[Diamondmatter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Um... they did. There was a funeral and everything. It was one of the best episodes of the series, about a character who was so good he's the only part of Ghost anyone will ever admit/remember did anything right. And that wasn't even the only time someone died.

Oh yeah, that's true, but she was a very minor character who was most likely designed to die from the start. The death was done well, but it still didn't get the "cherish life" point across for me. Maybe the characters said it outright and it went over my head because I took it as token preachiness. I guess what I'm aiming for is "show don't tell", and Ghost does so much telling that the telling doesn't connect with what it shows and becomes shallow.

Quote:

See, that's more of that oversimplification that really frustrates me when I see people complain about Ghost. You're implying he just got over his issues out of nowhere but pretty much every time it happened it was his friends or the Heroes pushing him along that got him back on his feet. Most character development in Ghost worked externally like that and I've always felt that was one of its best qualities. The show was always talking about how important connections with others were, and it backed that up throughout by having a main character who, for a large chunk of the series, is hugely reliant on the people close to him to actually get things done. His flaw is that he's immature. He's unsure of himself and occasionally irrational. Note that he dies on 18th birthday. He's meant to be someone who despite being on the cusp of adulthood is still very much a child. Hopefully that description is a little less ill-defined.

I'm not implying that he got over them randomly, just that they became irrelevant and had no resolution. If his friends got him out of moping once and it was a singular character arc instead of an annoyance Takeru keeps falling into, it would have been resolved. But it wasn't, and Takeru never had to overcome himself beyond a few beginner hurdles.
If the point is that it's easy when his friends are helping him, then... cool, I guess? Nice Aesop to carry an episode or two, but not a whole series.