An Unedited Naoie Rant: Generic Plot Orifice
I’ve come from a long line of gamers who have seen stuff since the day an age of the Nintendo. I’ve experienced things that most people don’t care to experience and are thus, fed with the most generic… unoriginal crap I’ve ever seen in my life. Damn you Nintendo, damn you for making these people a part of my life.
As the above has stated: This is true to most entertainment and the one thing that I always loved about anime is that it was different enough that you hardly noticed a lot of the generic stuff. Unfortunately though, many of the writers these days are no talent professional wannabe’s who consider themselves experts only after a few “decent” posts on a forum with their shitty fan fiction. If you want to take the “monster of the week” formula and use it, that’s fine. Be original with it. I mean seriously… look at Fox’s House M.D. That shit is a “monster of the week” series and you know what? It works because that monster is a freaking epic disease that can make you crap your pants and you wouldn’t even know it. That and House is a complete asshole.
So I’ve spent many hours of my life reading Naruto and Bleach. Both of which are now no longer entertaining in any form and their plot twists are just plain ridiculous now. Which I could care less for. Soul Eater, the current Naruto / Bleach / One Piece / Dragonball wannabe series follows such course as well. People have yelled at me for looking down on Soul Eater. However, here’s the thing… and I’ll say it now because some people don’t get it.
Soul Eater is Bleach.
You have your partner, which is your unique weapon that you choose and one that chooses you. Zanpaktu?
Soul Eater is Dragonball.
You have your partner, which improves when you eat 99 souls and a witch’s soul. Dragonballs?
Soul Eater is Naruto.
You have your partner, which you have to work with and complete tasks much like a hit list. Naruto rank missions?
You wanna know why Soul Eater ends up working? They take everything you like from everything else and put it in one place. It’s like taking Chocolate Syrup, Ice Cream, Strawberries and Sprinkles… throwing them in a bowl and then having it forced fed into you like you’re some sort of retard.
Which now leads me to the point of this:
I hate poorly constructed introductions as well. Which is used heavily in Japanese culture and anime. Tell me, what is wrong with this sentence?
“I think I’m going to rape you now, Allison-chan”.
“Oh noes, why would you do that to me, Denise-kun?”
First off, in real life… no one would actually reference your name like that. It’s a poor way to introduce a character in my honest opinion. It detaches you from the current situation almost immediately because it feels unnatural. If you don’t think that’s weird… try it for yourself in person. You’ll quickly find that it’s stupid. Also, if you know this person for a very long time, you won’t reference them like that at all and if you do, you’re probably fairly awkward, socially, aren’t you?
Also… plot twists… they need to not be done if it’s not absolutely amazing.
“I’m going to go paper, there’s no way he will use scissors.”
“You’ve lost.”
“Wait, what?”
“I can read minds. There’s no way you can win.”
“Oh no, he can read minds! I never knew!”
There are a lot of ways for a writer to surprise the reader, but a plot twist that doesn’t reveal huge revelations shouldn’t be used at all. It’s absolutely silly to even consider them because it literally makes the whole situation awkward and unnatural. This can be said a lot about Bleach these days. In all honesty, I can’t read that series anymore. People randomly appear without reason, people do things for stupid reasons and overall, the whole entire plot became a mess after a while. I understand if you can use intuition to figure out a lot of things, but these people… they’re like… “Hey, Aizen is going to blow up the Earth.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why I replaced the Earth with Venus.”
“Wait, how did you know?”
“I just do.”
“No seriously… how do you know.”
“Don’t question me. It was convenient that I knew.”
Naruto can be as silly at times with their generic plotlines but you know what? At least they explain in depth of how things ended up as they are. Bleach… oh my god… things happen out of sheer covenience. In all seriousness, I hate unexplained details. Bleach used to be so great with those hand drawings…. what happened to you?
Finally, I hate the use of “that”.
It’s a device used often in series to hide a revelation that people know something absolutely amazing but shouldn’t reveal it just yet. This was heavily used in Naruto and almost immediately, forgotten after the long 200 chapters about Sasuke. We’ll probably see it and go “oh shit!” but you know what? After so long, I doubt anyone cares to remember now.
“Hey, don’t use that technique.”
“Which technique?”
“That technique.”
“That technique?”
“That technique.”
“Oh… kay…”
200 chapters later.
“Use that technique!”
“My inner demon?”
“No! Use that technique!”
“My thousand wind needles of doom?”
“No, no, no! THAT technique.”
“Ok, stop. Hey, Akatsuki guy, can you chill for a sec? Look, Kakashi… fuck you okay? Fuck you. I don’t know what that technique is, so you’re going to have to help me out here.”
Anyways, I’m done ranting now. Have a pleasant day waiting for the next chapters of Naruto and Bleach. Look out for these Generic Plot Orifices, you may win a prize if you see at least one of the above used in the current chapter.
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