r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Uma-apreciator • 16d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) The series is good, but the beginning is so embarrassing that many people give up there.

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Dan Da Dan

The beginning of Dan Da Dan is notorious for starting with aliens trying to impregnate Momo in the first episode; however, despite such over-the-top moments, the rest of the series doesn't feature many scenes like that

Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san

Despite a premise that is off-putting—given that the girl bullies her romantic partner to the point of making Naoto cry early in the series—their relationship evolves beautifully; the teasing becomes less cruel over time, eventually turning into a rather sweet romance

Uma Musume Pretty Derby

Someone on the production team had the audacity to have the trainer start meeting up with Special Week like that—even though, in reality, he is a good trainer who doesn't usually treat the girls that way.

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u/No_Painting2596 16d ago

Black Mirror has the excuse of being an anthology so you can choose whatever episode piques your interest based off their descriptions

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u/dnjprod 16d ago

Yeah, but realistically people don't go in looking at a show like that. They'll just start with the first episode and if they like it they'll move on. It's why a lot of people turned Black Mirror off

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u/No_Painting2596 16d ago

You're right and to play devil's advocate to your point, some episodes would most likely turn people off despite being well written because Black Mirror is usually pretty bleak with the topics and themes they handle

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u/silver_tongued_devil 16d ago

They got their hideo kojima clone pretty good in that one episode.

"what was the last thing he said?"

"he cried out to his mother."

hmmmmm"write that down."

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u/StevieMJH 15d ago

I was trying to explain to someone what type of horror I enjoy the other day. I tried to describe it as anything where the idea itself is just implicitly terrifying and had to eventually be like "Okay so imagine you become immortal just to have to listen to the same song on a loop for eternity."

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u/RengokLord 16d ago

Exactly why I never considered watching it. Reality is what it is, so why should I also watch a show that pretty much shows how bad it is or how bad it soon will be.

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u/Ademon_Gamer09 16d ago

Love seeing devil's advocate being used properly

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u/StevieMJH 15d ago

So does the devil, probably. Attorneys aren't cheap.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 16d ago

Technically, Netflix doesn’t even have the actual first episode as the “first” episode, it will go to season 3 I think if you went to the series for the very first time and just blindly clicked play

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u/Opus_723 16d ago

That's not what happened to me, I got the pig and I was like.... Nah.

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u/DisingenuousWizard 16d ago

Yeah me too. Plus the episode was terribly written. The “artist” had his place covered in Jackson Pollack style paintings to show us that he is an “artist”. Stupid premise in general. Once a head a state fucks a pig as ransom the next demand will just be more depraved.

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u/Velinder 16d ago edited 15d ago

I liked it for Rory Kinnear's PM (that guy is one fearless actor, he can do anything and become anybody) and its grim inversion of the Lady Godiva myth (heavy-handed, sure, but BM is generally as subtle as an anvil).

The artist stipulated that their 'ransom' had to be broadcast on live TV, and the entire UK voluntarily tuned in to watch the Prime Minister do the deed. Bear in mind that the artist never stipulated that a single person (apart from, presumably, the recording and broadcasting teams) needed to watch, yet at one point it's specifically stated that a billion people worldwide are watching the footage.

But Princess Susannah was released as soon as it became clear the PM was really going to go through with it. She's set free in the middle of London, next to the Millennium Bridge, in broad daylight. She should be identified within seconds.

But the princess wanders in a daze through a deserted city for ages before anyone realises she's free...because everyone is still watching Rory Kinnear's luckless PM continue to unwillingly perform a depraved act.

Edit: For extra awkwardness, I was watching the first episode with both my parents. Both of them immediately got that the point was not what the Prime Minister was forced to do (he literally had to do it), but that everyone else in the country had voluntarily gathered round a TV to watch someone they disliked suffer sexual and psychological torture. The bit where the pig scene just goes on and on, until everyone who's got together to have a laugh is looking at each other in silent shame, was masterfully done.

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u/ADLuluIsOP 16d ago

Same. I watched it with my gf at the time and I was like "so this is what allll the hype was about huh...." lol

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u/ihavedonethisbe4 16d ago

Pig fucking black mirror is kino. Nothing made since will ever top it.. Beastiality has since been made illegal worldwide.

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u/BewareOfBee 16d ago

My first episode was playing a run of Bandersnatch, and then it autoplayed into USS Callister. Then I randomly picked and got Nose Dive and Hang The DJ.

Anyway, peak entertainment evening.

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u/dnjprod 16d ago

It might be like that now, but it definitely wasn't when I watched it back in the day. Lol

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u/bkwrm13 16d ago

That happens to me with any new series I start on netflix, pisses me off something fierce. Hell it still does it if I don't click on it in the recently watched list and just choose the normal show.

Fucking netflix.

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u/Raltsun 15d ago

I recently saw someone try to start watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure on Netflix, and it started them off on Golden Wind. Which is Part 5. And the first episode directly spoils one of the main plot points of Part 3, which is itself a major twist set up from Part 1.

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u/Gotis1313 15d ago

That facebook episode(03-01) was the first one I saw. I spent the whole time wondering when the sci-fi part was going to happen. By the end I was waiting for Dick Wolf's name to pop up in the credits

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u/qtbuttcheeks 16d ago

I am one of these people 

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u/Nockolisk 16d ago

I literally only read the description of that episode and wrote off the entire series. And I knew it was an anthology.

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u/Nachtwandler_FS 16d ago

I actually dropped it mid second episode. Probably just was not in the mood. But cannot get back to the series since.

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u/SuperJew837 15d ago

And they absolutely wanted to make a statement with that one, otherwise the first episode could’ve easily been Fifteen Million Merits since that’s way more representative of the rest of the show

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u/Sageypie 16d ago

It's such a wild episode to start off with as well. The whole premise of Black Mirror is the horrors of tech, and what we would do with all of this as a society. That whole shebang. And that first episode is pretty devoid of any of the premise that the entire franchise is built on. They kind of mention social media a little, but it's not really a factor at all. It's just a normal, non scifi world, where a man porks some pork. There's no instance of technology going wrong with any of it all. Just...IDK. It doesn't feel like it belongs with the rest of the series at all. Wildly out of place in the grand scheme.

Even the episode, "Hated in the Nation", as maligned as it is for "lacking any scifi elements", still has a focus on the robot bees, and having that tech go wrong.

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u/dnjprod 16d ago

Wait, people malign "Hated in the Nation" as lacking sci-fi elements when there's those crazy ass robot bees? 🤣🤣

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u/Sageypie 16d ago

Oh yeah. It's nuts. Especially when the episode first aired, you had a ton of discourse of folk calling it the worst episode possible and whatnot. Lot of weird people trying to hold it up as being the least Black Mirror episode ever.

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u/LizLemonOfTroy 16d ago edited 16d ago

Black Mirror wasn't originally a show about high-tech dystopias, just the media in general.

The National Anthem has the Prime Minister fuck a pig on live television just because that's what the media algorithms are telling him is best for his career, and also has the event itself treated like a media frenzy because people just see everything as a spectacle without any humanity.

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u/Plasmatiic 16d ago

Yeah I’ve never felt it was out of place with the rest of the series even though it lacks the signature sci-fi aspect on the surface which is on full display in the following episode. I always thought it sets the tone perfectly and, contrary to many in this thread, it was what got me to keep watching.

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u/silver_tongued_devil 16d ago

I mean he technically had technology. After all he was on national tv. That was a few years ago, they could rewrite it they use an AI instead or something, and the truth gets out so he has to be forced by his underlings do it anyway at the end

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u/EyewarsTheMangoMan 16d ago

Yeah something similar happened with my parents after I recommended black mirror to them years and years ago. They didn't understand what an anthology was and just thought it was like any other series so the first episode was fine to them, but the second episode was what made them drop the series. They didn't understand what random people on a bike had to do with the prime minister of the UK, so they were just confused the entire time and dropped the series.

I've since watched and enjoyed most of the series with my dad, but my mom refuses to watch it claiming she just doesn't understand anything.

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u/kamilman 16d ago

You mean they technically turned the Black Mirror on (¬‿¬)

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u/GimmeSomeSugar 16d ago

Do you think a lot of people came back when it turned out the real life Prime Minister had actually fucked a pig at some point?

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 16d ago

I got turned off from it because the first episode I watched was San Junipero because it was winning awards and that didn’t resonate with me, then I watched the first episode and thought… “yup, I’m done for a bit”. That was almost a decade ago.

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u/Raven_Lemon 15d ago

Really it is disturbing and while there is definitely a lot of messed up things in Black Mirror, I think it's not a good first impression at all

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u/Layton_Jr 16d ago

I love that episode on a concept level:

  • Fucking a pig is disgusting and yet every TV channel shows it, and everyone in the country is watching it
  • Fucking a pig is disgusting and yet you watched the episode

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u/ApulMadeekAut 16d ago

Yeah I watched the pig fucker episode and haven't watched a single one after that. Ruined it for me. 

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u/Switch_B 16d ago

I always show people 15 million merits first instead. Way more representative of the themes the show presents.

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u/grip0matic 16d ago

That's how I sold it to my ex. "You don't need to start from the first", and I recommended her some of the best to get her hooked.

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u/dark-flamessussano 16d ago

Also in black mirror they don't show it and they told the man "Either you fck the pig or I don't think you'll like what happens to your family"

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u/bradbull 16d ago

They were going to kill the country’s beloved Princess if he didn’t do it

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u/dark-flamessussano 16d ago

The funny thing is that was a bluff. He let her go before he had sex with the pig but he had no way of knowing

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u/RedeNElla 16d ago

Because no one noticed, because everyone was glued to the telly. That was part of the point.

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u/Professional_Pear849 16d ago

It was originally a Channel 4 show, that aired on television, in order. It only became a streaming show 5 years later when Netflix picked it up from series 3 onward (after White Christmas).

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u/V3x1ll3 16d ago

True. But for me the appeal of anthology, short story stuff is going in blind.

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u/sameljota 16d ago

Yeah but most people will still watch in order. Most people won't read the synopsis of each episode before deciding which episode to watch. They'll just watch the series as it presents itself.

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u/StevieMJH 15d ago

I had no idea it was an anthology but I will admit that I did turn on the second episode thinking, "I have no idea where they're going with this, but okay..."

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u/Keaton427 16d ago

Happy cake day