My Turn Ons (in fiction) aka Attack On Titan/Chainsaw Man obsessive appreciation post
I started writing this post about what I liked to see in works of fiction, but uhhhh it quickly devolved into just praising every aspect of those previously mentioned mangas. Look I swear I like more than these two, they just seem to hit every single one of my spots??? These are the first works of fiction I really obsess over because of the plot and the storytelling and not just characters and worldbuilding. Like, most of my favourite franchises are mostly because of characters. DC, Rick Riordan stuff, one certain novel series that feels fills me with rage just thinking about, you know the one, you get the point. Also, I'm writing this while watching a video overanalysing Attack On Titan story arcs :P. Okay, that's it for my explanation for why this turned into a post singing praises, the rest is what I started writing and am too lazy to edit the intro for.
I spend a lot of time on TVTropes. And significantly more time obsessing over the new work of fiction that I just discovered and fell absolutely in love with. And recently, I’ve found out a few things that make anything instantly a favorite for me. Lemme list them in no particular order.
1.Death. Obviously. You probably saw that coming from lightyears away. I really love works of fiction that do not shy away from killing off fan favorites and well established characters unceremoniously. Examples include Attack On Titan, Chainsaw Man, The Walking Dead, Avengers: Infinity War to a lesser extent because of the events of Endgame, The Suicide Squad, the Arkham Series, I mean uhhh do games count, since Batman has died at least like 20 times by my hand and other characters too because I just wanted to see them die? Anyways, the Arkham series also has a huge canon death count of huge characters.
2. Sudden Tonal Shift. I love when stories start off as goofy and comedic and suddenly shift to dark and depressing in a matter of seconds. Examples include Chainsaw Man, Attack On Titan (yeahh, it’s kind of spoiling it, but dw, you won’t see it coming), AoT to a lesser extent because it is one tone throughout, but shifts how it is approached suddenly and quite often, and Your Name.
3. Female and LGBTQ+ characters. I… don’t really know how to explain this. Basically uhhh I want every single character treated the exact same way. Idk how to really explain it, so lemme use some examples. I feel like Attack On Titan has the best female and LGBTQ characters. Okay, okay, I know I say that AoT is like the best work of fiction ever created a crap ton, but really, I’ve yet to see anything that did female characters soooo well. One of the few things that made me despise anime is their female characters. Let’s see here. Death Note, there is one female character in the main cast and her whole purpose is… fawning over the main character. There is literally nothing else that she does. And another manga that I had the displeasure of reading as a kid is Fairy Tail. It’s led by a female character, which you might think is a good thing but… she’s so sexualised like oml like wtf the solution to every problem is not “sex appeal”. I’m not even joking, the phrase “sex appeal” is probably more used than “Fairy Tail”, and My Hero Academia is good enough ig? They have pretty strong female characters but not very well written imo, and, well, this character’s outfit exists.
She’s a minor, for god’s sake. There are quite a few more characters with questionable outfits and questionable writing but I don’t want this post to get gigantic. To be clear, I am not singling out just a select few mangas and calling the whole industry sexist. There are a lot of stories with strong women who aren’t overly sexualised, but shounen is pretty much the most popular demographic, written by mostly men aimed for adolescent boys, so that lends itself to these issues (Also, sidenote, I have no idea where the line between shounen and seinen is. I’ve read just one seinen, Parasyte: The Maxim, and I’ve read shounen like Attack On Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Fire Punch, and that felt like they had more sexual themes and nearly as much gore and violence?).
So why do I like Attack On Titan’s female characters? The story never really concerns itself with gender. It is pretty much true equality, and it actually has female characters that contribute so much to the plot and stand on their own apart from the main character (don’t you dare say Mikasa, that’s a can of worms you do not wanna open even among the piles of worms that are all my posts.). Also, look at the art of the characters.
(Actually, I prefer their manga art. Much more androgynous. As perfect as the anime is, I hate that they made them female. I loved the fact that their gender was up to the reader's interpretation in the manga. Hajime Isayama even got mad at the translators for using female pronouns for them in the English translation.)
Okay, not exactly the best picture, but I just loved that panel so much :P.
Also they are explicitly called male in the manga and then female in the anime?
Those are just a few examples, but no one has very gendered features in the main cast. It’s a thing I noticed recently, but no one grows a beard??? And so many male characters have long hair so even that’s not a distinction you could make. Anyways, my point is, there is no distinction. Strong women fighting against male domination is all well and good but like, I want stories like these more, where women are equals. And the one (maybe two) lesbian characters are so like natural too.
Chainsaw Man also does this surprisingly well. The main character, Denji, is a certified pervert.
A few panels from the first few chapters.
So safe to say, I wasn’t expecting great female characters. And I was proven wrong. I don’t want to give away too much, but it has some very top tier female characters. Some western examples include DC, obviously, with Batgirl being my absolute favourite, and characters like Harper Row, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown also being some of my favourites. American comics generally don’t have a great reputation when it comes to female characters, like look at some of the costumes from older comics
I started reading Batgirl: A Celebration of 50 Years and holy hell, did men not know how to write women at all, like what in the actual hell is this
Down to her "pretty toes"??? Seriously?
Ah yes, women put on makeup while fighting.
Ah yes, women apply makeup while fighting. But I’m glad to see how far DC has come, with how much of a badass she is now. I’m not going to get into novels, there are a crap ton of novels I could cite for having good female characters, and a lot of being written by women too.
4. What the F did I just read. I like dark humor and dark stuff in general. So I love reading stuff that make me just pause and take in what I just read. All of Tatsuki Fujimoto's works (Chainsaw Man, Fire Punch, Goodbye, Eri, Little Sister's Elder Sister) get more and more deranged than the last, and The Boys too get very insane, and James Gunn stuff also tend to be uhhh weird, to say the least.
5. Extremely careful storytelling..? idk what to call it. Basically, a combination of the extreme opposite of writing by the seat of their pants, an extreme version of Chekhov's gun, and a good mystery. See, every story has it's twists and turns, but what I love is when there's a ton of foreshadowing and one that makes you go "OMG THE CLUES WERE THERE ALL ALONG, HOW DID I NOT NOTICE ANYTHING WHAT THE HELL" on a rewatch, and stories where every single moment and small detail contributes hugely to the plot. I've experienced the story of Attack On Titan three times... kinda? I kinda simultaneously read and watched Attack on Titan the first time, like reading season 1 then watching a few episodes, reading a bit, then watching, you get the point, then I went back and watched the episodes that I read and read the episodes that I watched and I'm currently rewatching it all because the last season came out like an year ago??? MAPPA takes on too much work and then make their workers suffer, anyways, not a can of worms I wanna open now. Anyways, what I'm saying is, every single detail is thought out and have some kinda symbolism or foreshadowing. Damn, I'm trying to find a meme, but I can't, but it's basically someone getting mad with the text saying something like "When your friends don't pay attention to the flowers and the birds (it is foreshadowing)".
Also, I'm also rewatching Chainsaw Man... after finishing watching and reading it less than a month ago, and most of the words spoken take on a new meaning after finishing it.
:P I'm sorry, idk any western media that has done this so well, so these are the only two examples you get.
6. Music. I can't believe I didn't remember this till now. I don't think I need to elaborate again? I've written like three posts about this already. That said, nothing even compares to Attack On Titan.
Yeah that's all I can think of :P. I'm about 14 hours late but meh.
