Narm Cleanup

Bringing up the following example from Reign of the Supermen:

• Narm: The scene where the boom tube falls from the sky and seemingly vaporizes the Justice League would normally be suspenseful, except the heroes stand completely motionless as they stare at the portal heading their way. What should be one of the tensest moments in the film becomes much more comical thanks to the heroes seemingly resigning to their fate and not even attempting to run/fly/phase/teleport away from harm.

I think it counts.

I'd go with a re-write to make it sound less snarky.

Yeah, that'd help it.

Bringing up the following examples from Narm.Naruto:

• In Shippuden Episode 114, the death of Tsunade's brother in a flashback. He just shows up in a flashback about Orochimaru's life without any indication, runs ahead of his team, and just... explodes. And his necklace lands near the rest of his team.
• Itachi's infamous RAPE FACE made the jump from manga to Shippudden's sixth opening. Every time one watches the upcoming episodes, it's there to remind the viewer how ridiculous it is — and if the original wasn't bad enough, then the one in the opening has an inverted color scheme that makes it look more like Kankuro than Itachi.
  • There's the Gratuitous English at the start of the opening:

    "I realize the screaming pain
    searing loud into my brain
    But I'm going straight ahead with this scar."

    • Even more hilarious is the line "Please let me show you the pain", which is sung over Pain doing something awesome and seems ridiculously on-the-nose as a result.
• Sasori's fight against Sakura and Chiyo, while awesome, had an instant of Narm. Sasori is shooting fire at Sakura and Chiyo. Sakura and Chiyo both hide behind rocks and are completely unharmed by the flames even though some of the flames are bypassing the rocks. It's made even funnier when Chiyo remarks, "These flames are so intense." In addition, electric guitar music may not be the best soundtrack for what is supposed to be a dark and dramatic fight against one of the most disturbing and creepy characters in the entire series.
• It's hard to take Hinata getting smashed into the ground by Pain's Shinra Tensei seriously when the response this elicits is "Eek!" Fortunately, this is only the Sleepy Fans translation. (Others use the more appropriate "Kyah!")
  • Viz used it too.
• Viz translates the name of the jutsu that Pain uses to level most of Konoha as "Almighty Push", taking away some of the impact of the scene with how unimpressive the name is.
  • The technique made its debut in Shippuden Episode 159, and it seems subs have picked up on using "Almighty Push" for Shinra Tensei (神羅天征). It's a matter of perspective; seeing it mentioned in a scene that has a Homage to The Matrix conserves its awesome and fear-inducing nature if you know the Matrix reference.
  • Viz's translation of the scene where Hinata confesses her love to Naruto goes well until Hinata is charging to attack Pain. She lets out a battle cry of "Rraawrr!" It's quite amusing to imagine Nana Mizuki or Stephanie Sheh trying to make a sound similar to one made by Rorschach while voicing Hinata.

• I can see the humor here, I guess
• Not sure if the bit about the inverted color scheme is necessary, as it doesn't sound humorous.
  • Could use more context to explain why that's funny.
  • Doesn't say why that's funny, just that it's on-the-nose.
• Reads as Fridge flaws.
• I don't know what Sleepy Fans is. Is that a fandom thing? If so, it can be deleted. Also I'm not clear on why saying "Eek!" is funny.
  • If Viz is an official translator, that can probably just be merged into the above bullet, if it's even valid.
• Reads as "thing falls flat".
  • Natter and Justifying Edit.
  • Reads as Association Narm.

I agree, although I feel the last one should be tweaked because it sounds like it could count to me. Also, the gals mentioned in the final sub-bullet are Hinata's voice actresses, so I don't think it's AN. (Yes, I searched that up.)

From context, Sleepy Fans appears to be a scanlation group popular at the time.

Edited by nanakiro on Sep 15th 2022 at 11:51:22 AM

Bringing up the following examples from Stargirl (2020):

• Narm:
  • The added tiger sound effect when Tigress was fighting Starman.
  • The show really plays up Joey's death as being super sad. Despite the audience knowing him for maybe 5 minutes and 3 combined scenes.
  • Courtney is so thoroughly insistent that Starman was her absent father that you can just tell the writers are trying to set her up for a big let-down, made even more blatant by there being more information that contradicts her belief than supports it (i.e., her mother insisting he was a scumbag, Pat not knowing Barbara from when Courtney thinks she was Starman's lover etc). Sure enough, "Brainwave Jr" shows that Courtney's father is alive, and Barbara keeps in contact with him.
  • In the Season 1 finale, Yolanda and Rick have a very out-of-nowhere scene where they argue about killing, just so there can be a big thing over them switching places on that. Their mutual delivery of the dialogue doesn't help. Not to mention, there really was no need for it, since the show had previously established their respective stances on this.^note Yolanda restrained herself from slashing Henry Jr. on multiple occasions and Rick had stated in no uncertain terms what he intended to do to Grundy if he ever had the chance.

I feel the first needs more context and the others are more so complaining.

Bringing up the following examples from No Time to Die:

• Narm:
  • Bond saying to Ash, "I had a brother. His name was Felix Leiter." You almost expect Ash to follow up with, "Godspeed, James Bond."
  • Just shortly after the film sets up a climax of James having to save Mathilde from Safin, this concept is rather comedically undone. Mathilde puts up just a bit of resistance and Safin tells her she can leave him if she wants. And she does.
  • Obruchev's clunky exclamation that all the Spectre agents are dying from his virus, given the only reason for him to say this out loud is to inform the audience.
  • For a good portion of the film, Bond's Plot Armor is exaggerated to the point where he could very well be considered an Invincible Hero. He shrugs off explosions, never gets hit by automatic gunfire, and easily escapes from his enemies to the point where it becomes comedic. Such as during the climax when a frag grenade explodes literally inches away from his chest, and he's just knocked back into a wall and is back on his feet a few seconds later. Some fans even joked that he could very well have survived being nuked at the end, as the film's credits still tease "James Bond Will Return."

• I'm skipping the first bullet for now, because I haven't seen the movie yet. Maybe someone else can chime in for that.
• Reads as just a flaw/anticlimax.
• Regular flaw
• Mostly general and just a flaw.

Seconded. For the record, I'd say the first entry is association narm. Additionally, the other three come off as complaining to me.

Bringing up the following examples from Star Trek: Picard:

• Narm:
  • "Initiate planetary sterilization protocol number five." Said with a weird mix of monotone and gravitas, while obviously implying that Romulans have at least five protocols for sterilizing planets, and that which protocol to use against a barren world with one small settlement would be in question. Not helped by the crew not doing anything but charging their weapons until it is too late to fire.
  • From the same episode is the infamous "copy and paste fleet" — two hundred nearly-identical Inquiry-class starships that show up to help Coppelius in the season finale. (There are actually three variants, but you wouldn't notice unless you looked very closely.) Compare this with the fleets seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which were equally large but had a much more varied composition. One has to wonder if the producers ran out of budget to create more ship models.
  • The Zhat Vash received a vision of the future that was so horrible to witness that it caused several of them to commit suicide and left the survivors traumatized to the point where a Borg cube broke from trying to absorb one of them, and knowledge of this "Admonition" that's passed onto other people causes them great distress. When we see this vision later on, scenes of apocalyptic destruction are heavily undercut by copious amounts of stock footage and clips from Night Of The Living Dead of all things. It makes everybody look like they're overreacting, and one wonders if they ran out of money to show the rest of the apocalyptic stuff.

• Dunno about this one.
• Just pointing out that the ships are copy-pasted, nothing more.
• Dunno about this one.

first one seems nitpicky, but i think the third one is valid.

I think the third and maybe the first are valid. I don't feel the second is an example, though.

Re-write the first and third ones and cut the second.

On second thought, that sounds like a good idea.

Bringing up the following examples from Narm.Naruto:

• The reaction of Nagato (who would become Big Bad Pain) when ninja murder his parents:
  "WAHHHHH!!!"
  • The reaction to the ninja that killed them after mistaking them for other ninjas is approximately, "Woops, our bad".
  • From the same flashback, we see where Nagato got the idea of becoming a god to help the world right before a stray exploding kunai comes by and kills his dog. The timing makes it hilarious.
  • Later we have Yahiko's death in the anime, by flash stepping into the kunai.
• The final battle between Sasuke and Itachi has the scene where Itachi comes at Sasuke for his eyes. Itachi's facial expression kills any gravitas the scene has.
  • You can make the argument that it's both narmy, and terrifying at the same time. On the hilarious side of things, Itachi's dialogue during the scene is incredibly over the top, and his facial expression is rather ridiculous. But it's also scary because it's Itachi making this bizarre facial expression and delivering this unhinged speech. It's the first time we see the character show a great degree of emotion. In addition, the fact that he quickly goes back to his default demeanor after the fact makes it incredibly unnerving. However, in hindsight, the effect does sort of lose its horror aspect when the audience later learns that Itachi's entire behavior during the scene was merely him deceiving Sasuke, and makes it seem more like the only way Itachi could convincingly feign insanity was to act as outlandish as possible.
  • Itachi's infamous RAPE FACE? Looks something like >8D ?
    • Even worse is when Itachi finally dies, his face smacks into the wall as he falls to the ground. This has pretty much become a meme of "Itachi Style: Facewall" when something is completely ridiculous.
    • By that same merit, Sasuke's reaction to Itachi blocking his Kirin with Susanoo, an overwrought sounding "GODDAMN YOU", may possibly count.
• In the pilot chapter, after finding out who killed his best friend, Naruto transforms into a fox. It sounds cool before it appears; but then you see it's an adorable, sort of creepy, anthropomorphic fox◊.
  • It gets better. In that link, you have to scroll past the huge tentacle rape-y tails to get to the tiny little freaky fox.
    • The fox made it into the actual manga, and its Narm factor is lampshaded by it being a goofy failed transformation.

I think all sans the justifying edits and the last example are fine I think. (Aside from maybe the rape face one, though I'm leaning on tweaking it instead of cutting it. EDIT: Though I think the last sub-bullet on the first example should be cut.) However, the natter should have its indentation fixed (if that's the right way to describe it).

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Sep 16th 2022 at 11:22:29 AM

Honestly, they both still seem like fridge snark to me, although there's a bit about the third one that I'm uncertain about.

Ok. Also, just wondering, what's the bit that you're unsure about?

Regarding the first one: I fail to see what's funny about a teenager screaming in anguish after witnessing his parents' death (Watch the scene here).

The third one... is okay? The panel looks really goofy despite supposedly being a serious moment.

While I do find that understandable and I agree that that by itself simply isn't funny, I believe I was thinking the scream was acted weirdly or something. Now that I think of it, I can see both sides of the "argument".

EDIT: Also, if I came off as insensitive, that was not my intent.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Sep 17th 2022 at 3:06:13 AM