#basically his introduction scene in MGS1

[pancreasmachinebroke]

I love toxic ex Gray Fox

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Thoughts on Johnny and Meryl from The Metal Gear Solid Franchise

Alright, so I've been watching Stream Four Star's retrospective streams of the Metal Gear franchise. This was actually my first introduction into the Metal Gear world. I never played the games when I was younger, I really had no idea what it was about. Now that I've been introduced to the world, the stuff in DBZA about Princess Snake makes a whole lot more sense, is super funny, and I finally understand what TeamFourStar was doing there. I actually really like the world of Metal Gear, I think it's super fascinating and I'm honestly glad that my introduction to this franchise took place well into my adult years instead of my teenage years because I feel like the intricacies of this world would've just flown right over teen!bluephoenixrises's head. I definitely feel like I can appreciate this franchise more as an adult as opposed to a teenager. The world is super interesting. It feels very real but at the same time does a perfect job of being completely unrealistic at the same time, it's really just this perfect blend of real world type of stuff mixed in with anime nonsense and I love it. Plus, there is so much super cool, super fun meta going on in this series.

But I'm not here to ramble about the Metal Gear franchise in its entirety, just one aspect of it. I just wanted to let everyone know this is a franchise I'm really enjoying and you should check it out if you're so inclined. Also, I wanted to state that I am new to the Metal Gear franchise so any of you hardcore fans reading this will hopefully cut me a little bit of slack if I don't 100% know what I'm talking about. Spoilers ahead, just so you know.

I'm actually here to talk about the relationship between Johnny Sasaki/Akiba and Meryl Silverburgh. Now, before I even got to MGS4, I had been spoiled about the Johnny/Meryl relationship and when I was spoiled, I was like, "okay, that's really cheesy and cliche, I'm not sure if I'm going to like that when I actually see it." And when I got to it, was it cheesy and cliche? Yes. Did I hate it? Surprisingly, no. I kind of liked it. I don't think their relationship was executed perfectly but I certainly do like them as a couple. Was it a little rushed? Yes. But was it unearned? I don't think so.

First of all, Meryl is a great character. I really enjoy her. I liked in MGS1, we meet her as this tough as nails soldier on the outside but on the inside, is really "green" and is just trying to understand who she really is and the kind of person she wants to be. She has these dreams of heroism and the like and she definitely projects her desire to be a hero onto Snake. By the end of the game, she still doesn't really know who or what she wants to be, but she realizes it's her choice to make which parallels pretty well with Snake going through his identity issues as well about not being a soldier simply because he has to, actively making the choice himself. And when we meet Meryl again in MGS4, she's this total badass, commander of her own unit, you can tell she is perfectly comfortable with who she is. But she still holds this fantasy of heroism, that fantasy still drives her. It's not necessarily about her being a hero but her applying heroism to those around her. She and Snake spend a little bit of the game at odds because of her projecting her heroism ideals onto him because she still sees him as the war hero she always thought of him as during their time in MGS1. She's at odds with her father because up until recently, she'd believed the man that was her father was actually her uncle. Basically, she's the child of an affair which makes it hard to reconcile seeing her father as the hero she used to see him as. She sees her father as a cheater and not worthy of the title of "hero". I bring up her hero projection issues because it plays a big part in her relationship with Johnny.

Johnny, throughout the franchise, has always been this background character. He doesn't actually get any sort of real characterization until MGS4. But man, when the franchise finally gave him some characterization, I really liked him. I just like that he's so different from a lot of the other characters. He's not the tough as nails, brooding hero. He's kind of a goof, he suffers from irritable bowel syndrome which affects him at really bad times. But he is a hero in his own way. For most of MGS4, we notice that whenever the system is being taken over, the nano machines in every soldier's brain causes them to go haywire. But Johnny always remains unaffected because he refused the nano machine injections. He's afraid of needles so he ducked out on the injections but it was also his goal to be on Meryl's team so he knew he would be at a disadvantage without the nano machines. Having the nano machines essentially means that the entire team can work as one but since Johnny secretly never took the nano machines, he was always out of sync with the rest of the team and the rest of the team saw him as more of an annoyance than anything else. But when Johnny confesses to Meryl about the nano machines, she realizes she had Johnny pegged all wrong. She saw initially saw Johnny as a bit of a goof, someone she couldn't really and truly respect but when he comes clean, she realizes exactly how brave and strong-willed Johnny truly is. She sees him as a hero. She had always been seeking out this idea of a hero and constantly applying those terms to Snake and her father and then constantly being let down when they couldn't live up to those expectations. But through Johnny, she sees the wide array heroes can come in and realizes the difference between the hero she wants and the hero she needs. The hero she wants is a fantasy, something that's seeped in dreams, it's not tangible but here she sees Johnny as not necessarily the hero she always envisioned finding and becoming but still possesses all the qualities a hero should have but just in a different way -- the hero she needs.

There's also another aspect in that Johnny reveals he's been in love with her since he first saw her in MGS1. And he joined her team in MGS4 because he wanted to be near her and be able to protect her. She sees this as dependability, someone who truly sees her and actively sought her out and puts her on top of his priority list. This plays into the issue she has with her father. She has a bit of an axe to grind because of her father's cheating and the fact that she's the child of an affair. It makes her feel that she can't trust anyone. But then, here's Johnny who tells her straight up and that he's here completely for her. She sees the potential in Johnny that he won't let her down, that he won't disappoint her.

Now granted, the whole Johnny being in love with Meryl since MGS1 is kind of where I have problems with the relationship because we're not actually shown much of anything from Johnny's perspective. Like I said, he was a background character until MGS4, so there's not really a whole lot of foundation for his feelings for Meryl. She beats him up and steals his clothes, that's basically their relationship MGS1. And then he mentions in passing how attractive she was in MGS2. Not a whole lot to go off of so you have to do a bit of head canoning when thinking about his side of the attraction. I mean, it could be as simple as Johnny being attracted to powerful women. I also like to think that when Meryl was shot by Sniper Wolf and then subsequently captured and tortured by Liquid Snake that Johnny was around, he did witness the things that happened to her and greatly admired her strength and will power to overcome it and that's where his feelings really stem from. But that's just a small part of the relationship dynamic I kind of had an issue with. On Meryl's sides of things, their relationship makes sense and is earned but not so much on Johnny's side textually. But, hey, imagination and head canons are what makes stories fun so I don't fault the franchise too much for it and I still really like the relationship.

So we get the totally cheesy scene where in the middle of a battle, Johnny confesses everything to Meryl and asks her to marry him in which she refuses only because she believes in doing things herself so she asks him to marry her instead and he accepts. Then they spend the battle watching each other's backs and talking about their future. Like I said, totally cheesy but still, it touched me and it's really cute and I love it. I also love that without the nano machines in play, Johnny and Meryl are actually in perfect sync with each other, constantly helping each other in that battle, watching the other's back so you really get this visual sense that although at first they might not seem compatible, they actually kind of are. The other teammates had to have nano machines in order for that compatibility in battle to work, but you take the nano machines out of the equation and you see how natural it is for these two and I love it. So I really enjoyed that.

Basically, I never had a difficult time believing in this relationship. A little bit of head canoning on Johnny's side, but really everything else is there. I love the relationship these two have, the mutual respect they found in each other, and I would be totally down for a spin-off game featuring these two. Probably never going to happen but hey, dreams are allowed.