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Still, claiming someone is a Childhood Friend when you met them in High School stretches the bonds of credibility. (Unless your name is Dr. Douglas Howser.)
On the other hand, Doug and Patti really can't be considered Childhood Friends In Love in-series. If there was a third series with a Time Skip of about a year or two, then they can claim eligibility *.
Yeah, absolute or relative age really shouldn't determine eligibility, except insofar as whether the characters were still considered children when they first met. It should be more about Backstory, i.e. was the Childhood Friend Love Interest a friend of the character's (at any time) before the story begins? (And while they both were considered kids?)
I guess, in that case, Ron & Hermione could count for each other (and for Harry as well), though Ginny would still be a stretch for Harry * Misty would also be a stretch due to the larger responsibilities of a Pokemon Trainer. (And even then, Not Allowed to Grow Up disqualifies her right there, at least until Ash gets a Time Skip.) *
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That's definitely true, though. The truest examples of Victorious would completely avert Westermarck. *
Yeah, unless the character is delusional, invocation of the Trope would likely indicate eligibility. And, again, Backstory, or even personality, would help with determining sanity.
edited 7th Mar '11 5:56:57 PM by DonaldthePotholer
I don't think it's an "age" thing. I think it's a "plot" thing. They should have been friends in childhood and before the work started. The point of the trope is that they have some previous relationship with each other; if the work shows that relationship developing (outside of flashbacks), it shouldn't count.
This.
That is the fundamental distinction. If the main character meets the other person for the first time in the course of the story being told, then by definition they cannot be a Childhood Friend. A Childhood Friend is always a pre-existing relationship, though one or both parties may have memory issues about it (if so, this will be a major plotpoint), but the only way we can see the first meeting of the Protagonist and his Childhood Friend is via a flashback.
The trope Just Friends exists, you know. It's what keeps Kyou in Clannad from fitting this trope.
? Yes, of course. No one suggested Kyou for this trope. Or at least if they did, its obviously wrong.
Obviously not every character that meets the description I just put out is a Childhood Friend, but its one of the major elements. And especially in harem series, the Osananajimi will be the only romantic interest the Protagonist knew before the series started.
No, the point is that the definition as has been suggested didn't exclude her. After all, they had a relationship as friends before the story started. And no, it's not that nobody has suggested it. I've seen Ryou proposed to be an UCF and she has even less right to it than Kyou.
To keep examples like that from getting on the page we need to make it clear that they're supposed to have known each other for quite a long time, generally since childhood.
Memory issues go under Forgotten Childhood Friend, or will when that page actually gets split.
Right, there's also a time issue involved, but its generally clear. At least in anime/manga/VN, which is what I'm primarily basing it on.
This was mostly due to the weird side-track we were getting on involving the Westermark effect (which is a sorta valid consideration) and various Harry Potter characters. Which was odd.
edited 7th Mar '11 6:36:49 PM by SakurazakiSetsuna
I do think it's clear and that everyone here basically knows what the trope in question is. Just that the definition needs to be pretty clear about the qualifications or the page will just start growing examples like Kyou, Ryou, Satsuki etc.
We don't have to explicitly mention the Westermarck effect, just have something at the bottom possibly in bold that says the two need to have known each other for quite some time. Though I would put it at least in a hottip.
I don't know how much this will apply to Western works (I read/watch very few western media where this trope would be in play), but in anime, it will always be mentioned. If they aren't called "Osananajimi" at some point, then they aren't one. Period. I can't think of a single exception. Its virtually a requirement of the trope, for the Protagonist and his Osananajimi to run into someone new (like a new Haremette), and she'll be referred to as "Oh, she's just my Childhood Friend", queueing much angst and smothered rage by the Osananajimi in question.
Going and assigning this classification to characters who aren't indicated as such in the story is asking for trope decay.
While I agree on the basic principle that it's a plot thing not an age thing (although the age factor does enter into it, otherwise it would be straight New Old Flame), how does this work out when you have a work with a timeskip?
For example, in Little Men, you have various Toy Ships being set up (Tommy and Nan, Nat and Daisy, etc.). Then, in the sequel, Jo's Boys, most of the main characters are shown to fall in love and marry. Some of them (like Tommy) have romances with entirely new characters. Some, (like Nat), have romances with their Toy Shipmate. So, would Daisy be considered Nat's Childhood Friend or not? If the reader had started with Jo's Boys, she would be perceieved as one, but they actually did meet in earlier canon.
edited 7th Mar '11 7:00:45 PM by StarryEyed
I don't think the trope applies. At least, not the same trope, but I haven't read those books.
This goes back to what I said earlier (in this thread? Maybe it was the YKTTW...whatever), this is a very specific trope/character type in anime. It does exist in other media, but I have no idea if you can apply the same trope to a book written in 19th century America. There's a HUGE cultural gap there.
The Unlucky Childhood Friend and Victorious Childhood Friend pages currently have a lot of examples - including anime examples - who'd qualify as childhood friends in the more general sense but don't fit the narrower definition of Osananajimi.
It also has some examples that just plain don't fit, like Shirley from Code Geass. I suspect Arha's thinking is that he/she wants someone to point to when deleting those as not being examples.
Osanananananafofanawhatcha is something that is, I believe, currently in YKTTW ready to be split off.
I don't know if there's any really perfect example, other than if you just grab a random Harem anime, you'll probably find one.
Hell, Infinite Stratos manages to have two. Which is strange. But whatever.
Personally, I don't think that "Childhood Friend", by itself, is particularly noteworthy as a trope, but the more specific versions of it (Osananajimi, Childhood Friend returned as Enemy, etc) are.
Something to point to, not someone. But yeah, that's what I was going for. There needs to be something concrete in the trope description to say that this person counts, and this one does not. It'll slow trope decay at least a little and make cleanup easier for when it does happen.
Childhood friends would be a supertrope. Any of the subtropes about romance or being forgotten or being an enemy would go onto those pages instead.
edited 7th Mar '11 7:34:35 PM by Arha
Not really. It may not be pointed out explicitly, but they obviously have the relationship. And on the other side of things the word osananajami could easily be used to refer to different relationships than the trope. Arihiko and Shiki in Tsukihime are childhood friends, but they're both guys. And Shiki is a memetic sex god, so they're not gay either. Or what about Kotomi and Tomoya in Clannad? They're Forgotten Childhood Friends, not this. That's why you can't just say 'they have to be called that' and say that's good enough.
edited 7th Mar '11 7:41:23 PM by Arha
I'm opposed to combining the Unlucky Childhood Friend and Victorious Childhood Friend.
The characters are played differently depending on the planned outcome, to the point that people can usually pick out which is going to be unlucky before that part of the plot is actually resolved.
To me that makes them different tropes.
Also, lets not go down the "Nakama" road with "Osananajimi".
It means childhood friend. No more, no less. Just as what western people might call a childhood friend varies from person to person, so does what a Japanese person might call an Osananajimi.
edited 7th Mar '11 8:01:14 PM by Sackett
I'll agree that the ykttw trope shouldn't be called osananajami since it will just end up getting renamed anyway. Plus, as the thread shows, it's a pain to spell.
However, variations between whether the childhood friend is unlucky or victorious is merely a slight variation in how subtle the writer wants to be. I've definitely read VNs that were about as subtle as a brick to the face as to who the real heroine was, either the childhood friend or not. However, I don't think that's really a trope in itself. Or if it is, it's not this trope and is instead more like Official Couple.
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Subtle or not they do tend to play out differently, mainly because a story with a childhood friend as a romantic interest tends to delve into what the author thinks love is really about, what makes a good romance, and by extension what the good life is about.
When writing a victorious childhood friend the story naturally tends to favor stability, comfort, and continuity. When the childhood friend is unlucky the story tends to support excitement, adventure, and discovering new horizons. Compare H2 with Cross Game. They are by the same author. Both have childhood friends as a prominent love interest, but have different outcomes. The outcomes were no surprise to me, because the outcomes fit with the themes as listed above. It's almost similar to the Betty and Veronica dynamic, except that you only need one character, (the Betty), to demonstrate it.
Occasionally I've seen a few that mix the two with the childhood friend being the stability that the protagonist want to take with him on the new adventure- but in those cases the tension is almost never about who the protagonist chooses (ie victorious or unlucky), in those stories it's usually about whether the protagonist can convince his childhood friend to choose him and adventure over their childhood home and safe stable world.
Crown Description:
Should we have this Childhood Friend Romance Subtrope? Vote UP if YES. Vote DOWN if NO.

I think the only qualification for being a "Childhood Friend" is if the characters use the term. Especially for anime, if a character is going to be in the "Osananajimi" slot, they will be referred to as such at least once.