Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - When Your Fav Anime Protagonist is Problematic
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tintor2
 Posts: 2142 |
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It's amazing nobody touched Kira Yamato. Even Gundam Info has been making tweets to create roar about him and whatever is his role in the next movie. Maybe his character is not bad to result in hate?
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Hal14
 Posts: 717 Location: Heart of africa |
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Is Kira problematic or is he just disliked? The two aren't the same but a character can be both. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2383 |
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Did it? I mostly recall people calling Chitose hilarious (because she was) or sympathizing with her failure to reach her goals (which half the time was entirely her fault). The shitty producer of the anime she was working on got way more flack. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1187 |
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I do dislike Kira but he is not problematic. Kira is not that much of a problem, he was a broken boy manipulated by a crazy bitch seeking vengeance and got over it by the end. Shin was a jackass, he was the manipulative bitch indulged in self pity and you can perfectly argue he never learned his lesson. Even in the trailer of the new movie you can see he is still full of himself, he is the only one not kneeling to that girl who I suppose is a queen or something. The problematic MC of Gundam Seed is Shin, Kira just follows the usual fallen hero path and to this day I refuse to buy a Destiny Gundam for my collection. |
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Los Nido
Posts: 132 |
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As much as I like Rudeus, Kazuma will always be my go-to favorite isekai protagonist. I generally prefer flawed or problematic protagonists over the paragons of morals and heroes since they're more interesting. Goku, Naruto, and Luffy are more interesting because they can be selfish, perverted, or just stupid and arrogant. It makes them feel more human. Ultimately these guys are all heroes at the end of the day, but like us they're not perfect and can do questionable things and have flaws.
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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Man, Hanebado was so good.
You definitely don't see female characters with the same flaws common to male ones nearly as often. If you want a parallel to Thorfinn, there are manga like Shut Hel out there, and I could name some LNs with casts of fantastically messed-up women (how I wish Executioner and Her Way of Life's adaptation went to at least the end of book 6), but it's hard not to see the difference in baseline expectations. I don't know how anyone got a message of the girls "deserving it" or "learning a lesson" from that part of Mushoku Tensei. It's yet another instance of the MC getting carried away with a bad plan (he only has bad plans) before realizing that it was all totally pointless and asking someone to bail him out. He's a bungling idiot with a screw loose. (The idiot part, at least, has to be deliberate. Too many gags hinge on it for it to not be.) Edit: I'm also kind of dreading reading more of Monogatari now? I keep hearing about how many issues Araragi has, and my memory of the parts I read was mostly him learning lessons about how he can't solve other people's problems for them and needs to respect people's agency and stuff? Like, kind of a critique of how "good" protagonists act? I'm not sure I'd want it to go totally off the rails. Him moaning about how embarrassing it is to get bitten by a vampire in this day and age did crack me up, though. Last edited by AQuin1904 on Thu Aug 24, 2023 2:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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freebird1994
Posts: 88 |
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I can't be the only one who saw the title of this and immediately thought: "Oh gee, I wonder who they could be referring too? Surely there hasn't been any Protagonist in a currently airing series that could have brought this about as a discussion topic?"
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jmckenna15
Posts: 147 |
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I've said all that I wanted to say about Rudeus and the last couple of episodes in the "fun discourse" of the MT threads that I've more than happily contributed to, but to Steve's point about redemption -- while I largely agree with him that characters don't need to be redeemed to be good "bad" characters, it would be a huge knock against MT if it doesn't go this route because of what it's built up in Season 1 for Rudeus and the promise of it being a redemption story of sorts. That's what a number of Rudy fans are expecting and it wouldn't kill the series if it doesn't go that route, it would be a demerit nonetheless.
Thorfinn is the best example of redemption well see in some time though because you had an *entire season* of wonton violence he committed before turning it around in Season 2 in a very well written manner without 90% of the violence. It's brilliant writing because it happened almost naturally and trusts the audience to lean on what they remember from Season 1 to inform a lot of his decisions. It's why it's one of the great seinen titles out there. He's a legitimately good character now. For Good. Kazuya meanwhile just sucks lol. He's been better in Season 3 and less horny as the show goes into the movie arc but there's only so long he can go without being goddamn cringe. The girls keep it from being unwatchable -- for now at least. Thorfinn arrived at the spot we hoped in S2. Rudeus is getting to that point but isn't there yet (and I expect a few more stumbles from him before the end). And I have no faith in Kazuya getting there because I still want to hit him with a blunt object. |
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tintor2
Posts: 2142 |
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If it were 2016 again, Dazai from Bungo Stray Dogs (who is currently looking up for a nice way of dying in season 5) could count for constantly reminding us about a writer's suicide. Even in the spinoff Wan, Atsushi becomes tired of hearing about suicides. The movie Dead Apple tried cleaning up the concept of the whole suicide but it was so confusing for most viewers that Atsushi's final message didn't catch anybody. Rudeus was always written to come across as perverted but I bet what bothered everybody the most that almost cancelled the writer is the second coming Raphtalia. The whole sex thing was literally underplayed in season 2 due to MC suffering erectile dysfunction so I guess the author is gonna pick one problematic theme per season. I'm pretty sure even the final season will provide another problematic season based on what I heard. Then again, the whole isekai series are quite common. I can't believe that they even wrote the idea of Kazuma trying to rape Megumin in one scene from the movie that led to her escape too. |
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1325 |
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It's always wild to me when people can refer to Kira as a "broken boy" and then deride Flay as a "crazy bitch" when both of them are broken, traumatized kids thrown into a war at the same time and just doing what they have to to get by and protect what loved ones they still have. Her methods are shittier, sure, but she grows and regrets her actions by the end, like you said. Last edited by Gem-Bug on Thu Aug 24, 2023 4:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dark Mac
Posts: 321 |
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Kazuma from Konosuba is a much worse person than Rudy. It's too bad he's not brought up here.
You're correct. Everyone loved Chitose back when it was airing, at least in the Anglosphere. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4809 |
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Heh, it's kind of fun seeing a column pop up based on the topic of a current threadnought.
It's been brought up repeatedly by numerous people in said discussion, but for me the key factor is always going to be how the story frames a problematic protagonist. I don't need an explicit preachy moral message against them, or even necessarily need them to be redeemed, but at the absolute bare minimum the story has to show that their actions have lasting consequences that they'll inevitably have to deal with. If you create a story where your protagonist is a complete piece of shit who never gets called out for it, never grows out of it, and never even has much bad stuff happen to them because of it, you haven't written a character at all, you've created a gross piece of wish fulfillment. I'm so glad the column brought up Vinland Saga, because I'm in the middle of season 2 right now, and it's astounding just how good Thorfinn's character arc has been. His most violent and murderous tendencies in season 1 were always framed as only driving him deeper into an empty pit of despair, and now we're getting to see just what it takes to crawl back out of that pit. It's honestly some of the best character writing that I've ever seen. But like I said, you don't even need it to be a redemption story, and it can even be played for laughs if done right. Someone in the other thread mentioned Seinfeld, a beloved and highly-influential sitcom about four characters who, if we're being honest, are often total jerks. The stories never pretend that they're not jerks, and them being jerks frequently backfires on them in hilarious fashion. Or a friend of mine mentioned Always Sunny, a show about a cast of irredeemable garbage people who manage to screw up almost everything they touch. Something that immediately comes to mind for me on the anime side is Welcome to the NHK, whose protagonist was a profoundly-broken human being whose awful behavior was often played for laughs...only via biting sarcastic black humor that eventually gave way to genuine crushing drama. What all of these series have in common are the writing chops required to pull off the proper tone, and I'm sorry, but you're not usually going to find that in stories that started out as web novels mindlessly chasing popular tags on a self-publishing website. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2326 |
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You know who else came to mind for female lead characters who do shitty things? O Maidens in Your Savage Season. Niina especially, because she's absolutely a sympathetic character who's had things done to her she doesn't remotely deserve and is dealing with A Lot… and it's also true that spoiler[she sexually assaults her friend's boyfriend, and when he objects, counters with "your mouth says no but your body says yes"].
I'm getting close to the end of season 2, and if you want to get pedantic, I don't think he ever stabbed any Vikings! He did cut off one's fingers, but that guy was working for the English. Aside from that, worst he did was give one a cut on the cheek. Now, the English themselves, he killed loads of. ("But I had to! It was so I could kill a Dane! It totally makes sense, I swear! I… think?")
i_understood_that_reference.bmp
Or at least that someone has to deal with. You can do the Scorsese thing and make a thematic point out of the protagonist not being punished. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4809 |
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Yeah, that works too. The story has to do something with it either way, instead of just letting it happen without note. That's what struck me the most when reading the author's comments about Rudy: "My God...he hasn't thought about how this would actually work at all, has he?" |
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Shay Guy
Posts: 2326 |
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To this day I don't know how to feel about that one scene late in Royal Space Force. |
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