Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Huh. Didn't know that.

Regardless, doesn't make it much better, what happened to just giving the villain a breakdown followed by a Karmic Death?

I guess writer decided that it wasn't enough.

Rape is always a contentious topic. Not only is the premise bad, the context behind it is bad, too.

I'm not saying that it makes it bette or worse, I'm just saying that making arguments based on the unknown author gender is weird.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Feb 16th 2019 at 11:23:12 AM

And even if the author is a woman, that doesn't make the work any less misogynistic. I mean, Fifty Shades of Grey was written by a woman, and that didn't stop it from being really misogynistic (and insulting to actual BDSM practitioners). So it comes across as weird to me too.

That's exactly the point: normally, you'd imagine a woman would have a little more consideration and respect of the subject matter.

So it being written by a woman doesn't make it better, for me it makes it worse.

Overall, i can understand killing a vile antagonist (no matter of their gender) and treating it as cathasis factor, i can understand brutally killing especially vile antagonist and treating it as cathasis factor, but i absolutely, under no circumstances, can't even remotely understand how RAPING ANTAGONIST TO DEATH can be cathasis factor to anyone, but really bad sexist nerd, who watches too much hentai.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Feb 16th 2019 at 8:57:29 PM

I'm going to have to ask for a source on that "raped to death" claim because I searched the wiki and it doesn't seem to mention anything like that.

Don't get me wrong, Shield Hero has a shitty MRA premise and looks generic as all hell but I'm not seeing any sign of something that bad.

In the end, the evil princess was sent to become the bride of King Faubley, a man who she cannot manipulate, and who has raped and tortured 9,999 other women before her, and becomes woman number 10,000.

Yep. Can confirm here.

Whelp, I guess Shield Hero is even more on my shit list then it was before.

No great loss.

Yeah, I can confirm that as well. I wish I couldn't, but I can.

x4 So he threw a villain to a rapist because she was evil, but the mass-murdering rapist doesn't bother him much?

Gotcha.

I can confirm that as well. One thing to remember when reading LN/WN is that it can always get that bad or even worse no matter how inconspicuous its beginning. And Shield Hero is already bad right from the beginning. It isn't hard to see it's going to go down hard and fast.

Edited by SteamKnight on Feb 17th 2019 at 1:49:36 AM

And as I.said, neither of them are Medea's tier of badness.

Side note, but damn, I really dislike how people treat Malty as one of the evilest villains ever. She's bad but she's far from the worst in her own novel. I know that female unsympathetic villains tend to receive similar treatments...but even in 2019 there female anime villain with worse crimes.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Feb 16th 2019 at 1:56:00 PM

It's more of a matter of presentation I think. If done right, audience will clamor for the mass-murdering protagonist to kill someone whose crime is that they disrespect the protagonist. Of course, most of the times, said villains are revealed to be much worse, but the thing even before the reveal, the audience already screaming for the villains' head. Call me cynical, but I think it is just too easy for writers to manipulate the audience. It’s all too easy to get people to swallow the protagonist's tripe when their opponents are rendered as such a one-dimensional hate sink.

Edited by SteamKnight on Feb 17th 2019 at 2:05:01 AM

I think that guy was specifically created by the author as a tool to "punish" evil princess, so that's why no one minds him apparently.

Audience, who rooting for horrible mass murdering slavers protagonists, are usually misantrops/racists/bigots or just some toxic nerd, who as i said before watched a little too much hentai. All they need is some "sad past" to that protagonist and have him at least slightly being more well-intentioned and polite than the villain and that's it, they feel completely justyfied rooting for him, no matter what he do in the story.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Feb 16th 2019 at 10:14:26 PM

It's not like a character being a Hate Sink or Complete Monster mean he's badly developed or one dimensional: Matou Shinji, Koba, Killgrave, they're all portrayed as irredeemable in their reapective works yet all possess a fair amount of depth each.

It's that the way most isekai stories do it is very lazy, as far as I've read them.^note Which isn't all that much, granted, for I have a low attention span and takes a lot for a book to really grab me.

Then they did it very irresponsably, it could've been, I dunno, a former victim, or maybe some wild animal.

Y'know, something that wouldn't make the protagonist come across as a worse person than the villainess he's playing karma deliveryman to.

Unless that was the intention, but it clearly wasn't.

Edited by HailMuffins on Feb 16th 2019 at 4:15:53 PM

I know that Complete Monsters sometimes can be more engaging than supposed "deep complex villains", it's just that isekai genre by itself (as well as anime and manga media by large) cares more about creating hateble antagonist, than fun or engaging one and because of that, many "Pure Evil" villains come off as one-dimensional there.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Feb 16th 2019 at 10:17:58 PM

I wonder if that's true because the whole point of the Complete Monster trope is that the person is a malevolent one-dimensional pile of crap. Which can be interesting but not nuanced.

@Steam Knight: Yeah, the classic Protagonist-Centered Morality.

@VVV: Yeah, that guy is literally background stuff.

The Shield Bro is the classic "he's a jerkass but he had altruistic traits while almost everyone else is a jackass".

The amout of popular Evil Is Cool animanga villains should be enought to disprove that part.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Feb 16th 2019 at 2:21:52 PM

It's less about hate sink is one-dimensional, but is more about the hate sink that is one-dimensional. Heck, it doesn't have to be a hate sink. It can also be a strawman. For example: Our hero is this manly man of action who want to do manly actions to save his country, but he can't because the ineffectual governing bodies prevent him from doing what they need to do and the leader of said bodies is weak, naive and ill-prepared to lead. He is so weak that his advisors can push him around like a boss. I'm pretty sure average audience almost want to beg our hero to be in charge so he can somehow save the country with his masculinity. Those hate sinks or strawmen are nothing but a device designed to make us side with the hero by default.

It's eerie how much that reminds me of Mass Effect.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 16th 2019 at 2:24:36 PM

How many of them are Complete Monsters, who do not engage in many hours talks about how evil they are?

x6 Meaning no offense, but you mustn't have watched much types of manga if you think like that.

In action manga, particularly Shounen, that is pretty common, but the same can be said of action works of every medium, for tha catharsis offered when the hero defeats them in the end is part of the whole point.

Edited by HailMuffins on Feb 16th 2019 at 4:25:32 PM