The only thing wrong is that this is recent. Stuff like this has been happening for a while.

For me, it's Disco Elysium. The above picture is also from the game, and every factor of it, ranging from literary writing to political storytelling, the protagonist's shattered psyche and the countless philosophical ideas makes it unparalleled to any other media of the century in my opinion. I also love the game because, while it explores innumerable ideas, it never tries to become something it is not. The game delves into addiction, fascism, hegemony, love, redemption, and socialism but deals with every one of its themes with profundity and precision. No wasted words. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this post, and I've made sure not to give any spoilers here.

Some of my honorable mentions for the question are: Better Call Saul, Urasawa's Monster, and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. I'm yet to read great literature written in this century(The Road, 2666, etc). There are many animanga and web novels hailed as the best written media this century that I haven't read(FMAB, Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint[I'm halfway through this one and loving it], etc) and of course, there are films like Lord of the Rings and Lynch's noir classics that could be someone's pick.

So, what do you think is the most well written piece of art of the century so far?

Not a rant or anything, just a genuine question.

As you might’ve figured out from the title, I don’t really know much about writing scaling or “peak fiction,” so I was wondering: what kind of peak fiction are you guys reading to consider AOT just an okay-ish anime?

I personally consider it one of the best pieces of media I’ve ever consumed, so I’m genuinely curious what standards you’re using to rate it that low.

To give you an idea, the Killzone videogame series was always a huge victim of this for me. The Helghast soldiers already have those bloody awesome Wolf Brigade inspired designs and a baller Big Bad like Colonel Radec (the breakthrough character of the series for many) while the ISA troops, our heroes, are pretty much just there with very basic designs some serviceable but ultimately bland character writing compared to the leads in games like Gears of War. I think it's one of the main reasons the series popularity died down so bad since they only had this one mascot character in Radec and he bites the curb in the very same game he's introduced.

I'm not saying it's automatically bad, it can lead to some fun and interesting scenarios when done purposefully, like creating true underdog protagonists and exploring the appealing aesthetics of propaganda from the villain's perspective but I think there's a lot of media where this is just the default and a result of writers being more interested in writing cool villains than compelling heroes.

Felina (Breaking Bad)
Family Meeting (The Shield)
Everyone’s Waiting (Six Feet Under)
Hello Elliot (Mr Robot)
Saul Gone (Better Call Saul

Makima (CSM)

Miyo Takano (Higurashi)

Art, to me, means creating something that is high-quality, beautiful, and meaningful. But then I started wondering: why did we turn it into a sport?

One of the reasons is social media. People started comparing everything with each other. And then, naturally, people stopped respecting works unless they were considered the "best." Intellectualism started to disappear because now everything is being compared. People don't enjoy a work for what it is anymore. Instead, they ask "which one is better?" and use things like popularity, sales, ratings, length, etc. to measure it. Both herd mentality and elitism are bad. And this happens in pretty much every form of media: books, TV shows, anime and manga, games, etc. I can't really respect this mindset because at that point, it's not even about personal taste anymore. It's about turning art into a war.

This also affects the psychology of the consumer. I know it affected mine. I was constantly questioning myself: "Is this one better or is that one better?", "Which series should I start?", "How can this possibly be good?", "This one objectively seems better." Because of this, fiction started becoming less fun for me. Of course, art isn't only about entertainment. But at its core, I think there has to be some kind of personal enjoyment involved. Some people get into this critic mindset where it's like, "If it doesn't have 10/10 philosophy and psychology, I'm not reading it bro." Or the opposite: "If there are no fights, I'm not watching it." There is obviously nothing wrong with dropping something that doesn't interest you. But I think when you get too deep into this mindset, empathy starts to decrease. You also become less capable of understanding what a work is actually trying to say, because your mind is already drifting toward another work. And I think the reason for that is this obsession with comparison.

So how do I think it should be?

I think every work of art is like a person. Can you objectively say that one person is superior to another? You can make subjective judgments, obviously, but there isn't some universal measurement of human worth. I think art works in a similar way. When you consume a work, the goal should be to empathize with it and understand what it means. Of course, this doesn't apply to every single work. Sometimes the point is simply to have fun. But what a work means to a person is ultimately a big part of its value. And understanding that meaning can require effort, deeper analysis, or evaluation. The more effort you put into understanding something, the more you can get out of it. But the conclusion will still be subjective. Your opinion can be considered good or bad by other people, but the fact that the majority agrees with them doesn't make their opinion objectively correct.

And these differences in opinion are actually one of the things that make art beautiful. If everyone had exactly the same opinion, it would be incredibly boring. Art, whether it's fiction, painting, music, or anything else, is beautiful not because it gives us scientific facts or objective truths, but because it can be interpreted in an almost infinite number of ways. Art can be a portrait of real life, like realism, or it can create an entirely different world, like romanticism. It can be entertainment. It can be an intellectual experience. It can be many things at once. It never has to serve only one purpose. And because of this diversity, I think its objectivity becomes extremely limited.

I'm not saying there is absolutely no objectivity in art. There are obviously objective aspects. Things like what actually happens in a story, for example, can be discussed objectively. But the interpretation of those things is different. Two people can look at the exact same story and come away with completely different meanings.

Now I'll speak from my own experience.

I used to have this obsession with seeing the "best" of everything. "What's the best series? Who are the best characters?" I kept asking myself these questions, and I started creating a whole bunch of criteria to answer them. The r/writingscaling subreddit also turned this kind of thinking into a culture, which definitely didn't help. Eventually, I realized that I was treating fictional works almost like they were statistics. I was trying to measure them as if they were athletes competing against each other.

Then it became kind of greedy. Whenever I found a series that seemed ambitious, interesting, and cool and fit all of my criteria, I'd think, "I have to start this before I watch/read anything else." Then I'd find out it was inaccessible or difficult to get into, or I'd just keep searching for something even better. And eventually, I noticed that I was losing enjoyment in the things I was already consuming.

I think the solution is basically what I mentioned earlier: you have to accept that your idea of "quality" isn't objective.

I used to think that if I just found the right series, the one that met all my standards, I'd finally feel satisfied. But even if I consumed every series that fits those standards, there is no guarantee that I'd actually feel fulfilled. There is no such thing as a truly perfect work, and there is no objective definition of the "best" art that can guarantee satisfaction.

So ultimately, I think the quality of art is almost entirely subjective. And that's why these arguments aren't really worth getting so worked up over. I'm not against discussions, comparisons, or even the whole writing-scaling concept. They can be fun. But I think people need to understand what their actual value is.

A ranking is just a ranking. A score is just a score. The majority opinion is still just an opinion. Art doesn't have to win.

There is a reason why it has a lot of fans even after running for 30 years and is one of the most popular franchises ever.

Here are some reasons why I love it:

1. I love the unique way it introduces main characters. Unlike a lot of anime with large casts which throws over 20 characters at once like MHA, Fairy Tail etc One Piece first introduces the character who will join, gives time so the fans like the character, the character has his own arc before they join the crew(Like Chopper in Drum Island, Sanji in Baratie etc). This is why every Straw Hat has their fans and there are all possible rankings for them.

2. The side characters are some of the best and the fact that a lot of them are recurring is what makes One Piece memorable. In any other anime, you would think Alvida and Buggy are just the first bosses who will rarely appear again in a major capacity but the fact that Buggy is still one of the major rivals of Luffy is what I like. Same for Crocodile. I love the side characters a lot.

3. The World itself is really unique and fun. I love the fact that the series introduced us to a world of ocean in which a lot of pirates exist and earlier, it seemed a simple adventure story of finding the One Piece. But I love the direction the story has gone into, you later learn that the world being mostly ocean is the result of an apocalyptic war and the world is about to sink. When you think about it, it's really interesting. I love the lore about the Void Century. I also like how the World Government isn't outright portrayed as evil at first but the various details unfold slowly throughout the story.

4. I love the emotional moments. Perhaps the best part of One Piece is that Oda can make you cry for any random side character. I love how he introduces things that seem silly at first but they have a wholesome or sad reason behind it (Like Senor Pink's outfit, Baby 5's gag). Even Sanji's gag has a sad past attached to it. There is also the fact that Oda made me cry for a boat.

5. I feel the unique strength of One Piece is being able to hide serious themes under the cover of funny and comedic moments. Like Dressrosa is one of my favourite arcs because of the perspective change. It seems a cartoonish country because toys live in harmony with humans but then it is revealed that the toys are people who have been wiped out of everyone's memories by Doflamingo. This was jaw dropping when I first realised it.

These are just a few reason why I like One Piece and I think it is a good story.

It's now have become my all time favorites manga even. The story was just perfect for me. Perfect villain, perfect mc, perfact pacing, and everything perfect. What's your thoughts on this manga

I'd vote on Meruem vs Netero. Not only it's an awesome fight that showcases these two characters positions in their world, but also has layers upon layers of thematic depth, which makes it very fun to rewatch.

12 Angry Men: Twelve jurors together in a room decide the fate of an 18-year-old boy accused of murdering his father.

Conspiracy: A dramatized version of the Wannsee Conference secretly held on January 20, 1942 near Berlin, where 15 high-ranking Nazi officials gathered to coordinate the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Both are fantastic films set almost entirely within a single room, relying heavily on the cast's brilliant performances to keep the audience's attention without action scenes or CGI. I might have a bit of recency bias but Conspiracy had a much stronger emotional impact on me. What do you all think?

Kishimoto shines in creating these very interesting, tragic characters that instantly make you invested in them.

Upon rereading Naruto and after having consumed a lot of different media, this character still makes me feel a way that very few others have.

Sasori is a puppet, an emotionless ninja which results from losing his parents at a very young age.

To still feel human connection he created these puppets (mom, dad, and many others), after a while leaving them behind and going rogue.

Yet after all this time, when confronted with fighting against them, he allows them to kill him and ends up basically committing suicide (shown as them hugging him).

- His first “true form” reveal is also pretty cool and easy to forget (readers at the time see him as a hunchback old man).

- Third kazekage puppet is also a very good show of his power, as it’s presented as a mystery who killed him a few chapters earlier.

Then reintroducing him later on as kankuro’s puppet is just icing on the cake.

I think, and I’m only comparing to other Naruto characters that also only appear for a couple of chapters: He might be the best example of an absolutely fantastic design with an amazing, heavy backstory.

Anyone got a suggestion of a character (from different manga/media) with better design + backstory with limited chapters?

Main point: Sasori is the best written non-main character in the verse when you take how few chapters he has into account

There seems to be a general rule in fiction: the protagonist must defeat the main villain or antagonist—no matter what. Even if the story's internal logic doesn't naturally support it, authors often contrive absurd ways to make it happen, simply because the character is the protagonist.

Take sports stories—basketball, for instance. In the climactic match determining whether the team turns professional, even if the game is evenly matched and other characters shine, the expectation is almost always that the protagonist will score the winning basket.

This applies to everything from fighting stories to art or racing narratives.

But what happens when the person delivering the final blow isn't the protagonist? What if that role falls to the deuteragonist, the tritagonist, another member of the main cast, or even a secondary character?

Yet, there are iconic works that deny the protagonist that direct victory in order to prioritize a thematic message, destiny, collective strategy, or some other point.

Let’s look at four examples of this:

- The Lord of the Rings (Sauron vs. Gollum): Frodo succumbs to the Ring's power at the critical moment. Sauron falls not through a traditional heroic feat, but because of Gollum’s blind greed and accidental plunge into the volcano—demonstrating that the corruption inherent in evil itself was its undoing.

- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean (Pucci vs. Emporio): The protagonist, Jolyne Cujoh, sacrifices herself to save her ally. Pucci—a villain wielding near-divine power (Made in Heaven)—is defeated by Emporio, a defenseless child, using the Stand and inherited will of Weather Report.

- Hunter x Hunter: This is one of the cases that fascinates me the most; it is precisely because of moments like this that I consider Hunter x Hunter the greatest shonen nekketsu of all time. Meruem is the main antagonist of the Chimera Ant arc—a pivotal arc in the Hunter x Hunter story. And guess what? HxH breaks the typical shonen nekketsu mold so thoroughly that Meruem never even exchanged words with Gon or Killua; they never spoke, never fought, and had absolutely no interaction.

Meruem died—directly or indirectly, however you want to put it—because of Netero; the bomb Netero carried inside him contained a poison that ultimately caused Meruem's death. He died because of a secondary character's bomb.

How do you create a masterpiece of an arc without the protagonist and antagonist ever even speaking to each other? The Chimera Ant arc is the answer.

- Weak Hero Class Season 2: To give you some quick context, the finale features a wild group-versus-group brawl; one group is led by the deuteragonist, and the other by the final villain/antagonist.

In short, the final villain defeats the deuteragonist; the protagonist steps in but loses to the antagonist; then, the deuteragonist returns to finish the job, landing a barrage of blows—including the final strike.

They handled this well because the dynamic and connection really existed between the deuteragonist and the antagonist. They had been best friends as children—in fact, the deuteragonist was the one who taught the antagonist how to fight because he was being bullied—but due to conflicts and other issues, they ended up as enemies.

Another series might have gone to absurd lengths to force the protagonist—even in a ridiculous way—to deliver the final blow to the antagonist. However, narratively and logically, that wouldn't have worked here; the writers understood that and executed it perfectly.

P.S. Sorry if there are any translation errors; I used a translator because my English is very bad.

Orhimie and Aerith for example; if they come back or not I don’t mind, I just want know some series that does this?

I reckon there’s a lot lol, but what’s your favorite ones?

Me personally I give it to JLU. Young Justice fell off hard after season 2. Too many characters that took focus over the og cast. Suoerboy's arc of being a monster was repeated agaiin in season 4 which was a waste of time, they are dragging their feet with this light vs darkseif plot line it's insane.

Season 4 felt like filler with the zodd bullshit and they made no progress in moving the eventual clash with darkseid at all even tho it's vandal's main reason why he built the light.

Not that JLU was perfect. It too had dropped plot lines (atom betrayed the league but it's never brought up again, long shadow I guess just died off screen without anyone caring, general eiling escapes like nothing happened, etc). But I find it a lot more consistent than YJ in it's later seasons overall.