The Friendship Tragedy
Apr. 8th, 2011 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiI've just finished rewatching Gungrave with sixish and must hold forth. Almost no one I know gives a flip about Gungrave, which is understandable given that the anime is based on a video game about shooting zombies, but it's a shame because it is not only one of the best anime I have ever encountered but possibly one of the best stories.
Spoilers follow.
Summary
Brief summary: Set in a fictitious fantasy America, Gungrave is about two street punks, Brandon and Harry, who grow up to be successful members of the mafia. These best friends get torn asunder when Harry's ambition places him at odds with Brandon, who is loyal to the earlier godfather, Big Daddy. Harry kills Brandon and Big Daddy and takes over the syndicate. But Brandon has arranged to have his body resurrected when needed through a technology called necrolyzing. He is needed thirteen years later to protect Big Daddy's posthumous daughter from being killed by Harry. He topples Harry's regime but in the end is reconciled with Harry, and the two, mortally wounded, shoot each other in a mercy killing.
A Tragedy Like Hamlet
Gungrave is surprisingly like Hamlet, surprising not least because Hamlet is so iconically talkative and Brandon about the quietest guy you'll ever meet in fiction. Nonetheless, Gungrave plays a bit like Hamlet if Hamlet and Claudius were good friends. It features a loyal "son" (Brandon as Big Daddy's protégé), discovering that his "father" has been murdered and the murderer taken over the kingdom. He determines that it falls to him to avenge this wrong, and yet something stops him from acting. In Brandon's case, most of the hesitation occurs before the actual murders. Brandon sees the crisis brewing, but like Hamlet unwilling to kill Claudius without proof of wrongdoing, he will not make his move until Harry's betrayal is definitive, i.e. until after he kills Brandon. As with Hamlet, this hesitation arguably precipitates much of the crisis. Brandon's death leads to the confrontation between Harry and Big Daddy that leads to Big Daddy's death and Harry's ascension. And in the end, almost everybody dies.
Now, for my money, if Hamlet and Claudius had been friends, the added dimension of the broken relationship (as with Hamlet and Gertrude) could hardly fail to heighten the tension and the pathos of the enmity. So, yes, I would contend that on a basic structural level, Gungrave (for me as a character-based audience) tells a better story than Hamlet. It does not tell its story better, but it tells a story that compels me more because it not only addresses the pathos of one but two protagonists and the breaking and reformation not only of the "kingdom" but of the friendship as well.
The Friendship Tragedy
Both Harry and Brandon are tragic heroes. Harry is clearly a dark tragic hero (in the Macbeth mold). He is overly ambitious and egocentric (in fact, he has classic hubris), and despite many virtues, these failings lead him to commit atrocious deeds that ultimately lead to his demise.
Brandon's flaw (like Hamlet's) is subtler. He is Harry's antithesis. If Harry is too egocentric, Brandon is too self-effacing. If Harry is too ambitious, Brandon is too self-sacrificial. If Harry considers the only law to be himself, Brandon considers the only law to be loyalty to the Family. Brandon's loyalty and self-sacrifice are virtues, but he takes them to such an extreme that they become vices. His intense loyalty keeps him from acting to stem Harry's ambition; it keeps him from seeking the peace Big Daddy's daughter, Mika, advocates: loyalty demands revenge. Crucially, loyalty to the institution of Big Daddy's Millennion keeps him from questioning its morality. He spends years as a hired killer supporting a criminal syndicate because he subordinates everything to this loyalty.
In so doing, Brandon shuts off his higher conscience. He is not unaware of its sting. At moments, the agony of life as a killer fairly radiates off him. He turns his back on the woman he loves because being with a hit man would taint her. He knows his profession is wrong, as he knows from quite early on that Harry has gone wrong, but he can't act on this knowledge in a timely way, because to do so would place his personal impressions ahead of his loyalty and require him to oppose people he is prohibited from acting against by Millennion's "iron code" against "betrayal." In the end, he only acts against Harry when it is irrefutable that Harry has betrayed Big Daddy and he can, thus, balance loyalty against loyalty. He finds this path too late to forestall the rise of Harry's tyranny.
Harry and Brandon are complements: loud and quiet, brazen and reserved, leader and supporter, egoist and altruist, politician and warrior, each highly impressive in his own strengths. Together, they add up to two enormously talented and balanced people; it's no wonder that when times are good, they make an unbeatable team. But the extremes of their difference throw off their balance. Harry desperately needs Brandon, as Achilles needs Patroclus, to be his counselor, his conscience. But Brandon's self-abnegation is so intense and Harry's self-confidence so overweening that Brandon does not effectively fill this role, nor Harry let him. Thus, they splinter. Harry becomes progressively more isolated in his dreams of personal power, while Brandon becomes more powerless, removed from any role in Harry's decision making. By the time Brandon finally takes an overt stand, telling Big Daddy he will kill Harry if Harry betrays Millennion, Harry is far beyond the point where he might have been able to listen to Brandon. All Harry hears is the betrayal of Harry, who is, of course, always in the right.
The story's tragedy, thus, hinges on the separation of Harry and Brandon, not only because the devastation of their friendship is sad in itself but because their separation, literally and symbolically, defines the sickness of Millennion, the ever-widening imbalance. The anime expresses this with great symbolic beauty in its use of color and black-and-white in the end credits. Up to Harry's killing Brandon, the credits run in color, filled with the vibrancy of life. But in the episode in which Brandon dies, the credits turn to black and white: a pall falls; the shapes are the same, but nothing is quite real. This pall remains until Harry and Brandon meet again face to face, one on one. As soon as they do--as soon as they do--the credits run in color. Life flows again. This shift happens well before their reconciliation. The vital move is not making peace on any reasoned, acknowledged level; it is simply reunification: the two halves of the whole magnetically sealed.
Love
This is the deepest, primal force of Gungrave. Underneath any reasoned morality, underneath the iron code of loyalty to Millennion, underneath the more organic code of loyalty to friends and loved ones is the loyalty that transcends loyalty, the instinctive bond not even conscious effort can break: the love of Harry and Brandon.
This love is reciprocal and, I would argue, equally life defining for each of them. Brandon's love is easily seen. He states at the end, as he has illustrated throughout the narrative, that he can't kill Harry, not even when his conscience and his loyalty to other loved ones tell him he must. He says he made the wrong decision in choosing Harry over Millennion: a good man of Millennion should destroy the man who corrupted Millennion, and yet, he says, he has no regrets. His love for Harry is the bedrock of his life.
The depths of Harry's love for Brandon are more difficult to sound. Because Harry is an egoist whose value system prioritizes himself above all others, he typically subordinates Brandon to his own desires. Even early on, he can be thoughtless. He doesn't even to consult Brandon when he opts out of their plan to leave the city and chooses to join Millennion instead. He shows no insight at all into how painful Brandon finds it to kill people as a sweeper. And if Brandon is emotionally incapable of killing Harry, the feeling clearly is not mutual.
Yet Harry kills Brandon because he loves him. Or rather, he hates him--for the most common of motives: love betrayed. In Harry's mind, Brandon chose Big Daddy over Harry. The extent to which this humiliates Harry is difficult to imagine. Harry is the leader: since childhood, he implicitly trusted Brandon to be his best friend and, yes, follower. Now, the tables seem turned. Brandon is following someone else. He has, so Harry thinks, another best friend. Yet Harry, still, has no one but Brandon. Bob, Lee, Sherry, Bear Walken: he loves them but not like that. Brandon, it seems, suddenly holds all the power: Harry is his, but he is no longer Harry's. The egoist, Harry, can only respond to this trampling on his heart by reasserting his own supremacy. He tries to win Brandon back to his side, ham-handedly offering him Maria if they kill Big Daddy. This fails, of course, as Harry had to believe in his heart it would, and since Harry has no way, as he sees it, to win back Brandon's heart, he chooses to win in the only way left, by destroying Brandon's body. At the very least, he can show Brandon that he will not simply be cast aside.
This, too, fails, not only because Brandon gets himself resurrected but also on a purely emotional level because it doesn't solve the problem: the loss of Harry's status as Brandon's best friend. Not being the most self-reflective of individuals, Harry takes a good stab at not acknowledging this to himself, but the damage is obviously the worst he's ever suffered. The gravity of Harry's mistake is symbolically encapsulated in an incident shortly after Brandon's death. Harry, whose great, redeeming moral value is his concern for children's welfare, spots a boy being abused by his boss at a restaurant. Seeking justice for the boy, Harry kills the boss. The boy, to Harry's consternation, reacts with horror, sobbing and attempting to shake his boss back to life. Confronted with stark evidence of how worse than useless killing is as a means of finding solace, Harry himself starts to sob and rant about Brandon's betrayal. He pulls himself together quickly, but it's clear that his heart understands his mistake even if his mind can't admit it.
Near the end, Harry articulates his dominating psychological construct to Brandon: he killed Big Daddy and took over Millennion because Brandon chose Big Daddy over him. This is revisionist history. Harry was well on the way to usurping Millennion years before he had any doubts about Brandon, but the fact that, looking back, Harry thinks this is what happened tells us all we need to know about the centrality of Brandon in his existence.
It follows, then, that the reconciliation comes when Brandon tells Harry that Harry has always been first in his heart, always the one he's "chosen," even against his better judgment. This is exactly what Harry has needed to hear from the moment he first believed Brandon had abandoned him. And finally being open to hearing it, he is able at last to acknowledge his crimes and, bursting into tears, apologizes. The two end as they began: as best friends. As in a traditional tragedy, order is restored, a better Millennion succeeding Harry's, but more to the emotional point, the friendship healed.
Gungrave is not only a well-crafted tragedy; it is one of the most moving love stories I know.
sixish and must hold forth. Almost no one I know gives a flip about Gungrave, which is understandable given that the anime is based on a video game about shooting zombies, but it's a shame because it is not only one of the best anime I have ever encountered but possibly one of the best stories. Spoilers follow.
Summary
Brief summary: Set in a fictitious fantasy America, Gungrave is about two street punks, Brandon and Harry, who grow up to be successful members of the mafia. These best friends get torn asunder when Harry's ambition places him at odds with Brandon, who is loyal to the earlier godfather, Big Daddy. Harry kills Brandon and Big Daddy and takes over the syndicate. But Brandon has arranged to have his body resurrected when needed through a technology called necrolyzing. He is needed thirteen years later to protect Big Daddy's posthumous daughter from being killed by Harry. He topples Harry's regime but in the end is reconciled with Harry, and the two, mortally wounded, shoot each other in a mercy killing.
A Tragedy Like Hamlet
Gungrave is surprisingly like Hamlet, surprising not least because Hamlet is so iconically talkative and Brandon about the quietest guy you'll ever meet in fiction. Nonetheless, Gungrave plays a bit like Hamlet if Hamlet and Claudius were good friends. It features a loyal "son" (Brandon as Big Daddy's protégé), discovering that his "father" has been murdered and the murderer taken over the kingdom. He determines that it falls to him to avenge this wrong, and yet something stops him from acting. In Brandon's case, most of the hesitation occurs before the actual murders. Brandon sees the crisis brewing, but like Hamlet unwilling to kill Claudius without proof of wrongdoing, he will not make his move until Harry's betrayal is definitive, i.e. until after he kills Brandon. As with Hamlet, this hesitation arguably precipitates much of the crisis. Brandon's death leads to the confrontation between Harry and Big Daddy that leads to Big Daddy's death and Harry's ascension. And in the end, almost everybody dies.
Now, for my money, if Hamlet and Claudius had been friends, the added dimension of the broken relationship (as with Hamlet and Gertrude) could hardly fail to heighten the tension and the pathos of the enmity. So, yes, I would contend that on a basic structural level, Gungrave (for me as a character-based audience) tells a better story than Hamlet. It does not tell its story better, but it tells a story that compels me more because it not only addresses the pathos of one but two protagonists and the breaking and reformation not only of the "kingdom" but of the friendship as well.
The Friendship Tragedy
Both Harry and Brandon are tragic heroes. Harry is clearly a dark tragic hero (in the Macbeth mold). He is overly ambitious and egocentric (in fact, he has classic hubris), and despite many virtues, these failings lead him to commit atrocious deeds that ultimately lead to his demise.
Brandon's flaw (like Hamlet's) is subtler. He is Harry's antithesis. If Harry is too egocentric, Brandon is too self-effacing. If Harry is too ambitious, Brandon is too self-sacrificial. If Harry considers the only law to be himself, Brandon considers the only law to be loyalty to the Family. Brandon's loyalty and self-sacrifice are virtues, but he takes them to such an extreme that they become vices. His intense loyalty keeps him from acting to stem Harry's ambition; it keeps him from seeking the peace Big Daddy's daughter, Mika, advocates: loyalty demands revenge. Crucially, loyalty to the institution of Big Daddy's Millennion keeps him from questioning its morality. He spends years as a hired killer supporting a criminal syndicate because he subordinates everything to this loyalty.
In so doing, Brandon shuts off his higher conscience. He is not unaware of its sting. At moments, the agony of life as a killer fairly radiates off him. He turns his back on the woman he loves because being with a hit man would taint her. He knows his profession is wrong, as he knows from quite early on that Harry has gone wrong, but he can't act on this knowledge in a timely way, because to do so would place his personal impressions ahead of his loyalty and require him to oppose people he is prohibited from acting against by Millennion's "iron code" against "betrayal." In the end, he only acts against Harry when it is irrefutable that Harry has betrayed Big Daddy and he can, thus, balance loyalty against loyalty. He finds this path too late to forestall the rise of Harry's tyranny.
Harry and Brandon are complements: loud and quiet, brazen and reserved, leader and supporter, egoist and altruist, politician and warrior, each highly impressive in his own strengths. Together, they add up to two enormously talented and balanced people; it's no wonder that when times are good, they make an unbeatable team. But the extremes of their difference throw off their balance. Harry desperately needs Brandon, as Achilles needs Patroclus, to be his counselor, his conscience. But Brandon's self-abnegation is so intense and Harry's self-confidence so overweening that Brandon does not effectively fill this role, nor Harry let him. Thus, they splinter. Harry becomes progressively more isolated in his dreams of personal power, while Brandon becomes more powerless, removed from any role in Harry's decision making. By the time Brandon finally takes an overt stand, telling Big Daddy he will kill Harry if Harry betrays Millennion, Harry is far beyond the point where he might have been able to listen to Brandon. All Harry hears is the betrayal of Harry, who is, of course, always in the right.
The story's tragedy, thus, hinges on the separation of Harry and Brandon, not only because the devastation of their friendship is sad in itself but because their separation, literally and symbolically, defines the sickness of Millennion, the ever-widening imbalance. The anime expresses this with great symbolic beauty in its use of color and black-and-white in the end credits. Up to Harry's killing Brandon, the credits run in color, filled with the vibrancy of life. But in the episode in which Brandon dies, the credits turn to black and white: a pall falls; the shapes are the same, but nothing is quite real. This pall remains until Harry and Brandon meet again face to face, one on one. As soon as they do--as soon as they do--the credits run in color. Life flows again. This shift happens well before their reconciliation. The vital move is not making peace on any reasoned, acknowledged level; it is simply reunification: the two halves of the whole magnetically sealed.
Love
This is the deepest, primal force of Gungrave. Underneath any reasoned morality, underneath the iron code of loyalty to Millennion, underneath the more organic code of loyalty to friends and loved ones is the loyalty that transcends loyalty, the instinctive bond not even conscious effort can break: the love of Harry and Brandon.
This love is reciprocal and, I would argue, equally life defining for each of them. Brandon's love is easily seen. He states at the end, as he has illustrated throughout the narrative, that he can't kill Harry, not even when his conscience and his loyalty to other loved ones tell him he must. He says he made the wrong decision in choosing Harry over Millennion: a good man of Millennion should destroy the man who corrupted Millennion, and yet, he says, he has no regrets. His love for Harry is the bedrock of his life.
The depths of Harry's love for Brandon are more difficult to sound. Because Harry is an egoist whose value system prioritizes himself above all others, he typically subordinates Brandon to his own desires. Even early on, he can be thoughtless. He doesn't even to consult Brandon when he opts out of their plan to leave the city and chooses to join Millennion instead. He shows no insight at all into how painful Brandon finds it to kill people as a sweeper. And if Brandon is emotionally incapable of killing Harry, the feeling clearly is not mutual.
Yet Harry kills Brandon because he loves him. Or rather, he hates him--for the most common of motives: love betrayed. In Harry's mind, Brandon chose Big Daddy over Harry. The extent to which this humiliates Harry is difficult to imagine. Harry is the leader: since childhood, he implicitly trusted Brandon to be his best friend and, yes, follower. Now, the tables seem turned. Brandon is following someone else. He has, so Harry thinks, another best friend. Yet Harry, still, has no one but Brandon. Bob, Lee, Sherry, Bear Walken: he loves them but not like that. Brandon, it seems, suddenly holds all the power: Harry is his, but he is no longer Harry's. The egoist, Harry, can only respond to this trampling on his heart by reasserting his own supremacy. He tries to win Brandon back to his side, ham-handedly offering him Maria if they kill Big Daddy. This fails, of course, as Harry had to believe in his heart it would, and since Harry has no way, as he sees it, to win back Brandon's heart, he chooses to win in the only way left, by destroying Brandon's body. At the very least, he can show Brandon that he will not simply be cast aside.
This, too, fails, not only because Brandon gets himself resurrected but also on a purely emotional level because it doesn't solve the problem: the loss of Harry's status as Brandon's best friend. Not being the most self-reflective of individuals, Harry takes a good stab at not acknowledging this to himself, but the damage is obviously the worst he's ever suffered. The gravity of Harry's mistake is symbolically encapsulated in an incident shortly after Brandon's death. Harry, whose great, redeeming moral value is his concern for children's welfare, spots a boy being abused by his boss at a restaurant. Seeking justice for the boy, Harry kills the boss. The boy, to Harry's consternation, reacts with horror, sobbing and attempting to shake his boss back to life. Confronted with stark evidence of how worse than useless killing is as a means of finding solace, Harry himself starts to sob and rant about Brandon's betrayal. He pulls himself together quickly, but it's clear that his heart understands his mistake even if his mind can't admit it.
Near the end, Harry articulates his dominating psychological construct to Brandon: he killed Big Daddy and took over Millennion because Brandon chose Big Daddy over him. This is revisionist history. Harry was well on the way to usurping Millennion years before he had any doubts about Brandon, but the fact that, looking back, Harry thinks this is what happened tells us all we need to know about the centrality of Brandon in his existence.
It follows, then, that the reconciliation comes when Brandon tells Harry that Harry has always been first in his heart, always the one he's "chosen," even against his better judgment. This is exactly what Harry has needed to hear from the moment he first believed Brandon had abandoned him. And finally being open to hearing it, he is able at last to acknowledge his crimes and, bursting into tears, apologizes. The two end as they began: as best friends. As in a traditional tragedy, order is restored, a better Millennion succeeding Harry's, but more to the emotional point, the friendship healed.
Gungrave is not only a well-crafted tragedy; it is one of the most moving love stories I know.
