When characters go "emo"

[Pumpkinhead]

Oh, what I meant is having an angsty, prejudiced character and the show trying to make the audience side with that person, or portraying that character in a good light for having their prejudice and making it seem justified. At least that's what I thought Feathers was talking about.

[Feathers]

Naw, what I mean is like characters being angst against like something that's a fact of life and then expect sympathy. Like with Elfen Lied, they were trying to say how humans are horrible because they are judgemental and ignorant. Well duh. People will always being like that and we can't change it.

Essentially, it's like a character hating chickens because they cluck. The rest of us learn to live with the fact of life while this character decides to go angst over it. XD

[Pumpkinhead]

Ohhhhh alright alright. My bad for misunderstanding XD

[Rogo]

May 10, 2012 10:35:44 GMT -5 Feathers said:

Naw, what I mean is like characters being angst against like something that's a fact of life and then expect sympathy. Like with Elfen Lied, they were trying to say how humans are horrible because they are judgemental and ignorant. Well duh. People will always being like that and we can't change it.

Essentially, it's like a character hating chickens because they cluck. The rest of us learn to live with the fact of life while this character decides to go angst over it. XD

Er... did you mean that to sound like your saying we and the characters should just accept that people are prejudice and ignorant? Cause if so then I completely reject that.

The ignorance of humanity when it comes to things they dont understand is a TERRIBLE aspect of society that we should completely be against and try to change. If that's what the character's in Elfen Lied - or indeed ANY story - were angsty about... it's the fact they don't do anything about it that's the problem.

As for Elfen Lied and angst. It's big problem is that it overloads you with reasons for characters to angst without them actually believably responding. Instead of one reason for a character to react and feel depressed or angry about, each one is given about five or six, which is too damn many for the audience to relate to or even take seriously.

We can all relate to having a love one die, what we can't relate to his having a love one die on the same day we lost an arm, our car got stolen, our cat ran away and the local store ran out of mint choc chip ice cream. It's not these things don't happen or that they dont all happen at once - it's just that when this all happens at once in a story we become very aware that the writers are screaming at us 'feel sorry for them' and we reject it because of that.

Elfen Lied isn't awful because it's got too much angst - it's awful because it thinks the watcher is an idiot who wont get the idea that they have to be sad unless you lay it on thicker than syrup.

[Feathers]

I'm...sort of in agreement with that. Main reason being that it's a tad unrealistic to have all judgemental people wiped off the face of the Earth or something like that. Okay, the story itself may be fiction and such, but I prefer if it makes sense, ya know? XD

Other than that, yeah, I see what you mean. If Elfen Lied had it where...IDK Lucy found a way to take all the hate and in turn be a better person, then it would be a good thing. The viewers would feel how judgemental people affected her life and would think twice about hurting someone, but those who are judged can see how they could handle their own problems. Not sure if I'm making sense here. XD

Basically, I'm saying that Elfen Lied said the solution to getting rid of ignorance is to either kill everyone or have people stop judging one another.

Completely agree with that too! For those who did catch on to the early tradgeties and felt sorry for the characters, it was almost like torture to watch more. And then eventually, the sympathy wore off, turning to annoyance.

[Pumpkinhead]

So it's the fact that they tackled prejudice simplistically with such extreme solutions ("let's eliminate prejudice by performing genocide!!! >") than the fact that they were simply angsty about it, right? I see what you mean. I agree more with Rogo that a message about overcoming prejudice/teaching people not to be prejudiced is never a bad one...though it can be delivered poorly (either in your example with Elfen Lied or in a super sappy and cheesy way that I've seen in shows aimed at preschoolers XD).

To get back to angst...I just remembered a bad example from Yu-Gi-Oh (since...I have very few other anime shows to pull examples from). Though its not exactly the character's reaction that's bad, but the reason that caused it was such an obvious plot device.

So basically in this show there's this group of friends, one of them named Mai being the big boobed eye-candy character who started out as more of a loner but joins up with them and is also the love interest of Yugi's friend, Joey. There was some episode where I think Joey had some dream or something where all his friends were helping him up, Mai being one of them, and when he tells this dream to everybody Mai was like "Was I in the dream?" Then Joey was thinking something like "OH NO I can't tell her that or she'll think I have romantic feelings for her!" So then he basically responds that he'd never have a dream with her in it, in like the most DOUCHEBAG way possible, so then as a result Mai feels rejected and abandons the friends and goes back to being a loner. Because of that, later when she's in trouble, she's too angry and thinks she's a friendless outcast, so she won't accept any help from her friends and ends up getting her soul taken or something like that.

So it wasn't like her angsty "I don't have any friends" moment was really over-the-top (at least from what I recall), but it didn't really happen as a natural character development thing. The writers basically came up with something that felt forced and contrived in order to put her in that state—which was making her love interest act like an idiotic super dick. I think that is another bad way to write angst, when it's obvious that the writers are only doing it to create more conflict.

[Feathers]

I kind of cut that a bit of slack because it's a kid's show. But I see what you mean there. Stuff like that makes it seem a tad out of place for a character to go angst. In this case, it wasn't like the guy killed a friend of hers horribly in front of her eyes. He just said he wouldn't want to dream about her. Yeah, it's a mean thing to say, but it isn't anything someone should go angst over. LOL

[Pumpkinhead]

I don't really blame her for having a strong reaction if someone was suddenly acting like a huge jerk to me out of nowhere. Though I probably would be more like "what the hell is wrong with you?!" instead of going to angst about it, lol. It's possible her reaction was worse than I remember, too. Been like 9 years since I watched that episode after all, so my memory's a little fuzzy XD

May 18, 2012 8:58:45 GMT -5 Feathers said:

I kind of cut that a bit of slack because it's a kid's show.

:/ ...I guess I did come off a little harsh...but that's because I don't think being a "kid's show" should excuse something from having bad writing. I mean obviously, you shouldn't have plot lines or character motivations that are too complex or too subtle, because when you're younger it is harder to pick up on those things; I find it unfortunate, however, that the general consensus that writers behind these kind of shows seem to have is "simplify=dumb it down", when I don't think that's true. We have an anime film like Spirited Away, for example, that is technically aimed at ten-year-olds, but it is still a mature and intelligent movie that is artistically sophisticated, containing a lot of depth, symbolism, and characters who act like real people. The story is still very simple and easy for children to understand, but it is anything but poor quality.

[Feathers]

Yeah, I said I'd cut it a little bit of slack because I think the writers didn't want it to be too confusing for a younger audiance. I agree it was a bad move, but I really can't think of a way they could have made it any better/less random/whatever. That's probably because I don't know the series well though. LOL But overall in general, I think angst should be avoided in kid's shows for this very reason. XD

[Pumpkinhead]

To me, the series eventually felt like a long and drawn out card commercial thinly disguised with a weak story so...idk, within a framework that was already poorly written it's hard for to think of how to rewrite that poorly written scene, too, lol XD

I think you're right that angst probably should be avoided in kid's shows—at least if they have those kind of writers on board. I keep feeling like there's some exception somewhere that's nagging at the back of my mind, but I can't remember what kids' show that would be...and it's probably not an anime anyway so I should just forget about it and assume at the moment not to write angst in kids' shows.

[Rogo]

May 19, 2012 13:40:19 GMT -5 Pumpkinhead said:

To me, the series eventually felt like a long and drawn out card commercial thinly disguised with a weak story so...idk, within a framework that was already poorly written it's hard for to think of how to rewrite that poorly written scene, too, lol XD

I think you're right that angst probably should be avoided in kid's shows—at least if they have those kind of writers on board. I keep feeling like there's some exception somewhere that's nagging at the back of my mind, but I can't remember what kids' show that would be...and it's probably not an anime anyway so I should just forget about it and assume at the moment not to write angst in kids' shows.

Oh I know the exception;

Jeri from Digimon Tamers.

For those that haven't seen it, spoilers ahead.

Basically at the beginning of the final arc of Tamers, Jeri's partner, Leomon is brutally killed off by the villain Beelzemon. In his dying words, he mumbles something about how his death was his destiny, which triggers childhood trauma in Jeri. You see she lost her mother as a young child and when this happened, her father basically said the same thing to himself, that her death was destined to happen. It's a very normal thing to say, but the problem is... Jeri's young mind twists it around to mean the people she loves are destined to die and that's all somehow her fault.

So when Leomon dies, she's thrown into a bit of a funk, blaming herself and secluding herself from the group. This attracts the attention of deletion program calling itself D-Reaper who capturse her and replaces her with an emotionless clone that's unnoticed because Jeri was already fairly catatonic.

I'm not gonna go into it much further but Jeri spends the rest of the series slipping into depression further and further with many attempts made to save her and very few if any getting through. But it's believable because of her back story and because of the situation and it's genuinely heartbreaking at points.

Though it's worth noting that Digimon Tamers was made by the guy who did Serial Experiments Lain so... not your average kid's tv writer.

Actually Digimon in general does angst quite well. Matt from series 1 and Ken from series 2 were also good examples.

I'm not a Digimon nerd

[Pumpkinhead]

I completely forgot about Digimon.

The first series was the only one I watched, but from what I remember they did handle a lot of dramatic/tense personal life stuff like that really well. I think most of the characters at some point had some kind of angst moment that felt realistic and relatable.