Ideas For Deconstructing Your Generic Fighting Series?

Okay, so having mostly backed away from good ol' fashioned shonen style fisticuff series, I began to consider sitting back and ripping into some of its more ridiculous tropes. Sorting Algorithm of Evil, Training from Hell and New Powers as the Plot Demands, I'm looking at you.

So, the basic, basic premise I'm working with so far is that in the near future, people born with the proper traits are raised by world governments to participate in specialized military units. These units are formed of these select individuals in order to combat a new form of life, the Unseelie.

I really want to explore what a situation like this would really be like. No unshakable resolve, no Overdrawn at the Blood Bank, and no Big Damn Heroes who don't feel any pain when they start losing body parts. Just people, people who are confused, frightened and entirely unsure of what they're doing and why.

So, I need your help taking a closer look at some of these tropes. The last thing I want is to go into something like this half-assed.

edited 8th Feb '11 4:43:06 PM by KSPAM

There have arguably been some attempts as this already, as seen in Yu Yu Hakusho (...Or So I Heard) and Hunter X Hunter (before Meryem took over the plot). Nothing really systematic, though, as far as I know.

edited 8th Feb '11 3:27:14 PM by silver2195

On this subject, I once heard the suggestion of just making it explicitly about Child Soldiers and then just playing all the tropes deadly straight.

edited 8th Feb '11 3:30:04 PM by Gilphon

Hmm. Could work, although that would only really be deconstructing Naruto (Edit: And Soul Eater); the heroes of One Piece are 17 at the start of the series, and while the heroes of Full Metal Alchemist are Child Soldiers, they're the only ones in the entire military and they're also brilliant scientists. Bleach only has one child soldier (Hitsugaya) and I think he's technically in his 50s. Hunter X Hunter already deconstructs this aspect to an extent (the early arcs play up the heroes' parental issues and relative physical weakness). Jojos Bizarre Adventure and Fist Of The North Star are also child soldier-free. Goku is a kid in Dragon Ball, but he's an adult in the better-known sequel.

edited 8th Feb '11 4:26:44 PM by silver2195

Character tropes should probably come first. Aside from the standard hero deconstruction, I was thinking of taking the main character a different direction, opting instead to focus on escapism as opposed to hero archetypes. He should be introduced immediately leaving training, excited to get out there and kick monster ass.

Then we start with the cutie-breaking and he begins to see how much being a hero sucks.

As for others, I was thinking introducing your typical Blood Knight as a quiet or withdrawn individual. Make them seem dead inside outside of the battlefield. This way, it leaves room to point out that the most likely contenders for a realistic portrayal of this trope would either be sadists or people so traumatized that they can only feel emotion or a sense of "being alive" when they're in danger.

edited 8th Feb '11 4:58:19 PM by KSPAM

I think the first question we have to answer is how stealthly you want to be. Do you want it to be clear from the beginning that's it's not typical shonen fare, or do you want to have the deconstruction come as a surprise?

One thing I'd like to remind the thread is that Deconstruction ≠ Darker and Edgier. Nobody's made the mistake of making a suggestion pointlessly dark instead of just realistic as of yet, but I feel it's worth stating.

As your proposed hero: There are two ways of tearing apart the Jumped at the Call hero. You can either go Break the Cutie, as you suggested, or you can go the exact opposite direction.

edited 8th Feb '11 5:25:17 PM by Gilphon

Or both.

Break him and then set him up for the transition to Psycho for Hire.

Oh… that's a good idea.

It's fairly typical for these sorts of heros to goes through an angsty phase before coming into the true heroics, after all.

Might want to look at psychological effects of warfare on real soldiers.

edited 8th Feb '11 6:03:41 PM by Anarchy

Your typical shonen protagonist: Hot-Blooded, Book Dumb, Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!. Especially when you go with your military setting, this are great tropes to deconstruct.

Show that jumping eager into fighting without a proper plan is a actually a pretty harmful idea.

Oh, and a must have for a shonen deconstruction, the dumb one-on-one fights. E.g., your protagonist confronts his first opponent, shouts the typical speech, only to get whacked from behind, because the opponent is actually much more interested in finishing his mission than to compare dick seizes.

edited 8th Feb '11 6:33:56 PM by eX

Kill the Hero half of the way into the series and have The Kid that looked up to him take over for him.

Then kill the Kid 4 episodes before the end, and have his sidekick take over for him.

Then kill that sidekick in the final battle in a Heroic Sacrifice.

In the epilogue have the sidekick remembered as the great hero, the kid as The Mentor, and everyone has forgotten that the original hero ever existed.

Too convoluted. Both the message and the ability to relate to the protagonist would be lost.

I really want to take a look at how an Angel situation would affect world politics. Obviously there's the super-limitation policies that would have to be implemented, but on other notes, what about war between humans? Would it continue? How about super-terrorism? Or religious groups that see the antagonists as holy beings? How are they to be dealt with? Most importantly, what about the casualties and military/government expenditure involved in such battles?

^There would definitely be a faction that saw something like the Angels as divine punishment, though I'm not sure how deeply you could use that as deconstruction material.

I don't have much else to offer, though; I don't think I can think of any really original ways to deconstruct the standard tropes that haven't been offered yet.

A few ideas:

• You know how every shonen series (except One Piece, for some reason) has a villain who comes across as a pedophile? Make that explicit.
• You know how shonen heroes are Made of Iron? Make the older heroes punch-drunk.
• You know how shonen heroes always use Dangerous Forbidden Techniques? Give those techniques actual consequences.

I would like to point, nowish, out that Training from Hell is almost comically easy to deconstruct; just have some people die from it. Of course, the Plot Armour that ensures the hero will survive it is too powerful to throw away, even for a deconstruction; but you can play that for drama if you want to.

That sounds like a fine idea.

Also, New Powers as the Plot Demands. Show that just because they have new powers doesn't mean they know how to use them. Also, have them lose desperately hanging on to a technique they still haven't mastered.

^^

Or take the Full Metal Jacket approach and show how somebody snaps.

What is also good to deconstruct is Easy Evangelism and Defeat Means Friendship. If the invaders actually have human allies for some reason, show that they have reasons to do so, that are not just done away with a good beating by the hero.

Oh and make their reason genuine and not just some generic anime nihilism about the evil of mankind.

edited 8th Feb '11 6:54:28 PM by eX

I'm reminded of Yugioh GX, where a Dangerously Genre-Savvy villain exploited Defeat Means Friendship and built himself a cult. Not quite what we need here, given the premise you've given us, but it could work for the baddies to inflict More than Mind Control on some of those they defeat.

I was alos wondering about the Badass Grandpa. Sure, if they've kept someone in the force that long they'd have to be skilled, but just how many battles must they have seen? And how sane could any man stay after so much violence against other people, much less extradimensional horrors like the Unseelie? To that end, the Badass Grandpa should still be truly badass-but also completely and totally off his rocker. Or for another approach, dead.

Bishōnen Line could also use some deconstructing. When you think about it logically, it would benefit them to look like humans. It would make blending in and slipping past the radar easier and it would make soldiers more hesitant to kill if their enemy looked like a child or an elderly woman.

edited 8th Feb '11 7:10:55 PM by KSPAM

You should probably work in a deconstruction of I Am Not Left-Handed.

Have them reveal themselves to be Ambidextrous.

• Is shot**

That's easy, somebody tries to play that game and it costs him the fight.

idk… that might work, but for me it works a little better if you play him pretty straight, with no real subversive stuff beyond what the setting forces you to give- until it's time to give him a serious fight, at which point we realize that no matter how badass he used to be, now he's nothing more than a proud, weak old man who just challenged a powerful enemy. And the obvious consequences follow.

And hmm. Perhaps the behind-enemy-lines missions are only given to the top unseelie fighters? Well, that's more of a justification than a deconstruction, but nothing says you can't have a few Justified Tropes.

Also another possible deconstruction of New Powers as the Plot Demands could be having a character's body mutating constantly which could lead to eventual deterioration.

edited 8th Feb '11 7:26:23 PM by Apocali

I like that. A proud, delusional old man in above his head sounds perfect. And that was my justification for it, yeah.

Maybe. That could work, even though I planned for "superpowers" to be more technology based, with typical powers/abilities acting like standard weaponry, heavier powers being integrated into full Power Armor and the most extensive abilities requiring implants and permanent modification.

I think you might want hold off on the Angel scenario for later material, becuase while it would be interesting, in a fighting series (and when you say fight series I think of One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tail and the like, so if I'm wrong in assuming that, please correct me) might not be the best choice for plot direction, unless you're going for more of a Starship troopers feel.