shonen is a genre that can involve brutality and death, loss and moral complexity. bad things may happen to the protagonists, and you feel the punch as some of them may be lost.
slashers go beyond that level, subjecting the protagonists to so much brutality and regularly killing them off to the point where you no longer emotionally attach to any of the characters because you're just waiting to see what creative methods the killers use to kill them; the antagonists are the primary drivers of the plot and are the center of what little emotional resonance is present.
it is possible to tell emotionally complex stories in a slasher, tho it is much harder to do so for the protagonists. we just can't give much of a shit because we know they're toast. it's best to let any complexity play out subtley and for the benefit of being more invested in the villain's motivations.
Jujutsu Keisen can't make up its mind whether it wants to be shonen or a slasher. it started out with the premise that anyone could die, but way too quickly escalates that to "and by that i mean literally everyone *is going to die*" so i'm mourning the most interesting ones now and emotionally distancing myself from the cast. i'm also quickly losing interest because the bad guys are boring as fuck and don't use chain saws to do their murders, they just do mass terror shit and give shonen-style villain monologues that are not suited for slasher-villains; shut the fuck up and find more interesting ways to murder puppies or whatever 🥱
slashers go beyond that level, subjecting the protagonists to so much brutality and regularly killing them off to the point where you no longer emotionally attach to any of the characters because you're just waiting to see what creative methods the killers use to kill them; the antagonists are the primary drivers of the plot and are the center of what little emotional resonance is present.
it is possible to tell emotionally complex stories in a slasher, tho it is much harder to do so for the protagonists. we just can't give much of a shit because we know they're toast. it's best to let any complexity play out subtley and for the benefit of being more invested in the villain's motivations.
Jujutsu Keisen can't make up its mind whether it wants to be shonen or a slasher. it started out with the premise that anyone could die, but way too quickly escalates that to "and by that i mean literally everyone *is going to die*" so i'm mourning the most interesting ones now and emotionally distancing myself from the cast. i'm also quickly losing interest because the bad guys are boring as fuck and don't use chain saws to do their murders, they just do mass terror shit and give shonen-style villain monologues that are not suited for slasher-villains; shut the fuck up and find more interesting ways to murder puppies or whatever 🥱
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@ViciouslyKind All characters are toast in the circle of life, the grim reaper is the ultimate slasher, and his story could be the ultimate story, as well as the stories of the victims of life and death, and the stories of those who loved them and were left behind, and so on in an endlessly expanding universe web.
