Comment on What games have mastered "Both emotional extremes"?
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day agoI felt it went without saying that this was referring to mainstream media because… video games. With an emphasis on action because… video games.
Which, to use one of your examples, let’s look at (ugh) Rambo. The first one IS a pretty interesting character study into a man with extreme PTSD who can’t stop fighting his war (which is plenty of tropes). Which is why it is so telling that once they shifted fully into the action side, almost all of that went away outside of cheap drama over the naive pseudo-daughter… getting sold into slavery and raped to death.
But you’ll also note that the example I brought to the table was Dust: An Elysian Tale. Which is an American (I thought Canadian but wikipedia suggests no) studio. And OP mentions The Walking Dead and Borderlands which are similarly Western. Nobody was implying exclusivity outside of you.
But let’s look at two of the more interesting examples you brought up.
The Last Of Us 2… kind of is emblematic of video games’ (West and East) problem with masculinity. TLOU1 has two particularly strong emotional beats and both involve a Man losing his daughter. TLOU2 is MUCH better in that it actually allowed people to be characters other than “Sad Dad” but it is incredibly telling how much of the game revolves around the second of the strong emotional beats from 1. Ellie is driven by her conflicted feelings over Joel taking away her agency to protect her and Abby is driven by… Joel taking away her entire family. And… I think it speaks a lot to Druckmann and Naughty Dog that the character who has the strongest parental narrative is the very masculine woman who angered the internet for obvious reasons. And that is kind of supported by the mess that is the Uncharted series as well.
As for your critique of (generally shonen) anime? Let’s look at the ur example of Dragon Ball Z (also DB but it is less fun). Vegeta. Homie destroyed at least one entire planet (its cool, it was filler and he obviously never did that when he was rolling with Nappa), allowed Nappa to destroy an entire city, murdered Nappa, probably murdered a bunch of Namekians (too lazy to check), definitely murdered a lot more people when he went Majin, and is Goku’s best friend because Krillin is too busy tapping dat ass. Except… not really. Because if you actually go back to DB, the vast majority of The Z Fighters are kind of just rivals that Goku respected and occasionally teamed up with. Outside of Krillin and MAYBE Yamcha, they weren’t his friends. And that is where Vegeta was too up until he went Majin. It was only after that when he acknowledged that he cared about something more than power (Bulma and Trunks) and that, even after his eyes were opened by Frieza, he was a monster. And while Super brushes over a lot of that because it is meant to be a direct sequel to DB, that characterization is still there.
Which is similarly something that a lot of people clown on Yakuza/LAD for. Yeah, Kiryu and Ichiban and even Yagami end up teaming up with a lot of people they beat on a few dozen times. But, by and large, it is not a 'you are my best friend" and more “I respect you and now understand why you did those evil things… but things aren’t over between us”. And then you have the inverse with Ryuji who is pretty unrepentantly “evil” to the end… but it is also impossible to view him and Kiryu as anything other than friends as they fight to the death because that is the only way they know how to communicate.
Aielman15@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Slip of the tongue. I likewise reject the idea of eastern writers being “usually” better at writing emotions and/or moral ambiguity, or doing it more frequently. There are countless good and bad stories on both sides.
Most of the examples I mentioned were mainstream movies and videogames that sold millions of tickets/copies. Or at least as much mainstream as Kamen Rider and Yakuza. There are tons of examples of well-written human drama.
I also fail to understand why action = video games. There are tons of successful games where action is not the main focus, or sometimes it’s not even present at all. I enjoyed the cozy vibes of Life is Strange, for example.
Brushing off the first Rambo movie because of subpar sequels, and then using Dragonball (a series that had nowhere to go after Frieza and yet still gets milked with subpar sequels to this day) as a talking point is just nonsensical.
Mentioning Vegeta as a good example of moral ambiguity is hilarious because he is probably one of the worst written characters of all time, who single-handedly ruins the characterization of the entirety of the main cast.
The dude committed genocide or attempted one at least once per narrative arc and everybody was okay with spending their time with him for literally no reason. If I had two bullets and was standing in a room with Vegeta and Hitler, the safest option for Earth as a whole would be to shoot Vegeta twice. There is “respecting” another person, and there is “brushing off crimes against humanity because that character is cool”.
By the way, I don’t want to imply that eastern (Japanese? I don’t think you mentioned other media outside of Japan) writers are worse than western ones. I loved the first Yakuza game (the second one was very dumb and killed my interest in the series; maybe I’m missing out). Metal Gear Solid and Xenogears are, to this day, two of my favourite games ever. I went to the cinema twice in a row to watch Godzilla Minus One. I could also mention Oldboy for something outside of Japan, or Red Cliff, and those are both very much mainstream as well, and action too.
I just reject the idea of them being somehow better.