taotrooper | Please, think of the potential love interests! They think of your main character, naked

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Please, think of the potential love interests! They think of your main character, naked

I downloaded some Slayers videos (mostly OPs and EDs, but also the scene with the AT-field joke) from here -this page is awesome, it even has summaries of the novels, but in Spanish-, and then I was reflecting on something.

You know, I've read in more than one place how Gourry isn't dumb in the novels. Personally, I'm fond of anime!Gourry since he's like a puppy, but what I've read about book!Gourry gets me excited ~~in my pants? XD~~ and wanting to read the original series.

So, since the anime was targeted as a comedy, they dumbed Gourry out so the violent puns could persist. I can see that...

However, the fact Gourry became a love interest later on, or at least someone who explicitly loved the main character in all the media, and does a lot of things for her and her (and his) friends. And then, a lot of non-canon shippers, instead of saying they like Lina with whoever better, justify themselves by bashing Gourry, and saying he's so dumb and isn't into magic. When the original Gourry isn't half as dim-witted, but they don't know him since they won't read that canon. It's fine to like something alternative; I've done it myself, but I don't attack a character's brains, especially not in an adaptation.

Then the pattern seemed familiar to me. And then I understood that dammit, this is Winry's story!

While Winry's crush on Edward in the anime isn't really there, it is in the manga. And Winry got dumbed down compared to her manga self ~~then again, a lot of characters were~~. Winry is horribly bashed, even worse than Gourry is. For more, Winry doesn't understand alchemy, just like Gourry isn't a sorcerer.

(Incidentally, by coincidence, they're both blond-haired. It had nothing to do with canon, just as in real life hair color has nothing to do with intelligence, but that won't stop the fandom from doing tacky blond-bimbo jokes.)

There's another ship parallel, which is the female violence towards the guy. Some people fail to see that, while Lina and Winry hit their loved guys when they exasperate them, they still get along with them just fine and the girls consider them their best friends. Also, Lina is still close to her other friends, Zel and Amelia, regardless of her crush on Gourry (...in her own, particular way ^^U). Same with Winry towards Alphonse, although this friendship is in a sibling level.

Has anyone seen this kind of trend in other fandoms? Dumbing down a character when it's animated or adapted to film, and by coincidence he/she ended up liking one of the main characters in the original source?

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I think the first problem is that anime!Gourry isn't as dumb as the fandom makes him out to be. It's more or less people go "he's dumb" and instead of people going "Uh, no. He's just naive" they just blindly agree.

Gourry might not be textbook-smart, but he's smart in the areas he needs to be. He's very perceptive both during fights (he's an awesome swordsman, something I doubt even speshul 'Gourry iz dumb' people would argue) and of the people around him (he was the only person to realize that Xelloss was a mazoku). I actually knew a girl in High School that was the opposite of this- she was so ditzy/dumb when it came to real life stuff, but in textbook smarts she was all honor classes and A+ grades. People don't have to be smart in everything to be 'smart.'

But yah- anime!Gourry got the same fandom treatment as anime!Winry. People focus on the negative flaws (a lot of which were played up in their anime adaptions) as an excuse to pair their love interests elsewhere.

This is actually common in fandom from what I can tell- in the InuYasha fandom, people call Kagome a 'whiny brat' or 'ditzy' (which of course was NOT helped by the horrible dub in which she's practically a valley-girl) and then bash the hell out of her. This, like with Gourry and Winry, is mostly the fault of a bad anime adaption of the character which overlooks their kickass!strong points from the manga/novel format and turns them into the cliche ditzy leads they are. :/

It's not exactly the same situation, but your examples remind me of Movie!Ron in a way. A lot of Harmonians said that Ron "doesn't deserve" Hermione, and that comes partly from the dumbing down of Ron and the Hermione Sue of the movies.

(Also, as someone who isn't really into the fandom for FMA, I still can't believe people bash Winry. Does not compute.)

Well, it's true I'm still rewatching the whole thing, and it's been more than five years since I watched the series so my memory is fuzzy as hell. So I can't remember to what extend he was "dumb" (for instance, I can't remember the Mazoku thing). But yeah, his smart is intuitive, and I rather liked Gourry in the anime a lot even if he kept asking theorical questions or wasn't listening quite carefully to the explanations. For me, him not getting the explanations sounded like dumbing down the character for anime, but I can't know for sure until I read the novels.

I haven't read the Inuyasha manga, and in fact it was the anime what wore me out of the fandom. Which sucks, since maybe I would've liked it. Sadly, my country broadcasted a dub made from the English dub, and that just can't be nice. Anime!Kagome didn't seem that ditzy when I watched it, but she tired me out because she was always acting the same way. It didn't help that all her and Inuyasha/Kagome fangirls I met in the Spanish fandom at that time were brats. Agh. But that sucks, because Rumiko's girls are kickass, and I'm sure Kagome must be too.

Oh, I think it's kind of the same case. Kloves doesn't seem to like Ron, does he? Grrlpowaa!pink!Suemione ends up with his good lines, so Ron is only left to make comments about spiders or something. Of course it's dumbing down ~~because for Kloves, the main character is Hermione Granger!~~

(Dude, neither do I D: If Ed/Winry happens in the manga, the fandom is soooo going to hit fandom_wank again)

Yah, in the anime Gourry got what I call the 'Pokedex complex.' For example, part of the reason Ash seems 'dumb' in Pokemon is that he's always consulting his Pokedex for everything. This isn't actually because he's stupid, but because we as the viewers need to understand what's going on. Anime!Gourry got the same deal- he was left to ask the questions so we as watchers could understand how the spell or whatever it was, worked.

Any dub based off our shitty dog-pun filled, OOC piece of crap American dub of InuYasha cannot be good. I normally can at least tolerate the US dubs, if not love them, but not this one. Viz royally screwed it over. :/

Anime!Kagome is the cheerleader when the rest of the group fights (I've lost count of how many official anime images show her standing there looking shocked/scared while the others are fighting), she gets depressed all the time about the Kikyou situation, and she just all around got turned into a stereotypical co-star female damsel role. In the manga, she's been outright stated to be the most powerful character and almost took out Naraku completely pretty early on, she's smart and uses that to her advantage many times during fights, and more than once when she's been poisoned/controlled- she keeps on fighting and wins. She's probably my favorite kickass!female character so guh much hate for her anime and dub counterparts.

It didn't help that all her and Inuyasha/Kagome fangirls I met in the Spanish fandom at that time were brats.

Well nowadays in the fandom it's cliche/evil to like the canon pairing and everyone bashes InuKag and the two leads. :/ Ah fandom, how I hate thee...

I wasn't talking about Gourry being used as plot device to explain the audience. I have seen that in several of my fandoms. But I do remember and I've seen in the rewatching that sometimes, after Lina finishes her exposition, Gourry goes all "uh, I didn't really get it..." Which might've been done to exasperate Lina and provide comedy relief, maybe, but it still makes the poor dear sound stupidier than he truly is. I think.

It's kinda sad, but Spanish dubs translate from English dubs too frequently! So if they edit things out ~~hi Yu-gi-oh and Naruto!~~ in USA, we get the damn cuts as well. Kagome's voice in Mexican at least didn't sound that preppy, and Inuyasha was dubbed by one of my favorite voice actors, but all the bad puns and weird translations ~~and censure by overlapping of bikini tops to prevent boobies~~ must've been kept.

Yeah, I stopped watching the anime for the tiresome love triangle, and the repetitiveness. Probably anime!Kagome had a lot to do with it D:

So the fanbrats aren't picking on Kikyou? How odd O_o Before I left the fandom, there was a shipwar in the Spanish fandom: you either liked Kagome or Kikyou.

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