Personality
A character trait is later recontextualized into something bad/tragic, it's always been there, we just never paid attention
Deku's self sacrifice - My Hero Academia
Initially portrayed as purely heroic, it's later shown to be extremely detrimental when he refuses any aid from his friends, abandoning them to "protect them"(of course, leaving them also puts them in danger since he can no longer be there to save them if something goes wrong
The same quality that makes him a great hero, also leads him to nearly lose everything and get EVERYONE killed(since if this tired, weakened Deku did encounter AFO/Shigaraki, he would almost certainly die and have his powers taken)
The whole series is about how the main character is prepared for any circumstance to an insane degree(being the highest level half-way through, perfectly predicting that an ally would betray them through ridiculous jumps in logic, etc)
It turns out that the reason for this was that in a past life(unknown to him) he was extremely easy-going and unprepared for everything, always winning due to luck and skill, however, one day he ends up losing due to not finding out about a bosses weakness, this leads to the demon king murdering his friend, eating his Goddess, and then devouring his girlfriend and the child inside of her right in front of him. The Demon King then takes over the world and basically turns it into Berserk on steroids
Erens entire character - Attack on Titan
He hates the titans not because of what they've done(though that's a part of it), but because they've stolen his freedom, so when he learns that in reality, the Marleyans are the true enemies, the ones who have taken his and everyone elses freedom away, he does exactly what he said he was going to do, just to a different enemy
Erens philosophy is that anyone that tries to take his freedom deserves to have theirs taken away, Zeke becomes a slave because he tried to take away the Eldians ability to breed, the Marleyans lose the freedom of living because they tried to take his, it's always been a core character trait, but when he becomes to antagonist of the story in the last parts, this character trait of his is front and center
Kotaro Live Alone does this a lot, it'll show Kotaro doing some strange thing that could just be seen as "just a kid doing and saying the darndest things." Like one time, it's found that he has a bunch of newspaper subscriptions and the newspaper delivery guy is like "kid you don't need that many newspapers" but it turns out he wants to get all those newspapers because he everyday, he's looking for traces of his parent's names in them.
Like he gives all the neighbours a box of tissues each as a "gift" when he first moves in and you think, oh that's cute, he just grabbed some random shit from the cupboard, but hey, he's trying.
Then he's out shopping with the main guy and makes an offhand comment about one brand of tissues having a better smell/feel/taste than another, and again it's treated as a silly moment where the kid is just saying something quirky to sound clever or something.
Then we find out it's because when his parents first disappeared KOTARO ATE ALL THE TISSUES IN HIS HOUSE TO STOP HIMSELF FROM STARVING.
One of Leslie’s boyfriends in the early seasons. He’s incredibly worldly, knowledgeable, and has a ton of captivating life stories.
In a valentines episode, he and Leslie try to reunite her mom with an old love. Leslie wants to call off the plan when they meet the man and find out his life fell apart over the years, but Justin insists they go through with it because it will make for such a great story.
Leslie reluctantly goes through with it, it ends in a disaster, and while Leslie regrets the decision, Justin is excitedly telling everyone what happened.
Turns out the reason he has so many great stories is because that’s all he cares about, and will manufacture exciting moments at the expense of those around him.
Beatrice is initially portrayed as an extremely stubborn, antisocial person who refuses to leave the Forbidden Library, constantly talks about contracts/rules, and acts like she genuinely prefers being alone, however, it’s later revealed that this isn’t just some quirky personality trait, she’s been sitting in that library for 400 YEARS because Echidna told her to wait for “that person”, someone who was supposed to eventually come and give her life meaning(the worst part being that Echidna never even had a specific person in mind), so the same stubbornness and devotion to promises that initially makes Beatrice seem reliable and principled is actually the exact thing that ruined her life, because instead of choosing what SHE wanted, she spent centuries waiting for someone else to tell her what her purpose was, meeting countless people, getting attached to them, watching them disappear, and then going right back to waiting because she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the contract, it’s always been there from the beginning, we just assumed she stayed in the library because she liked it when in reality she was basically trapped there by her own inability to let go.
can u elaborate. I do remember in season 1 when he she teleports subaur with emilias dead body outside but pays 0 attention to emilias dead body or subarus suffering face.
I forgot exactly but there were times beatrice saved him when everything was already destroyed. Subaru couldn't understand it, why did beatrice not help earlier? Why him? Why now? Beatrice just didn't answer and said to not die in front of her.
Re:Zero is great for this. Another example is the main character himself, being initially portrayed as outgoing, confident and eccentric before revealing it was all a mask to hide his self-loathing and insecurities
this is hinted at as early as arc 2 of the story where he spends a significant amount of time trying to keep up appearances while deteriorating mentally from the pressure
The Julius dual episode was very specific in its desgin from how they draw Suba like throwaway isekai villains and it being the only time the eye reflection motif has the image fade away the exact opposite of what happens with Beatrice.
"Why are you holding that like it's something you care about?", "Everything I've ever seen everything I've ever said to others was written down in this book as if someone like you could ever move my heart on your own human!!"
Throughout Shokugeki no Souma, Nakiri Erina is always praised as having super sense of taste called "God's Tongue" and has only eaten the most delicious dishes. At one point, Souma makes her a bowl of rice with tempura fried eggs, using cheap, discounted eggs; Hisako (Erina's aide), upon hearing that, freaks out because, again, Erina has always only eaten high quality food. That said, Souma's skills make it so that she can eat the whole bowl without problem.
But then comes the BLUE arc, with Erina's mother finally making an appearance, and it's revealed that the "God's Tongue" is something that only a few members of the Nakiri family had developed through generations, but every single one of them fell into despair because their sense of taste became too refined as they grew up, to the point they eventually vomited anything that was put in their mouth and died from either starvation or suicide. In the present, Erina's mother also has the "God's Tongue" and she has to use IV drips to get nutrients.
When they brought up the Noir chefs, I was so excited to see if they do some “illegal ingredients” like human or endangered animals. Then we got the Chainsaw seasoning, razor claws basting meat, a ribbed cocktail shaker with 100 cross dressing men, and I was so pissed.
Unfortunately I love anime and cooking so I just had to finish the show.
Throughout Batman the Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, and Justice League, we see Bruce Wayne as a man with an unwavering commitment to fighting crime in the guise of Batman. By the start of Batman Beyond, we see that this commitment has driven away all of his friends and allies leaving him a bitter old man living alone with only a dog for company.
It's because western comics and Japanese Manga make money in such drastically different ways.
Spider-Man and Batman have to constantly stay where they are and be reset over and over because they sell toys. The movies and shows need them in that same state because that's how the characters are known and everyone wants a piece of the pie.
They are ultimately products to be sold, not characters.
Manga doesn't make nearly as much money, and when they do enter the same markets such as toys/figures, movies, etc, they tend to rely on the audience they already cultivated rather than trying to reach new ones with the individual product. They don't want you to only love the main character, they want you to love the whole story/universe the character is in.
While the traits are there, it is a bit complicated by Monika canonically amplifying them. Then again, these things are possibly implied to be something that can happen in the unaltered game since IIRC Monika complains about not being able to be an option to go home with as she doesn't have casual outfit sprites.
Cute, ditzy, silly girl's behaviour generally explains her silly and ditzy actions (such as getting out of bed late, being late for school), which is later contextualised to be depression she's been fighting throughout the game (and exasperated by the main antagonist)
there’s an incredible segment of an OSP video where they talk about how consistently characterized anakin is, always choosing to protect his loved ones at any cost, and how that desire to protect them leads him through his entire arc across all of the movies + clone wars
I think it's why they're so much fun to talk about. When we step away from clunky dialogue or pod racing, we get to a really compelling dual tragedy of a man and a republic being manipulated into destroying what they think they're protecting.
Prequels were a first draft of an amazing story, they desperately needed refinement and pushback , like the o.g trilogy has, but at the core, the movies had a soul.
The sequels are the opposite, a much better made series of movies but there is no core or cohesive story throughout. They just don't have a soul.
This is why the prequels still have a fandom, get TV shows made about the stories and a very vibrant community the sequels don't have.
It’s also worth noting that the prequels got a lot of supplemental material- cartoons, video games books- while the sequels have nothing. I’m sure the fact they were kinda good has helped, but I think the fact they exist at all help the prequels.
The problem imo is that the sequels are all flash and no substance. There's nothing really to build off of because there's nothing implied, all the lore is just dumped onto your lap pre-assembled.
The Clone Wars TV show existing also retroactively makes the prequels way better too, since we spend way more time with Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the clone army, watching his gradual turn to darkness over time. Makes it hit way harder, especially when you add Ahsoka to the mix
Going off of that, Luke Skywalker’s desire To save his loved ones often results in failure more than success.
Rush off to save Han and Leia? Fail at saving Han, lose a hand and find out a truth you’re not ready for, and end up being the one who needs saving.
Hear that your father may corrupt your sister? Nearly lose yourself in a fit of protective rage that would have led to you becoming the next Sith Apprentice.
See that your nephew has been corrupted and will destroy everything you love? Light your lightsaber to strike him down on instinct, but regret it…only for it to be too late, and to lose everything anyways.
In Brandon Sanderson’s “Stormlight Archive” series we follow the honorable Dalinar who is uncle to young king Elhokar. Throughout the first book Elhokar has shown himself to be a vain and paranoid man constantly thinking that everyone (including Dalinar) is trying to steal his throne. At the end of the first book Dalinar orders Elhokar’s guards to wait in the hallway and then beats the shit out of Elhokar as a way of demonstrating that if he wanted the throne he could have seized it whenever he wanted. The fact that he hasn’t proves that he loves Elhokar and wants to support him and so Elhokar should trust him. Fans generally regarded this as a highlight of the book and a demonstration of how badass Dalinar is.
In the fifth book of the series Dalinar is forced to relive this scene but with a more mature eye. Instead of seeing a badass he sees a bully pummeling a weaker man for not doing what he wanted. Instead of a strong uncle guiding a beloved nephew he saw a tyrant usurping the throne in all but name, controlling the kingdom behind the scenes while leaving Elhokar as a figurehead to appease his conscience. Looking back he realized a better man would have spent more time getting to know Elhokar and trying to teach him to be a better person worthy of the throne but instead he took the easy path of using violence to enforce his will.
So happy to see Stormlight brought up, and you did a seriously great job at explaining a whole lot of what happened. You did leave out a very important detail though.
Elhokar's paranoia was a genuine liability to everyone, including himself, and at that point resulted in actual lives being lost. None of the other Highprinces respected him and were going to turn on him if he couldn't clean up his act. On top of that, Elhokar faked an assassination attempt on himself so that people would take his paranoia more seriously. It put Dalinar in a sensitive position, which eventually led to him being betrayed and the majority of his army being slaughtered.
I forget the exact quote, but Dalinar basically said, "Look, you're drunk at the wheel and it's getting people killed. I love you like a son and I've done everything to prove that, but that's clearly not enough, so let's try it the only way left.".
and then later it's revealed that his paranoia was due to the fact that he was seeing the cryptics who were drawn to him and that he was very close to becoming a lightweaver. if dalinar was not dalinar and was instead someone more skilled at guiding and counseling elokhar could have been a great king and one of the founders of the return of the knights radiant
I was tempted to bring that up. Something I find so great about that interaction is that both have a what-if scenario that kind of makes the other one impossible.
In the book, him beating Elokar's ass is a signal that he's going to use his older ways to reunite the highprinces since violence and force is really all they understand. And it works, arguably because he did something that is harmful and bad character development, he saved the day long enough for them to survive the ruinstorm. But as a byproduct, you see what happens to Elokar in later books. That makes what you just wrote out impossible.
Alternatively, Dalinar could have nurtured Elokar and done what you described, but he may not have been able to reunite the highprinces soon enough to discover "that place".
Either way, Sanderson said that Elokar's ideals would have been to admit that he was a horrible king, which does lay credence to the fact that regardless of the way they went about it, Elokar had to go for the sake of the kingdom.
I mean, the only people at the time who could've known the Cryptics were real and that Elhokar was not paranoid, were either:
A lowest of the low cannon-fodder slave who was actively trying to keep his knowledge about this a secret.
Chilling out in an island-nation thousands of miles away, and actively trying to keep their knowledge about this a secret.
Completely and utterly mad, and probably evil.
It is easy to say with hindsight what should've been done, but you can't blame Dalinar for not counseling Elhokar on what everyone rational would've thought were delusions based on fairy tales.
stormlight archives has some flaws, but dalinar is an incredible character. i love how we meet the honorable and restrained version of him first and we buy 100% into it because its his POV and we know he is being sincere. and then we gradually get more and more details about the person he used to be for all but the past 5 years of his life and we start to see glimpses of that man in the present too like in the scene you mention.
it reminds me of book 1 of the dark tower where we dive deeper into roland's past the closer he gets to the man in black.
Yeah I remember being frustrated that foreign leaders wouldn't trust him , but understanding that they wouldn't want to give an Alethi army access to their lands.
Then when you learn who the Blackthorn was, it's the most reasonable decision ever to not give him access to your lands
Initially portrayed as one of his coolest traits, Roselle is the type of person that HAS to know what’s behind every mystery, constantly researching things nobody else understands, messing with dangerous knowledge, exploring places people clearly shouldn’t be exploring, etc(this is also why so much of what he leaves behind is insanely useful), but in LOTM curiosity isn’t always a good thing, because this is a world where simply knowing too much about the wrong thing can put you in danger. The same quality that makes Roselle such an incredible explorer/inventor is also the thing that makes his behavior increasingly unsettling once you understand how the world works, because he doesn’t really know when to stop, if there’s something hidden from him he NEEDS to find out what it is, so what originally comes across as “of course Roselle investigated this” slowly starts feeling more like “oh no, Roselle investigated this”
Yep, he ends up going to the moon, realises that the reason the moon is crimson, probably realises that he didn't transmigrate, and starts getting targetted by GOO since he was out od earth's barrier
I’m honestly surprised he survived going to the moon even as a king of angels and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he didn’t survive it at all
In Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, Nemona is a very enthusiastic rival. After seeing the player's skill, she practically begs you to be her rival. And yes, it is pretty funny. But The Way Home gives it a bit of a sadder edge. Nemona comes from a rich family, with her older sister being the one primed to take over the family business while she was mostly left to her own devices. In addition, her incredible skill and passion in Pokemon battling drove her peers away from her. So, her being so invested in finally having an equal is likely because the player is the first friend she's had in a very long time.
I thought she was creepy at first but then I realized oh...she's clingy because she legit doesn't know how to act when she's excited and has probably never had a friend before...
And her lack of social understanding has actual consequences besides just driving people away. Her insistence that the time dragon is having a "family reunion" when the Guardian of Paradise shows up almost gets everyone killed, and Penny yells at her for it.
Likewise, Arven is an abrasive jerk who refuses to open up about himself, but finally reveals that he's only had his dog his entire life since his parent was never there for him. Even when the professor worked from home, that was all they would do, and they ignored him. So he had to rely only on himself and his dog. It's likely that he would have been ignored if he had told anyone about his parent, since they were a beloved celebrity.
Ice King and his habit of kidnapping princesses in Adventure Time.
Turns out that he used to he a human named Simon who was deeply in love with his fiancée Betty, but as the crown drove him insane and mutated him, Betty disappeared.
In Catching Fire he's presented as a womanizing celebrity heartthrob. In Mockingjay we find out that President Snow was pimping him out to wealthy Capitol citizens since he was at most sixteen (which is when he says he officially became up for grabs).
Initially portrayed as one of his most heroic qualities, Dokja is constantly willing to throw himself into situations that should kill him if it means everyone else gets to survive(and because he knows more about the scenarios than everyone else, he can usually justify it as being the “best” option), however, as the story goes on it becomes increasingly obvious that this isn’t JUST because he cares about everyone so much, but also because he places almost no value on his own life compared to theirs, repeatedly making plans where everyone survives except for him and never really considering how badly his death would affect the people he’s trying to save. The same quality that makes him the person constantly saving everyone is also one of his biggest flaws, because Dokja treats himself like an expendable resource, and whenever something goes wrong his immediate solution is basically “I’ll sacrifice myself and everyone else can keep going”, even when the others very clearly DON’T want a future bought with his life
these kinds of characters have it particularly bad because their ability to come back from the dead (even if it's only from their perspective in Subaru's case) only reinforces their ideas of others' lives being more valuable than their own
that family of 4 doesn't get a do-over if they die, so you better do something about it
I love this characterization and kinda wanna explore it myself at some point
Subaru does at least get an arc where hes forced to reconsider this when he realizes there is a possibility that the times he dies that version of the world may actually keep going and all of his friends and loved ones have to go on without him in those timelines.
Hikigaya Hachiman, the main character of Oregairu, is shown to have a way of helping others that tends to sacrifice himself in social ways. He is overly self-deprecating, dwells on his failures to socialize with classmates, and can't bring himself to be polite to people who don't deserve it.
By the end of the first season, he frames himself as a villain to get the Culture Festival Committee Chairman to do want he wants her to do in defiance. This foreshadows the real conflict of the series: the people around him who care about him can't stand to see him hurt himself. And after he gets isolated from his two closest friends for an amount of time, he ends up breaking down.
https://giphy.com/gifs/VhXhoqn3DJt8Q
It’s played almost entirely for laughs in the first film, but Finding Dory takes Dory’s disability a lot more seriously.
“It runs in my family. At least…At least I think it does…Hmmm. Where are they?”
Goes from being one of her funniest lines, to one of her most tragic.
Gon Freecss from Hunter x Hunter has always been a "risk it for the biscuit" kind of guy. But under the lens of him being a child protagonist, you kind of just assume that it's just Gon being the heart of the story. But it's so much more than that. He refuses to believe that his father was a scumbag, constantly excusing his father's absence because of the "awesomeness of being a Hunter". Consistently risks himself for the sake of others, to extents that could only be described as psychopathic. Gon is malleable in a way that only he himself manipulates—but when faced with moral ambiguity that conflict with his interests; like the child that he quite literally is, he clings to what he's already convinced himself to believe.
I'm ~30 episodes in and his fight with Hanzo does an extremely remarkable job of recontextualizing Gon from a typical shonen protagonist to something different. Toriyama used to talk about Goku's inner "poison" and his drive to "fight strong guys" and Togashi is clearly establishing some kind of inner poison for Gon in these early seasons. It's fascinating.
I don’t remember the exact line but during the razor game “be safe of his attack” “ok” “try to dodge” “ok” “don’t overdo it” “ok” “are you even listening to me?” “Ok” “fine go get yourself killed”
Spoilers: That fight really made me think different of Gon when he was perfectly okay with wrecking killuas hands. Prior to that it felt like his stubbornness only put himself in danger, but there he is being fine with destroying Killua’s hands just cause he has to beat razor and thinks he can’t do it without Killua 🙄
We got multiple warnings from people making comments on how reckless, stubborn, and pure Gon is. Gon never excuses his dad, but instead respects that Gin is doing what he loves. Gon is just like Gin in that both love a challenge and constantly try to improve. Gon was willing to die, risk everyone in Greed Island dying, and willingly gave up both arms just to see if he can make one solid punch on the Bomber, an opponent out of his league, with his skill before resorting to a trap.
Netero probably liked Gon a lot because of how alike they are.
99 version makes this obvious much earlier by including chapter one and having them not react at all to Killua nearly taking their head off during the exams which makes the Honzo fight even more uncomfortable Honzo https://youtu.be/SFitXNQIkEY Post first lose to Hisoka https://youtu.be/wpa2B5NyCZo
It's also important to remember that he's absolutely not a normal kid. He seems to have basically no sense of morality, simply wanting to protect those he likes and punish those he dislikes. Once he sets his mind on one of those definitions of a person he barely if ever changes them.
Gon gladly accepts Killua is an assassin, shows absolutely no concern or basically interest in him killing someone right in front of him during the exams, and then just becomes his best friend and is willing to die for him while sometimes risking Killua's safety for his momentary goals.
As the story goes on you start seeing his "odd" behavior as more than that. He isn't just odd, he simply seems to lack something that everyone else has. Be it common sense, self preservation instincts, morality or even logic. Gon is a really strange kid.
This also results in how his story ends. How he fixates on Pitou to an insane degree because "she killed Kite and it's his fault." He fixates so much on it that he'll risk his life and pretty much the entire mission just so he can get revenge on her. And he literally does just that, burning his own life away just to kill her. If it weren't for magical plot device Alluka he would have likely died. Or at least he would have been a cripple for the rest of his life.
It takes Kite "reincarnating" into a child's body and he himself telling off Gon for thinking that he's responsible for what happened, to finally snap him out of it.
On a side note, I still find it weird that that's where Gon's story ended. Sure his original goal was met. He fully recovered and even found and got to talk with his dad. But like...really? He's been the main character for the entirety of the story so far, and suddenly he's just...gone from the story?
One of Kaneki's core personality traits is his need to protect the people closest to him and as such he is incredibly self sacrificing. He starts the series very timid so it's an admirable trait but then once he gets captured and tortured by Jason it becomes very toxic. It always causes problems for him and the people he's trying to protect.
Also, in RE it's revealed that his desire to help others and be of use regardless of his own well-being was a trait derived from his mother being physically and verbally abusive towards him, a core memory he repressed due to the trauma.
On a shallow level he looks like a classic shonen protagonist "I want to save everyone and do good". As the story goes on you realize that he's a little too eager to save people, even at the cost of his own well being to the point of bordering on suicidality. If Shirou saw someone about to be hit by a car he would 100% push them out of the way and die instead. When faced with the trolley problem he would try to untie as many people as possible even if that means getting run over along with the people who remain
The reasons for this are twofold: first, he is one of the sole survivors of the Fuyuki fire, a great disaster that befell his hometown when he was a child. This left him with a very severe case of survivor's guilt causing him to not value his own life very much because he feels guilty about surviving when all other people died. The second reason is that he is desperately trying to carry on the wish of his late adoptive father to be a superhero
Funniest part is that he does not become less insane in HF like someone would think when reading "he stop sucidally helping everyone and want to help thr girl he loves", no he goes even harder in his shit and lose even more his survival instincts.
Actually heavens feel is where he’s at his least suicidal, archer’s arm puts the actual fear of death in him and at the end he admits he wants to live even if it means sacrificing Illya
The main point of saving someone by pushing them out of the way of the car in order to get yourself killed, is to be isekai'd. My man is the bone of his sword and is playing (at least) 1 parallel universe ahead.
He won't allow anyone in his party to go hungry. He constantly thinks about proper nutrition and feels compelled to feed everyone. Turns out he almost starved to death when he was younger, and watched the others members of his party slowly starve to death around him.
There's other little clues that hit different on rewatch too. At one point he says "you ever try eating leather? It's damn near impossible to chew" and it's a much less funny line after context. He also named his kelpie friend after the horse that his party had to eat when they were starving, that little detail hurt my feelings the first time I noticed it.
When he severely misunderstands the ages of the rest of the party relative to their races and shouts, "Must feed the youngin's!" Is another line of his which hits harder after getting more context
Oguri Cap was always racing to live up to others' expectations—ever since Kitahara Joe said she wouldn't let him down—and she fell into a depression when she could no longer run the way she used to (Uma Musume Cinderella Gray)
Iruma-kuns backstory has always been tragic. Made to work by his parents the moment he could walk, not allowed to have a normal childhood with school and friends, forced to work dangerous jobs and was also homeless and abandoned in a forest in his very early childhood for some period of time- only for those same parents to then sell him to a demon.
This results him in being a pushover who cant say no, a glutton who never wastes food and takes every opportunity to eat as much as he can and be dense to things like romance.
Yet due to the comedic nature and absurdity that was his background and Iruma himself never reacting that negatively or seriously to his past grieviences and being a happy go lucky kid- we never could treat his tragic life that seriously. A main trait he also had was he never despaired, since there was no point, it doesn't do anything for him or help him survive
Until this moment in harvest festival. He is forced to confront his deepest fears- losing everything he has built in the demon world. His friends, his family, his rank, his new school, his classmates and being forced back to his parents in the human realm.
Iruma never despaired because he had no real happiness in his old life. He managed to remain bright and cheerful because he had nothing else and didn't what it was like to live normally. Now though, amongst demons and beasts he has found happiness and has now also learned what it means to despair and he remembers the pain that haunted him in the past and accepts it
"The words I've been holding back... I want to say them. I musn't say them. But... But.... I'm lonely" -Iruma Sullivan
The extent of his hidden despair is explored further in the museum arc, when he's suddenly "gotten" a chance to go back to the human world... and his reaction is almost having a mental breakdown; by that point he full on fears going back.
And then there's Clara. During her debut chapter, it's already shown that she's aware of being taken advantaged of, but she's so afraid of being abandoned that she puts up with it until Iruma declares that he'd always play with her without expecting any "reward". From then on she's simply known to be a ditzy, clumsy, adorable demon girl who loves to playing... Until her Evil Cycle arc, where it's revealed that she's incredibly insecure, her abandonment issues still there, just buried under her peppy attitude. Turns out happy times and reassurances from best friends aren't replacement for proper therapy/psychiatrist (not that the Netherworld seems to have that occupation though).
in The Magnus Archives, the insatiable curiosity of protagonist Jonathan Sims is so unrelenting that it causes a solid 60% of the conflicts in the plot
Isn't it because once he's beholden to The Eye that he can't help but keep going? Just asking cause it feels more out of his control from external forces rather than something hes doing himself as a character flaw
it becomes more of a physical/psychological compulsion as he gets deeper into it but he explicitly joined the institute to investigate supernatural shenanigans to figure out his fucked up childhood experience and was hand-picked by elias to be archivist specifically because he keeps trying to find answers about everything he encounters (as well as for secret plot reasons)
Shirou Emiya from Fate Stay/Night. From the very beginning he is shown to have a strong desire to help people at his own expense, however, later on we see this hero complex comes from deeply entrenched survivors guilt that makes him believe that others lives are more important than his own. This is better showcased by Archer who serves to show how Shirou's beliefs lead to his own destruction and disillusionment with his ideals.
School Live! (Gakkou Gurashi) - Megumi - Teacher of the group, is constantly ignored by everybody in the cast but Yuki, it seems like it is just a gag, but later when Yuki speaks with Megumi, Miki (newcomer to the group) asks her, who is she talking to, which reveals that she exist in her head, as a way to cope with reality (zombie apocalypse), and actual Megumi is dead (or rather zombified).
i think the best part is the hint with the car, the way the other girl (who doesn't have a license) just takes a teacher's car and she sits in the back
plus when they come back the car they have another girl with them so the car is full
Introduced as a "kirk-style", gung-ho starfleet ensign with an aversion to authority, and having been demoted from every ship in the fleet despite very high competence, in season 4 it's revealed that she lost a close friend in the dominion war and she's terrified of having to order people to their deaths, resulting in her constantly putting herself in danger.
In chapters 2 and 4, when Noelle is having intimate moments with Susie, she talks to her about doing something crazy like running away from home or fantasizing about growing wings and flying away. But she can't because she feels too weak and shy. Which on surface, both are player and Susie are led to assume that Noelle just wants to be more happy and confident in her life and wants to escape from her mother's strict control over her.
However, if you play the side-B/weird route of the game where you physically make Noelle stronger and break down her mental walls. You get to see a whole new side of Noelle's character. A side that she's been hiding under her sweet and innocent persona mask the entire time.
And the crazy thoughts she's been having like "flying away" from town is just straight up allegory for suicidal thoughts she's been developing. Because she's the only one to notice that something is off about the world she's living in and she wants to discover more beyond the game's physical boundaries.
Throughout the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog run, Sonic's idealistic belief that everyone deserves second (and third and fourth and fifth and sixth...) chances is repeatedly challenged as dangerous, maybe even to the point of causing more harm than good.
He thinks as long as there is even the slightest chance someone might turn for the better, it's not worth killing them. While it's an admirable principle on its own, and it's understandable why Sonic feels this way (especially considering the sheer number of his allies that started off as enemies), he is so stubbornly committed to letting EVERY villain go that at some point you have to question whether he himself is responsible for the suffering of everyone they hurt.
Countless examples:
Early on, there is an arc where Metal becomes a serious threat that requires EVERYONE's collaboration just to put him down. Sonic makes Tails repair Metal after this, and lets him go pretty much scot-free despite how provably he is a threat and how blatantly he refuses any possibility of a redemption (in fact, it's hardwired into his programming that he can't). To no one's surprise, Metal continues being a nuisance.
Dr. Eggman is found in a state where he has no memories. Sonic adamantly defends him from the others who want to put him down in this state in case he recovers his memories and becomes evil again. Unfortunately, Starline kidnaps Eggman and recovers his memories, allowing Eggman to kick off the Metal Virus arc which is an entire apocalyptic event that almost killed every single character and took over the entire planet. When confronted by Espio about how this whole catastrophe could have been averted if not for Sonic defending Eggman, Sonic (even exhausted and at death's door himself) still stubbornly insists that it would have been wrong to assume the worst out of someone (pictured)
After defeating the Deadly Six, Sonic sends them back to their home planet. Hearing that he was simply sending them back and not finishing them off, their leader Zavok laughs at his face and spells it out that they'll return and make him regret this mercy by causing tenfold the destruction. Sonic still insists that it's not worth sacrificing principles out of fear, so even with the plainly spelled out threat he won't budge.
Having had a falling out with Eggman, Dr. Starline now outlines what he calls 'The Sonic Cycle,' wherein Eggman starts some plan to take over the world but gets thwarted at the last second by Sonic. Then the people rebuild and move on with their lives until the next time Eggman does something. He paints this as a failing on the part of both Eggman (because of his inability to think long term and his insistence on killing Sonic in a 'satisfying' manner instead of an efficient one) and Sonic (because of his stubbornness).
It's also important to remember all of the innocent people that get hurt in the middle of this cycle. Case in point, Starline creates Surge and Kit, wiping their memories and subjecting them to severe psychological torture to turn them into tools to use against Sonic and Eggman. Though Surge and Kit end up breaking free from Starline, they are both still severely mentally scarred individuals, and Surge (reasonably) blames Sonic for her misery. She doesn't know who she was before she became Surge, but she knows that none of this would have happened if Sonic just dealt with his villains instead of allowing them to keep doing things like this to random people like herself. Her current portrayal is as an anti-hero who earnestly wants to do good things, but STILL despises Sonic and wants him dead.
This sorta stuff was all over Archie run Sonic and crew went through many arcs such as blue blur eventually being less reckless, Knuckles being free of their people's past, Sally's growth to leadership role, Shadow discovering who they will be ETC.
Problem is that all that good character development can’t really happen in IDW due to both SEGA mandates forcing them to keep Sonic a static character, and the fact that those comics are explicitly canon, meaning they can’t really put all the character development in them without being jarring to players who haven’t read them.
In Sonic's defense, it would've been pretty messed up to kill Eggman when he was Mr. Tinker and was actively doing good for the people around him, with no recollection of his prior actions, when nobody could've known Eggman had a platyfanboy who would restore his memory.
I think the series paints Sonic as neither fully wrong or right for this belief. Like, in the Mr. Tinker example, while it's understandable for Espio to get mad at him, I think it really would have been seriously wrong to kill Tinker (and the real fault lies with Starline, not Sonic).
At the same time, letting people like Zavok and Metal Sonic go shows that Sonic's a little too single-minded. Ideally there should be nuance here, where he isn't just letting everyone go and also is willing to give people a chance reasonably. Sonic aside, other characters that are depicted as morally good in the story (Whisper and Silver) realised killing Mimic was the best and only option because there was just zero path to redemption for that character, whereas Sonic would have let him go.
Even a real world court could not condemn Eggman in his state as Mister Tinker.
Metal is released, crippled into a world, that to their knowledge, had no Eggman to weaponize him. Metal is capable of thought. A few years being a bored, useless turd might have helped him be less of an asshole.
Zavok is only capable of leaving Lost Hex because of the Warp Topaz, which is gone. They send them back to their planet, with 0 tech that can get them back off again.
Starline is left to die without remorse.
Eggman snatches up Clutch for retribution and Sonic does nothing to save him from his fate.
If Sonic executed everyone whose actions threatened the world... Knuckles, Rouge, Shadow, and Silver would all be dead too. And more. He even points this out to Shadow in the comic who has no comeback.
Code Geass has an interesting variant, in that Lelouch's need for control/obsessively chessmastering is a reasonable response to a world where he(and by extension the ones he loves) are a cosmic plaything. He has the most ATROCIOUS luck in the grand scheme of things, and only succeeds through aggressively manipulating everything around him, up to and including a world war.
The end of the series plays this to its logical conclusion, of a fun case where someone with extremely firm principles refuses to back down on them even at their own expense: Lelouch is extremely well suited for the bullshit machinations of the setting, and now that he's at the cusp of a new world order, he DOES NOT BELONG THERE. He actively arranges to become a hated dictator that plays up his worst character traits, followed by being politically assassinated by a masked figure exemplifying his best ones. Thus, the world has a clear example of "we approve of the hero for justice, not the dictatorial tyrant", to avoid reverting back to the old order.
It's portrayed as necessarily tragic, in much the same way that Lelouch has always declared his unjust actions to be necessarily evil, because they pave the way for a tomorrow where such things aren't needed.
Ace Combat Zero: Larry 'Pixy' Foulke - Questioning Authority
Your wingman through the majority of the game, Pixy is a cocky but seemingly decent guy who, at several points in the campaign, as you are given increasingly illegal or immoral orders by command, either questions the reasoning behind them or refuses them outright. You know, like you're technically supposed to do as any soldier asked to carry out unjust orders like bombing civilian targets with no tactical value. You genuinely can see him at times as a moral compass.
Which is why it smacks you in the face when, after seven nuclear weapons are detonated beneath where you're flying, breaking comms with command and scattering IFF, Pixy just laughs, says he's finally found a reason to fight, and tries to shoot you down.
When you eventually face him as the final boss, you realize he's questioned his country so much that he's abandoned the idea of nations altogether, believing the only true means of bringing peace is destroying the notion of borders. With nukes. A lot of nukes.
Also from the melodramatic war crime plane game genre, we have the mirror opposite with Project Wingman's Crimson One, who's fatal flaw is his complete inability to question authority. At the start of the game, he's widely regarded as THE best pilot in the world, leader of the elite "Peacekeeper" squadron tasked with protecting and enforcing the Pacific Federation's rule over his native homeland of Cascadia. But when the Cascadians decide to secede from the Federation, his unshakable belief in the undisputed righteousness of the Federation leads him to remain a loyalist and wage war against his homeland's bid for independence, which leads to him going up against the player character "Monarch" (a mercenary pilots hired by the Cascadians) and getting his ass kicked, just one of their string of overwhelming victories that turns the tide of the war so sharply in Cascadia's favor that the Peacekeepers themselves lose their shit and commit fratricide just to launch an indiscriminate McGuffinite turbonuke saturation bombardment of a major Cascadian city, which hits so hard it unintentionally triggers a Pacific-wide geothermal apocalypse.
But instead of taking this as the cue to switch sides and fight back against the deranged Federation radicals that devastated his homeland, he blames the whole thing on Monarch for "denying the Federation peace" and forcing them to escalate. His projection gets so severe that when the war is about to end, with the Cascadian capitol of Presidia all but liberated and the last Federation holdouts declaring their intent to surrender, he shows up in an experimental superfighter and firebombs the whole fucking city with turbonukes, wiping out the Cascadian forces, the Federation troops, the capitol of his own homeland. And then he spends the next 10 minutes yapping about how "You, solely, are responsible for this" while spamming more missiles and railguns than a Touhou boss and generally ignoring the laws of physics until he gets murked by, most likely, a Cold War-era fighter with an in-universe market value equivalent to a used Honda Civic.
I love Pixy because honestly, who wouldn't go a bit insane after Hoffnung. Also it makes the moral alignment of your character matter more, as you have very different reasons to fight him at the end.
I'm kinda sad we didn't get an actual "hero defects" plot in AC7 for the same reason, but hey, I guess it was ok to go "Belka bad" for a reboot
Joel from The Last of Us is portrayed from the beginning as a ruthless, ''f u I got mine'' guy who cares for himself and his loved ones first, and everyone else...never. He later stops the Fireflies from sacrificing Ellie for a cure, basically dooming the future of humanity to not go through the heartbreak of losing his surrogate daughter (though wheter the FFs plan was gonna work or was justifiable is a very divisive point among fans).
It's honestly a terrific ending as there are good points for either argument.
If you were to argue that Joel is incredibly selfish and only thinks about what affects him rather than thinking about the greater good, you would be correct.
You can also argue that Joel is justified through the fact that 1. The cure was not guaranteed 2. He couldn't accept the sacrifice of an innocent girl that he cares about or 3. The fact that, at least in Joel's eyes, after seeing the horrors caused by his fellow man, humanity probably does not deserve a second chance on the whole. You would also be somewhat correct.
The first point being a HUGE point in Joel's favor - Because he's directly told Ellie is not the first person the Fireflies have tested on.
They have pretty much told him they will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, be killing her. Can't guarantee him a cure for their efforts. And have done this before with no results.
I think if they could show him they were truly on to something - That Ellie could genuinely be the one piece they need - There would be more of an argument to claim the Fireflies would solve the problem. But I think given what we're provided, it's very much made clear this is just humans clinging to what they believe is their last bit of hope - And what's more likely to occur is, Ellie dies, nothing is solved, and the entire world is still left doomed.
Definitely didn't help his perspective that the first time he actually meets a firefly after the wild goose chase across the country they insisted on holding him at gunpoint instead of listening to his pleas to help a young girl who was seriously hurt.
The same scenario that ended up killing Sarah.
(Also he definitely already made up his mind at this point but as he was being escorted out of the hospital, they walked past his belongings without handing them back to him. Meaning best case scenario they'd leave him without all his gear or worst case, taking him outside and executing him.)
The point is divisive because the original FFs were clearly not that competent to begin with so, from the perspective of what we see in the original game, assuming that they would have failed is a perfectly logical choice. I'm saying the original game, since the remaster did actually do some mostly visual changes to make them look more competent, like cleaning up the operating room. Seriously, the hygiene level difference is a massive context clue here.
One thing that makes me side with Joel here is that they didn’t get Ellie’s consent to the operation.
They saw an unconscious teenager and went straight to the ice cream scoop to carve out her brain
imo the FF should’ve given Ellie the choice. I think she even would’ve gone for it too given her feelings in the sequel and then she would hopefully be able to convince Joel to let her go.
Then Joel would definitely be “The Last of Us”
Granted I feel they should’ve been able to do a craniotomy and scrape off some of the fungus without killing her and do tests on that
Yotsuba Nakano from The Quintessential Quintuplets is initially presented as a happy-go-lucky girl who's always cheerful and helps other people out with a smile. As the story goes on, it becomes more and more apparent that she's not completely sincere about it and a lot of her actions stem from a massive inferiority complex that leads her to believe she doesn't deserve to be happy if it comes at anyone else's expense even a tiny bit.
There is a line in Attack on titan that I love by Levi,
Levi alway knew that Eren is a monster, it's something way more deeper than his power.
He has a flawed sense of freedom, to the point where he will always build a wall that blocks him from his freedom just so he can trample it.
First it was a wall, them the titan, then the see, then Marleyans thenn humanity, and I wouldn't be surprised if his people would've became another wall after.
And I like that he acknowledges it during his speech with Armin, he tells him he would've destroyed humanity anyway, because it didn't fit the image that he pictured.
Eren is evil, yes he cares about his people and his friends but he's not a good person.
And... it makes sense, the creator described reading a book from the perspective of a serial killer(or psychopath... I don't remember) and how the perspective made some sense.
Same goes with Eren's story, we saw it from the perspective of Eren and rumbling made 100% sense, but when you look carefully, you start understand how flawed he was.
While it's pretty much at that point a character trait that Nagisa looks like a girl, and even some of his classmates are confused when they see him in just swimming trunks when they go swimming, it ends up being revealed that the reason he looks effeminate is because his mother wanted a baby girl. So when Nagisa was born, she forced him to grow out his hair, dress like a girl, and be extremely abusive to fulfill her own fantasy.
Those episodes are really hard to watch, man. It’s so disturbing watching his mom just abuse the kid, both physically and emotionally. It’s no wonder the kid is so good at concealing his presence, he’s had 15 years of practice up to that point
To add more to the horror, the final chapter shows that he barely grows up at all compared to his middle-school days, and he's already the shortest boy in class. Now, children that suffer from malnutrition at an early age may have a condition called stunted growth... And in Asian countries, beauty standard for girls are being small and cute...
In part one of the game, Dimitri’s character seems a typical Fire Emblem Lord that many fans of the series are used to seeing: Kind and compassionate to a fault, heroic, charming enough to suade people to his side, so on and so forth. He especially holds great love for his family, especially his father, and wants to do right for them after they died at Duscar when he was younger. Part 2, however, has him turn into a bloodthirsty murderer hellbent on revenge for said family’s death after finding out who the culprits were. All that vengeance-seeking, however, isn’t just from rage, but from grief as well. He genuinely believes that in getting his revenge that the dead that were killed by the cult will finally get the peace that they deserve and will have their regrets cleared away. His compassion and empathy for the Dead was what warped him to becoming a monster.
Having the central figure of your religion backing you up probably helps.
In a small support conversation between two unrelated characters (Claude and Annette), it is implied that Dimitri's home views unavenged dead as being forever tormented in limbo until the living avenge them, a sort of spin-off belief from the central Fodlan church's doctrine.
Rhea would be able to directly counter that and reassure Dimitri, and as the central religious figure, it's reasonable to say the message would get through to him.
Dimitri is genuinely one of the most tragic characters in that series in my opinion. I still remember seeing him post timeskip and that weight in my gut.
Also IIRC one of his best friends / retainers straight up tells you in part 1 that he's somewhat of a loose cannon going to snap at some point but nobody takes it seriously.
Yeah, a huge reason why Felix (one of his childhood friends who’s gruff and antisocial) is so morose is because he can see the train crash coming and there’s little he can do to stop it. He outright says that Dimitri is going to get himself killed if he doesn’t get help, and he’s 100% right.
This applies to all darkins and specially for xolaani, in her time as a mortal and as a “semi god” she was essencially a pacifist. She hated wars abd acted as a healer using her blood magic to heal injured, even being adored by some mortals and having entire cities dedicated to her.
After a major event in the lore she and most/all of her semi gods brothers and sisters bevame corrupted, starting wars between themselves (imortal beigns) with mortal armies. Xolaani in that context, and consumed by insanity too, started using her blood magic to control everyone she encounters as a puppet, not allowing anyone to fight anymore. That is until she was sealed
Her pacifist ways turned into dictatorship, literally removing free will of her followers and enemies
Goated Mad Men supporting character, Ginsburg, hates the advertising business and is probably the best Ad Man at the company next too Don. He's also extremely eccentric, saying odd shit a lot over his 3ish season tenure on the show. As the 60s start turning into the 70s, he gets more stressed at his job.
come season 7 episode 5, and Ginsberg gets more erafic after the introduction of a computer to Sterling Cooper. This culminates in him mutilating himself to "release the pressure", and it's at this point both the audience and Peggy (the only person Ginsberg could call a Freind) realize that he's a full blown psychotic. After that episode, rewatching old episodes becomes weird because you wonder if Ginsburg was ever joking when he said shit like "project kill machine!" Or if he was just suffering from Schizophrenia.
Origami Tobiichi from Date a Live - her status as willing source of fanservice and the yandere gag character gets recontextualised later as the story reveals more about both her tragic past and how unstable she is in the present. The second half of the third season recontextualises all of her crazy displays of affections as the result of her severe codependency issues caused by the death of her parents.
He saved her parents from their original fate, causing them to die later in the new timeline, in les traumatising way. This normally would be a good thing for Origami's mental health, if she wasn't also part of these time warping, causing her to remember both timelines, with the dissonance breaking her to the point of developing the disassociative identity disorder. She ultimately gets better through honest talking, not the warp by itself. Also, she canonically still has DID, just in the more stable condition.
Elliot Anderson’s want to make the world a better place leads him to committing a massive hack (5/9 hack) which greatly harmed the global economy, making things worse for everyone. This hack led to stage 2, where he (or a part of him, Mr Robot) was part of a subsequent cyberbombing attack on 71 facilities in the USA, leading to thousands of deaths.
Eren is an interesting one. He’s played off as a typical hot-headed shonen protagonist in the beginning. I actually dropped the anime during its original run because I couldn’t stand his character. His aggression and lack of regard for human life rubbed me the wrong way. We’re supposed to root for the selfish, bloodthirsty teen? Really?
Turns out that was intentional. The story never means to portray Eren in a good light, but it leans on shonen tropes to falsely frame him as the hero early on.
Doesn't quite fit the same way but the Elric brothers (full metal Alchemist) realizing their goal of getting the philosopher's stone is bad becuase of what the stones are. The don't want to use the stones at all after they realize the horrors of the stones.
Until Alphonse uses one in a fight against pride but still won't use it for personal gain.
I liked that about fma. The brothers originally wanted to play god and bring back their mom till they learned the lesson meanwhile the bad guys are playing god by killing thousands
Kinda the same with human transmutation as well, they technically knew it was bad because of their experience as kids but not the reason why. Part of their journey has them coming to terms with what happened and why the transmutation never ever works out and all the harm it causes (including being the catalyst for every Philosopher Stone in the series).
Zeke's willingless to kill Eldians so easily (Attack On Titan) at first when he's introduced as the beast titan he just slaughters the scouts without a second thought as he makes references to baseball which comes off as him just being sadistic but in reality he's just trying to act like he's having fun because he doesn't want to be serious about things like his father who ruined him mentally and the fact he wants to dissassociate from the awful things he does, plus he thinks killing Eldians is a mercy in the first place considering they have to live in a world that oppresses them in extremely cruel ways. It's a completely nihilstic mentality which makes it tragic but we'd have no way of knowing before seeing his backstory.
When you face him in court, he's dogmatically relentless, ruthless and aggressive in his approach to prosecuting. Except he was always like that, you just didn't realise because he was on yours side when he was defending for you.
Joke here with this guy(Nagisa-assasination classroom) is that he looks like girl to the point his classmates had no idea if he is actually guy. Well anyway later we found out his mother wanted daughter and our boy kinda had no say in it
Siffrins self-sacrifice and care for their friends - In stars and time
Initially Siffrin appears as heroic, they drop everything to help save the country from a coming apocalypse as soon as they hear of it, they always stay at the front of the party to keep the others safe from traps, he notices right away when someone is feeling down and cheers them up, he even lost his eye protecting a child from harm.
As the game goes on, it becomes more and more readily apparent that those traits stem in large parts from massive fear of abandonment and self-esteem issues to the point they barely see themselves as a real person. They are willing to suffer and die in the front because that means the people who actually matter are save, they are cheering people up and putting themselves in danger because they fear that if they aren't constantly being useful they will be abandoned, after all no one would be with such a worthless person if not for the value they provide to the team.
Don't forget the trauma of all memories of their past and home being wiped when their homeland was collectively forgotten. Siffrin and the King share this trauma and you can see their parallels in how deeply they latch onto what they have left
Eddy, from Ed Edd and Eddy, being an attention-hog scammer.
There's 2 main reasons to explain Eddy's antisocial conniving behavior:
Eddy has no friends, only Ed & Double D put up with him. Scams get attention. He basks in attention, loves being the center of it.
Eddy is heavily influenced by his older Brother, whom he idolizes. His Brother is only hinted at before the movie, and despite Eddy having nothing but positive feelings toward him, subtle clues indicate Eddy's Brother is a con artist bully who has no respect for Eddy. By the time the movie shows him in the flesh, he is every toxic trait that Eddy has manifested in-person.
In Stars and Time. Siffrin is your standard knife-wielding, trap-spotting rogue (except for the fact he's dressed like a wizard, ignore that it's a cultural thing) until you realize that... Well, they're not actually that great at their job. They have SEVERE memory issues, impaired sight that makes their job harder and causes them to constantly bump into things, and despite being the group's jokester he's very reserved and rarely relies on others for his own issues. The team also has a kid in it, who for some reason is always cold to Siffrin, but the characters state that the two used to be very close. In general, it's obvious that Siffrin does not value his life as much as other people's (a sentence spoken in the first hour of gameplay is "well, if it's just me who dies, that's fine" when a character jokes about being so mad they blow up and kill Siffrin in the blast)
It's revealed as you play that the reason the kid is cold is that Siffrin lost the eye recently protecting them, which makes the kid avoid him out of guilt and even hating Siffrin because he never thinks anything of hurting himself to help others, and the kid wishes they'd just died instead of having to live with this guilt of being responsible for someone else's suffering. But the big reveal is that the reason his memory is so bad is that someone cast a curse to make everyone forget his home- an island that everyone knows disappeared one day, but no one can recall the name or appearence of. Siffrin can't remember his home, his family, his habits, his religion, where he got his clothes, why he likes his favorite foods. He forgets about his deadly allergy to pineapples which causes them to die during the game. They only remember in flashes, but they are then forced to forget- every time in the game, they manage to recall "oh, I did this once" and then get confused, and then a brutal cut like the thought was never there. The universe is punishing Siffrin for remembering anything at all, this is why their memory is so bad! And this lack of roots, of means to be trustworthy (because when you say you don't know where you come from, people tend to think you're just hiding something, no one remembers the island enough to realize he could be from there and no one knows about the curse) is the reason Siffrin thinks nothing of throwing their life away, and makes them think there's no way anyone would care about them or not abandon them
The game is seriously so good and gets into all these things that are basically what you described, you constantly get new context for why Siffrin does something and it guts you ever time
Star Wars - Yoda's hesitence on training Luke and his grievances regarding him (he's too old, he's impatient, etc.) becomes more impactful once the truth about Anakin is revealed (and especially when we later see in the prequels how those traits contributed to his fall). While you already get the sense that Yoda is worried that he'd turn into another Darth Vader, it's only later that you realize why Luke's behavior would bother him so much.
I really liked Cautious Hero when it came out, because it was just so insane and over the top as the default, it was refreshing.
But once the layers get peeled back and we realize just how desperate Seiya is underneath it all and then get the full explanation as to "why", it really is an emotional gut punch, while also pointing out that why that one goddess was so bewildered in seeing him or why she agreed to help out and bending the realms in the god realm.
Spoiler containing opinion:
Dude had gone through enough trauma the first time around, but getting memory wiped and sent out again is kind of fucked and don't get me started on the endings implication that they'll drag him back for a third go around if they deem it necessary.
I feel like I read a different AOT than everyone else because Eren was always that kid, it didn't even feel like it was hidden in plain sight. Jean regularly pointed this out.
Subaru from Re:Zero, who’s actions and character is constantly being recontextualized in every arc. Especially Arc 3, where his heroism and escapist delusions blow up in his face, and Arc 4, where his self-sacrificing nature is revealed to be at least partially suicidal as he grapples with relying on Return By Death
Bojack Horseman is never portrayed as a good person, but we do see his sympathetic side and what made him the horse-man he is. Throughout the whole show we're there for his worst moments, be it contacting his best friend after decades only because the man is dying of cancer, almost sleeping with another of his old friend's daughter who is seventeen, sabotaging Todd's rock opera because he doesn't want to be alone, and causing a sober Sarah Lynn to relapse and overdose just because he wasn't nominated for the Oscars. Then at the very end we find out that Sarah Lynn died at the hospital, and had he not waited seventeen minutes to call 911, she might have survived, but his warped sense of self-preservation directly led to her death.
Jinx from Arcane. She grew up as one of the weaker and smaller children who greatly admired her protective and stronger sister. She generally showed an intense desire to prove that she could help people she cared about, but after a tragic night she ends up orphaned again but adopted by the leader of a drug cartel who she imprints upon and does violent and heinous crimes to prove herself worthy of his love.
One Piece loves doing this with its characters.
Nami is greedy and obsessed with money? A gag for 3 arcs and then you find out it's because she grew up in poverty, then was effectively was forced into slavery with an empty promise that she can buy her village's freedom back.
Sanji is a massive simp? Because of horrific childhood abuse from is sociopathic eugenicist father and superhuman brothers, where only his ailing mother and sister were nice to him.
That frog that keeps trying to wrestle trains? That one random guy that dresses up like a baby? The maid that's constantly falling in love with everyone she meets? The sillier the concept the more likely there's going to be a traumatic reason for it.
Harumasa Masa in ZZZ is introduced as a slacker, a pessimist, and kind of an asshole. Surprising qualities in a gacha game, a genre where everyone needs to be likeable to be profitable.
But apparently he puts on a facade so no one gets attached to him. He takes a bunch of sick leave not just to slack, but because he's actually dying from a chronic illness. He's 24 and he has a disease that kills people at 27.
He has a bleak opinion on life because he hates hopeful messaging. "Everything's going to be okay", "You're going to get better". They just frustrate him. So, when talking with children that share his condition, he's blunt. He helps them accept that they'll likely die in their 20s. But that's not a reason to not want to do something. There's something in life they want to do, something they can do before they die. So they share that aspiration that won't take a decade to accomplish, and work towards it.
Another thing, Harumasa's sick leaves are actually used to recuperate. But sometimes he uses them to find his father figure. The man that taught him to use the bow and is also the man that used to be his personal physician. Given his condition, he's the closest he has to a father figure.
1.3k
u/Rocket_of_Takos 21d ago
Kotaro Live Alone does this a lot, it'll show Kotaro doing some strange thing that could just be seen as "just a kid doing and saying the darndest things." Like one time, it's found that he has a bunch of newspaper subscriptions and the newspaper delivery guy is like "kid you don't need that many newspapers" but it turns out he wants to get all those newspapers because he everyday, he's looking for traces of his parent's names in them.