Quote:
Originally Posted by roriconfan
Character death is a lot more important as a plot device than you think. I have seen it myriads of times. A character gets on the verge of death, reaches to some sort of self-realization and beats the bad guy, while surviving himself, despite for the obvious reverse outcome. You'd think he became a better person, a more mature version of himself or something like that. Sadly, most of the times that does not happen. He either remains the same immature kid afterwards or even worse, his purpose in the story just ended and thereafter he becomes an unimportand stunt in the background, serving as filler material. Why would a character survive if he is to become far less interesting than far more interesting after a supposed near-death experiance? Most series are afraid to kill their characters or just remove them from the story entirely after they have nothing to do with them thereafter. So, they turn to a parade of stunts after awhile and the interest simply dies out.
Hey, hold on, I never said I don't like that. What I don't like is how they get stronger and wiser when they are one with the floor. Something that simply does not happen in practice. You are stronger when you are in shape. You think straight when you are in shape. You get stronger when you are in shape. See my point? You have the means to fight for all your friends and gather their power when you are in shape. When you can hardly stand up, you can do shit, much less realize how a hell of a lot more you care about them and fight at 1000% power.
There, the usual problem of stuck ups. I never said "don't build a castle". I meant "don't build a castle there". Or even "use cement if you want it to hold". Being a stuck up, means you keep trying to achieve even a lost goal. Like all those priests back in the dark ages, who refused to believe the Earth is indeed round and not flat. They were killing and torturing thousands of people because they refused to give up (yes, that's exactly what their willpower and belief led to). It took 500 years for the Vatican to admit it was wrong. 500 years for an obvious fact!!! Well, excuse me I'm not into this sort of mindset as you say.
By the way, the Japanese people were brainwashed during the 2nd world war to be in a mindset of "we are the undefeatable nation that will rule all of Asia in the name of the God emperor". Can you imagine how devastated they were, when their undefeatable navy was beated, their cities were nuked and their God emperor surrendered, begging for mercy? Don't try to convince me standing up or not surrendering would lead to Japan winning the war, because it wouldn't. They had already lost. So, from my point of view, all this "fight for your ideals and never give up" is more of a tradition than actual practice in real life.
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I think you've been seeing some really bad shounen series and missing out on the good ones, it doesn't help as well that you yourself don't like the trope.
Why did the priests lose? Because their will and belief is not strong enough to win the will and belief of the rest of the world. More people were convinced by science and believe the facts of science, the will of discovery continue to uncover more with science.
Why did the Japanese lose in WWII? Despite their will and belief, they lost to the will of the Allies. Even with their extremely strong will, they do not have the resources to win the war. The combined will of the Allies combined their efforts, resources and war factories to produce overwhelming forces.
Will is nothing unless you have the means to support the will. Even in anime, the characters have the power to support their will. One of the most important traits in many of the shounen and mecha characters is 'Nekketsu', 'Hotbloodedness', a word that cannot be found in the English dictionary and people nowadays do not know what the word is about.