Let’s talk about Platonic Ideals.
Plato, one of those names you might’ve heard about in relation to philosophy, proposed the idea that everything in the world comes from and is informed by “the realm of Forms”. It’s a super interesting concept that also ties to a bunch of other interesting stuff that I don’t wanna get sidetracked by just yet, but the gist of it is that anything that exists comes from a realm where everything exists in its most perfect form and people have a universal drive to make things go towards that ideal perfect form. It’s (grossly oversimplifying) the idea that the desire to reach perfection is a natural drive and that everyone instictively knows what this perfect form is and they learn how to get to it as the perfecting process happens.
So when you talk about “platonic ideals” as applied to concepts, you’re talking about the hypothetical best form of a concept either in your mind or in the general concensus.
For example I once made a joke on a different blog about what the platonic ideal of a western RPG is and how it relates to every choice having consequence.
Idol fans, in Japan specifically for this argument, aren’t the first thing that would come to mind if you’re thinking about being noble and aspirational. After all there’s a long documented precedent of developing parasocial relationships, prioritizing the character over the actual human being behind it, stalking and… did any of you ever watch Perfect Blue? If you haven’t what’s your problem?! But that movie came out in 1997, tackles all of this and more, and it’s as relevant nowadays as it was back then where it was addressing long-standinng issues. GOD I miss Satoshi Kon so much.
Obviously it isn’t exclusive to idol fans in Japan and it’s a phenomenon that takes many shapes in MANY fields, but for this one let’s focus on this subset specifically.
But even idol fans have a platonic ideal of what they can be, what they’re actually meant to be like.
The relationship between idol and fan, assuming this ideal form, is one of different worlds. Where the loyal fan is there to give as much support towards their idol as said idol constantly gives them. This is why idol fans have chants and even their own choreographies to cheer for their favorite while they’re on stage. Idols are meant to exist in their world, with the fans appreciating them from a distance and cherishing any opportunity where they get acknowledged.
Got all that? Keep all of this in mind while I take you to a side road that will converge before too long.
Agnes Digital was quite the racehorse in its time, often called an “All-rounder” from how it was able to run in both turf and dirt.
Racehorses tend to specialize in either turf/grass or dirt/sand running. This is because both surfaces ask different things from the horse’s body and some are just naturals in one but not the other. It’s not unheard of for horses to have a record in dirt even if they specialized in turf. Oguri Cap, Taiki Shuttle, and El Condor Pasa are some that come to mind in this sense, but with them it was more a matter of being able to rather than being able to run them freely.
Think of it as how a Motocross bike and a regular speed bike are different. Even if the motocross bike is technically more “powerful” as in its wheels exerting more strength, this doesn’t mean it’s gonna be faster in asphalt specifically.
Agnes Digital, meanwhile, has six G1 victories (the break point for most notorious racehorses in terms of G1 accolades, where getting more than that easily settles them as super legendary rather than just legendary) and they’re in both dirt AND turf. During its career Agnes Digital’s slogan was, I shit you not: “Heroes don’t pick their battlefield”.
So how do they adapt this monster of a horse? This Hero?
As the most archetypical filthy idol otaku and raging lesbian.
And not only does it work, they somehow made it possible for “chivalrous hero” and “filthy idol fan” to not only coexist but be extensions of each other.
Let me spoil something from now: Agnes Digital, Digitan as I’ll call her from now on, isn’t just a “Hero”, she’s the game’s purest definition of what a Hero is supposed to be in any fairy tale, we’re talking “Dragon Quest Main Character” levels of hero here.
So with that setup, let’s explain what her deal is.
Digitan is a Horse Girl that really REALLY loves other Horse Girls. She feels blessed every single day to have been born a Horse Girl because it means she can be in Tresen Gakuen surrounded by them everywhere. In fact, she loves being near them so much, that she practiced running on both turf and dirt to be near as many of them as she can.
She did something that is considered nothing short of an amazing feat, casually, just to be near more girls more often. Digitan is literally a mid-2000s Sports Manga protagonist.
In fact, the only reason she didn’t get into the Twinkle Series earlier and find a trainer is because of choice paralysis. Every trainer told her that she needed to pick one and she just couldn’t, after all, how COULD she pick one set of her beloved Uma Musume-chan over the other? It isn’t until her future trainer proposes her the idea that she COULD chase that pipedream and become an “All-Rounder” that she thinks about it seriously.
Despite how this might sound, Digitan is still just as idol fan at heart, and her idol just so happens to be every single Horse Girl in existence. Every single one. That one girl with so little to her name that she doesn’t even have a proper racing outfit? She knows her name, racing record, and cherishes the memory of when she thanked her for holding a door open for her. So while Digitan might get too excited and wants to maximize her time near them as much as possible, she prefers to keep her distance.
In fact, she doesn’t just prefer it, if she had her way she would remain invisible on the sidelines not being acknowledged by anyone. But you see, the problem is… it’s impossible for others to NOT notice Digitan, and this isn’t meant in the sense that everyone’s creeped out by her, on the contrary.
When everyone else sees Digitan, they see the mighty girl that can just casually run almost any race type; they see the kind girl that seems to always be there to pick a dropped pencil, to offer a handkerchief, to pass the sauce your table is missing, to pick up the trash you accidentally left behind, to return a dropped glove, to help you carry stuff… and that’s also always out of sight by the time you wanna thank her.
While it’s constantly framed in reference to being an idol fan, Digitan has the purest spirit of a hero in the cast. She wants nothing except to help others, in fact helping others is such a satisfaction that being thanked feels like overkill to her, in her mind she isn’t doing anything special and is completely befuddled by why would anyone make note of stuff that, to her, is as natural as breathing.
Even if you don’t get any of the random events where this shows through while training her, her first proper objective shows it in full force.
Her first proper race, the Hiyashin S, ends with her seeing the tribulations of a Horse Girl that didn’t win. The bitter tears from her defeat, and the encouraging words of her trainer about how they WILL make it someday, that they will continue to aim for that G1 victory and that G1 live. And something snaps inside Digitan.
She realizes just how disrespectful she’s been to everyone. Of course there has to inevitably be a loser in a race, of course even an Open Grade race like the Hiyashin S would make someone frustrated at a defeat, and she was foolish to think that a “less important” race would avoid this because there’s no such thing as a “less important race”.
And so, she decides to immediately aim for a G1 race, because anything less than giving her all in a race would be disrespectful to those who lose, be it in that race, past races, or any potential future race.
That’s where I think the core element of Digitan lies, it might be framed through the lens of an overly excited otaku so obsessed she trained herself into a monster on the track, but it only works because Digitan is, fundamentally, a selfless person that only wants to see everyone happy and getting any credit or recognition for it is secondary. She doesn’t want to win out of ambition, she wants to win because if she doesn’t try to then she’s just making light of the blood, sweat, and tears that everyone else is putting to win.
Hopefully you can appreciate so far how the madlads in charge of this game somehow welded a filthy otaku with a chivalrous hero. How they took the platonic ideal of what an idol fan is meant to be and took the most archetypical chivalric hero traits out of it.
But the fun thing is that even when the story makes this evident, one trait doesn’t overtake the other. There’s a fun scene during Summer Camp where Digitan goes out of her way to help King Halo fans come up with a better and flashier way to cheer for her, this knowing full well that King Halo is gonna be an opponent in her next race. But for Digitan she’s just helping fellow King Halo fans give King Halo a cheer worthy of a king.
In her New Years event she has a minor moment of doubt because everyone seemed to avoid her and her trainer had to point out that, for the time being, all those girls were her rivals. Digitan was trying to casually approach friends that for the moment saw her as a threat they needed to focus on. This is balanced by the Fan Thanksgiving, where Digitan is just in overdrive helping everyone’s booths and is SHOCKED when everyone decides to go out of their way to personally thank her for being so attentive with all of them.
And then her Christmas event has every single nameworthy girl in the academy including Rudolf herself gift her a shikishi with all of their signatures, as if to cap her whole arc with the perfect final prize that means more to her than any other trophy.
There’s a fun irony in Digitan’s character, in the sense that not only is she the platonic ideal of an idol fan, but she’s living the ultimate fantasy for any idol fan, where she goes from silently admiring all these girls to seeing them eye to eye and being on direct talking terms with them.
I’d actually say there’s an argument for how everyone else only sees the “hero that doesn’t pick battlefields” and the filthy otaku side is something that only the player notices as a matter of POV. I say this because whenever Digitan is mentioned by others none of them point out any particularly eccentric traits, if they do it’s just concern for how she suddenly went catatonic after hearing El Condor Pasa sneeze (mood tho).
But this ultimate fantasy doesn’t come out of nowhere, she earns every step of it. She doesn’t magically meet an idol that takes a liking to her out of nowhere, everyone notices virtues that shine through no matter what she think of herself as.
So if you wonder how the girl that ascends to a higher plane of existence every time she sees Scarlet and Vodka fight (mood tho) might be a “Hero”, give her training a go and ask the question again afterwards.
