The thing about discourse around Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Monomyth is that it’s based on a bunch of observations that I’m not even sure he intended to claim universally applied to absolutely all stories as much as it often seems like he was.
Even when we take the observation that the Return Section involves three mutually exclusive options that can’t coexist in a story with only one timeline thus moving the total number of bullet points down from 17 to 15, you’ll still be hard pressed to find any story that actually does all 15 with the analysis being forced to really stretch some parts, even in the stories most said to be directly intentionally following Campbell like Star Wars.
However that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful and fun to notice the points that apply intentionally or not. And I also want to note that different Story Structure models we talk about aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as we sometimes paint them. So for example a Japanese writer who’s been influenced by Western Stories can write in the Kishotenketsu structure and still have pieces of the Hero’s Journey influencing beats within those Acts.
One aspect of the Hero’s Journey that rarely happens in modern stories in a remotely straightforward manner is that idea that there is a Boon or Elixir in the “Other World” that the Hero has to find and bring back to his world for the benefit of his world. I’m calling it the Elixir mainly because of Blue’s video on the topic on the OverSarcastic YouTube Channel.
The desire to apply this to Star Wars or LOTR or Narnia or The Matrix or any number of Superhero films requires highly abstracting all of it. Now that the “Other World” isn’t actually a completely different world or even always a different part of it geographically speaking is fine actually, it’s everything else that I find kinda funny how you have to really force it to apply.
One exception is the 1984 Supergirl film, I remember on IMDB back in the day at least one poster really invested in saying that film is the most perfect encapsulation of the Hero’s Journey, and I do see why they would feel that way. In the case of this topic the Omegahedron is the Elixir.
I also recall Leonard Nimoy talking about this in the Audio Commentary for Star Trek IV The Voyage Home where in that film the Elixir is the Whales.
But what I really find fascinating in this context is the 2019 TV Anime adaptation of the 1996 Adventure Game titled YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It really turns out to be a fascinating fusion of Kishotenketsu and the Hero’s Journey.
First of all the fact that in Kishotenketsu the “twist” happens close to the halfway point is perfectly represented by how the actual transportation to the Isekai world happens a few episodes into the Second Cour.
But in this context the Elixir is the Saikite that Takuya needs to save Kanna. That he’s doing it for one Girl instead of the entire world fits in with common Otaku Media tropes quite well actually.
The last point is a difference from the original game however, I imagine it’s a change many fans dislike but for me it constantly proves to be a crux why I find the Anime so incredibly good and underrated.
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