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Nornagest comments on Things you are supposed to like - Less Wrong
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Comments (367)
Maybe "broadening appeal" is the wrong phrase to use, but I don't find it much more likely that the device is used to round out characters: do Ed's comically violent reactions to short jokes really add something to his character that a more grounded reaction wouldn't? Giving viewers a chance to cope sounds closer, but still not quite on target; the sense I get is that these transitions are included mainly as a sort of counterweight to the dominant mode, so as not to intimidate or overwhelm viewers (especially younger viewers) that might find the tone oppressive if more conventional emotional pacing was used. Note that they seem a lot more common in shows targeted at teenage audiences and younger.
I thought Madoka handled its emotional pacing fairly well, incidentally: it spaces out its intense moments, but the relief never struck me as jarring. I wasn't able to sit all the way through Evangelion and I haven't touched Saikano, so I can't comment on either.
For any reaction to serve character development, the reaction has to be funny; whether the humor must be over the top or more subtle depends on the particular work, creator, and audience but doesn't change the basic point.
What is 'conventional'? Otherwise, basically what I said...
Could you explain? This sounds false to me, both in general and with respect to Fullmetal Alchemist specifically.
Hm, not sure what I was thinking there. I'll try again: teasing Ed about his height is intrinsically humorous, so any reaction which builds his character will be humorous, so the only question is how the humor will be treated and it's pointless to criticize whether the humor is over the top or moderately broad or very subtle - which kind of humor is best will depend on the audience. That there will be humor must be the case for any decent author, as Arakawa most certainly is. (Notice Nornagest didn't criticize all the other character-building repeated elements/motif/themes which range from humor to philosophical to tragic, like the watch, which suggests to me that he simply doesn't like the jokes about height, not that he is making any real point about the general desirability or functionality of these mixed genres. And come to think of it, the height jokes are why any reader is paying attention to how tall Ed is, which ultimately pays off for the reader when, towards the end, he realizes Arakawa has been subtly drawing Ed taller and taller - he is a character who literally grows.)
Hey, that was your example, not mine. I was actually thinking of some of the silliness in Seras Victoria's scenes in Hellsing when I wrote my original comment, although that particular style of comic relief is common in the genre and FMA isn't terribly shy about using it. The other repeated motifs don't bother me because they aren't incongruent with the local tone of the series.
Comic relief also isn't the only place this sort of thing shows up, although it's probably the most common: a lot of anime takes a similar approach to erotic fanservice, for example. Although now that I think about it, that version does happen fairly often in Western media...
Yes, yes, think about it more...! :)
By "conventional" I meant the kind of emotional pacing you see in most Western television, or in most anime aimed at adults: less abrupt changes in tone, more emotional consistency, and a slower pace overall. I don't buy "coping space" as a complete explanation because that's a basic element of competent emotional pacing no matter how it's executed; the slapstick interludes in FMA et al. are a distinct (and fairly unusual) mode and need additional explanation. The demographic considerations in the grandparent are my best guess as to what that is.