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What do you mean by "wholesome" here? "Emotional"?
We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza
Yeah, anything that evokes a heartwarming or sad reaction from the audience.
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
^ That'd be Emotional Torque
We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza
^ This for what he's avoiding.
Toriyama seems to have a decided preference for creating Gag Series with a hefty dose of Rule of Cool over more serious works - that is, works that focus on the silly, weird, and awesome with any plot or drama being incidental. (it says something that Dragonball Z is him at his most linear and weighty)
Edited by Scorpion451
I think that's related to Avoid the Dreaded G Rating.
So, I'm tropefying the works of Akira Toriyama and he has this interview about his work with Masakazu Katsura, where he states rejection for wholesome content. We have a rule for No Hugging, No Kissing, which also applies to his work I think (I need to finish Dr. Slump to confirm this), but do we have a trope for "Anti-wholesome material"? I do notice he focuses more on the comedic nature than whatever he can make someone feel the good feel.
For example:
Toriyama: You were a nag, all right. (laughs) You read the storyboard and said, “There’s no content.” I like stuff without any content. But he really wants to put some actual content in. Things like “human themes”. I hate that kind of stuff. (laughs)
Katsura: With this job, I can now confidently say that Toriyama-san actually aims to draw things devoid of content. So for me, this storyboard was my archenemy. He deliberately does it so as not to put in anything that invites emotion. Plus, Toriyama-san’s stories progress with high energy the whole time.
And another:
Toriyama: In comics, dumb interactions in the middle of the story are my favorite thing. So I don’t like things that express humanity. It feels like losing.
Katsura: Things like characters’ justifications — things which I suppose from my perspective have a sense of “a normal human being would do this”. Toriyama-san‘s characters are “living in a dream”, so they’re completely untethered from unpleasant or dark aspects. Because of that, the characters don’t have any worries that come out.
Toriyama: I can’t draw people with worries.
Katsura: That’s part of your artistic color, Toriyama-san. But this time, I guess I was afraid that if I kept it that way and drew it in my own art style, it would be like, “What have I been doing for all of 53 pages?” I wanted to play it safe a bit and expand upon Sachie’s mental aspects, since Toriyama-san deliberately tries to water the story down.
Katsura: I’d say, “Please, give me a little bit more of things like the sense of despair as the village suffers in poverty!” Things like that!!
Toriyama: I hate that sort of thing. (laughs)
Sorry for the long post.