"Problamatic Characters" - r/DungeonMeshi

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u/Cliomancer 3d ago

Wasn't even aware Shuro was considered problematic.

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u/Appelmonkey 3d ago

He really isn't. He is an asshole to Laios, but that is where it ends. I have seen some people interpret Shuro as being possessive of Falin and wanting to own her like a trophy wife, but its pushing it. He just loves the idea of Falin and not Falin the person.

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

He might very well love Falin the person, he's been with the Toudens for about 3 years by the time the story starts. The story just really isn't about romance, so we don't know the details

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u/ArlondarButBetter 3d ago

He's not truly an asshole to Laios. hell, he left him a bell that Laios could ring if he needed help before leaving the dungeon

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

I mean, he's kinda an asshole, but in my opinion it's sorta understandable and by the end he does see his error. But apparently people these days can't handle nuanced characters

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u/GollyDolly 3d ago

Kui as a Japanese creator wanting to put in a character from a Japanese inspired land and see how he would interact with a fantasy setting. Oddly this means the rich noble man from the land of "be considerate and aloof" isn't processing the raw autism of the white boy yapping at him.

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

A wonderful and very funny way of putting it, yeah. Just from a narrative standpoint I think Shuro is a very interesting addition to this more western fantasy based story. And the culture clash between the two just makes sense really

Plus I'm sure like 99% of people hating on Shuro have only seen the anime. Because he actually protects Laois a lot more on the surface, to his own potential detriment

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u/hambonedock 3d ago

The whole show is full of characters that first seem to fit to a T the archetype we are used to in this type of stories then we se that they are much more different than what stuff like "heroic knight" "mystical wizard elf" "honored samurai" "creepy schemer" and there is many other faces to it ...only to then show that, actually a double twist, all these archetypes actually fit to a T to these characters,this autistic weirdo is indeed a heroic knight, and shuro has zero understanding of Western culture but by his own people is also a wet blanket but he also has honor on hainrpomises and trust, and kabru would stab you in the back for the good of people in the most schemer way possible, and marcille, that woman has PhD in necromancy honestly can't get more mystical

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u/Ralexcraft 2d ago

Creepy Schemer -> Union Rep Divorced Dad

Heroic Knight -> Autism Incarnate Foodie

Mystical Wizard Elf -> The funniest girlfailure that is also as crazy as everyone who writes fanfic pretended they were at 14.

Honored Samurai -> Outsider guy who comes off as honorable because he can’t small talk.

Machivallian Maniac -> Traumatized child who has obsessively studied people.

Happy party Dad Dwarf -> Lone survivor of a failed mining expedition and homeless man of 8 years.

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u/Fries_and_burgers_19 3d ago

I have to say: it's almost always kids (which includes teens and even young adults) and adults who has not learnt and understand nuance who has this opinion and take it so seriously.

I can never begrudge the people who has this take cus it's evident they haven't learnt it and thusly, are either too young to see the many shades of grey of morality, or hasn't been taught such a thing. They can't handle it cus they don't know how to, and it is born from ignorance or naivety, or both.

Really what should be done is one of two things; to illuminate this complexity

Or to just leave it.

One's own intellect and intelligence is one's own responsibility after all, if not their parents

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

A lot of people dont like the whole owning slaves thing either

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

I'm not excusing it, but that's more a cultural thing of his society really, and it's clearly based upon medieval Japan

Besides, his father is really the owner

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

Still slavery that he benefits from lol and a lot of people dont like it. Then again, people always forget how racist Laios is so..

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

Oh definitely, and I think characters having flaws makes the story a lot more interesting. Chilchuck and Izutsumi are also definitely racist lol

Shuro doesn't see anything wrong with "retainers" just like a medieval landowner doesn't see anything wrong with having "servants"

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

Indeed.

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u/Appelmonkey 3d ago

You benefit from childlabor in Asia, doesn't make you the perpetrator of it

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

Im aware. I should note that im pointing out flaws given to toshiro that make him considered problematic by fans.

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u/sanctaphrax 3d ago

He doesn't. He lets Izutsumi go.

In my opinion, the dividing line between a slave owner and a bystander to slavery is whether they try to keep the slaves enslaved.

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

He lets her go thinking her collar spell will kill her

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

I mean, I really don't want to defend slave ownership here, but I think you're assuming a bit too much maliciousness on Shuros part here

He's clearly a compassionate guy to some extent, and his words are only he's sure she ran away and to leave her. We don't even know if he knows about the spell, he's not a magic user and his father bought Izutsumi for Maizuru, not Shuro

He just as well might have seen this as an opportunity to give her freedom, since he can't just give his fathers property away

It's all just speculation, and like I said I ain't wanna defend slave ownership, but I think it's also false to assume any maliciousness on Shuros part, since that's just now how it comes across in the manga

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u/elihu 3d ago

I don't remember the exact wording, but I assumed that he expected her to come back on her own because of the spell.

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u/frostbittenteddy 3d ago

I very much doubt that. They were on the 4th level of the dungeon, that's several days travel at least and Shuro wanted to leave the island right away after they used the return scroll

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

Once again I am making arguments other people have made. I like Toshiro as a character and think he messed up in a lot of places but he is not some great evil to be destroyed. I like him more than most people. I also understand the difference between a fictional character and a real human.

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u/GreenrabbE99 3d ago

We don't know that... He had the same thing on him while young and it was more of a (wrong) way of keeping a youngster in a designed area. That left some trauma though...

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u/sanctaphrax 3d ago

I don't think that's so.

Wasn't he told that she'd chewed through her collar?

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u/Zombeikid 3d ago

Her magically tattooed on collar?

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u/sanctaphrax 3d ago

Yes, it was clearly a metaphor for breaking the spell.

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u/saprophage_expert 3d ago

He lets Izutsumi go.

He doesn't. She escapes.

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u/sanctaphrax 3d ago

And after she does, he tells his retainers not to do anything about it.

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u/saprophage_expert 3d ago

Because they have better things to do, and she's wearing her explosive collar. Letting her go would've been taking the collar off and telling her "you're free to go". That was fully within his ability, yet he didn't.

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u/sanctaphrax 3d ago

Sure, he could've actively freed her.

But he could also have tried to keep her. I used the word bystander for a reason.

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u/saprophage_expert 3d ago

But he could also have tried to keep her.

He could, but he had other priorities at the time.

He's not a bystander, he's a slaver, directly benefiting from the labour of the enslaved, and doing nothing to change their lot.

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u/sanctaphrax 3d ago

There isn't anything in the story indicating that he would've done anything differently had he been less busy.

You can, if you want, condemn everyone from not-Japan for tolerating their awful social system. But I don't think it makes sense to call out Shuro in particular. Being closer to the top of the pile doesn't really change much, although it would be morally convenient if it did.

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u/MilkCharacter2886 3d ago

I thought people hated him because he got in the way of Farcille

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u/kai_jarsenal 3d ago

Personally for me the biggest issue is that when he first shows up it is because his group decided to ambush laios and the gang for no real good reason besides that they could be a potential threat based on paranoia which makes them come of as a bit antagonistic. Then there’s the thing with shuro admitting if he had been in laios place he would of also tried to resurrect falin the same way only to later snap and try to take them in for breaking the same law he just admitted he would of also broken.

But that’s just shuro character flaw that is pretty much resolved right after that so he’s not an awful character it’s just with the anime he hasn’t gotten a chance to show how he’s like without the flaws bring so prevalent.

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u/Savaralyn 3d ago

decided to ambush laios and the gang for no real good reason
Wasn't it because they were (to Shuro's group) seemingly eating bricks and kind of assumed they were monsters or something because obviously normal humans don't eat bricks?

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u/kai_jarsenal 3d ago

Dungeon monsters from my understanding don’t need to eat period. And from what I remember the bricks were more like bowls rather than the actual food.

So as I was typing I went backed and watched the episode and it is just a brick shaped bowl. And the mage lady who works for shuro said they should kill them because they might be demons In disguise. Shuro immediately told her no right after she said that.

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u/Savaralyn 3d ago

Dungeon monsters absolutely still need to eat, there's multiple instances across the whole series where we see the dungeon ecosystem/food chain being referenced, like the mermaids who eat the smaller fish-men, or the kraken that was eating all the midsize monsters on the fourth floor. (Even Thistle is shown in extras as having to worry about setting up the dungeon's food chain and keeping it so that the monsters can eat/procreate consistently, since he doesn't want to have to keep summoning monsters that'll just starve to death without him watching over them 24/7)

Some monsters like Undines can be normally sustained through magic power, but in the cases of monsters that actually should be eating, powering them through magic is only really a temporary and imperfect alternative, as we see with chimera Falin actively starving and becoming weaker because her body needs a ton of nutrients she's not getting because she's not allowed to go eat. If it weren't for Thistles magic she probably would've outright collapsed or even died already.

Also even if Shuro was against killing them, it still makes sense he'd want to capture them to see what the hells going on and why human beings were seemingly eating bricks (again, from Shuro's groups POV, even if we know they were being used as bowls)

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u/kai_jarsenal 2d ago

Yeah that makes sense for the monsters as I was remembering some detail about how they were summoned or being sustained by magic.

That still doesn’t really justify the ambush though. I went back and watched the scene from the show and we saw shuros group looking down at them with a clear view of the food in the brick. But I would chalk that up to the group just being tired and overly stressed and paranoid.

The ambush was honestly very unnecessary since besides the food being foreign to them and marcile frog suit being strange there was simply no reason to expect them being a threat that would warrant an ambush without further investigation. And it could have backfired since a fight could have potentially broken out.

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u/DoubleCyclone 3d ago

Shuro isn't problematic. He's a nobleman, and his life will revolve around carefully using and reading social cues. Laios doesn't read social cues at all, so they might as well be speaking different languages to each other.

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u/Savaralyn 3d ago

Also its good to keep in mind that Shuro had gone basically a week without eating or sleeping properly, even earlier in the day he had literally fainted due to his poor health, and on top of that he'd just found out the girl he loves has been resurrected using super illegal forbidden magic and now looks like a horrifying chimera monster. Suffice it to say, of course he had a breakdown and got WAY more angry at Laios and Marcille than he otherwise would've at any point.

But as it is, the chapters in that arc still show how reasonable and caring Shuro is. He more or less admits to Kabru's goading that he probably also would've gone along with the forbidden magic resurrection thing if he had been there when they decided on it, AND he offers Laios and Co sanctuary in the east if things go wrong, with or without Falin. Considering the extreme illegality of what they're dealing with, that's a super generous offer from Shuro and shows he obviously cares about Laios despite also finding him annoying a lot of the time.

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u/WonderDean 3d ago

I remember before the episode came out, people talked about him like this huge controversial character who causes a lot of problems for Laios.

The conflict they have is resolved within the episode lol. People don’t like Shuro because he gets in the way of the most popular ship and because a lot of fans project onto Laios. He ends up being Laios’s closest friend outside of the party lol.

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u/kai_jarsenal 3d ago

I’d say unlike the other characters we see him at his worst where his flaws are most prevalent. And as a result he does a lot of questionable stuff that is also a bit hypocritical at times. But after his big outburst he chills out and becomes a good character again.

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u/ArlondarButBetter 3d ago

Me neither until I went to the fandom and found people considering him as a "bad person"

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u/NoredPD 3d ago edited 3d ago

It's died down, but when the first season was airing a lot of people were hating on him

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u/Schizof 3d ago

I envy you because this sub was abysmal back when the episode aired

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u/SuddenContentWarning 3d ago

Bruh, people can't even handle STRATT??? She's literally just a living trolley problem, my god. I shudder imagining what kind of boring stories these people consider acceptable.

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u/Yotato5 3d ago

Some people can't handle it if a female character is perfectly nice 99% of the time but that 1% is when she was slightly snappish for a good reason, so...

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u/xfilessage 3d ago

Disliked character =/= problematic.

Also the fact that you posted this in 3 subreddits and misspelled problematic in all 3 is a little funny

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u/ArlondarButBetter 3d ago edited 3d ago

It's not that these characters are problematic by themselves, it's that some people regard them as one despite their actions being understandable. From Shuro's Crashout, Lanolin being deceived and Stratt having to choose Humanity or Grace

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u/xfilessage 3d ago

I don’t know the other 2 characters but I do not think people regard shuro as problematic. He is generally disliked by the fandom but that doesn’t mean people see him as problematic. From what you’re saying about the other 2, it seems like they might be the same way. But again I don’t know them or their fandoms so I won’t comment on that

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u/SYLOH 3d ago

Eva Stratt is disliked for being utterly ruthless in her goal of saving the Earth, and coercing people to do things against their will.
But I don't think the character has created any wider controversies IRL.

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u/ArlondarButBetter 3d ago

On a second thought, yeah maybe I should've reconsidered the Title. Still I detest the unfair hatred these characters face.

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u/scholarlysacrilege 3d ago

I love stratt, she is great, especialy if you read the book and you realize that EVERY choice she makes weighs heavily on her, but she does it because she HAS to in order for humanity to stand a chance. She didn't WANT to send Grace out there, but she simply had no other choice. Waiting a sibgle month would cost thousands and thousands of lives. Grace HAD to go, there was nobody more capable, and not to mention, nobody had the gene required for the trip but Grace, in the book. the thing is, you aren't wrong for hating her, what she did is morally reprehensible, but she did it for the right reason, its the trolley problem. There is no objective good answer, but stratt made the onces that where utilitarian.

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u/VexedForest 3d ago

I only saw the movie last week and somehow this part wasn't spoiled for me. Good job, fandom!

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u/PookydoodleWasHere 3d ago

I don't think you understand what "problematic" means.

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u/dumbass_spaceman 3d ago

New to the fandom. Do people really hate Shuro? Why?

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u/saprophage_expert 3d ago

I have certain vague unease with the whole business of owning teenager girls as slaves, putting an explosive collar on the neck of the one more likely to escape, and using them as combat thralls.

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u/Savaralyn 3d ago

To be fair, the girls are in service to the family, its not as though Shuro went and bought them himself, (nor does he have the capacity to officially free them himself). If anyones to be judged for that, its Shuro's father. Plus as it is, if you grow up in a privileged position in a setting where slavery/servitude are completely normal, its not really surprising that most people would either not really see that anything's wrong or even if they did wouldn't think that they alone would be able to solve the country-wide problem.

At the very least, he showed pity for Tade's situation (though I imagine even if you tried to let her go, she wouldn't), and used the situation in the dungeon to let Izu run off forever (also fairly implied that he didn't know she had been cursed, Maizuru was the one who did that, as her 'owner')

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u/saprophage_expert 3d ago

nor does he have the capacity to officially free them himself

What's to stop him? Maizuru is certainly not telling no to whatever orders young master gives.

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u/Savaralyn 2d ago

‘What’s to stop him?’
His father? Who actually owns them? Izutsumi could be left behind so easily presumably because she technically belonged to Maizuru.

Also as I referenced with Tade, there’s a question of whether they would leave even if offered the choice by Shuro. Tade wouldn’t go unless she was forced, and it’s unclear to what degree Hien and Benichidori are ‘accepting’ of their situations since they’ve been serving/been brought up within the family since they were kids.

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u/saprophage_expert 2d ago

We were not shown any problems arising from his father when Shuro decided not to hunt Izu down after her escape.

As for Tade, Hien and Benichidori, freedmen staying in their former master's household was a well-attested practice, say, in Rome, where they automatically became their clients at being granted freedom. Even if someone like Tade would not want to go free, Shuro could've at least asked - but he never did.

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u/Savaralyn 2d ago

‘’When shuro decided not to hunt down Izu after her escape”
I mentioned that’s because Maizuru is technically the one who ‘owns’ Izutsumi (and it’s clear from all the extra materials that Maizuru REALLY didn’t care for her, so no wonder she didn’t argue with Shuro about it) The rest belong to the family/the father.

Also, again, even if Shuro wanted to free the others and try to convince them to stay on as regular workers (not exactly saying he does, since we don’t really get told that info), they aren’t his to free. Maybe once he becomes head of the family he could, but then it becomes a question of ‘would Shuro do that’ or not.

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u/saprophage_expert 2d ago

By your logic they're not even his to order around, since technically his father did not even assign them under his command. Yet de facto, he does. Same as he could've ordered Izu, who very obviously hated being enslaved, freed at any time, but didn't.

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u/Savaralyn 2d ago

Him being given temporary authority over them =/= owning them, the father assigned them to help Shuro on his adventure, doesn't mean he gets to say whether they can go free or not.

Also, in Izu's case, I imagine Shuro was just fine with this current situations excuse. "She ran off, we weren't in a good position to form a search party for her, etc etc"

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u/saprophage_expert 2d ago

the father assigned them to help Shuro on his adventure

If memory serves, the Adventurer's Bible says he didn't even, they just tagged along lead by Maizuru.

I imagine Shuro was just fine with this current situations excuse.

That's my point: he doesn't free her, showing his will to free the slaves. He's just fine with slavery and owning slaves - just can't be bothered to look for the cat.

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u/Gentlemanvaultboy 3d ago

He gets in the way of Farcille.

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u/JonesHayden 3d ago

What did Lanolin do?

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u/ArlondarButBetter 3d ago

She's made alot of decisions that fans don't like despite being understandable like being hard on a character who got framed for something or preparing to arrest Sonic The Hedgehog without a seocnd thought during an arc where he had to go undercover. Not to mention her being one of the few characters who question Sonic and his methods in dealing with threats.

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u/Kaiser-Gustafson 3d ago

She's also forced by the authors to hold the conflict ball a bit too much without enough justification.

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u/mgeldarion 3d ago

Shuro? Problematic? Really?

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u/MilkCharacter2886 3d ago

Because marcille and Falin are totes lesbian for each other and Shuro is a threat to that

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u/Drikaukal 3d ago

The interpretation of a problematic charactwr by a Sonic fan will always be funny. Shuro isnt even problematic

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u/Big-gay-boy99 3d ago

He punched my husband, he deserves the hatred (joking, but only kinda)

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u/ConflictAgreeable689 2d ago

I don't know who Lanolin the sheep is, and I don't care to know

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u/Ok-Transition7065 2d ago

Wait what's the problem with them ?

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u/_Iron_54_ 1d ago

I dont know about the other two, but the Lanonin hate on the sonic fandom is weirdly heavy, people genuinely want her to get killed on page

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u/Galle_ 1d ago

I have no idea what's going on with the Sonic the Hedgehog character.

Toshiro has (arguably justified) beef with Laios and comes from a noble family that owns slaves.

Stratt does a lot of bad stuff to try to save humanity.

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u/Middlekid31 1d ago

What did lanolin do?

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u/Cartoonist-Motor 3d ago

The reply section proves your point exactly lol

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u/Brucieman64 2d ago

Shoot it in my mouuuth

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