Mangatalk

[telophase]

One of my DeviantArt watchers asked me about plot cliches and storylines to avoid. That's a bit harder to do an essay on for me, since I'm more focised on the visuals and how they carry a story along than on the story itself Plus, we all know the real answer is something like "Nothing, if you've got a fresh take on it."

But I figured that it might be a decent springboard for discussion, what with all the writers and manga readers (and sometimes manga-reading writers) who occacionally hang out here, so I figured I'd throw it open for discussion, with maybe a few general questions: so what do you think should be avoided? What constitutes a new take on things? What are examples of manga that you think avoid cliched storylines and why, and what are manga that you think take these same types of cliches and storylines and handle them well? Or how about - when is a well-known cliche or trope someting you want - perhaps to give readers something familiar to hang on to?

And I'm crashing now, but I shall be interested in seeing what, if anything, has been posted by tomorrow morning. :) Digressions quite welcome.





Index to manga analysis essays.

Comments

[maiteoida.livejournal.com]

Can we talk about anime as well? Because the first thing that came to my mind was Escaflowne. For me, it took a VERY cliche concept (Girl gets whisked away from her world to another one and seems to have some special powers significant to this new world) and ran with it. That's one of the reasons it remains possibly my all time favorite anime. I think it was because it wasn't ALL about Hitomi, it was about everyone and a lot of the problems going on in Gaea had nothing to do with her, it just had to do with the people who were already on the world before she came. Everyone was so beautifully fleshed out, and were wonderful on their own...they weren't defined by anyone else (I liked this especially with Millerna, who at first seemed to be a character purely defined by her feelings for Allen but soon grew to be her own person, who made her own decisions).

I think character depth has a lot to do with how well a cliche can be avoided. I think you mentioned it yourself in one of your posts earlier, like with Tohru she seemed like one of those overly nice, "nothing's going to get me down!" girls who seem abundant in shoujo, until you saw how poorly she saw herself that she figured she didn't DESERVE certain things. Yeah, that's what I like- taking a archetype and elaborating on it.

Another example that comes to head is Bleach, which could easily have been a fighting "shounen" story about a bunch of shinigamis fighting off the "enemy of the arc" or so. However, the characters are so downright interesting that even if it intially follows that certain formula, you don't mind at all.

I'll add some more thoughts about cliches later, when I think of them...^^; There are a lot, I think, but I can't get any in my head right now.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Absolutely we can talk about anime - it's so entwined with manga that I don't think it's possible to completley leave it out of writing discussions. XD

I think one of the things I liked in Escaflowne was how Allen's personal storyline didn't turn out so happy - by all the usual expectations, he should have been either the hero or the villain of the piece, and he wasn't either, just a guy like any other, who'd made some stupid mistakes in some cases and some good decisions in other cases.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's anything that should be avoided by everybody. I think writers should avoid cliches that they dislike, and embrace cliches that they do like. Cliches become cliches because they're done often, and they're done often because they contain elements that a lot of people really like. So a cliche is not bad solely because it's a cliche.

But in general...

1. You can avoid cliches that are specific to the genre you're writing in, but embrace cliches that are specific to other genres. This can result in a feeling of originality, or at least be interesting and different.

For instance, the sort of small-scale low-key sf Planetes does so well has been done a fair amount in sf novels, but not so much in manga. Hence, it feels more original than it actually is.

2. You can embrace the cliche so hard that it bleeds real blood. I think manga is frequently very good at this. You like angels? Go all-out with angels, and you get Angel Sanctuary. Ninjas? Make every damn character a ninja in Ninja Land, and you get Naruto.

3. You can subvert the cliche. See the anime Utena.

4. You can use all the cliches you want, but bring a lot of craft and heart to the story, and explore the elements of the cliches that made them beloved and powerful in the first place. (Mars, most good sports stories, most good shoujo fantasy.)

5. You can try to use as few cliches as possible, and tell a different sort of story, subverting any cliches that have snuck in as you go. Fullmetal Alchemist.

6. You can combine cliches that do not normally meet, such as boy bands, romance novelists, and gay love stories, or ghost stories and the game of go. (Gravitation, Hikaru no Go.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I should have said, the cliches in the last part are the ghost story and the sports story-- basing a sports story around an old-fashioned board game is subversive and unusual in its own right.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Nice list, thanks.

For instance, the sort of small-scale low-key sf Planetes does so well has been done a fair amount in sf novels, but not so much in manga. Hence, it feels more original than it actually is.

On a bit of digression here, a few years ago I got in an argument with a friend over Watchmen, due to this same sort of thing. I explained to him that when I read it, it didn't affect me very much and I wasn't blown away or anything, because the idea of deconstructing the superhero was quite familiar to me, since for years I'd been reading books and comics wrriten after and influenced by the ideas that were brought to the surface in Watchmen. My friend argued that no, it was moving, powerful, and affecting, because it had been the first time these thinngs had appeared in the genre, and that I should be blown away by it because of that.

I think he couldn't quite separate the idea of "revolutionary to the genre" from "revolutionary to the reader."

[rans-curse.livejournal.com]

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Really, I don't think any cliches are off limits. Basing a series off cliches is great, as long as the creator puts their own spin on it and really gives the series some soul. Many of my favorite animes have cliche aspects to them, and I think it's important to look at series that on the surface may seem like just another genre-cliche, but upon a deeper look are really great all on their own.

Like maiteoida, the first anime that came to mind was Escaflowne. At its core, it's a very cliche storyline, but it's beautifully fleshed out, the character all really develop over the course of the series, and there are several deeper plotlines along with the main "defeat the evil guys" storyline. Also, I like that it's presented as a serious drama, rather than played for laughs (like many other girl-is-transported-to-another-world animes).

The Saiyuki series is a fairly traditional "journey" series that borrows a lot of material from other sources, but it's an absolutely incredible series all by itself. The depth is really what makes it so wonderful. On the surface it seems like an action story, but it's so much more than that. There's a lot of focus on how the characters grow and change, and I think that's really the focal point of the series. And of course, the creator really makes this whole world very real to the viewer/reader, by creating a solid setting and incorporating a lot of different religious and social atmospheres.

I don't think there's anything wrong with basing a series on a cliche. It can be great when done well. The most important thing in make a cliche good is to create a lot of depth, to make the series your own, to really make it "3-D", so to speak. A cliche doesn't have to be unimaginative and unoriginal. When you take a different spin on an old idea, the results can be incredible creative.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I do love the journey story of Saiyuki, and the idea that I think is central to it - that the important part of the journey is the journey itself, not the destination. If Minekura ever decided to end it with a big showdown and confrontation, I think it would feel anticlimactic, because the true story isn't what's going on in the world at large, it's what's going on between the characters.

[matildarose.livejournal.com]

Hm. I really shouldn't be posting something like this this late at night, but ohwhythehecknot.
- No Gary Stu/Mary Sues. While one may say 'but that applies to work you don't own!' I mean in an original sense. Don't make up this fantastic world with its own rules and regulations, then throw in a main character who is OMG THE BEST and is a mirror of yourself. Maybe the character is struggling to the top? Maybe the character is suddenly caught by the enemy they were hiding from? Many good plots have climatic 'setbacks' throughout the story, where the MC (main character) comes closer to getting their particular goal but falling short and having to rethink their strategy/recooperate/heal their wounds/charge on/etc.

- Badasses. You know the type. Stoic, anti-hero, anti-social, dark, handsome, mysterious, tall (usually), silent, death on two feet. Take about five or more of those traits and you got the anime/manga/video game staple of the 'badass'. Lots of people like to have one of their characters be a Sanzobadass. But even Sanzo gets drunk and sings karaoke. Humanity goes a long way, folks. Every 'badass' has their weak side, even if it's as simple as the fact that it always seems to rain on their parade. The point? Your token badass character is still 'human'. To pull this character off, you have to eventually lift the veil and show the reader that they're not one-dimensional beings just there to have the wind blow in their hair and say scathing comments at the right moment. Take Jin of Samurai Champloo fame. He's a stoic character, but he does several things that make him more three-dimensional: he develops a crush(maybe more?) on someone not intregal to the plot, he has to do menial non-samurai-ish jobs to make money, and he's not adverse to wanting to visit a red light district or two. He might be your typical 'badass' character, but he's still a guy living in a psuedo Edo(?) era Japan.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I love that Sanzo's fatal flaws include pride and an easily-lost temper - when he gets insulted or exasperated beyond what he can stand, he's likely to throw down with a Makai Tenjou, even when it's not warranted and the opponent is no match for him otherwise, like during that drinking contest. XD

To pull this character off, you have to eventually lift the veil and show the reader that they're not one-dimensional beings just there to have the wind blow in their hair and say scathing comments at the right moment.

Yeah, I see a lot of this in amateur manga (well, in amateur writing in general) - if you gently tell the writer that their characters should have flaws, often they insist that the character does have flaws, but when you press them about it either they're not really flaws, or they're not used in ways to handicap the character.

a few off the top of my head...I will come back and add more

[octopedingenue]

This list of shoujo cliches is both amusing and useful. :D

"Naruto" plays with cliche in the structure of the male leads in particular: the goofy bouncy mouth-bigger-than-his-brain comic-relief sidekick guy (Naruto) gets focus as the series lead, and the brooding popular handsome wunderkind with the dark tragic past and noble revenge quest (Sasuke) gets shunted off into second banana status. (There's some scene during the chuunin of exam of Shikamaru and Chouji watching Naruto fighting and saying scornfully, "This guy is such an idiot! He's totally unlike someone who could be a main character of a series!") And it works because it highlights that sidekicks are often more endearing than the protagonists, and brooding wunderkinds are often self-centered brats. I like the way Kishimoto makes a point of setting up characters so that you think they're one thing and they turn out to be something completely different.

There are LOTS of half-demons or similar non-human crossbreeds in anime/manga (and in fantasy literature in general). It's a simple way to give a character outcast/loner/Other status that's immediately accessible to multiple groups that feel outcast in ways that a character with real-life minority characteristics wouldn't, and it's also a way to give characters kicky superpowers. Done well, it can be a powerful metaphor and character trait that shapes the character (Gojyo from "Saiyuki"); done badly, it's a tiresome canon-Mary Sue trait thrown in to give characters instant coolness and Emo Points without them doing anything to deserve it ("MY DADDY IS SATAN MY LIFE IS PAIN at least I'm superstrong and wicked hot").

"Fushigi Yugi" deserves its own giant essay on the ways it uses and abuses cliches, because cliche/story repetition is the very essence of the series (the main character is a canon Mary Sue!). And it's frustrating that it's not always clear when Yu Watase is using cliche out of haste or writer-laziness (or whatever reasons one uses cliche), and when she's using cliche in the story deliberately as meta-play. One of the more interesting examples of that is Chichiri, who apparently has the magical abilities to make visual manga cliches into reality. When he transforms into superdeformed chibi Chichiri, he's literally grown smaller; when he wears his smiley crescent-eyed happy cat face, he's wearing a literal mask that he can physically rip off--but we don't know this just by looking at him until the narrative points it out. It reminded me of The Sandman storyarc "A Game of You", when Barbie goes to a funeral wearing a black dress and black face-veil, only to go to a bathroom later and wash off the "veil", which we find out was only black lines drawn on her face all along.

Re: a few off the top of my head...I will come back and add more

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You're right about the Naruto/Sasuke dynamic there. That's similar to the dynamic in the movie Big Trouble in Little China, which turns Western movie conventions around and the brash, tall, wisecracking, square-jawed American main character turns out not to be the hero after all, but the sidekick to the smaller, quieter, lovesick Chinese-American character.

Re: a few off the top of my head...I will come back and add more

[riyuen.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't know if Naruto is deliberately playing off the 'traditional' structure of male leads, but more it's part of the trend; most shounen manga I can think of feature bright happy never-give-up-types, who aim to be cool guys but usually do better when they don't think about it. I find the cool guys always tend to be the side characters. For example, just look at the lineup in Shounen Jump - starting from DBZ's Goku ('cool' guys Vegeta, Picolo, etc) , One Piece's Luffy (but the whole cast is kind of endearingly idiotic), Kenshin (who I suppose does have the cold guy main character sort of as Battousai, but then completely subverts him, with lots of side cold stoic cool guys) Shaman King's Yoh, etc etc. Bleach's Ichigo is sort of cooler, but is also often a complete dork. I'm trying to think to think of series that star brooding protagonists, but all I'm coming up with is 'Fist of the Northern Star' whose main character I found completely boring and personality-less anyway. Maybe I simply haven't read enough older manga.

What I find fascinating about Naruto's happy dork/brooding badass dynamic is that Kishimoto shows that his brooding badass is really quite stuffed up in the head - his aloofness, coldness, distance, or whatever!(and I am a fan of stoic cold utterly badass characters, but it is nice to see them taken deeper and deeper and deeper!) is a result of that, and in the end it's not admirable at all. The Sasuke that we thought was so in control (the first fight with the mist ninja in the Zabuza arc? Swish!) is really not in control at all, though he thinks he is, and underneath that front all those bottled up emotions are driving him to things that are Not Good. Whereas Naruto is an endearingly healthy character.

*ahem*

Er...why am I replying to something months after it's been posted? Good question ^^;.

any cliche that Shakespeare adored, feel free to steal for manga

[octopedingenue]

I am a BAD SHOUJO FAN. I cannot believe I forgot crossdressing, because it is my favorite cliche (especially crossdressing that involves impersonating/living as the other gender for long periods of time, usually in secret). And I would never tell anyone to not use crossdressing in another manga, because genderplay is awesome. There's enough of it in shoujo manga that there are even subgenres of crossdressing manga (crossdressing to get close to the boy/girl you like! crossdressing to get on a sports team! crossdressing to Prove A Point to your parents!), and portrayals of the fluidity of gender roles in all of them intrigue me. Even the most terrible crossdressing manga manages to say something interesting (though usually infuriating) about gender stereotypes. And the good series can play with cliches of all kinds. One of my favorites, "W Juliet" (boy Makoto crossdresses as girl to Prove A Point to his parents, falls in love with girl Ito who is butch and often mistaken for a boy), has plotlines rife with cliche--school trips, romantic misunderstandings, suddenly appearing fiancees, etc. But the main characters subvert their cliches enough to become interesting and make the cliche stories interesting with them. Ito is smart and likes herself and doesn't want to be a girlygirl, and Makoto sees dressing as a girl as a challenge instead of an embarrassment and loves Ito just as she is and isn't interested in making her conform to any more female gender stereotypes than she feels like. They are sensible and likable romantic leads who steady the whirling shoujo crossdressing craziness around them, and because they are interesting, the cliche stories become interesting.

Re: any cliche that Shakespeare adored, feel free to steal for manga

[maiteoida.livejournal.com]

Eee! You totally just echoed what I LOVE about W Juliet! Especially about Ito- I'm SO glad she doesn't want to become a girlygirl, because that's a cliche about tomboys that really annoys me sometimes- sometimes they ARE happy being who they are, and I think W Juliet does a good job of conveying that.

[octopedingenue]

aaaand I totally repeated myself in the last sentence there. RAAWRGH to my pre-posting editing skills.

Re: any cliche that Shakespeare adored, feel free to steal for manga

[rabican.livejournal.com]

There can never be enough exploration of crossdressing. It is the bestest cliche there ever was, probably because no matter how cliched it actually gets it never stops being subversive (it may stop being so in a hypothetical healthier future, but we'll all be dead then). Actually, I'm wondering - are there manga examples of the (best known in superheroics¹) Crossdressing for Justice! variant?

Re: any cliche that Shakespeare adored, feel free to steal for manga

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hee. The girl-disguising-herself-as-boy has always been one of my favorite themes in fiction, for whatever reason, and if a story's got that in it, it's got to work hard to get me to dislike it.

although Ouran High School Host Club managed that.

[rabican.livejournal.com]

To me, there are two equally important parts of the cliche definition: the first part is a frequently occurring narrative trope; the second is the use of this trope without bringing anything new to the table.

I'm not sure if this actually counts as a cliche, but - my first love in manga has always been Rurouni Kenshin (okay, technically it was Doraemon, but I don't remember that stuff and I'm pretty sure none of it's been translated, so now that I've lost my seven-year-old self's fluency in Japanese I can't read it), which, frankly, is a fairly standard shounen over-the-top fighting manga no matter how you slice it. I don't think it can be called subversive in any way, either, and yet ... it does subvert, if that distinction makes any sense to people not me. It pretty much just blithely marches on with its story, and it's only when you pay attention that you notice that it's amazingly cerebral and psychological for a "boys' own" type adventure, even though that element does tragically falter a little towards the end. The character arc of Himura Kenshin is about as elegant and intuitive as it gets - over the course of twenty-eight volumes he changes from a zen-like wanderer who believes in saintlike forgiveness for everyone except himself to a man who can acknowledge his mistakes and move past them, bury his demons and have meaningful, familial relationships - something that the character we're introduced to just wouldn't be capable of. And it's all so natural that you hardly even notice how drastically he's changing, because you're right there in his head with him.

On a perhaps shallower note, I also give the Kenshin series mad props for having its silly shounen cake and eating meticulously researched historical fiction, too, and then refusing to acknowledge that this might be unusual or contradictory in any shape or fashion. It really is sad how none of Watsuki's subsequent work seems to be able to recapture that brainy dorkiness or, you know, any modicum of talent whatsoever. (Me, bitter? Nooooo...)

Hmm. Given that my favorite manga is Kenshin and my favorite anime is Utena, I think I may have a leaning towards stories that subvert without looking like they're doing so.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've always liked stories that subvert like that, which draw you in with the promise of one thing, then pull the rug out from under your feet. Even Naruto does a bit of that, with the characters: Kishimoto sets you up to expect one thing from the characters, then does a 180 and makes you see that no, this person really isn't like that, and this is why.

My mother was a middle school teacher for many years, and one of her tricks for dealing with a particularly annoying kid was to march on down to the administrative offices and say "Tell me something to make me love this child!" Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't, when nobody knew anything good about the kid, but hey. And once or twice when I was feeling lonely and picked-on or unpopular or envious of some other kid in school, Mom would tell me something about them that would make me see them in a different way. I tended to resent it at the time, because, dammit, I wanted to hate them for being perfect, but I was a kid at the time - but it did instill a bit of appreciation for how contradictory elements can make up a charater, and how knowing some things about people can put a whole different spin on them.

Anyway, that's what reading Naruto is like for me - every so often Kishimoto takes an unlikeable or enemy character and says "This is why you should love this child." Or he takes a character that's been on the "good" side and makes you see how you really shouldn't be so happy with them after all.

[scortia.livejournal.com]

Sadly it seems almost every anime and manga out there starts out with an easily recognized cliche (or twenty). But its about making the simple cliche'd filled plot something that stands alone in some way:

1, Indepth, engaging plot - Escaflowne, as mentioned in the earliest comments, is an amazing example. So is Utena... Utena is a standard mahou shoujo with a strong female lead who does random episodic battles. But then, there's a deep psychology to the series that makes it one of the most perplexing series out there. Another example is Princess Tutu which makes the viewer think it'll be a sappy-sweet story about a ballerina with magical powers.. but then you later on discover just how dark and depressing the world she lives in actually is. This usually is my favorite way of overcoming a cliche... making the anime something so original, uncomparable, profound even that the cliches become almost impossible to see.

Another thing I generally refer to is putting the story on an "epic" scale. The above titles do that... Rurouni Kenshin, though the plot is nothing of special significance, 'pulls' the viewer into the Kyoto storyline by making it into an epic journey. Berserk does it with merely the addition of the Behelit storyline and Griffith's never-ending desire to overcome everything. Angel Sanctuary is probably the most 'epic' manga I've ever read... but then, it is quite original in almost every way...aside from characterization of the immeadiate main cast.

Character development: Why do people like Naruto so much? Awesome characters... many of which are "bad boy" characters who get redeemed or have many hidden layers to them. The storyline is full of cliches, but we can't help but watch/read because the characters drive us. Another good example is Card Captor Sakura. It follows an episodic scheme but the characters, oh man the characters make the cliches just disappear.

Parody: Easiest way to not be cliche is to throw as many cliches in as possible and make fun of them. :P

Just utterly original: Samurai Champloo... what the heck can that be compared to? When I see titles like that I have hope that new things can still come out. Tenshi ni Narumon is another good example of something just impossible to compare to anything. I guess just complete off-the-wall strangeness is needed for originality these days. With centuries of writing and other forms of entertainment, everything has been done... just in different settings and with different people.

Heh, I bet this all made little sense but ah well. ^_~ I think I'm mostly driven away from cliche anime/manga when all the lead characters have personalities so overused that I feel nothing for them or their situation. Yuu Watase comes to mind... I couldn't enjoy Ayashi no Ceres, despite the interesting plot, because all of the characters greatly resembled her characters in Fushigi Yuugi... so it was like she was copying herself with the same cookie cutter cast.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think I'm mostly driven away from cliche anime/manga when all the lead characters have personalities so overused that I feel nothing for them or their situation.

Oh, yeah, been there done that. There's many, many highschool shoujo series that lose me within the first chapter or two because they're all just Generic Shoujo Manga Heroine #3 and Hero #5, accompanied by Wacky Sidekick Friend #4.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I think that a lot of the time stories (manga, whatever) with completely revolutionary or unexpected premises can get by on shock value, but that stories with less unusal premises really need to be done well to stand out. So, cliches aren't damning, but they are a handicap. You hold stories with them to a different standard.

That's when we're talking cliches in the basic set-up: teenager whisked away to alternate world, teenager obtains magical slave, teenager seeks revenge for death of parents, etc etc. Secondary cliches can actually be incredibly useful, because you can use them as shortcuts.

An example: right now I'm reading Cantarella (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~onyabear/Cantarella/). It's historical fantasy, verging on shonen-ai, set in 15th century Italy. the manga-ka is clearly a Renaissance history geek of the highest order. Not knowing much Renaissance history myself, it is sometimes all I can do to nod along when the plot begins to hinge on someone's marriage, someone's illegitamate third sun, someone's political machinations with the French. To make things worse, the manga moves at an unbelievably fast pace. Two volumes = ten years.

The mangaka makes things easier for me by basing all the characters off extremely recognizable types. That way I can enjoy all of the twisted master/servant stuff, all of the political intrigue, without having to worry about character motivation. I *believe* that Watsuki set out to do something similar with Rurouni Kenshin (although none of the characters in that series managed to be what their roles said they should have been ♥). A better example would be The Demon Ororon. Othello shows up and we can *imediately* classify him as the smiling-but-deadly dandy who secretly cares.

All of that's useless if you can't somehow get past the cliche; otherwise there's otherwise nothing that distinguishes your character from anyone else's. But it can be incredibly useful as a starting point.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

*perks up* Renaissance Italy? *has costumed and worn Renaissance Italian in the past*

Sounds intriguing; I must download this...

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Hey. So what do you think about starting an LJ comm for manga discussion along the lines of dc_clocktower or house_of_marvel?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Whoops. I mean house_of_ideas.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it might be a good idea. *pokesaround* Well, "mangatalk" isn't registered yet... hm.

[lady-noremon.livejournal.com]

I think ppl should stay away from "young ppl (boys) trying to collect/catch cute fuzzy animals, and/or then do battle (with them(.

Like Pokémon, or Beatamon, ect. Anything that will be raped when it gets localized.

Wandered off topic there ^^;