Fullmetal Alchemist

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

It's not that I don't get it, but I think it's kind of stupid, and would make more sense if alchemy was involved. What I'm pointing out is that its stupidity is compounded, or thoroughly demonstrated, at least, when Ed starts doing it too.

He has two indestructible limbs. Come on. Fuck that.


Again, I'm not surprised, I'm just pointing out that it doesn't make sense. I like it when protagonists die. It usually makes a lot of sense within the context of the story. It doesn't, however, usually make much sense in terms of the author's narrative, and that disconnect eternally irks me. In short, go bad guys.

How does it not make sense if you don't mind me asking? I have yet to see any error with characters surviving in believable ways for that universe's rules. And I'm up to Chapter 107.

[Lithp]

Here's what I don't get about the "main character dying just makes sense" argument: It seems to forget that people DO survive events like wars. It's not "unbelievable" if they survive even improbable events. We might not be satisfied with minor characters, but really, applying context, they don't KNOW they're major or minor characters. Granted, the 50 million Amestrians was a stretch, but how would you come back from that?

That being said, coming close to dying demonstrates that it can & will happen, especially in a series that has killed off some main names. Hell, just going by your definition, Hughes totally counts.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Hughes was partially main character by the time of his death.

[Lithp]

You guys are ball-busters.

[Magus]

You should probably put a spoiler tag over that, Kyanbu, someone may still be unaware of that if they are starting the series now.

Hughes' death was basically required for Roy's character to have a catalyst for action/dynamism. I don't want to say that Hughes existed solely to be killed as a plot device to logically drive Roy's motivations...but well, yeah, he was. Obviously the author fleshed him out so he wasn't just a lame stock character but probably from before she started drawing it she had that character in mind and knew she was going to kill him off to make the other character do things. On the flip side we know that several main characters were decided from the beginning to survive the series the whole way to the end and whose story arcs were highly planned.

Whereas characters like Fu or Buccaneer were probably developed much later and their fates were more malleable from the beginning. I'm not even sure if any of the Xingese or Briggs' folk were thought up ahead of the first issue or if they were thought up later, as they're all pretty ancillary and the plot could have been done without them. Not done in the same way with all the same events, but the major arc of the plot never required their presence.

[Lithp]

The problem, as I see it, is that these conditions are completely impossible to meet. Even if Ed, Al, & Roy themselves died, no matter what, you could still find some way to make this argument work. If the series ended, it wouldn't matter. If the series went on, they were only fleshed-out plot devices. In that case, I guess this is right: No main character has ever died. In anything. And they never will.

[Magus]

I'd say if they didn't die involved somehow in the finale of series, I'd say they weren't a main character. Obviously there are lots of things where the main character dies right at the end but if they died a fourth of the way in you probably wouldn't ascribe them main character status, they'd pretty much have to be secondary.

So if they die somewhere near the climax of the series and had some other attributes of a "main" character (like the main conflict is deeply intertwined with that character), then they were a main character, yeah.

[Lithp]

Which is exactly why this argument is self-defeating. By those very standards, you can't have a main character that just dies halfway through. It's completely contradictory to your definition of what makes a main character!

I don't know if this is what the originator of the debate feels, but I'm sure that it's similar enough to have highlighted at least a few problems with his complaint.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I haven't read it all the way through but. There is a manga called PLUTO which was basically a very dark astro boy with a different grown lead named Gesicht, who died more then 11 chapters before the story even ended. (the manga isn't all that long). despite this he's still treated as the main even though he died a good ways before the end. Mostly because his death had a great deal of an effect on the remainder of the story.

The point to this being that it is possible to kill off the lead[ and still finish the story with out it feeling random/sloppy so long as its done during the last/second to last arc and/or has an impact on the story's ending. Though I have no idea if this was even worth mentioning given the self-defeating argument.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Lithp

Which is exactly why this argument is self-defeating. By those very standards, you can't have a main character that just dies halfway through. It's completely contradictory to your definition of what makes a main character!

I'm writing a story where that very thing happens in the beginning of the second book. It totally works.