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Old 2009-12-13, 15:20   Link #86
lmd_84
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Reading, England
The thing about backstory is that it seems to be working in roughly the same order character-specific subplots do. That is, we get bits in different places for each main group as the story continues. Tsubaki and Black Star got there first with Masamune and Mifune respectively, then Maka and Soul with Italy continuing into the Clown and Arachne bits.

Which, as with Mifune, appear to run into one another so far as progression and characterisation goes. Alongside how the kids defeat the latest tougher threat (TV Tropes calls this the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, meaning that I now have a name for...one of those structures that turn up in series like this - though I suspect Noah's gone and broken it) we find out more about them as people.

Kid, on the other hand, doesn't really have that. He's stuck as he was at the beginning of the series - powerful, confident of his skills to an extent without being arrogant, and getting through the story by virtue of being that much stronger than his peers (and so capable of handling most of what they encounter) in spite of his obsessions and self-image issues.

And then the Baba Yaga arc happened. He goes from being the one character lacking any major challenge so far to being brought down in a truly brutal fashion by Mosquito, and his single-mindedness leading him to get kidnapped.

Unlike the others, we've not found out some new take on his character or motivations, we know nothing of his past, and there's been no catalyst for Kid to put any such information into a brand-new powerup of his own.

The only reason he survived fighting the vampire was possibly because Shinigami gave him Brew for that purpose (if anyone else has a better idea, I'd love to hear it because there seemed no good reason for the tool to be around until it saved Kid's skinny backside).

From the order in which the three groups originally appeared, I can understand that Okubo might have a structure to doing this sort of thing (characterisation, important subplot, relevant progression of skills), but so far the formula is lacking for his final three.

Of course, saying this, in Kid's case any info on his background is going to be bound up with Shinigami's. Black Star's and Maka's parents have been obvious influences on them from the start, but none of them have the same association to the entire story as Shinigami does. Theirs is more an individual effect.
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