ITT : stuff with shady writing that made you emotional

>ITT : stuff with shady writing that made you emotional

Is making the audience care a mark of quality or can it be easily achievable through what folks around here call "emotional manipulation?

Pic unrelated

Pic related is just a children's toy franchise. But lets stay on-topic

No pic unrelated because I didn't give a shit about anyone because the show gave no reason to it. You're just a faggot OP.

I don't mind being called a faggot but at least contribute to the discussion.

When there's a closeup of the teary eyed face of a crying person and sad music plays in the background, that's an example of manipulative storytelling. Like a picture guide that tells the viewer what emotion they should be experiencing, and it's done because people know it works.

For IBO it was more the idea and topic that made me feel a bit bad. The thought of child soldiers struggling to find their place and then getting massacred in the end is sad. Thing is, I didn’t give a shit about the characters themselves except for maybe Orga and McGillis.

Terrible show.

00 is more or less IBO, dont better.

>it's done because it works
Not quite. But it's a tell-tale sign of an anime meant for kids vs an anime meant for adults in pretty much all cases.

If you manage to make people care and get emotionally involved, it's a mark of talented writing at least on the character' part, regardless of how good the main story and scenario writing is.
Even emotional manipulation of the audience requires genuine writing skill; do it wrong and people will cynically mock your product (non anime-related but that's the fate of many Oscar-bait movies).

Maybe if you mean 00 S2. The first season is much better than this trainwreck of QUALITY.

...

I don't understand the hate for 00 S2. Like I recognize it probably isn't as good, but it isn't as bad as people act like.

It’s generally a slog and full of cliche shit. It’s more painfully mediocre than terrible. But hey I liked the movie so what do I know.

It's literally Zeta gundam but without any of the good parts.

Spot on. For there to be any sort of emotion to be felt at all, there needs to be some merit in what's there.

This might be me going on a tangent here, but I actually think character writing is more important than plot writing for the exact reasons you described. If you care about the characters, the plot could be the most mundane thing in the world for all it matters.

the only emotion IBO made me feel is happiness, because it finally ended.

Orga deserved to be killed for all the stupid shit he did. They had it made, but then he decided to trust a fruity snake oil salesmen and got every one of his comrades killed as a result.

>Zeta
>good parts

Literally the only good things about Zeta and 00 S2 are Kamille and Setsuna.

> Like a picture guide that tells the viewer what emotion they should be experiencing

I can't really agree with you. Writing makes you care or not about a story or characters in the first place, but presentation is what makes a scene memorable and poignant. The death of a character could elicit sadness, anger, pity, or shock depending on how you present it.

>Orga deserved to be killed for all the stupid shit he did. They had it made, but then he decided to trust a fruity snake oil salesmen and got every one of his comrades killed as a result.

That's part of what makes it sad though. They already got what they were looking for but realized that too late.

Pic related was a not terribly original story with a well planned out delivery. I still really liked it so I guess that counts.
>there needs to be some merit in what's there
I agree that a show that is distractingly shitty is going to have trouble making the viewer empathize with the characters so maybe "a mark of quality" is going too far but "has at least some compelling elements" is fair to say. A show that just has crying faces and sad music but is awful otherwise is just going to feel cheap and more likely to make you give up than inspire you to feel something.

The ending was indeed sad. The whole ride was watching these child soldiers trying to find their place, which they achieve by the end of S1. S2 is just horrifying to watch because they just slowly destroy the very thing they desired because they lost sight of their dream. Biscuit was the realistic of the group, and the one who had a clear picture of the dream they were searching for. Without him, it just crumbled because Orga could only make power plays while the rest of the children were human weapons.

Emotional manipulation is by definition required to make readers care about a story and its characters. The question is whether it is skillfully woven into the narrative in such a way that viewers develop a genuine emotional connection with the material (which is a mark of quality, to use your term), or whether the manipulation is laid bare and ugly for the audience to see (a mark of Your Lie In April).

I also thought 00 S2 was pretty good.

Any time you feel emotional while watching anime, you're being manipulated. They're just drawings. That said, some directors are more skilled at concealing their fingerprints and creating believable characters/worlds.

I think anons have already said well that making an audience care is always emotional manipulation. But there is a difference between doing it skilllfully and with taste, and just going a cheap route to appeal to the lowest common denominator of audience.

>good storytelling is manipulation
The target being unaware of being manipulated is essential for manipulation to be effective. The cheap tricks only work if the audience is intellectually lazy and led by emotion, and good authors respect their audience enough to make stories that primarily evoke thought.

Sure is reddit in here.

>good authors respect their audience enough to make stories that primarily evoke thought.

A "good story" with interesting themes and though-provoking ideas that can't get its audience to care is not a good story. There's a reason why some authors use fiction instead of writing non-fiction books. You can convey a message through logos alone, but only one person will listen to you, or you could touch people's emotions, and you'll get your message across thousands.

You're suggesting that the relationship between a work and its audience is like a business transaction: the work offers to "make the audience feel", and they will in exchange pay attention to the story. That's stupid. People don't need to, say, watch anime to experience emotions. A story has to offer something beyond that in order to be - and remain - compelling.

good writing is a spook

I liked it and basically you're fucking stupid if you didn't.