Anime Discussion Thread - Page 5765

I personally wonder how he got dragged into this world in the first place as well. Maybe it's as you mentioned, that there is a connection with the witch.

Felt like they squandered a bit of potential with some rather unforgettable antagonist writing. There are two ways to really go about this kind of show. Have the exploration/unknown drive the peril of the journey or have a constant force of antagonism making tension in the journey. We know what the end result will be as ending on failure is just not really enjoyable for a viewer. So it's really important to get that right which I felt they just mucked up. There were some really solid episodes in there(AI one was really nice) marred by the really bad ones. It was as if they were torn between catering for a wider audience or making it more focused yet landed up doing neither.

I can't recall who it was but remember reading that a core principle in writing is that your protagonist is only as good as the forces of antagonism. It's an interesting perspective that anime too often disregards. Take LoGH as an example, the weakest parts of the story is when we no longer have the conflict between the major competent forces in the story. It's vitally important to keep both sides interesting and competent.

I'm kind of ranting a bit here since I really enjoyed parts of the show, just dislike how bad they made the antagonist. Hell it's the same reason the Marvel movies are so forgettable, just no antagonist driving the story in a compelling way. The whole Garmilian side were inept to the point of hilarity yet we are supposed to believe they subjugated a massive portion of multiple galaxies? Falling back on Desler continually was awful.

I have more thoughts but it's kind of getting into rambling now so I'll just leave it. At least this means I did enjoy the show to some degree as normally if it's just poor then I wouldn't have such opinions about it.

Well, I think LoGH did well even after Reinhard basically had won the war. The church was quite mediocre as a villain to be honest and I even remember saying this when I was watching. However, Reuenthal later made a good "villain". The nice thing about LoGH was that there were very few characters I would call villains. Pretty much only the church and the fezzani. The other factions had a diverse spectrum of good, bad and arguable characters.
But yeah, I agree on what you say. That's one of the reasons I adore HxH so much because the villains here are real villains (except that bomber guy, he was terrible) and terrible OP compared to the main characters. Deus Ex Yamato had some decent Villains with Elk and Wolf but that's it. I think the show would have been much better if they focussed on exploration and sci-fi aspects as well as difficult situations, for example the technical difficulties they had. A show can be very enjoyable even if you know the outcome as long as the story and events unfold in an interesting way.

Reuenthal wasn't a villain, he didn't really have any evil schemes or actions. In fact I'd say he was rather a good guy. He did oppose Reinhard but if you look at it from another angle Reinhard is a dictator that could turn into a despot. LoGH is tough to talk about like this because in a way there are multiple protagonists as the story is able to take it's time dealing with each person. While Reinhard is the major protagonist you could make a case for Yang being a secondary one and even Reuenthal/Wolfgang or maybe it's a case of each character taking turns at being antagonist/protagonist. That's kind of how you want to set up political epics/operas.

Yamato being a space voyage story shouldn't really have tried this I think. They kind of dabbled in it but never gave enough time to the characters or the plot point to make it work properly. The whole rebel faction of Garmilians could have been an interesting thread but instead it just got shoved in there quickly. They just needed to either be tighter in their focus or expand on the length of show. A traditional space voyage story has a lot of "dead time" that could be used in lots of interesting ways while instead Yamato rushed through this potential. It's weird since they even gave themselves a decent time period of "365 days till earth dies".

HxH does that pretty well with it's arc structure. Sure Gon is the "main" protagonists but you see often the story sidelines him for other characters to take the spotlight letting the story and world build itself up more. I'd even argue that Gon is the least interesting character in the story and merely serves as a method of driving us to the next interesting piece. Pity HiatusxHiatus won't really deliver more.