Stories that "Dropped the ball".
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One Piece: It all went downhill after entering the Grandline. It tried to take itself just a bit seriously and just falls apart because that manga/show just cannot manage drama, suspense or tension at all. It's better as a silly, stupid show about a kid who doesn't know what a pirate is, wandering from island to island with no real sense of continuity.
Seriously, Ace is one of the worst character deaths I have ever seen that was meant to matter. The dude has less screen time, character, and development then a fucking duck. I honestly felt worse for the boat dying then Ace. And the best part is, he is replaced immediately by a retconned third brother, who thankfully doesn't look like a relative so the whole blood brothers thing works.
Psycho Pass: Like, what, twelve episodes in, and it goes from being a somewhat cool show with sci-fi criminology and twisting of the tech, to like a retarded 'half of the people in the city are recording themselves brutalizing killing people for shits and giggles, on day of the thing being revealed.' There are like immediately buildings burning and it's just dumb and silly.
Naruto: Uh. There are a few places, but what I can mainly think of is... after Itachi x Sasuke fight, and New Kyuubi mode, and then manifestation of ten tails. And then... Yeah, I stopped by then. Though, I found it hilarious more then bad though, as it lasted longer then both One Piece and Bleach before totally shitting itself.
Batman: Making the no killing rule. (Just a bad call) Bane breaking Batman's back. (Showing, that no, he isn't a mere mortal, he's a superhero) Limitless Resources. (Dude spends a lot of cash.) Super-Genius Intellect. (Yet he can't figure out basic things despite that dealing with criminals and the corrupt system is his forte.) Young Robin's after Tim Drake. (Seriously, 3 outta 5 Robins have died. I don't think any of them were over 15 before they bit it too.)
Dark Souls 2: Just. Fumbled everything and couldn't follow 1. Which was it's greatest enemy. Trying to continue that, when it obviously should have been it's own Souls entity, was a folly and worse for the game as a whole. Good job on making a stupid cycle system that literally makes your game moot. (At least the first has two endings, one of which forgoes the cycle.)
Breaking Bad: The show was okay up until they introduced Gus, and then they killed him off in a looney tunes esque fashion, that was also madly out of character as Gus should have just ended Walter but whatever. After that, the show just got worse and boring, really.
Persona 4: Letting your best friend casually walk away into her personal hell, then leaving and saying, "Oh the weather forecast shows it won't be foggy for two more weeks. She'll be fine."
No, you shit heads. You should do what the P3 cast did, immediately mount a fucking rescue and get them out of demonland. For fucks sake.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Well. Most of the narrative, but a few key points. 1. Accelerated Aging. Hurrdurr. 2. B&B Corps. 3. Meryl and Johnny. 4: Vamp.
Halo: Gonna hit this a bit individually. 3: Cortana spam pop ups. ***** became a virus even though shes in space a couple thousand lightyears away. Killing all the characters off except the ones who should have honestly died.
4: Master Chief being the protagonist. The stupid Forerunner dude whose only motivation is racism. The return of the elites even though we have a truth, and no, shit that happened off screen doesn't fucking matter if you can't tip your players in on it. At least in 2-3 we don't see the Elite truce made, but we see the Elites turn, and can taking the logical leap that the enemy of our enemy is a friend. Also the Arbiter is like, 'Sup, we don't kill eachother anymore. Except in multiplayer but whatever.' The 'Promethean' enemies looking nothing like the Sentinel's that have guarded every damn place we've encountered before, I mean not even remotely. 2 showed us they had some bigger tank busters, why not more forms like that? Then digitizing souls. That is dumb. Also, the manipulation of hardlight to do the impossible based on it's design. You just can't make it fold around and make copies or hold people like rope. That shit is a bridge. Just like you can't 'feel' through it, as it's light. And you're a AI. Just hijack a prosthetic hand that replicates that. But whatever i'm nitpicking.
WatchDogs: Your entire narrative was fairly poor, even if it was a better take on Batman.
Assassin's Creed: The Assassin's post 1. "Hey Ezio, the guy who can't think for himself, why don't you become the leader of the order so we can just order you to do stuff instead of having any kind of actual leadership that could stop us from being screwed over if things go bad." Connor in 3. "I will not once, ever, address actual problems facing my people, will worship the ground George Washington walks on, and kill my best friend for no actual reason." Desmond in 3. "Sure, I can trust this totally evil-not evil sentient machine thing lady."
Seriously, Ace is one of the worst character deaths I have ever seen that was meant to matter. The dude has less screen time, character, and development then a fucking duck. I honestly felt worse for the boat dying then Ace. And the best part is, he is replaced immediately by a retconned third brother, who thankfully doesn't look like a relative so the whole blood brothers thing works.
Psycho Pass: Like, what, twelve episodes in, and it goes from being a somewhat cool show with sci-fi criminology and twisting of the tech, to like a retarded 'half of the people in the city are recording themselves brutalizing killing people for shits and giggles, on day of the thing being revealed.' There are like immediately buildings burning and it's just dumb and silly.
Naruto: Uh. There are a few places, but what I can mainly think of is... after Itachi x Sasuke fight, and New Kyuubi mode, and then manifestation of ten tails. And then... Yeah, I stopped by then. Though, I found it hilarious more then bad though, as it lasted longer then both One Piece and Bleach before totally shitting itself.
Batman: Making the no killing rule. (Just a bad call) Bane breaking Batman's back. (Showing, that no, he isn't a mere mortal, he's a superhero) Limitless Resources. (Dude spends a lot of cash.) Super-Genius Intellect. (Yet he can't figure out basic things despite that dealing with criminals and the corrupt system is his forte.) Young Robin's after Tim Drake. (Seriously, 3 outta 5 Robins have died. I don't think any of them were over 15 before they bit it too.)
Dark Souls 2: Just. Fumbled everything and couldn't follow 1. Which was it's greatest enemy. Trying to continue that, when it obviously should have been it's own Souls entity, was a folly and worse for the game as a whole. Good job on making a stupid cycle system that literally makes your game moot. (At least the first has two endings, one of which forgoes the cycle.)
Breaking Bad: The show was okay up until they introduced Gus, and then they killed him off in a looney tunes esque fashion, that was also madly out of character as Gus should have just ended Walter but whatever. After that, the show just got worse and boring, really.
Persona 4: Letting your best friend casually walk away into her personal hell, then leaving and saying, "Oh the weather forecast shows it won't be foggy for two more weeks. She'll be fine."
No, you shit heads. You should do what the P3 cast did, immediately mount a fucking rescue and get them out of demonland. For fucks sake.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Well. Most of the narrative, but a few key points. 1. Accelerated Aging. Hurrdurr. 2. B&B Corps. 3. Meryl and Johnny. 4: Vamp.
Halo: Gonna hit this a bit individually. 3: Cortana spam pop ups. ***** became a virus even though shes in space a couple thousand lightyears away. Killing all the characters off except the ones who should have honestly died.
4: Master Chief being the protagonist. The stupid Forerunner dude whose only motivation is racism. The return of the elites even though we have a truth, and no, shit that happened off screen doesn't fucking matter if you can't tip your players in on it. At least in 2-3 we don't see the Elite truce made, but we see the Elites turn, and can taking the logical leap that the enemy of our enemy is a friend. Also the Arbiter is like, 'Sup, we don't kill eachother anymore. Except in multiplayer but whatever.' The 'Promethean' enemies looking nothing like the Sentinel's that have guarded every damn place we've encountered before, I mean not even remotely. 2 showed us they had some bigger tank busters, why not more forms like that? Then digitizing souls. That is dumb. Also, the manipulation of hardlight to do the impossible based on it's design. You just can't make it fold around and make copies or hold people like rope. That shit is a bridge. Just like you can't 'feel' through it, as it's light. And you're a AI. Just hijack a prosthetic hand that replicates that. But whatever i'm nitpicking.
WatchDogs: Your entire narrative was fairly poor, even if it was a better take on Batman.
Assassin's Creed: The Assassin's post 1. "Hey Ezio, the guy who can't think for himself, why don't you become the leader of the order so we can just order you to do stuff instead of having any kind of actual leadership that could stop us from being screwed over if things go bad." Connor in 3. "I will not once, ever, address actual problems facing my people, will worship the ground George Washington walks on, and kill my best friend for no actual reason." Desmond in 3. "Sure, I can trust this totally evil-not evil sentient machine thing lady."
Also, the surrender terms forced a change of ideology and forbade all forms of armed forces, so until the loophole jumping that spawned the Self Defence Force all military was American GI's. Then there's the whole Bikini Atoll test which irradiated a Japanese fishing boat that was in a designated safe zone, giving them all radiation poisoning, which the Americans responded by claiming the fishermen were all spies.Johnny Novgorod said:
Combine that with Japanese right wingers liking to pretend that Japans role in WWII was 'minding its own business till people dropped nukes on us' leads to a bit of resentment and demonising.
Admittedly, I considered posting Mass Effect back when this topic only had like three posts in it. I couldn't really find the words to express my thoughts on it at the time, though.LostGryphon said:
But my issue isn't specifically Mass Effect 3 or it's ending. It's kinda the series as a whole. Mass Effect planted seeds for potentially great story elements, and they mostly went either completely unused or heavily altered to suit a story that I can't imagine is the direction that they originally intended to go. Hell, Mass Effect 2 as a whole feels like a spin-off. Other than a few connections here and there, it really feels like it could have been a complete stand-alone title.
Shamus Young actually has a really good on-going series about the Mass Effect franchise that sums up a lot of my problems with it far more eloquently than I ever could.
That said, despite my issues with the series I still love it, and I'm still looking forward to the new one.
Yeah, I LOVE the first half of Hancock, and defend it as being a really fun and great superhero story. Then the second half happens and it just...bleh.Casual Shinji said:
OT: The movie Here Comes the Boom. Kevin James stars as a loveable, but hapless highschool teacher, where the funding is drying up, and they're going to have to cut a lot of extra curricular programs. So, he decides to try and raise the money by doing amateur MMA fighting. Your typical sports movie, of the underdog taking on the established powerhouse. It was genuinely fun and moving to me all the way through it, and they actually made me believe that Kevin James could be a fighter. (Seriously, the dude got pretty beefy for the role. He wasn't super cut and defined, but he had clearly lifted some weights, he was like a bear.)
And then the ending happened.
The money that he raised to pay for the programs was stolen, so instead of just having to actually show up for the final fight, to top off the money simply for participating, he had to WIN, because the cash prize for winning was exactly the same amount of money that he needed. So he goes up against the world champion MMA at the time,.....*sighs*...and wins. This...this was just so wrong to me. They shouldn't have done it this way. The whole movie he talks about how he doesn't care if he wins, that it's just a means to an end. That his real goal was getting the money for the school, he didn't care what his record was. So I think that the better lesson, would've been to have him fight his best, and lose, realistically this is what would happen going up against the world champion MMA heavyweight. BUT, have the champion, who of course would've heard why the guy was fighting, donate the winnings to the school, as a sign of respect for what the teacher was doing. He could jokingly say something like "Hey, the amount of good PR I'm going to get from doing this is going to net me a few million alone in endorsements. Besides, I'm already rich, what's another 50k?" Then he could smile, thump Kevin James on the shoulder, and walk out. And it would be able to teach the lesson that sometimes, even if you lose, you can win. But NO, they had to do the classic underdog ending and have him come back from behind and stomp the champion, and save the day himself. It just, really disappointed me by the end. I was loving the movie, but then they did that and I was just...meh.
One of my favourite comics, The Massive, did this. It was a great portrayal of how an 'apocalypse' would actually look like and the impact it'd have. And then
somewhere in the third book and it loses some of its uniqueness and story potential. In doing that it also became really preachy with its environmental message which wasn't much fun either. That all leads to a, to me, rather unsatisfying ending. It's still a great book, also thanks to its fantastic art, but it does go a little downhill.
they thrown in some uber-species that's been on Earth since the dawn of time
If memory serves, GATE started as one of the net novels that get popular enough to get published. Supposedly the publishers asked the author to turn down the nationalistic and anti-west leaning of it for the published version. I also heard that the anime is toning it down as well. I'd really hate to see the original. At this point I'm only watching the series for Rory.Mister K said:
Since there is a lot of talk about series most people know, so I'll throw in an obscure one, a little anime called Chaika: The Coffin Princess. Basically a story about a girl collecting the remains of her dead father to give him a proper burial (which gets complicated considering her father was a ruthless, warmongering emperor so powerful the heroes who defeated him chopped him up in pieces and kept a piece each to be certain he never could return), who enlists the help of some sellswords who have little to do since they were pretty much made for war, and war is completely over (part of a recurring theme in the series btw). It was never going to be a classic like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun or even Berserk, but it had a lot of promise. There was interesting developments with the rather likeable (if sometimes really one-note) characters and the world around them, an intriguing mystery to the whole thing, and strong action that went along on a decent pace. Then season 2 happened, and everything went to shit. It really feels like they had a fairly good story charted out here, but they only got one more season to end it all, so they were forced to rush it out, which is not a good thing because the show had too many characters to finish it in a satisfying way. Interesting developments are pushed to the sidelines or pretty much forgotten about, the motivations for a bunch of the characters was left in the dark, and the big revelation is pretty much given in the middle of the season and it somehow manages to feel both dragged out and severely rushed. The showdown with the villain at theend is also really unsatisfying, and kind of nonsensical. For a guy who's supposed to love war and fighting, he is completely monotone. I don't quite regret picking it up, but it really could have been something much better if given the proper time and I'm not sad to see it go. At least it was given an ending, which is more than I can say for some (looking at you Berserk!).
The Weis & Hickman "Prophet of the Rose" trilogy books fall on their face in the last 5 pages. It builds to a big closure then kind of just sort of lies down and takes a nap.
Shin Sekai Yori, oh my god. I don't know how can you build up a world with a sinister secret and perfect atmosphere to match in the first few episodes, only to ruin it with such a shitty reveal, then run with it full force. It stands as my only unwatched anime ever, and that's something, because I hated NGE from the get go and still suffered through it.
Holy shit, that show got worse?Silentpony said:
The low points of Season 3 (that idiotic fort business that dragged on too long, the carnie ex boyfriend, etc.) totally on par with those of Season 4 (that fucking puppet singing one). Some of my perception may have been to all the fans decrying 4 for being the worst thing since the plague, so I went in with low expectations and didn't really see much of a difference. It's also worth noting that the first half of Season 1 is the absolute worst part of the show.doggy go 7 said:
I'm going to join everyone who said Naruto. I'm charitable enough to the series to find that it only completely dropped the ball with the introduction of Madara. Before that the serie Naruto could have been was still in there, even the often criticized war arc had it good points like the zombie kages. There just wasn't any reason for Madara to be so ridiculously powerful that he easily trashed every established powerhouse in the serie with no difficulty. Even if all the strongest leaders in the world or all demonic beasts gang up on the guy he keeps easily beating them and that gets boring really fast. And this went on for a year. I could go on about the new villain but I don't have to. Madara is terrible enough to have doomed the story at that point already.
I'm surprised Mass Effect 3 has only been mentioned once. The previously awe inspiring villains were completely undermined, one of the many plotpoints suddenly got so important as to be the cause of everything and the game clearly went against the message it has been telling the whole time while suggesting downright collaborating with the Reapers is the best option.
I'm surprised Mass Effect 3 has only been mentioned once. The previously awe inspiring villains were completely undermined, one of the many plotpoints suddenly got so important as to be the cause of everything and the game clearly went against the message it has been telling the whole time while suggesting downright collaborating with the Reapers is the best option.
From what I've heard from friends that have read the light novel, most of what got cut for the manga and Anime was general moralizing about how Japan should throw off foreign influences and rebuild the JSDF as a real military again, ultimately anyone that goes against this is shown to either be a weak-willed coward, blatantly treacherous, or basically just either evil or incompetent in some way.syaoran728 said:
This still happens in the manga, but the light novels take it farther with the U.S., China, and Russia being incredibly inept and trying and failing to do anything to the Japanese, although they mostly get shoved to the side and ignored entirely after being embarrassed by the protagonists fantasy land harem early on, and just kind of slink off into the background just so they can be shown every once in awhile plotting and being both cartoonishly evil, and mind-numbingly incompetent. Basically, the U.S., China, and Russia are the only countries that seem to be interested in the gate to another dimension, the only reason they exist in the story is for Japan to look strong against their scheming ways and provide a paperthin excuse for why the JSDF are the only ones that get to go to fantasy land.
Most of the politicizing actually tends to be shown through Japanese characters rather than foreign ones, the right wing bent basically shows any non-nationalist character as wrong, and the plot will bend over backwards to give these characters their comeuppance. Basically, imagine the protagonist getting up on a soap box to give right wing speeches every once in awhile, and that's what I've heard they cut from the manga and anime.
I don't know if it's in the anime, but I remember the manga having an absolutely silly scene where the protagonist instantly recognizes the special forces team that tried to kidnap them as being American because one of the soldiers was Black, because apparently the U.S. is the only country in the world that has Black people in its special forces. That the story seems to treat the U.S., Russia, and china as the only countries to exist outside of Japan would be the only way that line would make sense.
Holy Shit Balls, Batman. I was never ever so mad about an ending than while reading this manga. They just.. stopped in the middle of the climax and went: "Lol, we're old and everything is fine now".Sniper Team 4 said:
But Histroies Greatest Disciple did the same bollocks and was completly anti-climatic. I didn't even recognize that this was the final part of the manga until.. it suddenly also did the fast forward bullshit.
Uh, my pulse is already through the roof by only thinking about that bullshit they pulled with the manga. \o/
I'd say Mass Effect's story is kinda like a very beautifully made soap box racer, you start out looking great and moving well, but as it goes on you hit bumps and things start to fly off while parts are breaking...but you're still moving along so you kinda ignore that because it's a race after all...but then about a teen feet from the finish line your wheels fall off and you start sliding, thinking you're going to make it across, but you grind stop about a foot from the line.Tuesday Night Fever said:
It was a beautiful start, but it just was coming apart at the seams too much and contriving far too many points to keep the story that they wanted to tell going (even in the first game!), rather than telling a story that the universe was equipped to tell.
Wow, I wasn't sure anyone else had seen that movie. It was one of those that came out and was forgotten after the opening weekend, but I quite liked it too, at least until the ending. Not that the predictable-as-the-tides conclusion was enough to ruin what was a very likeable little movie overall. It just could have done with a more effective and less eye-rolling message at the end.Happyninja42 said:
Yep. Hugely missed opportunity of a show; I hope they got their money's worth by deciding to make it last forever instead of focusing on telling a good story. I stopped watching a while after the exams. I got in the middle of the filler episodes (I think just over episode 100--my God; it hadn't been good since like ep 60), finally realized what was happening, and left. Super disappointing. They had a lot of cool concepts and tons of interesting characters (introduced anyway). And then they did nothing with any of it save the occasional side-story of no consequence in the series.lord canti said:
Also, Naruto was an annoying little dude.
The Indigo Prophecy was really cool/different until about 3/4 of the way through. It was a huge let down. I still enjoyed the game, but really the first like 3 hours or so has all the best content.
The Monstrumologist series (4 books): The 3rd and particularly the 4th books weren't nearly as good as the first two. I'd readily recommend the series to anybody who likes horror and doesn't mind a child protagonist. It's extremely well written and avoids a lot of the common teen fiction tropes. I'm actually sort of surprised it's classified as young adult given the extreme level of violent/gory detail and the reading level in general. Still can't get the "What of the Flies?" chapter out of my head from book 1. Great story, great characters. The only hesitation I have is the 2nd half of the series. I think it happened because the publishers cancelled the 4th and 5th books due to bad sales while Yancey was trying to write the 3rd book. Then fans protested and got publishers to agree to give him a 4th book--again, while he was writing the 3rd book. I have a feeling that they turned out strange because he didn't get to write the series he originally planned to write. The 3rd and 4th books have almost the same theme and the 4th just seems to tie up loose ends rather than adding anything new. They aren't bad, but they aren't as soul-destroyingly good as the 1st and 2nd books.
DAMN the first 2 were good though.
This scene was also in the manga, I think. Basically, from what I remember, one of the operators says that one of the foreign soldiers has black skin, and one of the military guy reacts with "Black skin?!! BASTARTDLY 'MURICANS BLAGHAGHAHBLEH!!!", or something like that.EternallyBored said:
Not so much enemies as both being interested in gaining access to the other world. It all could've been amazing if author wasn't radical rightwing Japan putzriot (I presume) and actually shown US, China and Russia as what they are: current superpowers of our world. Instead, he was more interested in turning them into saturday morning villains, and also loli tits and guns.Amir Kondori said: