Rudy Rambles: Interviews With Monster Girls (Again) (Patreon)

There isn't really any educational slant to this, but I want to dump my thoughts on vol 10 of Interviews With Monster Girls while it's fresh in my mind. THIS MANGA FUCKS ME UP FOR REAL FOR REAL!!!!

I've talked about this manga before at the end of my post about a character trope I'm obsessed with, and this volume brought my favorite character, Sakie Satou the succubus school teacher, and her character arc to a head that really got me, like... deep in my core. The general idea is that Sakie is a woman troubled by her succubus powers and through her interactions with a new teacher, Tetsuo Takahashi, and his obsession with studying and understanding the unique struggles of demi-humans, she learns more about her own powers and how to control them and achieve her dream of assimilating into society and getting to experience all the bits of growing up that she wasn't allowed to experience.

She was slowly learning how to let herself express her femininity, sexuality and desires in a way that wouldn't radiate out of control to those around her unwillingly and she was developing a great relationship with Takahashi, who understood that she had some unique struggles and tried to be very respectful of her needs and no-go's. 

To set up what I want to talk about here, I need to present a handful of pages in a row for a minute. This is back in chapter 53, which is vol 8:

Sakie experiments with letting herself dress nicely for the first time thinking she can maybe keep her powers of seduction under control if she gets more comfortable with wearing things and thinks less about if others would perceive her as sexy, thus stopping her mind from radiating her powers out to those nearby.

She appears to be visualizing herself on a date with Takahashi wearing the clothes she currently has on, as though she's starting to get comfortable with the idea of a happy future with romantic fulfillment for herself. It's a very, "aww that's so cute! I'm really rooting for her" kind of moment but with events that happen in vol 10, it gets a whole new meaning. To explain it, I have to show a little bit about another character named Machi, a dullahan girl.

The series mostly spent time from the perspective of Takahashi's obsession with a demi-human's experience as a marginalized and misunderstood group in society and the personal struggles that come with that, but Takahashi had a college classmate that was equally obsessed with demis with the angle of understanding the theoretical ways they interact with the world in ways humans cannot.

It was all pretty interesting and showed off just how much thought and care these ideas were given by the author, really trying to come up with genuine theories for how these powers would work with concepts we have in our real world, with the focus being the dullahan's head being detached from their body and the neck still existing but in an unobservable dimension. They conduct experiments based on the perception of one of the last demis to be introduced, Kaoru Higa, a Kijimuna (tree spirit) that can perceive people's feelings through their eyes.

There's a bit in vol 7 where Machi comes into contact with a Zashiki-warashi that can only be observed by one person (Takahashi's cousin) and Kaoru being witness to both of them in close proximity messes with these alternate dimensions that's just a whole mess of stuff. It's probably better to read through it yourself, it's some fun thought experiments for a made up reality.

What this eventually leads to is that this mixing of dimensions has allowed Kaoru to develop her abilities more, somehow being able to predict things or know certain information about people from just looking at them.

They use this as a thought experiment that what she has isn't some godly powers but just a knowledge of a thing that humans naturally don't have, like a elevated level of the way people thought those who could perceive upcoming weather patterns were practitioners of magic.

All of this is to say that when she saw the dimensional opening from the meeting of these two demis, this gave way to the other characters sort of intuitively seeing visions of possible futures without them really understanding what they were seeing. This all comes to a head in vol 10 when the demis conduct an experiment based on Kaoru's perceptions that Machi has a window of opportunity to fuse her head onto her body for a full day, which is something Takahashi had a vision of when he took Machi to a college tour to explore what she wanted to do with her life.

The characters have gotten these small glimpses into possible futures, sort of an augmented version of the idea of manifesting what you want out of life and it will come to you. This circles back to Sakie when she goes out on a 6th date with Takahashi and has resolved to confess her feelings for him.

She slowly loses confidence when she is confronted with her perception of herself that she's carried with her all this time, she is a succubus and even though she's gotten so far with this person she loves, she thinks that maybe it's not meant to be. Even when Takahashi takes the first step that she was too scared to do herself, she's still looking for reasons that will convince him that she's more trouble than she's worth.

At this specific moment, Takahashi knows what he needs to say to really get to Sakie at her core. He's spent so much time observing and developing an understanding not just of succubi but of Sakie and her very specific doubts and needs as an individual. It hits SO fucking hard for me.

Sakie is this amazing character filled with doubts of herself and her ability to live a fulfilling life with the hand dealt to her and Takahashi reassures her that it's not a hinderance, AND it's not some crazy sexy bonus; it is what it is and that's who he fell in love with. He doesn't want to tip toe around it, she's got an augmented sex appeal and that's cool, but so are all the other parts of her he sees when they spend time together.

It really gets to a truth that I've been trying to get at as I write my characters and it's still hard to put into words properly. I really love this idea of letting your characters have sex, be sexualized, and not shy away from depicting these moments for them, but to move on from it and let them be about other things too. But not just as like some little flavor text, treat those other moments as equal to the sexy stuff. I keep writing around in circles trying to talk about how I'm kind of fed up with most artists in my proximity not even attempting to mask that they don't want to spend time writing their characters; they just want to draw sexy bodies and dress them up (or down) and most people will eat it up because the dopamine rush of tits and ass is enough. I keep making this appeal to think on literally just the layer above it, it's not some crazy deep idea.

I have to let it go before I say something I don't mean but I'm really driving home that this scene is what it's all about for me. I'll end the post with how their date finishes out, coming full circle around to that first vision Sakie had of herself on the date in her new outfit.

There's so many layers to this moment that I had to say something about it. Write yourself a woman like Sakie, we need more like her in comics.