Forum - View topicMelodramatic anime: when drama is just too much?
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Wu Ming
Posts: 113 |
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I'm sure all of us has this bad experience at one point in time when watching anime, or any other visual media for that matter, where after observing the drug-addicted hero/heroine attempt suicide for the 28th time since she slept with the best friend of his/her lover who turns out to be a depressed simulated Cyborg copy of a clone of his/her original lover who was his/her previous archnemesis but also turned out to be his/her long lost twin that was brainwashed by the woman who turned out to be their biological mother who wanted vengeance against their father for killing their grandfather who was the framed for murder by a government conspiracy led by a giant corporation controlled by aliens from Dimension Z who are trying to contain the efforts of a small group of Demons from Hell who are at war with the Shikikami Death Gods who are trying to restore the balance of nature by violating their own superiors orders and creating a new life form which happens to be the reincarnation of a fallen Japanese god...
And you just kind of want to scream STOP!! TOO MUCH! Perhaps i've engaged in a bit of hyperbole, although i swear i could probably find a market for that in the current anime market, but the point i'm trying to express is when does anime just become too melodramatic to the point where a person wants to scream, "This is utterly ridiculous." The category of Romance anime is highly suceptible to the "melodramatic overload" as writers scramble for a means of getting the audience (ie: us) sucked into the relationship. But there's a tight-rope it seems, between expressing the trials and tribulations of a relationship versus walking down the path of Spansih telenovelas, American soap-operas, and ultra angsty teen shows. So, what's has been your worst experience with melodrama in anime? And why? |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 8016 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Not many series at all, really. The only series I can think of that I would quantify as having "melodrama" have been those aimed at the ladies, which aren't technically targeted twards me anyway since I'm a guy. Some examples off the top of my head would be 07 Ghost, Descendants of Darkness, and Vampire Knight.
I usually welcome the drama personally, and say the more the merrier, but it's subjective, and all depends on where one draws the invisible mental line between drama and melodrama. For instance Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight: Guilty were still good and watchable but I dropped Descendants of Darkness and 07 Ghost because they annoyed me so much and never bothered to finish them. |
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Mistypearl
 Posts: 517 |
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Peach Girl, honestly I stopped caring after the first 3 episodes, and then continued on some to watch this lovely trainwreck. It really had promise, at least some but oh my god Sae, Momo and her idiot spoiler[ two boyfriends] need to get pushed off a cliff and into reality.
[/spoiler] |
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nightjuan
 Posts: 1473 |
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Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, also known as Rumbling Hearts, comes to mind.
I agree that how someone feels about drama can often be subjective, but by the end of this show I really felt they had crossed the line and kept going. That doesn't mean it wasn't effective for the purposes of the story, considering the premise would be right at home in any soap opera, but they could have toned it down a little and not lost much in the process. It wasn't a bad series, but I really don't have much of an interest in going through this one again. |
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Aylinn
 Posts: 1684 |
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Vampire Knight is already mentioned, so I add Shuffle! However, in my opinion, this is melodrama not because terrible things happen, but because of exaggerated emotions, for example:
One of the girls makes impression of a person that is able to commit suicide if only Rin-chan said that the tea is not good. Seriously, such a tragedy 
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zawa113
 Posts: 7394 |
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Yeah, I was gonna say Peach Girl too, except I read the manga, and for some reason, I actually finished it. I swear to god, it was like seeing the same scenario repeated every other volume in which Sae was mean to Momo, Momo just took it while wanting to go out with the hot blond while ignoring the guy she talks to all the time having so painfully obvious a crush on her Princess Peach could notice it (and she can't seem to notice or even remember Mario unless he's either actively saving her or Bowser is actively kidnapping her). Actually, I think most of my melodrama incidents occur with manga more so than anime, probably because I would have given up watching it if it were an anime, but if it were a manga, it lets me just breeze through to same scenario in 30 seconds. While I thoroughly enjoyed Battle Royale, it went a bit too far into the melodrama at times too, especially considering that anyone who began to talk about their pasts spoiler[was almost guarenteed to die within the next two chapters if not two pages after they finished the backstory], and sometimes it just went a bit too far. For me, the lovely imaginative death scenes certainly made up for it, as did spoiler[the sheer but obvious irony] but I'm sure it just annoyed some people. Alien Nine came off as overly melodramatic to me as well, if only because absolutely everything made the main girl cry, and not happy cry either, but sad cry all the time for no apparent reason. She started crying while playing a recorder, wtf? She would've cried if she'd been given a puppy and an ice cream cone and she'd be sad about it to for some odd reason. Speaking of melodramatic characters, we can't leave Shinji Ikari off the list. Ok, sure, he was in a rough situation, his father is a complete jerk, but dear lord kid, quit or don't, don't spend 5 scenes revisiting that damn train again! And for the love of god, episode 24, he was damn upset over spoiler[Kaoru, but why? Kaoru was only in the series for a single episode, but Shinji acted like he'd been there the whole time, but oh no, it didn't fool me. That full minute of budget cut didn't help either]. And then dear god, the last two episodes was basically him talking about why he's depressed and melodramatic, it was honestly physically painful for me to sit through that for two episodes (luckily, Mr. Rubik's Companion Cube was there to comfort me!) The last bit of Welcome to the NHK gave me that impression too, if mostly because it suddenly went from being based in reality, a very very depressing reality for our main characters, into, at the very last episode spoiler[some strange fantasy thing that for no apparent reason made Satoh decide to fling himself off the cliff when he was so clearly dead-set on not doing so before it when he clearly wanted no one to jump off the cliff, then he suddenly gets the sudden hallucinogenic urges to jump off? wtf?]. By that point in the series, I don't think that they had spent enough time passing out the drama in small, pleasant spoonfuls, so it rather all came rushing in on the series towards the end like drinking a whole gallon of whole milk in one go, which resulted in things getting overly dramatic for me to the point of melodrama simply because it was all happening at the same damn time. And much like drinking an entire gallon of whole milk all at once, it damn near made me want to hurl. |
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LewsTherin
Posts: 13 |
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The ending to NHK doesn't make sense because spoiler[in the original novel(and the manga), there was copious amounts of drug use, so Satou was actually high at the time.]
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zawa113
Posts: 7394 |
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Thank you for clarifying that, he was spoiler[sober through and through and not on any sort of drugs whatsoever]in the anime. Now it might make more sense in context, but I'm not exactly willing to forgive them because without the context it makes very little sense. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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I'll second this. Dialogue and music were frequently overused for the sake of drama, causing me to distance myself from the romantic nuances of several scenes; I would divert my attention to the flaws alone, thereby overlooking the narrative strengths exhibited simultaneously. Minimising the application (or should I say, misapplication) of such devices could have worked wonders for the show- what ended up as a feeling of bipartite melancholy for both the female leads could have instead been an appreciation for its bitter-sweetness, if only a few changes were made here and there. |
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DomFortress
 Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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You wanna talk about complex subplots in anime, that's got nothing to do but introducing more characters acting like a bunch of pile-driving jackhammers, which only further complex the melodrama? I've got five candidates lined up for just that purpose; Inuyasha, Naruto, Bleach, Oh My Goddess, and School Rumble.
And why I think they've got too much melodramas going on, well the fact that it's for the exact reason of "too much melodramas going on", that I don't care about reading a bunch of fictional characters that seem to live in a more pathetic lifetime than I do. Last edited by DomFortress on Sun Sep 27, 2009 7:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1675 |
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You want too much drama? Try the ef series. ef-Tale of Memorieswas just... too much for me and the storyline was rather ... (so I thought, even though it gets AMAZING scores on sites). BUT the animation style was AMAZING! The ending saved the series for me, but WOW the drama! But it doesn`t end there....
In the middle of watching ef-Tale of Melodies, and the drama continues, however, I feel this one was done WAY better and actually catches my attention. Still, DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA!!! ...but such nice art! |
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sailorsarah08
 Posts: 471 Location: Houston, Texas |
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I really, really loved Rumbling Hearts, but I can see how it could feel that way, and I don't think you are wrong. I thrive off of melodrama, but only when done tastefully, and I think Rumbling Hearts was tasteful for the most part. They seemed like people by the end of the show, instead of omnifauceted objects. Kannazuki No Miko was way too melodramatic for my tastes. The characters thought processes didn't seem logical, why would you run back to the person spoiler[who raped you ] when there is another person who is in love with you? |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Why has no one mentioned Fushigi Yuugi and Dragon Ball Z?
MAN, those shows DEFINE melodrama, although for totally different audiences. Just blaaaaaaaah dee blah blah blah. It's worse because melodrama is supposed to be defined by overreaction to the drama at hand. So...reacting to a high school dilemma as you would a nuclear crisis. But in both aforementioned cases THERE IS a world-destroying crisis at hand, along with universal domination, multiple mind and body rape, etc...and YET they manage to make it too soppy and overwrought. That is just plain painful. 
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Or, more the actual point, why has no-one mentioned School Days? I haven't watched it, but it supposedly has melodrama in the trainload, with some TRULY disturbing events mixed in. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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In School Days too much drama was the plot, rather than something annoying. That drama was needed to explain the disturbing ending.
__ Well, there's an infinite list of over dramatic anime I'd love to list, but I'll just go with two for now. First is Evangelion. I'm not complaining about the anime, actually it was great. But were Shinji a bit less dramatic, we'd have a better anime. Toradora. I'll never agree with this anime. After giving it much thought my results were that nobody wanted to have a relationship with the protagonist so they kept throwing him to each other. Too much drama, more than needed. "Oh, you're my friend, and because of that I'll give you the person I love!" Yeah, right... |
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