Honestly Naruto's story would have worked better if it were stated you need "Both hard work and potential." since Naruto was often shown working his ass off in the early parts of the story.
It just all falls apart because Sauske is a cancer on the show, Honestly if the guy had just gotten his ass Whuuped by Super Sage Naruto at some point and got thrown in a jail cell for the rest of the series things would have been far less shitty.
That's what pisses me the fuck off. It started alright, and you kind of expect the protagonist to get cool shit the rest don't, that's a shonen thing, but in Naruto it just goes to bloody ridiculous fucking lengths, the spotlight stealing duo being reincarnations of Senju and Madara, and they being reincarnations of Space Ninja Jesus' kids like some cosmic nesting dolls is only the last slap in the face of all the other convoluted garbage he was obviously making up as he went.
They say something about some vague "The world ended" horseshit that doesn't make much sense (How does a Spacefaring Society that has anti-gravity shit die to overpopulation and resource problems.)
Honestly Naruto's story would have worked better if it were stated you need "Both hard work and potential." since Naruto was often shown working his ass off in the early parts of the story.
It just all falls apart because Sauske is a cancer on the show, Honestly if the guy had just gotten his ass Whuuped by Super Sage Naruto at some point and got thrown in a jail cell for the rest of the series things would have been far less shitty.
They say something about some vague "The world ended" horseshit that doesn't make much sense (How does a Spacefaring Society that has anti-gravity shit die to overpopulation and resource problems.)
Thanos: When our population was at risk, I suggested an alternative.
Dr. Strange: Genocide?
Later in the same scene, Mantis manages to slow his mind down and Star Lord asks where Gamora is, to which he responds "Gamora... my Gamora..." In a remorseful tone.
Naruto saving his ass was complete bullshit and nullified his sacrifice, but this is not the point. The point was "hard work in the manga doesn't mean anything", which is false, because Gai learned techniques, that helped him to beat much stronger opponents.
Well, yeah, if you read my post again, you will see that. Yeah, I'm justifying his bullshit by laughing at single digit casualties from the greatest war ninja world has ever known.
Also, why are using font styles, like you are retarded or something?
I don't think the way Naruto went is "subverting expectations". The manga industry, while meritocratic, is also brutal. Many mangaka get their work published only to fail, but if it does succeed, now they're expected to keep on writing it for years. This was the case with Naruto, where Kishimoto had clearly had an idea that got really popular and he just had to keep going, in the process losing the themes and ideas that he originally had just in order to keep the whole thing going.
The only person that has arguably triumphed in both sales and quality is Oda with One Piece when it comes to these long-running manga series. There's a reason why aside from One Piece, most acclaimed anime have shorter manga runs. Naruto and Bleach for that matter were not made with that kind of longevity in mind, so Kishimoto just sat back, wrote whatever he could pull out if his ass, and later realized he'd written himself into a corner, so he pulled out more stuff out of his ass to make it work.
I don't wanna turn it into Naruto sperging, but shark guy managed to fight with 8 tailed like they were even. You have to give a credit to a guy, who managed to beat him without magic at all.
Look, all I know is that AoT has continued to subvert expectations in the stupidest, most batshit insane ways possible.
Eren got literally decapitated by a big-ass gun fired by a twelve-year-old Nazi Marleyan in the middle of a titan filled battleground while the KoM was for some fucking airdropping in soldiers for an invasion.
Then he and his brother Zeke met in the PATHs system where Zeke seriously tried to argue that Eren's entire race should go extinct just because their dad was a bad person. He tried to show him that via time-travel because yes, that also exists and I'll get to that in a second, but all he ended up showing was Grisha being an awesome dad to Eren. Grisha's...uh, ghost? Consciousness? Essence? I don't fucking know, randomly shows up and hugs Zeke, and tells him that their race should go extinct and to stop Eren.
Then Eren reveals that he's been behind everything and was the one who used the PATHs system to time-travel and "influence" (from what we see, it's basically just Eren standing next to people and telling them to kill other people) his dad into killing the royal family in the first, and among a bunch of other stuff.
There's also a little girl named Ymir (no, not that Ymir, this is a different one) who's the original titan, and we finally learn where the titans came from, and why literally the entire world hates the Eldians and is okay with genociding them.
A long-ass time ago, a little girl let out some pigs, and King Fritz the First decided she had to die because of this for some reason, and then he, and a bunch of other people chased her into the woods. The girl fell down a huge-ass hole under a very unfortunate looking tree onto a huge-ass human spine. The girl then turned into the first titan/titan-shifter, and then King Fritz then decided to make her his slave/wife/war-machine thing, and the girl then bore him three daughters Maria, Shina, and Rose.
The girl, now a grown-ass woman, was killed by a limbo stick spear stabbing her in the neck, even though as a titan-shifter she should've clearly been able to survive that. Then Father of the Year King Fritz then forced his three daughters to cannibalize their mother to gain her titan powers. Ever since then the girl, who's name is Ymir, has been hanging out in the PATHs and seems to be basically the closest thing the series has to a God.
Yes. This entire thing started over pigs. I am not simplifying. I am not exaggerating. That's what happens.
Now to be fair, we don't actually see the pigs, so it could just be a slur for some other unknown people, but until we get further confirmation, I'm going to assume it was actual, literal pigs.
Moving on, after giving Ymir a pep talk about how she was not a slave, and whatever, and she gives him her titan powers and then Eren busts out of the PATHs system, turns into a literal 1000ft hellbeast, and then leads a caravan of colossal titans to literally go genocide the entire world.
I'm not kidding. He's going to end racism by killing every other race. That's been his plan all along. Seriously.
The Survey Corps in the meantime has just continued to sit around and yell at Mikasa each other, before finally deciding to go after Eren a literal week later. They decide to go steal a boat from a cult called the Yeagerists (they're not important, even if Isayama keeps trying to make them) and that's where we currently left off.
Oh, and Levi survived an explosion that literally sent a man into another dimension with nothing but two missing fingers and a few, non-disfiguring scars. Because why not?
Edit: Miscellaneous things I forgot that also happen.
Orphanages seemingly didn't exist until Historia created one.
Icecream, pizza, baseball, clowns, cars, planes, blimps, blood tests, (not just any blood tests, ones that can tell you what race you are) and all manner of 1940s-esque technology exist in this world.
Other races exist, including black people, and what looks to be a race based off of old Arab stereotypes. They look they're from Aladin is what I'm trying to get at.
Other countries exist and they've been totally on board with the genocide of an entire race because of what happened to some pigs two-thousand years ago
Yes, the pig incident happened over two-thousand years ago, and yes, the entire world is still pissed off about it. Jean even brings up how stupid that is in-series.
Literally everyone in the entire world is racist against the Eldians. In fact, in the five-year timeskip that happened, Eren couldn't find one person who wasn't racist against him. This is one of the reasons he decides to genocide everyone.
Prior to their deaths, Pixis, Nile, and other background characters were titanized by the Marleyans.
Jean has apparently always thought Eren was super cool, because that certainly doesn't contradict anything about his character.
Mikasa tried to tell Eren that she loved him, but failed spectacularly, and hilariously by family-zoning herself.
Eren told Mikasa that's he's always hated her even though that's clearly not true, and a really stupid thing to say.
Historia has been pregnant for like ever and we still don't know who the father is.
Armin was heavily implied to have spanked it to Annie's unconscious, (Not unconscious as confirmed by chapter 125. She was conscious for the entire five fucking years she was in there) crystallized body, and her best friend, Hitch, thought this was a good thing, and definitely wasn't utterly disgusting, or rape-y at all.
While Eren was out literally committing global genocide, the Survey Corps thought that brushing Connie's House-Titan mom's (his mom got turned into a titan and is stuck inside their house) teeth was more important than going out and stopping him.
Annie's out of the crystal and was conscious for all that time.
Look, all I know is that AoT has continued to subvert expectations in the stupidest, most batshit insane ways possible.
Eren got literally decapitated by a big-ass gun fired by a twelve-year-old Nazi Marleyan in the middle of a titan filled battleground while the KoM was for some fucking airdropping in soldiers for an invasion.
Then he and his brother Zeke met in the PATHs system where Zeke seriously tried to argue that Eren's entire race should go extinct just because their dad was a bad person. He tried to show him that via time-travel because yes, that also exists and I'll get to that in a second, but all he ended up showing was Grisha being an awesome dad to Eren. Grisha's...uh, ghost? Consciousness? Essence? I don't fucking know, randomly shows up and hugs Zeke tells him that their race should go extinct and to stop Eren.
Then Eren reveals that he's been behind everything and was the one who used the PATHs system to time-travel and "influence" (from what we see, it's basically just Eren standing next to people and telling them to kill other people) his dad into killing the royal family in the first, and among a bunch of other stuff.
There's also a little girl named Ymir (no, not that Ymir, this is a different one) who's the original titan, and we finally learn where the titans came from, and why literally the entire world hates the Eldians and is okay with genociding them.
A long-ass time ago, a little girl let out some pigs, and King Fritz the First decided she had to die because of this for some reason, and then he, and a bunch of other people chased the kid into the woods. The kid fell down a huge-ass hole under a very unfortunate looking tree onto a huge-ass human spine. The girl then turned into the first titan/titan-shifter, and then King Fritz then decided to make her his slave/wife/war-machine thing, and the girl then bore him three daughters Maria, Shina, and Rose.
The girl, now a grown-ass woman, was killed by a limbo stick spear stabbing her in the neck, even though as a titan-shifter she should've clearly been able to survive that. Then Father of the Year King Fritz then forced his three daughters to cannibalize their mother to gain her titan powers. Ever since then the girl, who's name is Ymir, has been hanging out in the PATHs and seems to be basically the closest thing the series has to a God.
Yes. This entire thing started over pigs. I am not simplifying. I am not exaggerating. That's what happens.
Now to be fair, we don't actually see the pigs, so it could just be a slur for some other unknown people, but until we get further confirmation, I'm going to assume it was actual, literal pigs.
Moving on, after giving Ymir a pep talk about how she was not a slave, and whatever, and she gives him her titan powers and then Eren busts out of the PATHs system, turns into a literal 1000ft hellbeast, and then leads a caravan of colossal titans to literally go genocide the entire world.
I'm not kidding. He's going to end racism by killing every other race. That's been his plan all along. Seriously. View attachment 1319344
The Survey Corps in the meantime has just continued to sit around and yell at each other, before finally deciding to go after Eren a literal week later. They decide to go steal a boat from a cult called the Yeagerists (they're not important, even if Isayama keeps trying to make them) and that's where we currently left off.
Oh, and Levi survived an explosion that literally sent a man into another dimension with nothing but two missing fingers and a few, non-disfiguring scars. Because why not?
Look, all I know is that AoT has continued to subvert expectations in the stupidest, most batshit insane ways possible.
Eren got literally decapitated by a big-ass gun fired by a twelve-year-old Nazi Marleyan in the middle of a titan filled battleground while the KoM was for some fucking airdropping in soldiers for an invasion.
Then he and his brother Zeke met in the PATHs system where Zeke seriously tried to argue that Eren's entire race should go extinct just because their dad was a bad person. He tried to show him that via time-travel because yes, that also exists and I'll get to that in a second, but all he ended up showing was Grisha being an awesome dad to Eren. Grisha's...uh, ghost? Consciousness? Essence? I don't fucking know, randomly shows up and hugs Zeke tells him that their race should go extinct and to stop Eren.
Then Eren reveals that he's been behind everything and was the one who used the PATHs system to time-travel and "influence" (from what we see, it's basically just Eren standing next to people and telling them to kill other people) his dad into killing the royal family in the first, and among a bunch of other stuff.
There's also a little girl named Ymir (no, not that Ymir, this is a different one) who's the original titan, and we finally learn where the titans came from, and why literally the entire world hates the Eldians and is okay with genociding them.
A long-ass time ago, a little girl let out some pigs, and King Fritz the First decided she had to die because of this for some reason, and then he, and a bunch of other people chased the kid into the woods. The kid fell down a huge-ass hole under a very unfortunate looking tree onto a huge-ass human spine. The girl then turned into the first titan/titan-shifter, and then King Fritz then decided to make her his slave/wife/war-machine thing, and the girl then bore him three daughters Maria, Shina, and Rose.
The girl, now a grown-ass woman, was killed by a limbo stick spear stabbing her in the neck, even though as a titan-shifter she should've clearly been able to survive that. Then Father of the Year King Fritz then forced his three daughters to cannibalize their mother to gain her titan powers. Ever since then the girl, who's name is Ymir, has been hanging out in the PATHs and seems to be basically the closest thing the series has to a God.
Yes. This entire thing started over pigs. I am not simplifying. I am not exaggerating. That's what happens.
Now to be fair, we don't actually see the pigs, so it could just be a slur for some other unknown people, but until we get further confirmation, I'm going to assume it was actual, literal pigs.
Moving on, after giving Ymir a pep talk about how she was not a slave, and whatever, and she gives him her titan powers and then Eren busts out of the PATHs system, turns into a literal 1000ft hellbeast, and then leads a caravan of colossal titans to literally go genocide the entire world.
I'm not kidding. He's going to end racism by killing every other race. That's been his plan all along. Seriously. View attachment 1319344
The Survey Corps in the meantime has just continued to sit around and yell at each other, before finally deciding to go after Eren a literal week later. They decide to go steal a boat from a cult called the Yeagerists (they're not important, even if Isayama keeps trying to make them) and that's where we currently left off.
Oh, and Levi survived an explosion that literally sent a man into another dimension with nothing but two missing fingers and a few, non-disfiguring scars. Because why not?
Look, all I know is that AoT has continued to subvert expectations in the stupidest, most batshit insane ways possible.
Eren got literally decapitated by a big-ass gun fired by a twelve-year-old Nazi Marleyan in the middle of a titan filled battleground while the KoM was for some fucking airdropping in soldiers for an invasion. View attachment 1319441
Then he and his brother Zeke met in the PATHs system where Zeke seriously tried to argue that Eren's entire race should go extinct just because their dad was a bad person. He tried to show him that via time-travel because yes, that also exists and I'll get to that in a second, but all he ended up showing was Grisha being an awesome dad to Eren. Grisha's...uh, ghost? Consciousness? Essence? I don't fucking know, randomly shows up and hugs Zeke, and tells him that their race should go extinct and to stop Eren.
Then Eren reveals that he's been behind everything and was the one who used the PATHs system to time-travel and "influence" (from what we see, it's basically just Eren standing next to people and telling them to kill other people) his dad into killing the royal family in the first, and among a bunch of other stuff.
There's also a little girl named Ymir (no, not that Ymir, this is a different one) who's the original titan, and we finally learn where the titans came from, and why literally the entire world hates the Eldians and is okay with genociding them.
A long-ass time ago, a little girl let out some pigs, and King Fritz the First decided she had to die because of this for some reason, and then he, and a bunch of other people chased the kid into the woods. The girl fell down a huge-ass hole under a very unfortunate looking tree onto a huge-ass human spine. The girl then turned into the first titan/titan-shifter, and then King Fritz then decided to make her his slave/wife/war-machine thing, and the girl then bore him three daughters Maria, Shina, and Rose.
The girl, now a grown-ass woman, was killed by a limbo stick spear stabbing her in the neck, even though as a titan-shifter she should've clearly been able to survive that. Then Father of the Year King Fritz then forced his three daughters to cannibalize their mother to gain her titan powers. Ever since then the girl, who's name is Ymir, has been hanging out in the PATHs and seems to be basically the closest thing the series has to a God.
Yes. This entire thing started over pigs. I am not simplifying. I am not exaggerating. That's what happens.
Now to be fair, we don't actually see the pigs, so it could just be a slur for some other unknown people, but until we get further confirmation, I'm going to assume it was actual, literal pigs.
Moving on, after giving Ymir a pep talk about how she was not a slave, and whatever, and she gives him her titan powers and then Eren busts out of the PATHs system, turns into a literal 1000ft hellbeast, and then leads a caravan of colossal titans to literally go genocide the entire world.
I'm not kidding. He's going to end racism by killing every other race. That's been his plan all along. Seriously. View attachment 1319344
The Survey Corps in the meantime has just continued to sit around and yell at Mikasa each other, before finally deciding to go after Eren a literal week later. They decide to go steal a boat from a cult called the Yeagerists (they're not important, even if Isayama keeps trying to make them) and that's where we currently left off.
Oh, and Levi survived an explosion that literally sent a man into another dimension with nothing but two missing fingers and a few, non-disfiguring scars. Because why not?
Edit: Miscellaneous things I forgot that also happen.
Orphanages seemingly didn't exist until Historia created one.
Icecream, pizza, baseball, clowns, cars, planes, blimps, blood tests, (not just any blood tests, ones that can tell you what race you are) and all manner of 1940s-esque technology exist in this world.
Other races exist, including black people, and what looks to be a race based off of old Arab stereotypes. They look they're from Aladin is what I'm trying to get at.
Other countries exist and they've been totally on board with the genocide of an entire race because of what happened to some pigs two-thousand years ago
Yes, the pig incident happened over two-thousand years ago, and yes, the entire world is still pissed off about it. Jean even brings up how stupid that is in-series.
Literally everyone in the entire world is racist against the Eldians. In fact, in the five-year timeskip that happened, Eren couldn't find one person who wasn't racist against him. This is one of the reasons he decides to genocide everyone.
Prior to their deaths, Pixis, Nile, and other background characters were titanized by the Marleyans.
Jean has apparently always thought Eren was super cool, because that certainly doesn't contradict anything about his character.
Mikasa tried to tell Eren that she loved him, but failed spectacularly, and hilariously by family-zoning herself.
Eren told Mikasa that's he's always hated her even though that's clearly not true, and a really stupid thing to say.
Historia has been pregnant for like ever and we still don't know who the father is.
Armin was heavily implied to have spanked it to Annie's unconscious, (Not unconscious as confirmed by chapter 125. She was conscious for the entire five fucking years she was in there) crystallized body, and her best friend, Hitch, thought this was a good thing, and definitely wasn't utterly disgusting, or rape-y at all.
While Eren was out literally committing global genocide, the Survey Corps thought that brushing Connie's House-Titan mom's (his mom got turned into a titan and is stuck inside their house) teeth was more important than going out and stopping him.
Annie's out of the crystal and was conscious for all that time.
For me it was how Eren could suddenly just turn into a Titan at will with little to no development OR apparent reprocussions. Once I got over that, I enjoyed it.
The reason I stopped watching after season 1 is because it was apparent the writers had basically written themselves into a corner.
Funny story about Battlestar Galactica. The writers didn’t have an ending in mind at all, and just decided to go with the most popular fan theory because they didn’t want to piss off the fans. They were totally unprepared for the initial mini-series to get a series order and too rushed by the network to figure anything out for a longer run.
Funny story about Battlestar Galactica. The writers didn’t have an ending in mind at all, and just decided to go with the most popular fan theory because they didn’t want to piss off the fans. They were totally unprepared for the initial mini-series to get a series order and too rushed by the network to figure anything out for a longer run.
It's not hard to see that they were making things up on the spot by the end of Season 2. But still, I honestly would forgive them for it because the miniseries, Season 1 and Season 2 were excellent sci-fi drama.
First of all, I'm not native English speaker, so maybe I'm misunderstanding nuances between "subversion", "deconstruction" etc.
To be honest, I'm tired of this "subversive = better" trend since middle school. It started with "this is so dark and deep" or gritty reboots, then evolved into "x story but WITH ALL-FEMALE CAST" or "x story, but gay". I've always like idealistic heroes and lighter stories (that doest not mean it is everything I watch/read) and nowadays if we have any, it is Steven Universe that only make people dislike emphatetic hero trope by how but this was it was executed.
Again, I don't think all "subversive" works are crap. I just don't like this manner of thinking that they are automatically better than more traditional ones or optimistic stories. They are equal.
People are similar and everything was done before, so we are creating stories with similar elements since forever. Especially now, world is connected, so many things produced, somebody can say your work is very similar to super niche chinese serial or something. I think artists should just stop caring about making something "super subversive deep groundbreaking" and just make authentic stories where we care about characters and plots, it is not important if some of them we can predict. If they happens to be subversive, fine. If they are great classic adventures, also fine!
As for examples, I think Legend of The Galactic Heroes have some really good plot twist and storylines that went not in a way you expected and consequences were very important. Also, while I think ending of the series could be more spectacular, all the subplots were resolved, you just know everything was planned and thought out and it is a lot, lot more than many of stories discussed here do.
What I meant:
1 season: Kircheis died. LoGH is estabilished as serious war epic in space, so you expect death. But shortly before that, there was serious argument between Reinhard and Kircheis and you expected their moral conflict is going to be explored. But instead, Kircheis is killed 2 episodes later. Reinhard lost his moral compass. It is huge.
2 season: FPA stopped existing. Empire "won" half of the series in. You thought the whole thing is going to be about war between those 2 forces, but situation is drastically changed and now Yang's team is small resistance force in Iserlohn. (to oversimplify the situation)
3 season: episode 82. Yang, one of 2 main characters is dead with 30 episodes left. Again, you probably expected him to die, because tone of the story, but in final episodes, not now! I know many people dislike Julian, but I personally think he is good character (I like prim and proper types others find boring), just not as charismatic as Yang and better in secondary role. I think he could be exprored a bit better, but season 4 was mostly about Empire side. But again, Yang's death was huge, well thought out when it comes to consequences and while Empire is all about Reinhard as charismatic autocratic leader, Yang ideals are about democration, so change of "main character" is a bit symbolic here too.
I don't wanna turn it into Naruto sperging, but shark guy managed to fight with 8 tailed like they were even. You have to give a credit to a guy, who managed to beat him without magic at all.
No, no I really don't cause Shark Guy fused with his sword to fight 8 Tail'd like he was even..Guy put himself out of commission for the rest of the arc to not beat him at his best and that is the best you can say for Lee and Guy. Rock Lee busted his ass the entire series and didn't win shit.
And yeah enough Naruto Sperging..because Naruto is fucking shit.
Edit : And no, Naruto is not worse than Attack on Titan. AoT managed to turn into the trainwreck of the ages. AoT is astoundingly bad and quite frankly I predicted it. I never said it out loud but I fucking noped out of the series when it became clear the author was doing his best to not go to the cabin because he didn't actually have any real clue as to what the fuck was in that basement or how the Titan's came to be so he did everything in his god damn power to put off actually going into that basement and telling us what the fuck was up with Erin's Dad.
The moment the fucking plot went away from "Get to the Cabin" to all the political intrigue bullshit we should all have known the series was gonna go to shit.
....you're calling someone with the name 'Secret Asshole' and trying to guilt me into being known as an asshole? I've been trolled and ridiculed before, but I am genuinely perplexed at how you thought this was something that would affect me in any shape, way or form. Normally I wouldn't even bother, but the statement is so absurd I can't help myself.
I mean...Attack on Titan takes 'subversion' and goes into full 'I'mma gonna fuck everything up' where you just take a sledgehammer and just start abusing the ever living shit out of your work. AoT has gone FAR beyond subverting expectations. Subverting AoT nowadays means it would turn into a good series. But lets be honest here, its kind of like Beserek where they were on their boat for like 5 years, Eren's genocidal super titans haven't moved for a good six months, and every single chapter is basically filler. And we're not talking a huge distance they have to cross.
Also Eren is now basically a God that controls time and space so uh, I really don't know how you stop him, even with nukes.
It really won't be. It will be worth it only to see the fans going insane on social media.
On that note, I have NO idea how a single season covers everything from the basement until now. Its going to be a gigantic fucking shit show. There is literally no way to salvage the series unless you take the manga and throw it in an industrial shredder and start from scratch. Oh and some people actually think this is still good.
It...really isn't. Like its pure trash. It is such a waste of time for you to get invested. We follow it in the AoT thread just to see how terrible it was. And we all went apeshit, ESPECIALLY when Eren's head gets blown offby a perfect shot by a 12 year old 40 pound girl, sniping him from the kneeling position with AN ANTI-MATERIAL RIFLE. Reminder, this is what a WWII anti-material rifle looks like (I love its name, 'The Boys Anti-Tank Rifle'):
The length is 5'2" inches. It is 40 pounds. Its bullets weigh 50 GRAMS. For you non-scientists and US People, that's a LOT. Despite the recoil slide and rubber cushioned butt pad, the noise, recoil and muzzle blast as painful. It left neck strains and bruised soldiers. For a 6 foot tall adult MALE. Oh, and the rifle was almost NEVER fired as a free weapon (IE: This shit was always mounted somewhere).
She fires this with perfect, PINPOINT accuracy. In a series that prides itself on being dark, gritty and attempts at believable fantasy. Oh and no, she doesn't have any special super powers or anything like that. The character is literally the author's self insert and a Mary Sue. I mean when it happened, it was no joke fucking hysterical. The lead up of events for that to happen was quite literally impossible. Even if it were light fiction and not grimdark bullshit, there's no way she could have done what she did.
I mean, it was fucking hysterical. But those are rarer moments. A lot of current AoT chapters are basically filler, because, fucking shocker, the author doesn't know what to do or where to go. Also, AoT suffers from A LOT of filler chapters. Story-wise, its basically over and if there wasn't so many filler chapters it'd be nearly done. But he is dragging this shit out, because Isayama seems like a 'one and done' manga type deal. But thanks to this shit's popularity I have a feeling its going to be awhile before we stop hearing about it.
The moment the fucking plot went away from "Get to the Cabin" to all the political intrigue bullshit we should all have known the series was gonna go to shit.
Oh, when I first watched AoT, I pretty much knew he had no idea what to do when he got to the cabin. It was drawn out for way too long and was very suspicious at how hard it was to get there and how many detours they took. AoT is Japanese mystery box syndrome.
If it's just execution that's the issue, then I bet DP will fix that. DP managed to make King Crimson comprehensible and interesting, so who knows how DP will pull it off. We got Fugo to cameo way later in the part for a few seconds after all.
Now if there is one drastic change I want
Have Foo Fighter show up in some form in the ending. Best girl got shafted HARD
Honestly for some reason that isn't the most whiplash I gotten from Jojo subverting expectations. Remember...
It is, because its so rushed. I mean, anime viewers aren't going to accept that the last time they ever see Jotaro His face is getting cut in two by Pucci. I mean, you can't let that go. I wouldn't be surprised that they haven't announced part 6 (I mean, lets face it, its fucking inevitable) is because they've really got to figure out what they're going to do. Typically JoJo is made for the Japanese fans, and Japanese fans basically love part 5 and HATE part 6. So I don't know. I feel like you need at least a 5 minute epilogue, 10 ideally. You're saying goodbye to like, what, 30 years of characters?
I mean, I guess Araki did that with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, since he wrote the story for it. If you really want an 'alternate universe canon ending' you can always go there.
First of all, I'm not native English speaker, so maybe I'm misunderstanding nuances between "subversion", "deconstruction" etc.
To be honest, I'm tired of this "subversive = better" trend since middle school. It started with "this is so dark and deep" or gritty reboots, then evolved into "x story but WITH ALL-FEMALE CAST" or "x story, but gay". I've always like idealistic heroes and lighter stories (that doest not mean it is everything I watch/read) and nowadays if we have any, it is Steven Universe that only make people dislike emphatetic hero trope by how but this was it was executed.
Again, I don't think all "subversive" works are crap. I just don't like this manner of thinking that they are automatically better than more traditional ones or optimistic stories. They are equal.
People are similar and everything was done before, so we are creating stories with similar elements since forever. Especially now, world is connected, so many things produced, somebody can say your work is very similar to super niche chinese serial or something. I think artists should just stop caring about making something "super subversive deep groundbreaking" and just make authentic stories where we care about characters and plots, it is not important if some of them we can predict. If they happens to be subversive, fine. If they are great classic adventures, also fine!
As for examples, I think Legend of The Galactic Heroes have some really good plot twist and storylines that went not in a way you expected and consequences were very important. Also, while I think ending of the series could be more spectacular, all the subplots were resolved, you just know everything was planned and thought out and it is a lot, lot more than many of stories discussed here do.
What I meant:
1 season: Kircheis died. LoGH is estabilished as serious war epic in space, so you expect death. But shortly before that, there was serious argument between Reinhard and Kircheis and you expected their moral conflict is going to be explored. But instead, Kircheis is killed 2 episodes later. Reinhard lost his moral compass. It is huge.
2 season: FPA stopped existing. Empire "won" half of the series in. You thought the whole thing is going to be about war between those 2 forces, but situation is drastically changed and now Yang's team is small resistance force in Iserlohn. (to oversimplify the situation)
3 season: episode 82. Yang, one of 2 main characters is dead with 30 episodes left. Again, you probably expected him to die, because tone of the story, but in final episodes, not now! I know many people dislike Julian, but I personally think he is good character (I like prim and proper types others find boring), just not as charismatic as Yang and better in secondary role. I think he could be exprored a bit better, but season 4 was mostly about Empire side. But again, Yang's death was huge, well thought out when it comes to consequences and while Empire is all about Reinhard as charismatic autocratic leader, Yang ideals are about democration, so change of "main character" is a bit symbolic here too.
I mean, the problem with subversion is that its often done by misunderstanding why it works and why it doesn't. Like I mentioned in my OP, subverting expectations is basically a magic trick. Its the difference between watching a magic show for babies and watching one for adults. Its a very difficult balance to strike, which is why it isn't typically attempted unless it is in a singular work. The more expansive the work, the harder it is to do. Because you have to replace audience expectations with something equivalent to what you took away. In franchises that span decades or massive novels or TV shows, it becomes exponentially harder to fill that gap.
Its almost always a bad idea to subvert your audience expectations. I mention JoJo, because Araki isn't that sort of creator, wanted a really happy ending and just botched it because it wasn't planned. Which lead the last part of the series to be the most detested. I am really, honestly not looking forward to watching Jotaro dying to save his daughter, then having his daughter die anyway and then get a shitty epilogue. I'll be honest, Stone Ocean is gonna be a hard watch. And that's what happens. Even with GOOD intentions you can still fuck-up subversion. Even if you plan a GOOD ending (and I think the ending to Stone Ocean, what it represents for the characters is honestly the best possible ending for them), doing subversion can fuck it up.
So its a device that doesn't even need to be used for edge and can be used to ruin an otherwise decent story or idea.
A friend of mine once got really discouraged when she started writing because all of her ideas were taken and done before and I basically said to her: "Everything's been done before. But they haven't been done by you." And that's the key component. Your individuality, your style, your ideas, tones and themes will always shine through a work. A lot of very uncreative people realize they have nothing to offer and lean on mystery boxes and subversion. These should never be used unless you truly want to delight your audience. That's what writer's tools are there for. To convey meaning and value to your audience. Not to make you look smarter than them.
You know, I wanted to give a couple of examples of good movies where subversion of expectations was done right, but... Wouldn't it be a spoiler in some way? If you ever will watch them you will know, that whatever that movie is trying to make you believe, it's going to be false.
The anime hasn’t reached the shit-hits-the-fan parts yet, last I bothered checking. I have a feeling they may diverge/rewrite a good chunk of the story since there’s still a lot to cover, but they only have one season left.
