Spirit Chronicles: How to build a world that is alive

 

Isekai has always been a genre that fascinates me. It is just such an egocentric genre; The protagonist is by default the chosen one out of all 7.7 billion human beings on earth, so as to fight the battle in this new world. They will be inherently special as compared to the beings of this new land, often time with exclusive knowledge that will provide revolutionary aid or some gifted specializations that allows them to have no equal. The term "self-insert protagonist" or "power-fantasies" are thus common descriptions we use to classify these isekai titles. In fact, isekai as a whole has gotten quite a bad reputation because of that.

I, for one, love isekai in spite of that. Instead of being distracted by too many different elements, it having an egocentric nature allows for all the attention to be focused on developing one singular character. It is for this reason why one of my favorite isekai of all time is the web novel of Mushoku Tensei which is a biography of its protagonist, Rudeus Greyrat from his birth to his old age. Throughout the entire story we have an unashamed view on every painstaking part of his life, from the most selfish thoughts to his most heroic moments. You see every single aspect of what makes Rudeus, Rudeus and like it or hate it, you can't escape his POV.

With that in mind, I am sure you can already see which aspect of story-telling I love the most -- The development of the protagonist. In fact, this is the exact same reason why my favorite episode of this season thus far is "Remake our Life" which loved their own MC so much that they decided they needed 50 minutes of run-time to introduce us to him.

https://zxcaderu.blogspot.com/2021/07/remake-our-life-we-are-going-back-to.html

However for the show that we will be discussing today, 'Spirit chronicles', I will go as far as to say that the characterization of our MC as of episode 2 is still lacking in having the proper ingredients of a protagonist. But despite that, this show is currently my second favorite show airing this season, despite it failing to appeal a core appeal of mine. Why is that so? Well, that is because this show has managed to achieve what a lot of isekai fails to do -- And that is to make their world feel alive.

A world that is alive

What is a world that is alive? Is it extremely detailed world-building like in Overlord for example? Well, maybe. But for today that isn't what I want to focus on for this show. What I want to focus on instead is 'character agency'.

Agency is defined by social sciences to be the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

Our main character as of now doesn't have much agency. I've touched a little bit on the concept of a reactive and proactive protagonist in my essay on 'Remake our life'; What makes someone proactive is having a goal and a resolve. As for now, Rio can be said to not have that much of a goal. In episode 1, he is introduced as a slave and even when he was gifted plot powers to defeat his foes, he was still somewhat dragged around by the royalty. He is also quite 'reactive', only being able to act after the obstacles were thrown at him. This is even brought onto episode 2. Can anyone, after all, answer why Rio is so steadfast in studying in the royal academy? I mean, I can try and theorize... In the same episode, he mentioned how he doesn't actually want to be a knight but wants to travel to his parents' hometown. Maybe the reason why he is studying so hard, to learn reading and writing, to hone his knowledge and combat skills is because he deems that that is necessary for him in order to successfully make that journey. However, the reason why I said 'maybe' is because we don't actually know. Rio, himself, has not stated that to be his reason and I can only guess at such from my own inference. Thus, that tendency to 'second-guess' at our protagonist's decisions and goals is in of itself already enough to make Rio a much more reactive protagonist than say, Kyouya from 'Remake our life', who states his goals front and center in the first minute of the show and spends the rest of it testing his resolve to accomplish it.

I hope that example thus far, has been enough for you to picture and understand the differences between a reactive and proactive character. Because this is where it starts getting interesting. Our protagonist Rio, didn't have agency but why I like this show so much thus far is because everyone else, has agency. Now this is a concept that will take a while to fully unpack so I hope you are have a nice cup of coffee beside you at this point.

For us to visualize this better, the main comparison I want to make is with 'Realist hero' that is airing alongside this show thus far. The world portrayed in that show is one that is inferior to our protagonist. From the get-go, our MC Souma dropped into a ruling council that is quite ignorant of wider economic concepts and lacked the flexibility or as the show likes to describe, the 'realist mindset' to save their kingdom from a great depression. The show thus summons Souma who possesses the unequivocal wisdom of our 21st century to try to save this kingdom and in the meantime, teach the audience the 101 of how to rule a country correctly. This world thus doesn't have its own agency. Never should we come to question why the monarchial and aristocratic rulers or its citizens would be so willing to accept Souma as their new king; That is the premise, but a mere springboard for us to begin on our 'kingdom simulation' as fast as possible. The world is hence catered specifically for our MC and isn't alive. Take note, that I don't want to come across as too harsh on the show. In fact, episode 2 was a highly enjoyable watch for me and me being ignorant on history, politics and economics, even the most basic 'kingdom simulation' shows will still engage me. What is without a doubt true though is that none of the other characters have agency in that show (At least till the end of episode 2). 

With that in mind, I want us to explore the side characters that we are introduced to in 'Spirit Chronicles'. Our first meeting is when Rio come across our royal party.

From the get-go, our parties' goal is introduced; They approached Rio because they want to inquire about "a girl with light purple hair" -- They are searching for someone. Not only that, they have significant resolve to accomplish said goal; You can tell from the tone of desperation from how rude they were towards Rio who is no more than a stranger. I have to add that while I've stated that Rio lacks agency, he isn't necessarily devoid of it. In fact, in some small moments, he often show his reluctance and even irritation towards the 'pushiness' of others, which is why in this scene he wasn't immediately cooperative for the search of this girl, but instead chose to respond with an equal tinge of derisive indifference: "Don't know", don't care.

An underbelly of tension is formed by this point. The characters aren't necessarily fighting but you can sense that they do not welcome each other's presence. It isn't even because of some conflicting beliefs or goals, in fact, if the ruling party had approached Rio with a little more tact, who is to say Rio wouldn't have just been like: "Oh damn, is she missing? I haven't seen her though, soz my dudes." After all, Rio has zero stakes in anything thus far, he doesn't even have the capability to have some sort of conflict in goals. The tension and the character clash comes from something much simpler and might I add, human; For our ruling party, their agency in this scene is "hurry up and speak, we have little time" and for Rio, his agency in this scene is "why should I speak to someone who is rude and didn't even take the time to introduce themselves?"

We shouldn't even group the ruling party as one entity by itself. After all, characterizing them only by merely by their associations and grouping them together, is an act that may strip away agency from an individualized character. The author seems to know this and thus even in that party itself, he presents a variety of agencies. The first agent would be Lady Christina and her friend who seems to be the most childish of the bunch; They speak ill of a person they needed information from and they seemed fully caught up in their emotions to make rational decisions. The second agent would be their knight Vanessa; Albeit her bluntness and being the one who started the interrogative tone to begin, she herself doesn't seem to harbor any actual ill-will towards Rio. It was more so of "wanting to achieve speedy results" than to "disrespect Rio" like our more childish agents. She is also the main rational planner of our party, being the one who counters the quibbles of our Princess and the one who suggests the next course of action for the entire group. Our last agent would be Celia, the most courteous out of all of them. She discourages the Princess' tactless remarks and Vanessa's callous probing, and instead approaches Rio by first introducing herself and breaking the ice with some off-topic remarks. Notice how much more emotive she was in that scene as well, apologizing, smiling, sighing, being concerned and even allowing herself to be surprised; Her conversational tone in that scene even carries an air of an "older sister speaking to a child". Compared to the stoicism of Vanessa, who is to bet that one would find themselves more willing to open up to Celia on their first meeting?

Can you see what I mean by character agency at this point? This character deep-dive that I just performed stemmed only from a mere 3 minute conversation. But from this 3 minute, we have a scene that started off from a point of tension, but is resolved on a good note with Celia. We also got a rare point of uncooperativeness from Rio to establish himself as having his own agency. And finally and most impressively, we had three opposing characterization of three different types of dispositions and behaviors. This is not even contrasting goals by the way, since they share the same goal (Which is often where most shows stop their characterization). This is solely on how they handle themselves, how they handle other people and how they handle the circumstances and make decisions. Just how dense is the characterization thus far! This isn't a fluke either. Their characterization persists afterwards yet in another scene that is equally well done.

This time, it is a full-on misunderstanding. Lady Christina runs into Rio who just rescued Flora and slaps him, falsely accusing him of kidnapping. Rio tries to explain himself but Christina is far too emotional to listen to reason. This is when Rio himself grew upset about being ignored and he grabbed onto her hand, actively hurting her. The tension escalates; Vanessa being the guard of the princess, draws her blade and demands for Rio to unhand the princess. However, she herself still keeps a rational head and also demands Christina to quell her temper and stop her unnecessary antagonism. She then proceeds to state her own demands onto Rio, ordering him to be interrogated in the castle. Rio, as any reasonable person who has been ignored and imposed on, refuses to cooperate. But as the sharpness of her blade demands, he finally relents when he realizes that he would probably be better off just agreeing. How much character agencies actually clashed in this one scene? Once again, even when they didn't have clashing goals, they still managed to get into a heated argument because of their own dispositions and behaviors. There is, of course, the obvious clash between Rio-Christina and Rio-Vanessa, but what about the clash between Vanessa and Christina?

To me, it takes a competent writer to write conflict between two characters; But it takes a talented writer to write conflict between two characters having the same goals and being from the same faction. The writers didn't need to show us a moment of Vanessa telling Christina off, but the fact of the matter that he did, means that when he was writing out this scene you can tell that he really dived deep into each of the characters and asked himself: "How would this character really act?" How would Rio, for example, really act when he was confronted by people who lacks tact? Obviously, it would be easier to write a scene where he just "follows where the plot beacon is shining", but who the heck would actually follow along with people who accuses him and antagonizes him unjustifiably? How would Vanessa, for example react, when some rando kid hurts her princess? Obvious, the easiest thought would be that she becomes angry at him, but she is an adult with a rational grasp of the entire situation. To her, this is just a scene of two kids squabbling and talking past each other. She thus raises her sword to steer Rio towards her own bidding, but not without telling Lady Christina to "leave matters to the adults". It is also because characters clash that you learn more about them. You learn that Rio is someone who may seem like he goes with the flow, but only so much so as you don't step on his tail. You learn that Vanessa (who mind you is a side-side-character) is someone who is blunt in her ways to achieves her means, so much so that she doesn't mind rebuking her own patron.

I think this aspect is what captured the fans of Re-zero as well; The agencies of all their characters. In every time-line and in every loop, some characters would act wildly different from the previous loop and act differently from Subaru's expectations. It is as if when his actions change, or when the situations change, they themselves make decisions behind the curtains and act in the background. The challenge is thus for Subaru to fully grasp the dispositions of every character and predict how they will act behind that curtain. And while regrettably the show has taken that means into endless character expositions, the fact of the matter is that Teppei-sensei still sat behind his desk at every loop and asked himself: "How would the character really act when X, Y or Z happens?"

This is how you build a world that is alive. Yes, world-building helps. You build different factions of elves, dwarves, humans and demons each with their own clan destinies that clash with one another, but on a more immediate character-to-character basis, there has to be clashing individuals as well, even if that is within the very same faction. That is how human beings work; Heck, reality is where even family and lovers can be at each other's throats. Why shouldn't all shows be the same? As long as a character is well-individualized, he/she should always have their own will and their own independence.

The show doesn't stop here. Take for example the scene in the interrogation chamber.

How would the knights who failed to protect their princess act? They would get desperate and inflict unjustified harm even on an orphan child. Thus even when Celia and Vanessa are the same faction and have the same sentiments as Charles, they would no doubt chastise him as his cruelty clashes with their own conscience. And also how would Rio act to Celia who fought for him to be let down? The immediate thinking would that he would be grateful. But why would he? To him, these are all people who had probably thrown his life into a living hell for the past few hours. He is not at the right mind emotionally to care about any human being; He thus pushes Celia away, telling her to "not touch him" as he wishes with every fiber of his being to be left alone. Once again, this scene is completely unnecessary. If the writer of this show, Kitayama-sensei, had wanted to just progress the plot, the red carpets would already be rolling for Rio the moment Princess Flora acted as his alibi. Instead, Kitayama-sensei asked herself: How would the people in this scenario really act? And in extension, how does this further characterize or humanize them?

Agency is something much simpler than goals and resolve

With the last point I want to make, I want to revisit my statement in the earlier part of this essay, where I said that our main character Rio has little agency. I still remain by my stance, but now I am ready to elaborate and justify myself further; Rio at this point has no goal-orientated agency, but he does have "human" agency.

I have to admit that I do not know of a more professional or linguistic term for this. All I know is that there is a difference in these two concepts. Whether I am diving into some complicated psychology, I am not sure, so as for now I will just coin my own term and explain myself (If anyone has a better term for it, please do educate me). 

"Human" agency is what I will consider the most basic human responses. Take for example, how would a character act when they are hungry. It is simple, right? The character would look for food and eat food. How about from this lens: How would a character react when they are on a deserted island and this last piece of meat has to be shared with a group of other human beings? If a character is written as a "kind" and "generous" archetype, or if the character has a goal "to bring everyone back alive", then the easy answer would be to write his next actions as to share the food. But what if that "human" agency, that need to satiate his bodily instincts, overwhelms even his "goal" or his "personality"?

This is an extreme example, but I hope that this at least draws a clear distinction between character personality/goals from something much more instinctual to us human beings. After all, this example is so similar to how Rio pushed away Celia in that heat of a moment. It is just basic human nature to be annoyed and angry at that moment of time.

In terms of flashing out his actual personality and goals, this same "human touch" has been applied to his characterization in episode 2 as well. One of my favorite lines that I think tells us a lot about the type of person Rio is this:

When advised by Celia that he would possibly be discriminated for his low lineage, his response is simply "I know my place". This is said in tone whereby he has fully accepted the reality of the situation. First off, this response is befitting not only for the self-awareness he probably garnered from his previous college-persona, but it is befitting for his slave-persona who has been beaten up upon so much. He has probably been through much worse after all. Whatever discrimination he should face, how much worse could it actually be? This line tells me his entire mentality towards life as well; While some viewers may call him the usual cookie-cutter stoic MC who is too cool to care about the insults of others, this line tells me that they are instead more so "too troublesome" for him to care. After all, we had this very same mindset inform one of his decisions in episode 1 when Vanessa forces him to come with them, he tells himself: "It seems like trying to protest here would only be a waste of time." 

And it isn't like he is completely unfazed, more so that he just chooses to ignore and suppress it all. There is a brilliant cut in episode 2 that is easily missed; But when asked by Celia whether there was anything bothering him in school, he had the briefest thought of all his peers laughing flashed across his mind. 

Did he choose to share that thought though? He didn't. Presumably because worrying about something like this too much would probably be more troublesome than it is worth.

In this aspect, he is even somewhat similar to one of my favorite protagonists, Ikki from 'Chivalry of a failed knight'. Ikki is also someone who is seemingly a typical hero that has risen above every system and person who has chained him down; Till of cause, the epic "worst one" scene in episode 4 which forces us to reframe his entire mentality (I won't go into detail cause I'm gonna ask everyone to go watch that show y'all. It's some good shit). The similarity then, is in that he isn't just a cookie-cutter "too cool for school" MC, he actively chooses to act as such; He ignores all the haters around him because it's too much of a pain in the ass.

This doesn't mean he doesn't have his own pride though. In fact, in episode 2 he is characterize with some sass in him. When he was confronted and falsely accused by Alphonse to have cheated in the test, he actually stands up for himself by saying: "I simply took the exam, that's it." And similarly when he faced Charles his torturer five years later, he dead-ass dropped some grade-A paggro on him.

Like I said thus far, he may seem like he follows the flow, but that is less because he is a reactive protagonist by nature but more so he chooses to present himself as such. He has backbone and he does have a limit when people overstep their boundaries. In this vein of thinking, he can even be quite similar to Killua from 'Hunter X Hunter'. Killua didn't have a goal until much much later in the series. In fact, his goal is quite simply to find one as he travels and have fun with Gon. This is very similar to Rio who seems less to be travelling to his parents' hometown for some grand quest but more so as to cling onto the only memory of happiness he once left there; He is travelling not to accomplish a goal but to search for his "starting point", or at least that is what I felt from him thus far.

As much as I always talk about reactive and active protagonists, this show has once again reminded me that that is but a small part of what can make a character good; What makes Killua good is that despite being reactive with his goals, he just has so much bad-ass qualities and such a wholesome synergy with Gon that honestly, who gives a shit whether he has a goal or not, I can just watch an episode of him fooling around town; What makes Rio good is that despite being reactive with his goals, that in itself is the premise of his character. He is loss and is searching, but despite all that he doesn't easily let others influence him, whether that is to become a knight or what not, because he has had enough of being pushed around.

Agency is something much simpler than goals or resolve -- It is simply self-respect.

Conclusion

Honestly, I feel pretty bummed that this show doesn't seem to be getting this much love this season. It legitimately has some solid characterization and it doesn't even need half an hour of monologuing for us to understand the intricacies of their personalities. All it needs from us is to have a little faith in the show and to pay attention to what the characters say and "listen" to the hidden words between their lines.

I am super excited for the upcoming episodes of this show. And if this is how great the characters start off with, I can't wait to see them when they fully mature.