Cliches are quite common in Anime/games/movie/whatever. Let's take some pretty generic one, like the hero is fighting some impossibly powerful guy and all hope is lost, and then turns around by (going Super Saiyan/discover a new energy source/unlock some blood heritage/power of (love/friendship/justice/valor/something else good)) and wins. You probably seen something like that 100 times and obviously it's not very exciting. So some stories seem to be written to totally NOT fall into cliche, but there's actually a reason for cliche to exist, in that they're probably not a bad way to handle whatever situation which is why everyone uses them. Although I'm a big fan of HXH, there's a lot of time where I feel the story goes against the norm simply for the sake of going against the norm, and in the end it feels like you're arguing about something similar to the Emperor's New Cloth, like this stuff is *not cliche* so it must be good, because if you don't get it then you're not a *true fan* or whatever.
Take the identical scenario, HXH faces off against an impossibly powerful alien race bent on enslaving humanity in a secret mission that the rest of the world is oblivious to. First they tried to kidnap the alien leader's woman and totally blew off the aliens in an agreed exchange, which had the net effect of taking out one of the impossibly powerful Royal Guards. Then, after fighting to no avail, the Hunters had a suicide bomber strapped on a nuke against the alien leader, and this inexplicably actually works and takes out the alien leader and the remaining 2 Royal Guards, thus saving the world. This also probably marks the first time in fictional history where the ability to throw fireballs loses to nuclear weapons. The nuclear fallout is supposed to take out half a continent but for some reason didn't happen. Even though every nation in HXH presumably has nukes pointed at each other in a typical MAD scenario, apparently a random nuke exploding in the capital of a nation didn't set off a global nuclear war. Earth is saved and everything is all good.
Now I get that if you're in a fight where losing means the end of humanity (that was humanity's last stand before the world would get conquered) you probably can't afford to approach this honorably knowing the enemy is way stronger than you. But even if you ignore the fact this alien race has studied human tactics to ensure they can enslave them correctly but apparently have never heard of a nuke (and in HXH world has crazy amounts of nuclear proliferation), 'just nuke them' isn't exactly a great way to handle conflict. Even in Independence Day, the president of the United States talks about how he'd go down in history as the guy who launched nukes at his own territory and probably going to viewed as a crazy bad guy, which is quite a reasonable expectation. Although you probably shouldn't try to learn lessons on life from fiction, in theory the guys in fiction can better afford to live up to a higher standard because they always have the author bailing them out even if those tactics would never work in real life. I don't think it's good idea to glorify the equivalent of a suicide bomber with a nuclear device just because that was the only way to save humanity in this particular conflict. I don't mean some other character should've turned into Super Saiyan to save the world. After all they're faced with extinction, but just like now we question whether dropping the atomic bomb to end World War 2 was really justified, the fictional character using a nuclear device should not get a free pass just because it's fiction. Certainly, it's not right because he didn't fall into the usual Super Saiyan method of resolving impossible odds.
I remember a long time ago I talked to a Japanese friend about Death Note, and he's saying he doesn't really like the idea the whole premise of Death Note is making a guy that commit random acts of murder as a good thing, and he totally supported the Chinese government for banning Death Note sales in China because it's not something he'd want kids to read anyway. I don't mind things that go against the norm/cliche, but I think they have to be responsible. If you base your values on Naruto, at least you'd turn out to be an okay guy (assuming Sasuke isn't your hero). On the other hand if you base your values on Death Note, don't be surprised if people find that disturbing. I remember in one of those shooting spree incidents they found out the guy also plays GTA. Now I don't think the two are necessarily related, but you shouldn't believe people suspecting there might be a correlation. If they found Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm in the list of games he played no one would assume there's a connection between the game and his behavior.
Take the identical scenario, HXH faces off against an impossibly powerful alien race bent on enslaving humanity in a secret mission that the rest of the world is oblivious to. First they tried to kidnap the alien leader's woman and totally blew off the aliens in an agreed exchange, which had the net effect of taking out one of the impossibly powerful Royal Guards. Then, after fighting to no avail, the Hunters had a suicide bomber strapped on a nuke against the alien leader, and this inexplicably actually works and takes out the alien leader and the remaining 2 Royal Guards, thus saving the world. This also probably marks the first time in fictional history where the ability to throw fireballs loses to nuclear weapons. The nuclear fallout is supposed to take out half a continent but for some reason didn't happen. Even though every nation in HXH presumably has nukes pointed at each other in a typical MAD scenario, apparently a random nuke exploding in the capital of a nation didn't set off a global nuclear war. Earth is saved and everything is all good.
Now I get that if you're in a fight where losing means the end of humanity (that was humanity's last stand before the world would get conquered) you probably can't afford to approach this honorably knowing the enemy is way stronger than you. But even if you ignore the fact this alien race has studied human tactics to ensure they can enslave them correctly but apparently have never heard of a nuke (and in HXH world has crazy amounts of nuclear proliferation), 'just nuke them' isn't exactly a great way to handle conflict. Even in Independence Day, the president of the United States talks about how he'd go down in history as the guy who launched nukes at his own territory and probably going to viewed as a crazy bad guy, which is quite a reasonable expectation. Although you probably shouldn't try to learn lessons on life from fiction, in theory the guys in fiction can better afford to live up to a higher standard because they always have the author bailing them out even if those tactics would never work in real life. I don't think it's good idea to glorify the equivalent of a suicide bomber with a nuclear device just because that was the only way to save humanity in this particular conflict. I don't mean some other character should've turned into Super Saiyan to save the world. After all they're faced with extinction, but just like now we question whether dropping the atomic bomb to end World War 2 was really justified, the fictional character using a nuclear device should not get a free pass just because it's fiction. Certainly, it's not right because he didn't fall into the usual Super Saiyan method of resolving impossible odds.
I remember a long time ago I talked to a Japanese friend about Death Note, and he's saying he doesn't really like the idea the whole premise of Death Note is making a guy that commit random acts of murder as a good thing, and he totally supported the Chinese government for banning Death Note sales in China because it's not something he'd want kids to read anyway. I don't mind things that go against the norm/cliche, but I think they have to be responsible. If you base your values on Naruto, at least you'd turn out to be an okay guy (assuming Sasuke isn't your hero). On the other hand if you base your values on Death Note, don't be surprised if people find that disturbing. I remember in one of those shooting spree incidents they found out the guy also plays GTA. Now I don't think the two are necessarily related, but you shouldn't believe people suspecting there might be a correlation. If they found Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm in the list of games he played no one would assume there's a connection between the game and his behavior.
