So, Nagi no Asukara (apologies, I keep spelling the title of this series wrong) had an interesting second episode. The main character in particular was really unlikable and for a short while I thought of just switching this episode off, however he did somehow work as the episode went along.
Flawed characters are really difficult to write: it’s all too easy to make them too annoying to watch, however you NEED flaws for good storytelling, otherwise things will be too perfect and just boring. It’s often a case of balancing things out, and the way most series do it is by giving characters a simple innocent flaw that doesn’t stand out too much, or things like naivety or something. Mr Sparkly Eyes (I really forgot his name) yells, moans, acts like a spoilt child throughout this entire episode.
Somehow this was balanced out by the rest of the cast who keep pulling this guy back to the surface. The bit around his sister worked really well, and by showing how the adults in the underwater community are even more bigoted than he is when they found out really helped by showing him things from a different perspective. He feels like he owns that girl, and these episodes are really trying to break away from that. The second half of this episode also cleverly juggled the drama of the rest of the characters together, and that actually made quite an impression on me. If the creators can keep this up things will get interesting.
Rating: 4,5/8 (Good)
Oof, yeah. That guy was the most annoying character I can remember in any work of fiction, ever. Literally. And I’ve seen hundreds of anime.
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who feels that way. The setting is interesting, but whether I continue watching it depends on whether he can annoy me into dropping the show or not.
” That guy was the most annoying character I can remember in any work of fiction, ever. Literally. And I’ve seen hundreds of anime.”
You haven’t seen much if this guys is the most annoying character you have ever seen. Try Kirino from Oreimo, Komori from little busters, Shinji from evangelion, Shu from guilty crown…hell there’s tons ten times more annoying than this guy. Besides he’s more of a dick than annoying.
Hikari’s…. aggressiveness is what I find annoying. He acts like someone who overdosed on stimulants, while being in withdrawal from some other unrelated substance. The combination of how excited and upset he is all the time, exceeds any other character I’ve seen.
In contrast, other mean people in anime tend to be at least a little bit calmer, and other over-excited people in anime tend to be at least a little less mean.
I’ll give you that different things annoy different people, though.
Well, he is a 13 year old kid, and he acts like one. He IS annoying yes, but 13 year old angsty kids in an environment full of bigotry can be like that.
It kinda makes me sad that you would consider dropping this show because the main guy annoyed you in ONE episode. Now if he stays annoying for a bunch more then I can see it, but one episode is not near enough when pretty much everything else is actually quite good.