If you watch anime, or talk to people about anime, or have ever heard of Japanese cartoons or videogames, or actually, no, this applies to all forms of media, I'm just using anime as an easy frame of reference, anyway, if you have absorbed media, then you probably know of a whiny character. Today, I'm going to talk about these characters, talk about why people hate them, about how they can be properly utilized within a story and what truly defines one.
Let's start with that, how does one go about determining if a character truly is whiny or not. Well, let's start with the word, "Whine." Taken from my dictionary of choice, The New Oxford English Dictionary, using the most applicable definitions provided, a "Whine" is "A complaining tone of voice." or "A feeble or petulant complaint." "Petulant" meaning immature, childish or sulky. Other definitions for a whine refer to a long drawn out sound, or a generally unpleasant, high pitched sound. Those work for determining when someone is whining through tone, but most characters that match this archetype don't necessarily use a whiny tone. They whine through intent and actions.
We're going to stick with the term Whiny. As whiny is a perfect descriptor for this archetype. Though, there is another. Another term. The term that overlaps with whine so much that they're virtually indistinguishable, the term "Angst."
We're going to stick with the term Whiny. As whiny is a perfect descriptor for this archetype. Though, there is another. Another term. The term that overlaps with whine so much that they're virtually indistinguishable, the term "Angst."
Let's talk more about angst for a minute. What differentiates an angsty character from a whiny one? Well, whining is one of the primary features of angst. You're not angsty if you're not complaining about how much angst you have. (Real quick, angst is anxiety and dread. Less a sense of being held down as it's often portrayed, instead it's more of a cynical defeatist attitude.) While these two archetypes might be different, there's the aforementioned overlap, where a character is rarely, if ever, portrayed as being one without the other. From here on I'll use the general term of "Whiny" as I feel it more concisely encompasses the trope, but I will point out differences if and when they arise.
Let me give an example of a whiny character. We'll use the poster boy for whine and angst. Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji fits the whiny character type to a T. He's immature. He's selfish. He's sulky. He's weak. He makes excuses. Shinji even has a slightly higher pitched voice than the other characters his age. Shinji truly embodies the essence of a whiny character, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as I'll explain in a bit, but what's relevant right now is looking at Shinji and comparing other characters to him. The way you go about this is important, done incorrectly you could take a whiny character and compare him to Shinji, then establish that that character isn't whiny at all, because he's "Not nearly as bad as Shinji." Which is a false conclusion. You're not comparing the character's aspects to determine which is more whiny, you're comparing them to determine whether or not they have any similarities. You may personally view whichever character you're using as not being whiny, or you may have a higher bar for what constitutes whiny than others may have, which is the reason you should use Shinji as your base. Shinji is a very whiny character, I'm an enormous fan of Evangelion, it's my second favorite anime of all time, but I will admit in a second that he is one of the biggest whiners in the medium. Actually, not just the medium, in all of fiction, Shinji is still one of the most recognizable and appropriate characters for embodying this archetype.Using Shinji as your base, establishing this archetype *for yourself is now far easier. You know the definitions and you have a good example of how this character type acts. Go forth and yell wildly about how whiny whatever Square-Enix character you don't like is.
*The point of doing this for yourself instead of just using TVtropes is that it's important to learn the ins and outs of character types separate from a database of information established by others. TVtropes is a good place to start, but to truly gain an understanding of archetypes and tropes, you're better off establishing them for yourself. That is, if you have any interest in storytelling or story theory, if you're more on the casual side, then sticking to TVtropes will probably suit you just fine, but there's a saying that if you want to learn something, then learning it piecemeal will leave you with less knowledge than you started with. Or something along those lines. The point being that learning bits and pieces won't help you and you're better off learning everything from scratch if you're serious about it. You don't learn a single guitar cord then write a song with it if you intend to actually make music.
Next we're going to talk about why people hate these characters so much. In my internet argument travels I have never run into a character type that has received as much hate and vitriol as the whiny character. The answer to "Why?" is pretty obvious. I mean, these characters are defined by their lack of action. Rather than move the plot forward they choose to cry and run away. To the average viewer this is very frustrating, it slows the pace of the show and you grow to resent the character for not taking action. Also, people really don't like whining. Whining by definition is a negative term, nobody wants to hear someone whine about their problems, even if those problems are legitimate. But the biggest problem is that whiny characters, especially in anime, are almost always used in "Coming of Age" stories, where a character has to grow up and face their problems maturely. People expect this going into a story where a character whines a lot, and their expectations cause them to grow frustrated when you know what's going to happen, but it's just not happening. It's similar to how in horror movies you know the person on their own is going to get killed, and you keep seeing the situations where it's about to happen, but it just won't. The difference being that the thrill of watching a horror movie is the way it plays on your own expectations. Subverting your initial thought and finding a way to surprise you. In a coming of age story, the thrill is in the big moment where they grow up, it's similar to a horror movie in that it's a single big moment with a lot of build up, but instead of the positive of a character staying alive a little longer, you have the negative of the character being whiny longer. With the prolonged life, every time something doesn't kill that character, there's a brief moment of relief. That character is not dead yet, you can both relax, but also remain on the edge, waiting for the inevitable death. With the negative of the character staying whiny, you have the opposite, as you want nothing more than the turn, but are being forced to sit through more inherently annoying content.
My final thought on why The Whiny Character is so hated requires me to talk about the term "Relatable." People throw this word around as a way to say an unrelatable character is bad or poorly written, but for the most part, that's kind of the opposite. Now, I'm not saying all relatable characters are bad, just that being relatable isn't a positive in its own right. Let's look at Twilight. Bella is one of the most relatable characters in the history of fiction. Do you know why? Because she has no personality. Bella is barely even a character, which allows every 14 year old girl to put themselves in her shoes, because all of those girls are just as shallow but aren't getting the attention to the two most beautiful boys ever. The audience for Twilight fully relates to the main character, and I have to be careful about how I word this, but it's the same concept that worked well for Harry Potter. Harry himself is kind of a nothing character. People say he's a kind and humble person, but you know who tells me that? Kind and humble people. Assholes have told me that they liked Harry because he took no gruff from anyone. Harry is everyone, because Harry is no one. Creating a character that can be as easily related to as Harry is hard, he is an extremely well written character solely because of how many different people can place their views, emotions and thoughts onto him. Bella is not hard to write. Bella is looking at a group of people, giving a blank slate the window dressing of that audience and putting that character into a very desirable situation. I hate using Twilight for an example here, as it's so old hat to bag on those books. I mean, years old now, but the point works well with them and I'm too lazy to find another example, so we'll just move on from here. The point I'm attempting to make here is that no matter what you do, a relatable character is going to be more popular with the mass audience than a specialized one. This is tied to The Whiny Character in that this archetype is probably the most relatable of them all. Everyone knows what it's like to feel helpless, to be powerless. Normal people experience that in their everyday life, many people come to media for escapism, not to recognize their negative qualities in a character. Especially not a character that is slowing the pace of the media you're consuming. People like to relate to Harry Potter because Harry is a famous super being with the bestest friends forever, saving the world from the ultimate evil together. People don't like to relate to Shinji Ikari because Shinji's whining is letting everyone around him die and is hurting the overall mission of saving the day. People like to relate to the good but not the bad, they hate whiny characters because they want to feel attached to a hero, despite the fact that in reality they'd probably act exactly like Shinji does.
Now we're going to talk about how you can use a whiny character in a story and not have it be a problem. First, we're going to establish what it means to properly use a whiny character, or more aptly put, how to frame a story around that character. There are a couple key components to making a Whiny Character that is either A) Not insufferable or B) Appropriately insufferable. That's about all you can do, but whiny is by definition a negative term, so making them likable or even tolerable is difficult, as they're for the most part written to be hated until they man up. Here are a few of the basic ways you can make these characters work.
Many people still have a problem with Shinji and Evangelion as a whole because of Shinji being a whiny, immature asshole. But those people miss the point of the series, they see Shinji whining at face value and say they don't want to watch that, ignoring whatever other narrative merits the series has. But my defense of Evangelion is not the point here, that series is merely an example of how you can use a narrative to support the story of a whiny character, not how well it executes it. Because regardless of what you think of the quality of Evangelion, it is a perfect example of character framing. Character framing being the concept of using the elements of a story to better portray a character or a character type, and less about just telling a fantastic story on its own.
Let's talk about an example that shows how not to use this trope. The anime Eureka 7. Now, I'm going to get this out of the way right now, I did enjoy Eureka 7 quite a bit. It is a solid series with some good character writing, good world building, good music, a unique style and some great action, but it also has some really bad character writing and some other significant issues that often get overlooked. But this section is merely about the use of whining within the series and nothing else, so we'll just focus on that.
Our example here is Renton Thurston, the main character, a young boy who wants to go on adventures with his air surfboard. This young boy happens to end up going on an adventure with his favorite air surfboarding team on their airship, where he meets a girl he falls in love with, then gets to spend everyday with all of these people doing what he wanted to do while fighting in giant robot battles. Then he whines about it. Now, don't get me wrong, there's the obvious story idea of not getting what you expected, or reality not living up to your dreams, but the problem with that structure is that Eureka 7 doesn't really play into that. Renton complains about aspects of the ship and his new life that don't really warrant complaining, and the story doesn't serve this concept very well, because at its core Eureka 7 is a coming of age story, dealing with the themes of falling in love and growing to face your responsibilities. Renton then spends most of the series complaining about nothing important. He complains about not getting any respect before deserving any, he complains about getting to spend time with the girl he's in love with, he complains about getting to pilot the best robot, he complains about every aspect of his life on this ship and it's very annoying. But, the defense is that Renton is a kid, he doesn't know anything and is really bummed out about this. The problem with that explanation is that for that to work, you have to have a steady stream of progression throughout the series, especially for a series that is 50 episodes long. But, Renton doesn't have steady progression, he has episodes where he learns lessons, huge ones that are big moments for him, he acknowledges them and promises to grow from them. Then in the next episode he's right back to complaining about having to do anything, forgetting that the lessons were ever taught to him.
It goes back to the concept of a horror movie building and paying off, but instead imagine that the busty blonde is running down the alley, clearly gets stabbed eight times in the chest, falls dead on the floor, her body is found and she is declared dead, then in the next scene she's sitting in the coffee shop with all the other characters and nobody acknowledges that she just died. Then, imagine that same setup happens another three or four times before the movie ends, then at one point she just dies forever and there's still no reaction from the story or characters. That's what Eureka 7 is. Renton learns lessons then the story forgets he did. This is frustrating on a meta level, as the writing itself is more annoying than the character is. This differs from Shinji in that Shinji never learns anything and story acknowledges it, the story is about how he doesn't learn anything. Evangelion doesn't have Shinji mature, then immediately put him back where he was with no explanation. There's actually an episode where Shinji starts to gain confidence, he begins to show progress then immediately suffers more mental trauma. And again, not comparing the actual quality of the two series', Evangelion just keeps the concept very clear and sticks to it, as where Eureka 7 never fully commits to it, making the story frustrating.
Before moving on, there's a final aspect of Eureka 7 that I want to talk about. The single thing that Renton complains about that is valid. But for this, I'm going to also have to stick on Evangelion. If you haven't seen Evangelion, Shinji's father is the boss of the group that does the robots. Gendo treats Shinji like garbage, he's a horrible father and person. Gendo purposefully doesn't give Shinji information, because it better suits Gendo's needs if Shinji doesn't know it. Keeping Shinji in the dark better services Gendo's own agenda. Now, in Eureka 7, there is a similar character, this character is the captain of the ship and group Renton joins and has adventures with. This character is Holland. Holland's character is that he's a dick to Renton. He has a tragic backstory, but that's not really related to why he's a dick. So Holland treats Renton poorly, he doesn't give him information, he gives him bad jobs on the ship, he doesn't respect him, he insults him. Renton is fully justified in complaining about how Holland is a dick. Why? Because Renton deserves to be told everything and given some respect. This is where Evangelion and Eureka 7 split, while Shinji and Renton both deserve respect and information, the reason they're not given it is radically different. Gendo doesn't tell Shinji anything because it better suits his plan. Holland doesn't tell Renton anything because Holland is a dick. Renton is one of only two people capable of piloting the ship's greatest military asset in the Nirvash, a giant air surfing robot (Yeah, it's pretty stupid.) Holland not telling Renton anything only serves to endanger the lives of citizens and the crew of their ship. Holland is being irresponsible and reckless by not giving Renton respect or necessary basic information. But hey, that's alright, I mean, Gendo is a dick too, right? That's right, he is, but you know what the key difference here is? Gendo is villain and Holland is supposed to be seen as a hero! They try to justify his actions and give him a tragic backstory, but none of it does anything but make Holland out to be just kind of unlikable. Which is a shame, because his design is pretty rad and his relation to the rest of the story is actually interesting and well done. His backstory is cool and it informs a lot of how he acts in the rest of the series, a scarred war veteran that will do anything to protect the people on his ship, which directly contradicts how he treats Renton.
To summarize where Eureka 7 succeeds and fails, it succeeds in redeeming Renton and succeeds in giving him an overbearing commander. Where it fails is in the lead up to the redemption, in that all of the maturing happens in the last couple of episodes, giving Renton no real sense of progression throughout such a long series. It also fails in justifying the commander's reason for treating Renton so poorly, which is an unnecessary aspect to his whining that only hurts the progression and pacing. But the most important thing to remember about Eureka 7 is that despite Renton being a rather poorly written character, the series still manages to tell a good story in spite of it, a story that is unrelated to his coming of age, which reinforces my point that to properly execute this archetype you need to frame the story around it.
From here I could go on for days giving examples of whiny or angsty characters and poorly executed uses of their story applications, but that's not the point. The point was to inform you on what the archetype is, allowing you to make that call for yourself as well as to make a case for their validity as a means to tell a story, and I like to think I did an alright job of presenting the archetype, but that's entirely up to each person to determine, as writing and stories are all very personal and unique things to each viewer, reader or writer.
What did we learn today? We learned that whiny characters are inherently negative, but not inherently bad. Are easy to do poorly and very difficult to do well. That it's more important to theme the story to the character type than it is to just do it well. That even if a series misses the mark on executing the character type well, that the series can still be good and doesn't need to rely on the trope.
I hope you liked this, I actually don't know what to call it, I guess feature? Though, if I do this for other archetypes then it might technically be a column. Let's just say this thing. I hope you enjoyed this thing, and I also hope that maybe you learned a thing or two from reading it.
If you want to let me know how much I'm wrong about something, as everyone who watches anime thinks everyone else who watches anime holds factually incorrect opinions about every aspect of the medium, then let me know on twitter @Aaroneadez or in the comments, because obviously people are reading this.
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day, you baka gaijin with your stupid anime bullshit.
My final thought on why The Whiny Character is so hated requires me to talk about the term "Relatable." People throw this word around as a way to say an unrelatable character is bad or poorly written, but for the most part, that's kind of the opposite. Now, I'm not saying all relatable characters are bad, just that being relatable isn't a positive in its own right. Let's look at Twilight. Bella is one of the most relatable characters in the history of fiction. Do you know why? Because she has no personality. Bella is barely even a character, which allows every 14 year old girl to put themselves in her shoes, because all of those girls are just as shallow but aren't getting the attention to the two most beautiful boys ever. The audience for Twilight fully relates to the main character, and I have to be careful about how I word this, but it's the same concept that worked well for Harry Potter. Harry himself is kind of a nothing character. People say he's a kind and humble person, but you know who tells me that? Kind and humble people. Assholes have told me that they liked Harry because he took no gruff from anyone. Harry is everyone, because Harry is no one. Creating a character that can be as easily related to as Harry is hard, he is an extremely well written character solely because of how many different people can place their views, emotions and thoughts onto him. Bella is not hard to write. Bella is looking at a group of people, giving a blank slate the window dressing of that audience and putting that character into a very desirable situation. I hate using Twilight for an example here, as it's so old hat to bag on those books. I mean, years old now, but the point works well with them and I'm too lazy to find another example, so we'll just move on from here. The point I'm attempting to make here is that no matter what you do, a relatable character is going to be more popular with the mass audience than a specialized one. This is tied to The Whiny Character in that this archetype is probably the most relatable of them all. Everyone knows what it's like to feel helpless, to be powerless. Normal people experience that in their everyday life, many people come to media for escapism, not to recognize their negative qualities in a character. Especially not a character that is slowing the pace of the media you're consuming. People like to relate to Harry Potter because Harry is a famous super being with the bestest friends forever, saving the world from the ultimate evil together. People don't like to relate to Shinji Ikari because Shinji's whining is letting everyone around him die and is hurting the overall mission of saving the day. People like to relate to the good but not the bad, they hate whiny characters because they want to feel attached to a hero, despite the fact that in reality they'd probably act exactly like Shinji does.
Now we're going to talk about how you can use a whiny character in a story and not have it be a problem. First, we're going to establish what it means to properly use a whiny character, or more aptly put, how to frame a story around that character. There are a couple key components to making a Whiny Character that is either A) Not insufferable or B) Appropriately insufferable. That's about all you can do, but whiny is by definition a negative term, so making them likable or even tolerable is difficult, as they're for the most part written to be hated until they man up. Here are a few of the basic ways you can make these characters work.
- Make their complaints valid
Nothing makes a whiny character more annoying than having their complaints be over nothing. Characters like Shinji Ikari are a good example of how to give reason behind a whine. Shinji has a terrible life and is mentally destroyed. If any character has a right to whine, it is Shinji Ikari. - Get the whining over with quickly
Sometimes a character will whine through an entire series, never growing until the end. If you want to make a coming of age story, don't make a long story, then have everything happen at the end. Have a slow evolution of the character, a couple big turning points and write the rest of the story to deal with the mess made by the first half. It's a concept used in Gurren Lagann and more poorly in the JRPG, Tales of the Abyss. The first half the main character whines and refuses to deal with his problems, then has to man up and deal with the consequences of his earlier refusal. It's a simple method, but it works well to keep the story moving. - Redeem them
I know this sounds obvious and is almost entirely the point of the coming of age story, but it really baers repeating how important this step is. Some stories will just up and skip this part without adhering to any of the other methods. Let's use our previous examples, in Gurren Lagann, Simon, the main character, whined and messed a lot of stuff up, then spent the rest of the series fixing those mistakes and generally being a badass, more than making the viewer forget, or at least more willing to accept his earlier whining. In Tales of the Abyss, the main character Luke, spends the first half of the game whining and messing everything up, then spends the second half whining and whining about how he doesn't whine anymore. Luke barely evolved after his big turning point. He manned up to the concept of having to fix everything, but continued to complain about it and continued to complain about how everyone blamed him.
While that's not a perfect or complete list, it's a couple places to start, but before I get too far down the road of trying to teach story telling, let's get back on the topic of using this trope properly.
For this we're going to use our original example character, Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji works as a whiny character because that's what defines him and every action he takes in the series. But not only does it define him, it dictates how everyone treats him. He whines because people treat him poorly, but he's treated poorly because he's weak and timid, he knows he's weak and timid, which causes him to become depressed and causes him to whine. It's a cycle that comes from a very real place. Shinji works because he's a realistic representation of someone with depression and other mental issues, but that alone doesn't make him any more tolerable to the average viewer, but what does make it work is that Evangelion is about Shinji more than anything. The series focuses on Shinji's inability to deal with his problems. Every action taken by or against Shinji is directly related to how whiny he is. Shinji whining causes problems within the story, everyone is annoyed by him whining, everyone is affected by his immaturity and sulking. Evangelion directly deconstructs the trope of a whiny protagonist, showing that acting this way is unacceptable, that it has real world consequences, but also that you don't miraculously get over years of mental trauma. This works as a story telling device because Evangelion isn't a coming of age story. Evangelion is a story about learning not to run away from your problems and accepting that even if things are bad, you have to accept them as they are. At the end of the series, Shinji has not matured and has not progressed in dealing with his actual trauma, but accepts that it's his responsibility to deal with it. On one hand that can be seen as a coming of age tale, but it doesn't actually deal with the conventions of growing up or facing your problems head on. Evangelion instead chooses to go the route of accepting your problems in place of growing past them.
Many people still have a problem with Shinji and Evangelion as a whole because of Shinji being a whiny, immature asshole. But those people miss the point of the series, they see Shinji whining at face value and say they don't want to watch that, ignoring whatever other narrative merits the series has. But my defense of Evangelion is not the point here, that series is merely an example of how you can use a narrative to support the story of a whiny character, not how well it executes it. Because regardless of what you think of the quality of Evangelion, it is a perfect example of character framing. Character framing being the concept of using the elements of a story to better portray a character or a character type, and less about just telling a fantastic story on its own.
Let's talk about an example that shows how not to use this trope. The anime Eureka 7. Now, I'm going to get this out of the way right now, I did enjoy Eureka 7 quite a bit. It is a solid series with some good character writing, good world building, good music, a unique style and some great action, but it also has some really bad character writing and some other significant issues that often get overlooked. But this section is merely about the use of whining within the series and nothing else, so we'll just focus on that.
Our example here is Renton Thurston, the main character, a young boy who wants to go on adventures with his air surfboard. This young boy happens to end up going on an adventure with his favorite air surfboarding team on their airship, where he meets a girl he falls in love with, then gets to spend everyday with all of these people doing what he wanted to do while fighting in giant robot battles. Then he whines about it. Now, don't get me wrong, there's the obvious story idea of not getting what you expected, or reality not living up to your dreams, but the problem with that structure is that Eureka 7 doesn't really play into that. Renton complains about aspects of the ship and his new life that don't really warrant complaining, and the story doesn't serve this concept very well, because at its core Eureka 7 is a coming of age story, dealing with the themes of falling in love and growing to face your responsibilities. Renton then spends most of the series complaining about nothing important. He complains about not getting any respect before deserving any, he complains about getting to spend time with the girl he's in love with, he complains about getting to pilot the best robot, he complains about every aspect of his life on this ship and it's very annoying. But, the defense is that Renton is a kid, he doesn't know anything and is really bummed out about this. The problem with that explanation is that for that to work, you have to have a steady stream of progression throughout the series, especially for a series that is 50 episodes long. But, Renton doesn't have steady progression, he has episodes where he learns lessons, huge ones that are big moments for him, he acknowledges them and promises to grow from them. Then in the next episode he's right back to complaining about having to do anything, forgetting that the lessons were ever taught to him.
It goes back to the concept of a horror movie building and paying off, but instead imagine that the busty blonde is running down the alley, clearly gets stabbed eight times in the chest, falls dead on the floor, her body is found and she is declared dead, then in the next scene she's sitting in the coffee shop with all the other characters and nobody acknowledges that she just died. Then, imagine that same setup happens another three or four times before the movie ends, then at one point she just dies forever and there's still no reaction from the story or characters. That's what Eureka 7 is. Renton learns lessons then the story forgets he did. This is frustrating on a meta level, as the writing itself is more annoying than the character is. This differs from Shinji in that Shinji never learns anything and story acknowledges it, the story is about how he doesn't learn anything. Evangelion doesn't have Shinji mature, then immediately put him back where he was with no explanation. There's actually an episode where Shinji starts to gain confidence, he begins to show progress then immediately suffers more mental trauma. And again, not comparing the actual quality of the two series', Evangelion just keeps the concept very clear and sticks to it, as where Eureka 7 never fully commits to it, making the story frustrating.
Before moving on, there's a final aspect of Eureka 7 that I want to talk about. The single thing that Renton complains about that is valid. But for this, I'm going to also have to stick on Evangelion. If you haven't seen Evangelion, Shinji's father is the boss of the group that does the robots. Gendo treats Shinji like garbage, he's a horrible father and person. Gendo purposefully doesn't give Shinji information, because it better suits Gendo's needs if Shinji doesn't know it. Keeping Shinji in the dark better services Gendo's own agenda. Now, in Eureka 7, there is a similar character, this character is the captain of the ship and group Renton joins and has adventures with. This character is Holland. Holland's character is that he's a dick to Renton. He has a tragic backstory, but that's not really related to why he's a dick. So Holland treats Renton poorly, he doesn't give him information, he gives him bad jobs on the ship, he doesn't respect him, he insults him. Renton is fully justified in complaining about how Holland is a dick. Why? Because Renton deserves to be told everything and given some respect. This is where Evangelion and Eureka 7 split, while Shinji and Renton both deserve respect and information, the reason they're not given it is radically different. Gendo doesn't tell Shinji anything because it better suits his plan. Holland doesn't tell Renton anything because Holland is a dick. Renton is one of only two people capable of piloting the ship's greatest military asset in the Nirvash, a giant air surfing robot (Yeah, it's pretty stupid.) Holland not telling Renton anything only serves to endanger the lives of citizens and the crew of their ship. Holland is being irresponsible and reckless by not giving Renton respect or necessary basic information. But hey, that's alright, I mean, Gendo is a dick too, right? That's right, he is, but you know what the key difference here is? Gendo is villain and Holland is supposed to be seen as a hero! They try to justify his actions and give him a tragic backstory, but none of it does anything but make Holland out to be just kind of unlikable. Which is a shame, because his design is pretty rad and his relation to the rest of the story is actually interesting and well done. His backstory is cool and it informs a lot of how he acts in the rest of the series, a scarred war veteran that will do anything to protect the people on his ship, which directly contradicts how he treats Renton.
To summarize where Eureka 7 succeeds and fails, it succeeds in redeeming Renton and succeeds in giving him an overbearing commander. Where it fails is in the lead up to the redemption, in that all of the maturing happens in the last couple of episodes, giving Renton no real sense of progression throughout such a long series. It also fails in justifying the commander's reason for treating Renton so poorly, which is an unnecessary aspect to his whining that only hurts the progression and pacing. But the most important thing to remember about Eureka 7 is that despite Renton being a rather poorly written character, the series still manages to tell a good story in spite of it, a story that is unrelated to his coming of age, which reinforces my point that to properly execute this archetype you need to frame the story around it.
From here I could go on for days giving examples of whiny or angsty characters and poorly executed uses of their story applications, but that's not the point. The point was to inform you on what the archetype is, allowing you to make that call for yourself as well as to make a case for their validity as a means to tell a story, and I like to think I did an alright job of presenting the archetype, but that's entirely up to each person to determine, as writing and stories are all very personal and unique things to each viewer, reader or writer.
What did we learn today? We learned that whiny characters are inherently negative, but not inherently bad. Are easy to do poorly and very difficult to do well. That it's more important to theme the story to the character type than it is to just do it well. That even if a series misses the mark on executing the character type well, that the series can still be good and doesn't need to rely on the trope.
I hope you liked this, I actually don't know what to call it, I guess feature? Though, if I do this for other archetypes then it might technically be a column. Let's just say this thing. I hope you enjoyed this thing, and I also hope that maybe you learned a thing or two from reading it.
If you want to let me know how much I'm wrong about something, as everyone who watches anime thinks everyone else who watches anime holds factually incorrect opinions about every aspect of the medium, then let me know on twitter @Aaroneadez or in the comments, because obviously people are reading this.
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day, you baka gaijin with your stupid anime bullshit.
