Misused: Loads And Loads Of Characters

There's one defining part that bothers me. Ensemble Cast implies there is no single protagonist, while with Loads And Loads Of Characters it's usually 1-3 protagonists and indefinite numbers of side-characters.

I guess I'm thinking of it relative to similar works, that have a similar number of recurring characters, so the amount of them doesn't seem very stand-out to me? But I could also just be arbitrarily drawing the line while justifying it to myself. That's possible too.

Really, I brought it up the first time just to explain what sort of characters I was talking about, as "minor characters" in one work may still be recognizable and recurring faces where "minor characters" in another work disappear an episode after being introduced. The second time, I... honestly think I just sort of forgot how many characters that show actually has.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:09:28 PM

I don't know if that's 100% true. Bleach and One Piece are classic examples of loads and loads of characters. The former has a main crew of 5 and the latter (i'm not well versed on one piece at all, so i'm just going off the wiki page) seems to have a main protag group of 7. Naruto another work with loads of characters has 2 deuteragonists.

I think the point is that whether it's 2 or 4, there isn't just a singular protag in an ensemble.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:11:44 PM

- Hmm... Something about that makes me think of Nominal Importance and other signifiers of importance.

Perhaps this trope should be restricted to works where the number of those people are sufficiently large, by some measure likely defined by medium and/or genre.

Edited by Malady on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:13:09 AM

Heck, I brought up Warrior Cats, and every arc aside from the first one has at least 2-3 POV characters, sometimes even changing the viewpoints each book, and multiple major non-POV characters, bringing it up to at least 10+ important characters per arc. It's still one of the standout examples of this trope in my eyes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:16:00 PM

But I think that's my point. Even in the most insular feeling sitcom like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that focuses on a group of 5 characters, there are several recurring characters over the series' 13 seasons that would make it a candidate for this trope depending on how we define it (the lawyer, the mcpoyles, the waitress, rickety cricket alone bump this to 10).

And that's not even touching Soap Operas which by definition run on a "lots of characters" premise to switch between stories and draw them out. That all feels like just "Ensemble Cast but bigger" to me.

What's the number we'd draw it at if we include secondary characters? How do we determine and enforce "prominent secondary character" as a rule on the site without accruing shoehorned examples?

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:19:27 PM

I agree with WarJay. I think that their assessment works for how this can still be considered a trope without fully disambiguating.

We have Long-Runner Cast Turnover, which would cover the Grey's Anatomy types "people join/leave over multiple seasons" of examples.

Also, I just noticed Game of Thrones is listed on Ensemble Cast...

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:22:45 PM

The thing about Bleach and One Piece is while the The Team is just 1 titular character with a bunch of friends with their own arcs, there are a lot of people helping them for personal reasons, and StandardEvilOrganizationSquads or QuirkyMinibossSquads regularly get VillainEpisodes explaining the origins of every non-mook member, and villains often pull Heel–Face Turn and go become Hero of Another Story. So with a many-year run series you can see how the character count spirals out of control.

I think the big issue for me is how do we gage if something is Loads And Loads Of Characters. If we're including any character that appears more than once in a show, then most tv shows have character counts higher than ten.

re: GOT on Ensemble Cast. Right, by definition it is a correct classification. Which raises the question: is this The Same, but More of that trope? In practice, I'd argue, yeah

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:52:57 PM

I think "having a lot of characters" is tropeworthy. Often times in fiction, we get unnaturally small casts where characters talk to literally no one at school or work, have no family, etc., etc., except for the people who affect the plot and are necessary.

Choosing to defy that and give a fictional world a cast more approaching the number of people an actual real human knows is intentional and adds a lot of depth to the world and story. It makes it feel much more lived in, even if the characters aren't especially relevant, and it makes a character feel connected to their world. Even just mentioning that they're hanging out with a friend only mentioned for that purpose and not showing that scene is very different from having a character always alone when the scene changes.

Well, Ensemble Cast is ostensibly about protagonist count, and I agree GOT has a lot of protagonists; a current example for GOT having Loads And Loads Of Characters would also count the minor characters in each character's circle (retainers, random peasants, slaver #3, minor lord #17, etc)

Hm...dunno if this question helps, but what is the 'Goldilocks zone' between Minimalist Cast and Loads And Loads Of Characters?

The idea behind ensemble cast is that the main characters are given equal importance and there's no one protagonist. Theoretically, a cast of three people could be an Ensemble Cast, while a cast of twenty four characters might not qualify.

The thing is Minimalist Cast is about a work where the only characters are the main characters. So if a work has a cast ten characters who are all main characters, is that a Minimalist Cast?

Edited by RustBeard on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:43:03 AM

Game of Thrones is described as both tropes, given that it is minimalistic compared to A Song of Ice and Fire.

that's not how that works. we don't trope via comparison unless it's a comparison trope. GOT the show is an Ensemble Cast because it meets the definition, i.e. has a large cast without a singular protagonist. it also meets the loose definition of loads and loads of characters of having....a lot of characters.

there is no goldilocks between minimal and loads of characters, or rather, that's highly subjective and variable based on the kind of story you wish to tell. any number we'd make would be very arbitrary.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 10:49:52 AM

GOT is most definitely not a Minimalist Cast.

I think whoever added that entry mistook Minimalist Cast for Adaptation Distillation.

If we are going to define Loads And Loads Of Characters as "a work has a lot of characters" should we create a minimum threshold to qualify?

We need at least a way to define Character as be too broad. Nominal Importance should be a good measure.

If there's too many names, perhaps only ones where we know them in full. That usually works?

gonna link my comment from the previous page, i.e. keeping this as is, to avoid the current issue from starting up again the description needs to clearly lay out:

• what makes a cast "loads"? what's the threshold that needs to be met?
• who is included in that count (protags, secondaries, recurring bit characters) and how can we judge if a character should qualify for the count

Even the Kirby series can be described as both having Loads And Loads Of Characters and Minimalist Cast.

...No, no it really can't. I can't think of any series with a ton of characters who are all also equally major enough to be considered a Minimalist Cast. Kirby is the one and only protagonist.

Well, if we're just talking about Protagonists/Main Characters, I would say 8 should be the threshold. Five-Man Band is a common ensemble number and it isn't unusual for a Five-Man Band to have one or two newbies join. It gets tricky when you talk about the cast as a whole.

Edited by RustBeard on Feb 9th 2022 at 8:37:00 AM

Agreed.

There's this from Minimalist Cast:

• In most Kirby games, the cast is limited to Kirby, some random enemies, Well-Intentioned Extremist Rivals King Dedede and Meta Knight, the Monster of the Week, and maybe a Waddle Dee or other "sidekick" character. The Dark Matter Trilogy expanded on this a bit with the introduction of Gooey and the Animal Friends, and marked the series' overall shift towards having a rather large character count overall (mainly due to one-off and minor recurring characters adding up); however, most individual games fall squarely into this trope. The Anime of the Game Kirby: Right Back at Ya! was made relatively early in the franchise's lifespan, and ran face-first into the issue of not having enough game characters to tell its story, causing it to add a lot of Canon Foreigners ^note some of whom became Canon Immigrants in Kirby Mass Attack.

Yes, the pothole to Loads And Loads Of Characters in "large character count" is misuse and Kirby is definitely not Ensemble Cast and the name says so.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:44:48 AM

That is not Minimalist Cast, like at all; Minimalist Cast is literally about a work's cast being so small everyone involved is a main character. That entry literally gives evidence to disprove this claim. Maybe the first entry counts but the franchise as a whole definitely doesn't.

Anyway, this is a huge tangent and, Nen, I would appreciate it if you did more than just come onto these threads to talk about specific examples or Kirby; please try and respond to the broader discussion more? Sometimes your posts feel very... Non Sequitur.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:43:30 AM