Feel the Burning #8: Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Stupid
Today being today, I suppose I should address the subject of romance, even though it’s a week to be Burning. In that spirit, let’s talk about one of the character archetypes meant to dodge romance: the Hot-Blooded Idiot (熱血バカ).
Like his counterparts in more sprouting anime, the Oblivious Guy (鈍感) and the Wishy-Washy Loser (へたれ), the Hot-Blooded Idiot is a great way for writers to dodge any sort of resolution to romantic subplots. If your main character is a Hot-Blooded Idiot, he’s too obsessed with his chosen thrill (be it piloting giant robots, fighting people, playing baseball, or what have you) to give such petty concerns as romance a second thought, and no number of swooning girls will sway him from his chosen path. His chosen path doesn’t always have to include robots, though many classic Hot-Blooded Idiots have blindly chosen the cockpit of a robot over… you know what, let’s not finish that joke.
A good example of the Hot-Blooded Idiot is Ikki of Air Gear - the manga explicitly states that over 90% of his brain capacity is taken up by skating, how much he loves skating, and how he can get better at skating. The remaining 10% covers Everything Else, which explains why he has managed to weave through a complicated web of three romantic interests: mostly by ignoring them.
There are plenty of other examples I don’t have time or space to cover here, but they all follow pretty much the same pattern - boy meets obsession, boy follows obsession, 2 to 6 frustrated girls get lost in the dust cloud.
So - do you hate the Hot-Blooded Idiot? Do you accept him as a necessary evil in anime and manga so the romantic subplot doesn’t end too quickly? Or do you actually admire his single-minded pursuit of his chosen craft, at least compared to the walking disasters who muddle their way through gaggles of Sprouting storylines?
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