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This Week in Anime - Akane is the Real Protagonist of SSSS.Gridman




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TheExile285



Joined: 07 Mar 2017
Posts: 13
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:34 pm Reply with quote
spoiler[Akane is also best girl.]

Tbh, I'm hoping Akane gets a happy ending. She's twisted but I can't bring myself to hate her at all. Also spoiler[I really don't think Yuta is dead yet.]
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Generations



Joined: 21 Jul 2016
Posts: 204
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 8:28 pm Reply with quote
Oh, I can bring myself to hate Akane easily because she's a terrible person. Also she drank straight out of the jug instead of pouring it into a glass. That's sickening.

The difference is that I also find her fascinating, and the greatest sin a main antagonist can make in a show is NOT be interesting. Akane doesn't do that. She's been both the show's protagonist and antagonist right from the beginning, and she's been a delight to follow. That said, I do hate her guts.

In the same way watching Kira from JoJo Part 4 is fascinating, I may HATE the main antagonist but I also love seeing their story unfold. Do I want them to have a happy ending? With Kira, probably not, but at least Akane seems salvageable (despite the murder) -- at least Gridman seems to think so.

I think the main takeaway we can get from this story is something everyone should realize sooner rather than later: getting everything we want won't suddenly solve all our problems with the world, because we're the best and worst thing about ourselves.
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Koda89



Joined: 10 Jul 2006
Posts: 278
PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 11:05 pm Reply with quote
Rikka may have won over the meme lords, but Akane is the best Gridgirl.
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#HayamiLover



Joined: 22 Jul 2018
Posts: 796
Location: Eastern Europe
PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2018 2:14 am Reply with quote
I don’t think that if Akane is the local demiurge and got the POV episode, then this makes her a “real protagonist”. This isn't the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, when Haruhi was also a title character and main girl. So, if you really want to prove that your "best girl" is better and cooler than the local shonen ordinary student, then this is not the best choice, lol.
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Norm the genius



Joined: 07 Dec 2018
Posts: 91
PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2018 6:57 am Reply with quote
#HayamiLover wrote:
I don’t think that if Akane is the local demiurge and got the POV episode, then this makes her a “real protagonist”. This isn't the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, when Haruhi was also a title character and main girl. So, if you really want to prove that your "best girl" is better and cooler than the local shonen ordinary student, then this is not the best choice, lol.


But with haruhi what happens in the end is that the author gets tired of she it and is oriented more towards Nagato beyond what the normal narrative would propitiate, which is a bit frustrating since I love the character of haruhi as many animes always paint a main girl being also the one who dominates on the cover of the show, but this is only the partner of the boy who is the real protagonist which It is thousands of times less interesting in both personality and design. It seems to me that many writers are guided by the structure or formula of an old anime as it could be evangelion or urusei yatsura where we have this same, depending on the type of history this may work, but from another point of view they seem a parasite character since everything the plot revolves around another.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13540
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2018 10:29 am Reply with quote
A writer named John August wrote a 7/26/2005 entry on his website and the entry is called "What’s the difference between Hero, Main Character and Protagonist?".

Quote:
In most cases, “Hero,” “Main Character,” and “Protagonist” are the same character.
Seriously, you can stop reading now. Here’s a nice article about raising orphaned squirrels.

Now, for readers who are still with me, let’s try to come up with more specific definitions for these three terms, and explore why they may apply to different characters in certain stories.

Hero
My incredibly-simplified definition: this is the character who you hope to see “win.” While it’s fine to think of Superman, or Aladdin, the hero doesn’t have to be noble, or courageous, or especially talented. As long as you’re rooting for him, that’s what matters.

Main Character
Just what it sounds like: this is the character who the story is mostly about. Confused? Often his or her name is in the title: Shrek, King Arthur, Tootsie, Citizen Kane.

Protagonist
The character who changes over the course of the story, travelling from Point A to Point B, either literally or figuratively. She learns and grows as the story progresses. Generally, Protagonists want something at the start of the tale, and discover they need something else.


OK, so Akane is arguably the protagonist. However, going from the angle that the M.C. means the character with the most screen time (panel time as it the case with manga), then Yuta is clearly the M.C. and Rikka is the lead girl.

Concerning best girl, I usu. put the main girl as being best girl since she is the one that gets or should get the most character development

When there is a primary character but not the lead character, I think "main character" is appropriate. For example, Gray and Erza are the leads of "Fairy Tail" but are clearly among the most important characters in that series.
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#HayamiLover



Joined: 22 Jul 2018
Posts: 796
Location: Eastern Europe
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2018 9:20 am Reply with quote
Norm the genius wrote:
But with haruhi what happens in the end is that the author gets tired of she it and is oriented more towards Nagato beyond what the normal narrative would propitiate, which is a bit frustrating since I love the character of haruhi as many animes always paint a main girl being also the one who dominates on the cover of the show, but this is only the partner of the boy who is the real protagonist which It is thousands of times less interesting in both personality and design. It seems to me that many writers are guided by the structure or formula of an old anime as it could be evangelion or urusei yatsura where we have this same, depending on the type of history this may work, but from another point of view they seem a parasite character since everything the plot revolves around another.


The problem is that when it comes to LN, especially strictly romantic, MC often only plays the role of self-insert the audience, as if you were playing visual novel. It is so common that even partially influenced the development of CGDCT and the popularization of yuri in general, as the audience is tired of using mediocre protagonists only as a reason for a bunch of cute girls together.

But on the other hand, it motivated many people to create well-written protagonists, for example, Jum Maeda is well known for this. Or you can also recall works like Oregairu, whose MC can compete with his girls in terms of popularity.
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Norm the genius



Joined: 07 Dec 2018
Posts: 91
PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2018 2:53 pm Reply with quote
#HayamiLover wrote:
The problem is that when it comes to LN, especially strictly romantic, MC often only plays the role of self-insert the audience, as if you were playing visual novel. It is so common that even partially influenced the development of CGDCT and the popularization of yuri in general, as the audience is tired of using mediocre protagonists only as a reason for a bunch of cute girls together.

But on the other hand, it motivated many people to create well-written protagonists, for example, Jum Maeda is well known for this. Or you can also recall works like Oregairu, whose MC can compete with his girls in terms of popularity.


Well the first option does not seem so bad the truth, those animes of only girls do not suffer from having a clumsy and shy romance whose interactions between the characters is only with "accidents", in the CGDCT the general chemistry of the group of friends is good that's why I like railgun more than index even though the latter has more interesting and fun arches. Now this season akanesasu shoujo which also works more with the interactions between its characters, the truth is that if they put a boy in this group all they would lose their personality only to become obsessed with the MC.
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Gurren Rodan



Joined: 04 Jan 2018
Posts: 263
PostPosted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 7:19 pm Reply with quote
Generations wrote:


The difference is that I also find her fascinating, and the greatest sin a main antagonist can make in a show is NOT be interesting. Akane doesn't do that. She's been both the show's protagonist and antagonist right from the beginning, and she's been a delight to follow. That said, I do hate her guts.

I'm mostly with you here. While I wouldn't say I HATE Akane, she's acted deplorably and doesn't seem anywhere near true redemption yet. What I hope is that she can get a relatively optimistic resolution while still acknowledging her past behavior.

Then again, maybe she's just gonna die or something. A couple of those final shots in the OP (plus last episode's cliffhanger) seem kind of foreboding to me.
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