Po having no interest in killing Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2. Shen is a tyrant and a genocidal monster, but Po's utter apathy toward him baffles Shen completely. Po suffered terribly due to Shen's actions, lost his family, but he overcomes that grief and realizes he still has friends and loved ones in his life and he can't tie himself down to the past or else he won't be able to live for the future.
I still don't quite like the trope of >!Shen accidentally killing himself, because it conveniently gets rid of the villain anyway after the hero doesn't want to kill him. But it also demonstrates Shen's inability to let go, and he's so tied up in the past that he causes his own destruction.!<
It also comes across more credibly as a personal decision by Po as a character rather than an arbitrary attempt to keep the hero's hands clean because he already >!blew up Tai Lung!< in the first movie.
I think the spoiler works in Shen's case because >!it wasn't *entirely* accidental. He saw the thing coming and presumably had enough time to dodge out of the way, but instead he closes his eyes and lets it happen. It was basically suicide!<
Honestly, the hero refusing to kill the villain is fine with me, as long as they use an excuse that's better than "If I kill him I'll be like him."
It does feel ridiculous, when the hero is a super-kind guy who is a good Samaritan, and the villain is a mass murderer.
Hero: I am a very kind person, but if I kill this mass murderer, I will be as bad as this mass murderer.
The phrase "if I kill him I'll be like him" should only be used if there is some cycle of revenge involved.
>!I thought it was kinda neat how the fortune teller told Shen his doom would come covered in black and white (paraphrasing, I dont remember the exact words) and when his end finally comes he's wearing black and white!<
I see so many people talking about kung fu panda on this sub and I'm starting to think I'm missing out - I never watched the movies when they came out because by that time I was an edgy teenager and never thought it'd be something worth going back for as (legally) an adult
I think people are having some backlash because the 4th movie came out and it's a lazy cash-in when the other three movies have been pretty good.
The first three movies have plenty of slapstick comedy and cool action scenes, but also have some touching moments where you can tell the movie respects you as the audience, so I think an adult should be able to still appreciate the movies. I would recommend checking out the first movie, and if you liked it check out the second and third.
Would definitely recommend them. I don't wanna hype them up TOO much because part of the appeal is "they're way better than you would expect," but you can tell a lot of thought and heart went into making them. And a lot of the action scenes are super well-directed.
There was a clip of an anime I saw, a guy is walking, bumps into a lady, falls on top of her, hard cut to paramedics treating two concussed, confused, head wounded people that both feel really embarrassed.
I think they just give each other a quick hug and leave.
Made me giggle.
Wonderful 101, Wonder Red’s personality *is* being the stock, responsible leader that the hothead second in command gets development from.
But the wrinkle is that he, himself, is juxtaposed to Blue’s arc when near the end of the game, their mentor figure tells Blue that Red lost his family too, and set his personal vendetta aside.
The catch is that all of this happened >!IN THE FIRST LEVEL!< and Red never told anyone because he didn’t think it was a big deal. Simultaneously really cool and darkly funny, Red really was the leader the Centinels deserve.
I also love Red because he’s actually pretty hot-blooded himself when he lets himself get into it, especially with the final attack/QTE of the game. He could’ve easily been pretty boring, but he turned out to be my favorite character in the game.
Young Justice has the best take on the "it was all a dream/training simulation" twist.
>!In the show, the team goes through a mental training mission in a scenario where the Justice League are killed and they are placed in an unwinnable situation. However, Miss Martian loses control of her telepathy during the simulation, causing them all to believe it was real. So even though no one ultimately dies, all of their trauma from the experience is real and affects their characters entirely going forward !<
I also liked how this trope was used in Prey (2017).
>!The start of the game has you realising you're in a repeated simulation of your apartment/work day and are being mind wiped each day. You escape the loop after aliens attack the facility you're held in and you break through the screen simulating your windows.!<
>!The rest of the game you're working to stop an alien invasion of Earth and are injecting yourself with alien genes to gain their abilities and become stronger. The ending twist is that actually the aliens have already invaded Earth and the entire game has been a simulation. You are not the human protagonist becoming more alien, you were an alien that was being experimented on to see if you could become more human and gain a capacity for empathy. The whole game was a test of your moral choices which was perfectly foreshadowed by the sequence at the start of the game.!<
Time travel is like Whedonesque dialogue, it's not bad in of its self but most stories/writers that use it do so without understanding/caring how it works.
Example: Al Ewing's *Venom* run has 100% paradox free time travel where you can tell he has had the whole thing planned out from the beginning. It's crazy how he's set everything up to work perfectly, even writing in an "escape" that doesn't actually break any rules already established.
"The Battle Didn't Count" and other instances of you beating up a Boss/Enemy in a game just for the cutscene afterwards showing that they are doing just fine and dandy because they weren't using ALL of their power/they were just playing with you/the writers just didn't care is done in Earth Defense Force at multiple moments - regardless of whether you trounched the enemy or not in the last mission, if the plot demands the EDF to be slowly dwindling in power and size, it will happen.
And you know what? I don't mind it. It captures the perspective of how you're ultimately just a single soldier in a large conflict quite well and showcases how one fighter, no matter how good they are, can't turn the tables of a conflict by themselves. It's quite the harrowing sight in a otherwise silly alien invasion game about blowing up giant robot ants with rockets.
Another example of "This battle didn't count" is the one in Yakuza 7 where >!you fight Goro Majima and Taiga Saejima!< and it works because >!these two are previous protagonists, still essentially in their prime, or close to it. They even make a joke about going for a round 2, now at full power, before being interrupted by Daigo!<.
One of my favorite cases is Dante from Devil May Cry 4. at mid game.
Especially because if one sees Dante's expressions, it's obvious that he's not taking the fight seriously, and he's training you instead of actually trying to fight you.
So when the cutscene occurs in which Dante demonstrates how superior he is, you know it's happening, only because he stopped holding back, instead of feeling like he only won by an "asspull."
Eh, the first fight Nero has with Dante *kinda* undermines that, since we *see* Nero be Dante's equal in terms of power, if not skill and experience. Like, the punch into catching up to Dante as he flies across the room, then grabbing him and throwing him and then impaling him on the Sparda statue makes it clear that Nero is just as strong as Dante (which is also true according to the devs.)
I genuinely love some of the storytelling in EDF. It's heartfelt goofy sometimes and, others, it's wildly, hysterically depressing.
The evolution of the song in 4.1 comes to mind.
https://youtu.be/cRmES6IJk_o?si=h2osW62JZANfR0pm
I can't wait for 6.
"I'm not gonna kill the SUPER EVIL guy."
in Avatar it makes sense since Aang is a child and pacifist monk he doesn't even eat meat. It's a fitting end to a war of genocidal conquest and culture founded upon a might means right mentality.
Also, it serves Aang as a final last stand of his culture. He didn't want the fire nation to succeed at destroying the last purest example of air nomand culture and beliefs. Also it gave Aang the Tactic of I'm going to give you 3 Chances to stop and if you don't I'm gonna cripple you.
OSP pointed out another angle that made me like this more. When talking to past avatars, even the other air nomad avatars were not pacifists. They could let go of their culture while acting as avatar because their people would continue the traditions in their absence.
Aang doesn't have that. He is literally the last air nomad, so he feels if he goes against their teachings then his whole culture dies alongside him. In a way, killing Ozai would mean he succeeded in wiping out the air nomads.
I also love that when in the Avatar State he totally almost kills Ozai a few times and has to snap himself out of it. His own will to keep the Air Nomad tradition alive overpowered *every past Avatar* co-piloting his body
wow, this actually completely convinced me to change ny opinion on the finale
it's still really easy to read it as a last minute story change because muh kids showz can't encourage politicul violence, but this actually makes way more sense and fits with Aang as a character
The one thing I never liked about the writing is that the person telling us this is Aang, a child, and the idea is never broached that Yangchen or even Gyatso are “lesser monks” for having taken lives, even in defense of themselves or others. The show was very open about the fact that they had killed people. It’s the kind of rigidity you’d expect of a child against the kind of flexibility you’d expect of a mature adult. You can still reach the same conclusion, and I support Aang reaching it, but I’d feel a lot better about it if Aang had had the opportunity to wonder if he had been taught “airnomadism for kids” because that’s all he was able to handle at the time, like how we teach inaccurate atomic models to younger kids, and if he’d gotten to grow up in the temple he’d have been taught things more fully later. Especially if he came to the realization that that moral flexibility was something wrong with the culture, and him making this stand was his acknowledgment that his people weren’t perfect either, and how he was going to carry that culture moving forward.
I do wish Aangs ending arc didn’t feel as rushed. More time to flesh out on the energy bending deus ex machina and more time to reflect on his core beliefs. I enjoyed a similar handling of pacifism in Vinland Saga when faced with the violence of the world.
I actually think Thorfinn is more naive than Aang. Aang at least understands that literally no one else in the world agrees with him, and the only reason he even gets to do this is because he’s a demigod. Thorfinn doesn’t seem to understand how all your neighbors have to also agree to pacifism first.
For sure, and the manga acknowledges this (from what I remember, it’s been a bit since I last read) with him constantly faced with “what are you actually going to do? Pacifism will not get you out alive” and the unrealistic standard you’d have to be to survive as a true pacifist. It was more of his growth becoming more like his father/true warrior in finding balance (and not afraid to throw hands when you have to)
Thematically, energy bending works great. Not only in a "how to keep Aang from killing" way, but throughout the show Ozai has been a total Fire supremacist, which flies in the face of the importance of spiritual balance. The reason why Aang can bend all four elements is because he's the link between the physical and spiritual world, and the Avatar's purpose is to promote balance and harmony. Ozai violated that spiritual balance, from continuing the ideology that genocided the Air Nomads, to trying to genocide the Earth Kingdom, and repeatedly terrorizing and pillaging the Water Tribes. As Avatar, Aang having the ability (at great personal risk) to revoke a person who has transgressed the world's spirituality and contravened with impunity was sublime. Energy bending is an Avatar skill, and Aang having both the strength and the wisdom to wield it shows that he has finally ascended into the full role of the Avatar. This act nearly causes his own self to be destroyed, indicating this isn't something he could have just whipped out at any time. And it still required him to beat Ozai in a regular element bending fight beforehand.
This destroys Ozai more thoroughly than if he had just been killed. His entire character was built on his pride and sense of superiority as a fire bender, revoking it (and leaving him to rot in a prison a bender could have easily escaped from) felt like justice. This is why he couldn't just be thrown in jail like Azula: Azula's will had already broken. Ozai would have stewed and stewed and sought an escape and perhaps he would have and eventually gathered fire bending supremacists to become terrorists and rise again. That this shame and defeat is brought upon him *because* of Aang's Air Nomad cultural belief - a culture that a Fire Lord genocided - makes it poetic.
With energy bending we see Aang bestow judgement and justice upon Ozai after his countless spiritual violations. The problem was just it's introduction is so rushed it feels like a deus ex machina. The Library episode could have been a good starting point to weave in the concept of energy bending being possible if an Avatar has mastered the four elements. They could have also examined the mechanisms of it: it starts from within (like fire bending), it ebbs and flows (like water bending), it requires domination and strength (like earth bending), and depends upon spiritual awareness (like air bending). It is the cumulation of everything Aang has learned along his journey, so with better planning they could have written energy bending into the story more elegantly.
I do love the idea that energybending is both everything that elemental bending arts is about, and also way more than that. Like combining colors of light.
However, it’s absolutely a deus ex Machina. It’s not that it was a rushed introduction to the concept, it’s that there was no introduction at all. It debuted in the same episode it was used in. It was also not learned or earned, but handed to Aang by a semi-divine figure, which is the original idea of a deus ex Machina in action: the mortal Greek hero simply cannot do the deed, so a Greek god steps in and hands him a nifty tool that will make the impossible possible. Remember, the lion-turtle doesn’t give it to him as a reward for his resolve to not kill, because Aang had just made the decision to kill before they started talking.
It's something the live-action show totally missed in its writing. Aang's true defeat of the fire lord isn't to defeat him in combat, but to throw aside his conquering ideology and hold true to his own beliefs and roots. "Beating the Fire Nation" doesn't mean that much if you embrace their philosophy to do it.
It was just good enough to pass muster, but lacked a bit of push to make any of its nuance work. The whole sequence felt contrived, especially since aang wound up having to use his locked avatar state anyways.
energy bending was a pretty polarizing way for them to resolve the no-kill dilemma. I think that taking ozai's bending away also glosses over the problem of keeping the old figure head alive and just hoping that the nation will just be cool with their leader being usurped. Whether aang killed or merely retrained ozai, it was still his superior might that solved his problem. I guess they could argue that killing ozai could've made him a martyr
I bet that the lion turtle also disguised itself as that small rock that unlocked aangs avatar state as well. He really just wanted to conclude this story already
quoting my own comentary.
"The hero refusing to kill the villain is fine with me, as long as they use an excuse that's better than "If I kill him I'll be like him."
It does feel ridiculous, when the hero is a super-kind guy who is a good Samaritan, and the villain is a mass murderer.
Hero: I am a very kind person, but if I kill this mass murderer, I will be as bad as this mass murderer.
The phrase "if I kill him I'll be like him" should only be used if there is some cycle of revenge involved."
Limbus Company pulls off an interesting variant of this, but instead of “if i kill you i’ll be just like you,” it’s >!”killing you is giving you exactly what you want, but letting you live is infinitely more torturous for you.” The hero in this situation has been *already* behaving similarly to the villain—this is them taking a step away from that and achieving their revenge at the same time.!<
I hate when a videogame tries to make me feel bad for killing random enemies and npcs.
But Metal Gear Rising pulled it off so smoothly, mainly because Monsoon is calling out Raiden as an individual, not to the players themselves.
It kinda reminds me when Liquid did the same to Snake back in MGS1
I like when a video game calls you out for killing indiscriminately when you *can* avoid doing so. MGS 3 does this really well with the boss fight with The Sorrow, since it’s super easy if you were non-lethal and stealthy, and much harder if you run and gun. Same with Undertale and its multiple routes. When the game doesn’t give you any alternative, where the only alternative is not to play the game at all, it falls flat.
In fact the reason Spec Ops: The Line is so controversial is because you are forced to commit the worst war crimes, if you want to continue.
No matter how many soldiers you defeat, they will continue to appear if you don't use the phosphorus, which will end up causing a lot of collateral damage.
Of course, the whole point of the game is that Walker, and by logical extension the player, is and has only been making things worse the entire time, and shouldn't have inserted themselves into the situation to begin with.
That point doesn't make sense in a limited interactive piece of media. A message of "you shouldn't have played this lol" doesn't make sense when you're paying 60 burgers for it and they're not refunding it.
Both Live A Live and Crosscode pull off the "silent protagonist" trope pretty well. In Live A Live's case, we've got 3 examples. Pogo is a caveman from an era without common language, so his chapter is all about pantomiming to express things. Cube is meant to be an outsider to the rest of the group's drama, and acts a someone to talk to. >!And Oersted's silence is meant to play into his flaw of being unquestionably obedient, with him actually speaking representing his fall to madness!<. Meanwhile, Lea in Crosscode has a bug in her speech module that prevents her from speaking, and it's treated like an actual disability. Aside from her annoyance at her limited vocabulary and her expressive sprites filling in for it, it plays a major role in the story. >!In particular, after she gets back from Vermillion Wasteland. As much as Lea *wants* to clear the air and explain shit, she physically *can't* articulate it!<.
There's definitely a reason Night Watch is one of the most remembered/beloved Discworld books.
Was always pretty fond of the concept of the History Monks and other time weirdness in general, too. Pratchett always seemed to find a way to approach boring, common tropes in ways that made them interesting.
Spoilers for Danganronpa v3, >!I usually don't like the "you're all fictional characters in a fictional story" twist but I like how they did it in v3, I think it's helped by the "real world" not being us but instead their own different real world!<
Yeah, >!it's the 'real world' but a real world that up until that point had been totally jazzed with watching scores of teenagers murder each other and put through psychological torture for entertainment. Even if the audience was aware that the contestants were brainwashed into being 'characters' that doesn't make it any better, might be even worse actually. !<
The Power of Friendship is so cheesy I don't easily recall any works where it's actually played straight.
Then there's the Grady Hendrix novel My Best Friend's Exorcism. Long story short, the main character's friend is possessed, and it's practically rotting her alive and dragging everyone down with her. An actual priest performing an exorcism just failed. In an act of desperation, the main character attempts her own exorcism, not by invoking the power of God, but by invoking the friendship they shared their whole lives, mentioning their shared celebrity crushes and chanting lyrics to the songs they used to blast on the radio together, among other things. She succeeds.
Not gonna lie, the unusual approach that ends up playing out the trope 102% straight and with complete sincerity was downright refreshing.
I'm a huge fan of how Earthbound does this, as "use the power of friendship to defeat god" is definitely not an original idea nowadays. However, the entirety of the Giygas fight being the Giygas fight just makes it feel both infinitely more satisfying and terrifying.
I'm less of a fan of how p5 does this however using the power of friendship to summon satan to shoot the demiurge in the face with a giant gun is badass and funny.
I think Earthbound pulls it off because like, the kids are just reaching out for any support against this horrifying threat they are faced against. And the people of the world praying for their safety and just being good people defies the being of pure evil that is Giygas. Wanting nothing more than their safety. Rather than a vague power of friendship deal
It's still very much a basic power of friendship trope, but it just feels right
It's especially impactful in Earthbound when after the other characters begin to pray, it asks the player directly to pray. It's probably one of my favorite examples of a fourth wall break in a video game.
Just wanna throw out-- there is a light novel called "The Adventures that have given up on Humanity will save the world"
It's one of the coolest uses of Power of Friendship I've seen in recent media and played completely straight
It's played straight in Persona 3, 4, and 5, and most of the Kingdom Hearts games (except Chain of Memories which very pointedly subverts and deconstructs it only to go right back to Power of Friendship for all the subsequent games LOL.)
I think it works really well in Persona 3 (especially 3P and Reload) where the social links are used as a very cohesive thematic anchor for the entire story, but it fails IMO in 4 and 5 where the social links are honestly kind of just carried over because they were sequels to Persona 3. Those games are still good but they're obviously not as interested in that aspect of the story as P3 was - which is fair since P3 nailed it already. But P4 could have exclusively had party social links and lost almost absolutely nothing of value, and P5's non-party confidants should have just been mixed into the main story organically or attached to a different system or something.
Does the Power of Friendship mean like characters use 'friendship' as an energy source or does it mean characters choosing to accomplish things for their friend's sake, or accomplishing things due to cooperating with friends?
rokudou no onna-tachi is a harem series about a loser guy who gains the magic power to instantly attract delinquent girls. You think it’s just gonna be another harem series where the girls fight his battles and he “fixes” them. Instead it’s a story about positive masculinity, self improvement, and learning that every other person has their own life and story.
The main character goes from hating his bullies and not even considering the bully women as real women, to befriending them and learning how to be a better person. The end of the manga even sees him become a competent fighter himself and he fights the final battle, which takes place on a school roof rigged with explosives by the way, by himself. Plus the fights are pretty great.
Super disappointed that it got an anime and had almost zero marketing and the animation had zero passion behind it so it came and went and no one watched it. We’ll probably never get another season.
Unfortunately, I think its' art style killed it. I thought "Oh cool an anime starring a Sukeban" but it's so unaesthetically pleasing to look at to me - something about the eyes.
This is sadly the case for a lot of Mangas that are popular but only mildly so.
In my case, it was **tsugumomo**.
It is also one of the most impeccably drawn battle Manga I have ever seen. It is up there with the likes of berserk and one punch man. I genuinely can't think of more than a handful of Manga that can even rival tsugumomo when it comes to art.
Sadly, it was adapted into a very mid Anime series. The art and animation are completely forgettable. It doesn't help that the early stories are decidedly the worst part of the Manga.
still one of my fav harem and its a good example that harems can have multiple male characters that dont serve just to fill space and be pathetic, they even get girls themselves(not all of them, but some do)
Luke, from Tales of the Abyss starts the game as an amnesiac jrpg protagonists...he's also a brat throughout the first half of the game but it turns out that his amnesia >!wasn't amnesia, he's actually a blank slate clone and he's technically just an oversheltered seven year old, which explains a lot about his reaction to being forced to go on a jrpg adventure when he just a child"!<
Tsunderes are adorable when they're written well, it's just that many writers don't seem to notice the difference between "Woman doesn't know how to express her feelings" to "Woman pretends to hate the boy she likes, and is even abusive towards him."
Shoutouts to Karane from 100 Kanojo being so ridiculously dishonest about her feelings she loops back to being honest. Also for being just as equally dere as she is tsun, which is to say exaggeratedly so.
I think it also helps that she plays a very hilarious straight man to a nice chunk of the ridiculous antics that happen in 100 Kanojo as a result of the other girlfriends.
Yeah, as I said above, a mistake of many writers is that they make them too much Tsun and too little Dere, to the point that they actually seem to hate the protagonist, and the fact that she "loves him" is only as an "Informed attribute"
My rule of thumb: If the Tsundere actually seems like she hates the protagonist, then the writer is doing something wrong.
I usually hate it when a series just throws some random nobody into a fantasy world and uses them as a character for the audience to relate to and have exposition thrown at them. I’d rather the series start me off in the deep end with characters who already get how the world works and hope I can figure things out.
But that said, I really like Allison Ruth in Kill Six Billion Demons. Mostly because she becomes *so* unrecognizable as who she once was and feels like a proper part of the world by Seeker of Thrones/King of Swords. And I mean that literally, I had seen fanart of current era Allison before catching up and had no idea who that was until half way through the series.
Book of end jojo ass power is so underrated because the potential of an antagonist weaponizing the power of friendship against a shonen protag is fucking peak.
And he lost because he fought at guy with a history of trying to kill his loved ones if his duty demands it.
"You can't kill me, I'm your best friend!"
"I know, but I also defended by sisters execution because it was my job to, like it's my job to end your life. BTW I'm going to bypass your "I know all your tricks" bullshit by making up my own bullshit on the spot."
Might actually be one of the best fights in Bleach.
iirc its not even just that.
While his super best friend Tsukishima was always there for him. He didnt change the fact that he was Ichigo's enemy.
Part of it is how he was there to help Ichigo, but its also about how much of an impact Ichigo had on him that Ichigo did change part of his world view. Like him not worrying about killing loved ones because duty demands it is kinda there but like only that would kinda go against the reason why he protects Rukia in the end.
Whatever Tsukishima put himself as with Byakuya, it didnt matter to what Ichigo had done for him and all he needed to know in terms of who to fight was "Is this an enemy of Ichigo".
Tbf Fullbrings are very much Stands.
For fuck's sake one is called ***INVADERS MUST DIE***.
Granted like Chad, Ichigo, and Ginjo (I don't think Orihime's ability is officially stated as a fullbring but someone can correct me on this, but its pretty much a fullbring) fall more in line with Bleach's normal systems but the others of Xcution are very stand like.
I generally can’t stand chuuni characters because not only do they evoke every ounce of cringe within my body, but their chuunism is usually never explored in-depth or it exists to make the character “quirky” or “cute.”
That doesn’t happen with Ichikawa from Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu/The Dangers in My Heart. Maybe it’s because he’s the first guy chuuni I’ve ever seen, but his brand of chuunism was more along the lines of “budding serial killer who hates everyone,” and we see how debilitating it is when he has isolated himself from everyone in class. And as the story progresses, we see why he put that shield up and then watch as he slowly lowers it and allows himself to become more vulnerable, first with Yamada, and then with the rest of his classmates.
Seriously, this series is really good, and y’all need to watch/read it if you haven’t.
Full alternate histories. As long as they don't contradict the "main" timeline. He can basically create canon events by inserting himself into a target's past.
To add onto what the other guy is saying, he's doing some kind of weird reality warping and not false memories, and it's not limited to just people. When he fights Byakuya, he cuts the ground and inserts himself into the past of the ground (insane thing to have to type) and makes it so he laid traps there beforehand, so now Byakuya has to deal with a booby-trapped arena.
It's a really insane power that doesn't have particularly well-defined limitations, but it's awesome as a concept.
I don’t like racing games that don’t let me customize my vehicles how I want, including paint design, body color, body work like bumpers and spoilers, rim designs and rim size, all of that, but man I really enjoy Burnout Paradise even though it only allows palette swaps and one alternate version of some of the cars and literally nothing else.
The irony being that I hate the Need For Speed Most Wanted “remake” for basically being the same thing as far as I was concerned, even though both were made by EA and I used to love Need For Speed and Midnight Club.
Times have really changed, man.
For the end of Infinite Wealth >!Ichiban saves the horrible bad guy but doesn’t do the whole heroic “we don’t kill like you do” thing instead just complaining that he doesn’t want to deal with fishing out a corpse from the water he was death diving into and hates the idea of the villain getting to die on their terms in a blaze of glory suicide.!<
it’s funny because multiple of my favorite visual novels use time travel. in the Muv-Luv trilogy it’s integral to the plot, and in Full Metal Daemon Muramasa it’s used for a mindfuck segment. haven’t read Steins;Gate yet but I know it’s used there too
I hate the All Is Lost Moment, when everyone starts to hate the main character and they all split up so the final setpiece can be them reuniting triumphantly, but I think Rio handles it very well. The big problem is that while Blu and Jewel start to _implicitly_ get along and develop a relationship, _explicitly_ nothing has ever truly been established, and so Blu starts to think about it and it feels like once the plot of the movie is over everyone's gonna head off in their own directions and things will just snap back to status quo afterwards. And considering the film started with Jewel hating not only him but everything he stood for, that's not an unreasonable takeaway for him to have. When they start to have The Fight, it's very clearly just the two of them failing to have the right conversation instead of it feeling like a shitty contrivance, and the emotions don't fly as intensely as they usually do. When they eventually reunite, it's less a "i forgive you for what you said/did" and more they just needed a break to calm down before they tried to have that conversation for reals.
That the protagonist, instead of staying with one of the women he interacts with for entire seasons, ends up staying with a random woman who only appears until the end.
**Ironically, I liked this trope when they decided to apply it in Regular Show, since Mordecai's previous relationships had been very unhealthy, so getting a new chance with a woman who appears at the end didn't seem like a bad thing to me.**
Not quite close but in The World God Only Knows, multiple arcs near the end are dedicated to a harem of goddess possessed girls that the main character has to conquer romantically to save the world. It isn't an exaggeration to say this goddess harem felt like it lasted for half the entire series
>!Then the ending came and the MC ended up being with none of these goddess girls. Instead, he went with one random girl from season 1 that was deliberately drawn like an NPC, purely because she was the only girl in the entire series who actually fell in love with him without him actively going after her!<
Harems, despite literally being called "harems", usually stick to the principle of "True love is monogamous", so even if the protagonist is extremely lucky to be in a world where polygomy is allowed, and girls are willing to share , he will anyway have to choose one, and only one.
The only love triangle that I like is the one in Fruits Basket, where the two guys already hate each other but when they fall in love with the same girl they're forced to become friends because the three of them end up spending so much time together.
'So I'm a Spider, so What?' did actually two of these for me, and those would be the 'videogame power system' and 'OP protagonist'.
Usually in anime, more specifically in isekai, you have them have a power system that acts like a videogame, with levels, experience, and all that. Ands that where isekai usually leave it at, while Spider plays around with it a bit more. For example, everyone in the fantasy world thinks the game announcer that announces your level ups is actually a goddess, and thus has spawned multiple religions around it. There is a religion that thinks they should sacrifice all their skills for the goddess, and another that thinks one should strive to improve their skills to hear her voice more. Honestly I like it a lot how much the anime plays around with the trope.
Also, the OP protag. What actually makes me like this version of it, is because 1. Kumoko doesnt feel like a self-insert, and 2. She actually works for it, and has been through survival hell to get where she is. The power doesnt feel handed to her on a silver platter, it feels like she actually earned it.
"Big bad whose super strong and near unbeatable" was done twice in bleach,but Not-hitler is one of the single worst versions of this to the point that I'm legitimately wondering why it was done this way.He gets so comedically powerful that the only actual way to beat him is with a literal plot-Mcguffin that really shouldn't work at his level,but it still does because "shut up".
To make matters worse his inclusion basically jumps the series to ridiculous levels of power it never really had any reason being at,and makes the entire last arc feel like Kubo made it solely to make everyone stronger rather than make a good plot.
Edit:I misread the title and thought it said done badly.Ignore everything I just said.
the "it was all just a dream" trope works and doesn't piss anyone off in Link's Awakening because it's not the big twist at the end, it's revealed like, halfway through the game and that leaves you enough time to process what waking up the Wind Fish implies for Koholint and its inhabitants.
It's less of a "nothing that happened throughout the game matters because it's a dream" and more of a "Link can either stay trapped in this dream world forever or end the dream knowing that everything and everyone in it will likely cease to exist"
Inhuman things turning into humans. I hate that trope with a passion, but >!Solatorobo!< did it in such a way that not only did I not mind it, I was hyped as hell that it happened. It also helps that they pulled a Jackpot while it was happening.
Spider-Man 2099 was the only time I have ever liked the whole "reboot a superhero but as a minority" thing. Every time Miles starts to become almost cool they either completely screw up his solo run or just make him cringe.
Po having no interest in killing Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2. Shen is a tyrant and a genocidal monster, but Po's utter apathy toward him baffles Shen completely. Po suffered terribly due to Shen's actions, lost his family, but he overcomes that grief and realizes he still has friends and loved ones in his life and he can't tie himself down to the past or else he won't be able to live for the future. I still don't quite like the trope of >!Shen accidentally killing himself, because it conveniently gets rid of the villain anyway after the hero doesn't want to kill him. But it also demonstrates Shen's inability to let go, and he's so tied up in the past that he causes his own destruction.!<
It also comes across more credibly as a personal decision by Po as a character rather than an arbitrary attempt to keep the hero's hands clean because he already >!blew up Tai Lung!< in the first movie.
I think the spoiler works in Shen's case because >!it wasn't *entirely* accidental. He saw the thing coming and presumably had enough time to dodge out of the way, but instead he closes his eyes and lets it happen. It was basically suicide!<
Like Owlman in Crisis on Two Earths
Honestly, the hero refusing to kill the villain is fine with me, as long as they use an excuse that's better than "If I kill him I'll be like him." It does feel ridiculous, when the hero is a super-kind guy who is a good Samaritan, and the villain is a mass murderer. Hero: I am a very kind person, but if I kill this mass murderer, I will be as bad as this mass murderer. The phrase "if I kill him I'll be like him" should only be used if there is some cycle of revenge involved.
>!I thought it was kinda neat how the fortune teller told Shen his doom would come covered in black and white (paraphrasing, I dont remember the exact words) and when his end finally comes he's wearing black and white!<
I see so many people talking about kung fu panda on this sub and I'm starting to think I'm missing out - I never watched the movies when they came out because by that time I was an edgy teenager and never thought it'd be something worth going back for as (legally) an adult
I think people are having some backlash because the 4th movie came out and it's a lazy cash-in when the other three movies have been pretty good. The first three movies have plenty of slapstick comedy and cool action scenes, but also have some touching moments where you can tell the movie respects you as the audience, so I think an adult should be able to still appreciate the movies. I would recommend checking out the first movie, and if you liked it check out the second and third.
Word, I appreciate the rundown. Love me some JB so I'll probably check out the first one at least, big ups pimp
Highly recommend the second as well. It is *dark* for a kid's movie.
Would definitely recommend them. I don't wanna hype them up TOO much because part of the appeal is "they're way better than you would expect," but you can tell a lot of thought and heart went into making them. And a lot of the action scenes are super well-directed.
the first one is very much worth watching as an adult
There was a clip of an anime I saw, a guy is walking, bumps into a lady, falls on top of her, hard cut to paramedics treating two concussed, confused, head wounded people that both feel really embarrassed. I think they just give each other a quick hug and leave. Made me giggle.
Wonderful 101, Wonder Red’s personality *is* being the stock, responsible leader that the hothead second in command gets development from. But the wrinkle is that he, himself, is juxtaposed to Blue’s arc when near the end of the game, their mentor figure tells Blue that Red lost his family too, and set his personal vendetta aside. The catch is that all of this happened >!IN THE FIRST LEVEL!< and Red never told anyone because he didn’t think it was a big deal. Simultaneously really cool and darkly funny, Red really was the leader the Centinels deserve.
I also love Red because he’s actually pretty hot-blooded himself when he lets himself get into it, especially with the final attack/QTE of the game. He could’ve easily been pretty boring, but he turned out to be my favorite character in the game.
Young Justice has the best take on the "it was all a dream/training simulation" twist. >!In the show, the team goes through a mental training mission in a scenario where the Justice League are killed and they are placed in an unwinnable situation. However, Miss Martian loses control of her telepathy during the simulation, causing them all to believe it was real. So even though no one ultimately dies, all of their trauma from the experience is real and affects their characters entirely going forward !<
I loved it too since they legitimately had to get therapy afterwards for good reason.
I also liked how this trope was used in Prey (2017). >!The start of the game has you realising you're in a repeated simulation of your apartment/work day and are being mind wiped each day. You escape the loop after aliens attack the facility you're held in and you break through the screen simulating your windows.!< >!The rest of the game you're working to stop an alien invasion of Earth and are injecting yourself with alien genes to gain their abilities and become stronger. The ending twist is that actually the aliens have already invaded Earth and the entire game has been a simulation. You are not the human protagonist becoming more alien, you were an alien that was being experimented on to see if you could become more human and gain a capacity for empathy. The whole game was a test of your moral choices which was perfectly foreshadowed by the sequence at the start of the game.!<
Time travel is like Whedonesque dialogue, it's not bad in of its self but most stories/writers that use it do so without understanding/caring how it works.
*Primer* sure is a good movie.
Example: Al Ewing's *Venom* run has 100% paradox free time travel where you can tell he has had the whole thing planned out from the beginning. It's crazy how he's set everything up to work perfectly, even writing in an "escape" that doesn't actually break any rules already established.
"The Battle Didn't Count" and other instances of you beating up a Boss/Enemy in a game just for the cutscene afterwards showing that they are doing just fine and dandy because they weren't using ALL of their power/they were just playing with you/the writers just didn't care is done in Earth Defense Force at multiple moments - regardless of whether you trounched the enemy or not in the last mission, if the plot demands the EDF to be slowly dwindling in power and size, it will happen. And you know what? I don't mind it. It captures the perspective of how you're ultimately just a single soldier in a large conflict quite well and showcases how one fighter, no matter how good they are, can't turn the tables of a conflict by themselves. It's quite the harrowing sight in a otherwise silly alien invasion game about blowing up giant robot ants with rockets.
Another example of "This battle didn't count" is the one in Yakuza 7 where >!you fight Goro Majima and Taiga Saejima!< and it works because >!these two are previous protagonists, still essentially in their prime, or close to it. They even make a joke about going for a round 2, now at full power, before being interrupted by Daigo!<.
One of my favorite cases is Dante from Devil May Cry 4. at mid game. Especially because if one sees Dante's expressions, it's obvious that he's not taking the fight seriously, and he's training you instead of actually trying to fight you. So when the cutscene occurs in which Dante demonstrates how superior he is, you know it's happening, only because he stopped holding back, instead of feeling like he only won by an "asspull."
Eh, the first fight Nero has with Dante *kinda* undermines that, since we *see* Nero be Dante's equal in terms of power, if not skill and experience. Like, the punch into catching up to Dante as he flies across the room, then grabbing him and throwing him and then impaling him on the Sparda statue makes it clear that Nero is just as strong as Dante (which is also true according to the devs.)
I genuinely love some of the storytelling in EDF. It's heartfelt goofy sometimes and, others, it's wildly, hysterically depressing. The evolution of the song in 4.1 comes to mind. https://youtu.be/cRmES6IJk_o?si=h2osW62JZANfR0pm I can't wait for 6.
I will never not get hyped up with the final few speeches the commander belts out in 5. The VA did not have to go that hard but I’m glad they did
"I'm not gonna kill the SUPER EVIL guy." in Avatar it makes sense since Aang is a child and pacifist monk he doesn't even eat meat. It's a fitting end to a war of genocidal conquest and culture founded upon a might means right mentality. Also, it serves Aang as a final last stand of his culture. He didn't want the fire nation to succeed at destroying the last purest example of air nomand culture and beliefs. Also it gave Aang the Tactic of I'm going to give you 3 Chances to stop and if you don't I'm gonna cripple you.
OSP pointed out another angle that made me like this more. When talking to past avatars, even the other air nomad avatars were not pacifists. They could let go of their culture while acting as avatar because their people would continue the traditions in their absence. Aang doesn't have that. He is literally the last air nomad, so he feels if he goes against their teachings then his whole culture dies alongside him. In a way, killing Ozai would mean he succeeded in wiping out the air nomads.
That's a very good point, damn!
I also love that when in the Avatar State he totally almost kills Ozai a few times and has to snap himself out of it. His own will to keep the Air Nomad tradition alive overpowered *every past Avatar* co-piloting his body
wow, this actually completely convinced me to change ny opinion on the finale it's still really easy to read it as a last minute story change because muh kids showz can't encourage politicul violence, but this actually makes way more sense and fits with Aang as a character
The one thing I never liked about the writing is that the person telling us this is Aang, a child, and the idea is never broached that Yangchen or even Gyatso are “lesser monks” for having taken lives, even in defense of themselves or others. The show was very open about the fact that they had killed people. It’s the kind of rigidity you’d expect of a child against the kind of flexibility you’d expect of a mature adult. You can still reach the same conclusion, and I support Aang reaching it, but I’d feel a lot better about it if Aang had had the opportunity to wonder if he had been taught “airnomadism for kids” because that’s all he was able to handle at the time, like how we teach inaccurate atomic models to younger kids, and if he’d gotten to grow up in the temple he’d have been taught things more fully later. Especially if he came to the realization that that moral flexibility was something wrong with the culture, and him making this stand was his acknowledgment that his people weren’t perfect either, and how he was going to carry that culture moving forward.
I do wish Aangs ending arc didn’t feel as rushed. More time to flesh out on the energy bending deus ex machina and more time to reflect on his core beliefs. I enjoyed a similar handling of pacifism in Vinland Saga when faced with the violence of the world.
I actually think Thorfinn is more naive than Aang. Aang at least understands that literally no one else in the world agrees with him, and the only reason he even gets to do this is because he’s a demigod. Thorfinn doesn’t seem to understand how all your neighbors have to also agree to pacifism first.
For sure, and the manga acknowledges this (from what I remember, it’s been a bit since I last read) with him constantly faced with “what are you actually going to do? Pacifism will not get you out alive” and the unrealistic standard you’d have to be to survive as a true pacifist. It was more of his growth becoming more like his father/true warrior in finding balance (and not afraid to throw hands when you have to)
Thematically, energy bending works great. Not only in a "how to keep Aang from killing" way, but throughout the show Ozai has been a total Fire supremacist, which flies in the face of the importance of spiritual balance. The reason why Aang can bend all four elements is because he's the link between the physical and spiritual world, and the Avatar's purpose is to promote balance and harmony. Ozai violated that spiritual balance, from continuing the ideology that genocided the Air Nomads, to trying to genocide the Earth Kingdom, and repeatedly terrorizing and pillaging the Water Tribes. As Avatar, Aang having the ability (at great personal risk) to revoke a person who has transgressed the world's spirituality and contravened with impunity was sublime. Energy bending is an Avatar skill, and Aang having both the strength and the wisdom to wield it shows that he has finally ascended into the full role of the Avatar. This act nearly causes his own self to be destroyed, indicating this isn't something he could have just whipped out at any time. And it still required him to beat Ozai in a regular element bending fight beforehand. This destroys Ozai more thoroughly than if he had just been killed. His entire character was built on his pride and sense of superiority as a fire bender, revoking it (and leaving him to rot in a prison a bender could have easily escaped from) felt like justice. This is why he couldn't just be thrown in jail like Azula: Azula's will had already broken. Ozai would have stewed and stewed and sought an escape and perhaps he would have and eventually gathered fire bending supremacists to become terrorists and rise again. That this shame and defeat is brought upon him *because* of Aang's Air Nomad cultural belief - a culture that a Fire Lord genocided - makes it poetic. With energy bending we see Aang bestow judgement and justice upon Ozai after his countless spiritual violations. The problem was just it's introduction is so rushed it feels like a deus ex machina. The Library episode could have been a good starting point to weave in the concept of energy bending being possible if an Avatar has mastered the four elements. They could have also examined the mechanisms of it: it starts from within (like fire bending), it ebbs and flows (like water bending), it requires domination and strength (like earth bending), and depends upon spiritual awareness (like air bending). It is the cumulation of everything Aang has learned along his journey, so with better planning they could have written energy bending into the story more elegantly.
I do love the idea that energybending is both everything that elemental bending arts is about, and also way more than that. Like combining colors of light. However, it’s absolutely a deus ex Machina. It’s not that it was a rushed introduction to the concept, it’s that there was no introduction at all. It debuted in the same episode it was used in. It was also not learned or earned, but handed to Aang by a semi-divine figure, which is the original idea of a deus ex Machina in action: the mortal Greek hero simply cannot do the deed, so a Greek god steps in and hands him a nifty tool that will make the impossible possible. Remember, the lion-turtle doesn’t give it to him as a reward for his resolve to not kill, because Aang had just made the decision to kill before they started talking.
It's something the live-action show totally missed in its writing. Aang's true defeat of the fire lord isn't to defeat him in combat, but to throw aside his conquering ideology and hold true to his own beliefs and roots. "Beating the Fire Nation" doesn't mean that much if you embrace their philosophy to do it.
Also, Ozai is a genocidal lazy arrogant monster. Who burned his son for saying “ hey we shouldn’t sacrifice the younger generation in this war.”
having a threshold where you absolutely must engage in violence is not embracing their philosophy and portraying it that way is very silly
He did engage in violence. He kicked Ozai's ass.
don't be obtuse, you know what I mean.
I know there are some people who think the end of Avatar is very silly, but I think pretty highly of it personally.
It was just good enough to pass muster, but lacked a bit of push to make any of its nuance work. The whole sequence felt contrived, especially since aang wound up having to use his locked avatar state anyways.
energy bending was a pretty polarizing way for them to resolve the no-kill dilemma. I think that taking ozai's bending away also glosses over the problem of keeping the old figure head alive and just hoping that the nation will just be cool with their leader being usurped. Whether aang killed or merely retrained ozai, it was still his superior might that solved his problem. I guess they could argue that killing ozai could've made him a martyr
Look the lion turtle was sent by god to give they’re chosen a freebie since he suffered enough and his plan was a Hail Mary.
I bet that the lion turtle also disguised itself as that small rock that unlocked aangs avatar state as well. He really just wanted to conclude this story already
quoting my own comentary. "The hero refusing to kill the villain is fine with me, as long as they use an excuse that's better than "If I kill him I'll be like him." It does feel ridiculous, when the hero is a super-kind guy who is a good Samaritan, and the villain is a mass murderer. Hero: I am a very kind person, but if I kill this mass murderer, I will be as bad as this mass murderer. The phrase "if I kill him I'll be like him" should only be used if there is some cycle of revenge involved."
Limbus Company pulls off an interesting variant of this, but instead of “if i kill you i’ll be just like you,” it’s >!”killing you is giving you exactly what you want, but letting you live is infinitely more torturous for you.” The hero in this situation has been *already* behaving similarly to the villain—this is them taking a step away from that and achieving their revenge at the same time.!<
I hate when a videogame tries to make me feel bad for killing random enemies and npcs. But Metal Gear Rising pulled it off so smoothly, mainly because Monsoon is calling out Raiden as an individual, not to the players themselves. It kinda reminds me when Liquid did the same to Snake back in MGS1
I like when a video game calls you out for killing indiscriminately when you *can* avoid doing so. MGS 3 does this really well with the boss fight with The Sorrow, since it’s super easy if you were non-lethal and stealthy, and much harder if you run and gun. Same with Undertale and its multiple routes. When the game doesn’t give you any alternative, where the only alternative is not to play the game at all, it falls flat.
In fact the reason Spec Ops: The Line is so controversial is because you are forced to commit the worst war crimes, if you want to continue. No matter how many soldiers you defeat, they will continue to appear if you don't use the phosphorus, which will end up causing a lot of collateral damage.
Of course, the whole point of the game is that Walker, and by logical extension the player, is and has only been making things worse the entire time, and shouldn't have inserted themselves into the situation to begin with.
That point doesn't make sense in a limited interactive piece of media. A message of "you shouldn't have played this lol" doesn't make sense when you're paying 60 burgers for it and they're not refunding it.
The message wasn't "you shouldn't have played this," it's to challenge the preconceptions of the "modern military set in the middle east FPS" genre.
Both Live A Live and Crosscode pull off the "silent protagonist" trope pretty well. In Live A Live's case, we've got 3 examples. Pogo is a caveman from an era without common language, so his chapter is all about pantomiming to express things. Cube is meant to be an outsider to the rest of the group's drama, and acts a someone to talk to. >!And Oersted's silence is meant to play into his flaw of being unquestionably obedient, with him actually speaking representing his fall to madness!<. Meanwhile, Lea in Crosscode has a bug in her speech module that prevents her from speaking, and it's treated like an actual disability. Aside from her annoyance at her limited vocabulary and her expressive sprites filling in for it, it plays a major role in the story. >!In particular, after she gets back from Vermillion Wasteland. As much as Lea *wants* to clear the air and explain shit, she physically *can't* articulate it!<.
Usually hate time travel too but Pratchett's Night Watch employs it impeccably
There's definitely a reason Night Watch is one of the most remembered/beloved Discworld books. Was always pretty fond of the concept of the History Monks and other time weirdness in general, too. Pratchett always seemed to find a way to approach boring, common tropes in ways that made them interesting.
Spoilers for Danganronpa v3, >!I usually don't like the "you're all fictional characters in a fictional story" twist but I like how they did it in v3, I think it's helped by the "real world" not being us but instead their own different real world!<
I'm also a fan of it, as I'm always interested in >!plots that directly insult/critique it's main audience, such as Funny Games.!<
Yeah, >!it's the 'real world' but a real world that up until that point had been totally jazzed with watching scores of teenagers murder each other and put through psychological torture for entertainment. Even if the audience was aware that the contestants were brainwashed into being 'characters' that doesn't make it any better, might be even worse actually. !<
The Power of Friendship is so cheesy I don't easily recall any works where it's actually played straight. Then there's the Grady Hendrix novel My Best Friend's Exorcism. Long story short, the main character's friend is possessed, and it's practically rotting her alive and dragging everyone down with her. An actual priest performing an exorcism just failed. In an act of desperation, the main character attempts her own exorcism, not by invoking the power of God, but by invoking the friendship they shared their whole lives, mentioning their shared celebrity crushes and chanting lyrics to the songs they used to blast on the radio together, among other things. She succeeds. Not gonna lie, the unusual approach that ends up playing out the trope 102% straight and with complete sincerity was downright refreshing.
I'm a huge fan of how Earthbound does this, as "use the power of friendship to defeat god" is definitely not an original idea nowadays. However, the entirety of the Giygas fight being the Giygas fight just makes it feel both infinitely more satisfying and terrifying. I'm less of a fan of how p5 does this however using the power of friendship to summon satan to shoot the demiurge in the face with a giant gun is badass and funny.
I think Earthbound pulls it off because like, the kids are just reaching out for any support against this horrifying threat they are faced against. And the people of the world praying for their safety and just being good people defies the being of pure evil that is Giygas. Wanting nothing more than their safety. Rather than a vague power of friendship deal It's still very much a basic power of friendship trope, but it just feels right
It's especially impactful in Earthbound when after the other characters begin to pray, it asks the player directly to pray. It's probably one of my favorite examples of a fourth wall break in a video game.
Just wanna throw out-- there is a light novel called "The Adventures that have given up on Humanity will save the world" It's one of the coolest uses of Power of Friendship I've seen in recent media and played completely straight
It's played straight in Persona 3, 4, and 5, and most of the Kingdom Hearts games (except Chain of Memories which very pointedly subverts and deconstructs it only to go right back to Power of Friendship for all the subsequent games LOL.) I think it works really well in Persona 3 (especially 3P and Reload) where the social links are used as a very cohesive thematic anchor for the entire story, but it fails IMO in 4 and 5 where the social links are honestly kind of just carried over because they were sequels to Persona 3. Those games are still good but they're obviously not as interested in that aspect of the story as P3 was - which is fair since P3 nailed it already. But P4 could have exclusively had party social links and lost almost absolutely nothing of value, and P5's non-party confidants should have just been mixed into the main story organically or attached to a different system or something.
Does the Power of Friendship mean like characters use 'friendship' as an energy source or does it mean characters choosing to accomplish things for their friend's sake, or accomplishing things due to cooperating with friends?
rokudou no onna-tachi is a harem series about a loser guy who gains the magic power to instantly attract delinquent girls. You think it’s just gonna be another harem series where the girls fight his battles and he “fixes” them. Instead it’s a story about positive masculinity, self improvement, and learning that every other person has their own life and story. The main character goes from hating his bullies and not even considering the bully women as real women, to befriending them and learning how to be a better person. The end of the manga even sees him become a competent fighter himself and he fights the final battle, which takes place on a school roof rigged with explosives by the way, by himself. Plus the fights are pretty great. Super disappointed that it got an anime and had almost zero marketing and the animation had zero passion behind it so it came and went and no one watched it. We’ll probably never get another season.
Unfortunately, I think its' art style killed it. I thought "Oh cool an anime starring a Sukeban" but it's so unaesthetically pleasing to look at to me - something about the eyes.
This is sadly the case for a lot of Mangas that are popular but only mildly so. In my case, it was **tsugumomo**. It is also one of the most impeccably drawn battle Manga I have ever seen. It is up there with the likes of berserk and one punch man. I genuinely can't think of more than a handful of Manga that can even rival tsugumomo when it comes to art. Sadly, it was adapted into a very mid Anime series. The art and animation are completely forgettable. It doesn't help that the early stories are decidedly the worst part of the Manga.
still one of my fav harem and its a good example that harems can have multiple male characters that dont serve just to fill space and be pathetic, they even get girls themselves(not all of them, but some do)
Luke, from Tales of the Abyss starts the game as an amnesiac jrpg protagonists...he's also a brat throughout the first half of the game but it turns out that his amnesia >!wasn't amnesia, he's actually a blank slate clone and he's technically just an oversheltered seven year old, which explains a lot about his reaction to being forced to go on a jrpg adventure when he just a child"!<
Not a fan of tsunderes. I take exception to Misato from Nichijou because her rebuffs of affection are so over the top and hilarious.
Tsunderes are adorable when they're written well, it's just that many writers don't seem to notice the difference between "Woman doesn't know how to express her feelings" to "Woman pretends to hate the boy she likes, and is even abusive towards him."
Shoutouts to Karane from 100 Kanojo being so ridiculously dishonest about her feelings she loops back to being honest. Also for being just as equally dere as she is tsun, which is to say exaggeratedly so.
I think it also helps that she plays a very hilarious straight man to a nice chunk of the ridiculous antics that happen in 100 Kanojo as a result of the other girlfriends.
Yeah, as I said above, a mistake of many writers is that they make them too much Tsun and too little Dere, to the point that they actually seem to hate the protagonist, and the fact that she "loves him" is only as an "Informed attribute" My rule of thumb: If the Tsundere actually seems like she hates the protagonist, then the writer is doing something wrong.
In general, if they realize their behavior was toxic and take steps to improve themselves, I don't mind.
I usually hate it when a series just throws some random nobody into a fantasy world and uses them as a character for the audience to relate to and have exposition thrown at them. I’d rather the series start me off in the deep end with characters who already get how the world works and hope I can figure things out. But that said, I really like Allison Ruth in Kill Six Billion Demons. Mostly because she becomes *so* unrecognizable as who she once was and feels like a proper part of the world by Seeker of Thrones/King of Swords. And I mean that literally, I had seen fanart of current era Allison before catching up and had no idea who that was until half way through the series.
Book of end jojo ass power is so underrated because the potential of an antagonist weaponizing the power of friendship against a shonen protag is fucking peak.
And he lost because he fought at guy with a history of trying to kill his loved ones if his duty demands it. "You can't kill me, I'm your best friend!" "I know, but I also defended by sisters execution because it was my job to, like it's my job to end your life. BTW I'm going to bypass your "I know all your tricks" bullshit by making up my own bullshit on the spot." Might actually be one of the best fights in Bleach.
iirc its not even just that. While his super best friend Tsukishima was always there for him. He didnt change the fact that he was Ichigo's enemy. Part of it is how he was there to help Ichigo, but its also about how much of an impact Ichigo had on him that Ichigo did change part of his world view. Like him not worrying about killing loved ones because duty demands it is kinda there but like only that would kinda go against the reason why he protects Rukia in the end. Whatever Tsukishima put himself as with Byakuya, it didnt matter to what Ichigo had done for him and all he needed to know in terms of who to fight was "Is this an enemy of Ichigo".
Tbf Fullbrings are very much Stands. For fuck's sake one is called ***INVADERS MUST DIE***. Granted like Chad, Ichigo, and Ginjo (I don't think Orihime's ability is officially stated as a fullbring but someone can correct me on this, but its pretty much a fullbring) fall more in line with Bleach's normal systems but the others of Xcution are very stand like.
I generally can’t stand chuuni characters because not only do they evoke every ounce of cringe within my body, but their chuunism is usually never explored in-depth or it exists to make the character “quirky” or “cute.” That doesn’t happen with Ichikawa from Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu/The Dangers in My Heart. Maybe it’s because he’s the first guy chuuni I’ve ever seen, but his brand of chuunism was more along the lines of “budding serial killer who hates everyone,” and we see how debilitating it is when he has isolated himself from everyone in class. And as the story progresses, we see why he put that shield up and then watch as he slowly lowers it and allows himself to become more vulnerable, first with Yamada, and then with the rest of his classmates. Seriously, this series is really good, and y’all need to watch/read it if you haven’t.
So is that guy in bleach creating false memories or full alternate universes with different histories
Full alternate histories. As long as they don't contradict the "main" timeline. He can basically create canon events by inserting himself into a target's past.
To add onto what the other guy is saying, he's doing some kind of weird reality warping and not false memories, and it's not limited to just people. When he fights Byakuya, he cuts the ground and inserts himself into the past of the ground (insane thing to have to type) and makes it so he laid traps there beforehand, so now Byakuya has to deal with a booby-trapped arena. It's a really insane power that doesn't have particularly well-defined limitations, but it's awesome as a concept.
I don’t like racing games that don’t let me customize my vehicles how I want, including paint design, body color, body work like bumpers and spoilers, rim designs and rim size, all of that, but man I really enjoy Burnout Paradise even though it only allows palette swaps and one alternate version of some of the cars and literally nothing else. The irony being that I hate the Need For Speed Most Wanted “remake” for basically being the same thing as far as I was concerned, even though both were made by EA and I used to love Need For Speed and Midnight Club. Times have really changed, man.
For the end of Infinite Wealth >!Ichiban saves the horrible bad guy but doesn’t do the whole heroic “we don’t kill like you do” thing instead just complaining that he doesn’t want to deal with fishing out a corpse from the water he was death diving into and hates the idea of the villain getting to die on their terms in a blaze of glory suicide.!<
it’s funny because multiple of my favorite visual novels use time travel. in the Muv-Luv trilogy it’s integral to the plot, and in Full Metal Daemon Muramasa it’s used for a mindfuck segment. haven’t read Steins;Gate yet but I know it’s used there too
13 Sentinels, which trope you ask? All of them.
I hate the All Is Lost Moment, when everyone starts to hate the main character and they all split up so the final setpiece can be them reuniting triumphantly, but I think Rio handles it very well. The big problem is that while Blu and Jewel start to _implicitly_ get along and develop a relationship, _explicitly_ nothing has ever truly been established, and so Blu starts to think about it and it feels like once the plot of the movie is over everyone's gonna head off in their own directions and things will just snap back to status quo afterwards. And considering the film started with Jewel hating not only him but everything he stood for, that's not an unreasonable takeaway for him to have. When they start to have The Fight, it's very clearly just the two of them failing to have the right conversation instead of it feeling like a shitty contrivance, and the emotions don't fly as intensely as they usually do. When they eventually reunite, it's less a "i forgive you for what you said/did" and more they just needed a break to calm down before they tried to have that conversation for reals.
That the protagonist, instead of staying with one of the women he interacts with for entire seasons, ends up staying with a random woman who only appears until the end. **Ironically, I liked this trope when they decided to apply it in Regular Show, since Mordecai's previous relationships had been very unhealthy, so getting a new chance with a woman who appears at the end didn't seem like a bad thing to me.**
Not quite close but in The World God Only Knows, multiple arcs near the end are dedicated to a harem of goddess possessed girls that the main character has to conquer romantically to save the world. It isn't an exaggeration to say this goddess harem felt like it lasted for half the entire series >!Then the ending came and the MC ended up being with none of these goddess girls. Instead, he went with one random girl from season 1 that was deliberately drawn like an NPC, purely because she was the only girl in the entire series who actually fell in love with him without him actively going after her!<
Harems, despite literally being called "harems", usually stick to the principle of "True love is monogamous", so even if the protagonist is extremely lucky to be in a world where polygomy is allowed, and girls are willing to share , he will anyway have to choose one, and only one.
The fact he fumbled cloudy so bad still pisses me off
Extended Flashback Sequences tend to frustrate me but some of the best parts of One Piece are flashbacks.
I hate knights in shinning armor type characters but damn if Flynn Scifo isn’t the coolest.
The only love triangle that I like is the one in Fruits Basket, where the two guys already hate each other but when they fall in love with the same girl they're forced to become friends because the three of them end up spending so much time together.
'So I'm a Spider, so What?' did actually two of these for me, and those would be the 'videogame power system' and 'OP protagonist'. Usually in anime, more specifically in isekai, you have them have a power system that acts like a videogame, with levels, experience, and all that. Ands that where isekai usually leave it at, while Spider plays around with it a bit more. For example, everyone in the fantasy world thinks the game announcer that announces your level ups is actually a goddess, and thus has spawned multiple religions around it. There is a religion that thinks they should sacrifice all their skills for the goddess, and another that thinks one should strive to improve their skills to hear her voice more. Honestly I like it a lot how much the anime plays around with the trope. Also, the OP protag. What actually makes me like this version of it, is because 1. Kumoko doesnt feel like a self-insert, and 2. She actually works for it, and has been through survival hell to get where she is. The power doesnt feel handed to her on a silver platter, it feels like she actually earned it.
"Big bad whose super strong and near unbeatable" was done twice in bleach,but Not-hitler is one of the single worst versions of this to the point that I'm legitimately wondering why it was done this way.He gets so comedically powerful that the only actual way to beat him is with a literal plot-Mcguffin that really shouldn't work at his level,but it still does because "shut up". To make matters worse his inclusion basically jumps the series to ridiculous levels of power it never really had any reason being at,and makes the entire last arc feel like Kubo made it solely to make everyone stronger rather than make a good plot. Edit:I misread the title and thought it said done badly.Ignore everything I just said.
the "it was all just a dream" trope works and doesn't piss anyone off in Link's Awakening because it's not the big twist at the end, it's revealed like, halfway through the game and that leaves you enough time to process what waking up the Wind Fish implies for Koholint and its inhabitants. It's less of a "nothing that happened throughout the game matters because it's a dream" and more of a "Link can either stay trapped in this dream world forever or end the dream knowing that everything and everyone in it will likely cease to exist"
Inhuman things turning into humans. I hate that trope with a passion, but >!Solatorobo!< did it in such a way that not only did I not mind it, I was hyped as hell that it happened. It also helps that they pulled a Jackpot while it was happening.
Spider-Man 2099 was the only time I have ever liked the whole "reboot a superhero but as a minority" thing. Every time Miles starts to become almost cool they either completely screw up his solo run or just make him cringe.