hak wasn't in the picture. they're drawn to her, yes, and she means a lot to them, but it's not like they all want to bang her. and the dragon's blood does have a lot to do with it, it's true! not just their individual dragons but yona's red dragon blood as well. the question of whether it's imposed upon them or if it's just a part of who they are is an interesting one and something that i also would like to see the series explore more (though i do want to point out that with ki-ja and shin-ah, it makes sense that there wouldn't be conflict about that, since ki-ja completely accepts his identity as the white dragon and shin-ah doesn't seem to care that much/put much thought into it. i'm not completely caught up with the manga, but from the spoilers i've seen i think zeno might deal with it more. we'll see!)

anyway! the only ones i'd say that are truly in love with yona are hak and soo-won. tae-jun has romantic feelings for her, but while they're not ki-ja level, they're not hak and soo-won level either. hak is pretty obviously the main love interest, and that's why his feelings for yona are the most developed, and while it's not guaranteed they'll end up together (he might die, yona might die, something else might happen), it is a certainty that they'll be in mutual love by the end. there isn't a "who will yona end up with?" feeling to the story because it isn't aiming for that! while the series does like to shiptease, the only real romantic developments have been between hak and yona and i don't believe that will change.

as for yona herself, personally i'm pretty fond of her! i love how her journey from sheltered, spoiled princess to leader capable of defending both herself and the helpless hasn't been an overnight thing. even after deciding to stop being helpless and ignorant, even after learning how to fight and defend herself, she still struggles with fear and inexperience, and every victory she's won and every bit of progress she's made has truly been earned, or at least i feel that way. i don't find her boring or generic at all; her story arc isn't the most unique thing, sure, but i find it to be better written than almost all others i've seen, and the dragon thing gives it a special twist.

i think we'll probably have to agree to disagree on this, but i felt it was worth sharing my viewpoint since it's so different from yours. i do think you're misunderstanding the series a bit and getting hung up on the harem part, because while akatsuki no yona is a reverse harem, it's first and foremost a story about yona herself and her emotional journey as a person, as well as her actual journey throughout kouka. even her romance with hak takes a backseat to her own character development, which is actually pretty rare in my experience, even for stories like this that are supposed to be all about a female character (since another anon brought it up, take fushigi yuugi as an example; i see a clear difference in how yona and miaka are handled by their respective narratives). so i don't think it should be written off as just another harem or judged primarily as a harem, since the series itself is not primarily a harem!

(sorry for the wall of text, i'm a natural tl;drer plus i've never gotten to talk about this series before so it just kind of happened...)

agreeing with pretty much all of this. i do think that it is one of the better series out there (better than fushigi yuugi at least imo) but it doesn't nearly deserve all the praise that it's been getting lately. i do think that the dragons are starting to get more development. the series hasn't ended yet so I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that it'll get better and more interesting.

I just want to see Yona struggle with issues that aren't ??? confusion about hak's weird physical intimacy and her father's view on weapons. I want to see her struggle with taking the life of someone who's not Obviously Evil or at least be thrown into a situation where she questions her own values more thoroughly. sure she's been doing that ever since the beginning, but i want to see more from her than 'i picked up weapons to protect the people around me'. it'd be more interesting if she decided to be queen and fought against soo-won imo because then political intrigue and power play and learning how to be smarter would actually come into play here, since none of the dragons or hak could swoop in and save the day. (i'm already tired of the mystical dragon powers swooping in to save the day angle that's been coming up in the fire tribe arc)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Too slow

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dda

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nayrt

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no subject

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DA

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