#last but not least people who compare new characters to old characters and vise versa

[aetheternity]

I'm lowkey curious and I bet this won't recieve any attention but: What's something the Genshin fandom does that annoys you?

[greatwyrmgold]

I've kinda of stalled on Bleach, so I decided to rewatch the Mother's Basement video that got me to try the series. There's one point that struck out at me in particular.

[M]ost of the characters involved in its fights aren't really built up before they show up [...] But because almost every fight introduces at least one quirky new character and ability, and most of the supporting cast gets to fight (not just Ichigo and his friends), the resulting clashes of personality are incredibly varied and intense.

(Disclaimer: The full statement is more nuanced than this. But the part pointing out the drawbacks of having so many characters aren't relevant to my epiphany.)

There's something that's been bugging me for a while about shonen series for a while, from Bleach's Soul Society arc to MHA's bloated climactic battle arcs currently being aired/published in both anime and manga format. (Or they were last I checked, maybe they wrapped up in the past few months. Not the point.)

They involve so many characters, often ones that weren't introduced up until that point. At best, this means needing to speedrun exposition about who they are and why they're fighting; in series with more intricate power systems, it also means spending pages explaining what their powers do. I saw this as an inexplicable blunder. Why spend so much time on introducing new characters who didn't exist before and will almost certainly not matter later?

Hearing Geoff talk about this as a positive, even a mixed-bag positive, made this click. The novelty is key. You can't generally give old characters new personalities and powers, so if you want to get a different kind of personality clash or engagements between different kinds of powers, you need to introduce new characters.

This also explains some other stuff that bugged me. Like how Jujutsu Kaisen had a multi-chapter fight scene between a magic pachinko guy we barely met and an electric guy who we'd never seen before. On one hand, it felt like the main plot was being put on hold for an extended period for a fight between two nobodies. On the other hand, I have never seen a fight scene like that before, and expect to see it only once again, when the Culling Game arc gets animated. It was unique.

Contrast that with the other consistent theme in my hyperfixations, Wildbow web serials. He doesn't not introduce new characters with new powers and new personalities creating new kinds of conflicts, but you never get the sense that he adds a character just to get a new power and personality into the mix.

The closest are big crises like Endbringer attacks or the invasion of Kennet, which make a good point of compare/contrast between anime and Wildbow, if you wanted to do that for some reason. (Say, hyperfixations.) There are a bunch of new characters thrown into the fight, and few if any have a specific purpose for being included.

However, there are two points where Wildbow's big battles are different ones in shonen battle anime. First, very little focus is put on these new characters. Their existence is important to Wildbow, to demonstrate that this is something important enough that a lot of people show up to, but that's it. They're given enough detail to give a sense of a greater backstory, of more details that we never see, but that's it.

And we never see that detail because, for the most part, Wildbow's serials are aggressively first-person. The interludes break this up, but most of them are more focused on showing us side stories or backstories than giving another perspective on the present-tense events of the plot.

We don't see individual clashes between Leviathan and specific heroes fighting him, except for the fragments that Taylor catches while she's running around doing her thing. The only one we see in detail is Armsmaster's confrontation, specifically because he isn't a new character with novel powers—it's because Taylor has a history with him and vise versa, leading to Armsmaster sabotaging Taylor. And because Armsmaster's confrontation is significant to the plot and themes of Worm, but if Wildbow wanted to have a new character take that role, he could have written one.

The same across other serials. We see the Fallen compound raid in first person, augmented by cameras; every fight has at least one and usually more major, established characters involved. When Blake and Conquest battle, the conflict is focused on Blake and the handful of people he trusts, with some of Conquest's secondary followers getting a bit more screentime. When Bristow sends his Aware into Kennet, we don't get a scene where a bunch of quirky new goblins capture one of the Aware. When the Lambs...um...

I'm sure there's an example in there but I just realized I've forgotten most of what happened in Twig. Moving on.

I really like Wildbow's cape battles and magical wars and whatever happened in Twig, probably. I like that way of framing the big battles. They're big, they're world-shaking, and that's clear...but the focus is still on the core characters and plot. He manages to write battle scenes that feel as big and epic as anything in anime, while still focusing on what matters the most for his specific story being told.

Now, to be fair...I've read other web serials, I know most people can't do that very well. It's possibly a bit unfair to compare an entire genre, highs and lows, to one very good author. And I also recognize that my preference for big battles that serve pre-existing character arcs over big battles that introduce novelty is an entirely subjective preference.

I guess what I'm saying is that I have some thoughts about a random statement made in an anime YouTube video, and worked through those thoughts by writing about them, and you have now read those thoughts. I apologize for wasting your time.