Fanfic No Need for Heero
I've never been a *huge* fan of Gundam Wing, but I was a big Tenchi-Head back in the day. And this fic was well structured and paragraphed, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, I gradually realized that the early parts of the story were just lifting plot points from Tenchi Universe episodes. It wasn't as bad as most other fics, but it was still noticeable. A copy-and-paste Time and Space Adventures redux from the series wasn't really necessary for this fic, to be honest.
Things thankfully started moving away from that, with the introduction of the Judgement Array. But the fic still had problems, namely the main character Heero Yui himself. It's clear Heero is being used as some kind of self-insert. Or at least a reflection of the author's power fantasies. Things just move far too smoothly for Heero, and his attitude rubs me the wrong way in many cases. And when it seems like their might finally be some interesting bumps in the road for him, either getting humbled by Nagi or having to deal with the fallout from Washu helping Sasami sneak on board for a dangerous mission, it's all smoothed over rather quickly.
Couple all this with the revelation that Heero -along with the villain Kagato- is supposedly the Tenchi Muyo equivalent of the 'Chosen One' and it's increasingly obvious the story is being smothered by the sheer weight of Heero's sue-ness. I didn't like the whole, 'One Above All' schtick in the actual Tenchi Muyo when Kajishima did it in canon, and I wasn't happy to see it here…especially since the appeal of a Tenchi Universe 'verse is that it eschewed that type of storytelling nonsense. And the recent chapters chronicling the back-and-forth of Jurai politics could be comfortably cut down in length, I feel, without losing substance.
And Ryoko….back in the day, old timers like us coined something called 'Tenchi Syndrome'. It's when a girl gives it all up, her power and independence everything….just to be a hanger on to a milquetoast protagonist with no personality. I see traits of that in this fic, and it made me realize that replacing Tenchi with Heero Yui doesn't make Tenchi Syndrome better, just more blatant. And the recent engagement with Mihoshi to Heero doesn't help matters. It takes work to make a Protagonist/Mihoshi paring plausible (see, DB Sommer's excellent fic 'Vacation Days') and from a Doylist perspective, politically paring off Mihoshi with Heero seemed too abrupt for me as a reader, despite the in-story reasons for it.
Fanfic No Need for Heero
I've never been a *huge* fan of Gundam Wing, but I was a big Tenchi-Head back in the day. And this fic was well structured and paragraphed, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, I gradually realized that the early parts of the story were just lifting plot points from Tenchi Universe episodes. It wasn't as bad as most other fics, but it was still noticeable. A copy-and-paste Time and Space Adventures redux from the series wasn't really necessary for this fic, to be honest.
Things thankfully started moving away from that, with the introduction of the Judgement Array. But the fic still had problems, namely the main character Heero Yui himself. It's clear Heero is being used as some kind of self-insert. Or at least a reflection of the author's power fantasies. Things just move far too smoothly for Heero, and his attitude rubs me the wrong way in many cases. And when it seems like their might finally be some interesting bumps in the road for him, either getting humbled by Nagi or having to deal with the fallout from Washu helping Sasami sneak on board for a dangerous mission, it's all smoothed over rather quickly.
Couple all this with the revelation that Heero -along with the villain Kagato- is supposedly the Tenchi Muyo equivalent of the 'Chosen One' and it's increasingly obvious the story is being smothered by the sheer weight of Heero's sue-ness. I didn't like the whole, 'One Above All' schtick in the actual Tenchi Muyo when Kajishima did it in canon, and I wasn't happy to see it here…especially since the appeal of a Tenchi Universe 'verse is that it eschewed that type of storytelling nonsense. And the recent chapters chronicling the back-and-forth of Jurai politics could be comfortably cut down in length, I feel, without losing substance.
And Ryoko….back in the day, old timers like us coined something called 'Tenchi Syndrome'. It's when a girl gives it all up, her power and independence everything….just to be a hanger on to a milquetoast protagonist with no personality. I see traits of that in this fic, and it made me realize that replacing Tenchi with Heero Yui doesn't make Tenchi Syndrome better, just more blatant. And the recent engagement with Mihoshi to Heero doesn't help matters. It takes work to make a Protagonist/Mihoshi paring plausible (see, DB Sommer's excellent fic 'Vacation Days') and from a Doylist perspective, politically paring off Mihoshi with Heero seemed too abrupt for me as a reader, despite the in-story reasons for it.