r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Morr4Seiya • 17h ago
Hated Tropes (Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing
Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.
-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.
In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.
-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.
In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?
Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.
-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down
So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.
Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out
But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.
So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.
While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.
Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.
So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?
When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays
First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?
Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)
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u/Ok_Somewhere1236 14h ago
Cheery Littlebottom: The Watch vs. Discworld
I think most fans of the Discworld books could spend hours talking about everything wrong with the live-action adaptation, The Watch. From the unnecessary attempts to "modernize" books that arguably needed no modernization in the first place, to the bizarre decision to mash together elements from ten different novels into a single season, there is plenty to criticize.
But if I had to point to the single biggest missed opportunity, it would be what they did to Cheery Littlebottom's character. In the books, Cheery is a female dwarf, and her character arc, developed across multiple novels, explores just how deeply patriarchal and restrictive dwarven society and culture are.
Dwarven culture is so overwhelmingly masculine that dwarves traditionally use male pronouns for everyone, including females. Femininity is practically taboo, and anything considered insufficiently masculine is treated with suspicion or outright hostility. And that's what makes Cheery's story so fascinating.
Cheery is a female dwarf who simply wants to be feminine. She wants to wear feminine clothes, use female pronouns, express herself openly, and be recognized as a woman. That might sound like a relatively simple desire, but within the context of dwarven society, it's practically revolutionary.
What makes her character so unique is that you can interpret her story as both a feminist narrative and a transgender allegory.
From a cultural perspective, Cheery has essentially been raised and socialized as male her entire life. She has been expected to dress, behave, and present herself according to strictly masculine standards, regardless of her biological sex. Her decision to embrace femininity is therefore not just a personal choice but a rejection of the gender identity and social role imposed upon her by her culture. At the same time, her story is also about women's rights, challenging a society that refuses to acknowledge femininity as something legitimate or worthy of respect.
And one of my favorite details from the books is how Cheery finds inspiration in human drag queens. The idea that if human men can dress and present themselves as women, why shouldn't she, an actual female dwarf, be allowed to do the same?
It's such a wonderful little piece of worldbuilding because it shows how something ordinary or familiar in one culture can become a revolutionary idea in another.
Cheery's character arc manages to explore feminism, gender identity, self-expression, cultural expectations, and social change simultaneously, without reducing any of those themes to a simple lecture.
And the best part is that her development takes time. She struggles, experiments, discovers herself, gains confidence, and gradually challenges the expectations of the society she grew up in. It's a genuinely beautiful story, made even better by how naturally Terry Pratchett integrates it into the world of Discworld.
And then the television adaptation comes along and decides to make Cheery a human trans woman who is already openly presenting as herself from the very beginning. And that's where I think the writers completely missed the point.
They didn't just change the character's appearance or background. They removed the entire context that made her story so meaningful in the first place.
Gone is the uniquely dwarven struggle against enforced masculinity. Gone is the gradual exploration of femininity in a society that barely acknowledges its existence. Gone is the process of self-discovery, the cultural rebellion, and the fascinating intersection between feminism and transgender themes. Instead, the show essentially skips straight to the destination, without giving us the journey that made reaching that destination so powerful.
And I'm sorry, but that just feels incredibly cheap.
The irony is that, in their attempt to make the character more explicitly progressive and modern, the writers discarded one of the most original and nuanced explorations of gender identity and women's liberation already present in the source material. And I want to be very clear here: this is not a criticism of the actor/actress, nor is it a criticism of transgender people or transgender representation.
My criticism is directed entirely at the writers and their adaptation choices.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a transgender character. But when you're adapting a character whose original story already offers such a rich and thoughtful exploration of gender, skipping the journey just feels like such a loss.