Reviews for Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy

Great stories can be told about psychopaths who are obsessed with imprisoning their victims, whom they love and fear. Stephen King's _Misery_, for example, is a decent story about a writer who is held captive by a mentally imbalanced fan of his work. "Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy" casts the psychopath as a lovable boy and the victim as a lovable, but terminally stupid and passive, girl. And then it deals with this horrific premise as if it were a light romantic comedy. The opening theme song is notably good. The art is mediocre. The characters are unlikable. It's bad enough being a madmanwho wants to imprison the object of his affection, but maybe a good actor could make such a character sympathetic -- much like Hannibal Lector became a sympathetic anti-hero. But when the madman is basically a boring nobody with a poorly-explained trove of advanced weapons and technology, there is no drama.

It's painful enough to watch a story about a girl who passively suffers, or a story about a girl who makes a doomed rebellion against her unjust fate. But the victim in this story communicates nothing other than her lack of consent. She will say something like, "Hey, don't do that, I won't let you," and then lapse into idiotic passivity. Somehow, watching a brainless doormat get tramped on is even worse than watching a sympathetic character get trampled on.

This anime is beyond salvaging. The victim-girl is already a doormat. Don't be a doormat. Don't watch this anime.

My girlfriend and I watched this over the last couple weeks. It was a childhood favorite of hers that she picked up at some point back in her initial period of otakudom. I was totally absorbed watching Misutenaide Daisy with her, and I loved that this was something she had been keeping near to her heart for all these years. I love iconoclasts, and there are a couple here. On the other hand, maybe this is where she got some of her profoundly scary ideas about what it is like to be with someone in her formative years. Maybe this is whatmessed her up for life. Well, everybody gets those ideas from somewhere- so at least if that is true, the one that I love got theirs from something I approve of. As opposed to, say, the Twilight franchise.

This anime, by virtue of its central themes, should be put in a category shared with Evangelion both in shared style and generation as well as that central theme; which could most easily be described as "Love".

It is not. People take the characters in this series seriously as moral actors in an imaginary world whose ethical physics is supposed to match their own view of how things are, or should be, in real life.

Apparently people generally have far less trouble imagining that someone could fly, or lift a tank, or kill fifty men with no negative consequences for themselves, than they can imagine someone behaving in a sexually reprehensible way and still being treated as a privileged main character. Somehow I am not entirely sure this example represents a positive step for gender equality or the forward progress of society. But maybe civilization will be fine, and it is just the progress of literary criticism that is being retarded by social mores. We can all of us only hope.

We are talking, of course, mostly of this series' most memorable and most detailed character: Reijiro Techno, the "smart boy" who can't understand how to socialize. He is easily the lead character, by most any measure.

Now, there is nothing special about that stereotype. It is like shooting a barrel full of anime protagonists and hitting an orphan, or someone with hair that does not seem to obey gravity. It is one of the ingredients in the original Betty Crocker cookbook recipe for a Japanese Cartoon Show.

But this guy, yeesh. I can almost understand the universal lynching this series got in professional reviews when it was released. After all, professional means that it matters to you what your customers think. What would anyone think of this character?

For one thing, despite being the main character, he is also the primary antagonist of the show. He is the one who does bad things. He has his own mischief making obstacles a la Team Rocket standing in his way, but it is never played for Drama. If something is happening to someone and it is seriously bad, he is responsible. I don't think I am spoiling anything by saying this series is not about him getting his comeuppance. That does not happen. He gets rewarded for his violence.

What kind of antagonist is he then? Well; if he were a real person, he would be a felony sex offender. The police would be called on him shortly after he meets the female lead of the series, by her, in the first episode. Or anyone who saw him with her. International kidnapping, forced abduction, stalking, harassment, along with the standard blowing things up and frying people. He is also a Mary Sue topper of a Mad Scientist: all his superdevices essentially amount to the game children play where they say "Bang, I shot you, you're dead... No I'm not, I was wearing a bulletproof vest... Well then, I used armor piercing bullets...I was in a tank..." ad nauseam. His technological singularity is reaching the end of infinite series of boasting technobabble one-upsmanships. He is never seen solving or studying a regular problem a real person encounters in their education, but he has a time machine and an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. If you are a STEM graduate student, there isn't a lot to sympathize with. Again, suspension of disbelief fails the average viewer. "This is the smart guy who can't relate to people" it says. Underlined twice for emphasis.

The "real" protagonist, the real moral decision maker and actor of the series, is the female romantic lead, Hitomi. We know way, way less about her imagination, her psychology, her history, her belief system- she is treated and expresses herself as a blank slate, as a statistical average of what a Japanese girl Is or Is supposed to Be. To whom they are supposed to be that, or what that average is, I have very little idea. All that is said, repeatedly, is that "Average" is her identity. She acts by being acted on by the "Unusual". Her struggle is in how she looks at circumstances she does not seem to have much agency to control or steer. Her agency is all in manipulating her own subjective frame of reference. She has no way of actually opposing the villain, and in the end he wins, after a fashion, because she changes her mind.

There is no love triangle. A romantic couple is presented as a dynamic of male antagonist and female protagonist that slowly move toward one another and toward moral zero as the series progresses. Secondary characters are abusively teased and abandoned as elements of the narrative. Everything ends up being internal to the male and female aspect of a unitary narrative. Oh, and the series is a cold war resolution fantasy in the same way that 99 Luftballons was, or Dr. Strangelove. It is one of the most sentimental examples of that I have ever seen, and it actually got me for a second, like It's a Wonderful Life occasionally manages to.

And yet, I believe that is the essential, remarkable strength of this show, that characterization. Both of them, even. Either the authors knew what they were doing and constructed a conscious satire, or they earnestly believed in the simple truth of the positive outcome of their narrative. If a character this profoundly dissonant with the standard expectations of an audience, the expectations of their value system and how they apply that system to a story- if this was accidental it is almost cosmic in its character arc.

Here is a partial reading list: Orlando Furioso, Mating Intelligence: Sex, Relationships, and the Mind's Reproductive System by Geoffrey Miller, The Catcher in the Rye, et cetera. Ad nauseam.

You should also watch A.O. Scott's review of Chris Marker's La Jetee. I mean, if you read this far down, you might as well. Any of the above mentioned sources certainly make my point better than I ever could. Watch that review, among many other things you could watch, also to the point of nausea. Gorge yourself on this topic as a young person in love would gorge themselves on the attentions of their first and only love. Go watch Misutenaide Daisy, and then laugh at Macho sex advice writers like Athol Kay and the basic notion of the "Captain/ First Officer" heterosexual relationship dynamic. Laugh at the notion we are evolving towards some supercritical point of mental celerity. Laugh at the real-life Techno Reijiro; that takes every bit of cognitive effort they can muster to wrap their minds around their own biology. Laugh as the writer intended, at the Cole Porter song. Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love.

This was a good show! It had a me thinking about how I think, and about how other people think. It is a shame it doesn't have more of a cult following. It is mostly a shame that people seem to mostly hate it because they cannot empathize with the characters, or admit to other people that they do.

It is a shame I will probably get more mileage out of this series by using it as a litmus test for other people that I meet than I will by actually discussing it with them, but I can always turn to my one and only. She will happily discuss it with me. I hope one day everyone finds what they are looking for in that way, and flies off into outer space on the rocket of their dreams.

Imagine you lived in total isolation in a bomb shelter from other human beings for most of your life. Then you see a girl you like and end up leaving to join the rest of society for her. Are you going to be able to recognize subtle unspoken social nuances and gradually get to know this girl, build a relationship with her and others you've not before had the opportunity to interact with? Or are you inevitably going to mess it up a person who never grew up learning complex social rules that others take for granted? The latter of course, and that's both thecomedy and the tragedy of this series. Add not just the fact of personal isolation, but also that our main character Techno is a super genius with access to weapons of mass destruction, and you get a very dark comedy here.

So if you like dark comedy with zany anime antics, which I do, this is a series to watch for sure. I was somewhere in-between gawking and laughing out loud at how inappropriate Techno was for much of the series. It's not without its weaknesses though. I think the series may have been stronger if it focused not just on Techno and his love interest Hitomi, who he nicknames "Daisy" like in the title, but how he interacts with others when going out into the world. I really don't think he got called on his behavior often enough. Hitomi seems to be the only one who will say anything more often than not. He's very mean to Yamakawa X, his classmate who tries to show himself as a tough rebel but is ultimately an insecure character ignored by his peers. X is another appealing part of the series for me, but he didn't end up getting his own character arc.

The romance itself is not very strong, so I wouldn't watch it for that. Instead, laugh or cry at the suffering and antics of Techno and anyone who has the misfortune to come across him.

The trailer for this show was what sparked the great "chesticles" vs. "flame titties" debate "back in the day". After having watched the show though I have to say that the trailer (and its attendant voice over) would have been hard pushed to give a more incorrect view of it. In many ways its impossible to pin down what exactly this show is - romance comedy, introspective examination of adolescence and first love, absurdist satire of global war politics, cutting commentary on the destructiveness of love taken too far - its really all of these and more. I feel like a cunt for writing something likethis, but Don’t leave me alone Daisy isn't so much watched as experienced, the way in which it transcends genre's forces the viewer into a more active position in interpreting just what exactly the show is trying to say. Yes well, art school wank out of the way the obvious question is "Yes, that’s nice, but is it any good?”

It’s an older show and as such the quality of the animation is certainly sub-par to more modern fare, this doesn’t bother me (especially as I've been working through older anime I missed at the time) but if you watch anime solely for the lovely looking animation it may put you off. That aside I think it is good, though in many ways how much you get out of it may depend on how much you want to read into it. If you take it at face value then some people may not get past the first episode as it presents a fairly creepy "extreme stalker" situation that could turn some people off. And certainly the first time I watched it I thought "Hmm not sure about this", but while somewhat creepy it's also quite intriguing and dragged me back in. In the end though it’s hard to recommend this as I have a feeling it’s one of those highly polarised media products where everyone loves it, hates it or completely ignores it.

This review CONTAINS MOSTLY SPOILERS. Read with caution. This will be a rant basically, but I will make sure to explain my reasoning for the aspects that I hated. I collect anime VHS. I found this as a box set, seems to be pretty rare and I was happy to own it! I did minimal research onto what the show was about, the box art made it seem pretty self explanatory and I watched an official trailer for the show which made it seem interesting... I was not prepared for what this show actually was. The synopsis written for this anime is a little bit overexaugurated in some ways, but that doesn't excuse what this anime IS about. Techno is a stalker with no redeeming qualities and gets his hopes set on a girl named Hitomi. He claims ownership over her immediately to which she refuses. BUT, he insists and uses gadgets and experiments to get his way no matter what she says.

There are many aspects about the "relationship" that forcefully develops between these two that aren't ever good. He is nothing but awful to her and to everyone else in this show. It was very uncomfortable to watch as the show TRIES to frame Techno as sympathetic and attempts to get you to side with him. But, his actions are inexcusable and NEVER change. It doesn't help that despite all of the characters in the show hating what he does, he ALWAYS gets his way.

It gets to the point with Hitomi, who Techno has named "Daisy" since he thinks he owns her, starts to fear a life without him there. She constantly hates what he does, yet she's now so used to it that she fears being alone. If you do a quick Google search on "Why don't some people leave bad relationships" the first thing it says is "fear of being alone"... that is the title of the show. Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy is not about a relationship that starts terribly but through learning different things that occurred in Techno's past blossoms into a mutual understanding and a more healthy relationship... it is about an unhealthy, abusive, and manipulative relationship that the creators try to get you to root for.

The beginning premise could have been done well, but they write no redeeming qualities for Techno and it ends with nothing changed besides Daisy's mind somehow. Its really unsettling and hard to watch at some point. I was baffled that it ended that way. Since they gave Techno no redeeming qualities at all, it just does not work AT ALL. Take this situation for example... if someone is bullying others that's not good at all. However, the bully is only acting out because they are self conscious or something. The takeaway from that is NOT "Oh man I'm so sorry. You can keep bullying me". If you see what I'm trying to say here....

The fact that it ends (SPOILERS) with Techno getting his way despite having no character development or growth. It is mind blowing and results in a show with almost no redeeming qualities.

With all of that being said, are there ANY good things about this show? Yeah, sure! The music is all pretty good! I'm a sucker for this era that the anime came out in and the art style is something I do enjoy. And ONE character is memorable and fun, even if he's just played off as a punching bag, that being "X".

So would I recommend Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy? No, I would not genuinely recommend this to anyone at all. The best thing it has going for it is just the fact that its so bad and if you want a good "hate watch" it may do the trick. As long as you're not there for the "its so bad that its funny" type of entertainment you get from low budget horror movies or something like that. Here, you get the "its appalling that this exists and that they want me to root for this horrible character".

Thank you for reading this. I HAD to talk about it and I had A LOT to say.