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Showing posts from July, 2022

Lycoris Recoil: The Art of Presenting Information

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One of the most difficult skills in story-telling is the technique of presenting information. Say I want to set up a plot point about a villain. This villain is a powerful influencer who has been undergoing some shady deals under the public eye. How should we present this information to the audience? One easy way is to have our characters discuss it, such as a group of police giving out mission reports. Another way is to allow the audience to just see the villain engage in his devious acts. But perhaps if we take a page out of the 'Lycoris Recoil' playbook, we may first establish him via a news programme praising his societal contributions, metonymize him with a owl pin and then transition to us seeing the "hero" engage in his treachery.  There is no perfect answer to the debate of how to present information. While the first method of simply having our characters info-dump may be a bog-standard one, it is still effective in ensuring that the audience understands what

Goodbye, Eri: Why add an explosion?

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  I think everyone is familiar with the term 'breaking the fourth wall'. In a theatrical play, we peep into the life of a character by seeing past the fourth wall, which is the wall that connects both the house, the character and the audience. However, a house should logically have four concrete walls. In a sense, even though the fourth wall is invisible for theatrical purposes, the characters still have to treat it as a concrete entity, ala exiting through a door. It is when the characters step forward and phase through the fourth wall does the audience's immersion break. It is by breaking its concreteness are the audience reminded that they are watching a bunch of actors acting on a stage. In anime and manga, this technique is mostly used for comedic purposes. Shows like 'Gintama' and manga like '100 girlfriends' utilizes these fourth wall breaks to subvert expectations and remind their audience not to take its content seriously. However, 'Goodbye Eri&