Why is there a trend of bad guys looking increasingly more appealing

hitler

NTR

>>158901843
Because writing the mc as anything other than a blank slate for otaku to self-insert is haram in the anime industry.

>>158903142
>Eren
>blank slate

He has plenty of personality if you count rage as personality

>>158901843
Good heros and bad villains are boring

>>158901843
Pure evil villains are boring.

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It's because heroes are fundamentally reactant meaning that they don't really have a life or goal outside of trying to accomplish whatever goal the series has set out for them. Villains tend to be a bit more dynamic with what they want allowing for more characterization.

>>158903566
He represents the repressed frustration and rage of the otaku.

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>>158901843
>trend
Is this your first year absorbing any form of media?

Well, you see. The villain is actually a proactive force, while the protagonist a reactive one. The protagonist only ever does something being he doesn't like whatever someone else is doing. He was all fine in his cuddled life and then something happened to take him off it.
While the villain did it because of a specific reason. He didn't have to - but he did, anyway.

tl;dr protagonist gets out of safe space because he's forced to.
villain gets out of safe space because he wants to.

I mean, Reiner didn't really need to do all that shit. He could just roll over and die, and someone else would take his place. But he did anyway.

>>158903986
So why can't protagonists by the ones that take charge? Is any kind of acting with ambition considered evil?

>>158904068
>Is any kind of acting with ambition considered evil?
It's a really disgusting message I see all across mainstream media. I swear sometimes they're doing it on purpose to prep everyone up to become wagecucks, and discourage them from ever aspiring for anything more.

but reiner is a good guy

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>>158901843
NTR

>>158904068
You are supposed to be a sheep and do what society tells you in japan
Individualism is frowned upon

>>158909752
This isn't a Jap only thing, this is a universal characteristic present in nearly all forms of media.

>>158901843
But he isn't appealing. He and his buddy committed genocide because some assholes wanted Oil.

Ever heard of Char Aznable?

It's far, far way from being a new trend. It's why anime is so different from cartoons, they don't think people are too stupid to understand that beautiful or even average people can be evil.

>>158904068
Blame Joseph Campbell.

But protagonists can have proactive motivations. It's just the stories don't really start until a protagonists is set upon by an antagonistic force.

>>158901843
Dude, the bad guys have been cooler than the good guys since Milton wrote Paradise Lost.

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>>158901843
I see your point

>>158910681
Haven't Eldians oppressed everybody in the past with their Titan powers? Genocide and puppet soldiers are just a form of redemption for their race's atrocities.

>>158904068
They can and then they are antihero like Lelouch was

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>>158901843
Because writing appealing heroes is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Villains usually have some inherrent appeal to them because they're going against the grain. They don't "just" do something, they do horrible things and usually have some kind of reason -valid or invalid- to do it. Let's compare the motivations for Eren and Reiner, since you posted Reiner in your OP.

>Eren
A titan killed my mother, now I'm angry and want to kill all titans.

>Reiner
I'm a secret agent planted behind enemy lines, but the stress of living a double life has become too much to bear to the point where my real life and fake life have become indistinguishable from eachother.

Now I want you to answer two questions:
>Which of these two characters sounds more complex and relatable?
>Would it be possible to write Reiner and Berthold, the ones responsible for pretty much every massacre we see in the anime, as the heroes of the story?

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>>158913801
Good point.

>>158913801
>Would it be possible to write Reiner and Berthold, the ones responsible for pretty much every massacre we see in the anime, as the heroes of the story?
I believe so. Hell, Lelouch was the direct cause of Euphienator and was still considered the hero of Code:Geass.