This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Wicked223: In other news, this show is now Trope Overdosed. Which is as it should be.
Note from Looney Toons: This [the large number of trope examples] is what you get when you watch a show from the very beginning, taking notes on every trope you spot as you go.
Susan Davis: Two-Teacher School — no, it isn't. Quite a few faculty members are prominently featured, one of whom is a main character, and unlike in the Two-Teacher School trope, we see classes being taught fairly frequently.
Susan Davis: both Killed Off for Real and Disney Death are listed. Other than the Big Bad, who actually stays Killed Off for Real after the massive Disney Death retconning?
Morgan Wick: I didn't actually look at the article, let alone watch any of this, but if even the Big Bad stays dead, that counts, right?
Susan Davis: "When a major character who is not a villain is killed...." (Killed Off for Real)
Morgan Wick: Come to think of it, villains are a lot more disposable than heroes... So You Were Saying...??
Looney Toons: If I recall correctly, the Killed Off for Real comes from earlier episodes, when it looked like that was the case... I assembled the tropes list piecemeal after every episode I watched, and since the Disney Deaths all take place in the last few minutes of the last episode, the Killed Off for Real looked plausible.
Tulling: I was wondering: Which character would be the Emotionless Girl? The Robot Girl could seem like that in the first appearances, but later it is shown that this is not the case. The Ojou might also qualify, but her facade cracks when under great pressure. Furthermore, I would like to remark that the upbeat finale seems so over-the-top that it might actually have been intended as a parody of overly happy endings.
Bob II: Well, aside from the "Hi ME Rangers, Assemble" schtick, it all fit. It really did, after all, we'd been repeatedly, constantly beaten up emotionally for 25.5 episodes, it needed to be at least somewhat happy. I think the ending was great.
Looney Toons: At this late date I cannot remember who I pegged as the Emotionless Girl. It might have been Miyu, in an earlier episode, but for the life of me I can't recall.
Sikon: Who is "Rei Ayanami with the serial numbers filed off"? Miyu?
Looney Toons: Yes. I wrote that description of her fairly early into watching the series on fansubs.
Tinweasel: Out of curiosity, does anyone else see Obfuscating Stupidity when comparing Midori's behavior before and after the end of episode 16?
Erebus : Is there a trope name for ridiculously exaggerated prudishness ? I barely watched the first few minutes of the very first episode and the scene on the boat where a girl prevents her brother from giving CPR to a girl who has stopped breathing is too stupid for words.
dkellis: In this case, it's more of jealousy than prudishness. And the show does point out how silly Shiho is being from time to time.
Erebus : Completely unappropriate jealousy, then. Seriously, the scene is absurd. The girl's not breathing, every second counts if she is to be revived and yet the boy is blushing as if performing CPR to save someone's life was his personal erotic fantasy, his sister physically stops him and, even though there's a large crowd around them, nobody but the heroine (who does not exactly jump to it) even tries to intervene. It happens quite often in anime series that (usually adolescent) characters are overwhelmed with embarrassment or overreact dramatically when confronted with situations that could, in other circumstances, have sexual connotations. It's mostly done for comedic effects, but once you've seen it a hundred times, you just don't find it funny anymore.
mzz: Um, she's not his sister. I think Clingy Jealous Girl is the trope you're looking for here. And yes, it's over the top.
Gentlemen396: Some of the Tropes listed don't have any explanations in the relevant pages...?
Sikon: Who the heck is Shijo? You mean Shiho?
Neon Prodigy: Would anyone else agree that the manga counts as DisContinuity?
Sikon: Given that the manga is Alternate Continuity, I can't see how it can even qualify for the status of Dis Continuity.
Heretic Bishop: It's definitely Adaptation Decay though.
Sikon: Indeed.
Ack Sed: I'll add my name to the Wall Banger list for that ending. What. The. Fuck? Just about the only ending I'd consider canon is Midori's - at least that made sense.
Winter: The ending is CLASSIC Wall Banger. I mean, really? The superpowered superhero and her stack of friends (who were killed and reanimated for no reason—in-story or out—other than to torment the audience) can't kill the badguy... so the totally ordinary male lead has to come in and do it for them... really? REALLY?
curtmack: Am I the only one who found it odd that Shiho ended up being a Hi ME, after Mai and Mikoto bathed with her and didn't notice any Hi ME marks on her? Nor did Shiho recognize Mai's Hi ME mark?
Kitsine Nine Tails: I added counter-arguments to the Idiot Plot Section. IMHO, IdiotPlots should be reserved for when a character doesn't use knowledge or obvious information available to them at the time, or acts completely contrary to their character in such a way to derail the story. Here, cheesy ending or not, most of the mechanics of the story had actual foreshadowing and explanations directly retrieved from the show (i.e not Retcon'd or made from thin air), and there seemed to generally be somewhat sound reasoning behind character actions based on what they knew/were feeling at the time (especially given we're mostly talking about 16 year old girls here).
To respond to curtmack, I think the Hi ME symbol only appears when they get their powers, and I don't think Shiho was a Hi ME until she faced the orphan when Tate abandoned her.
To Winter, Tate didn't defeat the big bad IIRC. He merely delayed him enough so Mai could handle Mikoto and then face Reito (she even had to come to Tate's rescue, if I recall it right), Unless I REALLY remember things wrong, it was Mai and Kagutsuchi that ended it, not Tate. Not saying the whole Hi ME ranger ending wasn't incredibly cheesy, it was (and I think they could have handled it a lot more dramatically), but the rest of the storyline mostly had reasonable foreshadowing and lead up, IMHO. And could you have REALLY seen an ending where all of the characters stayed dead? Ouch.
Loltsundere: In response to Kitsune, while I think that the IdiotPlot counter-arguments are correct, it's starting to look a little like an Edit War over there. There are many many text-walls. I think the idiot plot debate would be better off in discussion instead of the main article. And as an aside, since someone seemed confused about Natsuki's giant Duran in the end - Duran's size changed in proportion to Natsuki's character development. Until that point, Natsuki's important person had been her mother. Her love for her mother was distant and tragic, and as a result Duran was damn tiny compared to the other CHIL Ds. When the truth about her mother was revealed, she became disillusioned with her love for her mother, so she lost her ability to summon Duran and her Element. When she later realized that Shizuru was her most important person, realized just how much she cared for Shizuru, AND finally began to accept those feelings rather than supressing them, Duran's size reflected that. At the beginning of their last fight, Natsuki explained to Shizuru that the relationship of the CHILD's size is directly proportionate to the Hi ME's feelings toward their certain person - which is why Shizuru, misunderstanding her, replied with "You really hate me that much?" That was at least the way I saw it.
DT: I agree that we need to do something about that Idiot Plot debate, it's gotten way out of hand. Part of me thinks we should try to briefly summarise why some people think the series has an idiot plot, the other part of me thinks we should just axe that part entirely, as implementing the above idea could be kind of difficult. Really, this show has some serious plot holes, but it's by no means stupid, and personally I found I was too caught up in the emotional hook to care all that much. This show was meant to awe the audience with it's emotional impact, not the complexity of it's storyline.
As for Duran, I'd kind of thought that maybe Duran was linked to Shizuru all along and that his increased size just reflected that Natsuki had finally fully accepted those feelings. Though perhaps that doesn't fit quite so well with her not being able to summon Duran for a while after the reveal about what happened with her mother. The fact that Duran went back to being small again later is a bit of a plot hole, but that's probably another issue where it's best to just accept things and enjoy the story for what it is.
Jhiday: I've moved the horrible Conversation In The Main Page monster that was the whole Idiot Plot entry to the It Just Bugs Me! page. That's where it belongs. (And it allowed to nuke the spoiler tags, always a benefit.)
Kitsune Nine Tails: Yeah, I'm glad that got moved to a better home, too. I did feel bad starting a discussion on the main page, but I don't like outright removing other people's comments, even if I feel they need debate, and I'm a bit uncomfortable wholesale moving discussions myself, so I'm glad someone else did it. :)
To loltsundere and DT regarding Duran's size... I think it works out in context of Natsuki's feelings and all that, but I think the biggest "huh?" is why don't the other HiME's childs change size based on their growing/fading feelings... Oh well, loved the series too much to care too much.
TheCrazyZonie: Not to change the subject, but has anyone noticed that this series sets up the Searrs corporation/Searrs foundation as an Evil Corporation? Granted, they are not the Big Bad of the show, and they are no where as big or menacing as Genma type multinationals, but the show hypes them up as a morally corrupted, power hungry secret group under the guise of a large corporation. When Natsuki is reveling this for the first time, she even goes as far to say "a large corporation based in the west". (This sounds like a veiled jab at both the United States and US based corporations by the show's writers.) Even further, there was the brief occupation by the Searrs army of the school grounds under the idea, "Do not mind the big army, we are here for your protection". The Searrs army invades under lie of protecting the students from a terrorist attack (in violation of sovereign rights and international treaties) while secretly searching for the means to it's own goals of power. (This is also another not-so veiled jab at the United States, where there have been accusations that the US has invaded and occupied countries under the cover of liberating them from some evil dictator or establishing peace in their boarders, while secretly helping US companies to get a leg up.) I do apologize that the only trope I found was the Evil Corporation. I am sure there a variant of the Evil Army trope specializing in Occupation for secret reasons, but I could not find it.
DT: Right, since I suggested we move discussion of what Shizuru did or did not do to Natsuki in her sleep here, allow me to start things by trying to do an overview of what I see as the evidence for and against.
First off, we have the mirroring issue, with Natsuki facing the same direction in both known to happen and 'flashback' scenes despite the two scenes being seen from opposite sides of her (probably). This could just be a continuity error though. Second, we don't know if the 'flashback' scene is what Yukino saw or Natsuki jumping to conclusions based on what she's overhearing (keep in mind she's not in the best of mental states at that point). The dialogue in that sequence, at least in official subtitles, is highly ambigious, so much so that it seems deliberate. (This troper has sometimes wished he had access to someone who understood Japanese really well just so he could see if anything got changed in translation.) Yukino's dialogue seems like it could be her referring to the earlier kissing incident. It's actually Shizuru's dialogue that more strongly suggests something more. However, Shizuru's behaviour when she kissed Natsuki in her sleep earlier way awfully coy for someone who had already done much worse.
Personally, as a matter of interpretation, I actually think Shizuru's sudden descent into insanity in that scene makes a little more sense than it otherwise would if you take the interpretation that Natsuki is imagining things. Shizuru is already being ripped into by Yukino and Haruka, then Natsuki recoils from her in terror (which, despite her being ashamed of her feelings, would probably have her feeling "I'm not that horrible, am I?"). At that point, I can see her sort of giving up or shutting down due to being beseiged on all sides.
Although on the other hand, if that kiss was all she actually did, her response to Yukino's blackmail threat seems rather extreme...
I seem to remember reading somewhere on TV Tropes that the writers had actually refused to clarify what actually happened when they were asked, but I don't think the person who claimed that ever provided a source.
Lastly, I considered it kind of improbable that Shizuru could mess around with Natsuki all that much without waking her up, but then, it would seem that she got her out of her motorcycle gear and bandaged her up no problem, so I guess that doesn't hold.
Anything I'm missing?
Rampulus: Haruka seems to place the blame on both Shizuru and Natsuki ("Two women behaving like that with each other... you're filthy! Both you AND Natsuki Kuga!"), which angers Shizuru, who points out that she was the only one who acted. This could indicate that Haruka doesn't think Shizuru raped Natsuki and is merely objecting to her sexuality in addition to the stolen kiss. While Shizuru admits to doing so, she could be lying due to not liking Natsuki being insulted, since she doesn't know Natsuki's listening.
