I love this trope and the hilarious scenarios it leads to, where awful murderers can just chill out with the good guys like nothing happened. The sunny naivety of it all is appealing somehow. Maybe just for the contrast to more grounded stories.
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Forgiveness in Japanese fiction
- Thread starter Solarc
- Start date
Please remember that Shaw did NOTHING WRONG. A minor traffic incident. As you can clearly see, Shaw barely scraped Han's vehicle, then promptly made a phone call to extend his friendship to Dom in his time of grief.
Well they fought a tank with their cars so...
yeah, it was always an anime.
They even have the Power of Friendship as the main theme of the series.
Western media is fairly guilty of this too, Darth Vader being the most famous example. One good act doesn't undo all the genocide he did because he had a spooky dream
It's funny because Jonathan keeps trying to forgive DIO but he keeps being more and more of a dick until
Part 4 is the best for this trope. With the exception of Kira, like every enemy stand user becomes their friend after getting the shit kicked out of them
It's funny because Jonathan keeps trying to forgive DIO but he keeps being more and more of a dick until
his great great grandson punches him so hard that he explodes
Part 4 is the best for this trope. With the exception of Kira, like every enemy stand user becomes their friend after getting the shit kicked out of them
It's often purely used as a way to showcase the moral "power" of the main character, completely ignoring how actual rehabilitation or redemption would work, in turn giving a strong immoral or amoral tint to the whole.
You You Hakusho did this well with Elder Toguro. He was a cold hearted villain, slowly revealed to be more grey and sympathetic who paid for his crimes and didn't get the easy way out of redemption.
Then again, Freezing was pretty meh even for a titty anime. As titty animes go, I'd definitely rank it below stuff like Seikon no Qwaser, Sekirei or even Manyuu Hikenchou.
Heh. I'm trying to imagine an angry scream version of "This is not ok!" and the results are amusing.
I believe it is a concept of Asian tales that no one is truly good or evil just different and that unless the act is completely harmful, you can be forgiven. That said I think there certain media that may misunderstand where the line is to forgive (The Freezing example).
I mean, yes it's a long-standing storytelling trope. Look at Journey to the West.
Wasn't it just Luke/ the force that forgave him? Leia and the universe as a whole didn't forgive Vader.
This is the real question. Like, who's worse, the guy following orders or giving them? Especially when you're forgiving the latter?
It's similar in Japanese games, where you fight some villain (often repeatedly throughout the game), and after you win, they just walk away with the heroes just standing and looking after them. When you lose, it's game over because it was a fight to the death.
Drives me nuts
Re: Star Wars: Vader dies for his sins btw. there is a difference...
Drives me nuts
Re: Star Wars: Vader dies for his sins btw. there is a difference...
Examples like Darth Vader are less "forgiveness" and more "redemption"
And generally redemption on the scale of something like Vader did requires the character's death while attempting to make correcting the mistakes their former villainy.
If Vader had survived betraying the Emperor and everyone forgave him and he just joined up with the crew, nobody would have considered his redemption "earned"
And generally redemption on the scale of something like Vader did requires the character's death while attempting to make correcting the mistakes their former villainy.
If Vader had survived betraying the Emperor and everyone forgave him and he just joined up with the crew, nobody would have considered his redemption "earned"
The mom who plotted with the enemies and was responsible for the death of all of her coworkers as well as probably hundreds of thousands at least in cities around the world, if she had a change of heart and was just able to escape on a helicopter with her family it would have been an act of forgiveness that would feel unearned, but since she sacrificed herself to stop what she started, it was an earned act of redemption.
It's definitely something you can say, but it really only makes sense if you're talking to someone who... cares about you I guess? Like in a sense you're withdrawing any chance at reconciling but that wouldn't matter if you were never friends in the first place.
It was refreshing when I started watching like Miyazaki stuff when I was a kid compared to always kill the baddies in US stuff. It felt to me like reflection of post WWII Japan itself. But now it just feel like a giant trope. I don't by this higher honor and spiritual ascendance bs.
Re:Godzilla Spoilers
I understand the usage of the redemption instead of forgiveness as the intended trope but much like the complaints in this thread, what she does to redeem herself is not even close to sufficient to feel earned.
