Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-174.16.253.207-20160614045347/@comment-27247962-20161020144016

^ "Romantic love ADDS to the realism" vs "the story lacks realism without a romance".

Correct & Incorrect.

First of all the emphasis on 'adds' and on 'lacks' in both sentences have a completely different weight. 'Adds' points at a small addition of realism brought to story by making romance surface a bit more in the story. While 'lacks' in this case implies the bottom of the barrel. No romance --> no realistic story basically, that's how it's interpreted and that's where the similarity off both sentences stops. But initially that doesn't have to be the case. But this shows that you can't rely on a negative equivalent of the original, more positively implied sentence, because it gets an interpretation that is completely blown out of proportion.

Incorrect because not every story lacks realism when romance isn't involved, but in TG's case i'm positive that it would do some good and add to the vibrant nature the story once showed. Doesn't mean it needs to be generalised to every story will become more realistic when it has more romance in it. Some genres or specific stories don't particularly need it.

The reasons why it would be good to have a bit more romance, is to rid Kaneki of that baby/kid-aura he still has. Just glancing over comments in Kaneki's or Hide's page confirms how people see him as the overpowered ghoulized babyfaced kid that's going to solve an important problem in the end. Romance for example could be a good method to indirectly show us how Kaneki is maturing by taking on responsibility, not running away and grabbing onto to the people dear to him, instead of keeping them safe from a distance. It would mean he overcame a drastic obstacle within himself. The one where he doesn't allow himself some happyness.

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I'll add some stuff later.