Spotlight Character: Eva Heinemann (Monster)

noteDhero said:
One of my favorite female characters of all time. I may have to replace her with Fredericka Greenhill, because every time I think of the character, I love her more. Her development is quite stunning compared to the main characters (and I do consider her a supporting character), and there were many times where I felt her presence and development made the show twice as enjoyable.

Daisuki-chan said:
A loathsome prostitute woman. As is common in anime, even her face matches her character and personality. Don't you just want to punch her face in and light her on fire with your mind? X3

Sleeping with Tenma just to secure her place in elite society made her a prostitute of the lowest order to me.

I know she develops as a character, which is why I voted 2 instead of 1. She must not be forgiven!!! Too bad Tenma was too kind to really let her have it.

bbobjs said:
Rolled a die, came up heads, voting yes.

noteDhero said:
hot mess of a bitch

Daisuki-chan said:
A loathsome prostitute woman. As is common in anime, even her face matches her character and personality. Don't you just want to punch her face in and light her on fire with your mind? X3

Sleeping with Tenma just to secure her place in elite society made her a prostitute of the lowest order to me.

I know she develops as a character, which is why I voted 2 instead of 1. She must not be forgiven!!! Too bad Tenma was too kind to really let her have it.

ladyxzeus said:
I don't feel she was needed and I think that all her actions could have easily been replacing without picking her up from the dust.

Daisuki-chan said:
I wouldn't induct reality into the club relations as "exemplary", either. ;p

Dozer said:
She's a main character from Monster, what's there to debate?

Daisuki-chan said:
Six sides, all heads? ;p

AfterGlow said:
You need to lay off you damn HxH wank.

bbobjs said:
Snake eyes actually

Daisuki-chan said:

This club wanks LOGH and Monster, so why shouldn't I wank HxH? You're free to wank mindfuck anime if you like, too. :)

bbobjs said:
Actually I found out the hard way how not free to wank you actually are, true story.

AfterGlow said:
Why the hell would i wank anything? Especially any mediocre shonen with subpar drawings and characters?
That would completely contradict the purpose of this club and wouldn't make me fit to be a member.

noteDhero said:
Ok. Let's stay on track. This spotlight is about Eva Heinemann. So if the conversation is going to involve other characters, let's please make sure it has something to do with the spotlight at hand.

kokuro said:
Eva is a well-designed hateful character. She's one of the rare characters that I dislike the same way I might dislike a real person. She deserves to be on the relations list in my opinion.

bbobjs said:
Simply because everyone wanks, it doesn't mean they should.

True, there are no rules requiring you to cast a justified vote. That's why I'm challenging you to do the mature thing. If you are voting for/against characters/anime/manga simply because you like/dislike them, then you're not considering quality and you're really not assisting the club with its goal. If everyone were to (does?) vote like that then this club would be nothing more than a local level popularity contest. Maybe you do have a really good valid reason for voting "no" and if you do then I hope you vote "no" but first ask yourself, do you? Do you REALLY have a reason beyond personal preference?

Daisuki-chan said:



I've experienced so many hateful characters, and most real people are simple enough in various ways to lead me to believe that thousands or millions of "clones" of these characters actually exist, so I don't find Eva to be very special. Oh well for me, though. ;p

bbobjs said:
Simply because everyone wanks, it doesn't mean they should.

bbobjs said:
True, there are no rules requiring you to cast a justified vote. That's why I'm challenging you to do the mature thing. If you are voting for/against characters/anime/manga simply because you like/dislike them, then you're not considering quality and you're really not assisting the club with its goal. If everyone were to (does?) vote like that then this club would be nothing more than a local level popularity contest. Maybe you do have a really good valid reason for voting "no" and if you do then I hope you vote "no" but first ask yourself, do you? Do you REALLY have a reason beyond personal preference?

bbobjs said:
This club does treat incomplete manga fairly. Originally there was no rule against nominating incomplete manga, that was changed. Now all nominations for incomplete manga are considered void. The change says nothing about voting on incomplete manga. There was another change that allowed legitimate votes to be cast for characters based on their appearance in incomplete manga. In this case as well no ex post facto is applied.

bbobjs said:
The challenge actually allows you to use anyone from anything. Fictional character or real person, I don't care. I'll do the research for myself if you manage to find more than 9. I suppose this ends up precluding real people with 0 or near 0 fame but then again I'm only asking for 15 rather than the 2,000-2,000,000+ you claim should exist. If they're close I'll at least abstain.

AfterGlow said:
And yes, this is what I hate when a fairly small group of people are fans and thus are wanking something that is rater crappy just because they happen to like it, not because of any quality, and the majority of people haven't seen it (since they aren't fans) which blindsides the club in to inducting utter crap like HxH OVA.
Only the fans have seen it, all the fans vote yes.

AfterGlow said:
Lay off the God damn wank, just because you happen to like HxH doesn't mean every OVA as well as it's crappy, one-dimensional characters should be nominated/inducted.

AfterGlow said:
If I happen to like an anime, RahXephon for instance, I'm not going to wank it by nominating the series, the OAV, the movie and the characters.

AfterGlow said:
And to spout some retarded crap about Eva is a clone of thousands of characters, and not being able to give even one example of a character she is a clone of, while saying you'll vote yes on Hisoka, who by all accounts is a shounen cliché just proves how incredibly biased you are.

kokuro said:
She has many sides to her just like a normal human being and therefore is well-designed in my opinion. Of course you're entitled to your opinion but i thought it's better to clear my point. Thanks for reading.

noteDhero said:
Hmmm....I don't think you're really being clear. What about her addition to Monster is negative, not positive, non-exemplary? I'd like for you to explain that. Also, if you'd compare/contrast her to someone like Ushio, someone you did vote yes for, so that we can all see exactly where you're coming from. Because when I think of the word 'exemplary' then I think of something that can be made an example of, and I believe Eva to be exemplary in that she is a well-crafted supporting character full of charisma, pathos, and multi-factedness, showing a range of emotion that never feels cheap or forced, while also being rather important to the plot of Monster, and making the show more entertaining.

Daisuki-chan said:

Exemplary is defined as "worthy of imitation; commendable". It thus has a positive connotation to me, and I am strongly opposed to applying it to things, that while having a high absolute value in some characteristic, are negative overall. How much a character improves a piece of art also depends greatly on what happens between that character and the plot and other characters. Eva didn't make Monster more attractive to me, and the effort spent on making her hatable would've been better spent on improving Johan or Tenma, in my opinion.

Anyway, for characters, my question is "Would it have been even somewhat worth experiencing this piece of art if I was otherwise neutral to it, but it included this character?". In Eva's case the answer is no, I would not have found an otherwise neutral Monster to be worth watching due to her being in it. Like I explained using Hisoka as an example, I can value "evil" or amoral characters. Eva just didn't leave me with a good impression.

Ushio is less similar to Eva than Hisoka is to me, because she's cute and sweet, unlike Eva and Hisoka. Ushio was a lot more critical to the plot of Clannad ~After Story~ than Eva was to the plot of Monster to me, and is one of the few young children characters in anime or manga that I would like to be around. I don't like behavior that I could call "childish" (including in adults), so this is a decent achievement in my eyes.

noteDhero said:
Again, I don't think you're being specific. What about Eva, specifically, is negative overall? Now, you say that how much a character improves a piece of art depends on character interaction and plot development. Where do you think she stumbles or is ineffectual?

noteDhero said:
I'm not really sure how such strong development isn't a positive to the show. To dismiss her role to something as one-dimensional as "evil" and "hateable" is short-sighted to me.

noteDhero said:
So basically, you look at the value of the character alone, out of the experience of the show? I suppose that's fair to say, but again, I ask why? Why didn't Eva leave you with a good impression even though you find her to be well-crafted? What else, then are you looking at?

noteDhero said:
Unlike Ushio, Eva's role couldn't have been fulfilled by just anyone, in my opinion. Ushio could have been any child, and the impact would have been the same, regardless of the personality/characterization of the character. I don't find that to be the case with Eva. Her personality is integral to all of her interactions and every bit of plot that she is involved in. Change any one of her traits, and the show is very different.

Daisuki-chan said:

I explained what I found negative in my first post in this thread. She probably doesn't stumble and isn't ineffectual by your standards. I don't really need to consider that, though, because a character can't just "not fail" to get a yes vote from me. I need something special (in a positive way) to vote yes.

I didn't find her development highly appealing, and I wasn't made to care about her role beyond reacting negatively to it. I already mentioned in my first post that her development is why I voted 2 instead of 1 for her.

I don't know why being well-crafted would force a good impression. Like I said, medieval torture could be done well, but I just don't want to rate it highly or call it exemplary, both of which have positive connotations to me and very many others.

I don't consider Eva to be a main character in Monster (I'm stingy, so I only consider Tenma and Johan to be main characters in Monster, or only Gon and Killua in Hunter x Hunter (and not Kurapika, Leorio, Hisoka, Meruem, Netero, Morau, Nefelpitou, Komugi, or Kuroro), for another example that shows that I'm not just excluding Eva because of how I feel about her or Monster), so she only hurt my rating of Monster by about 0.05, which rounds to 0. Unless she was changed from a 2 to an 8 or higher to me she probably couldn't have boosted my rating of Monster by my minimum increment of 0.5, so I wouldn't have considered Monster to have been very different to me in the ways I care about.

noteDhero said:
My problem is that those are absolute intentions in the creation of her character, and that she develops from there. If she stumbles, she stumbles, and I don't have a problem with you or anyone pointing out instances where a character doesn't come off as intended for the sake of plot or a push to be more popular. Those are legitimate complaint to have with her or any other character. But you seem to be dead set against her because she's not someone you would hang out with, and I take issue with that when we are discussion the merits of the characters not only as 'people' but players in a piece of art.

For the next week I would like to have everyone familiar with this character discuss what they think makes it an exceptional character. What attributes make it stand out in the ocean of interesting characters that exist in the realms of anime and manga.

noteDhero said:
So because she is the type of person you don't like, you can't react positively to development that makes her aware of such short-comings?

noteDhero said:
But if our job were to rate devices we thought were exemplary of mechanics, why shouldn't well crafted torture devices be permitted? Along that same train of though, even if Eva is a dime out of a dozen "prostitutes" character types, is she not exemplary of her type? Does that mean nothing?

noteDhero said:
So, let me get this straight:

Characters are only exemplary if they increase your enjoyment of a show by being relatable to you, and likable. They must also be a main character.

Thusly, if you don't like a character, then they are bad, no two ways around it.

Is that right?

Daisuki-chan said:

I don't care about the intentions of creators. I doubt most people here who feel that R2 is a bad anime care that it met its intention of being exciting and epic to most people. It didn't conform to what they wanted, so it wouldn't be given yes votes by them. Eva didn't conform to what I wanted, so she won't be given a yes vote by me. You can continue to discuss her merits from your perspective. I'm not aware that I should only post in these threads if several others agree with me. All I see is this:

I'm familiar with her. I don't consider her exceptional, but everyone else feels free to discuss non-exceptional aspects of spotlighted items, too, so I believe that this is just poor wording, not a literal rule. Besides, discussion would be very unattractive if only positives could ever be mentioned. I don't think that's what's desired.

I can react positively to development. I am very positive towards Nakajima Youko and her development. Eva didn't develop strongly in a direction I value, and also developed too slowly for me, so her weighted average value is low to me.

This club is effectively giving out awards that cause the awarded items to stand out as high recommendations to others. Even though that's not explicitly stated, I know that's how it is to many people. I didn't join to recommend awful things to other people, so I'm not doing so.

Likable is probably too narrow of a word. It's more that watching or reading the character's behavior or actions must be likable or appreciated. I wouldn't want to be around Hisoka, but I like that he's around in Hunter x Hunter. Being relatable (without blowing it somehow, which can have a rather bad effect on me) can definitely increase likability. Characters don't have to be main for me to like them, but being main increases the amount of time and focus characters get, which can increase my reaction to them. I mentioned Eva not being main to me because you were saying how important she was to Monster for you, but she wasn't a huge deal to me.

noteDhero said:
Again, the thing is that rather than describe in full detail why you think she isn't exceptional, you mostly bring up other characters you like and talk about them. So I asked you to compare and contrast, and for me, you're very ambiguous about why you like/dislike x character outside of just "I like them."

noteDhero said:
What about that direction did you not value?

noteDhero said:
This is what confuses me. In what way is she awful? Is she awful in the sort of terrible way that Mars of Destruction is awful? Or is she awful in a way that doesn't really please you, but from a standpoint devoid of your emotion towards her you can see why it would be to others, and that there is value in watching her character? There is a big difference there for me that I don't think you've been clear on.

noteDhero said:
I said she is important as a supporting character, and is exemplary in that role. I never brought up a dispute for what kind of role she has.

As it is, I think you have a problem relating your ideas to other people, and they/we just aren't understanding where you're coming from. I'm asking all of these questions to see a commonality in your rationale. As of now, I still don't get it.