The story I wrote about was going towards the Japanese anime style. I have a feeling that majority of the class will be tackling deep visually oriented short stories like dark thriller, mystery and comedy. Hence, I tried something different.
Notice that majority of the anime stories revolve around high school life, especially for Slice of Life genres. The Japanese spins lots of stories through high school or middle school students, the protagonists, who either have traumas, crisis or any incident that cause them to act weak in the beginning. Just like McKee’s readings had mentioned that protagonists usually are the heroes that the audience aspire to be and it has to be relatable. What’s interesting about the anime protagonists is that people can relate to due to their weak status at the beginning of the story.
In all honesty, I almost regretted challenging myself writing this style of short story because I felt that the story was very… childish. Well, it is a set in a high school after all. I had no other idea how to change the setting of the story to gain the same effect for the ending so I just pressed on with this plot. This was inspired by the thriller movie that came out not long ago in the cinemas called, The Boy (2016), directed by William Brent Bell, where a hired nanny was to take care of a porcelain doll. The porcelain doll was a replacement for their son who was killed in a fire about 20 years ago. The conversations and instructions the parents gave to the nanny were all connected to the ending and I was absolutely mind-blown. I wanted to give the same effect as what the ending of that movie did to me. For example:
(SPOILER ALERT – highlight over to see)
When the mother said that waking up Brahms in a soft tone would not be able to wake him up. This is because Brahms needs to hear it loud enough through the walls where he resided for the past 20 years due to his face burnt by the fire. At the beginning, no one knew that Brahms was still alive and they thought that the parents were crazy to have porcelain doll as a replacement for their late son.
(SPOILER ENDS)
Just to touch on the film, The Boy, majority hated the ending because they felt cheated. Just thinking about what was mentioned in class about the database logic I realized that the structure of the narrative was definitely out of the usual structure and that I commend for their originality but majority doesn’t see it that way because of the expectations (algorithms) of a plot. This is my reason of writing this short story – to realize the plot twists that audience may or may not accept as well as the subtle hints that could mean different ways till the ending.
Hey Wei Yun!
First of all, really enjoyed the story. The sense of style ingrained within the narrative was terrific! The ending I particularly enjoyed – it wrapped the narrative as a holistic piece, offering a great ‘unity of impression’. I also found myself keen to ponder what could have happened immediately after the conclusion. The only criticism I would have was that some of the sentences were a little clumsy, which occasionally affected the flow of the narrative.
All in all a great job however, and I believe their are some really strong ideas here to develop into a great trans-media project.