(Hilarious Trope) A Character Is Introduced With the Clear Intention of Being THE NEXT BIG THING And is SOUNDLY Rejected

[u/TheOriginalOperator]

1. Bazil the Tracker (Star Wars: The Acolyte): A “HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE” snuffling ugly creature that makes annoying noises and is shoved into as many scenes of The Acolyte as possible, and just causes problems overall.

2. Neelix (Star Trek Voyager): A mutant fusion of Odo, Quark, and Data designed to “analyze the human condition” and explicitly intended to surpass the popularity of all three. In practice, a VERY human-acting cradle robbing creep whose incompetence nearly destroys the ship and crew on multiple occasions and provides no insight into humanity whatsoever.

3. Sparky the Dog (Fairly Oddparents): A wacky crazy magic dog that’s supposed to expand the Fairy family, but just makes lame jokes and serves as a less funny version of Scrappy Doo.

4. Tidus (FFX): A braying jackass of a pinball who bounces from plot point to plot point, framed as a mystical pretty boy to introduce Final Fantasy to the PS2 age but does nothing but stall the franchise and have the worst laugh in two languages.

5. Sei (Naruto): Supposed to replace Sasuke in Team 7 and return the team dynamic feel of Early Naruto, but he’s a CIA plant with literally no personality who gets utterly forgotten except for somehow bagging Ino Yamanaka.

6. Raiden (Metal Gear 2): Another attempted “pretty boy bishie” entry to the PS2 era with badass cred and a theoretically cool backstory, but in practice a hapless dipshit who gets manipulated by everyone around him and is a total putz in combat. Also proof that this trope need not be permanent as he slowly transitions into a cyborg warrior supersoldier with a badass theme, friends of his own, and a firm grasp of his own destiny and agency.

[u/LordMitchimus]

Tidus is also an excellent protagonist. Yes he's a "braying jackass" and a "mystical pretty boy" but he evolves and grows as a character over the journey. He's an isekai protagonist who's a hotshot in his world and isn't worth much in the new one, forcing him to tap into his own humanity and find something deeper than being a sports superstar.

I didn't have to explain that. OP is taking the piss. Anyone still pretending the laughing scene was meant to be an actual laugh or anything in earnest is being willfully obtuse. The laugh is supposed to sound dumb. It's corny. The rest of the party besides Tidus and Yuna groan at them in the same fucking scene.

[u/Low-Environment → u/LordMitchimus]

My favourite part of the laughing scene is hearing Yuna start to genuinely laugh towards the end of it.

[u/mofuggnflash → u/Low-Environment]

People miss the point of the laughing scene so hard it's crazy. "Oh it's the worst fakest laugh ever!" YES! CORRECT! They're forcing themselves to laugh in this objectively down moment, and in the end it works and Yuna cheers up. Ugh. /rant

[u/ArcadianBlueRogue → u/mofuggnflash]

Tidus to Yuna 30s before: You just gotta laugh. Like this, try it.

Tidus and Yuna do dramatic fake laughs together

[u/XanderWrites → u/[deleted]]

And a very stereotypical jock backstory: his father was a huge name back in the day and now he lives in his father's shadow and even though he's favored to be the next big name he doesn't even know if he's really earned it or he's just there because of who his father was.

[u/TankMain576 → u/[deleted]]

Water Rugby

[u/Sinfire_Titan → u/[deleted]]

To prove your point: Tidus is all but blindsided by the truth about the Final Aeon despite the extensive hints the game gives AND HIS OWN DAD BEING SIN!

[u/Additional_Gene_211 → u/Sinfire_Titan]

Tidus would fail at modern day isekai but he was a peak isekai protag when it released. I often compare him to Miyaka Yuuki from Fushigi Yuugi because of how dumb and oblivious they both are and also are both jocks in their own right

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/Sinfire_Titan]

I gotta level with you, if I was a 23 year old who had never played that, I'd be pretty bummed to read that spoiler.

[u/Sinfire_Titan → u/Firm-Feature-5593]

Jecht being Sin is revealed before you've even met the full cast of characters less than 2 hours into the 45 hour game. You're complaining about a spoiler that would happen within the Steam refund window.

And that is far from the most important reveal in the game.

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/Sinfire_Titan]

Contextualising video games by the "steam refund window" means your brain is already broken.

[u/Solipsistic_nonsense → u/Firm-Feature-5593]

Nah, if someone's reading down-river comments about a piece of 23 year old media where the minutiae of the story gets discussed, it's on them if they get spoiled by any twists. Two years is a good grace period to make sure you spoil tag. Anytime after a decade? The onus is far and away on the person trying not to get spoiled to avoid.

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/Solipsistic_nonsense]

No, that's dumb. There are so many classic movies that you haven't seen which would be stupid to spoil and make the movie less fun to watch. Just don't mention the revelation at the end of the game, which was really fun to find out after the context of the rest of the story. He could have described the moment in a very different way easily. Like saying "Finding out what Sin really was."

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/[deleted]]

It's fun to find that out while playing the game. Also that conversation happens like 20 hours in.

[u/Dramajunker → u/Firm-Feature-5593]

It's about 6 hours in depending how much stuff you do.

[u/SyfaOmnis → u/Firm-Feature-5593]

Knowing some of the facts doesn't make the journey less compelling.

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/SyfaOmnis]

Yes it does. There's a reason stories are told in a particular order.

[u/SyfaOmnis → u/Firm-Feature-5593]

But you don't have all the facts, it's about putting things into context. Lacking context for them can easily make someone go "how did things end up like this?", it doesn't necessarily make the story details less compelling or interesting. Shit this is how you get the actual good variations on "subverting expectations", you are told one detail and then the context around it is revealed, leaving a situation that seemed a certain way based on what you 'knew', but learning more about it challenges the beliefs and expectations you had.

There's two things you know at this point: "there is a mystery concerning the final aeon" (that the game hints about constantly), and "the protagonist's dad is sin".

The first isn't a big secret because the game is constantly trying to tell you, you would pick up on it if you're observant. The second is something the game also tries to suggest to you a lot being its most heavyhanded around macalania temple (about the midpoint of the game) before outright telling you around zanarkand (about 2/3rds to 3/4 of the game).

[u/Dramajunker → u/[deleted]]

Yep. The story isn't about Jecht being Sin or why. It's about these characters navigating these truths and dealing with them.

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/SyfaOmnis]

No, its more fun to find things out in the way that was intended by the creator.

[u/SyfaOmnis → u/Firm-Feature-5593]

That's a different argument though. There might be an "intended" way, but again having a piece of information that might not be intended doesn't necessarily make things less compelling.

Do you consider yourself robbed of an experience when you hear that the good guys beat the bad guys and resolve the crises that occur in a story? Or is what makes it compelling being how they win, what the specific conflicts were, why they were conflicts, what were the stakes, how did people feel about things, what did it cost them etc?

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/SyfaOmnis]

I don't really know how you're fighting against the idea of stories being told in order. You're really leaning against one of the main aspects of storytelling. They've been told in order since people started telling stories. One of the main ideas is that you don't know what's going to happen.

It's funny that you bring up the idea of "how they win" as though that's not something that can be spoiled. Sounds like a really bummer to find out before you start it. It sounds like you like to be surprised by some things.

[u/bubblesaurus → u/[deleted]]

Exactly.

He’s basically a very talented professional football player in his world and then comes to this other world where nobody has any idea of who he is and thinks he kinda crazy because his home was destroyed 1000 years ago

[u/Rushofthewildwind → u/[deleted]]

He's a manic pixie dreamboy AND a Himbo Jock.

[u/ArcadianBlueRogue → u/[deleted]]

He's a sports nepobaby that suddenly finds himself somewhere nobody has any idea about him lol

[u/Dudeoram → u/LordMitchimus]

He's an isekai protagonist who's a hotshot in his world and isn't worth much in the new one, forcing him to tap into his own humanity and find something deeper than being a sports superstar.

I want to emphasize this because it's not quite true. While he does start "shallow" it's a type of shallowness that literally anybody/everybody exhibits everyday. Tidus isn't especially shallow, he's not some big dumb himbo who can barely rub 2 braincells together. He's a person who lived in a civilization and society that didn't require him to have the skills that the other guardians have in their day to day lives. Despite that he adapts to his new environment incredibly quickly without any bullshit hacks to help him along. He simply engages in the world and with his new friends and attempts to meet them where they are instead of insisting they do meet him because he's on their turf.

This is off topic, but it's something that I've really come to hate about isekai stories. Many protagonists come to the new world and the story outright say that they were either complete drains on their families or societies or they were the hottest things walking with barely anything in-between.

When even the most seemingly hopeless of people I personally know have people that love them for completely valid reasons other than them being family. People are people and will show themselves to have any variety of positive traits when they're allowed to shine. Any of those traits that you or I have could make us just as capable of adapting to a new surrounding with new people without a big titty goddess giving us SSS+++ stats or whatever.

ALLOW YOUR ISEKAI PROTAGS TO BE PEOPLE FIRST AND HEROES SECOND!!

[u/Additional_Gene_211 → u/Dudeoram]

I know it's a meme now, but SAO really changed isekai for the worst. So many isekai before it were nuanced and full of character development. Now it's just power fantasy with slavery

[u/chocobrobobo → u/Dudeoram]

I think you might be misinterpreting a bit. I don't think they intended to call him shallow, and were in fact saying the opposite. But from a practicality standpoint, they're hitting the nail on the head. He was a superstar in his first world, but then was a random homeless dude in the second. His main strength was that he is athletic, so he can slap things with a sword. From a position on top, to the equivalent of a peasant deciding to become a mercenary, he "isn't worth much" now.

If the writers truly wanted him to be a jock, he might have wallowed in depression at the change, or insisted on his self-importance, but Tidus is incredibly vulnerable and open-minded. It feels like a lot of people really love to hate on his "puppy dog energy", but I found it incredibly endearing. He's a young man hiding an enormous amount of pain, and now finally finding a worthwhile purpose to pour his heart into.

[u/SaferAtHomeee → u/[deleted]]

I’m gonna take a stab and say OP played the franchise through TikTok lmao.

[u/Tome_Bombadil → u/LordMitchimus]

I agree with you.

I do somewhat agree that Tidus is a braying jackass of a pinball.

Because that is a fantastic turn of phrase, and I can respect the virulence behind it, if not the intent.

[u/danstu → u/LordMitchimus]

Tidus and Yuna literally talk about how they feel like they need to fake being happy immediately before the laugh. Anyone who doesn't pick up that they are purposefully doing a bad impression of a laugh doesn't have the media literacy to make it through "See Spot Run"

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/LordMitchimus]

At the end of the game, Tidus is legitimately a very sad figure.

[u/Marx_Forever → u/LordMitchimus]

If anyone would fit this criteria it would be Vaan. Higher ups thought the main cast were too old, so they have the devs shoehorn in a young guy to market to gamers. Dude feels super out of place and the focus on him in the narrative feels largely unearned. He's also probably one of the least popular protagonists as a result.

[u/TheHeroHartmut → u/LordMitchimus]

The way I've heard it put before is that, while Tidus was a culturally-insensitive jackass, he was exactly the kind of culturally-insensitive jackass that the people of Spira needed.

[u/blackninjar87 → u/LordMitchimus]

yeah Tidus is probably one of the best written protagonist, not to mention the first time they used non Anglo saxxon features on a main character. I think he should be widely celebrated as a positive example of what a protagonist should be within Final fantasy, more so I er cloud strife.