I recall when I first saw the teaser for this anime a while back, and I believe they purposefully didn't reveal too much. Only showing the poster and that's it, so when it started to air, I went into it completely blind. And since the first episode, I found myself strangely captivated by it. Although the animations were fairly explicit, in terms of the violence, and the tragedy that the main seven characters face are indeed depressing, it constantly kept me on the edge of my seat. I can't remember specifically, but I believe it was how it played with my emotions in ways I was not familiar with, especially since I stayed away from television drama and sticking to mostly cartoons. Only during class, when someone mentioned about the idea of possibly focusing on a melodramatic piece that's only between males did I realise that this series actually does resemble a lot of the qualities that a melodrama typically has.
Just to generalise what I'll be discussing on my paper, it'll contrast the qualities that I found to similar to melodramatic stereotypes and compare how their effects are different. Starting with the seven individuals themselves, they act together as a brotherhood, almost like a single entity as oppose to how the individual is usually focused on in other works. I would credit this to their ideal of being independent, and how that basically means to get stronger, which is the common masculine image. And if you were to polarize that form of thinking, then it basically means that by not being dependent on others, which is something that constantly reinforced in the film. Which does remind of the stereotypical cowboy or samurai, where their honour lies in their ability and how they typically refuse help. It does question if this is inherently present in strong male characters found within melodrama, or is it just coincidental. As for these characters though, they are no different, rarely do they ask for help, and what ends up happening is that these boys will take it upon themselves to help each other. And there has definitely been moments where they will try to sacrifice themselves, per say, in order to benefit others, which reminds me of Stella Dallas and how she basically sacrificed her own joy for the sake of her daughter.
Also being an animation, it allows for means of expressing the polarity and alignment (good or bad) just within the physical appearance of a character. With this, there are certainly more than a few characters that have sharper features that characterize them as being villainous roles and parts. The use of this medium is especially used well, especially with one particular character, who may feature softer expression and seem to be on the side of the seven boys, but that's later used to betray the expectation of the audience. Not to mention it also allows for more grotesque and deeper portrayal of events to invoke more empathy. One connection I would draw would be the Golden Demon where a woman is seen to be kicked on the ground. Though with live-action actors it may be uncomfortable, by having it be animated, not only could one focus on say, the expression or the amount of blood and pain that is conveyed through the animation, providing even more emotion.
Considering that there are about seven main characters, also in a medium that is not traditionally found in early examples of melodrama, it makes it a bit difficult to be able to focus on a singular factor and how that affects everything else. But hopefully it'll turn out decent.
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