Characters that deserve less hate

Happiness Assassin

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Oct 11, 2012
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Mahorfeus said:
Shinji Ikari.

The kid is 15, his mom his dead, his father seems to hate him, and everyone is passive-aggressively pushing him towards piloting a death machine to "save the world." All the while, most of his comrades also seem to hate him in some way or the other. Everyone wants him to grow a spine, yet whenever he does stand up for himself, shit always seems to hit the fan. And then everyone hates him for it.
And that is why I hate him: he never really advances past the reluctance stage. He continuously tries to move forward but always ends up back at square one after a few episodes. While it is nice to see consistency in characters, I would rather see that consistency manifest through continuous growth, not a vicious cycle of loathing and self-pity. It is so ridiculous that by the end of the series, all sympathy that he garnered from me for his frankly shit life were completely eroded...

Then End of Evangelion happened and he nutted over the comatose body of a dying friend. At that moment he went from being a whiny ***** to fucking scum in my eyes.
 

Sheo_Dagana

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Aug 12, 2009
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Emiya Shirou from Fate/Stay Night. People despise him as a main character and writers will even be re-writing him a bit in the new F/SN anime ufo-table is animating, but I think he's kind of perfect the way he is. People that complain about his misogyny and white-knighting are kind of missing the point of F/SN - it's basically showing you that people who cling to the kind of 'heroic' ideals that Shirou does do not lead happy lives and, in reality, often meet with terrible ends.

The Fate series basically rails against the idea of hero worship and Shirou is the personification of this, although I can understand how people who have only watched the anime and not read the visual novel don't get this. Where does his white-knighting get him? Not very far at all, and everyone else constantly calls him out on it as well. It's made even more obvious when...

He is confronted with a future version of himself, Archer, who has chosen to kill his past self in order to erase his own existence, the existence of Emiya Shirou, entirely. His future self literally comes out and tells him that if he continues down the path he is currently on that not only will things not end well, but they will become much, much worse. Obviously the whole 'hero' thing doesn't work out too well for him.

Shirou is basically a critique on shounen protagonists in general, and rather than hating him for it, viewers/readers should use their dislike of him to further absorb the series' message and apply those dislikes to protagonists from other shows who have similar values.
 

Padwolf

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EeveeElectro said:
Tidus never really annoyed me either. At least he wasn't mopey like they usually shoot for.

The one I don't understand is Skylar White. I finished watching Breaking Bad a few weeks ago and pretty much everyone hates Skylar but I can't see it. Yeah, she's a bit of a ***** sometimes but it's understandable and I don't think she was a bad character.
Throw me into the Skylar White pile, for a long time she was actually my favourite character because all the stuff she was going through was horrendous and all the while she was full of hope for Walt and just wanted the best for her kids. I felt so bad for her by the end. However

I still think her cheating was very wrong and I can't defend that part of it at all.

Also, I think Tidus was a great character and I thought he was brilliant with how he managed to stay pretty cheerful despite everything that had happened to him. He was a lot better than the brooding, angsty emo characters we usually get. I also love Zack Fair for this reason!