They straddle realism and formalism, venturing to be both genuine enough to be believed and rich enough in calculated cinematography to cause the expected reaction. Whilst the devices used to raise the emotional impact are conspicuous ones, such as saturated lighting, sentimental music, and bevies of close ups upon faces, the circumstances try to be valid and venture to stay within the confines of suspended disbelief. This is the death we assume to happen for our important characters when we watch or read fiction. ![]() It is this that drives the extremely high death rate of “guru” characters–those that appear to expose the protagonist to the conflict and train them for their journey–such as Star Wars‘s Obi-wan Kenobi or Puella Magi Madoka Magica‘s Tomoe Mami. That they are killed at the end of this, when their narrative relevance is extinguished and an emotional investment by the audience has been properly built, is a simple means of extracting the maximum mileage each discrete character can offer, adding emotional shock and status quo destruction to their mechanical repetoire. The introduced character becomes an object against which a major character can develop or be characterized against, or otherwise introduce important plot elements and give it a human face. These deaths are stellar examples of Chekhov’s gun in the sense that the narrative expends all possible utility from the element–in this case a character–without any waste. Perhaps the victim is not a child, and other times is entirely willing to embrace expiration, such as “glorious sacrifice” deaths like the one early on in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann regardless, the marking properties are strong emotion, meaning (either immediate or eventual), and narrative relevance. In this way her death is excellent example of the sort of narratively efficient, poignant, meaningful, and mourned death that most “good” deaths we experience in media are. Bolstered by emotional BGM and an even-paced, earnest, post-humous narration/monologue, the subplot caps itself off to be compact, powerful, and efficient. Her death also seeds future conflict by way of her brother, develops Kio into a position of conflict with much of the major cast in ideals, and is achieved within time-constraints by 1) using a child, 2) killing her through incurable illness, and 3) highlighting the resultant loss of future potential (tied to the first mechanic of course!) ruthlessly through her diary of future imagined, causally linked to the major grievance of the Vagan whole. ![]() Developed across a mere 2 episodes of 37-38, Lu’s story is a shortcut to embody the sympathetic portion of the Vagan people and to be the primary “shock” to protagonist Kio Asuno to ultimately upset the status quo and develop the plot further towards climax. The death of Lu is a fairly condensed example of the functionally ideal death that most media will put focus on: emotional, narratively expedient, and meaningful. Self-portrait accompanied by diary monologue for maximum effect
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