When Bronze turns to Gold... (Alchemical observations from the west...)

By Maygra. 5/27/2000

I have to admit that the amount of time I spend haunting the Ozaki shrines and webpages and Ozaki Dokusen Central probably would qualify me as a homeless person if Aestheticism were a real city rather than a virtual one. But I can't seem to stay away and one of the things I find appealing is that there are so many people willing to talk about and translate her work into something I can understand. Even those who suffered from an Ozaki overload when it seemed she was the most popular, if not the only game in town, still offer insights and can't help but use her as a kind of common ground that most fans can at least admit to a passing knowledge of, thanks to the fansubs of Zetsuai and Bronze and expanded interest in all things Ozaki.

So, I came to the banquet rather late but found the leftovers appealing in a way that leftovers often are -- a little bit of everything and all the difficult things cleared away (Not unlike my romance with West End but that banquet seems to be ongoing or just starting.) With Ozaki and Bronze specifically, I have plenty to feed me without having to fight the crowds and since I think of yaoi as an indulgence, it's rather nice to play alone for the most part.

The over the top, fantastic stylings of yaoi appeal to me, always have, even before I knew what it was I liked -- or a I knew what I liked but had no name for it. Totally indulgent fantasy pretty much pegs it, and yaoi is that, most of the time, from what little I've seen. I'm not likely to spend several years in Tokyo inhaling the culture and values, or observing it through gaijin eyes and perceptions. The varied and sundry "Little Tokyos" that dot most major metropolitan centers on the east and west coasts (yes, even in the south, along with Little Havanas, Little Koreas and Little Newarks) are about as close as I'm going to get to even sniff out even the aromas of alternative cultures. It isn't a fear of non-Americans, or even other cultures. It is about resources and a sense that even though America may be bigger and stronger and richer, sometimes we, as individuals, get lost in all those freedoms and perceived freedoms. In that way, I find American's less Ugly Americans and more like country cousins ?we don't mean to be ignorant, we just sometimes aren't smart enough to see that we are.

And this has what to do with Ozaki or Bronze or yaoi at all, you may be asking? Well, it has a lot to do with it actually, at least for me. Having read discussions and excerpts and commentaries and hung onto every post that even hints at Bronze commentary (or Ozaki) since I joined AMLA, I found myself, quite recently, in a position to make some observation about the series that so caught my attention and got me into the Aestheticism site in the first place. It's not that anyone gave me permission, it's only that finally, after two years, what I was seeing and reading and reacting too finally gelled enough in my not so terribly quick brain that I was actually able to get past the "I like this!!" and get to the why. Part of that realization came from the simple fact that I was brought up in a culture where the idea of having an opinion and the desire to express that opinion are directly related to how much you know about any given topic giving validity to your opinion. (Not that people don't express their opinions based on *no* knowledge whatsoever, but at least for the middle American set I run with, intelligence, social grace and education are the standards by which opinions are measured.) So too, I felt I had to have at least some cognizant thoughts about Bronze before I could express anything more than a passing "I like this." My own opinions and conclusions were very much shaped by what and who went before --regardless of whether I actually agreed with the information expressed.

I think I read Kitty's review first (and if I misalign attributions I apologize -- this is top of my head stuff, not research stuff.) I think it was her view of Koji as a stalker that made me look harder because while I got that aspect of it, there seemed to be a lot more to it than that. She didn't view it as yaoi much at all, as I recall, and that confused me. It seemed very much yaoi to me, as I understood it, because it was both obsessive and unreasonable and not realistic at all. So, it must have been my understanding of what yaoi was that was at fault, right? Well, maybe so.

What appeals to me in Bronze, or in the Izumi-Koji pairing at all, (I know the correct assignation is KojiXIzumi, bear with me, 'kay?) is that while you can sum it up as this kind of futile obsession on Koji's side and this unexplained toleration of it on Izumi's side, it is that obsession and toleration that intrigues me. I'm a slash-monger. I admit and make no apologies for it. But in most slash, desire and kinship carry a lot of the relationship weight -- the two characters often share some notable similarities in experience, goals or existence -- and I tend to put things in those boxes regardless of their point, purpose or source. Yes, slash maybe be "the love that never shuts up" (I think that's Nora's) but I like that, and I like knowing why characters feel drawn to each other. When I look at Koji and Izumi there are all kinds of interesting rationales that can be explored in fic. Like that obsession thing. I like obsession. I like it in small doses or in large: small in real life, large in fantasy. And yaoi is fantasy, as is slash.

Seeing Koji's obsession seeded with such need and (to my eyes) insecurity, plucks at my tired old heart. Watching Izumi resist admitting that he needs anything or anyone, and watching Koji let him get away with it, feeds my co-dependant soul. (And actually, I'm not. I'm distressingly self-sufficient to the point where sometimes co-dependency looks like a good thing even though it's not -- kind of like anorexia if you aren't in any danger of getting it. ?thin is an aspiration, but not a realistic goal. Healthy is realistic.)

So Bronze is gold as far as hitting what I want to see and fantasize and write about. The potential for a healthy relationship is there under the surface, but not likely to be realized because both of them are too proud. Izumi too proud to say, yes I need you, most of the time, and Koji to proud to let Izumi grow beyond his resistance -- because if he became more confident in his need, he might discover he needs something, but it might not be Koji. Now that's a relationship that I can mess with (Or Ozaki can, and does, on a regular basis.)

Maybe because Ozaki does push it, I feel fairly willing to push it as well. They are fiction, so I can break them and have them bounce back. Realism isn't the point of the story, limits are and how far you can exceed them. Reality is the framework materials but not the frame itself, if you see what I mean. Which pretty much states the case for both yaoi and slash as far as I can tell, maybe even for all fan fiction.

You may notice that I've stayed away from commenting on Ozaki's artistic styling, which may be a mistake in any discussion of her work, but it isn't oversight. I grant that it was lovely pictures that caught my eye and first sparked my interest. But in illustrative medium, as well as my more familiar medium of television and cinema, it is frequently the visual that catches my interest. However, it is the story that maintains it, and Koji and Izumi's story certainly did that and still does.

I may not be making any new observations here, but I'm going to give it shot and apologize in advance for any huge plot errors. I am behind on the latest installments (Have the manga but other than summaries, I'm guessing by looking at the pretty pictures.) So we can start with the first five books which became, for the most part, the OVA, which is about as complete as I can get until we skip to the very end and beyond.

I mentioned I like obsession, and for me, I like it best when that obsession has sexual overtones. I actually think in Koji's case, there is more there, but he translates it into desire and that works for me on a lot of levels. My biggest first impression of Koji was one of ennui, that kind of privileged, bargain for your own freedom boredom that is so often the focus of many a novel --especially romances. He was brought up privileged, with responsibilities and issues, yes, and in my mind, the idea that he learned early on never to let anything that really mattered to him become the subject of discussion. When your entire family is into power brokerage, it's a fast way to lose what is most important and at the end of the list is your own sense of self. So what I see in Koji's fascination with Izumi is something he can't contain. Something he has no idea how to keep under wraps because a) it's bigger than he is and b) Izumi makes it damn difficult for him to be subtle about it. Yes, in a certain level of idealism, if he really loved Izumi he would have been far more worried about Izumi's happiness to begin with, but you kind of get the impression that he isn't all that familiar with that kind of love. Whether it was denied him as a child or he insulated himself from it because he saw it leads to pain, isn't really a necessary knowledge to have.

What I see in Koji's past is the idea that he learned not to fight for what he wanted, but to bargain for it. And part of the attraction to Izumi, lo, those many years ago on a soccer field, is being caught off guard by Izumi's absolute determination to fight for and win what he wanted. Even if it was a soccer game. (Or maybe especially if it was a soccer game.) That may seem a pat bit of interpretation but it works for me, because my impression is that until he met Izumi (or saw him) Koji had yet to find anything in his life that he would be willing to fight for, and very likely never thought of anyone as thinking of him as being worth fighting for.

But Koji's revelation is almost in complete opposition to Izumi's experience and expectation. Not privileged, and very much aware of what lengths people will go to to fight for what they want, Izumi does deny himself the opportunity to love at any turn ?or be loved. It was, after all, what left him and his younger siblings orphans. It takes no great stretch to understand why he both resists and is afraid (and thus angered) by Koji's later obsession with him. At the same time though, my brain goes to that place that says, yeah, but he has to wonder what it was about his father and mother that bred that obsession.

We never hear much about Izumi's father (or I haven't): the silent but precipitous object of his mother's attack. What I got from the OVA was no so much payback for the father's infidelity as an unwillingness to let him go or share. Obsession at its dangerous best. What Izumi got out of it was the betrayal, not the passion that drove it. And rather than be betrayed again, he denies any of it, reserving what affection he does feel for his siblings -- but even they he keeps at arms length, providing them with security in the form of an adoptive family, but not the love of a parent to a child. But as children, they love him anyway, and I think, while underplayed in the series from what I've seen, it's that love without condition that keeps him from becoming a totally self-centered bastard.

It is that need on both their parts that attracts me to the pairing at all, because it is there, however obscured by the improbable events that surround them. In slash, the need wouldn't necessarily be there, it would be a matter of seeking out an explanation as to why a pairing would be attracted and if the need were not present you could insert it and then spend several thousand words justifying it. (Note: I'm not slamming that tendency in slash -- it is used, but not at the expense of a good story, I don't think. It's a tool more than anything.) With Koji and Izumi, you don't have to invent it or explain it, really. It is there already, underlying everything they do and everything that motivates them. Even if Ozaki never intended there to be any kind of rationalization or justification for how their relationship works (or doesn't work) she has still given a plethora of possibles from which the framework of rationalization can be built. And that makes Bronze Gold for anyone who really likes mucking about with dysfunctional people and how they build functional relationships.

And Koji and Izumi are functional as a couple. It's not always pretty, there isn't a whole lot of trust it seems, but what they lack in trust they seem to make up for in stubbornness. Izumi can stay with Koji as long as what Koji calls love isn't the same thing Izumi calls love. He can avoid the issues of betrayal by assuming that Koji is already betraying him and it justifies that accusation as a weapon. And Koji has to keep working to prove that isn't true -- he keeps fighting for what he thinks they do have because it's important to him on a level he doesn't always understand, but that his brother is aware of and uses against him at every opportunity.

Which all seems really obvious except it isn't. And it's not the only explanation, if you happen to be of a mind to go looking for rationales, as I am. Because the alchemy process that turns Bronze to Gold is just that for me, a process. Give me this behavior, and I can write a dozen stories on why they act that way. Or take the same behavior and look at it a different way and you have fodder for more stories or even longer discussions.

I like to extrapolate, which may be why I found the excerpt from "Sweet Surrender" at Aestheticism's Dokusen Central to be so compelling. It gave me a set of behaviors, a situation, that wasn't overly defined except as a concept, and by taking what I know (or think I know) about Koji and Izumi, I got to translate those ideas into a different realm. One where I felt the characters, and their connection, continue outside of what may have been Ozaki's intent.

For anyone who writes fanfic that kind of freedom is indeed gold. I mean there is that wonderful visual of two lovely guys together, but by itself that isn't enough or fanfic wouldn't be the phenomena it is. It is as compelling in its own way as the source material that some people go to great lengths to obtain.

Do I see anything different in Koji and Izumi than other fans do? Maybe, maybe not. I know I am capable of idealizing any pairing beyond what is considered reasonable, but idealization doesn't make the chara's any less flawed. What I do see in them is a perfect love contained in imperfect vessels. And I love that.

Gold, I tell you. Solid, shiny, bright gold.