Yui's Backstory versus The Oni's Backstory
I am pretty disappointed with Yui's story and I am pretty impressed with Oni's backstory. Here's why:
Yui as a character has no development or personality beyond the "strong independent woman" archetype and the idea of women's empowerment. Neither of these things are a bad thing to have as aspects of a character, but that is all she is. There's nothing more to her. She has no flaws, she has nothing about her personality that makes her human, and she seems to exist only as an idealized icon character. She goes through no internal hardships. The only things that ever prove to be negatives in her life seem to be external, and all various male stereotypes. Now before someone jumps down my throat calling me sexist, I will repeat myself. There is nothing wrong with women's empowerment or the "strong independent woman" archetype being a part of a protagonist. The issue is that Yui is a very shallow character. This is what's called a mary-sue in film making. A character who has no flaws and no development, and always comes out on top just because they are awesome.
Now on the opposite end of the spectrum is The Oni.
Kazan was raised in a veteran family who had served as samurai, who Kazan had grown to idolize while growing up. Kazan wanted more than anything to be one of those noble samurai like his father. As he grew up, he began to despise the changing times and the people who were now being accepted as samurai. He saw their flaws and less than perfect ways and set out on a morbid journey to cleanse the honor of the samurai by removing these people. He went on a long bloody path of murder. Eventually he earned a name for himself and was feared as an Oni (which is a Japanese demon that is similar to the Western ogre, but is smaller, much more intelligent, and evil.) Kazan eventually cut down anyone who stood in his away, along with his appointed victims. One day a samurai blocked Kazan's path and he killed him. This turned out to be his father. This was a tragic part of The Oni's story and displays just how far he had fallen from grace. Instead of blaming himself for this, Kazan blamed the feudal lord, and set out to kill him. He succeeded and was then killed by the farmers of the village who had loved their lord.
In this story, Kazan is depicted as a person who wants what is good, but has a deeply flawed personality due to his ever increasing standards for honor. At some points in the story, Kazan questions his actions, knowing somewhere inside of himself that what he's doing is wrong, but he is honor bound to complete his goal. He becomes more and more resentful of the people, as they grew more and more fearful of him. He has actual character development. He is a very different Kazan at the end of the story than he was at the beginning, but still has enough in common to draw a logical path to how he became that way.
This is good writing. Among the best writing in Dbd. Yui's story pales in comparison, since Yui lacks any of the qualities that make a compelling character. It sort of reminds me of Game of Thrones season 8. The plot points themselves could have been good, but the way we arrived at them are so contrived that we are left unable to really appreciate them. Her story had no development to speak of. Just bullet points on how she got from place to place, things happen, then she comes out on top because she's awesome, then things happen, then she comes out on top because she's awesome, eventually ending up in this race that was never mentioned before and getting pulled into the realm of the entity.
Now granted, she does have the best visual design out of any dlc characters in my opinion. Her pink ribbon is a good part of her model. It's just disappointing that she doesn't really have a personality.
Comments
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In their defense, most of the Survivors are intentionally one-dimensional, in line with the various Final Girls they're all (and yes, I mean the men too) based on.
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This is true, most survivors aren't legendary examples of writing, but at least they had some kind of internal conflict. Feng had self esteem issues and a drinking problem, David was a violent jackass, Claudette has social anxiety disorder, dwight is a wimp, etc. These characters all without exception have extraordinary traits that counterbalance these flaws though, and that is what makes them human.
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Eh, I think that the lorw of Yui is alright. She is basically the same type of survivor as someone like Kate was: Someone with a great potential in life that was also loved, inspiring and t gave hope to everyone around them. The thing with them is that all of their success and potential doesn’t matter when in the end they get snatched by the Entity to suffer forever in its realm, no one will ever know that they were there, so the story is more tragic for that. Also, the Entity gains a nice bonus, as those kind of survivor will maintain hope longer (and give others hope too) so those kind of people will be a good target for the Entity.
And Yui being a Mary Sue...eh, sorry, but I find that ludicrous. Yui barely has any character at all, her story is very short to give that kind of titlle and of course is not that well developed compared to the killer: Killers tend to have a lot of more personality and backstory put into them, while survivors get just a very general picture, Yui is not different in that regard.
And I wouldn’t even call her a Mary Sue from what little we know: She had obstacles in her life, with his father disowned for his hobbies, having a stalker that the policy ignored, having to compete in illegal races, going to rehab, her deal seems to be turning those problems into strength, but they were still things that she had to overcome and did mostly with help of others, yes, we didn’t see her do it step by step, but little can you do to show that in a couple of paragraphs. Kate had less problems going on for her, as no one in her family objected to her goals.
Although I agree on the Oni backstory being one of the best, I love how, thanks to the add-ons, we can find more about his family, how his son got hurt in an accident, Kazan went to a temple multiples times to pray for him, but the boy remained crippled for the rest of his life, which probably fuel his obsession or even started it: His own flesh and blood could never become a samurai, while people from lower classes were becoming samurais, which would probably feel like an insult to someone so obsessed with honoring family.
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A mary-sue isn't someone who has no conflict, it's someone who has no flaws (or internal conflict.) Everything they do is perfect. That fits Yui pretty well. Everything she does is perfect. She never makes mistakes. She never does anything morally wrong. Etc.
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Every survivor in the game has some kind of personality flaw except Yui.
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But she has flaws, more than someone like Kate, that is described in a much better light than Yui, that you could get a few flaws from her actions in her story: Like, she literally refused to go to college to focus on her races, which is not exactly wise:
When it came time to apply for school, Yui gathered her courage and confessed her ambition to race motorcycles to her father. An altercation ensued and when Yui refused to apply for a proper education, her father felt a great shame and told her she was no longer welcome in their home.
Or her confronting the stalker because she couldn’t bear watching go through her stuff, which proved dangerous and severely hurt her:
One evening Yui returned home to find the stalker in her apartment going through her things. He hadn’t seen her, and she wasn’t sure what she should do. But the sight of him going through her clothes was too much to bear. She yelled for him to leave.
Which makes sense, because she has a quote that clearly shows her overconfidence:
“That is not enough to beat me. Not even close.”
And anyway, I don’t think that a Mary Sue is merely someone without internal conflicts, that is a negative aspect of a character, but you can have characters that are just content with who they are, and not have any big flaw and still be good characters. Really, for me, mary sue is such an overused term whose definition changes so much that I really don’t care about it anymore. Characters, specially female, aren’t really bad characters anymore, but Mary Sue, which somehow, is worse.
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There is only one definition of the term. It may be misused by people who don't understand it, but that doesn't change uts meaning. The term refers to any character who has no flaws.
And again, those examples you listed (except *maybe* the overconfidence if you choose to interpret that quote that way) aren't flaws. Choosing to pursue her passions rather than go to college is something that is depicted as a positive thing, and her father is depicted as being unreasonable. This is not a flaw in Yui.
Does Yui have a drinking problem? Angry outbursts that make it hard for her to make friends? Is she greedy? Is she a comlulsive spender? Does she have a problem with running her mouth? We don't know. Because the story doesn't tell us anything about her personality other than "women's empowerment" and "racing." There's literally nothing else to her. Then she manages to overpower an armed assailant even though she has never had any experience fighting in her life. And then she manages to become the leader of a badass biker gang because reasons. The story never once depicts Yui in a negative way.
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"The story never once depicts Yui in a negative way."
Seriously? SHE LITERALLY BREAKS THE LAW DURING THOSE RACES!!!
Not going to college makes her unable to find an actual job. Quote from her backstory that says this: "She could only find low grade clerical work or minor jobs as a hostess." Of course she went to racing, it's the ONE thing she's good at.
"Manages to overpower an armed an armed assailant even though she has never had any experience fighting in her life." Did you skip over the surge of adrenaline she had? Have you HEARD what adrenaline and the desire to survive does to people? Did you read the amount of damage she took? Another quote: "X-rays revealed she had broken her arm and foot in several places."
Look, I will agree that her backstory is a bit on the feminist side, and I tend to dislike these stories myself. But she still has flaws. She is only good at one thing, so of course she's going to use that to help others. Yeah, she fought off her stalker... with pretty severe injuries. Oh, and that one thing she is good at. She still had to read her grandfather's manual to help herself get better. She was passionate about racing, of course she would learn fast. And she's technically a criminal.
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None of the college/job stuff is depicted in a negative way in the story. It isn't shown as it being a mistake, or the wrong thing to do.
Yes she breaks the law, but the story just glances over that in passing. It never says she had any run-ins with police or did anything she regretted.
Yeah and the attacker wouldn't have an adreneline rush? I'm not saying it would be impossible for her to survive the attack or even to kill him, I'm saying it's very contrived the way it happens. Yui never fails at anything. She is always victorious in everything she does. Choosing to race instead of going to college is not a failure because that was her goal, and she succeeded at it.
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Adding on to Kazan's story: Akito was his son who fell from a tree and injured his leg beyond repair. It's never mentioned in the lore but is mentioned HEAVILY in the addons. Drawing a line between Akito losing his ability to be a true samurai warrior and Kazan killing impostors and losing his mind is a pretty obvious conclusion. Looking forward to the Archives on Kazan greatly.
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yeah looking at her crap fanfic backstory compared to onis amazing backstory is gonna make me enjoy ripping her tongue out and making ogre noises as oni
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Lore wise
Min, Jane and Meg are the only ones who really go through hardships that affect their personality
Nea is just your rebellious bad girl
Kate is the good wholesome girl
Claudette is the shy one
Outside of these they don't really change in their original backstories hopefully the archives fix this like it's been doing for Claudette
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In a way, Yui is the total opposite of The Oni, and a sort of "Nemesis".
The Oni carries traditional values, and heavily despise people dishonoring such values. Yui is a "strong independent woman" with a very unique look, and to me it looks like what Oni would hate the most.
That is how i see the both of them, they are the complete opposite.
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That's a good way of looking at it.
My issue with Yui is purely that her story is written horribly. Making it long doesn't make it good. Claudette, David, and Feng have stories that are much better written with much fewer words. The reason for this is due to their stories having logical sequences of events that connect together. They have a certain flow to their story that gives us a sense of who these people are, not just what they did.
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