#That doesn't mean i'm a big fan of the plot B in the internship episode

[tgammsideblog]

On Bill Motz’s thread on Scratch, cartoon fandom has weird idea of how redemption arcs work, which they think it consists in a character learning a lesson and becoming a complete different one without barely making the same mistakes again or having setbacks.

The true is that a person doesn’t change in a day and stops being what they are, they are going to make many mistakes along the way. They are going to have moments when they fall back in their old habits because getting over behavior you have had most of your life is difficult.

I think one of the few shows i watched that really gets this is Bojack Horseman, which is adult animation. The main character Bojack tries changing multiples times in the series and he fails miserably more than one time. He ends up pushing people away and completely ruining relationships forever. It takes him a long time until he starts to work on be better himself.

Speaking about that, i have watched very few animated shows with semi-episodic format that dion’t have the characters learn a lesson multiple times before they start changing. Not only that but older cartoons used to make the character learn lessons that rarely sticked to them and i don’t see people saying that they are bad series because of it. Look at Anne from Amphibia, it took her almost a season to really start seeing her changing and had to learn tons of things along the way.