The "Change My Mind" Thread

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Sleuth
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The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by Sleuth »

I thought this would be an interesting idea, so let's have at it.

This thread is where you can advocate/discuss pieces of media, with the idea of changing minds about the piece. Do you see a lot of hate for this character? How about that one TV show? Couldn't understand why anyone liked this movie? Here's where the topic is open to discussion. Nothing is outright banned as far as topics, but do note that joke posts such as "X is good because banana" are gonna hurt actual discussion, so I'd appreciate if we stuck to actual discussion. There's no special rules beyond the standard stuff.

The goal of this thread is less to try and blunt force peoples' opinions, more to just discuss and get alternate opinions on things.

You're free to post either essays or throw out ideas for topics. i.e. "Change my mind about X" or "I always thought Y was an annoying character. Why do people like them?"

I'll start with something topical: Change my mind about Case 2-3. Let's go.

disclaimer i liked 2-3 for the most part this is mostly just to start discussion
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by kwando1313 »

Ok, I'll shoot off with one.

Explain/Change my mind about shonen.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by TheDoctor »

I'll need to know why you like/dislike shonen first.

Can't help with 2-3. Sorry.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by kwando1313 »

I don't like shonen because it's wrought with cliches, poor story, poor characters, and endless filler.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by enigma »

The following are all considered shonen:

WataMote, Ansatsu Kyoushitsu, Death Note, Kindaichi Case Files, Nougami Neuro, Azumanga Daioh, Black Jack, Nichijou, Umineko no Naku Koro Ni...

Would you consider all of these titles the same? Shonen, in itself, is more an indicator of demographic than anything. Yes it contains all of the "generic shonen" works, such as Dragon Ball Z and Bleach and Naruto, however if you're looking at the most generic examples of a work, of course they will be frought with cliches! In fact, in some cases, they INVENTED those cliches (Dragonball/DragonBallZ certainly did.)

Does that change your mind?

Also, change my mind: Mandatory extraneous grinding is an example of unfair/fake difficulty, that RPG's should avoid.

Edit: To clarify, I mean that from the start of a level/dungeon up to the boss, I shouldn't have to go out of my way to fight enemies. I should naturally be at the correct level to fight the boss by the time I reach them.
Last edited by enigma on Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by TheDoctor »

I'm going to have to agree with enigma here. In fact, one anime technically considered shonen is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (not to be confused with the 2003 anime). However, there's next to no filler as almost every episode serves to further the overall story or character development, the characters themselves are very well fleshed out, and the story is rather engaging. I'd hesitate to say it steers completely clear of cliches, but what show does?

I recommend watching episodes 1-4 at the very least. If you aren't on board by then, well... we'll cross that bridge if/when we come to it.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by lazyplague »

In follow-up to enigma, almost every genre is like that. We could say the same about for instance... SoL! Every SoL anime is filled with the same old tropes, and nothing is original... Unless you dig below the surface. Everything has its hidden talent, and you cannot truly fairly evaluate a genre unless you go beneath that surface!

Also TheDoctor is right, FMA:B is basically everything great about anime, and its a very shounen story.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by Kroki »

Shonen is not a genre though, the comparison makes little sense.
As a demographics it contains any variety of genre and stories, as as been said.

Then in the first place, the point was certainly about "action anime".
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by lazyplague »

As it stands, my point still works, actually. You could still say that digging beneath the surface is necessary to truly evaluate something. It's just semantics, really.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by Bad Player »

Filler tends to be in anime, when it catches up to the manga and needs to give time for the manga to get ahead. If you don't want filler, just read the manga (or go for the shorter shonen animes rather than the 100+ episode behemoths)

Spoiler : S-Rank Challenge. Not for the faint of heart. :
Change my mind about Athena.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by enigma »

BP, if Athena didn't exist you wouldn't be able to hate Athena. As hating Athena is part of who you are, what makes you you, it's safe to say Athena completes a part of who you are.

QED: no Athena, no BP
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by SwagmaWampyr »

bp plz

this thread just can't STARTED, we can't go for the superhuman challenges right away

Anyway, I've received absolutely no response to this when I posted it a while ago, and I know a majority of the community disagrees with me on this, so...
Spoiler : SDR2, all of it :
Every single character in the game who isn't named Hinata (debatable), Teruteru, Pekoyama (debatable), Tsumiki (debatable, I personally don't agree but she has more of a reason to exist than most regardless of that) Kuzuryuu, Komaeda, and Nanami is handled extremely poorly. None of their deaths bring satisfactory closure to their characters, and none of their characters develop or even really go anywhere, even when they SHOULD. (See: Post-Case 4. Owari's character hasn't budged one inch from seeing Nidai die twice, and Sonia's reaction to Gundam, the pairing that came out of absolutely nowhere and which ultimately served no purpose except to make torture gags with Souda is all "Ohay gaiz Gundam died but he'd be mad if we despaired! 8D" Or in other words, "the writers got lazy and didn't want to write anything that would cause us to feel any emotional connection with these characters so we get this instead."

...Wow, I went off on a tangent there. I hate Sonia for being the most pointless thing to ever exist, basically. If that wasn't obvious.


But anyway, it's not JUST post-case 4, this is a huge problem with the majority of the cast and it stuns me why nobody else addresses it. But just so we're clear...


I will not accept "unsatisfactory deaths are inevitable in a game format like DR's" as a legitimate counterargument. Say what you will about DR1, it doesn't suffer this problem half as badly. Either in subtext or just the text, every character in DR1, with the exceptions of Leon and Ishi, feels like their story and their characters were concluded satisfactory. Or at least, they tried to do something with them, whatever you might think of how it was done. They don't try to do ANYTHING with SDR2's cast, with the exceptions of the characters I've already listed. And even some of THOSE are really iffy... Tsumiki for example. I could explain in detail why I feel like the execution with her fell completely flat, but that's neither here nor there, really.

The point is... Every character in SDR2, that I didn't already list, is handled very poorly, either because their death was unsatisfactory, no conclusion or development was bought to their character, or because despite living for all six chapters, absolutely nothing interesting happened with them at all.

Change my mind.
...Oh, and since the Bad Player challenge is already up for grabs... why don't we up the ante a little?
Spoiler : The SS Rank change-BB's-mind-about-Fukawa challenge. DR1 spoilers but who cares :
Toko Fukawa is a horrible, horrible human being. I shouldn't have to explain this, but let's go over it again, anyway, just to lay out my points. She's a mass murderer, constantly acts rude and nasty to people who are trying to be nice to her, is a colossal hypocrite (accuses everyone else of having perverse thoughts over the SLIGHTEST thing like a DVD, yet takes absolutely no issue with sexually harassing other students. Not physically on that last point, but still harassment that was very clearly upsetting person targeted.) and is overall just the most unpleasant person in the world to deal with with absolutely no redeeming qualities about her character.

But I enjoy Togami, so why do I take issue with the fact that Fukawa is a bad person?

Because there's a tremendous difference between a Togami and a Fukawa. The game has absolutely no problems admitting that Togami is a bad person. The CHARACTERS have no problem admitting that Togami is a bad person. He's frequently called out by the other students for his behavior, and just that one thing makes his whole character go down far easier. It's not just you, Togami really IS this over the top jerk that nobody enjoys associating with.

Fukawa, on the other hand, gets off scot-free for every single thing she does. She never faces responsibility or blame for any of her actions. Everything awful she does is excused because she has a mental condition, and she'll break into a million pieces if anybody dares to call her out on her behavior. This is not a healthy way to do anything.

Putting aside the fact that I don't believe for one second Fukawa never ever had a single opportunity to seek help for her condition... when a kid does something stupid and doesn't know any better, you still scold him. Punishment exists to correct behavior. If you actually ARE criminally insane and not just faking it to get off the hook, and you kill someone, sure, you'll get a lighter sentence, sure, you'll probably get evaluation for your condition, but you DON'T just say "oh welp, you're insane, guess we can't hold you responsible for anything", pat them on the back, and leave. And that's exactly how DR1 treats Fukawa. The way she's written, the game legitimately wants me to feel sorry for her, connect with her, and understand her. To which I say, screw that, you're an awful person who's not even trying.

Quite honestly, it's not even the character I hate, it's the way she's written. If the game wanted me to believe Fukawa was the black-hearted monster she's portrayed as, and had her face consequences for her actions, I'd ship her with Togami as the evil highschool pairing from the underworld, have a good laugh about it, and be done with it. But that's not what's going on here. DR1 is trying to force sympathy onto me for a character that is completely unsympathetic, and that's the part I find unacceptable.

So, you all know it's not gonna be easy, and I'll warn you right now there's a very good chance I'm not going to budge on this, but... Change my mind.

Oh, one last thing. Since I've mentioned it a couple times...

I will not accept any counterargument that bases itself on the events of Zettai Zetsubō Shōjo/Ultra Despair Girls/DRAE/Whatever we're calling it this week. As some of you know, I actually tolerate Fukawa in that game, or at the very least, despise her much less than I used to. For all intents and purposes, The Dangan Ronpa action game where you run around as a schoolgirl shooting Monokumas in the face hasn't existed yet, and DR1 is the only thing you have to base your sources and arguments on, as far as Fukawa's character goes.
I WAS going to do one for "Justify how anything Clover does in VLR makes sense", but... 80% of what Clover does in that game is objectively nonsense, especially taking 999 into consideration, and literally nothing anything anybody can say is going to convince me she wasn't written horribly.

But hey, two's good enough, right?
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by energizerspark »

Don't have anything to say about any of the current topics, but here's my own:

Change my mind about Shrek. I loathe the Shrek franchise with a burning passion.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by lazyplague »

Shrek is love, Shrek is life. Your mind is now changed.
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Re: The "Change My Mind" Thread

Post by gotMLK7 »

I'll try to think of some good arguments for other challenges in a bit but for now let's give a big ol' challenge to you.

Chang my mind about Teen Titans Go.

(This is a serious one btw; while I never expect to like TTG, I'd love some counterpoint to my issues with it for a new perspective I could at least consider in reviews.)
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