Are there any characters, good or bad, that you just can't bring yourself to enjoy in any capacity?
(for me that's Andrew... my beloathed)
We are kindred spirits, you and I 🤝
I hate Andrew enough that he makes it into my blog description kjdls
Everyone else I either love, like, or am neutral towards.
I talk about what I think would make him a more engaging antagonist here, but two other factors that go into my personal vendetta against him are him being the main villain of the Cuvitidala arc, which is one of my least favorites, in conjunction with how Shirai was handling some of the narrative stakes later on in the series.
(Chart I made to explain to a friend group my personal enjoyment of the series by arc because it's one of the silly things we do with each other, while avoiding some spoilers by removing the names of the last few arcs. I'd rank Cuvitidala and the human world arc a bit higher now and Return to Grace Field arc lower, but the rest is still largely the same.)
Borrowing these tags again from @whamss on this poll regarding the ending:
#nothing serious that happens to any ‘good’ character lasts if they’re younger than 20 lol #again its been a hot ass minute but TPN was at its best when Shirai knew how to raise stakes and make them feel actually serious
With the specification of "good character under twenty whose name the reader is aware of before they die" since during the bunker raid and Andrew's subsequent pursuit, there are six innocent children who are murdered.
(Chapter 111)
Fred's, Malcom's, and Mary's deaths are particularly brutal in that rather than shooting them from a distance, Andrew chose to relish bludgeoning them to death with the butt of his rifle until their faces were unrecognizable.
However, none of them have any significant moments in the narrative prior to dying, and their names aren't revealed until this extra in chapter 119. I distinctly remember feeling Shirai was trying to have his cake and eat it too, running with this to say "see, death is still a real possibility for these kids!" The effect is muted though when I don't know who they are besides "background character whose design I vaguely recognize from earlier chapters" and all ten members of the Goldy Pond Resistance survived their gun battle with the demon nobles.
Reading all of this in chapter 85 and then seeing Paula and Sandy alive in chapter 96 was so jarring and kind of a "lol okay I guess" moment for me on my first read. It's not actively wishing for the death or brutalization of children who are already victims of the farm system but wanting to see lasting consequences that have weight to them and seeing how characters cope. Sandy loses an eye, but much like Emma losing her ear, we never see him note his long-term struggles with that loss, such as having a larger blind spot, the anxiety and anger that would understandably result in, or even minor annoyances that when stacked together weigh on him. (Compare to Lucas who, while still a very capable character, does reflect on how the loss of his arm impedes him.)
And then after a timeskip that sacrifices some potential character interactions, Andrew arrives at the bunker. Compared to Grace Field, I didn't feel a lot of attachment to the location because of how little time and action is spent within it (thinking of this post regarding "home bases" in works. Grace Field feels very lived in as the only home our characters know while we also discover new things about it, allowing us to piece together the mystery alongside the cast, whereas we only learn about the bunkers intricate tunnel system during the raid, with no major events happening within its walls after the initial meeting with Yuugo).
So the majority of the characters who die in this portion of the story I have zero investment in since they're meant to be fodder, and their current home base feels underexplored. Add to that my initial fears about Goldy Pond transitioning the series to be more action-oriented and falling into typical Shounen Jump fare predisposing me against him with all his special ops gear and training, and you end up with a prime vector for my ire lol.
It doesn't entirely negate the impact of Lucas and Yuugo's sacrifice, but it does mute it for me, even with the symbolism you can draw from him being a lower-ranking member of the elite whose entire identity hinges upon the exploitation and subjugation of those beneath him, his entitlement and indignity at having that threatened, and the chaos and indifference of the universe at his death in the jaws of a random wild demon as opposed to one of the kids killing him (it goes against Shirai wanting them to maintain their innocence/goodness but I'll be real with you I would have been down for Ray or someone else shooting him).
Such a frustratingly meh character made worse by narrative choices in both the arc and series as a whole, and he doesn't even have a fun personality to make up for it like Peter.
What would you change to make Andrew a more compelling villain? How should his arc have been dealt so we, as the fandom, would be more fond of him, despite Andrew killing of at least two fandom favourites?
Swap him out with Isabella and give me the Isabella pursues the kids AU that S2 teased to facilitate the Grace Field escapees having a talk about the trauma she put them through that I crave or have him take Phil to Lambda.
Joking aside, almost anything that makes his conflict more personal with characters as individual characters rather than them as a monolithic group of cattle children would work for me, or giving him a personality beyond "Peter's lackey from the Ratri branch family with a one-dimensional hater boner for the cattle children."
I'd like him to stick around longer to simultaneously build up a greater antagonistic dynamic with the kids and show them strategizing how they'll neutralize him in an environment they aren't as familiar with, but are still knowledgeable enough about so the reader is privy to most of the elements in play and can deduct how at least some of them factor into the plan ahead of time, and then look back on any they missed without feeling cheated because they were introduced earlier rather than in the moment. Something along the lines of the kids luring him to a location the search party visited while looking for the Seven Walls.
Alternatively, an area they actively avoided because of rumors, like what evanescent puts forth here in always a riddle inside my head (aesop’s kin).
Comes with the potential bonus of providing more insight into demon world culture on top of adding a factor of risk of both sides trying to utilize the area to their advantage while trying to avoid succumbing to it themselves, especially if they ultimately decide to keep the group together as opposed to splitting up until the threat is dealt with.
I'd also like to see Andrew deducing Phil is a child of interest, either before he arrives at Grace Field due to his score and whatever else might be in his file or while he's at Grace Field and picks up on any odd behavior. Something for the reader to follow along with to build up tension and give us insight into both his personality and reasoning in a more lowkey setting to build anticipation for when he's in a higher energy one like confronting the escapees. It was most likely to save on page space, but him showing up at Grace Field only to do nothing with the encounter but use the fact he talked to Phil to taunt the Grace Field escapees in chapter 111 was such a letdown. Him doing something to Phil besides killing him offscreen makes for a more immediate threat than one of the many kids at Grace Field the audience might be aware of but doesn't have nearly as strong of an attachment to maybe getting shipped out at the two-year deadline. It also shows him taking some initiative on his own prior to the escapee confrontation when up until that point we just see him following Peter's lead.
Him following along the escapees' trail from Grace Field and stumbling across the coordinates to B06-32 Ray left carved in the tree would also be something deliciously angsty to taunt them with in their first encounter, chiding them for being sloppy. There's no guarantee they wouldn't have eventually been found anyway and no one really blames Ray for it given the circumstances, but still, the guilt of leading them to the location sooner rather than after they were long gone and putting Yuugo and Lucas into the position where they had to sacrifice their lives for them, oof.
Further rambling under the cut that turned into a semi-tangent:
Isabella is my favorite villain for, among other things, how intertwined she was in the children's lives. Very high personal stakes with a betrayal from someone who almost all of them believed was a normal, loving mother, to say nothing of the anguish Ray's biological connection to her brought him.
Leuvis made things more personal with Emma by going after children she saved earlier in the day to taunt her and affirmed to her face they were fundamentally opposed in their goals, making conflict unavoidable. He also killed Lucas and Yuugo's friends, forcing them to live separately with that guilt for over a decade.
Legravalima forced Mujika into hiding for 700 years after having her entire clan slaughtered, and she had an interest in the full score trio as the most delicious meat that was forbidden to her, making her one of the two key figures responsible for Norman ending up in Lambda that leads to a dramatically charged meeting between them in the imperial capital. It's a bit more distant of a connection, but it's workable for me when combined with her acting as a vehicle for criticism of systemic exploitation to maintain centuries of hegemony and how it inevitably implodes on itself. I half count Sonju here because their confrontation is also charged when they finally do meet, but it's never alluded to at all prior to this so there's zero build-up, and even in the "Two Destinies" story from the third light novel we don't see them interact.
Peter is the thirty-sixth Ratri to uphold the promise, giving some twisted credence to his assertion he is the father of the current generation of cattle children. He took advantage of Legravalima's greed to become the other key figure in Norman ending up at Lambda (though we don't get to see them interact much. We knew he was in conflict with his brother, the man who sought to end the Neverland despite knowing how critical it was to maintain the balance between the two worlds and how he should view it as an honor, since he was introduced. Again I have to fall back on the symbolism of what his defeat represented—his entire identity founded on a purposefully manufactured hierarchy and how he couldn't comprehend existence outside of that rigid mindset, of there not being an inherent inferiority to the cattle children that made their fate as food deserved—since on its surface his suicide is highly unsatisfying. Roughly a hundred chapters of build-up, and he just conveniently offs himself. No final stand, pathetic or grand, that pushes the characters to act or challenge something about themselves (yet again giving a shoutout to @salsae's vowsverse for having Emma shoot Peter and how for better, not only explores the toll that takes on her, but also how it affects the people around her).
Andrew's mindset is essentially the same as Peter's, so there's some symbolism in his wrath consuming him and contributing to his demise, but it's devoid of Peter's familial conflict. His meeting with Phil is framed in a sinister light that makes it reasonable to worry about his safety, but Shirai states in the mystic code book he never intended to do anything with it beyond using the meeting taking place as a way to briefly taunt Emma.
He also lacks the long history Leuvis had with Yuugo and Lucas. You could argue this speaks to how there's a disconnect between the upper echelons who profit off the exploitation of those at the bottom and the banal mundanity of it all, and how his death in the jaws of a wild demon was indicative of the indifference of the universe, but to me it feels empty when earlier villains gave us conflict that was simultaneously symbolic and personal.
(Mystic Code Book Chapter 4 | December 2020 Exhibition Interview)
The children maintaining their "whiteness"/innocence would have been fine by itself if it was preceded by a more prolonged pursuit that would at least give us a peek into Andrew's past and personality while also showing the children carefully crafting plans ahead of time like they did in previous arcs so we could follow along with them and build up anticipation due to being provided with all the potential elements in play.
Instead, he shows up at the bunker when we as an audience have spent very little time in it and only learned about its intricate tunnel system during the raid, he blows it up, and then he shows up again instigating a hostage situation. After the enormous blow of losing Yuugo and Lucas interspersed with the deaths of children who were meant to stress the gravity of the situation (but with their lack of focus it's frustratingly obvious they're cheap canon fodder; we don't even get their names until the chapter 119 bonus sketch) on top of all ten members of the Goldy Pond crew surviving Goldy Pond despite some suffering injuries that could have justifiably killed them, there's a lack of tension for seasoned readers when Alicia and Dominic are on the chopping block.
Such a frustratingly disappointing character who doesn't even have a fun personality to make up for it.
