Right so… “Depression” is one of those words that’s very deceptive at a glance.
There is this problem where sometimes things have a name, and they might not be the best name because you can confuse what they mean… but also there is no better choice, really.
ADHD is one of those cases. When you hear “Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder” it conjures up the images of a kid that can’t sit still and starts running everywhere. And while a kid like that MIGHT have ADHD, this stronger image that the language brings to mind can obfuscate the actual meaning of the word, where it refers to a specific brain wiring where you don’t have control over what your brain focuses on, how long it focuses on it, or how strongly it focuses on it (Hence Attention Deficit, a fault in the control of the attention span, with the Hyperactive meaning that when it does happen it happens strongly).
In fact, to tie into the theme of this post, Aston Machan brings up a way to describe depression so good it’s been living in my head rent free.
Machan often comments on her idea of how life goes. You’re born in an estuary, the currents take you to the river, and that river ends at the sea. This is already a great analogy that ties into her themes of memory with the idea of getting lost at sea and then the visual of her seemingly giving up and heading for the beach.
But there was another dimension to it that hit me the first time.
In other comments, she talks about feeling like the boat is only for one person, this one is used to explain how she feels like her problems are hers alone… which might be her response to feeling “selfish” for wanting the people around her to not forget her and leave her. She also comments on being tied on that boat, and the current being so strong that even if you wanted to row upstream you’re inevitably gonna crash at the sea anyways.
This all paints a whole other dimension of Machan: Depression.
And let me preface things with this: I’m not the kind to hammer the circle in a square until it fits in order to fit some crackpot theory, especially because this blog isn’t monetized so I don’t need to farm for clicks or anything like that.
When I say that Machan might be depressed what I mean is: As someone that has suffered depression in the past and lives in fear of it sneaking up on me again, Machan’s character spoke to that past experience in the sort of subtle way that feels like it comes from one depression survivor to another.
Tied up in a boat for one person, in a raging river that ends up at the sea. People want to help you, you can see then running by the riverside shouting your way, but they can’t stop the boat, you can’t row even if you wanted, and the boat is so small they couldn’t get on it and help if they wanted.
The nasty thing about depression, is that it’s not just “sadness”, you’d actually give up so many things to be even sad or angry. Depression is a black hole where your emotions either die or burn to ashes. You stop feeling things so you try harder on things you knew gave you joy… and when they don’t and nothing else does you start to wonder why even try. You feel absolutely helpless even when you can see the people around you trying to help.
Like for example, why bother with that race you promised fans you’d be at? Do they care that much? Why?
Your goals for merch with your face on it? Who cares? Who’s gonna buy it anyways?
The person that only wants to see you shine to your truest potential? Why do they bother so much? They’re kinda weird anyways.
Your dear friends? They look like they’re having more fun without you anyways…
Perhaps nobody will care if you went and vanished, they have the good memories of you already, and you’re gonna end up at the sea one day, does it matter if you end up earlier?
And where did that come from? Is it the sadness of being forgotten often? Probably, probably not, it probably didn’t help with some existing condition that was there before. Sometimes it just happens without any deep reason.
But that person on the riverside keeps running and screaming at you, they’re telling you how to fight the current, how to untie yourself, how to minimize the damage if you do crash… they’re so noisy, maybe if you do as they say they will shut up.
You’re gonna end up in the ocean one day anyways… but you know, the weather is nice and the view is relaxing. Maybe, just MAYBE if you follow the screaming voice’s advice those nice things will last a bit longer.
After Machan decides to not give up things actually start looking up for her. It’s debatable if she’s in any better mental state, but at the very least she now feels like her efforts aren’t in vain, and her Sprinters S victory seems to actually land on her unlike her Takatsunomiya Kinen victory where… honestly, she probably did get attention but she was predisposed to assuming the worst so being slightly ignored felt like she was confirming that absolutely nobody cared. And what’s so stinging about the moment when this happens is that it didn’t happen when she shifted her goals away from Scarlet and Vodka, it happened when everything was going good and her goals were being accomplished.
For all intents and purposes she should’ve been the happiest she’s been… but black holes don’t let even light escape. So what changed?
Her trainer.
The problem with many a mental health issue is that the brain ends up seeking the wrong kind of validation. Machan spoke about wanting to be remembered and beloved, but in practice it’s easy to see that she was predisposed to see the negatives. When she didn’t get the interview she wanted after a race, she didn’t see her victory, she saw a simple thing that felt like it validated that voice in her head that she’s better off being forgotten and away.
You want to know that you’re wrong, you want to have the voice in your head spouting all that negativity to be proven wrong, but you can’t help internalizing that that voice is in the right and your brain starts looking for all the things that will try and prove that voice right. That’s often the biggest hurdle, that even if you consciously know something, it takes time to internalize it and actually believe it yourself.
And that’s where her trainer comes in.
Machan’s trainer spent the whole day looking for her despite her best efforts to ignore their calls, despite all the moments where Machan tried to push them aside and stop being a bother to them, her trainer was still there in that beach in front of her. And Machan wanted them to leave, she was resigned to see even further signs that the voice in her head is right and she doesn’t deserve love… but her trainer screamed louder and appealed to the side that Machan wanted to be validated about rather than the one her brain seemed to prefer.
So she chose to take the gamble. It’s hard to tell by the end how much of this changed in Machan, but the fact that from that moment onwards she’s more present with her trainer shows that at the very least she’s now putting trust she didn’t put before. And that first step of choosing to believe and prove your demons wrong is the hardest one to take.
It’s also important to know that all her friends show constant care and concern for her. The biggest difference her trainer made in a way was being a more direct line to Machan than what she normally allowed, if nothing else by necessity of the relationship between trainer and trainee.
Sometimes I worry that what I write in this blog might sound… exaggerated, like I’m hyping up things that might not land with others, or worse yet like I’m gushing over really simple and basic things. Writing these past paragraphs has been a microcosm for myself of what Machan’s struggle depicts.
What if I got something wrong? What if the game is eventually translated and I didn’t catch something properly? Does anyone really care about “all this nonsense”? What if there comes a day where I fall off hard like it happened with Granblue Fantasy or the Fate franchise where I have a resentment I can’t get over?
Thankfully, the me writing this right now has come out of the other side of one hell of a personal ringer, so I can easily shut off all those thoughts. If I get something wrong I never said I was an expert, if I didn’t catch something properly I’ll just readjust, I know there’s enough people that care about this or are just curious about that game making the rounds. And if I do eventually fall off, I want to at the very least have a testament to that period where this game meant so much to me that I decided to pay for a domain in order to put all my feelings about it in a better longform format that’s easier to archive.
But the thing about surviving a struggle is that you don’t forget it, and just because you can shut those voices up doesn’t mean they aren’t there. You don’t get magically healed from mental conditions, you just grow stronger so that they can’t push down and eventually you’re able to live without noticing them, hopefully.
So even if I’m looking too deep into “just a gacha game”, maybe the fact that the game hits me so hard and so deep that the only way I can often convey the emotions it makes me go through is by conveying the many personal things it hits where it hurts makes that game worth all these words and effort.
Honestly, just the fact that this game makes me use my “person” brain instead of my “media” brain when analyzing this all is a LOT. Notice that I’m not talking about Machan’s inferred depression in cold terms of media language, narrative theory or all that nonsense, rather, I’m trying to explain it as if I’m explaining a friend that I know.
And here’s the thing: I literally started writing because I could never find any piece of media that that did that as I grew up. My mission, professionally, is quite literally to “write your best friends that don’t exist”. So the fact that this game makes me feel the way that I hope the things I write makes others feels like, is really special. And it isn’t just Machan, every character makes me think about them in more personal terms in different ways, and not in that desperate fandom way where people assign superficially personal traits to characters. In Uma Musume you don’t have to make your own food, you’re fed well every single day.
THAT SAID, it’s not like the “media brain” isn’t eating well either. I could go off about how well structured the plotlines are… and I believe I have quite a lot by now. But more importantly, that “media brain” is sorely needed right now to just… convey how whoever wrote this whole scenario clearly LOVES Key Visual Arts. Or just Key for short.
For those that don’t know about them, Key games are romance games with a HEAVY emphasis on tragedy and melodrama. They’re often called 泣きゲー (Nakige, crying game) for their emphasis in wanting to make you cry. Not to be confused with 抜きゲー (Nukige, masturbatory games) which is the slang for porn games with hard emphasis on the porn.
Key games tend to follow certain patterns, the most notorious one is the presence of a male player character with a more proactive personality and a main heroine with tender and cute traits that will inevitably be her downfall. Often via a preexisting condition, a curse, or the universe literally wanting them dead.
For some grossly oversimplified examples (the name of the game will be highlighted in case you want to avoid spoilers, though no names are used):
Kanon: Player Character comes back to the town where he vacationed as a kid without any memories from that period. He meets with the main heroine that’s looking for something important. Turns out that the heroine is actually her spirit, she fell off a tree seven years ago and is now in a coma, the traumatic experience making everyone forget what happened 7 years ago.
CLANNAD: Player character lives his youth and has a child with the main heroine… who then dies in childbirth and the player character’s life spirals out of control.
AIR: Player character continues family tradition of looking for a specific girl, said girl is cursed, that curse goes a long way back.
Little Busters: Actually, in this one the player character is ALSO filling the role of the girl, and the supporting Best Friend is the Male Protagonist in behavior. Which is to say, Bad Things Happen To The Player Character… More Than Usual.
Spoilers end here.
If any these catch your eye, definitely look them up. Key has also worked on a lot of anime (both adaptations and not).
But hopefully the image I’m trying to paint is clear.
A girl with a quirky side that is born from clear trauma, followed around by a supporter character (again, trainers can be either gender in the game and the narrative doesn’t skew one way) with their own quirks but also an undying loyalty to them. A plotline that sees the girl slip further and further away by means out of her control being seemingly “cursed” until the other character makes a “miracle” happen.
Of course it doesn’t help that her supporting cast includes Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka which could easily fit any number of supporting girl roles in Key stories. But also, Machan’s Voice Actress, Honoka Inoue (daughter of the LEGENDARY Kikuko Inoue… who shows up in the game as the crazy acupuncture lady) gives a performance befitting any of the other heroines, Machan’s voice is very soft and whisper-y, the kind that makes it all the more shocking when she inflects more strength into it.
People have made edits of many of Machan’s scenes with music from those games… IN FACT WHILE LOOKING FOR EXAMPLES “アストンマーチャンウマ娘 key” WAS RIGHT THERE.
Hopefully this post and the one before can illustrate how this game actives so many parts of my brain at once. How right after processing all the character elements that just makes me giddy as a writer and how they reflect the real horse’s story which makes me giddy as a designer, I think I’m done and then I get hit by a different wave of…
HOLY SHIT THIS GAME IS MADE BY FIRST CLASS TURBONERDS.
