Reflection and Analysis

The Worf Effect - The Killing Worf Effect - Downsides to Trope Usage (7/7/21)

Note - this is my 100th reflection!

Today I want to talk about The Worf Effect trope. More specifically, I want to talk about when this trope is used and the "Worf" in question is killed off, but let's call the extreme of this trope The Killing Worf Effect, but what I want to talk about is how this trope is misused.

To do so, though, I do need to note that this trope is actually not a bad thing when used right, yet one of the things I've noticed is that more and more his trope is used as a quick fix so writers don't have to put in any work in presenting their bad guys as an actual threat to the audience, yet the truth is if the writer is doing their job right, the reader will still see a level of effort put into play.

As for why I am writing about this, it would be because of Naruto and Demon Slayer, but more specifically the latter. I'm going to admit that I've only seen the Anime, and not the Anime movie, yet in that same regard I wanted to find out what happened to my favorite characters which led me to feeling something wasn't quite right. Specifically, a lot of the character deaths felt out of place, but when I looked up discussions on the topic, the subject got brushed aside because...

a.) ... the character death is used to motivate the canon characters into becoming stronger and...

b.) ... the character death is used to showcase how strong the characters are.

Except, I finally figured out what bothered me regarding the first major death in Demon Slayer and that has to do with the fact the pacing was not only off, the beat down didn't just establish the enemy as being stronger – it established them as being impossible to beat, which in turn helped to lead to the let down many fans of the series had regarding the final boss as the writer did to much establishing of the enemy as a power house to quickly.

As for why I say the timing was off, what is the logic of making the character become stronger – aka, the recovery arc, only to establish in the very next arc that they need to become stronger. This might not have been a major issue of the arcs for Demon Slayer were longer, but these were super short arcs. Think about it—the train arc only lasts two volumes of Manga with one volume dedicated to the death of the character, whereas in other series the arc would last at least twice as long if not three times as long, but the entire arc would be dedicated to The Killing Worf Effect.

Yet, Demon Slayer gets praised for having a fast pace compared to—oh, Bleach, One Piece, Naruto, as if the pacing of said series is somehow a flaw for these series when in reality the problems with Naruto lie with the writer...

a.) ... forcing the characters to do things they wouldn't logically do as common sense doesn't seem to exist in this universe...

b.) ... tossing out the whole concept of Naruto being an underdog that was established early on for him to be the fated one...

c.) ... forgetting what he'd written in previous chapters, for which—yes, the longer the series goes on the more likely this is to occur, yet I'd argue with how much fanfic I've read that the most agrevious ones have these issues crop up from the beginning, and this does include Kishimoto...

d.) ... getting the math wrong, as Kishimoto is worse than Rowling.

In fact, many of the times I've seen readers complain about the pacing of a series the problem lies not with the writer but the reader who doesn't have the necessary attention span for plots which take longer to develop, though there are some exceptions to the rule. This quick pace—it's treated as positive for Demon Slayer, yet ended up being the sword it ended up falling on, that, and the writer was asked to make the series less dark and only did a surface change to the series.