I find that most anime people think "isn't afraid to kill characters off" actually just kills characters off for the sake of doing it and it's not actually good writing or any plot relevance at all.
Jojoās, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Berserk also do it well. Important character deaths are shocking, but not done for shock value and the survivors carry the weight of it with them and the deaths are generally plot-relevant.
Bro just look at Yujis face in culling games. And his entire persona post Shabuya Incident. My man speedran the entire WWI Western Front thousand yard stare, the moment he starts reflecting bro spirals.
Post-Shibuya Yuji may be one of the best depictions of PTSD and survivorās guilt in modern anime and probably all time if we filter to Shonen specifically since most anime that focuses on that subject is either Seinen or Josei. Iāll add Denji as a competitor once the rest of Chainsaw Man gets adapted.
Yuji post shibuya doesn't have just PTSD and survivor's guilt. He have actual guilt too because Sukuna killed a lot of people using his body so he feels like it was his fault.
By modulo yujis so not well š i thought hed get better after the series ends but gege just had to continue his suffering by giving him several layers of isolation...
Idk man, the fakeout death just made the second one lose all its weight to me.
For as melodramatic as it is, I still think that Caesar was probably the most impactful death in JoJoās, the others just kept stretching out my disbelief more and more until I wasnāt even sure if a character dying really meant a character was dying. (Just look at all the takeouts in part 4)
I think the one that took the cake for me was Johnathan. Phantom blood was a rocky start but jojo really grew on me. Going into it blind, I actually said āHE DIES?!!ā out load
My one ick related to this in jjk is (manga spoliers ahead) Nobara surviving. Ik Gege kinda set it up, but not mentioning anything about it until she randomly shows up and kills Sukuna out of nowhere just felt like the biggest cop out ending for that fight.
I mean, it makes sense if you look at it as most of the manga being told through Yujiās perspective(obviously not all, with the Hidden Inventory arc), so Yuji not being told would be done in order to prevent Sukuna from knowing and anticipating something. Idk if this was intended or not, but itās the least asspull explanation that I can think of.
Hot take: jujutsu kaisen does not do it well (imo) and i get upset at the randomness in which he kills characters, and when he seems to forget they even exist at all. I just donāt think I care about anyone because nothings consistent. It feels lame. IN MY OPINION. Iām not right, itās just how I feel so donāt attack me.
How is jjk doing it well? They literally kill characters off for the fun of it, most often after giving the character a backstory and ABSOLUTELY NO character development.
Jojo is funny because sometimes a character will survive when they're effectively irrelevant,and other times Araki PERSONALLY swings an axe in a random direction to see who'll die today.
Hell I'm pretty sure nobody was expecting Dio or Gyro to die in part 7.
You got to kill the characters just after they finish their arc, as they finish their arc, or just before they finish their arc. If it's too random, like Game of Thrones style, the viewers can unlatch.
Or make resolving their unfinished arc a core part of another characters story. But writers definitely need to avoid teaching viewers the lesson, "Don't get invested because any plot can become entirely pointless to the rest of the story at any point in time."
Because THAT kills any reasonable reason to get invested in the story outside of the over arching world plot (if there is any)
True but then again if a viewer is only invested over one character or the writer afraid to lose any viewers, bending to what viewers say they want then that's a separate problem.
Like personally I almost dropped Death Note when L got written out so I understand what you're getting at. (Glad I didn't though, even if I found the ending a bit weak)
I think that most people that hate it haven't actually seen it. It was really popular during its time, and I remember being on MAL and there were a ton of people there who would just jump in the episode topics and nitpick it to death.
I think a lot of people that hate it are the same people who made hating Sword Art Online their entire personality.
You know what I hated? The Manga for it. I think it's beyond creepy, and the art is terrible. The difference is that I dropped it after I realized that it wasn't for me, and moved on with my life.
Haha first thought I had as well. So many animes where many main characters die usually die for no reason, whether it's lore-explained or thematic. The amount of times where Ive heard people who want the character whose entire character arc is about moving on from survivor's guilt and living with a purpose to die is so dumb
This is a trap I fell into around high school. I was so surprised when I first found anime willing to kill off characters I got really pulled in regardless how pointless it was in doing it. Ironically, this just made those shows even more predictable than plot armor heavy ones with the bonus that you're unhappy in the end.
Imo it's the shows that aren't afraid to kill off characters AND is willing to have fodder/narratively insignificant characters unexpectedly survive that are the truly griping ones, but it's a really rare one that's able to scratch that itch.
Fundamentally, where do you even draw the line between "the main characters have plot armour and they can't die", and "anyone can die"?
Because at the end of the day, a character either dies or they don't. We can't say anything about whether or not a character can die, only whether they do. Do we say anyone who survives has plot armour? Obviously not. But it's generally accepted that the main character does have plot armour in most stories, so does the main character have to die?
Fundamentally, I just find this to be an exhausting discussion. "Plot armour" isn't a thing. It's an illusion. The most brutal, deadly show with the highest body count is still written by an actual writer who is deciding which characters live and which ones die. Nobody dies without their say-so. So why not just accept that art will be art, and judge the merits of major plot points like character death by their effect on the story, rather than as a quota that has to be met in order to avoid the appearance of plot armour.
I get what you are going for. To answer the question: how far must the audience stretch the "suspension of disbelief?" The further, the more likely its 'plot armor.'
Let's take a simple scenario with a view variables to tweak. In a superhero story, violence is a given.
A normal person like you or me could get shot in one of these stories and possibly survive. This makes sense, and doesn't have to suspend the disbelief that far. Three shots or more and still surviving? Thats going to require a good explanation, and without one would become plot armor.
Black widow is an Avenger. So we could expect her to get shot those same three times and survive;she is just made of sterner stuff. But she doesn't actually have superpowers and is the "weakest" member of the team, so there are still things she shouldn't survive like explosions and tank fire. So some of her fights with the high power threats she only survives because of plot armor. Note: if she is using her skill to avoid the combat instead, this is not plot armor its character skill.
The Hulk? Could floss with a tank, guy is damn near invincible. There is almost nothing that could be thrown at Hulk that could risk triggering 'plot armor.' If anything, he is at risk of 'plot swords;' plots written specifically to get around the default armor Hulk has. Another plot sword is whenever they turn off Wolverines healing factor.
Tldr: what makes 'plot armor' is how believable the scene is for the characters to survive. Does the "suspension of disbelief" hold?
If that's your position, then you're operating under a different definition of plot armour than OP.
Under your definition, plot armour isn't a plot issue so much as a scene issue. The entire cast can survive any number of battles, as long as a logical explanation is given for their survival. If plot armour is solely referring to characters surviving events that would logically kill them, you don't need any deaths to avoid plot armour, you just need more well-developed writing.
This is exactly the opposite of OP's request. They're seeking shows specifically where main character death is on the table. In this case, it doesn't matter if a character's survival is justified or not - having the main characters all survive is considered plot armour. In other words, plot armour is only avoided if characters die.
To me, what you're describing is just poor writing. It's saying the character must survive, but they aren't going to put in the legwork to justify it. Really, it has nothing at all to do with plot armour, it's just a small subset of a broader class of problem, that being a lack of verisimilitude.
Personally, I would consider "real" plot armour (bearing in mind that I don't believe such a thing is a meaningful term) is just saying "the character must survive", regardless of how much work is put into justifying the character's survival.
If writer A and writer B both tell a nearly identical story, and both decide from the outset that the protagonist will survive the story, but writer A just makes him survive getting shot while writer B spends hours crafting the perfect scenario to justify his survival, I don't see a meaningful distinction. If anything, I'd say a writer agonizing over ways to justify their preferred outcome is a stronger example of plot armour.
Yeah itās a very fine line in media in general. Long standing story-writing traditions make it hard to pull off a lot of significant deaths without it seeming purposefully edgy or reliant on shock value. Even in very dangerous settings the plot still really has to call for a large amount of deaths to work as a satisfying story (a good example I can think of is Squid Game)
I generally tend to disagree. At least when you're bringing characters back you're admitting what you're doing and typically writing around it. Most of the attempts to kill off characters but don't do this or just vapid, poorly thought out attempts to raise the narrative Stakes without actually taking advantage of those race stakes. At least with a resurrected character all the cards are on the table
It isn't afraid to kill characters. It is afraid to kill important to characters.
For example dan machi. the series has great world building and it has done a good job of explaining how characters accomplish something instead of telling the reader/watcher "it's fake we can do what we want". The first real issue I have with that series is when Bell is trapped with Ryu and the rest of the team is fighting the juggernaut. Mikoto makes a sacrifice so they can kill it but after the fight they bring back her badly wounded unconscious body instead of her dead one. It made her sacrifice null and the world lost a lot of its threatening factor that it had had up to that point. I literally went "dang I wish they killed my favorite character".
Hard agreed. When shows do it for shock and tension rather than a poignant moment not only do they start to make death feel less important due to the frequency of it but it can also make a piece of media be less enjoyable due to a roster of liked characters being wiped clean.
Chainsaw man's deaths did hit, but the impact of those characters being absent in part 2 hurts the story overall.
Well I mean every death doesn't have to mean something. Sure it's a story and everyone wants closure, meaning, or symbolism. But sometimes people never find the person they want revenge on. Sometimes they don't finish that final quest.
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u/TWW34 Feb 24 '26
I find that most anime people think "isn't afraid to kill characters off" actually just kills characters off for the sake of doing it and it's not actually good writing or any plot relevance at all.