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ImpAtom posted:Characters in fiction using implausible weapons I stead of being tactically realistic really doesn't need to be explained. It's fine if the anime establishes that guns aren't great weapons for whatever reason. Why use a gun when everyone else can just deflect your bullets with their superior katana? But MHA has never even implied that to be the case for most characters, as they have quirks that are completely ineffective at dealing with firearms. This works the other way as well. It's hella weird in symphogear when you watch a bunch of soldier guys get sent into the noise meatgrinder for the fifth time when it's been clearly established that conventional weapons don't work against them.
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Jul 7, 2022 18:21
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| # ? May 11, 2024 11:32 |
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The Rule of Cool has been repealed
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Jul 7, 2022 18:27
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Mymla posted:It's fine if the anime establishes that guns aren't great weapons for whatever reason. Why use a gun when everyone else can just deflect your bullets with their superior katana? But MHA has never even implied that to be the case for most characters, as they have quirks that are completely ineffective at dealing with firearms. There are an absurd number of series which feature guns and katanas in the same series! The named characters rank higher using their chosen weapon no matter what it is. Like this is bonkers "Why does Cloud Strife use a sword instead of a gun since Barret and Vincent both prove guns can be effective" "Why hasn't Zoro mastered Three Gun Style?" ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 18:31
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Don't underestimate the power of Shooty-Go-Blam!
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Jul 7, 2022 20:07
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It would be so much more realistic if the kids were all just killing the villains with guns, and as you all know, realism is the ultimate measure of quality for a fictional story.
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Jul 7, 2022 20:30
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ImpAtom posted:There are an absurd number of series which feature guns and katanas in the same series! The named characters rank higher using their chosen weapon no matter what it is. Man, it was loving wild when Barret got scared of president Shinra's pistol after spending half the game's cutscenes being showered in chopper-mounted machine gun fire.
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Jul 7, 2022 20:38
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Lord_Magmar posted:The people they are specifically trying to kill (AfO, Shigaraki) are immune to bullets. The rest of the villains are not being actively targeted for death. Are they immune to explosives? Yes, heroes don't use guns or other modern weapons. But presumably Japan still has a military (the USA certainly seems to). And it's pretty weird that they're just leaving this to the heroes. tweet my meat posted:It would be so much more realistic if the kids were all just killing the villains with guns, and as you all know, realism is the ultimate measure of quality for a fictional story. Is anyone actually demanding more guns? If anything, people wish there were less guns in e.g. Tartarus.
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Jul 7, 2022 20:39
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all rpg characters rightly fear the Cutscene Gun
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Jul 7, 2022 20:39
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Mymla posted:Man, it was loving wild when Barret got scared of president Shinra's pistol after spending half the game's cutscenes being showered in chopper-mounted machine gun fire. It was a golden gun though. That thing kills in one hit!
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Jul 7, 2022 20:44
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All this chatter (71 unread posts?!) and I thought we had a new issue to discuss. We do, just not of the manga. I thought it was a common super hero trope that bullets just aren't that effective against them or villains. See: The Boys or every Captain America movie.
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Jul 7, 2022 20:52
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obviously everyone’s just kicking rocks as we await the next chapter, but I think this nitpicking is partly based in a deeper frustration with the manga - its draw had always been the setting and some people are still trying to tease out the details of that setting as the comic itself degrades to more punchman slurry
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Jul 7, 2022 20:56
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It would be stupid and less fun if it worked any other way but One Piece has guns with no magazines or clips or cylinders that fire musket balls, which apparently can fire multiple times without reloading After establishing that revolvers are new tech that actually exist in the manga's world, and that gunpowder works how it does in our world There are characters who carry multiple pistols too which fits even more with how actual pirates would carry multiple to not have to reload Always weirded me out This isn't a criticism though, I just have to wonder how powerful modern semi auto weapons would be made out as in it's world
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Jul 7, 2022 21:05
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Mymla posted:I don't think anyone is asking why they aren't shooting shigaraki because he's obviously basically immortal. For Stain in particular, his power wouldn't really work with a gun. The sword is to allow him to get in contact with his opponent's blood. Also he's probably just a sadistic prick.
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Jul 7, 2022 21:11
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Mymla posted:Man, it was loving wild when Barret got scared of president Shinra's pistol after spending half the game's cutscenes being showered in chopper-mounted machine gun fire. Honestly, that whole section of Remake was weird for reasons beyond the pistol. cool kids inc. posted:All this chatter (71 unread posts?!) and I thought we had a new issue to discuss. Break this week.
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Jul 7, 2022 21:17
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Oxxidation posted:all rpg characters rightly fear the Cutscene Gun One of my favorite bits in FFXIV is when the strongest person we've seen to date, an immortal demi-god that has engineered the rise and fall of civilizations, interrupts a touching cutscene to just straight up loving pop someone with their ornate gun. That they have never used before this point, because they are an immortal demigod and why would you need a gun? Because gently caress you, I can. It's a messy bitch move, but entirely in character.
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Jul 7, 2022 21:34
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tweet my meat posted:It would be so much more realistic if the kids were all just killing the villains with guns, and as you all know, realism is the ultimate measure of quality for a fictional story. Can’t wait for the Netflix adaptation where all the villains are different flavours of school shooter
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Jul 7, 2022 21:43
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Why did Ryu train in martial arts for 11 years when he could've just got a gun instead? The Matrix is the only series that respects guns, martial arts will get you nowhere, you can fight people for 10 minutes any never kill them but a gunshot is always effective.
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Jul 7, 2022 21:43
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RareAcumen posted:Why did Ryu train in martial arts for 11 years when he could've just got a gun instead? Because Ryu has discipline. Without it, you'll just wind up creating a park full of murderous dinosaurs. It's a historical inevitability. (Also, bringing up Chainsaw Man again. Named, recurring characters with supernatural powers capable of destroying buildings die to just getting shot. Even aside from the power of the physical embodiment of the concept of "Gun", guns are a big deal for most of Chainsaw Man's run. Still weaker than Chainsaw, though.)
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Jul 7, 2022 22:00
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Oxxidation posted:obviously everyone’s just kicking rocks as we await the next chapter, but I think this nitpicking is partly based in a deeper frustration with the manga - its draw had always been the setting and some people are still trying to tease out the details of that setting as the comic itself degrades to more punchman slurry This is actually exactly where I'm at. "Why is there literally no military intervention against these dudes who are literally blowing up the entire country and turning it into a mad max wasteland, and why are the heroes in the most desperate existential survival situation they'll ever be in not trying desperately to leverage every possible tool they can" is a worldbuilding and setting nitpick, not a legitimate storytelling desire to see the JSDF equivalent of Seal Team Six riddle Spinner with bullets. Someone shooting all the villains to death would be just as boring as Super Eri showing up and thanos snap rewinding them all out of existence. I never, ever like "well you don't need to explain things for yourself because ~other works in the genre~ do things a certain way" excuses because it's a disservice to the work in question. MHA might be a giant love letter to cape comics but it's also its own thing with its own takes on the subject matter and I want it to explore and explain things in its own way.
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Jul 7, 2022 22:10
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The lack of the JSDF doing anything could have been addressed by adding a panel or two mentioning they'd been crushed by leftover nomus from the Tartarus breakout or something, but it wasn't, so...
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Jul 7, 2022 22:31
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Has there been any mention of the JSDF at all in this series?
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Jul 7, 2022 22:33
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I think some were around transporting Gigantomachia? They were complaining about just putting him in prison but executing him would require like a missile strike or something.
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Jul 7, 2022 22:48
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chiasaur11 posted:Because Ryu has discipline. Without it, you'll just wind up creating a park full of murderous dinosaurs. It's a historical inevitability. the guy can't even afford shoes how's he gonna buy a gun
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Jul 7, 2022 22:53
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cool kids inc. posted:All this chatter (71 unread posts?!) and I thought we had a new issue to discuss. the boys makes an effort to acknowledge this all, though. the first major conflict is with a guy that they literally cannot kill conventionally. i think thats what the original Gun Posters were getting at tbh, if the story takes place in a modern world, modern technology ought to be available and used. i mean it is kinda silly that like, dabi, wasn't just fuckin sniped in the head cuz he's got no reason NOT to be. i think stronger stories would either acknowledge and explain why that is or remove that possibility from being used (i.e. the confrontation with dabi isn't in some big random abandoned city, it's more personal or a surprise or something). not the end of the world in either case
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Jul 7, 2022 23:09
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Rhonne posted:Has there been any mention of the JSDF at all in this series? IIRC not directly named as such, though as Caidin said they've mentioned military scale weapons like using missiles on Gigantomachia, so the assumption is that there is some kind of military formation. This is actually another problem with genre/setting shorthand. It's definitely way easier to use existing society as a template for your setting - stuff like "it's just like real life, except there's superpowers" or "it's just like real life except we invented giant robots", but then your viewers/readers are going to reasonably assume that everything works like real life except the stuff you explain as extraordinary. MHA is set in an equivalent-to-present-day society, except people have superpowers. Countries have militaries to deal with existential threats in present day societies. It's totally acceptable from a storytelling standpoint for MHA's take on Japan to not have one, or for it to be totally useless at handling the crisis for an entire range of reasons, but the total absence of anything like it in a situation this grave and desperate is weird, especially since we've established that MHA America has a functional military so it's not like militaries don't exist in quirkworld. Once again I need to emphasize that I'm not wishing for the story to be resolved by hails of gunfire against the bad guys, I'm thinking about the setting and how it all works together and operates. Horikoshi put a ton of effort into thinking about the specifics of some parts of his setting, and that work leads to some of the manga's best written stuff(like the entire Endeavor arc), so I'm always disappointed when some other aspect of it is ignored or half-baked. Kanos fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 00:00
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CharlestonJew posted:the guy can't even afford shoes how's he gonna buy a gun Bum money off Sakura to play pachinko, then use his pachinko winnings to get a gun from the Yakuza.
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Jul 8, 2022 00:06
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Kanos posted:Once again I need to emphasize that I'm not wishing for the story to be resolved by hails of gunfire against the bad guys, I'm thinking about the setting and how it all works together and operates. Horikoshi put a ton of effort into thinking about the specifics of some parts of his setting, and that work leads to some of the manga's best written stuff(like the entire Endeavor arc), so I'm always disappointed when some other aspect of it is ignored or half-baked. You are asking exactly that though? Like I can't imagine exactly how loving boring the manga would be if they had to stop to address every single possible thing that could work because it vaguely resembles a quirk .Nobody wants that but Guns are super special and need special treatment. A superhero setting is not going to operate in a coherent way no matter what you do unless you make a horrifying hellscape. The genre, by its very nature, can't actually address things realistically because "Deku accidentally murders everyone he fights when a shard of bone flies into their brain after he punches them hard enough to caught permanent brain damage" isn't the kind of story it is telling. The comparisons to Chainsaw Man ignore that Chainsaw Man is a violent bloody story about an immensely hosed up dude where every element of 'shonen' intentionally goes absurdly wrong except like one thing which leads to probably the single most hosed up moment in a series full of hosed up moments. More to the point guns being powerful in Chainsaw Man is a literal plot point in addition to being a subversion of expectations. It is in fact intentionally shocking that guns kill stuff in Chainsaw Man because it's such a commonplace overlook that guns just ain't worth poo poo unless a main character is using them. No setting actually holds together if you demand perfect realism to it. Not even settings that claim to be realistic.' Kanos posted:then your viewers/readers are going to reasonably assume that everything works like real life except the stuff you explain as extraordinary. No they aren't. That is in fact a major part of fiction. We accept characters being uncommonly skilled, absurdly durable, lucky to an unbelievable degree. We accept that silencer will stop all sound, that cars explode when shot, that Jackie Chan can win a choreographed fight and not get shot in the face even in movies where he is threatened by guns. Even in historical fiction we accept modern grooming and health habits, foods existing that didn't exist at the time, etc, etc. Like in another thread it was fun pointing out that the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't exist in the MCU so their last decade of pop culture had to be something completely different. But we, as viewers, just accept that it tells us it is similar because the point isn't realism. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 01:04
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The militaries of the world got destroyed during the dark days and AFO being in control made sure they didn't get rebuilt. There, done. Now you know why there's no military doing stuff in a shonen manga.
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Jul 8, 2022 01:04
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I'll also add that the reason this has me so irked is because it happens almost exclusively only with guns and fiction. Guns need to be explained or justified or are the answer to every question or are presented as the best option to defend yourself or whatever talking point people want to use. Sometimes you get it with car people but 90% of the time it is Gun People complaining that (x) thing used the wrong name for a gun and why are we supposed to believe characters wouldn't be gunned down right away anyway? I'm already at my wits end with people wanting to talk about how great guns are without having to hear someone demand why this particular shonen anime wasn't resolved with the teenage schoolgoing protagonists grabbing a gun and murdering The Bad Person or else it's a writing flaw. Guns aren't inhernetly bad to feature in a story but it isn't a drat writing flaw for guns to just not be meaningful in the presentation of the dramatic shonen punchfights between flamboyantly powered characters, even if a gun appeared earlier in the story.
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Jul 8, 2022 01:16
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The problem is that horikoshi never gave a poo poo about the actual mechanics of the setting so it's all half-baked
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Jul 8, 2022 01:18
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ImpAtom posted:I'm already at my wits end with people wanting to talk about how great guns are without having to hear someone demand why this particular shonen anime wasn't resolved with the teenage schoolgoing protagonists grabbing a gun and murdering The Bad Person or else it's a writing flaw. Kanos posted:Once again I need to emphasize that I'm not wishing for the story to be resolved by hails of gunfire against the bad guys
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Jul 8, 2022 01:22
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Kyte posted:The militaries of the world got destroyed during the dark days and AFO being in control made sure they didn't get rebuilt. They've implied or actually shown militaries before, though. I actually kind of agree with that part. A quick "Here's what the JSDF is doing" or alternately "Here's why the JSDF is out of action" panel wouldn't be out of place, especially with a whole (not very good) arc spent on why other nations aren't getting involved.
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Jul 8, 2022 01:22
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just thought about mushroom girl and drove through 14 red lights and gritted my teeth so hard they exploded
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Jul 8, 2022 02:35
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I feel like it's part of a bigger question of "why are the violent, murderous terrorists attempting a rebellion against the entire country being fought off by the heroes alone and not also the military, since the series has established that military forces exist" like obviously not shigaraki or, uh, other shigaraki, but the stakes are high enough and the villains dark enough that the idealistic "no killing, prisoners only!" thing has been rendered absurd and that's the only implicit explanation given
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Jul 8, 2022 02:42
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Mymla posted:I don't think anyone is asking why they aren't shooting shigaraki because he's obviously basically immortal. I know the conversation has drifted a bit but out of all the people you could ask this about, Stain's actually the weirdest one because he explicitly uses knives and swords for a reason. Yeah, he could shoot somebody from a ways off but then they're aware of him and can either escape or close the gap with a plan, and believe it or not, a lot of gunshot wounds are extremely survivable (assuming you can get some medical attention) even for normal people, unless they're headshots obviously. Short of becoming a master sniper, Stain's best tactic is ambushing someone, stabbing them before they realize he's there, then paralyzing them with his quirk. Shooting people from a distance provides zero benefit to Stain, even if guns weren't difficult to get a hold of in Japan.
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Jul 8, 2022 03:04
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ImpAtom posted:You are asking exactly that though? Like I can't imagine exactly how loving boring the manga would be if they had to stop to address every single possible thing that could work because it vaguely resembles a quirk .Nobody wants that but Guns are super special and need special treatment. A superhero setting is not going to operate in a coherent way no matter what you do unless you make a horrifying hellscape. The genre, by its very nature, can't actually address things realistically because "Deku accidentally murders everyone he fights when a shard of bone flies into their brain after he punches them hard enough to caught permanent brain damage" isn't the kind of story it is telling. Okay, but My Hero Academia spends a lot of time exploring the nuances of what would change in a world with superheroes and how that would apply to normal society and how normal society would react to things changing like this. Deku's entire initial story arc was about what it was like to be a normal person in a wacky superhero world and how being that way affected him personally. The entire arc of the League of Villains before Shigaraki turned into a boring final boss villain was about how society can ruin people and cause them to fall through the cracks. The manga isn't just a happy fun "good guys punch the bad guys and win!" cape comic romp, it spent a lot of time dealing with some very, very heavy issues that are both very dark and very relevant to the real world. quote:A superhero setting is not going to operate in a coherent way no matter what you do unless you make a horrifying hellscape. Virtually all of the best story arcs of MHA - stuff like My Villain Academia and Endeavor's entire character arc - literally function because Horikoshi made a real effort to make his superhero setting function in a coherent way. Endeavor's family drama is broadly one of domestic abuse and neglect, but the specifics exist because Horikoshi set up and explained how quirk genetics work, and why quirk marriages existed, and how the hero ranking helped push Endeavor to do terrible things. None of those specifics exist in real life, but Horikoshi took the time to bear them out to the viewer. That wasn't a waste of time, that's good worldbuilding. As for the Chainsaw Man comparisons people have made, I haven't personally read Chainsaw Man, but My Hero Academia is very often a bloody violent manga where things go horribly wrong. Even if you compartmentalize and ignore the intensely gory hyperviolence of My Villain Academia, you have stuff like Twice's entire death chain(being stabbed to death while fleeing in fear and his last action being stabbing a man in the head on camera), Child Dabi burning himself to cinders on panel, Endeavor abusing his family, etc. It's not super light hearted happy time and one of the big points of the manga is pointing out how hosed up and flawed this society they've made is. No one's asking for perfect realism. People are discussing the current arc of the story - where a literal army of superpowered criminals massacre thousands of people, destroy several cities, and functionally break society into pieces while their leader openly declares his desire to either kill or enslave everyone - and are curious about the absence of anyone attempting to do anything other than the plucky band of heroes. The setting itself says that militaries exist, and extremely recently Stars and Stripes brought fighter jets to shoot Shigaraki. So it feels like a big gap in the setting - a setting where they have mentioned military weapons like the missiles they talked about using against Gigantomachia existing - for there to be just no higher response from Japan at all. It doesn't even need to be a tank brigade rolling down and shooting at Shigaraki, it can be as simple as "the armed forces are delayed by some Nomu" or "Super Shigaraki thanos snapped the attack force" in an offhanded manner. quote:No they aren't. That is in fact a major part of fiction. We accept characters being uncommonly skilled, absurdly durable, lucky to an unbelievable degree. We accept that silencer will stop all sound, that cars explode when shot, that Jackie Chan can win a choreographed fight and not get shot in the face even in movies where he is threatened by guns. Even in historical fiction we accept modern grooming and health habits, foods existing that didn't exist at the time, etc, etc. Are you familiar with the concept of internal consistency? We accept characters being uncommonly skilled, absurdly durable, or lucky to an unbelievable degree because the story makes it clear that that's normal in the setting. People don't ask why Luffy can do weird poo poo in One Piece because it's internally consistent in the setting that people who eat devil fruit get weird magic powers. What's normal and acceptable varies from setting to setting. If you're watching a gritty realistic crime drama set in 1920s england you're going to be put off when the detective solves a mystery by ignoring the mystery entirely, activates his hidden superpowers, and kills the mastermind criminal with a kamehameha. If you're watching Army of Darkness you're going to be put off if Ash revs his chainsaw arm and gets his shoulder dislocated by the torque, falls down, and dies. MHA itself is somewhat tonally inconsistent and it's hard to grasp what kind of internal logic Horikoshi runs it on. Sometimes it's extremely violent and gritty, with superpowered people getting murdered in alleyways with normal swords and knives. Sometimes it's superpowered DBZ fights between demigods in the sky. Kanos fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 03:05
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he should shoot bullets with strings and reel them back in to lick the blood
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Jul 8, 2022 03:05
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dogsicle posted:he should shoot bullets with strings and reel them back in to lick the blood Harpoon gun 
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Jul 8, 2022 03:09
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I'm not gonna disagree with any argument that MHA's setting was utterly wasted
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Jul 8, 2022 03:26
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MHA's setting is completely wasted, yes, but this is a ridiculous problem to have. Turning to look at the camera and go "wow, I guess guns won't work on this guy" or "the military is busy just offscreen" every fight wouldn't improve the story or the setting. These are not the crucial details that are going unexplored in this universe. It's a non-sequitur. Also, MHA is not that hosed up as a series, come on. It's by no means "bloody violent." It's a bog-standard punchman manga. I'm starting to think that this dumb argument kind of speaks to the pervasiveness of American gun culture, honestly.
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