Well THAT was a shift!

[step1999]

MR ROBOT is great until just the last episode or so.

The first twist is really good, it turns out that two people the main character knows are actually his relatives, a father and sister. The main character Elliot forgot because he has severe mental disorders. THEN they ruin it by later revealing that the father specifically is actually a hallucination because the father has been dead for about 10 years or so. We've been seeing his hallucination dad commanding the hackers this whole time so I guess that was all not real or it was all Elliot imagining his dad doing it?

THEN the main villain, turncoats or something? Or maybe the main villain was in on it the whole time? I dunno by this point the main character is such an unreliable narrator you just give up. Then there's a timeskip and the whole climax is resolved literally offscreen and the main character suddenly decides he doesn't like what they did so he blunders about having a mental breakdown for literally the whole last episode. Then all his old hacker buddies just unquestioningly team up with their arch nemesis without Elliot. It's such a trippy terrible mess and it only goes crazy in the last episode or two.

Spoiler

I find it interesting that you thought the hallucination thing came out of nowhere, since they foreshadowed it a lot, too obviously IMO.

The idea with Mr. Robot is that whenever we saw him interacting with other characters it was actually Elliot, and he actually started Fsociety and then forgot about it due to his split personality. This is made a little more clear in Season 2 IIRC, which is pretty good. Also IMO the finale did an amazing job showing how bad the real world consequences of Fsociety's actions would be, and between seeing that and finding out about his split personality, it makes sense that Elliot would lose it a bit. Also IIRC it's implied that Tyrell had actually been working with Elliot while he was in his Mr. Robot persona for a bit, which explains his sudden amicability towards Elliot (again, this is hinted at more clearly in Season 2).

(NOTE: I might be misremembering some of this since it's been a while since I watched Season 1, I just wanted to correct you cause I really like this show and think you should give it another shot.)

 

[Cowabungaa]

The first thing I always think of when thinking about sudden shifts is Condemned 2: Bloodshot.

Around halfway through the game, maybe two-thirds, you get weird Fus Ro Da powers all of a sudden and the entire thing becomes super weird. Not the good, creepy weird the game was up until that point, but a crappy weird.

or it was all Elliot imagining his dad doing it?

Neither, it was Elliot himself with, probably, a dissociative identity disorder. That multi-layering is actually why I loved it so much, it all makes sense in in the end.

 

[Mister K]

So I've been reading though Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, it's cute as hell, when...

Interestingly enough, my most recent one is from Kobayashi too. It starts of rather cutesy-whimsy, right? I am a bit surprised by how fast the first dragon (Tora?) became infatuated by Kobayashi, but whatever.

Then I decided to watch the OP and one of the recommended videos was "the beach scene".

...

Well, whatever, lets take a looksie. Oh, how surprised I was when the girl with the biggest hooters decided to get really physically intimate with 10-year old boy. PEDO ALERT! CALL THE POLICE!

OK, OK, maybe it was a one time thing. I watched further. Then cutey-boo loli dragon pushes a kindergardener to the ground and, in her cutesy voice, says basically "lets f**k".

...

WHERE IS THE POLICE, DAMNIT?!!

This was the fastest I've ever dropped any show.

 

[Kreett]

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

"Do you feel like a hero, yet?"

 

[Kreett]

So I've been reading though Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, it's cute as hell, when...

Interestingly enough, my most recent one is from Kobayashi too. It starts of rather cutesy-whimsy, right? I am a bit surprised by how fast the first dragon (Tora?) became infatuated by Kobayashi, but whatever.

Then I decided to watch the OP and one of the recommended videos was "the beach scene".

...

Well, whatever, lets take a looksie. Oh, how surprised I was when the girl with the biggest hooters decided to get really physically intimate with 10-year old boy. PEDO ALERT! CALL THE POLICE!

OK, OK, maybe it was a one time thing. I watched further. Then cutey-boo loli dragon pushes a kindergardener to the ground and, in her cutesy voice, says basically "lets f**k".

...

WHERE IS THE POLICE, DAMNIT?!!

This was the fastest I've ever dropped any show.

To be fair the kid isn't blameless in his situation, he did try to summon a malevolent demon but accidentally got her instead, and while she tries to be a good guardian for him she also has a very narrow view of what she can do for him after he rejects all her magical gifts and offers of power. Though she is also a 6 foot woman with chest melons that is very intimate with a little boy as a result, it's hard to justify the beach episode sadly, watch the show from the beginning it's actually really good, even if you can't get over the cartoon character perving on a smaller cartoon character.

 

[TrulyBritish]

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

"Do you feel like a hero, yet?"

See, I could never read that quote without thinking of Rolf Harris saying it like "Can you tell what it is yet?"

 

[tippy2k2]

Terraformars (the Anime)

I just started watching it because I heard really good things. Thing is, for someone who likes Anime, I REALLY hate the anime tropes (fan service, over exaggerated reactions, etc).

Terraformars was alright but it had none of that stuff. It was 13 episodes of fighting giant cockroaches and people getting killed in gory ways.

"Well this is great!" thinks a stunningly handsome tippy2k2 "I heard that the first season was good but the series really picks up with season 2 (Terraformars Revenge)! I can't wait to start it!!!"

The very first episode, one of the main characters grabs someones boobs (someone who would have murdered the shit out of someone for even THINKING about doing that in the first season) and she's fine with it. Another cadet has a fantasy of all the girls on the mission in a shower. Now we're getting people not doing their jobs (in a God damn war zone where dozens have already been killed in some pretty brutal ways) and we're getting the "My face goes deathly pale with the stupid mouth drop thing going OOOOOOOOOHHHHAAAAAA!!!!" garbage...

I'm only two episodes into it. I will likely tough it out (#firstworldproblems) but I am gravely disappointed that they took a dark and gritty anime in war and tossed in a bunch of completely out of place Anime Tropes into it...

Damn it Terraformars, you disappoint me.

 

[Marik2]

Anything you've watched/read/played/listened to had a big shift in tone/situation that came out of nowhere and kind of confused you as to WHY?!?

SPOILERS. DUH.

So I've been reading though Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, it's cute as hell, when...
OUT OF NOWHERE...nudity.
Not just 'dots in the center of boobs', but 'surprisingly detailed tits/areolas for a few pages and then it's back to regular (PG-ish) stuff.
Being an adult, it doesn't bother me, but it did come out of nowhere given how very tame the manga is.

Also, recently catching up on reading 'The Sacred Blacksmith' which has a 'RAPE THE STRONG FEMALE' scene that does nothing but, I don't know...break her down for some reason?
It's like the author figured 'hey, what's a lazy, sleezy, break-in-tone, way of giving my female character a quick character arc...OOOO, I know! Let's have her be raped by the main bad guy and NOT tell anyone!!!!'.


Any others ya'll can think of?

Where's your avatar from? I think it's from that manga about a guy who has to kill teammates to level up.

 

[Tanis]

Where's your avatar from? I think it's from that manga about a guy who has to kill teammates to level up.

Nope, it's from Youjo Senki: https://myanimelist.net/manga/88930/Youjo_Senki

It's a great manga about a killer little girl in 'totally NOT WW1/2 with magic'.

I'm REALLY hoping for a SE2 of the anime, given that it's already blown past the manga.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Wow. I know the 40k universe is know for its grimdark and depressing atmosphere, but there is a difference between "gimdark" and "pointless, stupid cruelty for the sake of pointless, stupid cruetly." Shit like this is why I can't really get into the Warhammer franchise outside of lore overviews and the "If The Emperor Had a Text to Speech Device" series.

Yeah, keeping hoping that they'll stop sinking to new lows, they keep disappointing me.

 

[Saint of M]

A couple come to mind.

The Second Vampire Hunter D Book, Raiser of Gales. While I never really thought the books were scary (read the first 3), the Author tends to find ways to make humans look like bigger monsters then the vampires, werewolves, mutants, and other monsters out there, and that usually involves long, drawn out, detailed scenes of rape.

ow hanging Fruit, but I watched most of Evengalion in a few nights, not knowing all I was getting into, and I think it was somewhere between episodes 12 and 15 that things got creepy. Never mind the infamous last two episodes that make you go: What the heck?

 

[TilMorrow]

I guess the Assassin's Creed Artifacts of Eden being made by super god alien humans is a pretty major twist to a storyline about two shadowy organizations playing keep away with ancient artifacts.

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

If you're talking about On the Line's White Phosphorous I wouldn't say it was a shift as such, rather an escalation of Walker's bad decisions/assumptions since the start of the game causing even more terrible results. Otherwise no clue what you're talking about.

I thought they led upto that reasonably well, not perfectly but enough that you knew something wasn't quite right. Right from the first boss seeming to recognize her and calling her Shauni (a name that she then instinctively adopts when asked for a codename) and the general obsession the Domz had with her, the "Your friend in exchange for your soul" line etc.

I honestly never thought the DomZ called Jade Shauni because she was their Goddess, I always thought it was a term they were using to express their annoyance or they labeled her as such due to the threat she posed. Also the fact she was undermining and exposing the DomZ operations on Hillys kind of explains why they had a massive obsession with wanting her. Either way, the whole Goddess/power source twist had little foreshadowing mostly due to the fact we know next to nothing about the DomZ religious connections/beliefs before it is then dumped on the player in the last boss fight along with the revelation.

 

[Hawki]

Barring shifts in tone between installments, I can think of one - Pan.

Now, I like Pan, flawed as it is, but I can't deny there's a lot of tone shift. For example:

-Peter is in bed, forlorn (somber)

-Extravegently dressed pirates come in and abduct him and a number of children (zanny)

-Spitfires pursue the flying pirate ship (still zanny)

-Peter and the kids are in space (sort of, atmospheric)

-Quickly cuts to Neverland (awe)

-Cuts to singing Nirvanna (...the hell?)

-Cuts to slave labour (grim)

-Cuts to children being executed (not graphic, but what?)

This doesn't occur over that long a period of time either.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

When done right, sudden tonal shifts can be amazing.

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

I knew something was coming when I played that game, because people told me "bad things happen", so I was expecting something like that to happen. It still hit pretty damn hard because of how damn WELL they pulled it off.

Spoiler

Making you walk THROUGH that devastation before you get to the gut punch was an incredible touch

To me, the shift was the final final segment. Holy shit, did NOT see that coming and it left me emotionally wrecked.

--

Custom Robo had a shift too.

Like, most of the game is this lighthearted goofy series of battle tournaments, with some minor crime fighting going on. And then there's a handful of serious moments involving an autonomous killer robot.

And then suddenly:

Spoiler

Oh yeah, BTW, the world you know is just a tiny little neighborhood inside a dome. The real outside world is completely obliterated because of what that Killer Robot used to be before it got stuck inside the robot. There are giant fucked up canyons and holes full of static-y stuff everywhere, complete post-apocalypse outside the hidden exit to the dome, holy shit.

-

Not to mention Kid Icarus Uprising which is nothing but tonal shifts.

Spoiler

Yay, let's fight medusa and her minions...OH WAIT suddenly Hades rips up the credits and starts ruining things! Oop, hold on now the goddess of Nature is dropping Reset Bombs on human cities and killing them all! Time to deal with her and then we- ALIEN INVASION EVERYONE TEAMS UP HOLY C- Three year time skip! Hero was trapped in a ring the whole time and now his goddess is evil and has been murdering the world! Quick team up with the Goddess of Nature and, save your goddess from the thing possessing her! Whew, ok, that's dealt with. What were we doing again? OH RIGHT, let's kill Hades! All with some random hilarious humor peppered throughout!

It was a completely wacked out and hilariously awesome roller coaster.

-

Then there's the final segment of Read Only Memories.

Like, the game had a serious mystery but was also largely tongue-in-cheek, with the exception of one chapter that was basically a horror segment, as terrible things just followed wherever you went.

Then, you get to the end and after a fun little shooting minigame where you stungun enemy robots, BAM. Back into full-on horror mode for the final segment. 0_0 It was FREAKY.

-

And there IS that RPG that I made that has a tonal shift as the whole point of the game.

It starts off as an "after the credits" somewhat cliche-on-purpose silly game where you're trying to figure out why some people are "retro-izing" and looking all silly and pixel-y. And every time you complete a dungeon and find another non-answer to what's going on, things get just a little more concerning until finally things take one final turn to get really dark and serious. And you're left thinking "I feel like I should have seen this coming, but I really couldn't have, this is way out of left field."

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

From the recent Samurai Jack episode:

Spoiler

We see Scotsman getting annihilated by Aku cut to his skeleton just sitting there on a wheelchair cut to his daughters mourning him cut to him cartoonishly turning into a pile of dust cut to one of the daughters plying to avenge him cut to Scotsman immediately comming back as force ghost.

Wew lad, what a rollercoaster of feelings that was.

 

[Michel Henzel]

So I've been reading though Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, it's cute as hell, when...

Interestingly enough, my most recent one is from Kobayashi too. It starts of rather cutesy-whimsy, right? I am a bit surprised by how fast the first dragon (Tora?) became infatuated by Kobayashi, but whatever.

Then I decided to watch the OP and one of the recommended videos was "the beach scene".

...

Well, whatever, lets take a looksie. Oh, how surprised I was when the girl with the biggest hooters decided to get really physically intimate with 10-year old boy. PEDO ALERT! CALL THE POLICE!

OK, OK, maybe it was a one time thing. I watched further. Then cutey-boo loli dragon pushes a kindergardener to the ground and, in her cutesy voice, says basically "lets f**k".

...

WHERE IS THE POLICE, DAMNIT?!!

This was the fastest I've ever dropped any show.

What are you even on about, those are some of the best parts.

 

[Quellist]

I honestly never thought the DomZ called Jade Shauni because she was their Goddess, I always thought it was a term they were using to express their annoyance or they labeled her as such due to the threat she posed. Also the fact she was undermining and exposing the DomZ operations on Hillys kind of explains why they had a massive obsession with wanting her. Either way, the whole Goddess/power source twist had little foreshadowing mostly due to the fact we know next to nothing about the DomZ religious connections/beliefs before it is then dumped on the player in the last boss fight along with the revelation.

Oh granted, I just meant they properly foreshadowed that something wasn't right and the Domz, for whatever reason had a special interest in her.

Or maybe i'm just cracked...I thought the statue was the Domz Priest and that the actual Domz Priest was its head/weapon/whatever after all...

 

[SmallHatLogan]

From Dusk Till Dawn. I didn't see this movie until years after its release but I had no knowledge of it other than that it was a Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration.

Spoiler: Non specific spoilers about the general direction of the plot

It starts off seeming like a fairly serious movie about a couple of criminals taking a family hostage in order to get over the border to Mexico. Then about half way through the movie there's a massive tonal shift and it turns into an over the top silly action movie about killing vampires.

I honestly had no idea what to think about it. It took me a while to even decide if I liked it (I do).

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

I don't think it was a tonal shift - there are many times right from the first battle at the bus where you are doing questionable things. That was the culmination.

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

It does, to the point I have to ask for specifics because I can think of two things it applies to.

I'm going to assume it's the Heart of Darkness of video games since that was the actual good one though, though I also don't think it counts since it wasn't really a tone shift so much as escalation of what had already been happening.[/spoiler]

Does "White Phosphorous" mean anything to anybody?

If you're talking about On the Line's White Phosphorous I wouldn't say it was a shift as such, rather an escalation of Walker's bad decisions/assumptions since the start of the game causing even more terrible results. Otherwise no clue what you're talking about.

From a retrospective analysis, yes, it seems like an obvious (and necessary) step towards the point the game is trying to make.
At that point, though, and in light of everything that's happened before that point, it does signal a shift in tone. Because so far the game has played like a pretty run of the mill gung-ho military shooter, and if it ended there it would be remembered as such. It's after that point that the game stops harping on notions of duty and patriotism and becomes downright confrontational and accusatory of the player, introduces horror-like visions suggestive of an infernal limbo and forces pointless moral choices on the protagonist. So far the game has been about whatever's going on in Dubai; after that it's clearly about whatever's going on with Walker. And you.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Even then the game goes into the darkest places a Persona game has really ever gone before. Attempted suicide, sexual harassment, physical abuse and so on. That's only the tutorial boss too. Persona was supposed to be the lighter side of the SMT series too, c'mon guys what gives.

Have you played any of the other main games in the series? Compared to the games in the main series and other spinoffs like Digital Devil Saga and Devil Survivor, this game is practically Barney and Friends.

Still, I appreciate the shift in tone back away from the overly-happy Persona 4. It was still great, but the tone made it play out like a bad anime, which led to me wishing that Teddie would grab Rise and Yosuke and hurl themselves from the top of the tallest building in Inaba. I liked the story and characters in Persona 3 more, and I like it that the developers decided to go back in that direction.