Sacrifice in Anime/Manga/Games

[Hollow 1977]

I am pretty sure everyone of us has seen at least one a character that gives everything to save someone or some place or protect something he or she holds dear. Sometimes the character dies and other times they survive or even brought back to life. My question is if a character survives after making a sacrifice or is brought back to life does this make the sacrifice worth less or even ruin it. For me I want the characters to live or be brough back somehow but does this ruin a good sacrifice and possible character development. How does it ruin or make the sacrifice less or does it matter? Looking for your thoughts and examples.

 

[mjshi]

Just in general, a character who dies and is resurrected is generally received with criticism. It makes their death "cheap", it makes it seem as they gained something without really losing anything. Perhaps this is a bit controversial to say (but this is the most famous example I can think of) in the bible, it says that "Jesus died for our sins", but then is "resurrected within three days". The story that the bible puts forth would be much more compelling if the main character died permanently rather than temporarily, because it makes the "cost" that the character pays basically nothing. It takes away the sincerity of the sacrifice. A truly impactful sacrifice is one whose payment isn't refunded. A genre-savvy player is all too used to someone dying then coming back to life. You want them to, at the end, say "Wait, but... he/she's coming back right? Don't tell me this is the end!" and keep that desperate hope until the credits scroll.

 

[Tu-Face]

Just in general, a character who dies and is resurrected is generally received with criticism. It makes their death "cheap", it makes it seem as they gained something without really losing anything.

Yeah, this specific trope is often referred to as "Death Is Cheap". The only way I can think of to make it seem less "cheap", is to have the other characters go through some arduous ordeal in order to bring back the deceased. Even that will garner criticism though. I mean, look at Dragon Ball Z lol. They might have overdone it a bit.

 

[Pine Towers]

May contain spoilers of really old games/animes/movies.


I guess we can't split the idea of sacrifice with the idea of death in general.


Like said, resurrecting can be kinda of lame to the sacrifice. Dragon Ball falls to this in the Z saga.

Spoiler

Sure, gathering the DB is rough and in the original saga it was worth the effort to resurrect Kuririn, and was a good way to make Goku train after being killed by Piccolo in the fight against Raditz. Was a great way to invoke the SSJ Goku because at that time the Earth's DB allowed only one resurrection so, when Frieza killed Kuririn (again) it was a great shock. Later we discovered that Namekusei's DB don't have this restriction. It was even played out rather nice in the last movie - Return of F - by resurrecting Frieza and, at the end, shock the player with the destruction of Earth and its DB. Sure, it was Ex Machina played by Whils, but even so...

I considered this an awful way of dealing with death and thus, sacrifice.


Chrono Trigger did something quite nice.

Spoiler

After Crono dies, you can choose to revive him or not: Better, it isn't a revive per se, but a time travel hijack much like a magic trick. This makes for a great lesson that unless you have time travel, your action has consequences. But even better, even with the consequences there's maybe always a way to fix things. Even though almost 100% of players revive Crono, I guess a whole lot kill Magus after that, because this way Glenn can return to normal. This is another kind of sacrifice, since you must sacrifice a (potential) party member (a tool to reach the end of the game) for an event that only happens after the game is finished. It does depends more if you're a Frog or Magus fan.

I'm a Magus fan.


Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (TTGL) is one of my favorite anime because of how it dealt with this.

Spoiler

Simon's growth as a responsible man were steady through the first episodes but he already looked after Kamina for reassurance. With Kamina's death Simon learned (the hard way) that to be a true man you must take ALL responbility over his shoulder. Kamina's death was fundamental to keep Simon's growth as a man. Without this he would be in Kamina's shadow for ever. It allowed for him not only becoming more like Kamina, but becoming more than Kamina.

I really liked this and I still get emotional remembering.


But, when dealing with video-games, we must be aware to maintain consistency between story and gameplay, else we get the why-not-Phoenix-Down-you-know-who that happened in Final Fantasy VII.

 

[Hollow 1977]

Yeah I am a fan of Dragon Ball Z, Fairy Tail, and Rave Master as most of the cast lives through the story. I believe you can have less important characters die or moments when a character sees someone die but they actually live. Still though the chracter does suffer even if the person did not die. Bleach has not really killed off any main characters aside from ones that never really did much aside from a few appearances.  Naruto was really bad as some characters I Iiked died but it did cause the ones left behind to mature.  


I agree Pine Towers: But after playing Crisis Core I learned the that why FF7 was so tragic. After the death the two characters reunited in the aferlife. They were lovers after all.


They did use a phonix down on that person. See Kingdom Hearts.

 

[Henryetha]

I think, if you do that a few times, the player won't take the story serious anymore.


Let's see: A "good" character dies.. The player might be even sad for a few moments, thinking "oww ****! I hate this game T_T"


Now bring those chars back a few times, then the effect of a character's death won't be like that anymore, but rather only like.. "ow.." and that's it.


Depends on how you want to cause emotions.


Fairy Tail brings back people, still manages that the person behind the screen cries rivers cuz of so many emotions.


If you can achieve the same in a game, that's cool.


Else.. permanent events might help here achieving to bring "all the feels".

 

[Rozel]

Just in general, a character who dies and is resurrected is generally received with criticism. It makes their death "cheap", it makes it seem as they gained something without really losing anything. Perhaps this is a bit controversial to say (but this is the most famous example I can think of) in the bible, it says that "Jesus died for our sins", but then is "resurrected within three days". The story that the bible puts forth would be much more compelling if the main character died permanently rather than temporarily, because it makes the "cost" that the character pays basically nothing. It takes away the sincerity of the sacrifice. A truly impactful sacrifice is one whose payment isn't refunded. A genre-savvy player is all too used to someone dying then coming back to life. You want them to, at the end, say "Wait, but... he/she's coming back right? Don't tell me this is the end!" and keep that desperate hope until the credits scroll.

But it wasn't free. Before he died he experienced something incredibly painful, and his suffering was far above anyone else's. He took every pain anyone has ever felt onto himself. I usually hear it as "Jesus suffered for our sins." It wasn't the death that was the hard part. If anything, having only death would just be too easy. He ended up returning to heaven not soon after, so he still did 'die' at a young age.


Moving off of that, if the death is painful enough and that character is brought back, but has still lost something, it can still be an incredible sacrifice. But I generally agree that it's cheap and makes a character's death seem worth much less if you know it isn't all over for them yet.

 

[mjshi]

@Rozel Again, I don't mean to demean any religion, but it was the most well-known example I could think of. Other than that book, the only other possibly widely-known book in which that occurs would maybe be Harry Potter (though, to this day, I'm still a bit unsure as to what happened in that last scene xD)


I think a good example of a "meaningful sacrifice" that wasn't a death was the ending of Fullmetal Alchemist. If you've watched it, you know what I'm talking about. It was so sad ;-;

 

[Rozel]

@Rozel Again, I don't mean to demean any religion, but it was the most well-known example I could think of. Other than that book, the only other possibly widely-known book in which that occurs would maybe be Harry Potter (though, to this day, I'm still a bit unsure as to what happened in that last scene xD)


I think a good example of a "meaningful sacrifice" that wasn't a death was the ending of Fullmetal Alchemist. If you've watched it, you know what I'm talking about. It was so sad ;-;

Ah, that's fine! Just wanted to explain how I see it is all.


And yeah, I've seen FMA and agree.