Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - When Your Fav Anime Protagonist is Problematic
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Cho_Desu
 Posts: 238 |
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And even then, spoiler[Rem does straight-up kill him at least once, lol. (And was involved in one or two of his other deaths? It's been a while.) Subaru ultimately has to put in the effort to win her trust.] It's basic storytelling to make protagonists earn victories, but such a massive percentage of narou-kei can't be bothered to provide an engaging challenge for their heroes. I do feel Re:Zero has its issues, but it's sad to see just how much better it is than most of its isekai peers for simply taking the time to put some thought into things like character arcs, worldbuilding, and themes. My thinking is that in instances of a flawed protagonist rubbing some audiences the wrong way, it's often an issue of writers chasing trends, throwing together stories quickly without considering the implications of their characters' actions. Many web novels, I've noticed over the years, take a very "eat their cake and have it too" approach, letting their protagonists do questionable, perverted, or "edgy badass" things either in authorial self-indulgence, or to simply "give the readers what they want." It's effective, so I don't see the trend ending anytime soon. I'm personally a fan of "messed up" characters when handled properly, at any rate, if only because their stories leave you something to think about. Death Note certainly took me by surprise back in my early manga-reading days with its genius yet villainous protagonist Light, and the fervor surrounding Aldnoah Zero ("Slaine did nothing wrong!") remains a distinct online anime community memory for me. And in more recent years, I've found Nana (of Talentless Nana) to be one of the most fascinating takes on a "problematic protagonist," and a rare instance of a lead girl getting to do bad things. (I get why there aren't as many, but I'd like to see more.)
I remember finding Chitose entertaining too, and it seemed she was a fan favorite in general for that anime season. I also remember being kind of let down by the story as a whole for Girlish Number though... (It's a shame we never got the novels in English? At least, I believe the anime was based on novels.) |
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2-2Distracted
Posts: 150 |
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Off-topic but what's the name of that Manga? On-topic again, but I agree with a couple folk here about problematic characters and how to portray them right, or rather, in a way that makes sense on both a narrative level and meta level. Part of the reason people can't stand the near endless slog of wish-fulfillment Isekai is because it's just that, Wish-Fulfillment. I also agree about there needing to SOMETHING said about why & how your flawed protagonist is a flawed protagonist, and what sucks is that every time the author tries to pull a Martin Scorsese he then fumbles the bag with bad writing. |
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groovysunbeam
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There is no 'right' way to do anything in fiction. Shows and movies that breaks the "writing rules" according to some people doing well seem to showcase the idea of any kind of rules for writing aren't really true in the end. That kind of talk always seemed like people wanting to control the way fiction is written or presented. The only thing one can say is as a viewer if what your personal preferences are, but everyone is going to have their own
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vorkedlarfleeze
Posts: 22 |
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Deathstroke is a villain though, not a protagonist. I think villains are allowed to be cool and likable despite doing bad things. I think the topic of 'does every villain have to be redeemable' or "people getting upset a villain doing bad things" is no less a valid discussion worth having though. But then you remember Generations where adult Superman makes out with a teenage Lana upon her request, or Hal Jordan and his many escapades so I guess even they would qualify as problematic. Antman shrinking down to spy on Ms Marvel showering... Yeah, old comics were pretty fun thinking back on them. The Scott Pilgrim thing is funny to me because for every complaint I see about him I see others hoping the new show makes Knives and Kim a canon couple finally. But, like, Kim is literally the same age as Scott. The idea that Scott dating a high school girl being a problem but Kim doing it is not is funny and kind of showcases the double standard of straight relationships vs same-sex ones for some people. |
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Snowcat
Posts: 190 |
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Concerning the double standard: it's funny few people have any problem with Eris being violent, getting away with it and that it's mostly frame as comedy too.
Nobody had any problems with the female cast of Black Lagoon either (even if not the MC, it's kind of an ensemble cast) or the assassin girls anime trend (Noir...). But i suppose it's because audience is desensitize to murder and violence. So I don't know why Vinland Saga would be criticized for having that kind of MC. So concerning the double standard, it isn't even based on anecdotal evidence: MT has probably gotten more criticism than Hanebado! and Girlish Number combined. "Audiences are, by and large, conditioned to identify with the lead of any given story by default." => is there some kind of number for that ? It's an interesting point. |
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tintor2
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Wow that escalated. This site has the weirdest commentaries of Re:zero sometimes. I still remember how when season 2 premiered and an OVA that expands the first season cliffhanger, the writers here hated Subaru so much that they downright said they would rather have another protagonist. The thing is that Re:zero is pretty much a horror series. Subaru works well because his mental sanity is tested right? Then again, when the last cour started airing the focus of the narrative shifted to the supporting cast as it seemed Subaru reached his arc's end (staring at season 3 artwork carefully).
Meanwhile, Mushoku Tensei is mostly a comedy sometimes kinda like Ranma 1/2 where everybody can be quite of asshole and explore lots of sex jokes (seriously, that series was insane for Takahashi). The only time I remember Rudeus showing off a mature side was when he tried to understand his father's side and and hugs him to comfort him. I'm not gonna mention Rapthalia 2.0 though. I'll wait after the cour ends. Still, I'm surprised nobody mentioned Light Yagami whose entire story led to the banning of Death Note from multiple countries. Then we have Lelouch who realized who got revived for the sake of another movie that is not even focused on him. Even my avi might count as problematic. |
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Los Nido
Posts: 132 |
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Sex is way more taboo in American culture than violence is so it's unsurprising when Americans get upset over perverted gags. Light Yagamai never had as much scrutiny on social media as even a D-tier pervert character like Mineta gets. If it involves sex or pervertedness in any way, people take it a lot more seriously at leaat on the internet. Back in the day people did used to complain about the 'violent girl' trope where if a guy accidently walks in on a girl changing or something then she pulls out a hammer or punches him with her fist and sends him flying and crippled into a wall or the sky, but that was more for it being so overdone rather than any kind of morality discussion on if assaulting someone over a misunderstanding is too much or inappropriate. Closest I can think of to a female character that gets a lot of hate or scrutiny is Sakura Haruno, but she also did other things like try to emotionally manipulate Naruto with a false love confession and other things which Naruto called her out on. Vinland Saga is a bit interesting to see brought up because back in the day people genuinely hated the famrland arc. It could be a result of it being released monthly so the pacing was a lot more grueling, but so many people felt the series dropped off back around 2010. Even when the anime was announced and premiered people were wondering how the farm arc would be received by anime-onlys. No doubt it has fans itself but people seem to forget it was very divisive back in the day. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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The 'violent girl' trope usually bothers me less than the garbage Rudeus is portrayed doing because that trope is often played out in contexts where it is obviously absurd, and because the framing of these scenes generally seems quite aware that what the woman is doing is not OK. To the extent that it fails to frame it in this way, it also generally bothers me.
By contrast, MT very rarely seems aware that anything Rudeus is doing is wrong. It is generally humor in the 'Laughing and leering with Rudy' sense, not in the sense of laughing at Rudy. You can even see this in the audience's reactions, with several of the more passionate defenders of the show actively cheering for Rudy's torture and sexual abuse of the cat girls, insisting "they deserved it" in various ways. That attitude comes from people actively rooting for Rudeus and finding those scenes funny with him, not at him. Subaru is the perfect contrast. If the authors are friends, it is unfortunate the MT author didn't learn more from Re;Zero. Re;Zero's far from perfect, but it does an excellent job actively motivating you to dislike Subaru for good reasons, and, variously, to root for him to redeem himself and do better -- and has even shown us Subaru learning how to recognize the core problems in himself. Subaru's life is also filled with basically nothing but suffering, and he is an ordinary weakling in his isekai life; very little is handed to him, and his existence is little more than struggle. In R;Z, there's much less (though arguably not absolutely none) of the blatant wish fulfillment you see in something like MT, and R;Z actually addresses and shows growth in the broken parts of its protagonist, which we absolutely do not see in MT. In MT, Rudy just goes from a fat depressed pedophile and sex pest to a jacked outgoing pedophile and sex pest. A few more of those words would need to change, or at least be challenged and not actively rewarded by authorial choices, for it to have a shot at being decently written media. Anyway, I dunno. Probably should just write a script to auto-reply to a subset of posters' comments with "No, that's not what it's about. It's about framing.", given how tediously and creepily repetitive these conversations have been, but I guess I can't help but touch a hot stove over and over again. |
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Gonzo_Deluxe
Posts: 23 |
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If you want Rudeus to get taken down a peg or three, just wait until Eris gets back. In addition to having to deal with the women in his life, he's going to have to deal with the Greyrat family politics: Luke's branch of the family were the instigators of having Eris' grandfather executed for "mishandling" the teleportation event.
And I have to say after the episodes this season, if Rudeus is growing out of his horny (38-year-old shut-in/inexperienced 16 year old) shell, it's going very slowly. He clearly is still not thinking beyond his immediate needs and he only sees responsibilities within his immediate friend and family circle. It's still possible he'll stagnate as a typical half-assed isekai protagonist. But the two turning points in this story so far have had huge impacts on how he sees the world and himself, and I don't think we are done with the paradigm shifts in this story. I guess my tl;dr of Mushokou Tensei up until now is that it's a typical OP isekai protag, but the world is on hard mode. Oh, and at least there aren't any status screens. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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I don't really care if he gets less horny. It is genuinely not a problem for me that he's sex-obsessed. He can be a super ecchi, intense nymphomaniac protagonist and still be sympathetic or interesting.
What bugs me is that he is, specifically, sexually abusive, exploitative, and disrespectful, often towards children or people he believes are children, and that the world was clearly designed to make this easier for him, not harder. That he isn't challenged on it; we see no real comeuppance, no contrasting voices, and his behavior is most often framed as a hilarious joke we should be laughing at alongside him. The narrative accepts this grotesque behavior and appears to endorse it. It doesn't even see it as a thing for him to fix and grow away from, as Shay Guy has pointed out repeatedly. (This, without getting into his active engagement in other evil social institutions, which also hasn't changed and goes unchallenged. But this alone is enough.) And, respectfully, readers have been claiming 'Just wait...' for two seasons now while selling this as a redemption story. I simply do not believe it at this point, especially as many of the folks most ardently defending it seem to not to even understand that these parts of Rudy are broken. EDIT: also 100% disagree that the world is 'on hard mode'. The world of MT is basically one massive gift to Rudy, both in terms of his sexual depravity and his in-born skill and power in it. We've seen that some powers (meaning, some of the wandering superpowered humanoids) in it eclipse him by a few orders of magnitude, but they're few and far between. He generally coasts through life easily, and with a few minor training montages becomes a kind of prodigy. Contrast that with someone like Subaru, who literally has nothing resembling useful new-world powers aside from his ability to suffer, die, and return, and could in any iteration of 'his' story be absolutely crushed by a roaming low-level monster. Even when he does beat the equivalent of RPG trash mobs, and certainly when he succeeds in challenging more powerful foes, it's generally after repeated miserable failures, and only through great artifice and personal growth. Re;Zero is definitely a much better fit for the 'on hard mode' description, in my opinion. |
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Snowcat
Posts: 190 |
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Yeah, the difference is Rumiko Takahashi has a lot more talent than the author of MT for comedy and doesn't use vulgarity. It was also another period but Ranma 1/2 is still so good.
Indeed, I never understood the criticism for Sakura. If I had to criticize something, it is the difficulties for Kishimoto to write female characters and his tendencies to sideline them. It's a good argument in the sense of double standard against women made in the article. I reacted on the aspect of double standard because of debates about "School Days" I had in the past. Everybody hated the MC for being a complete a**hole but only a woman defended him by saying the girls where not that much better and manipulated him. (anecdotal evidence here also). |
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Shay Guy
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It's one of the frustrating things about anime and manga, that the image of cishet dudes' sexuality so often seems split between repression and predation, neither of which I'd like to aspire to. It doesn't have to be that way -- Sigma from Virtue's Last Reward frequently thinks with his Σ, but the game manages to keep it on the side of funny instead of "dude, not cool". |
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light turner
Posts: 177 |
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I guess it depends if you can watch media without the ability to ignore the real world implications of the characters and their actions - or messages, as an old Simpsons gag once said.
Personally I like Sasha from Seikon no Qwaser. His whole gimmick was getting power from sucking on girls' boobs, and he did it so matter-of-factly it was funny and had little to zero interest in the girls sexually, outside the one he falls in love with. One of the coolest moments in the first season was him doing it mid-battle when Katja pushed her partner/girlfriend/slave/pet, ripped off her shirt, and told him to suck her boobs mid-fight for a powerup, and he did it with such stylish flips and twists while dodging attacks. Some might call that assault in the real world, but.. it was cool on the show. And funny. Katja herself would be in jail in the real world too given all the things she's done to Hana..... And Hana too, for that matter given what she did to some of the other girls.. Really, everyone in that show would be in trouble in real life if they followed the laws. But they don't, so we get funny and cool scenes. |
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Top Gun
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You're conflating personal preferences with writing fundamentals here. Obviously everyone is free to enjoy whatever they choose, but that doesn't mean there aren't general practices that can be learned and understood in order to make one a better writer. To put it another way, there's an old expression I've seen used about artistic endeavors: "You have to understand the rules first in order to break them." Unfortunately, the authors of many isekai series seem to have never learned the rules in the first place, so they're not being deliberately subversive so much as fumbling about. There's also the "appeal to popularity" fallacy coming into play: remember that just because something is successful doesn't say anything about its inherent quality.
I'm confused as to where exactly Black Lagoon treats the actions of its cast as a positive or glorifies them...if anything, it's the exact opposite. Revy's entire character is framed as a fundamentally-broken person with a horrific past who's had to do unspeakable things in order to survive, and she's held up as a contrast to Rock, who's teetering on the edge of the dark abyss she inhabits. It's why their relationship was so fascinating. Likewise, fan-favorite Balalaika is shown to be a terrifying ruthless murderer on numerous occasions.
Multiple people have brought both of those series up as counter-examples in the other threads about this topic. I mentioned both myself just a few days ago. Yet again, it's about framing. (NeverComplex is right, some of us should set that as an auto-reply at this point.) I don't even think that Death Note is particularly well-written, but at the very least it's crystal-clear by the third or fourth anime episode that Light is a megalomaniac and sociopath. Even though he's the protagonist of the story, it never once presents what he's doing in a positive manner. And I think one of Code Geass's core strengths is showing how, even though Lelouch started his journey with the best of intentions, it quickly became a very dark path that ensnared him. The fact that the story ends with him spoiler[voluntarily martyring himself as the enemy of the entire planet because he knows that it's the only way to achieve peace] should tell you everything you need to know about its treatment of him. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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I'm not sure it's about ability so much as desire and goal. Like, if we're going to have a conversation about whether a piece of media is well-written, deep, interesting, high or low quality and so forth; then, I don't see what 'turning off' this ability accomplishes. Thinking about the show as a reflection on real-world ideas is critical to being able to have that conversation. But, like, if the goal is just to turn brain off, immerse, and vegetate on whatever content regardless of its quality, then sure, that stuff's no longer necessary to think about. I mean, I guess there's a bit of quality left to talk about, purely in terms of .. like, is the artwork well done? Is the world narratively self-consistent enough that you can immerse and not constantly feel jarred out of it, I suppose? But, most of the interesting stuff worth talking about is gone if you refuse to entertain the idea that maybe we should look at the show as a creation of a real human in the real world. Particularly anything about the merits of character-writing, since these generally involve human characters and unavoidably require us to draw on the real world to evaluate how well-written they are. All the more so in cases like Rudy's, where he is, even within the canon of the show, originally from 'our' world. |
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