Talk:Ken Kaneki/@comment-213.66.199.45-20150514061428/@comment-25047329-20150514070902

I was just thinking about the connection between tragedy, catharsis, and audiance expectation, and I think a lot of that has to do with Kaneki as a character. Us, as the audiance, have certain expectations when we go into a story, whether we're conscious of them or not. The main character of a story is who we connect to the most because that's who we spend the most time with. If the MC is likeable and relatable, as Kaneki is, we want them to be happy. Him being happy makes us happy and we build expectations around that. Kaneki is a character in which much tragedy surrounds his life, so we (broadly speaking) want that catharsis of happiness.

Most people gravitate towards the positive and even in a story like TG, many hope that at the end, all the misery points can be turned in and something good will happen. Thus, the cathartic feeling that it all meant something. On a more point by point scale, his character is constantly undulating in a way that allows breathing room. It's kind of predictable in a way but only in restospect. Kaneki goes through a period where he's relatively happy or stable, something terrible happens, he comes out hurt but stronger, he adjusts and is relatively happy again, but then it starts all over. It's actually a pretty simple formula once you understand it, but an effective one.

Kaneki's character follows a delicate balance where he has overt negative traits and terrible things happening in his life, but it's counterbalanced by his positive character traits and good things happening so that the audiance can have that catharsis and not feel smothered. For instance, he starts out as a wimp who's easily taken advantage of, but is an over all nice guy. Being a wimp isn't a positive trait, but being taken advantage of is something we've all gone through, so we can relate. His personal flaw, being "too nice" leads him to getting deceived and tortured. It's a terrible experience that really opens his eyes so he becomes stronger as a result and reeks retribution on his torturer. Which is where expectation and catharsis comes into play. After being treated so badly, there's the "expectation" that something good must happen and when it comes in the form of the MC giving the bad guy his comeuppance, it's cathartic.

To put it simply ('cause I've already gone on really long, lol) he's really well balanced. He's a good balance of being flawed, but not too flawed, of having a tragic life, but not so tragic that it's hopeless. He abides by audiance expectations just enough to leave the audiance satisfied, but not so much that there isn't room for nothing to go wrong so that more conflict naturally arises.