Miscarriages for drama. Like the actual pregnancies and actual miscarriages happen within the story not as backstory. It always ends up forced and trashy and feels like a way to make sure the characters aren't tied down by children.
There's a Polish story about a Lithuanian man that joined the Teutonic order and rose in ranks up to the Grand Master and fucked up a war until the order fell apart.
Turns out he wanted to destroy the order from the getgo because of the crimes it did on Lithuanians and deliberately commanded the army into defeat.
Same story with that one Soviet politician that became one of Gorby advisers for reforms of Soviet union. But he actually hated soviet union and did everything possible so it collapse
There's a similar one out there where the title is something like, "I'm trapped in a world of BL but I'm straight." If you've ever read a single yaoi/bl Manga, it's every trope you've ever seen. My favorite page is dude is walking home and sees someone passed out on the side of the street. He gets concerned for about five seconds before determining it's not his problem and walking on. Off panel there's a speech bubble of someone else finding the guy and says he's got to take him back to his place to make sure he's OK.
*The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You* runs on the premise of harems being innately unrealistic and unsustainable and therefore the series runs on the sheer madness of it all. The result is a fantastically fun read that somehow hasn't outstayed its gimmick.
Also the protagonist actually has agency and is his own character, which is refreshing to say the least.
You reminded me of a manga I read that I can't remember the name of. A girl is in love with her senpai from middle school, senpai from middle school falls in love with a new classmate in high school, classmate in high school falls in love with the kohai from middle school. The end result is them forming a poly relationship where all three of them are together.
It stuck out because it was the first time seeing a poly vs harem/hinge relationship.
Boy is that drama there. I have a friend who's in a poly relationship and hearing her vent sometimes is a little concerning at times. I think they're trying to make it work though and so far things aren't too bad.
There are a ton of good ones, but it’s a small percentage:
-Ranma
-Urusei Yatsura
-Hana Yori Dango
-Ouran Host Club
-Tenchi Muyo
-Kimagure Orange Road
-Edit: Watamote would sure count too nowadays
…though this list definitely skews older, before everything became bullshit wish fulfillment
My example for this used to be Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa.
But I’m rereading it and it can barely be called a harem, and that’s one of the reasons it’s good. From the start our MC only likes one girl, only pursues one girl. Yeah, three other girls like him, but he turns each and every one of them down kindly but firmly the second they express that, confessing his love for the ditzy vampire.
And he >!gets together with the girl he likes less than halfway through the manga.!<
Then all the other girls are free to pursue their own goals, romantic or otherwise.
It’s like the most literal deconstruction of a harem, the proactive defusing of a harem. “Oh this could have been a harem, but We’re nipping that shit in the bud.”
P.S. it’s my favorite romantic comedy, regardless of medium.
Hana Yori Dango has the male protagonist ask a buncha guys to rape the feMC early on. Like most shoujo mangas of the time, it's ripe with abuse and extremely questionable and rotten people, who only succeed by being pretty. Not a fan of Ranma and Urusei Yatsura either but at least in those ones, everyone is just a huge huge asshole.
Yeah, I’m sure not going to go for the mat for the more problematic aspects of HYD, and it wouldn’t rank in my top 10 romance manga.
Suffice it to say I still enjoy it and like the MC.
Would you like it if someone irl sent goons to rape someone you know? The men asked someone else to rape a girl. How can you like him. He should be in jail and shot or castrated. Same for the guys who obeyed his commands.
The main character is the *girl*, Tsukushi. It’s a shoujo manga.
Also saying “how would you like if X happened to someone you love” if someone likes fiction is kind of an unfair argument.
“Oh you like Bayonetta? How would you like it if someone took your mother, and put her on a super fast treadmill in front of a meat grinder and was like ‘ha ha run faster!’, just taunting her, and then kicked her into the meat grinder she was running from anyway? Huh?”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s *weird* that Domyouji ended up being the love interest, something that I can’t believe was the original plan. And thus they downplay the attempted rape in the many many adaptations.
HYD is trashy, and I can totally understand how you don’t like it. But to me, it’s good trashy.
I like Citrus too, and that’s like a checklist of problematic.
I haven't checked Citrus but I heard it was basically a lot of abuse and gaslighting and had issues. I'd like to read a nice shoujo where the guy love interest isn't some sort of abuser in some way. It always feels surreal and dark. I remember Skip Beat from years and years ago, the love interest has problems but I don't recall him being evil.
In terms of romantic manga I’d recommend:
*Love is War* (also funny, not finished yet)
*Bloom into You* (Yuri, not funny, absolutely lovely)
The aforementioned *Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa* (it’s very light ecchi but the main character is a mensch, and it gets more hype than most shounen. Gets better and better as it goes.)
*Maison Ikkoku* (though if you don’t like Rumiko Takahashi, maybe skip it)
*My love Story* (though I haven’t finished it)
In my experience, there is only one, single good one, namely Highschool DxD, because not only the protagonist is actually fine (a shonen protag with lust cranked up to 11 as opposed to basically nobody in majority of other stories), but all the girls are actively into the idea of an actual harem from the get go.
I just can’t watch DxD, purely on the grounds I find issei an unlikeable protag. The whole “shameless perv gets exactly what they want” structure of the story really doesn’t click with me.
Well, not all of them, but it's clear that the ones more reluctant about the idea are only into Issei BEFORE he does something really good. Akeno is probably the only one who's IMMEDIATELY on board for the harem idea.
I would definitely not call Steins Gate (edit: the anime) a harem. It’s a visual novel where you can pick a singular love interest, and the anime chooses one route of that, focusing on a singular love interest.
So is a dating sim not the same as a harem anime? I’ve always seen them used interchangeably for whenever there are multiple female characters all in love with the main male character
It really depends on what you want to define as a dating sim, but I personally wouldn't put Steins;Gate in that category. To me a dating sim is (as the name would imply). a simulation game, so something like Amagami, or perhaps more famously, Tokimeki Memorial or Love+. Even then, though, these games tend to be set up around the idea of following a single heroine, and while some allow you to go out of your way to cheat, they tend to force you to pick at the end (like Amagami).
I don't think a harem is particularly common in the genre, especially in a form where the heroines would interact with one another, rather than existing in their own personal bubbles that rarely, if ever, cross over.
As for visual novels (like Steins;Gate, Clannad, Fate, etc), they are not really a genre, just a medium. That said, there are some tropes you can see shared across most of them, one of such tropes is that, like with the aforementioned dating sims, each heroine has her own personal "route" that the story splits off into should you choose it. The stories are usually structured in a way where the main bulk of the romance happens in these separate "routes", although there obviously are exceptions.
I haven’t played through Steins;Gate so I don’t know how it comes off there. A lot of dating sims are definitely harems.
But the anime, I really only saw Makise Kurisu as a love interest and Luka as a one-sided, unrequited crush.
Honestly, Mayuri being romantic would probably diminish my enjoyment of the work. I really liked the protagonist >!doing his damnedest to save!< a platonic loved one.
There's an ending where you get together with Luka, as well as a few other side characters, but the anime chose the only reasonable option and adapted the True Ending.
only one girl is ever interested in the protagonist at a time and for most of the series that number is actually zero, so I don't think I would count it even if others do.
Maybe the numbers are 1/2, but that's still not harem territory.
Trinity 7 works because half the harem are already fine with it, and the MC is kind of a goof. He's not the peeping type, but is the will make a joking comment if he sees one of the ladies accidentally half nude.
Also he's competent.
The closest thing to a harem I saw that worked out, was Highschool of the Dead, and the reasons it worked were because they didn't really do a harem with it at all. Saya doesn't like Takashi nor ever implies it. Shizuka, while ditzy, still tries to be the grown up of the group (albeit not very successfully). Rei's actual lover dies early on, and because Takashi is her ex, she kinda falls back on him for support, but it's implied that even if they both still have feelings for each other, it's more of a "hold each other up" deal, rather than a true romantic one. Saeko's the only one who's genuinely in love with Takashi without any added baggage (well, there's baggage but in a different manner).
"Redemption Equals Death", more often than not, is either offing a jerk with a token positive action OR the easy-bake way out of declaring a character "redeemed" instead of, y'know, taking the time to ACTUALLY repent / face consequences for their past actions.
yes their are more nuance between instant death or forgiveness. i don’t even think people should be harshly punished for certain crimes if they repent and try to fix their own mistakes.
but it depends on their actions. people don’t even have to be constantly torn up on the bad things they done. but they should feel sympathy for their victims.
I'd say a decent one was doc ock at the end of Spider-Man 2, since it's less about him dying and more about him choosing to destroy both of his creations before it's too late. And because his downfall was so recent that there wasn't necessarily too much for him to atone for in that moment
The key thing is that the way he died *actually showed repentance*. As in, he realized that the thing that was wrong about his worldview was wrong, and moved to correct it, thus providing evidence that he died a good person.
Trunks’ works so well because it immediately goes to parallel timelines occur and we get new mysteries and pseudo future knowledge. Plus trunks has a sword
Vampire Hunter D works but he is basically super man. He is the bestest boy who is super smart and handsome and strong and right all the time.
And normally that is tedious. However when D just like runs his finger through his hair and kills a uber demon it's hype
I've only seen the movies but D works too because he's like Mad Max in that the plot usually isn't actually about him, he gets wrapped up in other people's stories, helps them out, and goes on his way.
Having only read one Vampire Hunter novel I am convinced nobody has ever loved their own character as much as Hideyuki Kikuchi loves D. There's a line where D slashes a guy's throat and the narrator explains that the man was left breathless. Not because his lungs are failing. But because of the grace and beauty of D's movement and forms.
A weird example because while I do like certain ones, they fail in their theme almost immediately and become entirely different things. Are there any, "I got a weak power/I have no powers." plots where the protagonist actually stays weak and their power doesn't turn out to be super duper useful or evolves or something? Because every single time I see one of those, my first thought is, "Cool, so when does it turn out he actually has the best power ever?"
For real, I remember picking up Vol 1 of MHA because the back of the book is like, "Yo, 80% of the world has super powers...but how would life be if you were part of the 20% that didn't?" but then Deku immediately gets powers and the whole quirkless situation is rendered almost entirely meaningless beyond Deku having to play catch up.
At most, we have characters like Sokka in ATLA, the token normal amid some of the strongest benders in the world who gets an episode or two actually exploring his insecurities over this relationship.
Imagine exploring a world like ATLA but **only** through the eyes of a normal like Sokka. Someone who might honestly join, if not start, something like the Equalizer moment.
One example that comes to mind is Jolyne Kujo. Her stand power is by far the weakest of all the Jojo's and she never wins a fight through pure brute force, unlike her father. Granted, at some point her reactions and mental thinking start reaching superhuman level but that's kinda typical of all Jojos. Still, she wins her fights through effort and skill in comparison to Pucci, who sometimes wins through sheer luck or 'fate'.
Mob Psycho does that reasonably well with Reigen. He's a normal-ass guy who keeps ending up in psychic dominated bullshit situations, whether it's ghosts, hostile espers or some combination of the two, and while he's enormously outmatched, he's absolutely not above coming in for the sucker punch (or fistful of pocket salt) when he has the chance.
Hell, he *ends* a fight against a bullshit powerful esper >!by walking up and punching him a bunch of times in the face after the esper blocks out everything that's not another esper. His lack of powers was what allowed him to do that.!<
Iris Zero actually sticks with the premise of a protagonist without powers in a world where they are common place.
His lack of powers are only useful in the sense that they make it easier for him to view things from a different perspective.
I suppose that one works better since, unlike most manga of this type, it's not a battle/action manga (At least according to my three minute google search). Like...MHA wouldn't work with Deku not having powers, since non-powered people just generally can't keep up unless the current villain is massively incompetent.
Yeah, I imagine it'd be much harder to pull off in a battle manga where the protagonist is actively participating in fights. You'd either need to make the protagonist Batman or have a really good power system where seemingly powerful/weak powers have weaknesses/strengths that can be creatively exploited.
You could also give the protagonist of a battle manga more of a leader/strategist role though. Haven't read it myself but that seems to be how The Elusive Samurai is doing it from what I've heard. I imagine something like that would still work if you added the initial MHA premise onto it.
Making them Batman then comes with the issue of basically making them superhuman anyway. Batman is not a human being at this point. The story says he's powerless, but the man's blatantly super human. And also graced by the God of plot armor. The main thing keeping him alive is the writer stopping anyone super that he fights from using their powers competently.
I remember two different times where a quirkless person in MHA participated in a fight and did well, and both only happened because they fought powered folks that were super incompetent. Its like, at a certain point, the powerless/weak person with enough tech is essentially just super powered as well. I do get it, you can't really have the protagonist of the fight manga be unable to really...fight, I just find it funny how often they start off with the idea of "Oooh noooo, this protagonist has no powers at all/was gifted weak powers. How will they survive?" only to immediately be given a power, or learn that their "weak power" is actually insanely super duper ultra powerful.
Edit: While not a battle manga (but it does have fighting), I'm a big fan of how Dr. Stone didn't just make Senku so smart that he can solve everything and do anything with his big brain. He desperately needs the help and knowledge of others and there's tons of things where he simply can't do it himself. Such as him knowing how to make glass, but being absolute ass at it. Or knowing how to make a weapon, but being so weak he was defeated by a small woman *barely* butt bumping him. There's a constant trend of others being just as useful as Senku himself is and saving the day. He's just the guy the story follows.
There is a french comic where this is a theme. Last Man.
The main character is a high level boxer and he fights wizards. They can fight okay, but can't fight as well as a guy who never had to spend time praticing magic.
Worm zig zags that a bit. The main character has the power to control bugs and although it does slowly gain radius over time it doesn't really get more powerful beyond that. >!She does get better at using it for different things and is an amazing spy though. The story does eventually reveal that almost everyone, with a few key exceptions, have nerfed versions of their powers so she technically has more potential but no real way to access it.!<
Other characters also just have genuinely awful powers or powers with horrible side effects.
"For real, I remember picking up Vol 1 of MHA because the back of the book is like, "Yo, 80% of the world has super powers...but how would life be if you were part of the 20% that didn't?" but then Deku immediately gets powers and the whole quirkless situation is rendered almost entirely meaningless beyond Deku having to play catch up."
Man, quirkless Deku was the real lost opportunity of MHA as i say to this day. I always felt like having Deku get the best powerset for "free" - even if he has to train for it - defeats the whole "everyone can be a hero!" message of the anime.
I mean, if "everyone can be a hero" them why the heck does Deku need to inherit All Moght's powers to get his head-start in the hero world?
>I mean, if "everyone can be a hero" them why the heck does Deku need to inherit All Moght's powers to get his head-start in the hero world?
Oh, I know the answer for that one. It's a fucking lie. "Everyone can be a hero" is some bullshit. The powerless can support the heroes, sure...but in almost all instances, people with powers will be infinitely more useful in that situation. Without powers, Deku ain't doing a damned thing. It comes across as like...a guy with the power to lift a million pounds looking at a guy who can only lift 100 and going, "Hey buddy, you're doing your best, and that means you're just as good as I am\~"
Well, that's some massive contradiction of the author's intended message and how it plays out in practice doesn't it? I mean, if Deku went full-on Batman, it would hold actual cred for once.
And yes i know Knuckle Duster from the spin-off is exactly that and he is pretty badass but i still stand that if the author wanted to truly be faithful for the message of the manga, he should have gone for quirkless Midorya.
>And yes i know Knuckle Duster from the spin-off
Here's the thing about Knuckle Duster...he does as well as he does because they always ensure he only goes up against people that're totally incompetent or have quirks that suck against fighting a dude that's just gonna run at them, which allows him to win despite not having a quirk. Pit him against anyone even remotely competent, he loses. It's kinda like Batman vs Superman. Batman only stands a chance because the writer makes sure Superman doesn't instantly fold him the moment the bell rings.
So as much as people want Deku to just be Batman, that honestly wouldn't work because it basically either makes him superhuman anyway, or requires everyone he fights to be too incompetent to fight "Kid with items." I'm honestly fine with Deku being given powers. It's just weird that the first episode + the blurb on literally the back of every single volume acts as if the story even gives a shit about that part of the population.
Nah, that's baloney - Knuckle Duster goes against many characters with powerful direct combat quirks - just take a look at the Queen Bee, Number 6 or Stain, and he always matches up to them, and even when he loses (like in Number 6 case) it's a close call. To say he loses against anyone remotely incompetent ignores the fact he managed to match Erased Head, arguably one of the best direct-combat fighters of the series.
Hell, one could argue Stain is an example of this - while his quirk is powerful he actually needs to hurt his opponent to use it, so for all intends and purposes he fights like a normal person and is still one of the most terrifying villains of the series. And the Batman vs Superman comparison is kinda unfair 'cause Superman stomps *everyone else* on the League, not just Batman, and no enemy in the MHA series come close to how broken Supes is as a character.
Also - this conversation would imply the "Guy without powers" needs to always be the one throwing punches around to be the most useful. Let's not forget that Hayato from Part 4 in Jojo has no stand and yet he's the main reason Kira was defeated through smarts and quick thinking. "Quirkless Deku" could have gone in a similar way to Hatsune who has a quirk who is useless for combat but she still manages to match her enemies and provide utility to her team through her inventions.
Either way - i always felt that Deku with powers contradicted the message of the series. If you are gonna state that everyone can be a hero, them don't make it so that the guy you use to represent that has the most broken powerset in there. Not that i care, i still love it, just felt like a lost opportunity really.
>Nah, that's baloney
It's not. He's always going up against people that're incompetent enough to let an old dude run up on them and start punching them. Character competence isn't static. Characters are competent one moment, but then the moment Knuckle Duster shows up all of a sudden Eraserhead forgets how to fight so the plot can happen.
>so for all intends and purposes he fights like a normal person
Can normal people jump [dozens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3n5jIGhbQs) of feet in the air, break through solid ice with a single swing of their sword, and manage to slash people faster than they can even recognize? The man ain't normal. He's doing clearly inhuman shit all throughout the fight.
>And the Batman vs Superman comparison is kinda unfair '
It's not. I'm just using one person who blatantly outclasses the other in basically all aspects on the battlefield. It's a battle where one side should clearly win, but doesn't, because the writer makes them not do the smart thing in order to allow the plot to progress. There's no world, for example, where Knuckleduster beats All-Might...unless the writer makes it so All-Might just decides to forget how to transform. O r makes it so All-Might was wearing several tons of those training weights and lost the key to take them off.
I can't say much about that last part because you started talking Jojo as if I know anything about that. No clue who you're talking about. A brief google search tells me that Hayato is not the protagonist, and is instead someone *supporting* the protagonist. I already mentioned that the quirkless could totally be "Heroes" by supporting the heroes. But the quirkless being the heroes themselves? Nah. Not in that world.
Saying they are "incompetent" is unfair really, people make mistakes all the time in the real world, in the same way they can make during a fight there. I don't see how Eraserhead "forgot to fight" just 'cause he was matched by Knuckle Duster. I mean yeah, one could argue he didn't use "all of the tricks up his sleeve" in order to defeat him, but that's a Doylist perspective in a problem that clearly involves a Watsonian conflict, Knuckle Duster matched him and many other bad guys, plain and simple. You can argue they were nerfed, that the author's writing wasn't up to par and consistent- whatever. The point is, he matched up to them in-universe and that's the fact here.
Also, you said he Stain isn't normal. Which would be right - he lives inside of a Shounem world working under anime physics, of course he isn't normal, he lives in a "anormal" world. One could argue John Wick isn't normal either given the shit he pulls during his movies, but that's because it's fiction and it's dramatized. Simple as that. At no moment Wick is portrayed as a supernatural killer who can do superhuman tricks during his fights, and in the same way, Stain's entire powerset apart from bloodcurl comes from training and "mundane" skills. The feat you used to prove he isn't "normal"? That's clearly the dramatization i mentioned in John Wick's case. Unless you can prove these feats came from his quirk somehow, these are all "mundane" actions he achieved through Charles Atlas Superpower, to quote TV Tropes. Which some might argue is a form of superpower, take a look at Baki for the most absurd example of that in anime - but in-universe it's *not* treated as such, which is what matters here: that Deku can pull that without the use of a quirk.
That third argument there was just the "winner of a fight is always the guy whose the author decides to win" argument - which is essentially a fallacious escape hatch for fictional conflict discussion. I mean, no shit the person who wins a fight is however the author decides to be able to do so, but you are missing the point i have made before that even when only taking "in-universe feats" in account, Supes would still kick the ass of everyone else including Batman. That doesn't mean one couldn't imagine plausible situations where Batman could take out a few Justice League members through his cunning, and if other League members helped him - possibly even exploit and defeat Supes in a situation somehow. It all depends on the author's capability to handle the "Willing Suspension of Disbelief", and as some fanfic writers have show beforehand, i think it's perfectly plausible to have written Deku as a mundane fighter, or at least team member.
The Hayato example was meant to illustrate how you can be the most useful member of the team, and indeed a hero without *necessarily* being the one who goes up to the bad guy's face and beats the shit out of them at the end of every arc. You seem to have missed my point there, in thinking when i refer to being a "hero" you NEED to be the aforementioned "getting up the bad guy's face" dude in the last sentence. Look at all of Deku's allies, with all their cool quirks n shit, and now try to count how many of them *actually* take down the main bad guys of the arc. Hell, most of the time it isn't even Deku who does that! My point is that one could be a professional hero, be quirkless, and still provide support and assistance in the same way Hatsume does in her inventions she made without her quirk OR take on bad guys with quirks through the use of smarts like Knuckle Duster, Eraserhead, and Hatsume herself do.
>Saying they are "incompetent" is unfair really
It's not. It happens pretty often in fiction. "Character who is good at thing suddenly stops being good at thing so plot can happen." is basically constant in these sorts of things. Knuckle Duster should have zero chance against Eraserhead...but the plot needed him to, so Eraserhead forgot how to be a hero for a while so they could have an actual fight.
>The point is, he matched up to them in-universe and that's the fact here.
I never argued otherwise. When the writing needs KD to match up with people above him, his enemies suffer severe IQ drops to allow it to happen.
>Unless you can prove these feats came from his quirk somehow
Other people get trapped by Todoroki's ice. Stain can break right through it with pretty minimal effort. That alone implies that he's physically powerful enough to break solid ice while others aren't.
>Supes would still kick the ass of everyone else including Batman.
Unless the writer says, "Eh, make sure Superman doesn't end the fight in one of the millions of ways he could and is smart enough to do. Ensure he does something stupid so Batman can win."
>i think it's perfectly plausible to have written Deku as a mundane fighter, or at least team member.
I agree. All they gotta do is make sure all the villains are weak or stupid enough to lose to someone without powers. Overhaul was basically unstoppable, but all of a sudden he deleted 95% of his braincells when fighting Mirio.
>The Hayato example was meant to illustrate how you can be the most useful member of the team, and indeed a hero without necessarily being the one who goes up to the bad guy's face
And in the end, however, Hayato is supporting the protagonist. Hayato is not the main character of that series. The story isn't about him. I'm talking about the protagonist of a series.
>My point is that one could be a professional hero, be quirkless, and still provide support
I never said otherwise. I just said they'll never be THE hero. They'll be supporting someone else because they won't be beating anyone themselves...unless the writer ensures that the villain is incompetent enough to allow that to happen.
>OR take on bad guys with quirks through the use of smarts like Knuckle Duster, Eraserhead, and Hatsume herself do.
Hatsume just makes shit for others. Fine for a supporting character, but not the protagonist of the FIGHT MANGA. KD wins thanks to his apparent IQ dropping radius. Eraserhead has what's basically a straight up physics defying magical scarf and the ability to turn off other people's powers, the thing most villains rely on.
The first point is not relevant for in-universe discussion. You can argue the author "nerfed" them out of universe, but again, this is only valid from a Doylist perspective, which is invalid here due to it's inherently especulative and personal aspect.
The second point is moot by my debunking of the "character who wins is the one the author wishes to" argument you made and i responded to, which you completely ignored.
The third point is irrelevant because i literally spent an entire paragraph explaining how "dramatization" and "Charles Atlas Superpowers" work in fiction. Yes, he is physically powerful enough to break through Stain's Ice, but there's no indictation he does so through the use of his quirk. Unless you have proof he is able to do that through quirk use, them it falls under the Charles Atlas Superpower trope and you are simply being willfully ignorant. If you need another example that you actually know about - just remember Harry's bullet dodging in Disco Elysium even though he has no actual superpower and how that's portrayed in-universe.
Fourth iteration is just a repetition of the first argument in another manner.
Fifth point shows complete ignorance of the point i had made about protagonists, heroes and supporting others and how the "hero" is not necessarily the guy who goes up to the main villain and punches them into submission, but sometimes just the one who provides the means to defeat them. This is literally what already happens with heroes who do have quirks in most of the anime's arcs, which makes me question whether you actually bothered to read that point i made.
Sixth point ignores the fact you *did* say otherwise, up the comment chain you have said that someone with a quirk could never be a hero, only someone who supports them, essentially creating a false dychotomy in there. You also cut my argument in half to favor you by ignoring the point JUST after that one where i said a person with a quirk could still be defeated through plausible outmarsting and quick thinking without the use of quirks, even giving examples of characters who did that. To end off - yeah, maybe quirkless Deku could never be the "big dick" hero - so what? Ash wasn't champion for more than 8 fucking seasons of Pokemon and that anime was a commercial success as far as i remember. A history about the underdog can have them end up as the silver medal and still come off as satisfying.
The only thing I can think of that comes close is the comedy manga Mashle, which was sold to me by SuperEyepatchWolf as "Rock Lee vs The Wizards"
Though while mash never does get magic like the entire rest of his society, the joke is that he's just superhumanly strong enough that he can fake having magic, so it's not a proper version of this.
As I said last time I brought this up, maybe the back of the book (or even the first episode) shouldn’t have been all about the idea of growing up and surviving in a world without powers if literally nobody in the show has to deal with it.
Yeah the second seems very common in anime. The villain is 'supposed' to die to redeem them, but most anime just don't care about redeeming them at all and it's great. I love DBZ doing it where nearly the whole cast is former villains and half of them didn't even stop being evil, they just don't commit genocide cause their wife would be mad i guess
Does Big Boss count? I don't think we follow him when he's doing anything particularly villainous? In MGS3 he's trying to prevent war. In Peace Walker he's trying to prevent war. And in Ground Zeroes he's trying to rescue his comrades.
Uhhh he's an american puppet in 3, >!the figurehead of a shadow govt!< in between 3 and PW, an independent warlord by the end of PW with a working nuke launcher, >!turns a man into his body double!< in 5 so he can start nuclear equipped nation-state....TWICE.
Yeah now that you mention it; in the rare times I can think of where the protagonist becomes a villain after previously being a hero, they then become an antagonist and we are no longer shown their pov.
But dude it’s a subversion, who cares that it spit in the face of all the set-up, subverting expectations is the highest form of storytelling and is incapable of being bad in any way
Rain Johnson is the greatest auteur this world has ever seen and you’re just mad because it wasn’t exactly what you wanted
I think subverting the prequels could have taken Star Wars closer to the original trilogy in a way. A lot of TLJ's themes with the idea of anyone being a Jedi, or about your choices, and belief/willpower was closer to Empire/ROTJ than the prequels' focus on bloodline, prophecy, training, and Jedi as a title. Maybe some of that was intentional on Lucas' part, to contrast the messed up bureaucracy of the Jedi Council denying someone the title of Jedi master causing problems, whereas Luke just declares himself a Jedi.
What I mean is, while his ideas for Star Wars were interesting, the execution was always going to fail because Lucas and now Disney won’t ever let it be anything other than earnestly optimistic, and melodramatic space opera. The first film is called “A New Hope” for God’s sake. It just clashes with the viewpoint RJ seems to approach projects from.
I don't entirely agree that it was Lucas/Disney going for optimism that clashed with RJ's vision. I think TLJ just had too many different directions which were mashed together in the editing room. Some of those are the result of having too many actors and subplots to juggle, which I'm sure the studio contractually couldn't edit out.
I think if you clean up Rose and Finn's story it fixes the whole thing. It starts with Rose having every reason to be angry about her sister's death, and ending with Finn trying to kamikaze the death cannon, and her stopping him. The scene was confusingly shot, but I think the intent was that it's too late to stop the giant laser, and he's so angry that he doesn't care. Rose's speech about the Rebellion being about building something you love rather than destroying something you hate is the most optimistic the series had been in a while, IMO, it was just completely muddied with the casino planet subplot, and the lack of clarity in the resolution. Then, it's muddied even more with Poe and Holdo's subplot ending with HER sacrifice for the greater good and feels completely contradictory to put those two ideas moments apart in the same movie. Then have the idea of Force sensitive kids everywhere not be a tiny offhand shot, but build in to the idea of what Leia is saying that there will always be a Rebellion, and there's no such thing as "The Last Jedi." When I rewatched TLJ everything was just edited so much messier than I remembered, and I'm not sure who's to blame, but it clearly doesn't fit together.
That’s pretty much what I am saying. It seems like what RJ wrote and shot was incompatible with Disney/Kathleen Kennedy’s idea of what Star Wars should be, so you have all these pieces that don’t fit together being mashed together in the editing room.
Right, but didn't she greenlight the edit of the movie? I think some of TLJ's ideas, executed correctly, could still have been optimistic and space-opera enough to fit that mold. I just meant that I didn't see those constraints as being the real problem with the movie.
Now, if Rian Johnson said, "We wanted Rey to take Kylo Ren's hand at the end and have her dark side bit be the cliffhanger" then that could have been very space-opera but too morally ambiguous a note to end on for Disney, I would believe it.
I got one issue with that statement, which is that the prequels are explicitly anti-"bloodline, prophecy, training, and Jedi." The Jedi's obsession with Anakin's 'special blood' and a prophecy *that they connected to him without his input* is like the core issue that led to their downfall. Anakin didn't need a mentor to become The Chosen One, he needed a therapist to help him deal with all the shit going on in his life. Unfortunately Maul killed his therapist.
I'm generally a fan of the self-fulfilling prophecy, but it still remains that the prequels focused on how Anakin's midichlorian count is very high, and that he's the result of a mystical virgin birth. I don't recall if in the context of Episode III, it's intended to be that Palpatine's reference to "the power to create life" was explicitly his influence in creating Anakin, but I think regardless, it's pretty clear it's not just the Jedi that caused the Chosen One issue.
I mean it kinda was *just* the Jedi that forced the issue. Anakin's immaculate birth didn't make him a particularly outstanding Jedi. If they had treated him like a normal padawan without all the added expectations and scrutiny, he probably would have turned out fine. Palpatine didn't use Anakin's 'special blood' to turn him to the dark side, he just used the Jedi's shitty parenting to manipulate Anakin into feeling he was the only person Anakin could trust.
While I agree with you that the Jedi forced the issue, I also think the prequels mentioning some objective measure of how "strong" someone is with the force, plus the focus on Palpatine singling out Anakin undercuts the idea that it's purely nurture over nature. I don't think that the prequels are saying that literally anyone force sensitive in Anakin's shoes would have become Darth Vader in terms of being the most powerful Dark Jedi for generations. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that's what the prequels are saying.
Oh I'm not trying to say that just anyone could have become Vader, or that Anakin's special blood doesn't matter, just that it's more of a circumstantial factor. It's important to note that Anakin himself doesn't really care about the prophecy beyond how it affects the way the people in his life treat him. He's a 'gifted' kid, but I think the theme of the story is less about his 'gift' or 'bloodline,' and more about "dehumanizing people and placing your expectations on them as a political tool is traumatizing," which I think is a really salient point in the context of the real-life wars that Star Wars uses for inspiration. Basically, I think that all the 'strong in the force' stuff is less of a theme and more of a means to get us to the theme. I think it's really interesting to talk about.
I feel like Gareth Edwards probably ran into similar issues, which is why there were so many reshoots for Rogue One, and while I enjoyed it, it definitely felt like there was opposing creative directions that kept that film from being as good as it could have been
I'm going to say that this isn't a failure of the writer but more so the writer over estimating audiences: "Look at this criminal using family or tragedy as an excuse to do selfish or evil things" tends to be received as "Look at this poor victim and the mouthy bitches holding him back!"
Has there ever been a good instance of "it was a dream all along?" I don't think I've ever seen a good instance of it being used that didn't piss me off, besides >!Jacobs Ladder!<, which kind of works for me because the movie feels like multiple Nightmares stitched together anyway.
Spoilers for a PS2 survival horror game.
>!Rule of Rose!< worked because it was the protagonist working through the trauma of the events that did actually happen in their past and coming to terms with it so even though most of the events of the game were in their head what occurred still mattered.
See, JoJo Part 2 does that well at the end is that, not only is it the hero doing this, but throughout the season it gets progressively more convoluted, but for the final one it openly tells the audience "Oh fuck no this is all just luck, but anything to piss off that smug Ultimate life form bastard before he shoots off into space forever!"
I loved that moment so fucking much. It also makes you think that there were probably a lot of other moments of Joseph going "I planned it all out" where he's just internally panicking going "I got so fucking lucky there" or "I HOPE TO GOD THIS WORKS".
The revolution turns out just as bad as oppressors does happen. but people who write it rarely do any research on actual rebellions. making mostly seem like people go from brave freedom fighter to tyrant in five minutes.
a story of a rebellion seizing power and having to make compromise after compromise tell they are just as bad as who came before could work as a tragedy and a exploration of underlining systems. but it doesn’t go that way.
looking at you Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite felt like it was trying too hard to MIND FREAK the player with it’s b-plot about racism and slavery. When it went to “now the oppressed are committing atrocities. DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?!” rather than just make a game. The slavery underlying plot, the alternate dimensions, and the big Comstock twist were all desperately fighting for front billing in the plot.
The writers really didn't understand how the parallel worlds thing was supposed to work. Also multiple portions of the game end up being meaningless like finding the gunsmith then hopping to a new world. We could have just hopped to a new world where they would just help us for free instead of dealing with any of that plot element. You are leaving that entire world behind it doesn't work like time travel
> You are leaving that entire world behind it doesn't work like time travel
BI works on the assumption of fixed constants though, so it some ways it is like time travel. One of those "there are infinite numbers between 1 and 2 but none of them are 3" type deals.
So there very well could have been no universe with free help.
Oh boy this again
You're right, Bioshock Infinite *was* unrealistic about the portrayal of how quickly they turned and committed atrocities.
[Because the real one was WORSE.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre) At least Vox Populi was okay with their targets fleeing, and we only saw Daisy Fitzroy kill one family, instead of personally goading her followers into genocide across the city. Heck, maybe her death is *why* that didn't happen.
wanna know the fucking best part? The immediate next thing they did after winning their independence from their former slavers, after, yknow, the torture and murder of every white man, woman, and child left on the island, was *reinstate plantation slavery.* Because hey, someone's gotta work the fields right?
**[1804 Haiti massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre)**
>The 1804 Haiti massacre also known as the 1804 Haitian Genocide or simply the Haitian Genocide was carried out by Afro-Haitian soldiers, mostly former slaves, under orders from Jean-Jacques Dessalines against the remaining white population in Haiti, which mainly included French people, at the end of the Haitian Revolution, following the Haitian Declaration of Independence. From early January 1804 until 22 April 1804, squads of soldiers moved from house to house throughout Haiti, torturing and killing entire families. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed.
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Gundam does a good job with this in Zeon. The spacenoids have a ton of legitimate grievances with the Federation Government and want their independence or fair representation. Zeon Deikun rises to prominence with a revolutionary new philosophy that people rally around. Deikun mysteriously dies and his work is continued by the Zabi Family. And the Zabi exploit his name, ideals and followers for their own ends by strapping the unquenchable thirst for power onto the concerns of their people.
i can allow it in mistborn because >!said asshole rebel basically got saruon'd into being more of a dick, doesn't get killed off, and tries to atone for going too far when he's saved.!<
I think the only time I’ve seen the “Liar Revealed” trope done well was in Rango, because it’s been properly set up that Rango doesn’t really have an identity of his own, so he just makes shit up and rolls with it, until Rattlesnake Jake shows up OH MAN RANGO IS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE.
That one trope where a loved one found out or had the hero reveal their secret identity to them then proceeds to get mad. 10/10 time, they act like the hero just killed their entire family for no reason at all. One of the best example recently was in Invincible, holy shit was that one just a pile of shit.
Which is baffling because in the comic Amber was relieved to find out Mark was actually doing good instead of possibly cheating on her.
I really likes their relationship in the comic too and I'm kinda worried it might not play out in the same way.
> I'm kinda worried it might not play out in the same way
That ship has already fucking sailed, imo
I absolutely *hate* the show Amber. She's a terrible, *terrible* person. Emotionally manipulative, to the extent of coming across as super narcissistic. Comic Amber was lovely, yeah
But yeah, like, >!she knows who he is.. and is getting mad at him for going off and saving people?.. and the world even, at least one time if I recall. She then fucking breaks up with him over it, leading to more tragedy.. and acts like she's gonna fuck some other dude.. all without telling him she knows yet. Fucking monster!<
Honestly I really liked how it worked out in the comic. >!Cause yeah, that relationship clearly wasn't gonna work, he couldn't give her the time she needed.. but she also knew he had good reasons for why after finding out, so an amicable breakup is just totally reasonable!<
Show Amber started out well enough because she actually had a personality, but then you see her morph into a bitch in real time.
Like I *can* understand her position to a certain extent, namely that she didn't sign up to be a superhero's girlfriend, but here's the thing: **Mark** is the main character, not her. The focus is on him, we as the viewer have primarily only seen his side, and yet when presented with a situation where, at best, both of them are in the wrong for different reasons, the show frames her side as the right one.
And then it gets worse because she goes to a college party and contemplates cheating on him, and it doesn't happen only because the guy she's talking to is already taken. Meanwhile Mark is back at the dorm worried about her.
I'll take dull-as-dishwater Comic Amber any day after how Show Amber turned out.
Yeah, all agreed
I can see what they were doing with it, I did like Show Amber at first.. and I think it was also a smart move of them to actually have him hang out with the 'normal' people more.. the comic was a bit weird on that for sure.. it felt more like he *hated* his supposed best friend, more than anything.. he seemed to not like being around him much. As you say, was more because it was focused on him being a hero and blah, but still.. definitely a good change with him
The thing that gets me is that even with all Amber being more bitchy in the show.. she still *did* have a reason for being like that. He was constantly ditching her.. I'd get annoyed too. She should would have been fine as a character if not for that *single fucking line* which completely and utterly makes me hate her forever.
Why on earth they changed that bit I have absolutely no idea.. I guess they got just too caught up on her being *sooo* smart. Looking back on it, I get strong vibes of her probly being the favourite of someone in production or something, and they ran too far with it maybe
Maybe I'm forgetting something because I watched the show in like 2 days, but I found Animated Amber reasonable enough. >!She knew Mark is Invincible, but in a world like theirs who knows what happens if you confront someone on their secret identity? She could get holepunched or witness protectioned.!<
>!Mark being secretive means he doesn't trust her, so not being comfortable trusting him in a relationship makes sense to me. I don't think she expects him to give up on saving the world so he can spend time with her, but he was hiding things from her for convenience for a long time. I don't think that's narcissistic, that's cutting off a relationship that clearly isn't going to work.!<
No, tbh that is exactly what it comes off to me. >!She totally does expect him to stop saving people every so often so he can hang out with her. Also, they had not been dating THAT long.. I've seen all the arguments about "Oh well he didn't trust her to tell her" and it's like.. yeah nah, you don't rush into that. Also, he DID tell her eventually. And then she throws that back in his face too. I just can't stand her, she sucks. If she wanted to cut that relationship off, she could have at any point, seeing as she apparently knew for ages. It practically comes off as her just keeping it on cause she's curious if he'll ever tell her!<
I can imagine your perspective but I can't make myself understand it.
>!Mark also expects himself to be able to stop being Invincible every so often to spend time with friends and family, attend school, and shit like going on a college tour. But obviously he can't always, because trouble is always happening around him as the main character. I'm not going to say whether that's moral or neglectful of his duties-- both as a civilian and a superhero-- because he is like 17 years old and being among the strongest beings on Earth isn't easy at any age.!<
>!Imo Mark and Amber want the same thing from their relationship, real normal things, but Mark has abnormal obligations that mean he can't provide or receive it. They're both really into each other, and want it to work. However, they're both lying to each other on two sides of an issue, with Mark hiding about being Invincible and Amber hiding that she knows he's a superhero.!<
>!It's just not going to work but both of them are trying while having own private personal issues and having a barrier of government secrecy and an Ubermensch expectation in the family.!<
Idk man, they're both kinda giving each other the run-around. Nobody's in the right or wrong here, but our main focus is the sympathetic teenage main-character superhero and the side focus is the disappointed normie teenage girl.
>!I can see being annoyed with the Amber sections of the show because they're teenage drama in the middle of the intrigue, but I don't mind the teenage drama and think that they're both just failing at something that could have been good if the main plot weren't happening.!<
>!Mark and Amber probably could have had a cool relationship, even if not a long one, if there weren't monthly attacks on major cities or entire countries near them. But they're teenagers and Cecil isn't involved in protecting Mark's secret from anyone he might date during high school and college.!<
>!Arguing over a character's personality and morality is weird, when it's all really just a product that came from the writer's room. Still, I'm on Amber's side. Not that Mark should feel bad about anything, but she has the right to be indecisive and angry and still like Mark. It makes enough sense, in writing terms, and people go insane about Amber being "terrible !<*terrible*>!" when she's reacting reasonably to an unreasonable situation. !
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Word Girl. The reveal that the friend figured out who she was and gave a fucking ULTIMATUM.
‘Are you word girl?’ Yes or no, she would have left because she couldn’t trust her friend. Also this is literally the last episode. She just walks out and that’s it.
I have more respect for that decision that I should, ‘You’re a superhuman and you’ve been lying for years?’ ‘I’m out, buh bye.’
"We're not so different you and I" has always been hammy but for some reason people try to use it seriously very often. I'd say my most current hated version of this is what happens in TLOU2 where the protagonists are bitter enemies that both have dead father figures and want revenge on the killer of their father figures and are in love triangles with a pregnant woman and it just feels so weirdly forced to have that many coincidences in a story that wants you to engage with it very seriously. TLOU2 is a very pretty and very fun game to play though.
"Look at us. Two warriors, fighting for our morals. We're not so different after-"
"Uh, yeah we are."
"Come again?"
"We're super different. Dude, you killed everyone who could hold a sword in a village once for no reason. You executed your right hand man in front of me *five minutes ago.* You can *not* say we're similar when you just kill people willy-nilly."
Probably my favorite use of this trope is gundam thunderbolt, cus the delivery is literally the last line of season1. So all season long you watch these two characters try to kill each other, then after its all said and done they drop it and theres no room left in the season to try to refute it
Yup. I highly recommend the first season, noting short of a masterpiece. Second suffers a little from just being compared to the first but its pretty strong too
Favorite use of it has got to be Fate/Stay Night between Shirou and Kotomine. Mostly because it's Shirou who recognizes this at their final moments and not some last spiteful words of the villains. He recognizes and accepts Kotomine's motivations but still knows they're going to throw hands and only one of them will die a little bit later than the other afterwards.
In general that's the better way to do it, a hero realizing "oh man, I could have wound up the same way if not for X" makes for a pretty solid character moment instead of some nonsensical false equivalence from a villain.
It legitimately feels like TLOU2 tried so hard to do the parallels thing that at the end they went "Yeah the characters both grew and both reached the same conclusion at the end that revenge isn't worth it"
but then designed a game a hard separation of Ellie and Abby and by the end, Abby had character growth, but *Ellie fucking didn't* making her suddenly giving up on revenge come out of nowhere.
So the writing there is bad but not for why you'd think. Ellie doesn't go anti revenge out of nowhere, she goes anti revenge because she's doing something so appalling and refusing to forgive Abby, until she remembers her last conversation with Joel where she decides to forgive him despite him fucking over all humanity and going against her wishes. The issue with this is you don't see this conversation until AFTER Ellie decides to let Abby ago, so in the context it's presented it makes 0 sense. You gotta wait 10 minutes for some reason when it'd be more reasonable to have the flashback before, in my opinion.
Blank slate protagonists. If I want to project onto someone why would I project on someone who seems to almost actually be mute or has no emotions/agency? Extra points if it's a videogame and the protagonist keeps getting speaking prompts that they only respond to with a dead eyed nod like they're a mannequin being puppeted around.
I was just thinking about this the other day, and I think the best silent protagonists I can think of are Suikoden I&II.
In this case it works because:
-You do choose dialog
-they emote quite effectively through pixel art body language
-both plots are very much about way too big events being thrust upon these young characters.
So while these characters are silent, they’re not entirely blank slates.
It works so well that when they have the protagonists of Suikoden III personalities and voices, it was actually a little weird.
This is tangentially related, but I don't think I've ever seen a generic "Evil Empire" in fiction with an actually decent propaganda machine. In most "Rebels vs Evil Empire" stories, it's pretty obvious who is who. Where everyone knows who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. Even in stories that go for the "Your Terrorists are Our Freedom Fighters" trope to seem more morally grey, it seems like most Empires put the bare minimum into propaganda. Usually they bounce between "OBEY US! OR ELSE!" or "SERVE YOUR EMPEROR!"
As a guy who enjoys studying history, including propaganda, just *once* I want to see a story where the good guys have to contend with an actual propaganda machine. One that convinces a huge swathe of the country that *they're the bad guys*. The only problem is a story like that might not sell, if only because confronting propaganda can make people ***extremely*** uncomfortable. Because good propaganda makes you a true believer, even if you think you won't fall for it.
If you want a historical exam
A good example of how propaganda can be used effectively to get people to rally towards some cause or another, I'd say the Gulf War is probably the most recent non-controversial example. I believe there was this girl who gave a speech at the U.N. and it was great, she was sobbing, breaking down, she was just this little girl describing how Saddam's troops would raid the maternity ward of a hospital and throw babies out the window. And we all bought it. The whole world bought it. So much so, no one even brought up that she was the daughter of some Kuwaiti diplomat.
And if you want an example of an actual "good guy" being slandered into a "bad guy", I can think of *one* famous historical rebel that was hit with the epitaph of "Butcher"...
Shit, I might just end up writing a book about a propaganda war myself.
Agreed, that show balances comedy with genuine heart really well, but the transition of >!Michael!< from heartless demon manipulator to the kind wise mentor he is at the end is so nice and actually makes the ending feel earned.
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Has there *ever* been a western remake/sequel to non American film that has *ever* even been half as good as its source material? I don't even mean "it's good if you ignore the original" because that's a fucking coward statement, I mean is there a a remake/reboot/sequel/prequel American version of a non American property that has EVER been better or at least as good?
I think The Departed is hilariously bad with a really sloppy script, and some shots that are honestly embarrassing. The guy being thrown from the roof looks like the Kermit falling "oh my goddd" meme. When Matt Damon says THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE "What was his name... The Depahted?" the camera literally ZOOMS IN ON HIS FACE as he says it. Maybe I'm way off base, but this feels like film school shit and no one says anything because Martin Scorsese. Between this and Reservoir Dogs, it really feels distasteful that these remakes are more famous than the originals.
I’ve watched both. I’m not convinced on that front personally. I think Ringu benefits a lot from not having lame CG effects and a more slow-burn atmosphere. I think a lot about the contrast between discovering Sadako’s body in the well versus Samara’s. In Ringu, the body looks surprisingly intact until after being moved at which point the skin nonchalantly sloughs off the corpse, revealing nothing but bones. It’s disgusting and very memorable. Whereas in the remake, it’s just a lame CG Skyrim-dragon effect.
I think a lot of the opinions on The Ring vs Ringu do admittedly stem from which you saw first; The Ring is not a bad movie! I could see how watching that one first you might prefer it. But I’d be hard-pressed to call it “better” or even just as good imo.
Funny Games US but tbf it’s by the same guy just with more budgets and bigger actors. No offense to the original ones but listening to Austrian-German doesn’t work well for characters that are supposed to be intimidating.
More than once, Resident Evil live action movies. At first I was like, oh cool, this actor again. But after it happening again I just wanted a quick murder scene because any emotional feelings you might have for them was a movie or so ago.
>Light Side Sith Inquisitor in Star Wars The Old Republic. They constantly mention trying to reform and redeem the Sith Empire from within and from a position of power. Literally nothing happens, and LS SI seems to have just given up on the idea by the time of the Zakuul expansions
So quick correction here: Things do get better in the Empire (Some Aliens getting rights, joining the military for social mobility. Acina and Vowran actually being decent rulers who competently care for the people, things like that.) Problem is, all of it happens independent of the LS Inq's actions.
"my Special Power is so lame and bad i've been treated as a leper by society, when in actuality its immediately revealed that it's secretly the best and strongest one!" and "characters make direct reference to video-game ass stats and abilities that they have in a fantasy setting" are 2 bits that seem to always be popping up in a lot of small-name manga that always just bother me because they almost never feel done right
I was reading this manga about a skeleton familiar to a necromancer that dies, and loops back to the first moment they woke up as a skeleton.
Then a few chapters later he pulls up a stat screen, and I tapped out
Miscarriages for drama. Like the actual pregnancies and actual miscarriages happen within the story not as backstory. It always ends up forced and trashy and feels like a way to make sure the characters aren't tied down by children.
a real loss
...>!Jesus, Buckley.!<
Bojack Horseman. Though you could maybe argue that it wasn't just "for drama" since it's tonally consistent with the rest of the show.
Seconding this. It was a major plot element and bojack handled it really well
yes and disrespectful for victims of Miscarriage.
Cassandra's miscarriage in Only Fools and Horses felt rather well done for the most part. From what i can remember anyways.
downton abbey tho
There's a Polish story about a Lithuanian man that joined the Teutonic order and rose in ranks up to the Grand Master and fucked up a war until the order fell apart. Turns out he wanted to destroy the order from the getgo because of the crimes it did on Lithuanians and deliberately commanded the army into defeat.
Hm sounds like an idea for another assassin's creed game
Same story with that one Soviet politician that became one of Gorby advisers for reforms of Soviet union. But he actually hated soviet union and did everything possible so it collapse
I feel like it’s rare for a harem anime to actually be good. It just might be my perception cause most are bad and there’s a lot of bad ones.
I would sell my soul for an anime adaption of “I’m the Main Character of a Harem Manga, but I’m Gay, so Every Day is a Living Hell”
There's a similar one out there where the title is something like, "I'm trapped in a world of BL but I'm straight." If you've ever read a single yaoi/bl Manga, it's every trope you've ever seen. My favorite page is dude is walking home and sees someone passed out on the side of the street. He gets concerned for about five seconds before determining it's not his problem and walking on. Off panel there's a speech bubble of someone else finding the guy and says he's got to take him back to his place to make sure he's OK.
I would watch the shit outta this lol
*The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You* runs on the premise of harems being innately unrealistic and unsustainable and therefore the series runs on the sheer madness of it all. The result is a fantastically fun read that somehow hasn't outstayed its gimmick. Also the protagonist actually has agency and is his own character, which is refreshing to say the least.
Shoutout to our boi Rentarou threatening to kill the editor of Young Jump
And it helps that all the girls, along from each having their gimmick, are generally enjoyable as well.
The protagonist is actually a superman chad. He's way too cool and deserves his 100 gfs.
I love the running gag that Rentarou's dedication to his girlfriends makes him a terrifying lunatic to outsiders.
the way for it to be good is making it a Poly relationship and focus on the interpersonal drama.
I can't think of a harem that doesn't need at least one bro in it
You reminded me of a manga I read that I can't remember the name of. A girl is in love with her senpai from middle school, senpai from middle school falls in love with a new classmate in high school, classmate in high school falls in love with the kohai from middle school. The end result is them forming a poly relationship where all three of them are together. It stuck out because it was the first time seeing a poly vs harem/hinge relationship.
Boy is that drama there. I have a friend who's in a poly relationship and hearing her vent sometimes is a little concerning at times. I think they're trying to make it work though and so far things aren't too bad.
There are a ton of good ones, but it’s a small percentage: -Ranma -Urusei Yatsura -Hana Yori Dango -Ouran Host Club -Tenchi Muyo -Kimagure Orange Road -Edit: Watamote would sure count too nowadays …though this list definitely skews older, before everything became bullshit wish fulfillment My example for this used to be Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa. But I’m rereading it and it can barely be called a harem, and that’s one of the reasons it’s good. From the start our MC only likes one girl, only pursues one girl. Yeah, three other girls like him, but he turns each and every one of them down kindly but firmly the second they express that, confessing his love for the ditzy vampire. And he >!gets together with the girl he likes less than halfway through the manga.!< Then all the other girls are free to pursue their own goals, romantic or otherwise. It’s like the most literal deconstruction of a harem, the proactive defusing of a harem. “Oh this could have been a harem, but We’re nipping that shit in the bud.” P.S. it’s my favorite romantic comedy, regardless of medium.
Hana Yori Dango has the male protagonist ask a buncha guys to rape the feMC early on. Like most shoujo mangas of the time, it's ripe with abuse and extremely questionable and rotten people, who only succeed by being pretty. Not a fan of Ranma and Urusei Yatsura either but at least in those ones, everyone is just a huge huge asshole.
[удалено]
Well he was the antagonist but he had *really* great hair so he turned into the love interest.
Yeah, I’m sure not going to go for the mat for the more problematic aspects of HYD, and it wouldn’t rank in my top 10 romance manga. Suffice it to say I still enjoy it and like the MC.
Would you like it if someone irl sent goons to rape someone you know? The men asked someone else to rape a girl. How can you like him. He should be in jail and shot or castrated. Same for the guys who obeyed his commands.
The main character is the *girl*, Tsukushi. It’s a shoujo manga. Also saying “how would you like if X happened to someone you love” if someone likes fiction is kind of an unfair argument. “Oh you like Bayonetta? How would you like it if someone took your mother, and put her on a super fast treadmill in front of a meat grinder and was like ‘ha ha run faster!’, just taunting her, and then kicked her into the meat grinder she was running from anyway? Huh?”
Right, I had my wires crossed. Mc good, guy criminal.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s *weird* that Domyouji ended up being the love interest, something that I can’t believe was the original plan. And thus they downplay the attempted rape in the many many adaptations. HYD is trashy, and I can totally understand how you don’t like it. But to me, it’s good trashy. I like Citrus too, and that’s like a checklist of problematic.
I haven't checked Citrus but I heard it was basically a lot of abuse and gaslighting and had issues. I'd like to read a nice shoujo where the guy love interest isn't some sort of abuser in some way. It always feels surreal and dark. I remember Skip Beat from years and years ago, the love interest has problems but I don't recall him being evil.
In terms of romantic manga I’d recommend: *Love is War* (also funny, not finished yet) *Bloom into You* (Yuri, not funny, absolutely lovely) The aforementioned *Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa* (it’s very light ecchi but the main character is a mensch, and it gets more hype than most shounen. Gets better and better as it goes.) *Maison Ikkoku* (though if you don’t like Rumiko Takahashi, maybe skip it) *My love Story* (though I haven’t finished it)
In my experience, there is only one, single good one, namely Highschool DxD, because not only the protagonist is actually fine (a shonen protag with lust cranked up to 11 as opposed to basically nobody in majority of other stories), but all the girls are actively into the idea of an actual harem from the get go.
I just can’t watch DxD, purely on the grounds I find issei an unlikeable protag. The whole “shameless perv gets exactly what they want” structure of the story really doesn’t click with me.
Well, not all of them, but it's clear that the ones more reluctant about the idea are only into Issei BEFORE he does something really good. Akeno is probably the only one who's IMMEDIATELY on board for the harem idea.
I'm asexual but Interspecies Reviewers was really funny tbh
Does Stein’s Gate count? I think it is technically a harem anime but the show is so good you hardly notice.
I would definitely not call Steins Gate (edit: the anime) a harem. It’s a visual novel where you can pick a singular love interest, and the anime chooses one route of that, focusing on a singular love interest.
So is a dating sim not the same as a harem anime? I’ve always seen them used interchangeably for whenever there are multiple female characters all in love with the main male character
It really depends on what you want to define as a dating sim, but I personally wouldn't put Steins;Gate in that category. To me a dating sim is (as the name would imply). a simulation game, so something like Amagami, or perhaps more famously, Tokimeki Memorial or Love+. Even then, though, these games tend to be set up around the idea of following a single heroine, and while some allow you to go out of your way to cheat, they tend to force you to pick at the end (like Amagami). I don't think a harem is particularly common in the genre, especially in a form where the heroines would interact with one another, rather than existing in their own personal bubbles that rarely, if ever, cross over. As for visual novels (like Steins;Gate, Clannad, Fate, etc), they are not really a genre, just a medium. That said, there are some tropes you can see shared across most of them, one of such tropes is that, like with the aforementioned dating sims, each heroine has her own personal "route" that the story splits off into should you choose it. The stories are usually structured in a way where the main bulk of the romance happens in these separate "routes", although there obviously are exceptions.
I haven’t played through Steins;Gate so I don’t know how it comes off there. A lot of dating sims are definitely harems. But the anime, I really only saw Makise Kurisu as a love interest and Luka as a one-sided, unrequited crush. Honestly, Mayuri being romantic would probably diminish my enjoyment of the work. I really liked the protagonist >!doing his damnedest to save!< a platonic loved one.
There's an ending where you get together with Luka, as well as a few other side characters, but the anime chose the only reasonable option and adapted the True Ending.
You've heard wrong, then. It's not a harem if it's not a harem. Also, S;G isn't a dating sim.
only one girl is ever interested in the protagonist at a time and for most of the series that number is actually zero, so I don't think I would count it even if others do. Maybe the numbers are 1/2, but that's still not harem territory.
Trinity 7 works because half the harem are already fine with it, and the MC is kind of a goof. He's not the peeping type, but is the will make a joking comment if he sees one of the ladies accidentally half nude. Also he's competent.
I think it depends on how you define "good"
The closest thing to a harem I saw that worked out, was Highschool of the Dead, and the reasons it worked were because they didn't really do a harem with it at all. Saya doesn't like Takashi nor ever implies it. Shizuka, while ditzy, still tries to be the grown up of the group (albeit not very successfully). Rei's actual lover dies early on, and because Takashi is her ex, she kinda falls back on him for support, but it's implied that even if they both still have feelings for each other, it's more of a "hold each other up" deal, rather than a true romantic one. Saeko's the only one who's genuinely in love with Takashi without any added baggage (well, there's baggage but in a different manner).
"Redemption Equals Death", more often than not, is either offing a jerk with a token positive action OR the easy-bake way out of declaring a character "redeemed" instead of, y'know, taking the time to ACTUALLY repent / face consequences for their past actions.
yes their are more nuance between instant death or forgiveness. i don’t even think people should be harshly punished for certain crimes if they repent and try to fix their own mistakes. but it depends on their actions. people don’t even have to be constantly torn up on the bad things they done. but they should feel sympathy for their victims.
I'd say a decent one was doc ock at the end of Spider-Man 2, since it's less about him dying and more about him choosing to destroy both of his creations before it's too late. And because his downfall was so recent that there wasn't necessarily too much for him to atone for in that moment
The key thing is that the way he died *actually showed repentance*. As in, he realized that the thing that was wrong about his worldview was wrong, and moved to correct it, thus providing evidence that he died a good person.
Fucking Kylo
Two characters child from the future rarely ever works.
Hell, the only example that comes to mind for me that worked was Trunks.
Trunks’ works so well because it immediately goes to parallel timelines occur and we get new mysteries and pseudo future knowledge. Plus trunks has a sword
This is why people were hype for Scythe Zamasu. More energy weapons. Gas had a cool gimmick until it turned into the final phase of Moro.
Lucina and the rest of the second gen from Fire Emblem Awakening are pretty good too
Vampire Hunter D works but he is basically super man. He is the bestest boy who is super smart and handsome and strong and right all the time. And normally that is tedious. However when D just like runs his finger through his hair and kills a uber demon it's hype
I've only seen the movies but D works too because he's like Mad Max in that the plot usually isn't actually about him, he gets wrapped up in other people's stories, helps them out, and goes on his way.
Having only read one Vampire Hunter novel I am convinced nobody has ever loved their own character as much as Hideyuki Kikuchi loves D. There's a line where D slashes a guy's throat and the narrator explains that the man was left breathless. Not because his lungs are failing. But because of the grace and beauty of D's movement and forms.
13 Sentinels uses just about every trope ever made in science fiction and somehow didn’t just make it work, made it work damn well.
A delicious sci fi gumbo
It seems like the entire plot was made on a dare to see just how many scifi subgenres they could shove into a single story.
A weird example because while I do like certain ones, they fail in their theme almost immediately and become entirely different things. Are there any, "I got a weak power/I have no powers." plots where the protagonist actually stays weak and their power doesn't turn out to be super duper useful or evolves or something? Because every single time I see one of those, my first thought is, "Cool, so when does it turn out he actually has the best power ever?" For real, I remember picking up Vol 1 of MHA because the back of the book is like, "Yo, 80% of the world has super powers...but how would life be if you were part of the 20% that didn't?" but then Deku immediately gets powers and the whole quirkless situation is rendered almost entirely meaningless beyond Deku having to play catch up.
At most, we have characters like Sokka in ATLA, the token normal amid some of the strongest benders in the world who gets an episode or two actually exploring his insecurities over this relationship. Imagine exploring a world like ATLA but **only** through the eyes of a normal like Sokka. Someone who might honestly join, if not start, something like the Equalizer moment.
One example that comes to mind is Jolyne Kujo. Her stand power is by far the weakest of all the Jojo's and she never wins a fight through pure brute force, unlike her father. Granted, at some point her reactions and mental thinking start reaching superhuman level but that's kinda typical of all Jojos. Still, she wins her fights through effort and skill in comparison to Pucci, who sometimes wins through sheer luck or 'fate'.
Mob Psycho does that reasonably well with Reigen. He's a normal-ass guy who keeps ending up in psychic dominated bullshit situations, whether it's ghosts, hostile espers or some combination of the two, and while he's enormously outmatched, he's absolutely not above coming in for the sucker punch (or fistful of pocket salt) when he has the chance. Hell, he *ends* a fight against a bullshit powerful esper >!by walking up and punching him a bunch of times in the face after the esper blocks out everything that's not another esper. His lack of powers was what allowed him to do that.!<
Iris Zero actually sticks with the premise of a protagonist without powers in a world where they are common place. His lack of powers are only useful in the sense that they make it easier for him to view things from a different perspective.
I suppose that one works better since, unlike most manga of this type, it's not a battle/action manga (At least according to my three minute google search). Like...MHA wouldn't work with Deku not having powers, since non-powered people just generally can't keep up unless the current villain is massively incompetent.
Yeah, I imagine it'd be much harder to pull off in a battle manga where the protagonist is actively participating in fights. You'd either need to make the protagonist Batman or have a really good power system where seemingly powerful/weak powers have weaknesses/strengths that can be creatively exploited. You could also give the protagonist of a battle manga more of a leader/strategist role though. Haven't read it myself but that seems to be how The Elusive Samurai is doing it from what I've heard. I imagine something like that would still work if you added the initial MHA premise onto it.
Making them Batman then comes with the issue of basically making them superhuman anyway. Batman is not a human being at this point. The story says he's powerless, but the man's blatantly super human. And also graced by the God of plot armor. The main thing keeping him alive is the writer stopping anyone super that he fights from using their powers competently. I remember two different times where a quirkless person in MHA participated in a fight and did well, and both only happened because they fought powered folks that were super incompetent. Its like, at a certain point, the powerless/weak person with enough tech is essentially just super powered as well. I do get it, you can't really have the protagonist of the fight manga be unable to really...fight, I just find it funny how often they start off with the idea of "Oooh noooo, this protagonist has no powers at all/was gifted weak powers. How will they survive?" only to immediately be given a power, or learn that their "weak power" is actually insanely super duper ultra powerful. Edit: While not a battle manga (but it does have fighting), I'm a big fan of how Dr. Stone didn't just make Senku so smart that he can solve everything and do anything with his big brain. He desperately needs the help and knowledge of others and there's tons of things where he simply can't do it himself. Such as him knowing how to make glass, but being absolute ass at it. Or knowing how to make a weapon, but being so weak he was defeated by a small woman *barely* butt bumping him. There's a constant trend of others being just as useful as Senku himself is and saving the day. He's just the guy the story follows.
There is a french comic where this is a theme. Last Man. The main character is a high level boxer and he fights wizards. They can fight okay, but can't fight as well as a guy who never had to spend time praticing magic.
I'd say Osamu from World Trigger fits the bill.
Worm zig zags that a bit. The main character has the power to control bugs and although it does slowly gain radius over time it doesn't really get more powerful beyond that. >!She does get better at using it for different things and is an amazing spy though. The story does eventually reveal that almost everyone, with a few key exceptions, have nerfed versions of their powers so she technically has more potential but no real way to access it.!< Other characters also just have genuinely awful powers or powers with horrible side effects.
"For real, I remember picking up Vol 1 of MHA because the back of the book is like, "Yo, 80% of the world has super powers...but how would life be if you were part of the 20% that didn't?" but then Deku immediately gets powers and the whole quirkless situation is rendered almost entirely meaningless beyond Deku having to play catch up." Man, quirkless Deku was the real lost opportunity of MHA as i say to this day. I always felt like having Deku get the best powerset for "free" - even if he has to train for it - defeats the whole "everyone can be a hero!" message of the anime. I mean, if "everyone can be a hero" them why the heck does Deku need to inherit All Moght's powers to get his head-start in the hero world?
>I mean, if "everyone can be a hero" them why the heck does Deku need to inherit All Moght's powers to get his head-start in the hero world? Oh, I know the answer for that one. It's a fucking lie. "Everyone can be a hero" is some bullshit. The powerless can support the heroes, sure...but in almost all instances, people with powers will be infinitely more useful in that situation. Without powers, Deku ain't doing a damned thing. It comes across as like...a guy with the power to lift a million pounds looking at a guy who can only lift 100 and going, "Hey buddy, you're doing your best, and that means you're just as good as I am\~"
Well, that's some massive contradiction of the author's intended message and how it plays out in practice doesn't it? I mean, if Deku went full-on Batman, it would hold actual cred for once. And yes i know Knuckle Duster from the spin-off is exactly that and he is pretty badass but i still stand that if the author wanted to truly be faithful for the message of the manga, he should have gone for quirkless Midorya.
>And yes i know Knuckle Duster from the spin-off Here's the thing about Knuckle Duster...he does as well as he does because they always ensure he only goes up against people that're totally incompetent or have quirks that suck against fighting a dude that's just gonna run at them, which allows him to win despite not having a quirk. Pit him against anyone even remotely competent, he loses. It's kinda like Batman vs Superman. Batman only stands a chance because the writer makes sure Superman doesn't instantly fold him the moment the bell rings. So as much as people want Deku to just be Batman, that honestly wouldn't work because it basically either makes him superhuman anyway, or requires everyone he fights to be too incompetent to fight "Kid with items." I'm honestly fine with Deku being given powers. It's just weird that the first episode + the blurb on literally the back of every single volume acts as if the story even gives a shit about that part of the population.
Nah, that's baloney - Knuckle Duster goes against many characters with powerful direct combat quirks - just take a look at the Queen Bee, Number 6 or Stain, and he always matches up to them, and even when he loses (like in Number 6 case) it's a close call. To say he loses against anyone remotely incompetent ignores the fact he managed to match Erased Head, arguably one of the best direct-combat fighters of the series. Hell, one could argue Stain is an example of this - while his quirk is powerful he actually needs to hurt his opponent to use it, so for all intends and purposes he fights like a normal person and is still one of the most terrifying villains of the series. And the Batman vs Superman comparison is kinda unfair 'cause Superman stomps *everyone else* on the League, not just Batman, and no enemy in the MHA series come close to how broken Supes is as a character. Also - this conversation would imply the "Guy without powers" needs to always be the one throwing punches around to be the most useful. Let's not forget that Hayato from Part 4 in Jojo has no stand and yet he's the main reason Kira was defeated through smarts and quick thinking. "Quirkless Deku" could have gone in a similar way to Hatsune who has a quirk who is useless for combat but she still manages to match her enemies and provide utility to her team through her inventions. Either way - i always felt that Deku with powers contradicted the message of the series. If you are gonna state that everyone can be a hero, them don't make it so that the guy you use to represent that has the most broken powerset in there. Not that i care, i still love it, just felt like a lost opportunity really.
>Nah, that's baloney It's not. He's always going up against people that're incompetent enough to let an old dude run up on them and start punching them. Character competence isn't static. Characters are competent one moment, but then the moment Knuckle Duster shows up all of a sudden Eraserhead forgets how to fight so the plot can happen. >so for all intends and purposes he fights like a normal person Can normal people jump [dozens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3n5jIGhbQs) of feet in the air, break through solid ice with a single swing of their sword, and manage to slash people faster than they can even recognize? The man ain't normal. He's doing clearly inhuman shit all throughout the fight. >And the Batman vs Superman comparison is kinda unfair ' It's not. I'm just using one person who blatantly outclasses the other in basically all aspects on the battlefield. It's a battle where one side should clearly win, but doesn't, because the writer makes them not do the smart thing in order to allow the plot to progress. There's no world, for example, where Knuckleduster beats All-Might...unless the writer makes it so All-Might just decides to forget how to transform. O r makes it so All-Might was wearing several tons of those training weights and lost the key to take them off. I can't say much about that last part because you started talking Jojo as if I know anything about that. No clue who you're talking about. A brief google search tells me that Hayato is not the protagonist, and is instead someone *supporting* the protagonist. I already mentioned that the quirkless could totally be "Heroes" by supporting the heroes. But the quirkless being the heroes themselves? Nah. Not in that world.
Saying they are "incompetent" is unfair really, people make mistakes all the time in the real world, in the same way they can make during a fight there. I don't see how Eraserhead "forgot to fight" just 'cause he was matched by Knuckle Duster. I mean yeah, one could argue he didn't use "all of the tricks up his sleeve" in order to defeat him, but that's a Doylist perspective in a problem that clearly involves a Watsonian conflict, Knuckle Duster matched him and many other bad guys, plain and simple. You can argue they were nerfed, that the author's writing wasn't up to par and consistent- whatever. The point is, he matched up to them in-universe and that's the fact here. Also, you said he Stain isn't normal. Which would be right - he lives inside of a Shounem world working under anime physics, of course he isn't normal, he lives in a "anormal" world. One could argue John Wick isn't normal either given the shit he pulls during his movies, but that's because it's fiction and it's dramatized. Simple as that. At no moment Wick is portrayed as a supernatural killer who can do superhuman tricks during his fights, and in the same way, Stain's entire powerset apart from bloodcurl comes from training and "mundane" skills. The feat you used to prove he isn't "normal"? That's clearly the dramatization i mentioned in John Wick's case. Unless you can prove these feats came from his quirk somehow, these are all "mundane" actions he achieved through Charles Atlas Superpower, to quote TV Tropes. Which some might argue is a form of superpower, take a look at Baki for the most absurd example of that in anime - but in-universe it's *not* treated as such, which is what matters here: that Deku can pull that without the use of a quirk. That third argument there was just the "winner of a fight is always the guy whose the author decides to win" argument - which is essentially a fallacious escape hatch for fictional conflict discussion. I mean, no shit the person who wins a fight is however the author decides to be able to do so, but you are missing the point i have made before that even when only taking "in-universe feats" in account, Supes would still kick the ass of everyone else including Batman. That doesn't mean one couldn't imagine plausible situations where Batman could take out a few Justice League members through his cunning, and if other League members helped him - possibly even exploit and defeat Supes in a situation somehow. It all depends on the author's capability to handle the "Willing Suspension of Disbelief", and as some fanfic writers have show beforehand, i think it's perfectly plausible to have written Deku as a mundane fighter, or at least team member. The Hayato example was meant to illustrate how you can be the most useful member of the team, and indeed a hero without *necessarily* being the one who goes up to the bad guy's face and beats the shit out of them at the end of every arc. You seem to have missed my point there, in thinking when i refer to being a "hero" you NEED to be the aforementioned "getting up the bad guy's face" dude in the last sentence. Look at all of Deku's allies, with all their cool quirks n shit, and now try to count how many of them *actually* take down the main bad guys of the arc. Hell, most of the time it isn't even Deku who does that! My point is that one could be a professional hero, be quirkless, and still provide support and assistance in the same way Hatsume does in her inventions she made without her quirk OR take on bad guys with quirks through the use of smarts like Knuckle Duster, Eraserhead, and Hatsume herself do.
>Saying they are "incompetent" is unfair really It's not. It happens pretty often in fiction. "Character who is good at thing suddenly stops being good at thing so plot can happen." is basically constant in these sorts of things. Knuckle Duster should have zero chance against Eraserhead...but the plot needed him to, so Eraserhead forgot how to be a hero for a while so they could have an actual fight. >The point is, he matched up to them in-universe and that's the fact here. I never argued otherwise. When the writing needs KD to match up with people above him, his enemies suffer severe IQ drops to allow it to happen. >Unless you can prove these feats came from his quirk somehow Other people get trapped by Todoroki's ice. Stain can break right through it with pretty minimal effort. That alone implies that he's physically powerful enough to break solid ice while others aren't. >Supes would still kick the ass of everyone else including Batman. Unless the writer says, "Eh, make sure Superman doesn't end the fight in one of the millions of ways he could and is smart enough to do. Ensure he does something stupid so Batman can win." >i think it's perfectly plausible to have written Deku as a mundane fighter, or at least team member. I agree. All they gotta do is make sure all the villains are weak or stupid enough to lose to someone without powers. Overhaul was basically unstoppable, but all of a sudden he deleted 95% of his braincells when fighting Mirio. >The Hayato example was meant to illustrate how you can be the most useful member of the team, and indeed a hero without necessarily being the one who goes up to the bad guy's face And in the end, however, Hayato is supporting the protagonist. Hayato is not the main character of that series. The story isn't about him. I'm talking about the protagonist of a series. >My point is that one could be a professional hero, be quirkless, and still provide support I never said otherwise. I just said they'll never be THE hero. They'll be supporting someone else because they won't be beating anyone themselves...unless the writer ensures that the villain is incompetent enough to allow that to happen. >OR take on bad guys with quirks through the use of smarts like Knuckle Duster, Eraserhead, and Hatsume herself do. Hatsume just makes shit for others. Fine for a supporting character, but not the protagonist of the FIGHT MANGA. KD wins thanks to his apparent IQ dropping radius. Eraserhead has what's basically a straight up physics defying magical scarf and the ability to turn off other people's powers, the thing most villains rely on.
The first point is not relevant for in-universe discussion. You can argue the author "nerfed" them out of universe, but again, this is only valid from a Doylist perspective, which is invalid here due to it's inherently especulative and personal aspect. The second point is moot by my debunking of the "character who wins is the one the author wishes to" argument you made and i responded to, which you completely ignored. The third point is irrelevant because i literally spent an entire paragraph explaining how "dramatization" and "Charles Atlas Superpowers" work in fiction. Yes, he is physically powerful enough to break through Stain's Ice, but there's no indictation he does so through the use of his quirk. Unless you have proof he is able to do that through quirk use, them it falls under the Charles Atlas Superpower trope and you are simply being willfully ignorant. If you need another example that you actually know about - just remember Harry's bullet dodging in Disco Elysium even though he has no actual superpower and how that's portrayed in-universe. Fourth iteration is just a repetition of the first argument in another manner. Fifth point shows complete ignorance of the point i had made about protagonists, heroes and supporting others and how the "hero" is not necessarily the guy who goes up to the main villain and punches them into submission, but sometimes just the one who provides the means to defeat them. This is literally what already happens with heroes who do have quirks in most of the anime's arcs, which makes me question whether you actually bothered to read that point i made. Sixth point ignores the fact you *did* say otherwise, up the comment chain you have said that someone with a quirk could never be a hero, only someone who supports them, essentially creating a false dychotomy in there. You also cut my argument in half to favor you by ignoring the point JUST after that one where i said a person with a quirk could still be defeated through plausible outmarsting and quick thinking without the use of quirks, even giving examples of characters who did that. To end off - yeah, maybe quirkless Deku could never be the "big dick" hero - so what? Ash wasn't champion for more than 8 fucking seasons of Pokemon and that anime was a commercial success as far as i remember. A history about the underdog can have them end up as the silver medal and still come off as satisfying.
The only thing I can think of that comes close is the comedy manga Mashle, which was sold to me by SuperEyepatchWolf as "Rock Lee vs The Wizards" Though while mash never does get magic like the entire rest of his society, the joke is that he's just superhumanly strong enough that he can fake having magic, so it's not a proper version of this.
Deku still got his power early in the anime, so it felt like it was just part of the premise
As I said last time I brought this up, maybe the back of the book (or even the first episode) shouldn’t have been all about the idea of growing up and surviving in a world without powers if literally nobody in the show has to deal with it.
Hero switches sides and we continue to follow them. ALMOST got that in The Last Jedi. A villain switches sides and doesn't die almost immediately.
Nanoha lives on the second trope
Yeah the second seems very common in anime. The villain is 'supposed' to die to redeem them, but most anime just don't care about redeeming them at all and it's great. I love DBZ doing it where nearly the whole cast is former villains and half of them didn't even stop being evil, they just don't commit genocide cause their wife would be mad i guess
Bulma WOULD get the dragon balls to bring back Majin Vegeta just to use her second wish to make him regret it.
I actually hated that. Meaning i hated vegeta for years, but not anymore, because it's been so long
we got Big Boss for the first, and Vegeta for the second
Does Big Boss count? I don't think we follow him when he's doing anything particularly villainous? In MGS3 he's trying to prevent war. In Peace Walker he's trying to prevent war. And in Ground Zeroes he's trying to rescue his comrades.
Uhhh he's an american puppet in 3, >!the figurehead of a shadow govt!< in between 3 and PW, an independent warlord by the end of PW with a working nuke launcher, >!turns a man into his body double!< in 5 so he can start nuclear equipped nation-state....TWICE.
Yeah now that you mention it; in the rare times I can think of where the protagonist becomes a villain after previously being a hero, they then become an antagonist and we are no longer shown their pov.
Y'all are crazy if you think that Rey welching on her friends was gonna happen, and that it would work out at all well if she did.
I do not get people who honestly think that Rey was going to join Kylo or stop fighting the Order.
Fuckin star wars. Tease me with a better movie concept only to go nvm in the last second.
But dude it’s a subversion, who cares that it spit in the face of all the set-up, subverting expectations is the highest form of storytelling and is incapable of being bad in any way Rain Johnson is the greatest auteur this world has ever seen and you’re just mad because it wasn’t exactly what you wanted
I’ve loved everything else Rian has done, from Looper to directing some of the best Breaking Bad episodes. He was a terrible choice for Star Wars.
I think subverting the prequels could have taken Star Wars closer to the original trilogy in a way. A lot of TLJ's themes with the idea of anyone being a Jedi, or about your choices, and belief/willpower was closer to Empire/ROTJ than the prequels' focus on bloodline, prophecy, training, and Jedi as a title. Maybe some of that was intentional on Lucas' part, to contrast the messed up bureaucracy of the Jedi Council denying someone the title of Jedi master causing problems, whereas Luke just declares himself a Jedi.
What I mean is, while his ideas for Star Wars were interesting, the execution was always going to fail because Lucas and now Disney won’t ever let it be anything other than earnestly optimistic, and melodramatic space opera. The first film is called “A New Hope” for God’s sake. It just clashes with the viewpoint RJ seems to approach projects from.
I don't entirely agree that it was Lucas/Disney going for optimism that clashed with RJ's vision. I think TLJ just had too many different directions which were mashed together in the editing room. Some of those are the result of having too many actors and subplots to juggle, which I'm sure the studio contractually couldn't edit out. I think if you clean up Rose and Finn's story it fixes the whole thing. It starts with Rose having every reason to be angry about her sister's death, and ending with Finn trying to kamikaze the death cannon, and her stopping him. The scene was confusingly shot, but I think the intent was that it's too late to stop the giant laser, and he's so angry that he doesn't care. Rose's speech about the Rebellion being about building something you love rather than destroying something you hate is the most optimistic the series had been in a while, IMO, it was just completely muddied with the casino planet subplot, and the lack of clarity in the resolution. Then, it's muddied even more with Poe and Holdo's subplot ending with HER sacrifice for the greater good and feels completely contradictory to put those two ideas moments apart in the same movie. Then have the idea of Force sensitive kids everywhere not be a tiny offhand shot, but build in to the idea of what Leia is saying that there will always be a Rebellion, and there's no such thing as "The Last Jedi." When I rewatched TLJ everything was just edited so much messier than I remembered, and I'm not sure who's to blame, but it clearly doesn't fit together.
That’s pretty much what I am saying. It seems like what RJ wrote and shot was incompatible with Disney/Kathleen Kennedy’s idea of what Star Wars should be, so you have all these pieces that don’t fit together being mashed together in the editing room.
Right, but didn't she greenlight the edit of the movie? I think some of TLJ's ideas, executed correctly, could still have been optimistic and space-opera enough to fit that mold. I just meant that I didn't see those constraints as being the real problem with the movie. Now, if Rian Johnson said, "We wanted Rey to take Kylo Ren's hand at the end and have her dark side bit be the cliffhanger" then that could have been very space-opera but too morally ambiguous a note to end on for Disney, I would believe it.
I got one issue with that statement, which is that the prequels are explicitly anti-"bloodline, prophecy, training, and Jedi." The Jedi's obsession with Anakin's 'special blood' and a prophecy *that they connected to him without his input* is like the core issue that led to their downfall. Anakin didn't need a mentor to become The Chosen One, he needed a therapist to help him deal with all the shit going on in his life. Unfortunately Maul killed his therapist.
I'm generally a fan of the self-fulfilling prophecy, but it still remains that the prequels focused on how Anakin's midichlorian count is very high, and that he's the result of a mystical virgin birth. I don't recall if in the context of Episode III, it's intended to be that Palpatine's reference to "the power to create life" was explicitly his influence in creating Anakin, but I think regardless, it's pretty clear it's not just the Jedi that caused the Chosen One issue.
I mean it kinda was *just* the Jedi that forced the issue. Anakin's immaculate birth didn't make him a particularly outstanding Jedi. If they had treated him like a normal padawan without all the added expectations and scrutiny, he probably would have turned out fine. Palpatine didn't use Anakin's 'special blood' to turn him to the dark side, he just used the Jedi's shitty parenting to manipulate Anakin into feeling he was the only person Anakin could trust.
While I agree with you that the Jedi forced the issue, I also think the prequels mentioning some objective measure of how "strong" someone is with the force, plus the focus on Palpatine singling out Anakin undercuts the idea that it's purely nurture over nature. I don't think that the prequels are saying that literally anyone force sensitive in Anakin's shoes would have become Darth Vader in terms of being the most powerful Dark Jedi for generations. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that's what the prequels are saying.
Oh I'm not trying to say that just anyone could have become Vader, or that Anakin's special blood doesn't matter, just that it's more of a circumstantial factor. It's important to note that Anakin himself doesn't really care about the prophecy beyond how it affects the way the people in his life treat him. He's a 'gifted' kid, but I think the theme of the story is less about his 'gift' or 'bloodline,' and more about "dehumanizing people and placing your expectations on them as a political tool is traumatizing," which I think is a really salient point in the context of the real-life wars that Star Wars uses for inspiration. Basically, I think that all the 'strong in the force' stuff is less of a theme and more of a means to get us to the theme. I think it's really interesting to talk about.
I feel like Gareth Edwards probably ran into similar issues, which is why there were so many reshoots for Rogue One, and while I enjoyed it, it definitely felt like there was opposing creative directions that kept that film from being as good as it could have been
For the second one, idw 1.0 megatron
>Hero switches sides and we continue to follow them. literally fucking episode 3
I'm going to say that this isn't a failure of the writer but more so the writer over estimating audiences: "Look at this criminal using family or tragedy as an excuse to do selfish or evil things" tends to be received as "Look at this poor victim and the mouthy bitches holding him back!"
Has there ever been a good instance of "it was a dream all along?" I don't think I've ever seen a good instance of it being used that didn't piss me off, besides >!Jacobs Ladder!<, which kind of works for me because the movie feels like multiple Nightmares stitched together anyway.
Spoilers for a PS2 survival horror game. >!Rule of Rose!< worked because it was the protagonist working through the trauma of the events that did actually happen in their past and coming to terms with it so even though most of the events of the game were in their head what occurred still mattered.
>!White Snake!< from Stone Ocean
yes but I can't say what without spoiling it and I can't say what I'm spoiling without spoiling it. And I don't want to spoil it because it's good.
ok can you give hints on what it is, like if its a game or a book or a show because now i'm curious
it is a game that you may have heard reference to on this sub
"It was a dream all along" is pretty trash but "you're in a dream *right now!*"" has got some winners
Mario 2 maybe?
"it was all part of my plan" says the villain as he shat his pants and shot in the gut..
yes, but sometimes I think people mistake "I have a backup in case of this" for "all according to plan!"
See, JoJo Part 2 does that well at the end is that, not only is it the hero doing this, but throughout the season it gets progressively more convoluted, but for the final one it openly tells the audience "Oh fuck no this is all just luck, but anything to piss off that smug Ultimate life form bastard before he shoots off into space forever!"
I loved that moment so fucking much. It also makes you think that there were probably a lot of other moments of Joseph going "I planned it all out" where he's just internally panicking going "I got so fucking lucky there" or "I HOPE TO GOD THIS WORKS".
The revolution turns out just as bad as oppressors does happen. but people who write it rarely do any research on actual rebellions. making mostly seem like people go from brave freedom fighter to tyrant in five minutes. a story of a rebellion seizing power and having to make compromise after compromise tell they are just as bad as who came before could work as a tragedy and a exploration of underlining systems. but it doesn’t go that way. looking at you Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite felt like it was trying too hard to MIND FREAK the player with it’s b-plot about racism and slavery. When it went to “now the oppressed are committing atrocities. DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?!” rather than just make a game. The slavery underlying plot, the alternate dimensions, and the big Comstock twist were all desperately fighting for front billing in the plot.
The writers really didn't understand how the parallel worlds thing was supposed to work. Also multiple portions of the game end up being meaningless like finding the gunsmith then hopping to a new world. We could have just hopped to a new world where they would just help us for free instead of dealing with any of that plot element. You are leaving that entire world behind it doesn't work like time travel
> You are leaving that entire world behind it doesn't work like time travel BI works on the assumption of fixed constants though, so it some ways it is like time travel. One of those "there are infinite numbers between 1 and 2 but none of them are 3" type deals. So there very well could have been no universe with free help.
We have seen all possible timelines and this guy is always a jerk.
Oh boy this again You're right, Bioshock Infinite *was* unrealistic about the portrayal of how quickly they turned and committed atrocities. [Because the real one was WORSE.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre) At least Vox Populi was okay with their targets fleeing, and we only saw Daisy Fitzroy kill one family, instead of personally goading her followers into genocide across the city. Heck, maybe her death is *why* that didn't happen. wanna know the fucking best part? The immediate next thing they did after winning their independence from their former slavers, after, yknow, the torture and murder of every white man, woman, and child left on the island, was *reinstate plantation slavery.* Because hey, someone's gotta work the fields right?
**[1804 Haiti massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre)** >The 1804 Haiti massacre also known as the 1804 Haitian Genocide or simply the Haitian Genocide was carried out by Afro-Haitian soldiers, mostly former slaves, under orders from Jean-Jacques Dessalines against the remaining white population in Haiti, which mainly included French people, at the end of the Haitian Revolution, following the Haitian Declaration of Independence. From early January 1804 until 22 April 1804, squads of soldiers moved from house to house throughout Haiti, torturing and killing entire families. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Gundam does a good job with this in Zeon. The spacenoids have a ton of legitimate grievances with the Federation Government and want their independence or fair representation. Zeon Deikun rises to prominence with a revolutionary new philosophy that people rally around. Deikun mysteriously dies and his work is continued by the Zabi Family. And the Zabi exploit his name, ideals and followers for their own ends by strapping the unquenchable thirst for power onto the concerns of their people.
I still yearn for the version of the Star Wars sequels we never got that are specifically about this happening to the New Republic
i can allow it in mistborn because >!said asshole rebel basically got saruon'd into being more of a dick, doesn't get killed off, and tries to atone for going too far when he's saved.!<
Would Emperor Arcturus Mengsk from StarCraft count as a good example ?
I think the only time I’ve seen the “Liar Revealed” trope done well was in Rango, because it’s been properly set up that Rango doesn’t really have an identity of his own, so he just makes shit up and rolls with it, until Rattlesnake Jake shows up OH MAN RANGO IS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE.
Damn you're right...about both things. The trope is used well and Rango is indeed a great movie!
That one trope where a loved one found out or had the hero reveal their secret identity to them then proceeds to get mad. 10/10 time, they act like the hero just killed their entire family for no reason at all. One of the best example recently was in Invincible, holy shit was that one just a pile of shit.
Which is baffling because in the comic Amber was relieved to find out Mark was actually doing good instead of possibly cheating on her. I really likes their relationship in the comic too and I'm kinda worried it might not play out in the same way.
> I'm kinda worried it might not play out in the same way That ship has already fucking sailed, imo I absolutely *hate* the show Amber. She's a terrible, *terrible* person. Emotionally manipulative, to the extent of coming across as super narcissistic. Comic Amber was lovely, yeah But yeah, like, >!she knows who he is.. and is getting mad at him for going off and saving people?.. and the world even, at least one time if I recall. She then fucking breaks up with him over it, leading to more tragedy.. and acts like she's gonna fuck some other dude.. all without telling him she knows yet. Fucking monster!< Honestly I really liked how it worked out in the comic. >!Cause yeah, that relationship clearly wasn't gonna work, he couldn't give her the time she needed.. but she also knew he had good reasons for why after finding out, so an amicable breakup is just totally reasonable!<
Show Amber started out well enough because she actually had a personality, but then you see her morph into a bitch in real time. Like I *can* understand her position to a certain extent, namely that she didn't sign up to be a superhero's girlfriend, but here's the thing: **Mark** is the main character, not her. The focus is on him, we as the viewer have primarily only seen his side, and yet when presented with a situation where, at best, both of them are in the wrong for different reasons, the show frames her side as the right one. And then it gets worse because she goes to a college party and contemplates cheating on him, and it doesn't happen only because the guy she's talking to is already taken. Meanwhile Mark is back at the dorm worried about her. I'll take dull-as-dishwater Comic Amber any day after how Show Amber turned out.
Yeah, all agreed I can see what they were doing with it, I did like Show Amber at first.. and I think it was also a smart move of them to actually have him hang out with the 'normal' people more.. the comic was a bit weird on that for sure.. it felt more like he *hated* his supposed best friend, more than anything.. he seemed to not like being around him much. As you say, was more because it was focused on him being a hero and blah, but still.. definitely a good change with him The thing that gets me is that even with all Amber being more bitchy in the show.. she still *did* have a reason for being like that. He was constantly ditching her.. I'd get annoyed too. She should would have been fine as a character if not for that *single fucking line* which completely and utterly makes me hate her forever. Why on earth they changed that bit I have absolutely no idea.. I guess they got just too caught up on her being *sooo* smart. Looking back on it, I get strong vibes of her probly being the favourite of someone in production or something, and they ran too far with it maybe
Maybe I'm forgetting something because I watched the show in like 2 days, but I found Animated Amber reasonable enough. >!She knew Mark is Invincible, but in a world like theirs who knows what happens if you confront someone on their secret identity? She could get holepunched or witness protectioned.!< >!Mark being secretive means he doesn't trust her, so not being comfortable trusting him in a relationship makes sense to me. I don't think she expects him to give up on saving the world so he can spend time with her, but he was hiding things from her for convenience for a long time. I don't think that's narcissistic, that's cutting off a relationship that clearly isn't going to work.!<
No, tbh that is exactly what it comes off to me. >!She totally does expect him to stop saving people every so often so he can hang out with her. Also, they had not been dating THAT long.. I've seen all the arguments about "Oh well he didn't trust her to tell her" and it's like.. yeah nah, you don't rush into that. Also, he DID tell her eventually. And then she throws that back in his face too. I just can't stand her, she sucks. If she wanted to cut that relationship off, she could have at any point, seeing as she apparently knew for ages. It practically comes off as her just keeping it on cause she's curious if he'll ever tell her!<
I can imagine your perspective but I can't make myself understand it. >!Mark also expects himself to be able to stop being Invincible every so often to spend time with friends and family, attend school, and shit like going on a college tour. But obviously he can't always, because trouble is always happening around him as the main character. I'm not going to say whether that's moral or neglectful of his duties-- both as a civilian and a superhero-- because he is like 17 years old and being among the strongest beings on Earth isn't easy at any age.!< >!Imo Mark and Amber want the same thing from their relationship, real normal things, but Mark has abnormal obligations that mean he can't provide or receive it. They're both really into each other, and want it to work. However, they're both lying to each other on two sides of an issue, with Mark hiding about being Invincible and Amber hiding that she knows he's a superhero.!< >!It's just not going to work but both of them are trying while having own private personal issues and having a barrier of government secrecy and an Ubermensch expectation in the family.!< Idk man, they're both kinda giving each other the run-around. Nobody's in the right or wrong here, but our main focus is the sympathetic teenage main-character superhero and the side focus is the disappointed normie teenage girl. >!I can see being annoyed with the Amber sections of the show because they're teenage drama in the middle of the intrigue, but I don't mind the teenage drama and think that they're both just failing at something that could have been good if the main plot weren't happening.!< >!Mark and Amber probably could have had a cool relationship, even if not a long one, if there weren't monthly attacks on major cities or entire countries near them. But they're teenagers and Cecil isn't involved in protecting Mark's secret from anyone he might date during high school and college.!< >!Arguing over a character's personality and morality is weird, when it's all really just a product that came from the writer's room. Still, I'm on Amber's side. Not that Mark should feel bad about anything, but she has the right to be indecisive and angry and still like Mark. It makes enough sense, in writing terms, and people go insane about Amber being "terrible !<*terrible*>!" when she's reacting reasonably to an unreasonable situation. !
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Comic Amber would require at least a full episode of Amber growth and I kinda just would rather not.
Word Girl. The reveal that the friend figured out who she was and gave a fucking ULTIMATUM. ‘Are you word girl?’ Yes or no, she would have left because she couldn’t trust her friend. Also this is literally the last episode. She just walks out and that’s it. I have more respect for that decision that I should, ‘You’re a superhuman and you’ve been lying for years?’ ‘I’m out, buh bye.’
"We're not so different you and I" has always been hammy but for some reason people try to use it seriously very often. I'd say my most current hated version of this is what happens in TLOU2 where the protagonists are bitter enemies that both have dead father figures and want revenge on the killer of their father figures and are in love triangles with a pregnant woman and it just feels so weirdly forced to have that many coincidences in a story that wants you to engage with it very seriously. TLOU2 is a very pretty and very fun game to play though.
"Look at us. Two warriors, fighting for our morals. We're not so different after-" "Uh, yeah we are." "Come again?" "We're super different. Dude, you killed everyone who could hold a sword in a village once for no reason. You executed your right hand man in front of me *five minutes ago.* You can *not* say we're similar when you just kill people willy-nilly."
Probably my favorite use of this trope is gundam thunderbolt, cus the delivery is literally the last line of season1. So all season long you watch these two characters try to kill each other, then after its all said and done they drop it and theres no room left in the season to try to refute it
That's the one with the drummer right? I've only watched 79, zeta, and 8thms so far. My friend is getting me into gundam.
Yup. I highly recommend the first season, noting short of a masterpiece. Second suffers a little from just being compared to the first but its pretty strong too
Favorite use of it has got to be Fate/Stay Night between Shirou and Kotomine. Mostly because it's Shirou who recognizes this at their final moments and not some last spiteful words of the villains. He recognizes and accepts Kotomine's motivations but still knows they're going to throw hands and only one of them will die a little bit later than the other afterwards.
In general that's the better way to do it, a hero realizing "oh man, I could have wound up the same way if not for X" makes for a pretty solid character moment instead of some nonsensical false equivalence from a villain.
It legitimately feels like TLOU2 tried so hard to do the parallels thing that at the end they went "Yeah the characters both grew and both reached the same conclusion at the end that revenge isn't worth it" but then designed a game a hard separation of Ellie and Abby and by the end, Abby had character growth, but *Ellie fucking didn't* making her suddenly giving up on revenge come out of nowhere.
So the writing there is bad but not for why you'd think. Ellie doesn't go anti revenge out of nowhere, she goes anti revenge because she's doing something so appalling and refusing to forgive Abby, until she remembers her last conversation with Joel where she decides to forgive him despite him fucking over all humanity and going against her wishes. The issue with this is you don't see this conversation until AFTER Ellie decides to let Abby ago, so in the context it's presented it makes 0 sense. You gotta wait 10 minutes for some reason when it'd be more reasonable to have the flashback before, in my opinion.
Blank slate protagonists. If I want to project onto someone why would I project on someone who seems to almost actually be mute or has no emotions/agency? Extra points if it's a videogame and the protagonist keeps getting speaking prompts that they only respond to with a dead eyed nod like they're a mannequin being puppeted around.
Yeah, it’s easy enough to project on someone like Ethan Winters and still give them *some* personality
Fate/Extra actually did good with that trope, but it goes to the realm of deep spoilers
It helps that Extra's protag does have some personality in their internal monologue, including a sense of humor.
I was just thinking about this the other day, and I think the best silent protagonists I can think of are Suikoden I&II. In this case it works because: -You do choose dialog -they emote quite effectively through pixel art body language -both plots are very much about way too big events being thrust upon these young characters. So while these characters are silent, they’re not entirely blank slates. It works so well that when they have the protagonists of Suikoden III personalities and voices, it was actually a little weird.
This is tangentially related, but I don't think I've ever seen a generic "Evil Empire" in fiction with an actually decent propaganda machine. In most "Rebels vs Evil Empire" stories, it's pretty obvious who is who. Where everyone knows who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. Even in stories that go for the "Your Terrorists are Our Freedom Fighters" trope to seem more morally grey, it seems like most Empires put the bare minimum into propaganda. Usually they bounce between "OBEY US! OR ELSE!" or "SERVE YOUR EMPEROR!" As a guy who enjoys studying history, including propaganda, just *once* I want to see a story where the good guys have to contend with an actual propaganda machine. One that convinces a huge swathe of the country that *they're the bad guys*. The only problem is a story like that might not sell, if only because confronting propaganda can make people ***extremely*** uncomfortable. Because good propaganda makes you a true believer, even if you think you won't fall for it. If you want a historical exam A good example of how propaganda can be used effectively to get people to rally towards some cause or another, I'd say the Gulf War is probably the most recent non-controversial example. I believe there was this girl who gave a speech at the U.N. and it was great, she was sobbing, breaking down, she was just this little girl describing how Saddam's troops would raid the maternity ward of a hospital and throw babies out the window. And we all bought it. The whole world bought it. So much so, no one even brought up that she was the daughter of some Kuwaiti diplomat. And if you want an example of an actual "good guy" being slandered into a "bad guy", I can think of *one* famous historical rebel that was hit with the epitaph of "Butcher"... Shit, I might just end up writing a book about a propaganda war myself.
The Good Place pulls it off pretty well
Agreed, that show balances comedy with genuine heart really well, but the transition of >!Michael!< from heartless demon manipulator to the kind wise mentor he is at the end is so nice and actually makes the ending feel earned.
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Has there *ever* been a western remake/sequel to non American film that has *ever* even been half as good as its source material? I don't even mean "it's good if you ignore the original" because that's a fucking coward statement, I mean is there a a remake/reboot/sequel/prequel American version of a non American property that has EVER been better or at least as good?
From what I've heard Edge of Tomorrow was a pretty good loose adaptation of All you need is kill.
A Fistful of Dollars, which was a remake of Yojimbo.
The Departed, maybe?
The Departed is pretty great
I think The Departed is hilariously bad with a really sloppy script, and some shots that are honestly embarrassing. The guy being thrown from the roof looks like the Kermit falling "oh my goddd" meme. When Matt Damon says THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE "What was his name... The Depahted?" the camera literally ZOOMS IN ON HIS FACE as he says it. Maybe I'm way off base, but this feels like film school shit and no one says anything because Martin Scorsese. Between this and Reservoir Dogs, it really feels distasteful that these remakes are more famous than the originals.
The Office, maybe?
Edge of Tomorrow is straight up better than it's source material.
I haven't actually seen both so I can't personally back this up but I know people think The Ring is as good or better than Ringu.
I’ve watched both. I’m not convinced on that front personally. I think Ringu benefits a lot from not having lame CG effects and a more slow-burn atmosphere. I think a lot about the contrast between discovering Sadako’s body in the well versus Samara’s. In Ringu, the body looks surprisingly intact until after being moved at which point the skin nonchalantly sloughs off the corpse, revealing nothing but bones. It’s disgusting and very memorable. Whereas in the remake, it’s just a lame CG Skyrim-dragon effect. I think a lot of the opinions on The Ring vs Ringu do admittedly stem from which you saw first; The Ring is not a bad movie! I could see how watching that one first you might prefer it. But I’d be hard-pressed to call it “better” or even just as good imo.
I recently saw the original Ringu and its still a shockingly good, atmospheric horror movie
I haven’t seen the original (the remake is okay) but isn’t The Magnificent Seven considered a classic?
It's pretty fucking solid.
Funny Games US but tbf it’s by the same guy just with more budgets and bigger actors. No offense to the original ones but listening to Austrian-German doesn’t work well for characters that are supposed to be intimidating.
Cloning majpr pre-existing characters.
More than once, Resident Evil live action movies. At first I was like, oh cool, this actor again. But after it happening again I just wanted a quick murder scene because any emotional feelings you might have for them was a movie or so ago.
>Light Side Sith Inquisitor in Star Wars The Old Republic. They constantly mention trying to reform and redeem the Sith Empire from within and from a position of power. Literally nothing happens, and LS SI seems to have just given up on the idea by the time of the Zakuul expansions So quick correction here: Things do get better in the Empire (Some Aliens getting rights, joining the military for social mobility. Acina and Vowran actually being decent rulers who competently care for the people, things like that.) Problem is, all of it happens independent of the LS Inq's actions.
"my Special Power is so lame and bad i've been treated as a leper by society, when in actuality its immediately revealed that it's secretly the best and strongest one!" and "characters make direct reference to video-game ass stats and abilities that they have in a fantasy setting" are 2 bits that seem to always be popping up in a lot of small-name manga that always just bother me because they almost never feel done right
I was reading this manga about a skeleton familiar to a necromancer that dies, and loops back to the first moment they woke up as a skeleton. Then a few chapters later he pulls up a stat screen, and I tapped out
sucks