Quote:
Originally Posted by Shining Celebi
What?
Naruto flashbacks are large, last-minute info dumps. Instead of complex characters with carefully revealed (or concealed) motivations, we're given one-dimensional villains and then suddenly all is revealed in a last-minute flashback and they die. Don't forget to add in a dash of retcon!
If you have to reveal "critical" information at a "crucial" time through flashback, you've already failed as a writer. You've killed your pacing and the thread of the story to siderail and explain something you failed to naturally reveal in the course of your storytelling. I assume Kishimoto cannot do this, in a compelling way without sounding stilted, so he falls back on flashbacks.
Sometimes flashbacks can be appropriate - certainly not at a "crucial" time - but they should be natural. Naruto is notorious for a casual conversation - or sometimes not even that - in the middle of battle leading into a huge multi-chapter Life Story, everyone else presumably standing around and waiting for the guy to get out of his lost-in-thought mode.
Off the top of my head, the only flashback in Naruto that seemed at all appropriate was Jiraiya's before he died.
I don't watch Buffy, which is your only solid example, but I can't think of many examples besides typical shounen fodder which engage in anything like Naruto's flashback abuse. Keep in mind this is obviously excluding stories where the flashback is a structural element; for example, in the last episode of the seventh season of House, the episode begins with a crime scene or whatever, and the rest of the episode is a flashback leading up to it. Or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, where the entire book is actually the flashback. (Of course, just because a lot of writers do something doesn't mean it's good anyhow.)
Your last line is exactly my point - if you need a flashback to sympathize with a character that the author wants you to sympathize with, then it's bad writing and the flashback is a crutch for it.
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I must apologize for my blatant impudence I displayed earlier as I didn't realize you had a Phd in creative writing and were an established critic of fine literature -- I think some people expect authors to have everything about their story all fleshed out from the get-go supposedly like Eiichiro Oda. It just sounds to me like a pitiful excuse to complain about the manga, like I said before (exclude Buffy and Angel if you wish
) many media outlets/entertainment venues refer to flashbacks as a means of narrative or story-telling.
I don't understand why it must be such a huge fail to include a flashback as I said it would either be that or an info dump and I disagree with your assessment that a flashback in Naruto (or Shounen manga in general) is an "info dump". "Last minute" inclusions (flash backs & plot revelations, etc) to the story are done for numerous reasons, but the most likely reason is because the story did not call for it yet OR because the author did not develop those character/plot points yet -- would it have made anymore sense for this Madara and Obito flashback to have occurred during the Pain Invasion arc? Or how about in the middle of the Hidan and Kakuzu arc? Or how about even further back in the serial during the entry exams to the Chunin Exam arc -- even before Obito was even introduced.
Fact is writers don't always stick with their original plan despite having an "idea" of what they want to have happen in the end, and many things happen that bring about sudden changes to their original ideas (i.e. editors interference, the publishing company, a character's popularity, a different -- perhaps better idea altogether). As I see it, the way you so eloquently made it clear that Kishimioto has failed as a writer this far in Naruto because of these flashbacks, makes me think that the standard belief is that instead of a flashback or random last minute "info dump" the author should not reveal anything new about said character or any new character history that was not shown on panel because it would be in "bad taste" and if someone like say Kakashi for example just so happened to know off the bat Tobi was Obito without the big reveal, managed to guess that he met up with Madara without the flashbacks, and somehow miraculously surmised the details of their deal then it would just be considered 'deus ex machina' or some kind of unnatural out of character omnipotency or "plotkai" and wouldn't even make sense as to how he managed to accurately guess all of those things without the aid of a flashback/reveal of some kind.
But I'm not out to change your opinion, we all have opinions as the old saying goes and I still think it is an entertaining story so far.