I think there’s something to be said for tragedies that are really well done.

Tragedies and Comedies are I think two of the oldest forms of plays done by the Greeks. To the Greeks, at least in school, we were taught that tragedies performed a cathartic function in cleansing the soul.

Seeing the suffering of others, learning from them, and experiencing it was an outlet for the frustrations and general spiritual decay I think we encounter in our daily lives.

I grew up watching some of the Hong Kong dramas made by TVB. Of course, at that period of time, there were also some that were released by ATV that were equally tragic.

Then, there were also the angsty AVN’s, anime series, and manga that came out in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.

There were some particularly memorable ones such as Elfen Lied, Full Metal Alchemist, Basilisk and the like.

There were also plenty of angsty Shoujo manga at the time.

In the past decade or so, as scanlations online have taken on a less Japanese-centric tilt, a few of the series that bear mentioning are Wolf guy, To You Who Never Loved Me, Limited Extra Time, and The Villain’s Saviour.

In a lot of these series, it’s interesting as the encounter with the tragic moment sometimes hits like a dump truck.

For some reason, I’ve found the build up in these series a lot more compelling than the later slop of reincarnation dramas where the premise was the tragedy that occurred.

A lot of the drama plays around misunderstandings, or knowledge mismatch. Of course, there’s also the suffering of various characters to drive sympathy towards them.

In Basilisk, part of the tragedy there is Gennosuke not realizing Oboro loves him until the very end, given all the betrayals his clan encountered, when she sacrifices her life.

There was a permanence to it.

Unfortunately, with the newer generation of media (including To You Who Never Loved Me, Limited Extra Time, and the Villain’s Saviour) I find that there’s a feel-good cop-out where things happen outside the one life people are given to provide solace/meaning to people for the suffering they ultimately had to endure.

I sure do miss that sensation of a certain permanence to the suffering. The existence of the scars on a person’s soul is part of what makes them unique, alive, and in a certain way, beautiful.

So the creation of these renders for the evil ending has taken me somewhat longer than I had originally intended. Getting certain elements of the lighting to appear a certain way has been… difficult. That, and just getting enough images to tell the story has been a challenge in and of itself.

But, well, I’ve got a long weekend, so I look forward to making much more progress on this work.