Meet Heroine.
Remember her? From that series you forgot about and probably dropped like a whole bunch of people (myself included)? Heck, at this point, she’s probably forgotten who she is too.
Admittedly, Heroine’s series is one that faded from my own memory long before Winter season ended– and it’s no wonder considering how boring it was, with only okay animation and shipping potential to keep it afloat. Only as I desperately thought back on the year, racking my memory for moments that stood out to me from the few shows I checked out did I remember her: the girl given no name. I remember watching that first episode and waiting for her name to drop; I remember hoping that a character would slip up and give us her name; I remember laughing at how her character wasn’t even spared the effort of being given a made up name.
So, I suppose that begs the question of why I’m devoting my 12 days post to her, doesn’t it? So what if she didn’t have a name? Who cares? Why is this post about someone from Amnesia again? Though I’m sure a rock has more interesting points to it than Heroine, thinking back on the little of her story I can remember, I find myself feeling oddly sorry for the poor girl.
Heroine is not a name; it’s a description. Sure we might all forget it, and I’m sure half of us don’t remember the names of most of the main characters in shows we don’t particularly care for, but at least they have one that you sort of remembered at one point. Something I think we tend to gloss over is the importance of names. We forget how much actually lies in them. They’re the first thing we latch onto when we meet someone; they’re one of the first things that we judge someone by (“Wow, she does not look like a Suzy.”). In a number of shows, they’re so important that if you give it away, you loose a part yourself. They are a part of our identity.
Not even given the courtesy of a made up name/nickname, Heroine is utterly forgettable. Though part of that definitely lies in her personality (what little of it you could spot), it all starts with the sad fact that she’s never given a name, given the chance to look at herself in the mirror and think, “I’m a Yuki, huh?” Instead, we get blank stare after blank stare with the occasional half-remembered memory tossed in as her (mostly) personable harem fill us in on what she was like. Heroine and all our impressions of her stem from those interactions with her group of guys. On her own, she’s nothing, without memories and without an identity.
I’m writing this post because the first few episodes (the only ones I soldiered through) of Amnesia left me amazed at the fact that a series would really not give it’s heroine a name. When I watched them, frustrated by her lack of name and personality, I came up my own name for Heroine. It probably isn’t the most flattering name, and, honestly, tends to bring up images of this person, but at least it has a little personality to it and it even managed to make watching the series a bit more fun.
So, before I let Heroine quietly fade from our memories again, let us meet her again one last time.
Meet Phyllis.
She’s probably not the brightest bulb in the box. And she’s not exactly the life of the party, but who can blame her, loosing her memory all the time like that. She’s slightly perturbed by her current situation, especially about the shota with pointy ears that only she can see. He seems nice though, so she’ll trust his strange story and do what he says. After all, she doesn’t want to die before she can figure out who she is again. As she wanders around with the guy of the moment, she latches onto his descriptions of herself, desperately trying to remember that self, the person she is supposed to be but can’t remember at all. She feels left out, a stranger in her own skin. Blindly she follows him, not quite sure why exactly she’s falling in love. Can she even call it that? And then, right as she starts to feel like herself again, whoever that may be, the rug’s pulled out from under her. Someone’s hit the reset button. Back to square one.
She stares again at the now unfamiliar face in the mirror and touches it, “Phyllis, huh?” she thinks to herself. She laughs and whispers, “Guess it’s just you and me.”
(Don’t go for Toma, Phyllis!)
