Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, where we discuss the wasted potential of our favourite
plotlines.
You're probably aware of this by now if you've watched enough of this show, but if there's
one thing that pisses me off more than a botched storyline, it's a botched retelling of a storyline
that was already great. One of the prime examples of this is the story of Ayane as she moved
into Dead or Alive 3.
For context: Ayane is the younger half-sister of series protagonist, Kasumi. Both are ninja
of the Mugen Tenshin clan, but from different sects. Their older brother, Hayate, was crippled
by DOA1 final boss, Raidou, who I think was only later revealed as their uncle and Ayane's
father through the rape of their mother. Kasumi then left the village to seek revenge in the
first DOA tournament, killing him in the final match. At the same time, Ayane was dispatched
to hunt Kasumi down and kill her, but failed.
The tournament was secretly a means by which the evil DOATEC would find the best fighter
in the world for experimentation. Project Alpha was cloning Kasumi. Project Epsilon
was abducting and attempting to brainwash Hayate. And Project Omega was abducting and
brainwashing Genra, Ayane's foster father. This proved to be the final straw that led
the ninja into war with DOATEC in DOA4.
But back to DOA3. Ayane and Hayate both viewed stopping Genra as their personal responsibility:
the latter as the eighteenth head of the clan, and the former as Genra's daughter. And this
showed us a very different side of Ayane. I would say that this is the game that humanised
her. In the previous two games, her primary goal had been to kill Kasumi, whose only crime
was running away to avenge her brother's crippling when no one else would, and whose only desire
was to see her brother and return home. In DOA3, though, Ayane had bigger fish to fry,
so she was actually willing to let Kasumi go after beating her, giving her a chance
to go and see Hayate. Speaking of Hayate, Ayane has... let's call it a "deep respect"
for Hayate, so she's normally just a tool at Hayate and the clan's disposal for recon
and message delivery. Here, though, she was willing to defy Hayate and beat him unconscious
to stop him from getting involved in her fight. In the end, Ayane reached the final stage
of the tournament and faced off with Genra, killing him. In her ending, she burned her
foster father's body and took his laser sword and mask, which she was then seen carrying
in DOA4. (Just ignore the fact that she had them in Ultimate as well.)
It's all really well done, and DOA2's remake, DOA Ultimate, made this even more beautifully
tragic with its new opening cutscene, expanding on the backstory of the Mugen Tenshin: Ayane
and Kasumi were childhood friends, but Kasumi, as daughter of the clan's leader, was treated
as a princess, while Ayane was neglected by the rest of the clan. Of course, she didn't
know the reason why until her mother revealed the circumstances of her birth. Other than
her siblings and some old guy (who may not have even been in the clan for all we know),
Genra was the only member of the clan to treat her at all kindly, personally requesting her
transfer to the Hajinmon sect to enter training under him. Following this, she learned of
her conception and dramatically cut off her ponytail so as to less resemble her newly-discovered
sister, for whom a certain resentment was now building, further isolating her from the
rest of the clan. With this added context, her bond with Genra and the emotion of their
battle was only strengthened. It's genuinely beautiful, and could be seen as a contributing
factor to Ayane mellowing out towards Kasumi in DOA4, her father's death putting things
into perspective.
In DOA Dimensions, a more fleshed-out retelling of the first four games, a lot was changed
surrounding DOA3. First off, during the DOA2 portion, Ayane is ambushed by Tengu after
losing to Kasumi. She then disappears until after Tengu's defeat, whereupon she fights
alongside Kasumi's clone against Hayate and Ryu, due to mind control. The control is then
revealed to have been placed on her by Genra who, in this version, is actually not brainwashed
by DOATEC, but instead willingly subjects himself to their experiments to gain more
power for... reasons?
This is bizarre because, early on, Ultimate's intro is played unaltered (aside from removing
Aerosmith's Dream On) with Genra requesting Ayane to join him, but it doesn't factor into
any plans to emotionally manipulate her, so it feels out-of-place with his heartless new
persona.
And Ayane has nothing to say about this betrayal. Nothing. And worse, her two big moments of
character development are ruined. That moment where she defies Hayate as a sign of her conviction?
Now, it's used as a blocking tutorial and a fight for Hayate, suggesting that he counters
her every move and fucking thrashes her. And her moment with Kasumi is ruined because she's
actively pursuing her now... just to tell her she doesn't care about pursuing her in
the cutscene they lifted from the original. What?
And then, there's the confrontation itself. Here, she shares the spotlight with Hayate.
My guess is that, because Hayate was the only ninja who had never beaten a boss, they felt
that they should have him share Ayane's spotlight, possibly motivated by the fact that he views
this as his responsibility as well? Personally, I'd have had him beat the final boss of DOA5
the following year, but whatever. That alone is bad enough, but the two can't even beat
him together until Ryu dives in and impales him with his sword to hold him in place...
somehow? Only then can the other two get him with a joint ninpo blast, killing him. Then,
we roll Ayane's DOA3 ending, unaltered, and it carries precisely none of the original
version's impact, because all of the context behind that original scene is completely ruined.
She's not crying because she had to kill her own father, one of the few people who ever
treated her with respect. She's crying because it turned out he was a dick. Fuck you.
This ties into the game's larger issue of inserting Ryu into goddamn everything. He
intervenes in Kasumi's fight with Raidou to give her the edge. He gets her out of the
DOATEC facility, rather than her jsut escaping on her own, as was originally implied. It's
his idea for Kasumi and Hayate to fight to help restore the latter's memory. Yes, he's
a very popular, very important character, but he should not be eating into the accomplishments
of others from the original versions of events. You're turning Ryu Goddamn Hayabusa into Quan
Chi. Fucking tone it down.
It's also a sign of how much weaker a character Ayane has become in the post-Itagaki entries.
She's overly-emotional and immature, even moreso than she was originally. I get that
she's only sixteen in the original four games, making her the second youngest fighter, but
it still seems a bit much. She tries to take Raidou on her own, despite the fact that he
single-handedly bodied a ton of guys, including herself and Hayate, only a few days earlier.
She gets mad that Hitomi assumes she's Kasumi and they fight. Her relationship with Eliot
is like a tsundere crush, with her flying off the handle for no reason and childishly
storming off after he pays her a compliment. In the scene where she tries to defy Hayate
and fails, she can't escape the grasp of the drunken Brad Wong and actually has to call
Hayate for help! Christie manages to abduct Irene from right beside Ayane without her
notice, an action that is repeated with Honoka in DOA6. She teleports in between Ryu and
Hayate's ninpo blasts to get them to stop, forcing them to curve their blasts away from
her to avoid an Ash Ketchum scenario. And after Dimensions, she seems a little uneven
in whether or not she's out to get "the traitor", but I can chalk that one up to Ayane herself
being unsure about the state of their relationship.
What I can't accept in that manner, however, is that there is a scene in Dimensions where,
when she badmouths Kasumi in front of Hayate, he slaps her across the face (because Dimensions
really has a thing for anime face slaps) and she, honest to God, is about to attempt suicide
because she thinks Hayate hates her, and is brought down by the woman who abandoned her
to scorn and poverty. Are you fucking kidding me, sir?
Ayane was originally an antagonistic force whose motivations became more clear over time,
with her tragic backstory managing to make her quite sympathetic, in spite of her attitude
towards Kasumi. It was understandable, even if you didn't find it justifiable. That's
not to say she necessarily made total sense, of course. After all, remember that time she
pretended to be the one who assassinated Helena's mother with a sniper rifle? ...The fuck was
that about? But from Dimensions onwards, I just don't understand or like her character.
The backstory is the same, but both of her fathers were evil and working for DOATEC,
so it not only weakens DOA3's narrative, which had by far the most emotional weight behind
it of all the DOA games, but it's also repetitive now. I mean, it says a lot that the least
terrible father now is Bass, whose motivation half the time is to crush his daughter's dreams.
She makes a lot more mistakes, to the point of seeming incompetent, which isn't part of
a retroactive development arc because she's still getting fooled by the same tricks by
DOA6. She and Kasumi are clearly on much better terms from DOA5-onwards, but we still have
to have our Kasumi vs Ayane fight in every game, like they were Scorpion and Sub-Zero.
And before we go, I need to briefly discuss how Ayane was handled in DOA6, because it
is baffling. In DOA6, Honoka is revealed as Ayane's half-sister, as she too is a daughter
of Raidou, who is brought back from the dead. But this suffered from Netherrealm-tier mishandling.
For one, the resurrection comes about five minutes before the credits roll, and Hayate,
Ayane and Kasumi put him down again before he can do anything, making one wonder why
they even bothered. The resurrection seems to only exist to give the story a final boss
and set up the more important resurrection for the next game. Honoka never learns about
her connection with Ayane and Raidou, and Ayane is captured right after the reveal and
wakes up to take part in the finale, so it has no effect on either of the two girls until
the next game. And then, during the finale, it's Hayate who holds Raidou's attention.
Not his daughter and not the woman who killed him. It's the twenty-three year old he bashed
against a tree that he focuses on. Raidou's only acknowledgement of either lady is taunting
Hayate about hiding behind a woman, which is just a call-back to the DOA Ultimate intro,
where he said the same thing after batting Ayane aside. If you were gonna call back to
any previous line, it should have been Ayane telling Kasumi she couldn't "let [her] have
this one" back in DOA3. Instead of exploring Raidou's relationships that they couldn't
previously, DOA6 has no idea what to do with the character and uses him and revelations
surrounding him for cheap fanservice, with Ayane's story really getting nothing out of
it. All that's really changed for her is that she's kinda friends with Honoka and Marie
now, and that's about it.
Kasumi: "Is this... Ayane?"
No. Not, it is not. I feel like Itagaki had a much firmer grasp on this character and
her arc, and it makes me wonder what he planned for her with DOA5 and Code Cronos before his
departure, other than her killing Miyako. She gets by fine in Ninja Gaiden, at least,
but she's really more of a plot device in that series than an actual character, showing
up to give stuff to Ryu and help him out.
Dimensions really dropped the ball between this, the nonessential characters being relegated
to cameos that your character interrupts for a fight, and the general ramping up of dumb
anime bullshit. And don't even get me started on the Irene thing. Yet...
If you liked this video, why not subscribe and support me on Patreon like these fine
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with you.
Today's recommended video is Cvit's recent video on the Ninja Gaiden trilogy. Yes, I
know it's not DOA, but you try finding DOA content on YouTube to shill. Besides, Warriors
All-Stars counts Ayane as a Ninja Gaiden character, and more to the point, it's a really good
video.