[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Clarste

Having the characters talk about themselves directly would be extremely out-of-character and jarring, not to mention unrealistic (not that realism is exactly a priority here...).

... Why? People in real life talk about themselves all the time. Facebook alone is an excellent example of this.

People generally like to express themselves, and share their experiences and important background details about themselves, with their friends and loved ones. That's perfectly realistic, in-character (in at least some cases), and not jarring.

It would be perfectly natural for Kanbaru to talk about her favorite foods or sports or recent accomplishments, for Tsubasa to talk about her best subjects and some of her personal interests, for Nadeko to talk about her favorite types of shows and games (well, I guess we at least found out she likes Twister ), etc..., etc...

We get so few details of this nature on either of the characters, and these are the sorts of things that, in my opinion, can breath some welcomed life and realism into a character while adding to their distinctiveness. These are also the sorts of specific character details that often can't be inferred from unrelated conversation or dialogue.


Now this is certainly not the only way to develop characters, but for a show that is as dialogue-driven as this one is (hence not allowing for many instances of 'actions speak louder than words'), I think it's a way that should be used more.

The way the series has gone so far, most information about the characters is instead inferred from the way they talk about trivial things.

It's fine to leave some things to viewer interpretation (i.e. through implication or inferring), but some character development should be more clear-cut than that so that all viewers have a good (if imperfect) understanding and appreciation of a particular character and how s/he's been developed.

it's just more subtle and, dare I say, better written than the kind of in-your-face character development many other series go for.

I somewhat disagree. What you call "In-your-face" character development thankfully leaves no doubt to it, which again gives the benefit of all viewers having a better understanding of your characters.

Well-written character development leaves a few things to viewer interpretation (since viewers tend to like to have some flexibility in how they perceive their favorite characters) but at the same time gives enough clear-cut development so that pretty much every viewer can spot some character development and appreciate it.

Of course, that doesn't mean Nise is perfect. Related to the pacing issues, it's been kind of repetitive. We learn the same things about Araragi and Karen over and over and over again before finally getting to climax where they put a slight twist on it to create the resolution. I suppose we learn these things while Araragi is talking to different people, but that makes the conversations... half useless? One third useless? I think the story could have been better served by being more focused and not spending so much time on reintroducing the old characters like Sengoku and Kanbaru.

Here we agree. It's like I said - It would have been better if they had trimmed some fat.