Handling Death in fiction

If there is something anime do a lot compared to cartoons, that would be killing their characters. Something that for many is considered mature and deep when it’s not. Death by itself is not meaningful as it seems if it fails in any of these 8 criteria.

1. Death must actually happen. It’s one thing to make it seem like the characters are in danger and that can die at any moment, and a whole different thing to have a show where nobody actually dies. I mean Jesus Christ, ghost pokemon are treated as a species instead of, you know, dead. (Pokemon)

2. Death must be final. Killing someone and then resurrecting him a few episodes later makes death meaningless. If it can be undone, you might as well call it a K.O or an injury or flat-line. Or in the case of DBZ, an excuse for a power up. (Dragon Ball Z)

3. Death must have an impact. If it doesn’t affect a character’s mentality or behavior, then there was no point to it. Manly tears FTW. (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)

4. Death must not define a character. If it’s the only thing that can make interesting an otherwise bland character nobody cared about up until then, then you only notice the death and not the character, essentially making the whole thing a plot device for forced drama. (Grimgar)

5. Death must not be overused. If one death is enough to have an effect on a character, any more would feel the same if they happen soon afterwards. Putting some space between deaths makes each one of them equally important. (Akame ga Kill)

6. Death must be unavoidable. No plot armor or impossible comebacks from situations where someone should have normally died. (One Piece)

7. Death must not be stupid. If someone gets killed because he didn’t do something obvious, then it was an easily avoidable, stupid, meaningless death. (Blood Orphans)

8 ) Death must not make favors. Many series try to make it seem like nobody is safe and that everybody can die, when in reality they are only killing minor secondary characters. That makes it pretentious. (Attack on Titan)

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Death vs Pain

Death means a lot less in fiction than it does in reality. Although thanks to technology we are able to not die as easily as we used to, it is still nerfed to a point where it doesn’t mean anything. There is either going to be an easy way to resurrect someone, or turn back time to when he wasn’t dead.

The reasons for why this happens are obvious. You don’t want to see your favorite characters die and the story must have some sort of an excuse to keep going. That still doesn’t shake off the feeling of death being a minor inconvenience rather than something very important. If dying is not important then what is? There is no tension.

In order for tension to exist, fiction often tries to replace death with something else. What it usually goes for is suffering. If someone dies, all his worries are over and there is nothing more an author can do with that character. A life of constant torture on the other hand, allows you to can keep the character around, while making him far more dramatic.

This doesn’t fix the problem since it constantly brings up the question of how much durability can someone have, in a setting where death does exist and some people seemingly die all the time. It feels like blatant plot armor, although it can be excused as a challenge of willpower. Someone cannot die but can still break under the constant pressure of the opposition. All of a sudden, surviving a challenge is not the point. Not giving up on your goals is what really matters.

That still undermines the concept of self-sacrifice. You never feel the importance of someone taking the bullet for the team, or dying so the rest can survive. Nobody can be called a martyr, since nobody loses something. The very concept of heroism loses a lot of its flavor if the worst thing that can happen is pain.

Also, removing death is like removing limits. There is no such thing as holding back from going overboard, since nothing can kill you and pain is only making you look cool in the eyes of the rest. Without an ultimate restrain everything becomes possible, and nothing feels that important. Thus death serves its purpose and removing it does not make everything better.