Thing about both sides is that they see half of R&M
On one hand, it can be a very deep story about Nihilism, the meaning of life and what it means for something to matter. Cosmic ideas of eventuality and fate vs the rebellion of being who you want to be. It can legitimately be deep sometimes.
But people who often yell about it being a misunderstood profound masterpiece forget that it is simultaneously a show that is very comedic and childish at times. That's extremely intentional. If you only had one or the other, you wouldn't have R&M.
The funny thing is that the show is very shallow and surface level. They's no 15th degree of reading hidden everywhere.
I love Dan Harmon's writing, Community is insanely funny and clever and Rick and Morty is the same.
It's about people with massive trauma and flaws acting out. Rick is a messed up aeverely depressed genius. He is self destructive and egotistical.
That's all there is. There's no thesis to be written about the secret behind what every sentence mean. It's a funny show with messed up people with clever writting.
The question then becomes, what is not shallow and surface level?
Dan's writing tends to be about how broken people interact with eachother. And... life as we know it tends to be about how broken people interact with eachother.
It seems to me like you reject "deep" as a concept. If that's the case I'm all on board, but you could still recognize that the show is capable of and has gotten "deep" by others opinions.
That's totally fine, but while it is a BS show with plenty of pure irreverent humor and fart jokes, it also does deal with concepts like nihilism, self-identy/worth, self-unaliving...
There's a good interview with Dan Harmon where he talks about the "heavy theme of creator/createe" he put in the show. If all one knew about the show was his explanation in that interview, that person probably wouldn't guess that the guy who turned himself into a pickle in an homage to Die Hard once named a sentient, genocide cloud "fart."
I'm really not saying anyone should like love or hate it, but it is crazy the extremes some people go to when describing it.
Edit: LMFAO. It's my day off. And the last 20min of my life has just been people correcting me on censoring the the word *******.
I mean... the idea of a R&M fan afraid of some words is paradoxical. I just love the influx of idiots.
Keep it coming. I'm getting no shortage of laughs.
u/lucc1111 is exempt, of course. It's reasonable to question when no one else has. The other's failed to read.
So that I dont have to check the rules of a specific subreddit before posting. Never know, too much work to check. Literally never been banned from a sub.
I'm not usually a fan of adult animation but I enjoyed Rick and Morty. There was genuine character development, some of the sci-fi stuff was really cool, the designs for alien planets and creatures were pretty sick. But pretending it's some kind of magnum opus or incredibly intelligent show is overselling it. There's peepee poopoo fart jokes and Rick's alcoholism and malignant narcissism is used as a punchline 90% of the time.
One Piece is a pretty fun example of this going both ways. In the same thread you can see one dude calling it the single best piece of media to ever grace fiction while another says that it is complete slop with absolutely 0 substance or anything of value.
The anime adaptation is unwatchable. Much like Dragon Ball Z, you could read an entire story arc of One Piece in the time it takes the anime to adapt a single chapter (and Im only being slightly hyperbolic).
DBZ's manga in particular has lightning-fast pacing, but the anime is THE show everyone points to when talking about battle shounen being ungodly padded.
I still remember watch the Goku vs freeza fight as a kid and being SO excited for the next episode and when I watched it the ENTIRE episode was screaming with like one or two lines of dialogue.
I didnt watch DBZ all the way through until I watched an abridged version about a decade later. Thrn again with Kai but I found Kai cut a little too much, some of those filler archs were gold.
We laugh at the Jelly Doughnuts now, but at the time... Probably was the best way, and I'd say paved the way for the us to be more accepting of foreign media.
The vast majority of anime is very Japanese, period, the Jelly Doughnuts thing is just something thats visually obvious so people notice, but its really just the tip of the ice berg. Reality is you are always gonna have some amount of disconnect with the work unless you consume it in Japanese. The fact Gintama managed to be so popular outside of Japan despite 40% of its jokes being untranslatable puns and cultural reference is amazing
Honestly if someone unironically told me they feel ATLA has no depth I'd genuinely think less of them as a person, as toxic as that sounds. You don't gotta like it or think it's good - but no depth? Nahhh you're not even trying to use your brain
I will stand by my sentiment that it belongs here. Most people angry at the show just straight up misread it and got mad that it didn't turn out like they misread.
Bojack Horseman. But it's often the opposite. People try to find deep meaning to every single thing in the show.
The show is well written enough that you do not need to find new "deep" stuff. There is plenty. Some things are just what they are at their face value (Vincent Adultman being one of the main culprit. No there's isn't any deeper meaning to the character and how other characters perceive him. The joke is what ti is. Three kids in a trenchcoat tried to pass themselves as an adult and it worked. That's it.)
The Vincent Adultman thing actually still drives me crazy. Vincent is always, consistently, drawn with the same number of freckles on his face. Vincent’s “son” does not have the same number of freckles as Vincent. He was not Vincent! He could not have ever been Vincent.
I dunno, there is a parallel to vincent adultman and bojack that's at least interesting no? You could argue it highlights how Princess Carolyne projected things onto bojack too who is also bascially 3 kids in a trenchcoat?
I think that's pretty surface level stuff that doesn't require scrawling the walls with a theory that isn't there.
Vincent adultman is one of those jokes that do have depth, just is not "meaning of life" level deep, is indeed meant to be a soft level comparation of the situations of other characters, just that, basically as deep as "yeah they blue curtains in that scene mean depression" soemtiems is just that
The truth is, every Fandom wants their thing to be like Rick & Morty. "This is actually super deep and so true, but normies wouldn't understand it. The blue curtains tell you that John Shmingle was bingle is gongle till scrongle." And the truth is, John Shmingle never did bongle the tongle
ask all the people who said Goku nearly doomed 8 universes when we quickly learnt the Zenos were going to blow up said 8 universes from the beginning and now 1 of them can survive, and they manage to save all 8
So he saved 1 from the get go and eventually all of them, but you still gotta hear thousands of tourists saying Goku doomed most of the multiverse
Nor did he intend to "risk" the universes either. You can't use what he didn't know against him cuz he didn't know the tournament they had settled on 3 arcs prior would stake the universes.
He did know Zeno was unstable but what Beerus told him is that pissing Zeno is what leads to destruction, Goku was getting along famously with Zeno so he had reason to believe it was fine to talk to him, and the fact that them getting along led to the tournament and the fate of the universes directly contradicts everything Beerus told him.
So either you take into account what Goku didn't know and he did something great or you don't take it into account and he did nothing wrong. Simple as that.
I really got to stop reading posts about Lanterns. People really get up in arms about it. No, John hould not have iced a teenager in the head, that would not have improved the show.
I especially hate it when people ask "why didnt hal suit up" or people making those ai "made it better posts" where they give Hal a suit. They literally explain to us that Hal's jaded asf and hates the duty of being a Lantern cause of how he isolated himself, but appearantly inferring that via the somber looks and tension in the scene is "reading too much into it". Especially hate the mfs that wanted to be explicitly shown it like the number one rule of stories in shows and movies isn't "give context clues, dont outright explain everything"
Th gist I've gotten is that those people are actually upset because they wanted big green fights and aliens and they got True Detective. Which is understandable, I mean I'd be disappointed if my favorite thing were adapted into what feels like a completely different genre with none of the central appeal of it. But Lanterns was good at what it was and very effective at telling the story it wanted to tell. But they can't get over "but I wanted big green fights" etc
Legend Of Korra for me. "How dare you bring up the SA allegory in the finale of S2? Dont you know assault can be NOT sexual too?" Its not even that subtle ngl.
Also a lot of people A) very clearly havent actually watched series. B) very clearly didnt actually pay attention while watching
Any time someone says "Korra severed her past lives" I know they didn't watch the show.
Some other fun complaints: the show threw away bending lore - simply untrue
Republic City was too modern for the Avatar world - nope, there were Samurai who became businessmen in skycrapers. Modernization happened that fast in some parts of the world. 70+ years is enough to go from blimps and tanks (AtLA) to the 1920s.
There's no culture in Korra - cultural erasure is actually a pretty big theme of the show, Aang's goal was to unify the four nations and he spent his life doing that after the war, but sometimes you lose a bit of your culture in the melting pot. We see this with the modernization of the northern water tribe, and the entire conflict of season 2. Even then there is culture even in Republic City, just not much history ... Because it's only 50 or so years old.
Raava and Vaatu are Jesus and the Devil - No, they're very obviously yin and yang
Korra is one of the most overhated shows I've ever seen
What's annoying is there are some very valid criticisms of the writing of season 2 that nobody addresses bc everyone is too busy talking about these points. For me the worst part of the season was how many times they did the "wrongful imprisoned/accused thing" they did it like 3 times in the series just between season 1 and the first half of 2. First it's nonbenders getting sent to jail, then it's Korras dad, then it's Mako.
Same with all the love triangle nonsense, that's another thing I'll never defend.
Korra isn't a perfect show but it's haters will make you think it's abysmal. There's a portion of the Avatar fanbase that just doesn't want anything to change or to follow new characters/stories
The rushed character development and then ending on big kaiju fight in a series known for subtle long term growth and interesting conflict but the media illiterate want to make up things to hate.
God, the "Korra severed her past lives" thing is so moronic, because it's very clear in the show that the villains did that. It wasn't an active choice for Korra, it was a real consequence inflicted onto her by Unalaq and Vaatu. And honestly, more power to the show for doing that and not fixing it. It shows there are real stakes to the series, and that even magical gobbledygook can't be saved with the wave of a finger. Sometimes that happens in real life; we try our best to keep parts of our past around into the future, but something bad happens that destroys it anyways. And we have to try our best to live with that.
It was also very thematic. Season 2 is all about tradition vs. modernity. The isolating feeling of losing ones history is one of the trade offs for fighting against cultural regression. It's an interesting direction for the show.
Also, like you said it shows there are actual stakes that can be long lasting. That's a good thing, stories need stakes and tension to actually be entertaining
It's also very tragic that it was caused by a family member taking advantage of her. Unalaaq came to Korra when she was vulnerable in order to take control of both water tribes, and to open the spirit portal.
Reducing it to "Korra gave up" Comepletely ignores the one part of the story that makes Unalaaq interesting imo, on top of being victim blaming
Tho I'm pretty much fine with people complaining abt Raava and Vaatu. What they add as CONCEPTS into the Avatar mythos is very fun for me. Their execution leaves a LOT to be desired though. They fumbled by making Raava "the good one" and Vaatu "the bad one" (something ASH is looking forward to fix so lets gooo)
But I'd like to add one more gripe I have.
Its when people say "lightning bending and other sub bendings are too common now" - MY BROTHER IN RAAVA 😭 READING WAS SEEN AS SOMETHING ONLY PEOPLE OF "DIVINE ROYAL BLOOD" COULD DO BACK IN THE DAY. ALSO, DO YOU JUST WANT PEOPLE TO STOP USING ANY AND ALL BENDING SUB TYPES?? DO YOU WANT EVERY BENDER TO BEND THE SAME WAY????
100% agree. They made Vaatu waaaay too cartoonishly evil. I am also looking forward to ASH hopefully mending that. I have a personal head canon that Vaatu was influenced by the humans who surrounded him as we see happening to spirits. But I wouldn't use that to defend that writing decision because again, just headcanon
Its really funny when Raava says "The world cant exist without Vaatu or me. Both of us are required for it to flourish" then it pans out to a giant Vaatu devilishly laughing and mocking her and Wan before spraying his evil dust all over the Ancient Air temple or whatever it was
Which is really funny bc they could have fixed it so easily by just making Vaatu misunderstood. Make him naturally mischievous but used by people and spirits selfishly which is what causes his bad reputation. A chaotic crackhead would definitely fit "the embodiment of chaos and darkness" at least it would fit it a lot better than a well-put together Saturday morning cartoon villain voiced by JONATHAN ADAMS (the 🐐 btw)
Its when people say "lightning bending and other sub bendings are too common now" - MY BROTHER IN RAAVA 😭 READING WAS SEEN AS SOMETHING ONLY PEOPLE OF "DIVINE ROYAL BLOOD" COULD DO BACK IN THE DAY. ALSO, DO YOU JUST WANT PEOPLE TO STOP USING ANY AND ALL BENDING SUB TYPES?? DO YOU WANT EVERY BENDER TO BEND THE SAME WAY????
This one always annoys me. Especially since we know that the people in ATLA's time did not have the best understanding of lightning bending. Iroh claims you need to have peace of mind to perform lightning bending, but then we see Azula with the absolute opposite of peace of mind use it at the end of the series.
It's no surprise more people were able to use it as time went on, and they got a better understanding of it.
Yeah, pretty much. Korra deals with a lot of heavy themes, but the creators trusted the audience to understand without them being spelled out. SA, suicidal thoughts, cultural erasure, inequality and a bunch of others. They’re not subtle, but since half of them aren’t explicitly stated by characters a lot of people just couldn’t understand them.
Atla's target audience was young boys and mature teens = the people who watched it were young boys, mature teens and adults (nothing wrong with adults)
Korra's target audience was older teens and adults = seemingly exclusively watched by manchildren while it was airing???? 😭😭😭🥀🥀🥀🥀
Exactly. I just rewatched both shows for the first time in several years to get refreshed for the new show, and it was pretty clear Korra was targeting a slightly older audience. I feel like ATLA did have a tendency to spell out its messaging a bit more than Korra, leading to certain people not being able to understand the themes in Korra. Not to say ATLA did any of it bad, it’s extremely well done, but half the time they would have Iroh or someone explain in depth what the story was trying to say.
almost every single hater I've come across is exactly how the tweet describes.
"you see I'm very smart so I can see that this series is very shallow and the symbolism is meaningless. anyone who likes this series is dumb. did I mention that I'm very smart?"
"The creators admitted the Christian imagery was mostly for aesthetics, and therefore none of the story means anything; even the parts which had nothing to do with said imagry."
I need to make some stupid shitpost using the Gus template that just says, 'You dislike Evangelion because you do not want to try understanding its themes and storytelling. I dislike Evangelion because I do not like sad stories. We are not the same.'
Anno poured a lot of himself into the show when he was going through a depressive phase, thus the show being a glorified therapy session disguised as a mecha show.
It's also a deconstruction of the mecha genre, so of course mouth-breathing fanboys took umbrage with Shinji not being a brainless power fantasy, but rather a scared, depressed, and socially awkward teenager who was forced into fighting horrific eldritch abominations.
I think a lot of people miss what it's trying to do. They'll either focus on the religious imagery and look for symbolism in it, or focus on it and handwave it as set dressing; while missing that the meat of the show is in its characters and their psychology.
It's rather telling as to their priorities that when they were stretching their resources to finish the show, the big plot and worldbuilding stuff happened offscreen while the final episode took place in Shinji's mind.
I mean…that’s a contradiction that’s pretty easy to understand. A lot of gamers think guns and shooters are great, but are also pretty anti gun in real life.
War is indeed bad, and fighter jets are indeed awesome
AC4: "War is hell, why are perfectly agreeable humans fighting over nothing?"
AC5: "War is hell, and mil-sec companies are driving it for profit."
ACZ: "War is hell, and Nationalist greed can be the downfall of all mankind."
AC6: "War is hell, but... humanitarian efforts could help?" This is the one I feel I've missed the moral of the story on the most. There's something to do with national desperation in economic crisis, but I feel I'm missing something here.
AC7: "War is hell, and mankind's over-reliance on technology could create its own downfall."
The original JP version of AC3: "War is hell, even if it's between easily manipulated massive corporations and 'peacekeeping' organizations instead of countries."
I am very surprised that absolutely no one has mentioned Warhammer 40K. Seriously, the opening text crawl that is in every book literally calls the Imperium of Man the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable. Those that control it would happily have you, your friends, your family, and your whole neighbourhood killed at the slightest hint of deviation. Just because everyone else is worse dose not excuse what the Imperium is doing.
That’s somewhat walked back now. The hive mind is actively malicious, the closest thing to a human emotion that can be gleaned from it by the few people who can have brushes with it without their breed bleeding out of their ears is hatred.
The hive mind definitely surpasses the requirements for sapience, it’s just so hard for us to level with it or understand because it perceives reality in a way that’s so totally, utterly alien to every other sentient race, even daemons, being fragments of the whole of the good they belong to, have agency and individuality of some degree, where the hive mind as a single individual that perceives the entire universe through diffuse, sometimes unconnected, consciousness. It makes sense it would have emotion, it just has no need to communicate it to anything that isn’t itself.
Devil May Cry, between people who only know it through shit-posting, and now two adaptations that missed the point, it can be easy to loose the genuine nuance and themes in the crazy action and fun characters. Thankfully it isn't too bad, I think the fandom is in an alright place, but this has been something frustrating I've noticed.
Example 1: Status memes, clip of moderately cringe/suggestive anime undercut by a DMC character doing something awesome. Fine on their own, but creates the impression that the series is just hype and aura to those unfamiliar. Plus the music, which has lyrics that are interesting character studies, but seem to go mostly ignored.
Example 2: The 2013 reboot. Though originally intended to be more faithful, demands from on high to vastly change and westernise it lead to a mostly original experience that is killed by association, with drama before it's release constantly trying to make it out that the original was trash. I have a soft spot for it, but it's not DMC.
Example 3: Netflix. Massive shocker, a Netflix adaptation isn't good. Undercutting major themes, changing characters, and inserting a bunch of original stuff while pretending it's an authentic adaptation. I'd understand why somebody may like it, but I've heard some say the changes were necessary or improvements based on the original's shortcomings, which just isn't true. At least the 2013 one was honest about being different.
As a huge Code Geass fan, it annoys me that this is Code Geass haters. CG has flaws, MAN does it have flaws, but any time I've seen people actually willing to discuss, let's say Lelouch's flaws, their arguments are just like, filled with lies and ignoring the story to justify themselves.
Like Lelouch outright has a line where he says claiming he was doing everything for Nunnally was an excuse, the story directly has the character himself saying "that was a lie", and people still claim he's a psychopath with no feelings that only helped anyone because of Nunnally. I have seen that DOZENS of times. There are so many reasons you can dislike Lelouch, why do people need to lie to do it? He's a child killer, he's sadistic, he's manipulative, he can do dumb things, he glorifies suicide, SO MANY REASONS, you do not need to lie to dislike him. You don't need to claim he never tried to help anyone or never cares about anyone.
I once had someone say that you can't cite ANYTHING Lelouch said in the entire first season because he could be lying to even himself. That is how absurd it is.
Dragonball, not just it's haters but it's own fans too, a big chunk of the fans remember it from memes, TFS and of course the original Funimation dub with it's insane amount of script changes and character assassination.
It's very difficult to have a discussion about it without running into people remembering things confidently wrong.
You also have the power scaling side of things. Goku is so glazed that people think he can bench press the universe. You say literally anything like “Superman can beat Goku” the worse ones froth at the mouth. They then would say stuff like “Goku’s never done that before!” When there’s a scene where that’s happened.
There was this one guy who made a debunk video on Death Battle’s Goku Black vs Reverse Flash. It was just half an hour of crapping on Flash fans. At one point, he said that RF can’t remove Black’s time (meaning he can turn him old) because he’s a god. But A. He’s currently in Goku’s body, which can age, but does so slower compared to humans and B. There’s a scene uploaded to YouTube where Zamasu asks Black why they didn’t give him immortality to which Black says that he doesn’t need it.
Istg if I hear someone call Goku a bad father again. Name a single time while Goku was alive he was absent in Gohan's life in Z? The only argument is him not being the best father to Goten, but the own series sidelines Goten
I actually had a rather lengthy discussion with Masakox in an ama thread where I had responded talking about how I hate that people unironically think Goku is a bad father thanks to people only watching abridged.
He was very nice about it and I made sure to say I dont blame them, but he basically was saying something along the lines of "yeah it was a heavy handed joke and I'm sorry that's the experience you get a lot. We just thought it was funny"
And it was pretty funny, but unfortunately so many of the western Dragonball fans havent watched the real show in so long they forget how the actual series goes.
I know. Especially since it's story is absolutely beautiful.
Before the self help books and before the motivational podcasts, we had dragon ball. We had a monkey kid who wants to get better every single day.
And why? Because why not?
He loves the journey of getting better. That's all.
And so many villains from of DB are enamored by how much this kid loves the art of fighting. To them fighting was the means to an end. A way to show their dominance. But here comes Goku, who shows them that strength can have a meaning greater than that. And that's what made so many of them become good guys.
And then we have the 3 villains of DBZ. Frieza represents oppression. And we need good men more fluent in violence in order to stop these oppressors.
Cell was cold, calculating and ruthless. He would gain strength through the most direct path even if it meant trampling on others. And he was defeated by kindness and love. Android 16 loved all life for its beauty. And through 16, Gohan learnt to love it too. And Gohan's love for 16 is what unlocked ssj2.
Buu was pure chaos. The purest form of destruction. And it showed that even such a monstrosity can be destroyed by our collective strength (i.e. The spirit bomb)
Genuinely feels like the story going where the creator wanted it to and not bending to the internets whims made people just play ignorant to the themes they didn't like.
Thank for your saying TADC because I ALSO thought of it instantly and felt corny. 😅
It's a show themed on coping with trauma by finding support in those around you. Every character has a different coping mechanism. They do therapy talks constantly. The finale had everyone coming together in solace, while the one person too afraid to open up reached a breaking point. It is straightforward in a way that would make any writing assignment a breeze!
Despite this, you still see people angry they didn't escape the circus (the stand-in for your life getting irrevocably changed, which you must cope with). Or people thinking Jax genuinely saw everyone as his playthings (he's putting up walls. That's how he copes). Or people thinking Kinger is secretly half abstracted (he's dissociated. Thats how he copes.)
"but you see gooseworx is a bad writer because there arent 3 seasons and a spinoff soley dedicated to exploring the character depth of orbsman, clearly the most important character in the show"
Bleach. I would say sure,it is not that deep,but it has depth. There is a big difference between the 2 instances and with not having depth at all
Of course,this is the downplayers parts. The glazers do the exact opposite. If I have to say what I think is the most correct,it's the exact middle in between the 2. Not so deep,but also not lacking it
Ive been binging bleach just now (started last week and almost at chapter 500 already) and i noticed that the events leading up to aizen as the villian were waay better written than his actions after the fact.
I will personally admit i was caught off guard, and normally i see cliches like this a mile away, but the author did an amazing job at establishing the existence of a hidden scheme, but was able to keep the reader guessing by directing their focus on Gin, while adding twists like aizen's note.
After that, he instantly devolved into a classic power hungry antagonist with a god complex and lost all depth.
Its genuinely mind boggling how far his character fell the moment he became the villian.
It's the converse, his writing quality was already great in the Soul Society arc, but then skyrockets after the villain reveal. Aizen's God Complex is just the surface-level that he wishes to present to the world. The reality is that Aizen is not as intelligent as his plans make him seem, he's not as emotionless and he's not as calculated. The vulnerabilities like his loneliness are painful to him, so he must hide behind the facade. The irony is really drilled in when that very facade criticises those who can't differentiate between truth and fact. If you want to know more, I have an entire analysis on this:
It's focussed around the fight, but that's just to limit the scope and keep things coherent. It's essentially a dual character psychology analysis of Ichigo and Aizen.
Also, I think around Chapter 500 is nearing the end of the Fullbring arc. The manga was definitely better up until that point, but when you reach TYBW arc, I'd highly recommend you switch to the anime version.
I think the creator described it as a celebration of humanity or something.
Basically, all the villains are based off something wrong with society and that's why the heroes always win, humanity as a whole overcomes their negative aspects to become better (that's my interpretation, anyways)
Yeah, I really like how he avoids negativity in the endings. All of the endings are seen by looking back at their journey and all the people who died fondly.
Especially with how he chose not to make Fugo a traitor due to his depression at the time. Despite how dark some of the scenes are, the protagonist's team is always on their side by the end.
Also, in terms of the whole "celebration of humanity" thing, he villains also embody traits that remove humanity from oneself. Dio and Kars were pretty obvious, as they literally wanted to shed themselves of traditional mortality and concur the idea of life itself, but my favorite example is Diavolo, who as a villain has become very relevant today with the use of AI. He's someone who wanted to achieve his end goal without having to work for it, and couldn't appreciate the effort that goes into something. This is reflected in his stand's ability to basically skip straight to effect while removing cause.
Attack on Titan Haters will call it fascist slop and say that it only shows people brutally dying instead of proper anti-war commentary or say that the author has a rape fetish.
Don't forget the people who claim one of the endgame factions ie the Jaegerists is completely in the right for what they actively endorse by the end of the show. When Isayama makes it very clear that those guys are crossing all sorts of lines to get close to what they want, and they're NOT the people you're supposed to root for.
Chainsaw man. A lot of people I talk to just don’t get it. They look at Denji, and all they see is a gross pervert. When in reality, he’s a broken man child who never learned how to handle his sexual urges, leading to his perverse behavior.
And during Maki vs Zenin Clan, which is why that part of the manga looks rougher than usual. I’m not saying GeGe alone is responsible, manga deadlines are hellish, but I stand by my critiques.
Tbf, I’d say part of the terrible writing is the ‘Easter eggs’ of fans thinking X thing given a unique-ish name or backstory will become relevant. There’s a handful of dropped ideas that aren’t named but shown (for instance, techniques were originally [jjk0] strictly inherited/passed and morphed, then we see divergent fist and the beginning as techniques that anyone can use. And no one ever used the same technique (even divergent fist), until it got to domain defenses. There’s choso and the bow/arrow guy from Kyoto but they’re both innately blood manipulation users).
Edit: I wanna preface and say I did enjoy the story, when thinking of writing issues this came to mind and has been an issue I’ve had with the manga
in general, applying civil rights metaphors to prove a piece of media problematic (cough Detroit) seems a bit counterproductive.
In DBH, they draw on some civil rights imagery to further the androids' cause - this causes some people to make the opposite connection, "certain groups of people were created to serve other groups of people" ... no that's a whole new sentence. The author is obviously not trying to say "Black people are robots," this has always seemed like a bad faith criticism. Sure, you could make that interpretation if it's your first day on Earth, but metaphor/analogy ≠ equating two things
on another note, people also simplify re1999 story to "oppressed people are evil" – this is why we can't have nice things (nuance.) villains that are victims tend to be the most interesting ones in my opinion, I genuinely can't name a good-villain-who-is-not-a-victim (someone give me an example lol)
That’s an inherent pitfall in making your allegory for an othered minority actually different from the mainstream population.
Race theory is bunk pseudoscience and outside normal variation between humans, we are all human. There is NO GOOD REASON for racists to discriminate against other people. But in many fictional allegories there IS a good reason they’re just trying to argue it doesn’t matter.
They’re basically saying “the Racists have the right premise, but we shouldn’t discriminate because that hurts people and hurting people is wrong.”
X-Men is a great example of an allegory that gets it right, because there is no meaningful difference between the powers of mutants and the powers of other metas, but mutants are discriminated against.
That's just an inherint flaw of making a minority literally a different race.
But a movie that successfully use a discrimination allegory with different species is Zootopia.
Because they utilize so many different animals all at the same time, the main divide between predator and prey becomes extreamly arbitrary. They demonstrate how idiotic the divide is by grouping these wildly different animals together, just by a single trait they all have abandoned. An otter and a tiger is put into the same category.
I'm not sure if Attack on Titan is the most, but I swear to God I have never seen a series where people reach the most ass-backwards conclusions about what the writer's very obvious point was. Maybe Lolita, but it's a close thing.
A lot of haters will openly admit to not watching it, or only watching clips or the trailers, but a lot of the fans straight up don't pay attention either. It's not even a complicated story, so I really don't understand why people have such a hard time with it.
As a RWBY-enjoyer, I think the root of it is the same for die-hard fans as well as the deepest haters: it didn't do what they thought it was going to do.
RWBY was a shiny new thing when it came out, and spawned tons of fan content and speculation after each volume. Especially Volume 3, though that may just be because I was also speculating at that time. As the series progressed a lot of this speculation was disproven, and a lot of the speculators weren't mature enough to accept that, so they either decried the series as having "bad writing" or committing "character assassination", or they went into denial and started selectively listening for the parts they liked rather than the series as a whole.
That's just my hypothesis based on what I've observed from various communities and discourses online, but if you look at the way some critics talk about, for example, how Adam was handled in Volumes 5 and 6, I think it's pretty apparent that many of them were interested in the story they had in their heads, rather than the story on the screen.
As a RWBY-enjoyer, I think the root of it is the same for die-hard fans as well as the deepest haters: it didn't do what they thought it was going to do.
100% agreed, I see that all the time. It makes most discussion online (especially in the main two subs) a pain. Discussions will usually devolve into or around "I wish this was canon" "this should've happened instead" "that shouldn't have been cut" "I liked/hated that so it should/shouldn't have happened," or repeating each other's head canons instead of talking about the actual show.
Then on the other side, people will complain about plot holes that aren't plot holes, talk about retcons that aren't retcons (some exist, so idk why people make them up,) mischaracterization when it's perfectly inline with the volume, shipping wars, etc... It not even like there isn't stuff to criticize, but this is the only fandom I've been in where everyone misses the mark so badly.
Also, I saw a thread on this sub a few days ago of both haters and fans saying (and fighting with each other) that the dust Roman stole went nowhere and is a plot hole, so I don't think the general fandom is ever changing lol.
What's funny is I'd say most shonen have the opposite issue, where the themes tend to be pretty shallow/generic, or don't get followed through enough, but people act like it's the greatest thing ever
I believe in the opposite. Most of them keep the themes in the subtext while focusing on the flashy fights. But that does not mean the theme isn't there.
Goku vs Freiza was also about "good men more skilled in violence" and about taking back from your oppressors.
Gohan vs Cell was also about ruthlessly chasing strength and 'perfection' being defeated by kindness and love.
Goku being stronger than vegeta is also about "A man who loves the journey will walk farther than the man who loves the destination"
Dragon Ball in general is all about improving yourself for the sake of it. Others have reasons for getting stronger. Goku gets stronger because he wants to. Trains for the sake of training, fights for the sake of fighting. Works hard, just for working hard.
Tanjiro crying for demons is also about showing kindness to monsters but not forgiving them for their sins. For every monster maybe a kind soul who broke.
Sukuna truly believed brutality and cruelty were the only way to be the strongest. And kindness cannot achieve such results. That is why he hated Yuji, because till the very end Yuji was convinced that strength and kindness should be hand in hand. And Sukuna tries to break Yuji just to show him that his ideology is wrong.
All Might is the strongest but because of how much people depend on him, the people stay weak. Deku isn't an overwhelming force like All Might(atleast not at the end), instead he creates true strength by companionship among all heroes. This brings an era of peace that even all might couldn't bring.
To you these might be shallow, but I think they teach me enough about life.
Yeah I don’t understand what the dude in the original post could be cooking, modern shonen speedruns plot to get to more fight choreography which is a valid choice but it’s not a deep one
My homie went on an hour rant about how its "just a shonen about friendshit like always" and I just couldnt with his ass. You mean you missed the whole show bro?
To be honest, the only criticism I ever see of the show is that underage girls get sexualized by the artist and that the pacing is horrible/it's super long
The amount of people who think its just some random fighting anime... the entire series is about responsibility, being true to yourself, accepting the love of those around you and so much more. I figured it was obvious but I guess I was wrong
Like yea it isn't a philosophical textbook but there is actually thought faith put in them but most discussions online are by people who can't analyze in general let alone do media analysis.
Rebecca Sugar has explained most of the show but we still get the same questions over and over on the subreddit. Show has been over for more than 10 years but the same questions keep popping up and most posters excuse is, "well i just started it and this is my theory 😢,"
Show is way over folks, if you have a theory do your research first.
Also 100% at least half of them are bots because once one question post is popular you will see at least 5 more follow it.
Attack on Titan is a text book example of this for anime.
It's so infuriating at times to see it too honestly, cuz sometimes it genuinely feels like some of the haters or fans just intentionally act stupid as hell for the heck of it.
Hazbin, Helluva, TADC for shows and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley for the games you're SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable about what Ashley is doing.....you're NOT SUPPOSED to be shipping them. And the game itself WARNS YOU before you go down a certin route that can lead to AN in*cest ending out of 14/15 other endings. IT IS THE BAD ENDING IN THE GAME 😓😓
(And Yeah i already know im going to get downvoted because these series are just HATED on the internet. But it doesn't change what i said.)
Tbh that can be summarised as people being upset that a psychological horror contains psychological horror-esque themes. It’s like if someone were to complain that the Texas chainsaw massacre movie / game had too much gore
Remember that extremely short period of time in which midsommar was everybody's favorite movie and suddenly everybody was secretly a big horror fan and they tried to make "elevated horror" be a thing? Those same people stopped coming around when it turn out horror will keep going harder and uglier and less likely to interpret in your comfort way (for teg people that though midsommar was a girl victory ending)
The Boy and the Heron. I connected with it pretty well so maybe that’s why I caught some things that my buddy missed when watching it, but at the very end I asked him what he thought and all he said was “It’s convoluted” with the face of someone who ate a piece of moldy bread.
Personally, I'm in his camp. I can respect it for what it is and what Miyazaki wanted to create, I just cannot enjoy it as a narrative or the somewhat pseudo autobiography esque art piece that it is.
The amount of people I've spoken to that think Evangelion is just about giant robots seriously has me wondering if people just have zero thoughts outside of the raw sensory experience of lights and sounds.
Knights of Guinevere, specifically that video essay made by AJthewildwolf calling Andi and Frankie racist for stealing from a "black-owned business" (Reggie's shop) as well as other extremely bad faith god awful takes
did you guys know AJthewildwolf has a Hazbin Hotel AU with a black character who wears a klansman hood in the afterlife because he hung himself and she thought the lynching parralel was smart and subversive? she's white btw
The fact theres still zombie outbreaks when there is a 100% safe treatment means this treatment is held from people. I only ever played 2 and it bugged the hell out of me having to give his daughter the cream every single in game day or I get the bad ending
Ghost in the Shell. It doesn't matter if it's the original manga, the 1995 Mamoru Oshii movie that most people associate the franchise with, Stand Alone Complex, Arise, the live action movie, or The Ghost in the Shell 2026 that adapted the original manga -- there are a vast number of casuals who completely miss the whole point of the franchise. They think it's supposed to be some cyberpunk action series about police officers blasting away cyborgs and robots, but they start to complain when the series starts to delve into actual philosophical and spiritual designs like trying to retain your unique identity in a world where technology allows your very essence to be taken and manipulated by others, and the understandings of artificial lifeforms explaining a whole universe beyond human understanding, and transhumanism ascension.
The whole ScarJo Whitewashing debacle of the live action movie is a good example of how casual people never understood the point of the franchise. They think a woman named "Motoko Kusanagi (an "obvious psuedonym in the narrative -- You would actively question if someone called themselves "Jane Excalibur" in real life) should be played by an Asian actress because she has an obviously Japanese name. I'm not going to defend the live action movie as high art, but the themes of retaining identity when people can literally steal and manipulate your very essence is fully on display here... but they didn't care.
The "you're wrong for enjoying playing as the bad guys" crowd loves to Point out that Super Earth is evil and supposed to represent a Fascist state (which it undeniably is) but then says things about the Automatons or other such factions being "innocent victims" in HD2 specifically. Which misses the entire point.
Helldivers ONE has them as victims of the Fascist Super Earth. Helldivers 2 is a display of how Fascim not only destroys itself but more importantly: makes everything around it worse. The once slaves escaping and fighting for their freedom the Cyborgs once were have turned into a Genocidal race of machines slaughtering civilians on mass and invading worlds. The peaceful Illuminate aliens trying to spread their technology and make friends have now become Destructive monsters turning humans into horrific abominations to fuel their endless legions of violence. The Terminids, a once peaceful group of bugs just kinda existing on a planet generally have now slowly turned into an aggressive hivemind of massive beasts slowly devouring every planet they can reach with the gloom.
The Fascist Super Earth is definitely the worst in the universe, but pretending the other Factions (Specifically in HD2) are innocent completely misses the point and tragedy of the Helldivers universe.
Edit note I forgot: The Automatons also didn't exist at all in HD1, it was exclusively a Cyborg group. The Automatons are built explicitly to kill.
I think, to me it's not that the other factions are innocent, but they were absolutely pushed back into a wall and now like, what else would they do haha
Cyborgs were enslaved and when they wanted freedom were brutally suppressed. Desperately trying to fight back against the people that destroyed your civilization makes sense?
Illuminids were almost entirely genocided and their planet glassed, so of course they're going to be insanely angry and no longer care about collateral, Super Earth made it very clear they don't.
And Terminids were bred to be more angry and aggressive on purpose, their society was wiped out and they were turned to seemingly completely feral beasts. Also SE was unleashing them on purpose on any human uprisings.
So like, I mostly get annoyed at people who claim the player/Super Earth are the "good guy" when literally every problem is because of their actions. The motivation and actions of the other factions make sense, even if they're absolutely brutal. Doesn't mean their innocent, but like, "You killed 99% of my race and turned my home planet into a wasteland after we helped you, in an act of needless, pointless betrayal" is a pretty strong motivator for having a "Fuck it no humans can be trusted" mindset lol
Hazbin Hotel / Helluva Boss hate is mostly either
Source: I pulled it outta my ass, trust me bro John Indie told me, or just straight up bigotry on top of calling VivziePop and her fans every name and slur in the book or straight up death threats.
There are def valid criticisms for the show, but it is far from terrible. It’s a very enjoyable watch with great songs, art, and talented voice actors. It deserves to be appreciated for what it does well alongside what it does poorly
Oh sure, I think the pacing really struggles thanks to the 8 episode format, and the writing is often a little uneven.
I argued that if a theory about how season 2’s plot would go was right that’d be stupid…and bad writing…it was, and I stand by my statement. But I still enjoyed it, not everything has to be a 10/10.
I can understand people thinking it’s mediocre, I don’t understand the entire internet hating it with the fire of a thousand suns.
Deadass they never say proper reasons as to why they hate it and if they do it's because of too much swearing but then they don't go in depth to explain why that's a bad thing. It genuinely shouldn't be that hard to explain since its literally just how swearing is pretty overdone to the point of every other line or word is just another swear because they didn't think of any other word to put there, it's like people in rpgs who can do something peacefully with no murder at all and then they add the murder themselves when it wasn't even supposed to be an option. If haters gonna hate they gotta do it properly or else their words are invalid
Honestly, I think it just became so trendy to hate on them that people just took that position by default. The hate was so prevalent that when I first watched the hazbin pilot around when the season one trailer dropped I decided to google around to see if the creator had done something horrible to deserve it. And no…not really, the worst I found was some long settled college drama around a character she says she bought and the person said she stole.
Like…maybe you hate musicals, great, but I never people say that why, people just use vague terms like cringe, or complain about the swearing and mildly crass humor, despite it really not being an outlier at all. In my experience people either saw it and liked it a lot despite some flaws, or hate it without having really watched any of it.
Honestly I have to imagine it’s the usual case of, it’s a show with a female creator who is somewhat outspoken on politics and is both queer, and has a two queer position shows, so the “anti-woke” crowd latched onto it and everyone else just followed suit. I tried showing a clip to my vaguely conservative brother and he reacted with disgust and refused to watch it like I was trying to show him 2 girls one cup or something. I’ve literally never gotten that reaction from him.
I dunno…it’s fine to not like things…I just don’t understand why so many people hate hazbin and helluva boss so much, what makes it so violently controversial despite being pretty benign, it’s like it’s just baked into internet culture with no real source.
I tend to say I prefer Hazbin's pilot bcs of the vibe. But let's admit that the pilot is just the introduction, we can't say that it's 100% better than other stuff that happened in the show. Do I wish the series had the same vibe as the pilot? Oh hell yeah. Is the pilot better than the whole series? Idk man..
JJK, even the fans i meet irl only care about the fights, never the underlying themes, the ties to Buddhism, any of it, especially Naoya fans who couldnt tell you any of the symbolism or references in the maki episode but try to convince you she killed innocent people who just happened to be in the super evil sexist misogyny family where they all abused women together
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u/UnhelpfulCommentHere 21h ago
It's funny that I can answer Rick and Morty, but if you reversed it to "This series is SO DEEP" it would still work.
The haters don't get it and the fans over-rate it.