Sooo, I’m beating a dead horse with this post but I don’t care. In general the anime trilogy was obviously a huge disappointment, and one of the main complaints was the human characters, especially the main character, Haruo Sakaki. I believe that his failure as a main character was because of three mistakes
Motivation
Personality
Character Arc
I’ll be diving into each of these three topics and analyze what went wrong with it, compare him with better protagonists, and at the end explain what could have been done differently to make him better
Mistake 1. Motivation
In the trilogy, Haruo’s main motivation is that he hates Godzilla and wants to kill him, and honestly, it’s a good motivation, is it relatable? No, of course not, not a lot of people have beef with a giant electromagnetic lizard, but it has potential, just look at Eren Yeager. If his motivation is good, then why does everybody complain about it? Well, like I said, they failed to stick the landing on an otherwise strong motivation. Let’s go back a little, why does Haruo hate Godzilla? Well, Godzilla killed his parents, yeah, thats reasonable, but guess what, we don’t even get to see his parents face until the goddamn third movie! And even then it’s literally a still frame followed by a voiceover! How are we supposed to sympathize with Haruo and the loss of his parents if we don’t even get to even see them in the flesh! Let’s bring back Eren Yeager now, it’s clear that Haruo was inspired by Eren, their biggest similarity is their motivations, both want to kill the creature(s) that killed their parents, but why is one considered one of the best anime protagonists of all time while the other is universally panned? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but for now, let’s look at motivations. The entire first episode of AoT is based on Eren on how his life was before the titans, we see his relationship with Mikasa and Armin, but possibly the most important was his relationship with his mom. She’s portrayed as kind and loving, like many mothers out there. Since we know Eren’s mom, her personality, and her relationship with Eren, of course it hits hard when she is killed, and this causes Eren to want to kill all of the titans, reasonably. Now, let’s look at how Haruo’s motivation is born, of course, since this is a trilogy that is around 5 hours, and AOT is a 30+ hour show, I will give it some leeway, but I’ll still try to compare it fairly. Basically, Haruo sees Godzilla blow up a ship and the debris falls onto the bus Haruo’s parents were on. Yeah that's it, no build up, no emotions no nothing, they just die so Haruo has something to seethe about. But there’s more. Going back to Eren, Eren’s motivation isn't just “I hate the titans cuz they killed my mom!”, he also wants to see the world outside the walls he’s basically imprisoned in, this automatically makes his character more complex, and Haruo lacks this. All he wants to do is kill Godzilla, that's it. Ok that's enough ranting, now let’s look at how to make him better. What I would do is just build up to the death of Haruo's parents, or something at least, even a small conversation with young Haruo and his mom would make us feel something when they die, and instantly make him more likable and relatable, it doesn’t even have to be in the beginning honestly, something with Haruo’s parents somewhere in POTM would still make him better. Then, add some other motivation on top of that, this makes him more likeable too. For example (sorry for shameless plug) in my rewrite for POTM, I made Haruo a child soldier, and the beginning of the prologue is his first face to face meetup with Godzilla, Instead of just pure rage now, Haruo also fears Godzilla, this adds more depth to his character, additionally, something else you could add is wanting to kill Godzilla not only to avenge his parents, but to avenge the people Godzilla killed too. Alright, i think I’ve gotten my point across, let's look at #2
Mistake 2. (Lack of) Personality
Alright, so we know that Haruo's one and only motivation is he wants Godzilla dead, Well, instead of giving him a distinct personality, he's just angry. You know how in the first Avengers movie Bruce Banner tells Captain America "That's my secret, I'm always angry" and turns into the Hulk, yeah that's Haruo, he's just always angry for literally no reason other than to be edgy. He always has this scowl on his face and he goes after anybody who doesn't believe that Godzilla should be dead. Again, look at Eren. Eren had a similar personality to Haruo in the beginning, both are hot-headed and strong-willed, unlike Haruo, He has actual relationships with people and that grounds him to reality. For example, Yuka-tan (I forgot her actual name so I’ll be referring to her as Yuka-tan for now on) is clearly Haruo’s version of Mikasa (minus the badassery), someone that clearly loves him and would do anything to protect them. Eren and Mikasa have tender moments that make you care about those two and their relationship, while Haruo and Yuka-tan have like one or two moments of care in which Haruo responds like a goddamn brick. Oh, and also, Yuka-tan is such a enabler too. If you slept in the middle 30 minutes of City of the Edge of Battle, which most of us did, Haruo actually has sparks of personality, He actually has moral conflict inside, he is distraught over if he should sacrifice more of his comrades to save Godzilla, which is really great! Is it handled well, no, it’s random and its more telling rather than showing, but I guess it works, but then Yuka-tan shows up and is like “It’s ok to feel mad, Godzilla needs to die” or something along those lines and he instantly goes back to being his angry self, I swear, It was such a missed opportunity to cash in on that self-doubt and make a more interesting, relatable character, but she had to show up and ruin it all. Of course, in the end of COTEOB he does have another moral conflict, but that's just an excuse to drive the plot forward and is literally never mentioned again by Haruo at all after it happens. Ok, how do we fix it, then? Well, it’s really obvious and I’ve been hinting at it this whole time. Give him (actual) internal conflict, don’t have it just be Haruo sitting there depressed and saying “Is this really what I should do?” Instead, actually dive into his mind and show his conflicting emotions. For example, that one scene in Evangelion 3.0 where Shinji is walking around and trying to process everything that happened the past 14 years? Something like that would be amazing. Along with that, give him actual relationships that ground him to reality. Remove the whole enabler thing from Yuka-tan and make Haruo respond more to her feelings, and then create a character and turn him into his Armin, a childhood friend he laughs with, cares for, and protects (platonically) and there you have it, a actual complex character who can still be mad, but at the same time be more realistic and likeable.
Mistake 3: Nonexistent Character Arc
Haruo’s Character Arc is practically nonexistent, actually, it's not even a character arc, is more of a character degradation, and not the well written one like Walter White, Haruo literally ends up worse than how he started, and in the end, it serves no real payoff for the viewers. Haruo’s “arc” throughout the trilogy is basically “I lost everything to Godzilla, I’ll kill him!” until the end where he randomly has a change of heart and sacrifices himself for the greater good. The only change he really goes through in the trilogy is the end, and even that doesn’t feel rewarding or is satisfying, he randomly gets a vision and becomes suicidal, he never grows, never evolves, and only wavers once in his quest to kill Godzilla. A trilogy is a perfect way to show a character and their journey, The first part is the protagonist’s origins and why he does what he does, The second part is him at his darkest moment, and the third part is him rising up from his darkest hour and evolving into something better than he was before, of course, there are other ways you could take it (like I said, Walter White with character degradation) but that's the most common one. A perfect example of this is the Dark Knight Trilogy. Batman Begins: We are introduced to Bruce Wayne and why and how he becomes Batman, The Dark Knight: Bruce Wayne continues his crusade as a Dark Knight and in the end falls into his darkest hour, The Dark Knight Rises: Bruce Wayne rises from the dark and ultimately becomes something more than how he started out as. Haruo’s arc could have been something like this, but instead, he remains a static character throughout the entire trilogy. So how do you fix this, well, this one is really easy to fix, just follow the character arc template I mentioned. Instead of rage->rage->rage->stupid sacrifice, it should have been rage->doubt->acceptance or sacrifice. Haruo starts out as an angry man with nothing to lose, but is held back by his friends who ground him to reality in Movie 1 and in the end Godzilla kills his squadron. Movie 2 starts where the first one left off, him starting to doubt himself after seeing so many people die, then in the end someone really close to him dies. Movie 3 is Haruo eventually coming to his senses and he either lets go of his hate of Godzilla or keep the original ending, but since Haruo actually has an arc now, it is a satisfying end, but personally the first one is still the route that should be taken as its more powerful.
In conclusion, Haruo’s failure as a main character stems from multiple critical issues, his motivation that the viewers can’t sympathize with, a personality of an angsty teen who responds to anything like a brick wall, and the lack of a character arc. All of these are key to creating a memorable and great protagonist, and as Haruo lacks all of these, he just seems like a cardboard cutout screaming “You Bastard!” to a mountain that doesn’t even care about him and his existence, much like the viewers. His mistakes as a main character is one of the biggest mistakes the anime trilogy made and sticks out the most because we spend 3⁄4 's of the trilogy with him. If Haruo had been written with a more fleshed-out and relatable motivation, a more nuanced and realistic personality, and an actual character arc going from rage to doubt to acceptance, he would have been one of the best protagonists the Godzilla series, and maybe even the Kaiju genre in general, has seen and made the anime trilogy more enjoyable to watch. So yeah, thats it, uhh if you’re down here then read my Anime Trilogy rewrite please, I would appreciate it, and asked if you want to be pinged!
@Godzillabutnotgod
@Footyzilla1321 (analysis stuff)
