Character developement

bikers123 said:
Getting to know/understand a character slowly over time counts as character development. Character development to me is also how flexible a character is in their opinions and decisions.

Do they do the same thing over and over again despite having new information/experiences or change/adjust accordingly?
Are they malleable and open to learn new things if given the opportunity or are solid as a rock and never change?

TheBrainintheJar said:


What if the character is deliberately narrow-minded? What if the story explores deeply the personality of a narrow-minded person who refuses to learn?

dwilson2000 said:

You can't come up with your own sentences then I take it? You should try and maybe then you're actually learn how to make sense. This is false. Naruto only has Shikamaru and Hinata. HunterxHunter only has Gon and Killua, Bleach only has Rukia and Renji, etc...No one's else's "development" ever gets reaffirmed so it doesn't count. Fairy Tail has far more and far superior character development then any of the rest of it's kind has ever had. Doesn't seem like they get a greater amount of development than FT characters from the looks of it...whose characters actually reaffirm the development they have had previously, such as Erza remembering to not throw her life away in the conclusion of the Fighting Festival or Natsu remembering to accept and embrace his fear instead of ignoring it altogether in the conclusion of Tenrou Island. And that's only the tip of the iceberg...

And Fairy Tail has even more characters who weren't in that list I posted that get development. Fairy Tail is the only long running shounen that actually bothers to develop all their characters. There isn't a single other one who manages to do it, even a little decently, let alone have a "greater amount" and that's just the cold hard truth. Yeah, I use actual facts to support my statement instead of just ripping off someone else's post...Please try to learn what character development actually MEANS before responding to me and making an idiot out of yourself.

bikers123 said:

If we see him tackle different situations and people, it still counts as character development as we get to know more about the character with his different interactions and choices in different situations. His actions could be based on a single static philosophy or something like that, but even then he is bound to react to different situations differently, it could be marginal if not by much.

TheBrainintheJar said:


The key to writing narrow-minded characters is to make sure their reactions to each situation is different - different situations mean different reactions - but also connect them all to the static philosophy. Moreover, the connection needs to emphasize the narrow-mindedness.

It's not that easy.

Hrybami said:


It's not that easy, but some stories employ it perfectly. The most notable execution of it is in One Piece.

In One Piece, the characters rarely change their mindset. It usually takes years to happens and never happens in just one time in a certain stressful situation (Except once with Robin). Other than that, the characters stay faithful to their static philosophy and it's us as viewer who experiment the character development in understanding the meaning and the thickness of their philosophy by the opinions and decisions they take. This approach makes the characters feel more alive and fleshed out. Luffy is surely one of the most narrow-minded manga characters, but as far as we travel into his journey, we gradually start to perceive his opinions and decisions better. And in the end, we understand that Luffy is not an idiot.

I think that this kind of character development is by the far the most rewarding. Characters with malleable mindset is not interesting to me, and it's mostly this that turned me off in Hunter x Hunter.

merryfistmas said:
Static isn't necessarily bad, but length matters here. I don't want to watch a character remain unchanged by 100 episodes worth of events, it's both unrealistic and boring.

merryfistmas said:
No there aren't, every single person changes throughout their life, are you just fucking with me? Even people who never leave their immediate area and never get to experience different perspectives change, if even slightly. I care more about the boring part than the realistic part anyway.

Characters don't turn out boring, they are boring. It's a state of being, not an end point. A character can be great without changing (Kamina), or with it (most characters I like), but something that is true of all of them is that they were fun to watch all they way through. There wasn't some turning point were a character suddenly became boring.

TheBrainintheJar said:


People not changing is an impossibility, since the body is a physical object that's always in flux.

Static characters can be entertaining, but only in stories that don't progress. SOL can live with static (not necessarily shallow) characters. But a story with a journey should change its characters, affect them in some way. If not, what's the point?

bigivelfhq said:
Who said that the narrow-minded has to be a flaw, to begin with?

What flaw Gon had in HxH? and when does he changes? And to what?
If you're talking when Gon changed to a Sadistic Emo that massacred Pitou in a fit of Rage, and even gave is life away doing it. That wasn't a change from a flaw, but totally the opposite, change to a flaw.

TheBrainintheJar said:


People not changing is an impossibility, since the body is a physical object that's always in flux.

Static characters can be entertaining, but only in stories that don't progress. SOL can live with static (not necessarily shallow) characters. But a story with a journey should change its characters, affect them in some way. If not, what's the point?

merryfistmas said:
I did. It is a flaw to me. If you don't consider it one, that's fine, replace narrow minded with any of trait that fits for you.
That scene revealed a flaw that Gon always had, he'd just never been in a situation where it would show itself so blatantly. Gon is selfish and was willing to fight a battle he knew he couldn't win because he was mad. He didn't think about how his death would affect anyone else, particularly Killua, he didn't heed Kite's advice that surviving is more important than fighting, he wsa a selfish, immature kid. He won the fight, but that's pretty much irrelevant, he would have fought it no matter how stacked the odds were against him. If anything, using up his nen displays that trait even more, because it shows he's not only inconsiderate of his friends, but short sighted and self destructive.

bigivelfhq said:


This is the thing. When people talk about change in a character, they only want to talk about the main mental aspect of their personality and reject everything else. And so Goku gets to always be the same character throughout Dragon Ball.
Suddenly when is brought a counterargument we also including other stuff, stuff that was ignored by the people bringing it up now.
The same can be said by the subtle changes and change of situation the character is placed. As the example of Goku is mental personality is all the time changing subtlety, and his situation changes significantly all time, but that doesn't count because you know the main aspect of his personality is the only thing that matters.
But than a person says that the same thing happens in real life, and suddenly changing subtly and the person situations is a thing.

I know a ton of people in real life, people that are already dead and people that are still alive, that throughout their lives keps the same type of main personality. Where I would describe them the same all throughout their lives. In fact is not hard to do so.
Of course, physically people change(obviously!) and the state of situation they are in also changes, but for most part they are just the same.

Basically my point is a simple one. Or you treat a character for all he has and is, and for every little thing he is made of. And so majority of characters in anime and fiction change and have character development.
Or you treat like a strong mental characteristic of a character is the only thing that matters in character development(I don't even know why it would be called CHARACTER Development if that was the case), and while there are many characters that don't have development, you have to agree though that, that fact is realistic!





Is not that he wasn't in a situation that didn't shown so blatantly, but the fact that it was the first and only time that showed that side of him.

Gon was never shown selfish at all before, quite the opposite. He always thought of others. Like in the first chapter when he saved the child "bear" from Kaito. The time he saved the sailor and risked is life. The time that he nursed the hunter competition from sea sickness. The time that he cared about if Leorio could still continue in the running exam and where he carried his suitcase for him, The time he all the time preoccupied and even went back to rescue Leorio and kurapika from Hisoka. The time in the tower with the majority vote, where he didn't thought only of himself, when everybody was doing so, and found a way for all of them pass the last challenge. And there a ton of other instances.

You say he improved because of Killua, but is quite the opposite. Killua is the one that was selfish and changed because of Gon. That was made rather obvious with the story about Killua and his family situation. One of his weaknesses was even the fact his brother placed a needle in his brain to make him selfish.

Also Gon turning into a person that doesn't listen to anybody doesn't have nothing to do with immaturity, but the aspect(that was showed for the first time in him), of a person loosing himself in rage, and so being impossible to reason with in those moments(You know the stories of people being so blind with rage that they see a lot of red and explode of anger).

merryfistmas said:
Static characters can be entertaining in many types of stories, but their personality often serves a purpose in the story even if the don't change. Kamina and Ned Stark are good examples of this

TheBrainintheJar said:


Ned Stark dies because Martin is a Level One Pessimistic Philosopher who can only say 'bad stuff happens'.

He's not an example of purposeful storytelling, really.