Often online I see people say something like, “Yeah I bawled my eyes out at the end of the movie it was so sad,” and then when I see the movie the only “sad” thing that happens is a main character dying. That’s not sad. It’s stupid. A lot of stories (especially romances) try to generate false emotions out of quickly killing a character. There is literally no purpose for the character to die other than to be sad and/or shocking.
I don’t mean that character death is never sad. There have been a few deaths that soured my mood a bit. The problem is most of the time I don’t really care about the character or the character dies too quickly for me to become invested in them. There’s this show that I watched and in the first five minutes we get to see the protagonist’s entire family get slaughtered. He’s crying and screaming and I just have a blank expression on my face thinking “Oh.” Maybe he cares about his family dying but since they only spoke about two lines of dialogue before kicking the bucket, I don’t. Was the scene supposed to be emotional? Because I didn’t feel anything. Was it supposed to be shocking? Just because a lot of people died? Not really. As soon as I saw that the protagonist had a happy family I knew they were about to get poofed. Because plot.
There’s this show called Your Lie in April and I won’t talk too much about it but basically it’s a cheesy romance with a love triangle and all that. At the end (surprise surprise) the love interest dies due to an illness. A mysterious illness being hinted at throughout the show that ends up killing the character at the end has got to be the most cliched and lazy way to kill off a character but I won’t talk about that. A lot of people say this show is sad and that they cried at the end. First of all, the show is not sad. One remotely sad thing happens at the end and that is it. That does not make the entire show “sad”. Secondly, why are people crying over this person? I found her extremely irritating. It might have been because I was half-asleep when I watched the ending but I didn’t even feel the slightest bit of grief. Many shows kill off characters to make the story seem more deep and meaningful than it actually is. Ask anyone about this show and the only thing they can remember about it is that she dies in the end.
But do you know what’s even more idiotic than killing a character off for no reason? Killing them, and then bringing them back. Because apparently writers want to have their cake and eat it too. I guess some bozo stumbled into the office one day and said, “Hey guys, I kinda want to add some shock value because I’m too stupid to generate it in more natural ways, but I don’t actually want to kill off a character. What do I do?” And then the director’s four year old son accidently enters while trying to find the potty and says, “What if you kill them, but they don’t die?” That’s how I assume these smooth brain’s keep thinking this is a cool and clever idea. It’s not. It greatly diminishes the impact of anyone dying because the audience assumes the writer is too much of a coward to actually kill a central character. While I’ve seen shows where the “protagonist trying to get revenge” trope works, or shows where the “love interest dies at the end” trope works, I’ve yet to see any form of media pull this one off.
so guys, I hope dyou enjoyed my blog. Don’t bother responding because your opinion is wrong and you’re just a hater. sayonara!