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Smack-9 t1_j27608d wrote

Alice in Borderland is a manga adaptation, yes, and manga will have flashbacks and character backgrounds dropped into the middle of plot proceedings.

Other media does this too. Breaking Bad will often have flashbacks in the cold open.

Presenting things in strictly chronological order can and will undercut a lot of tension. If we see the protagonist set up his dramatic reversal ahead of time, you lose the drama.

Its OK if its not for you, but there's real storytelling value to flashbacks.

As for the "everyone is an idiot" thing: Its really hard to write a character who is smarter than the writer. 😅

The 'battle of wits' genre kind of runs on a cycle of laying down the rules for a scenario, then MC finding a way to twist circumvent or beat the rules. Some shows do this better than others.

I find it helps if you remember that you, the viewer, have distance from the situation in the show and sometimes more information than the characters do. Nobody is a perfectly rational actor operating on a sphere in a vacuum; the characters are often tired, stressed, anxious, unsure who to trust, or otherwise not thinking clearly.

The Beach arc of AiB is pretty good about this: Yes, everyone should chill the fuck out and solve the murder, but, uh, there's other factors going on that makes that difficult.

A lot of these confrontations are as much ideological as they are intellectual. Often a scenario is designed to have character's ideals questioned more than they are to make perfectly logical sense. Its a thing that happens in melodrama. You either like it or you don't.

Part of the fun of these shows is the power fantasy of being the smartest guy in the room. The trick is to hide the idiot ball or at least not deploy it too liberally.

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stargate-command t1_j2c0yau wrote

If you are an American tv viewer and do not see the storytelling power and function of flashbacks… I’d like to introduce you to a little show called LOST.

Not a perfect story throughout, but man is it some masterful storytelling.

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grr_not_me OP t1_j27b188 wrote

Thanks. For me, I'm thinking it's too many flashbacks that repeat the same message with no advancement. I thought each flashback in Breaking Bad served a purpose. There may or may not be anime manga I find interesting. I'll pass on this one. Edit: I don't know who's down voting you. I upvoted because you taught me a lot.

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Smack-9 t1_j27hais wrote

Thanks! I tend to talk out of my arse a lot so I'm glad it helped. :)

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Simply_Epic t1_j2886zf wrote

I’d say every flashback serves a purpose. Yes, it likes to repeat a lot of themes, but the flashbacks tend to be important to either plot or character development. Sometimes both. There are a lot of character actions and behaviors that would make little sense without the flashbacks. This story is not nearly as much about what’s happening in the moment in the games as it is about the characters. Who they are now, who they were before, and who they will become. Early on in the show I get how they might seem pointless, but as the show goes on I think the purpose of the flashbacks becomes more and more clear.

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Visco0825 t1_j2a58nb wrote

Have you ever scene the show lost? Flashbacks are effective for shows where the characters are in completely different scenarios than they previously were. They provide depth and contrast and a method to show growth and change both in the world and in the character.

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