Nov 23 2007 07:56 PM I wondered if anyone else was as disturbed as I was by the blatant and prolific depictions of smoking in this anime. If one counted how many times Mayama and Hanamoto-sensei are depicted as smoking or lighting up vs. the number of times they appear in scenes of the show, I think the results would be pretty shocking. I mean it's practically a 1:1 ratio.
I understand that having a character constantly lighting up or with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth has become something of a stock persona in anime/manga and aids in characterization. But I can't help but think that there are better ways of doing so. Are we really supposed to infer that being a smoker automatically means that person has certain character traits? How realistic is that?
And to have two such characters as majors in the show is just excessive (not to mention boring). This kind of short hand character design seems lazy and ineffective. Not to mention all that stuff about use of product placements and smoking in the media, blah, blah, blah.
/rant