Yeah, I had pretty much the same reaction somewhere around that point too. The Demon and its attendant theme of “the most dAnGeROuS wishes aren’t self serving and cruel ones, but a desire to improve things and help others” are 100% the worst part of the worldbuilding and in fact are so bad that they kind of retroactively ruin all the cool ideas that came before imo.
I don’t want to rail against something that people enjoy the way they enjoy Dungeon Meshi especially since the early parts are so good and charming, but goddamn if it didn’t do two things that really sour it for me. The revelation about the Demon and the whole cosmology of the setting are one, and the other was pretty early on with the Falin storyline when
(spoiler for the show up through episode 13 or so and also this is just me ranting about a specific general narrative device that annoys me and not something super specific to Dungeon Menshi except that it did it and I found it annoying)
they just hit a narrative tension reset button by raising her before it’s too late and then immediately taking her away again but in a way that was no longer super urgently pressing. I hate that narrative device so much, like “oh you’ve accomplished [narrative objective], congratulations! Time to undo the completion of [narrative objective] and restore the plot to the point of still wanting [same narrative objective]!” because it’s just like why? It feels so pointless to have a story shift from having a goal to pretending to advance and then just saying “psych!” and still being in the same place, and while it’s not like that’s a super common narrative device it does pop up from time to time and I always hate it.
One should never segue from where one is at currently to literally just that same place, that’s so boring and pointless just think of a better way of not solving [core narrative objective] than having it solved and then deus ex machina unresolving it, or think of a new objective after solving the first. Resetting progression is the laziest and least interesting way one can possibly approach things.
One should never segue from where one is at currently to literally just that same place, that’s so boring and pointless just think of a better way of not solving [core narrative objective] than having it solved and then deus ex machina unresolving it, or think of a new objective after solving the first. Resetting progression is the laziest and least interesting way one can possibly approach things.
Agreed. It’s a pretty solid rule of writing that one should have each goal completion happen once and only once if at all possible.
I hate reset-happy writing. It’s dull and frustrating.
Yeah, I had pretty much the same reaction somewhere around that point too. The Demon and its attendant theme of “the most dAnGeROuS wishes aren’t self serving and cruel ones, but a desire to improve things and help others” are 100% the worst part of the worldbuilding and in fact are so bad that they kind of retroactively ruin all the cool ideas that came before imo.
That deeply hurts my love of the show, especially knowing this is coming up in it.
I hate status quo sophistry so much.
I don’t want to rail against something that people enjoy the way they enjoy Dungeon Meshi especially since the early parts are so good and charming, but goddamn if it didn’t do two things that really sour it for me. The revelation about the Demon and the whole cosmology of the setting are one, and the other was pretty early on with the Falin storyline when
(spoiler for the show up through episode 13 or so and also this is just me ranting about a specific general narrative device that annoys me and not something super specific to Dungeon Menshi except that it did it and I found it annoying)
they just hit a narrative tension reset button by raising her before it’s too late and then immediately taking her away again but in a way that was no longer super urgently pressing. I hate that narrative device so much, like “oh you’ve accomplished [narrative objective], congratulations! Time to undo the completion of [narrative objective] and restore the plot to the point of still wanting [same narrative objective]!” because it’s just like why? It feels so pointless to have a story shift from having a goal to pretending to advance and then just saying “psych!” and still being in the same place, and while it’s not like that’s a super common narrative device it does pop up from time to time and I always hate it.
One should never segue from where one is at currently to literally just that same place, that’s so boring and pointless just think of a better way of not solving [core narrative objective] than having it solved and then deus ex machina unresolving it, or think of a new objective after solving the first. Resetting progression is the laziest and least interesting way one can possibly approach things.
Agreed. It’s a pretty solid rule of writing that one should have each goal completion happen once and only once if at all possible.
I hate reset-happy writing. It’s dull and frustrating.