Nobody ever likes the real stories behind us magical girls. They always make up stories about us that people like better. But sometimes these little reflections end up more powerful than we are. Like this girl here. Moeko was never healthy enough to do much of the magical girl stuffs. So in the end, this one did far more than Moeko did to save people and save the world. Didn't you sweetie?
This main part of the oration (without the aside about the portrayal itself) seems the more interesting/meaningful/important one to focus on, and wait for the follow-up to.
Yes, the sentiment also matches pretty well with what most anyone talking about the subject says, in some way or another. We've heard a couple of versions from each of Erika, Piro, Kimiko, Largo. Also bits of it from consciences, show-biz people like Sayuri and Mumu, others like Yanagisawa, Meimi, and Masamichi. We've seen that Ed/Dom/Ibara don't agree with each other, yet together, they display a story of their own. (Ibara tells Junko his version of things, then shows he didn't really well understand how it actually works. Ed does things suggesting Miho is herself the real story and one that people excessively love (not simply 'like better') even though her story isn't made up; then he goes and tries what he already knew he couldn't do, and believes he did it when he hadn't. Dom doesn't think Miho is anything, as she's showing him otherwise.) Supposedly the CoE people get it. Allegedly Junpei's (grand)mother has some clear insight into it. Miho herself has given a number of versions of it all to Piro in quite a few ways over time, but not always consistently, often contradictory, and missing large important amounts of information; so not very clear to him, if certain reactions are any indication. If any of that is correct exactly either, Analogue-wise, that's another matter which hasn't been answered.
None of which is necessarily particularly conducive to solving the mystery though - what did Erika do to save the world? Was it any of, supporting the illusions, helping keep society in line, telling off the fans, being a major part of what's going on now? Or something else in the realm of things to guess at. Or just a figure of speech and not literal. It's curious either way.
darrin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2017 6:45 pm
Okay no offense but "good thing I wasn't portrayed as a FATTY" is really not many degrees better than "that Erika sure is a FATTY".
I agree, saying she'd prefer not to be portrayed as bigger isn't necessarily all that different in terms of degrees than saying Erika is bigger, or that she's not fond of bigger or Erika or both or whatever. The question though was more which one was she saying, not how different they are.
Still, no matter how little the difference, expressing disdain about something you personally prefer less, especially in an abstract sort of way, it is different. Saying you don't like some side of things much, isn't calling somebody else that or doing so in a socially negative and personally insulting sort of way. So yes, Ririka could have been more diplomatic, during the aside, during the rant/lesson/monologue. Although there didn't seem to be malice, and the phrasing was somewhat neutral. And so, how little or great the degree, something like saying 'I'm not fond of plain or large' isn't 'I hate you because you are horribly terribly ugly and disgustingly gigantically monstrous'.
If the question covers who she might be referring to, it's not as much an exercise of trying to dissect the sentiment expressed or reasoning behind it. Not that we don't won't can't do that, but it's a different focus of activity.
If the question is if Ririka was talking about Erika, the answer in that topic alone would seem to be no. Whatever Erika is or might be called body-type and demeanor-wise, or how either of them think about that internally, Erika didn't play Ririka. The rest becomes mostly immaterial.
If we ask instead who was Ririka talking about, the answer there seems nobody in particular, especially since none of the choices available seem to match. That would seem to leave fictional character type presentations and representations. Actresses in costumes and makeup that are other than their actual appearance doing things other than their actual selves according to script and dialog. Or animated drawings that aren't people to begin with. That leaves generalizing some troped generic choices on some scale of wrong when it came to fictional representations of her.
That Ririka prefers something more than other things is hardly surprising, but unimportant if Erika isn't those things, especially if Ririka wasn't Erika's character anyway.
Then in the middle, what Ririka thinks about who did play her, whoever that was. In the realm of dressing up an actress or illustrating a character, that were not like she actually is, which one would Ririka prefer between wafer thin mint to large and in charge. Clearly, she'd rather have the image be a "thin, flat, pretty little blond girl" on some side of wrong. That that fabrication was better than the other side of wrong, where she was a "chunky big butt bossy bruiser". Although the way she says it, it gives the impression she thinks herself more like the second and not at all like the first. Some people would choose the second to be or to have, with varying degrees of comfort in being or liking. She doesn't. What's the problem?
Given what Ririka puts into that aside about who played her, in the context of the story she's telling, she herself has apparently also bought into the made up stories that people like better. Not being more like she thinks she really is, but being more like some fanciful and socially more acceptable type of illusion. Not how things are, but how things are supposed to look and supposed to be. We see that to some extent in everyone here, and it's another lesson for Yuki to perhaps be taught. Unimportant boring reality is less desirable compared to stylized exciting fiction, the fans want the second and so do many of the performers. Some often refuse to believe anything else; even when it's clear and in front of them, it's rejected. The illusion, they expect it, demand it, need it; all supported by the authorities both political and legal, as well as society itself.