Daniel E Fleuranvil

Professor McClurg

English Composition 1

4/2/17

The Fallacy about Sequels

Creators throughout all of history have brought characters built on previously explored

and well received concepts and ideas. In the modern day, critics have a plethora of ways of

judging the difference between high and low quality work, and it isn’t uncommon for some of

these ways to seemingly be based on uniqueness. For example, a popular Japanese animation

critic who goes by the name of “Digibro” the often criticizes A-1 Pictures (a Japanese animation

studio) for having characters of similar design with similar defining characteristics. Much like

these spiritual successors, official sequels and reboots are often viewed with disdain even before

they’re released. Regardless, they typically do well in terms of viewership, even in comparison

to the original work. If this is true, then how important is uniqueness within a story. I contest,

that the uniqueness of a story has little to no effect on how media is received.

To the casual viewer, the parameters of reviewing a series may solely rely on their

experience when building a public recommendation, but to the more academically interested

viewer, it should be imperative that they ensure there review addresses the films already

accumulated success. Once a piece of media becomes popular, it becomes apart of what is

currently topical. As such, allowing yourself and your readers/viewers to learn how they feel

about it first hand furthers their ability to articulate their feelings in regards to future and past

films. It would also be incredibly negligent to not mention the main motivation of the creation of

movies when discussing how much of a success you believed them to be. Last but not least, if the

similarities of cliches of media weren’t constantly used as a negatives, it would further the

conversation, critiques, and commentary of that genre. For example, watchers familiar with the

Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, could be drawn to the differences in shot compositions between

iterations, rather than that they are indeed in the same situation.

The depth that a person sees in an individual scene is largely up to the person, rather than

the creator of that scene. While an individual might see one thing, the majority of people might

see something vastly different. It is for that reason, that sample sizes of active are important, but

aren’t to be fully trusted. In general, polling from a dedicated websites invites more dedicated

users to answer, so they don’t necessarily reflect the rest of the population. This is especially true

when they can form communities of there own, and those can have unique biases based on how

often they see certain tropes. Though Rotten Tomato is made up of the most dedicated

moviegoers, has no in-site ability to form a community making it more consistent than most

other websites. The easiest metric for checking the popularity of a movie is by far their box

office numbers. Money eliminates the possibility of falsifying the information to unfairly

increase or decrease a movies score. Unfortunately, factors such as inflation, population, and

advertising all have an effect on how much a movie can make. It should be noted that viewership

of television series aren’t publicized like with movies. In the case of anime, budgets are nearly an

industry secret, with most references being to it being in vague scales. While both these

methodologies are flawed, they are the least subjective metrics to gouge a film's success.

While the quality of art is subjective, it isn’t uncommon for reviewers to establish a set of

rules or guidelines that they expect from a story for them to consider it good. Often times critics

will use simplistic and/or deterministic language to describe aspects of the story they disliked to

introduce the part of the ruleset that is relevant to their critique. One such example can be found

in Professor Akia review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where he called it “the most poorly

told story by a level movie production I’ve seen this year.” Part of the reason for Akia dislike of

the film was its pacing, but this was only empowered by what he opted to call “fan-service.” This

was in reference to the movies references of past iterations of the franchise. His critique went so

far as to say that this movie was just a remake of one of those movies but with more main

characters, meaning there was less time to tell a story. Regardless, this “remake” made almost 40

times the original when adjusted for inflation in the opening week. There rotten tomato score are

quite identical with Star Wars: The Force Awakens having a 92 and Star Wars: A New Hope

having a 93. The reason why uniqueness as an argument, specifically for the Star Wars: The

Force Awakens, doesn’t is how long the time period between these movies were. Nearly 40 years

passed between those 2 movies, so the many people of the new audience weren’t apart of the

original audience, meaning a bigger audience and more money.

The world that a story takes place in is possibly the most important background decision

that an author can make. The world defines what is believable within the confines of a story and

how characters are expected to interact with each other and the audience. For example, in a

world made up of talking animals, what are pets? If regular animals are used as pets, then who

decides which animals are fully sentient beings and which are only pets. The answers to these

kinds of questions are important for building a world and yet show that give unique and

prevalent answers to this question don’t seem to have a lead in their online ratings as supposed to

there online counterparts. For example, Peppa the Pig has tried to keep true to the rule that

“birds, reptiles, insects and fish would be portrayed as 'real' animals” and has kept a 6.6 on IMDb

while Camp Lazlo which has made no attempt of making a rule as kept a 6.4 (IMDb is not a

purely professional critic controlled website, but it has one of the largest users bases.) While

many shows have had an entirely anthropomorphic rosters of characters, most don’t have any

semblance of a rule (e.g. Mickey Mouse as his best friends Pluto and Goofy who are both dogs.)

Another example of how the particular uniqueness of a world doesn’t effect it’s rating are the

show The Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water and Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Both

started airing on October 3, 2015, and both were sci-fi anime about high school kids in a school

approved battle-royal where the main character is sword toting male who is new to this, yet still

beats the flame sword wield princess in the first episode. The set ups for these world’s

similarities don’t end there, as they seem to follow each in story and characters nearly episode

for episode. They are both following this type of world's tropes that have been well established

for over a decade (It should be noted that anime typically releases on a seasonal calendar,

meaning that 4 separate showing will typically air on the same new anime time slots a year, and

there are no shortage of time slots.) Currently, The Asterisk Wars has a 6.9 on IMDb while

Chivalry of a Failed Knight has a 7.5. While the way a world is constructed matters, the

individuality of that world among others isn’t necessary to be successful.

From the treacherous second in command villain, to the unwavering dedication of the

main hero, we have all seen archetypes in one shape or form. An Archetype is defined by the

Oxford dictionary as “a very typical example of a certain person or thing.” Most, if not, all

characters are based off of pre-existing archetypes such as the brute or the love interest. This

allows for a “primitive mental image” to formed on this character, making them easier to

understand. Often times, it is said that a ‘good’ dynamic character branches out from there

archetype and blossoms in the story through the events that bring that character through their

own arc. The concept of dynamic characters as the protagonist is ignored nowhere more than in

shounen series such as Dragon Ball and Sword Art Online which, to be clear, are still heralded

by many to be on historic levels of greatness. A dynamic character is defined as “a literary or

dramatic character who undergoes an important inner change, as a change in personality or

attitude,” and this character is typically one of the main characters. Since Son Goku, the main

character of the Dragon Ball series, premier on television 30 years ago and Kazuto “Kirito”

Kirigaya, the main character of Sword Art Online, premiered 5 years ago, both these characters

have refused to follow their role as one of the dynamic character of there series. The closest thing

to a growth in these two have been their arbitrary power level’s growth. With a set up like this,

someone unaware of the genre might suggest that maybe they were unique in this venture, thus

that being the source of their success, but there quite literally dozens of this same breed being

made each year. Yet, On IMDB none of the canonical materials (there have been a multiplicity

of movies, cameos, and broadcasted shows in both series’s lifetimes which aren’t considered to

be apart of the narrative) for these 2 shows scores beneath a 7.9/10. What allows these shows to

accumulate so much popularity is the “primitive” and repetitive nature of these characters rather

than any concept surrounding uniques. Their simplicity allows for the viewers, specifically males

between 8 and 18, to project themselves onto the character easily. That concept is the defining

feature of the biggest market in anime for both global and internal sales/viewership(commonly

called “Shounen.”) These series clearly defied what has come to be expected of successful show

in making no attempt to make their characters seem more realistic, and yet, they still stand above

the crowd of things akin to them as some of the most popular anime ever.

When discussing any form of art, ensuring that the intent was to be understood as

subjective is incredibly helpful in making an appeal. If discussions about how non-unique a

particular part of a piece of media is, the media could be enriched from it. For example, sequels

seem to be an eternal force of dread for many moviegoers. Darren Franich even argued that “the

sequel is almost always worse than the original,” siting a graph composed of all rotten tomato

originals and sequels. The graph doesn’t include anything above the first sequel, and it also

doesn’t mention, that many of these movies outperform their predecessors on a monetary scale,

meaning people still go, regardless of how dreadful it seems to make them feel.

In the context of discussing different forms of art, disparagements originating from

unoriginality can be incredibly unhelpful. When reviewing a painting, the similarity of one piece

is largely brought as a negative. However, when a project becomes more complex, as is the case

with films and episodic programs, the similarities are seen as products of lazy writing or a lack of

creativity. Whle the tired feeling of avid watchers is understandable, the productions of these

pieces will not be slowed by approaching it with the same outlook. Rather than simply bashing a

show, the paralells could be used the highlight both the positive and negative attributes of either.

In the case of a successor being believed to be inherently worse, the intention of the successor’s

mirrored should be highlighted and decronstructed.

In conclusion, the individuality of a narrative isn’t as important as it would seem to be.

Even when a narrative is completely unoriginal, it still can do well in terms of revenue or even

ratings.While a world is essential to the plot, it doesn’t necessarily have to be separate from other

plots just like it to succeed. While time plays a big part in the success of a reboot or sequel, even

when released at literally the same time, uniqueness plays a small role. All in all, basing a

critique off of originality does little to further the discussion about the movie itself.

Bibliography

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