See perhaps that’s the issue I have; that sort of viewpoint is one that I like to have when reading a story the moment I start reading it. Yes they are a reminder and a representation, but do we, as readers, really need this representation? Can we not gain the same sort of appreciation by viewing it solely from the character and human perspective, without needing the help of a metaworld?
The examples you’ve given are exactly the things I appreciated out of all of Chiru. Seeing the story from a different perspective of the characters was a pretty good way of telling a multi-faceted story. Seeing the history of Natsuhi, the background between Battler and Beatrice’s relationship, and the tale of the impossible love between Yasu’s numerous personas was the highlight of Chiru, for me. But every other scene, I’m dragged back into the metaworld and forced to look at these things not from a human perspective, but from a meta storytelling perspective.
But, why the need of such a metaworld? This entire mindset can be so much more beautifully crafted by simply listening to the words and actions surrounding Ange; we don’t need a characterization of her internal struggle, because I feel that’s something that we, as people, should struggle by ourselves to understand, as it will help us understand the motives of a person a lot better.
I guess what I want to say now is that, despite it only being a single facet of Chiru, I felt it drew away from the appreciation of the rest of the characters of Rokkenjima. I wanted to explore their personalities in my own way; the way one would explore the personalities of people they would meet in real life with dialogue. Instead I am given a representation of a persona that I can no longer relate to as a human because, well, they are just representations. So I had absolutely no emotion seeing what happened to Erika except for “yeah you right” because I don’t see her as a person who grew up with these motivations in mind; I see her as a device that the author used to represent a mindset that he later showed to have flaws.
I want to see people and characters for who they are and what they do, and not have to use representations within a metaworld to try and understand them.