Yeah, good point, they certainly are similar in that sense. I think that similarity may even be acknowledged within the anime through Gojo making a point of determining just how crazy Nobara is in her debut episode.
@@imyouralibi6208 nah looked up the name meant haruta, it felt like she was meant to look pathetic and weak in that battle just to make nanami look even better when he swooped it.
@@somponz Ohhh my bad 😅 I see your point. Honestly, Haruta felt redundant as a character, imo. He felt like a mini Mahito to me: annoying af and seemingly impossible to kill.
i so agree. nobara had shit tons of potential after her fight with mahito and i was so dissapointed with how it ended bec i loved her character and had so much hope for it. tho i dont think she needs alot of solo wins to be good since her technique works best with an attacker on her side like how we saw in the last ep of season 1 but the way gege portrayed in her fight with the blonde guy made her seem weak as hell rather it being a bad match up as claimed
Gege desire to kill most characters actually gives character like Sakura (which a lot of people say Nobara is better than) more shine. Because Sakura was useless in the beginning but had way more badass and meaningful character moments. Nobara should be living amongst the squad, but Gege is obsessed with killing characters.
I mean, I wouldn't say Gege is *obsessed* with killing characters based on what we've seen from the anime so far, but yeah, it absolutely takes guts to kill off prominent characters like Nobara, even if they weren't given as much attention as they should have been.
I think in general too, Jjk just doesn't delve deeply into their characters and this is the downfall for me, the only character that I feel has the most potential to be a great character with good motivations is Megumi and Maki... Nobara also suffers because of this lack of depth, I felt nothing after her death even though she was considered a lead character, kinda sad and underwhelming truly, and although entertaining, bringing Todo and creating the lighthearted moment really took away from her death as well. Even her back story was shallow I feel...
Thats wrong. There are a lot of characters in jjk who are well written and complex like for eg. Gojo, Geto, Megumi, Toji, Yuji, Maki. Nobara was decent. She had very interesting flaws one of which being her overall black and white viewpoint which she could have developed upon as a character but plot wise she had a very little role to play so its much better she died instead of being the next Sakura. But still the way her death was handled was pretty good and thematically consistent.
@@Juryoku113in terms of Nobara i can see what you mean if you look at it in the sense that it was given but you have to admit it was truly a lot of wasted potential for her character, because even though she wasn't as in depth I can admit she was decent enough for the time we spent with her
@@Juryoku113I can agree with the other characters you listed, though Yuji is very questionable in my opinion, for a main character I feel like I'm not as invested in him as I should be
@@nathangreen1422 I find him interesting cuz he doesn't have any grand motivation like "I want to become Hokage" or "I want to become the strongest" but just guiding people to their proper death. The story doesn't revolve around him instead he is treated as just another character. There is much more to proper death rather than just not dying to a curse which is yet to be explored in the story. Yuji wants to save people by killing curses because he is strong, his grandfather's last words and irony being him completely helpless watching innocent people and his loved ones die just cuz he lives. His dynamic with Mahito is really well executed, how Mahito challenges his ideals and even forces Yuji to accept the flaws in his motivation. He accepts that he just kills curses without thinking, similar to how Mahito kills humans without thinking instead of giving himself a false reason in doing so.
@@visupreme2757 Maybe that's an oversimplification, but Yuji was so deeply shell-shocked that he was willing to let Mahito kill him. I would've expected more than a pep talk to break him out of that, especially considering all the crap he'd already gone through in the arc.
Hold on- Yuji is overpowered? Yuji? Itadori? ... He's literally not even that strong compared to other characters. Literally almost every high-tier is stronger than him. Being one of the stronger students isn't anything special considering how weak most of the students are.
In the first episode, Itadori displays superhuman abilities with no explanation, survives with one-in-a-million odds, and easily suppresses the most powerful curse in existence. I call that overpowered.
@@nicholaswesoloskie7194 I've heard a few things from the manga but haven't actually read it. I plan to just wait for the rest of the anime to come out. I don't usually care for the idea of waiting so long before revealing why a protagonist is as strong as they are, but it would ultimately depend on how Gege executes that reveal 🤔
as a guy who has been in anime and manga for ages - if you're looking for a manga that has an interesting and compelling female lead, check out Trinity Blood. she's not written as traditionally strong, but Ester does have a very interesting and complex character motivation
That's not what it was. Her hometown was a commentary on how close-minded Japan is. Especially in small villages in the middle of nowhere. Gege has made this same commentary a few times, the most notable being Mimiko and Nanako.
I really genuinely think Gege started writing JJK and wanted Nobara to the female lead but ended up liking Maki more. Because Slight Manga spoiler After this Arc Maki is basically the Female lead and has an entire Arc where she's the main character and tons of major fights and hype moments! Literally feels like Gege just wanted to switch Female leads so he killed Nobara and put Maki in her place.
Oof, yeah, that's what it sounds like. I mean, I'm glad because my wish for Maki to be the female lead is basically coming true, but at the same time, I feel bad for Nobara being so carelessly shunted off to the side like that 😕
i get the point, nobara could've had so much potential but the problem is comparing her to yuji or megumi isn't fair, both of those characters come from backgrounds with a large amount of history with sorcerers. The manga improves on this later on and imo it was a good idea killing her off that early into the series since rn she wouldn't really have helped a lot towards the plot, but that's just me
It's a little hard not to compare her to Yuji and Megumi though since, because they and Nobara are the protagonists, Nobara is constantly being juxtaposed against them, especially in S1.
@@jgg6932 You're welcome to present an actual counter argument any time. Cuz saying "you hatin" and then just making blanket statements and/or an appeal to emotion really isn't gonna convince me.
Might be forgetting some things but, in the beginning, Itadori's grandfather was the biggest part of why Itadori decided to become a sorcerer to protect people. He was challenged on that pretty quickly, which I appreciated, but I still don't think his motivations have been particularly fleshed out beyond what his grandfather told him. I don't really recall any emphasis being placed on the idea of Yuji fighting to give his opponents a "good death" except maybe when he's fighting transfigured humans. He's always been more focused on protecting innocents. As for "giving people a good death" I feel like I have seen it across a few anime (Demon Slayer probably being one of them) so it might not be as rare as you think 🤔
@@Somedude8853 IIRC, because of Tanjiro's compassion for demons, he tries to give them a "good" death, or at the very least a quick one. I could be remembering wrong though, it has been a while since I've seen S1, and with the more high-level demons in S2, it's more a matter of Tanjiro worrying about his own survival rather than worrying about how he's going to kill his opponents.
literally stated the very chapter after her death that she might not be dead, she's barely mentioned afterward and the villain is currently too powerful to beat with a piece of his soul still missing and ur first thought is... "that's the last we'll evert see of her, this is a good time to make a clickbait video"
@@deshawnwilliams6939 "Hey, this is a really well written character from an unbelievably popular anime that's blowing up social media right now, since she seems to have died I'll make a video on that disregarding the fact that she's still a large cut above 95% of female characters in animanga and the author went out of his way to reaffirm the audience that her death isn't confirmed to she's not really dead"
@@finnlawlor5555 I literally addressed the theory that Nobara might be coming back, did you not pay attention? 💀 Also, claiming she's "a large cut above 95% of female characters in animanga" is cringe, bro. Even if that were true, that'd indicate that the bar is pretty darn low, in which case we should be collectively pushing for a higher standard.
@@finnlawlor5555 Look, dude, if you want to explain your side, I'm all ears. But if you're just gonna spit insults while offering nothing to support your viewpoint, I'll just go ahead and peace out, k?
I keep hearing things about Chainsaw Man but haven't really looked into what it's about or whether or not I'd be interested in watching it. I did look up a character summary for Asa though and she seems interesting 🤔👍
@@imyouralibi6208 Little girl, what happens to the cast is up to the author; it's not for you to try to fix someone's intellectual property. If you want me to make an actual argument, then do, please, go make your own manga first and let me criticize it. Your whole video "essay" aren't that worth to argue with
@@raghatz LMAO! You reek of triggered 🤣 So you must absolutely hate the fact that there are countless rewrites in existence more popular than the original work. And that's a shame, because it's honestly beautiful to see fans express their love for something by going the extra mile to improve the existing work. Ah, the classic "let's see you do better!" argument. Even if I wasn't a writer (which I am), I still have a right to criticize a piece of entertainment, because the fact is that 1) nothing is perfect and 2) creators are naturally dependent on audience feedback. To use an analogy, I'm not a mechanic, but if my car started making strange noises, it'd be easy enough for me to tell something is wrong. The same goes for stories. Except, by your logic, (going back to the car analogy) because I'm not a mechanic, if my car breaks down, then I shouldn't bother bringing it to a professional because I should just accept that this turn of events indicates that the car is working just fine since I'm not allowed to find fault with something I don't fully understand. Do you realize how absurd that sounds? "Your whole video "essay" aren't that worth to argue with" That's just yet another way of saying you have no argument in the first place, lol.
This video is great ,what are you talking about ? If your meal was mix with shit , then you would say that is up to the cook and just accept that ? If you would , you are a real one😂
Ayup, quite a chongster of a comment I'm posting so as a preface I wanted to say, those are (mostly) just differing opinions to yours I'm posting, I don't particularly think you're wrong and maybe, who knows, I'll say something in there that you or another viewer haven't thought about yet! Enjoyed the video though more criticism of popular media is always good. -I don't really think Nobara wanted to get away from the country life because she has a strong sense of justice, moreso that it's natural for a kid to want to get away from the constant bullying and harassment you, your family and your friends are subjected to (her best friend left the city because she was being harassed for what her mother was, a witch, and said mother was friends with Nobara's grandma implying that she herself is a witch and thus subject to the same harassment naturally extending to Nobara hence why she's shown to not have many friends and has such an independent personality in the flashback), even if you don't really care about justice, you're going to want to get away from that. Nobara's relationship to and her idealization of the city life is as flawed as it gets and in a slice of life anime, the point would have been to make her see that people are the same no matter where you go. -Nobara's bit about just wanting an easy way to get money is kind of reminiscent of Nanami's. They both happen to be quite talented at a thing and that thing can make them the big bucks with the least amount of effort so they naturally lean towards it. If you look at how she looks for other opportunities she's just looking for something that requires, from her perspective, less effort than the thing she's already good at (in our case it'd be being a model with her preconception being that it just requires being pretty which she obviously believes she is) -Quite unrelated to JJK because we probably won't get something like that but a character just "liking fighting" can be quite endearing. The archetype of the battle junky is something we actually don't get enough of in anime as usually, it's just "Yeah I like fighting" and nothing more whereas the battle junky's character arc would usually be about how their obsession for battle will lead them towards making rash decisions, getting hurt disregarding the worries people who like them could have or even outright disregarding the safety of their loved one for the battle thrill and so on. Just a tangent I wanted to make because, again, I think we don't see enough of that trope besides the half-assed "I like fighting yo" -We've talked about the strength argument before, Nobara is outright impressive in universe it's just that she's stuck between the two chosen ones. It's bad writing I agree with you but I don't think the issue is her being too weak, it's the other two (well really the others in general) being ridiculously, unjustifiably strong. Also I think it's a bit unfair to not count Nobara's win against Momo because of Mai's interference if we're not going to count her wins in group fights, just a thought. I agree that the narrative not recognizing how weak she is is annoying however, her being self-conscious about it is not the answer imo. To me a character blaming themselves for not being on the same level as "the guy who has the strongest curse user of history" stuck inside him and "the genius child of the genius family" would just appear as whiny and irrational: it makes sense she's not on the same level and it's perfectly normal, the issue has more to do with Gojo and the other experienced curse users not reacting to the fact that she's a weak link in their group -The flashback has to be just setting up that she's going to come back with some weird witch powers (this is not a spoiler, just pure speculation on my part). If it's not then that flashback is just Demon Slayer tier (this is derogatory btw, demon slayer flashbacks are fucking terrible). It also wouldn't make sense for them to take the time to say "Yeah there's a chance she might survive" if Gege is not going to have her survive, there is legitimately no reason as a writer to put the focus away from one of the hypest fight of your arc to just give... false information? -I feel like the line "Life wasn't so bad" is *supposed* to be working as what you're saying but I have to agree it falls flat because she didn't give her life to save someone else, she gave her life because she fell into a fucking trap. It was negligence on her part that led to this, not an awful situation she was put in where she had to take a hit for someone else (which, had she gotten there later with Todo there she could have, have her/todo/yuji 1v3 Mahito and she gives her life to protect Todo because she recognizes that in this situation he's just more useful than her and boom her line actually has impact and Todo's speech propping up Yuji isn't as weird because suddenly Todo isn't just an optimist who doesn't understand the situation but can pull his friend out of it, he's an experienced curse user guiding his junior through something he understands) -Your point about her help against the curse brother leading to Yuji being incapacitated is kind of weird: had she not been there or had she not had the kind of power to counter the brothers Yuji would just have been either dead or taken over by Sukuna which would have led to the same result. -Ron being useful is true but only for the books sadly. He barely ever says anything useful in the movies past the first two movies as his family takes over for him instead. -Yeah I agree that Nobara adds nothing to the group which might seem weird considering the above, but the fact is with the current story being as it is, while I don't think Maki would have been a good replacement, someone similar to a younger Mei Mei would have done a much better job, someone who's morally the complete opposite of the group yet still shares the same goals, someone who could actually keep up with the others through hard work and mastery over her unique trait AND could challenge their idea of what it means to do good, to be a good person. -The issue with Maki is that she's just the boring kind of gifted as well. Sure she has limitations but they aren't really limitations, they're just a trade-off. Had Maki been this good because of sheer training I would be inclined to agree with you but the fact of the matter is, she has a similar situation as Toji's: she is literally physically super-human even without training. Sure she's *somewhat* more interesting than most due to her training but it doesn't look like her rivalry with Mai runs that deep as for her family, the Zenin have overall been portrayed as kind of the bad side of the exorcist world in the first place so her leaving them isn't so much a trial of her character as it is her doing the obviously correct thing. Also when she can't do something she isn't ashamed because of that sole fact, she's ashamed that she can't live up to the absolutely unrealistic goals she set for herself which, in a normal story, is something she'd get over not by getting better but by recognizing that she's just one person and can't do everything herself. However this is not a normal story this is a shonen, realistically she'll get a power-up that'll put her on the same playing field as a Megumi or a Todo (again her spell is the same as Toji's only slightly weaker because she still has a trace of cursed energy: we know it can be damn busted). Maki is absolutely common for a shonen female character is the sad thing and they always end up developing in similar ways (being strong, then getting outclassed, then getting self-conscious about it, then losing something precious or finding something precious again leading to a power-up, then achieving X or Y goal, then stagnating while the author crosses their finger and hopes everyone is satisfied with that) which is... not good.
I agree with everything you’re saying, with but a single caveat. About the point of the lines stating that she might survive being completely pointless if she doesn’t… Gege does that a lot. Which is incredibly frustrating because yes, it’s just bad writing. I remind you, he replaced a cool, interesting villain he’s been building up for 2 seasons, a flashback arc, and a movie, with a literal bodysnatcher. Gege sometimes just fumbles. He makes stupid decisions literally just because it’s something you wouldn’t expect, even if it literally makes the story actively worse. It is grating that the series is getting so much traction that admitting that is already seen as heresy.
@@Arrakiz666 There's a difference between the whole thing with Kenjaku/Geto which is a bait and switch (At first you just assume it really is geto and then you get to the movie and are like: "But wait, if he's dead then who the fuck is-" and then you get to the reveal that it really is Kenjaku. For us it doesn't change much other than our assumptions on the relationships between the characters and it's not like it makes the flashback pointless either: it set up movie Geto, Toji and a lot of other lore like the fact that curses actively change depending on how strong humanity is with Gojo tipping the scale and curses getting stronger for it) and giving a dead character a flashback the second before their death which, to be frank, is even worse than what demon slayer does because instead of the usual DS thing of explaining why the guy who just died was an asshole, in this case they're setting up quite a bit. Now of course because of how those stories are written maybe in 100 chapters Gege will have changed his mind about what he wants to do and most of those set ups will be flushed down the drain, it wouldn't even surprise me, but what I'm saying in this case is "If he wasn't planning on bringing her back when writing the scene, he wouldn't have included those elements".
@@naunau311 I don’t know, man, replacing a cool villain that had a lot of build-up with a bodysnatcher with a fraction of that development, and then killing off all the last vestiges of his presence, seems like a very bad move. There’s messing with your audience’s expectations and then there’s shooting yourself in the foot.
@@Arrakiz666 What I'm saying is that the build up "geto" had still works for Kenjaku from our point of view. What we saw "Geto" do is what he did but it doesn't change that it still happened. I don't really know if it's a bad move or not since it's barely been revealed, we'll have to see how it goes going forward, but with the flashback arc and the movie, it would just not have made sense for Geto to act like he does in current times which is why those two happened before the reveal. It's a clue for the audience that "something is wrong with that version of Geto". Now of course maybe Kenjaku will be a terrible villain it would have been better for Geto to go through a character assassination and have him act like "he" does in current times but it's a bit too early to tell. I don't really think it's shooting Gege in the foot from a storytelling perspective, just from a "the fanboys/fangirls of that character will be irrationally angry because you just confirmed that their favorite character is dead" perspective which as far as I'm concerned doesn't matter. Besides it's a shonen, if we're being real the "real" Geto might come back in like 5 or 7 arcs, there was that one bit where Geto's body fought back against Kenjaku somefuckinghow so it wouldn't surprise me.
@@naunau311 Firstly, thanks for this chongster of a comment, lol. There's a lot to discuss here. Good point on Nobara not necessarily having a sense of justice. Though I'm assuming you got a lot of this background info from the manga since I don't recall learning it in the anime? I think a big reason for why the "I like fighting" archetype *does* work in some cases is because there's something behind it. Even looking at Gojo from JJK (and I believe we did somewhat touch on this in a conversation outside of RU-vid), while he's not particularly obsessed with fighting in general, he does crave a challenge, and the obvious reason behind that is that he's so absurdly powerful that it makes him bored. That's why he looked so happy when he was fighting Toji, Sukuna, and Hanami. I think you are right that the archetype is underdone in a sense. While writing up this comment, I struggled to think of any examples. So, yes, it would be nice to see it well-executed on a more regular basis, as with all things in writing. I disagree with the idea of Megumi being a "chosen one" or "unjustifiably strong." It's made clear that his skillset comes from within his lineage (which you pointed out in the same paragraph). Of course generations of insanely skilled sorcerers are going to produce an insanely skilled sorcerer. That's pretty much a given. Megumi's power levels are no more dubiously achieved than Gojo's, who also gained his incredible skills from his lineage. As for Itadori, while I currently agree that his abilities are ludicrous and seemingly unjustifiable, I have heard somewhere (probably from Esper's video) that it may also be due to his unknown lineage. Even so (as you agreed) I don't think that excuses Nobara. Though the fact that you suggested a Mei Mei equivalent as a potential replacement female lead kinda works against your point here, imo? If the problem is that Nobara is a "nobody" (despite the information you provided where she in fact *does* have a sorcerer lineage) surrounded by "chosen ones" than why would Mei Mei, whose lineage we know nothing about who got hella strong solely through training, be any less of a problem? If anything, that seems to indicate that the true problem is that Nobara wasn't making an effort to train harder (which leads back to the problem of the character(s)/narrative not addressing her shortcomings). While counting victories in general, I included Nobara's fights where she teamed up with someone. It's just in the category of solo fights that I disregarded them. I think you might've misunderstood that. You seem to have it out for Demon Slayer, lol. Can you explain why you dislike the flashbacks in that anime? Also, I think I have to agree with Arrakiz. Gege hinting at a return which may never happen could just be an example of bad writing due to indecisiveness. It's not like that's completely unheard of. And as I already mentioned in the video, I'm hoping Nobara doesn't come back; it'll just be worse for her character if she does (which I think you agree with). Yeah, I would've preferred to see your suggestion of Nobara sacrificing herself for Todo. Going out with a bang as opposed to a whimper. If Yuji would've died/been taken over in the fight against the brothers, then I think it's safe to say that events would've been drastically different from what they were. Which is basically my whole point. Nobara's involvement led to a certain string of events that had significant impact on the plot. Yeah, I was admittedly moreso referring to the books when talking about Ron. Mei Mei definitely would've been an interesting lead/contrast to the other two. Her fight scene/backstory given in S2 certainly peaked my interest. Think I have to disagree on Maki. I don't see how her skills make her "boring" (which is a pretty subjective term anyway). If anything, the "superhuman without training" part of it is good, because it would put her on Itadori's level in the beginning, which is exactly the kind of leg-up that Nobara needed. I feel like you're being pretty dismissive of Maki's relationship with Mai. Even putting aside the fact that they're twins, they obviously had a very close relationship as kids. And not even taking into account how hard it would be for Maki to discard that relationship when leaving the Zenin clan feels unfair, honestly. "when she can't do something she isn't ashamed because of that sole fact, she's ashamed that she can't live up to the absolutely unrealistic goals she set for herself" Well, I mean, same thing? Yeah, fair point on the vicious cycles of shounen. It is disappointing, but I'm still holding out a sliver of hope for Maki 🤞
