7,868
edits
Adults Are Useless: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (markup, spelling, replaced redirects/disambiguation links, potholes) |
HLIAA14YOG (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| (6 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 38:
** Zig-zagged especially with Kogoro. He's shown to be a bumbling fool several episodes (Especially early on) and is an alcoholic and sometimes physically hurts Conan. However, averted because he actually ''does'' come to conclusions a lot of real life detectives would and actually knows some stuff Conan doesn't. (He's more street-smart; Conan's more Book-smart.) His biggest shortcoming is that he's competent, but impatient. Averted when [[It's Personal|the case is personal]] or if [[Papa Bear|Ran or Conan are threatened]], then he becomes ''scarily'' competent. There have been several cases where he got it mostly right and just needed a couple hints from Conan, or where he got it all right but only realized it after Conan did. (He's slower.)
** However, note that Shinichi's father Yuusaku is just as good a detective as he is, if not even ''better''. He's only useless because he's simply almost never there and he'd rather continue writing about mysteries than solving them.
** Ultimately averted, though, by the fact that Conan is almost ([[Comic Book Time|and should be]]) an adult himself (he just
** If anything; Megure is perhaps the most worthless of the adults - he's so strictly adhered to police code that he refuses to take a leap of faith and think maybe not all cases are like the ones you learn about in the police academy.
*** However, in one episode he's able to solve the case long before Conan does. Although, this is due to seeing a similar case years before.
Line 93:
* Haruka's mother in ''[[Psychic Detective Yakumo]]'' does not put up any fight, protest, plea, when her daughter wants to walk into a potentially dangerous situation to rescue Yakumo.
* [[Loveless]], oh so much so. Pretty much every adult is either abusive, inneffective, or emotionally fucked up enough to not be able to help, whether that's with Ritsuka being abused by his mother or all those 12 year old kids running around on their own getting into spell battles.
* [[Bible Black anime)|Bible Black]] is probably the ultimate example. The teens who the story focus on are having sex just about everywhere, sometimes non-consensual, sometimes with teachers, and the only adults who seem to be around are Takashiro, who becomes a victim of this, and Kitami, who eggs it on and participates in it.
* Used as a plot necessity in the Lost Children Arc in ''[[Berserk]]'' (even implied in the title). With the exception of Guts, every adult present is either a violent and sick pervert, a completely clueless moron, or a useless coward. Turns out that the [[Big Bad]] of this arc is a teenaged girl apostle who turns the local children into her spawn to join her [[Crap Saccharine World|elf fantasy land,]] all of them being very lethal, while she makes adults into spawn to use essentially as her own [[Cannon Fodder]] as punishment for treating children so poorly. Also, the village children who aren't turned into monsters seem more ballsy than the adults around them, namely [[Plucky Girl|Jill.]]
Line 119:
* Adults in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes: The Series|Calvin and Hobbes The Series]]'' are, at the very least, [[Weirdness Censor|very unobservant.]]
* The counselors in ''[[Calvin at Camp]]'' let the kids get away with just about ''anything,'' aside from actually leaving.
* Harry starts ''[[Harry Potter and the Rune Stone Path]]'' operating under the assumption that this trope is undeniably true -- and only the best case scenario. (Worst case? Adults are actively malevolent.) He only trusts 19-year-old Professor Bathsheda "Shiva" Babbling, initially, because she convinces him that her youth makes her more a kid like him than an adult like the other professors. He similarly comes to trust Tonks because she's Shiva's contemporary and acts ''younger'' than him most of the time they're together when they first meet. He eventually grows out of his automatic distrust of adults, however.
== [[Film]] ==
Line 228 ⟶ 229:
== [[Music]] ==
* ''[[Quadrophenia]]'' shows the other side of this- even though the plot opens with Jimmy asking for help from a therapist, preacher, and his mom, as events wear on it's implied (even all but stated) that the real problem is that he can't accept help. As a work about youth, this makes perfect sense really, but considering [[Be Yourself|his epiphany]] at the end, perhaps he can't be blamed for having to find his own way.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* It was just as well that adults were never fully seen in ''[[Peanuts]]'', because the rare situations where the main characters had to interact with them portrayed them as incompetent:
** In one story arc, Charlie Brown went to talk to his pediatrician to find out why the school board (which the doctor was a member of) had banned a book called ''The Six Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out'' from the school library. The doctor ''fainted''. The nurse later told Charlie Brown that little kids made him nervous. (Remember, this was a ''pediatrician''.) Later, Charlie Brown told Linus that the doctor admitted that he only reads medical journals, but the pictures upset him.
** Another story arc shows that Peppermint Patty's teacher is a [[Lawful Stupid]] type. A hole in the ceiling classroom was causing rain to fall on Patty's head. According to Marcie, the teacher couldn't move Patty to another desk, because that would disrupt the alphabetical seating arrangement.
== [[Puppet Shows]] ==
Line 375 ⟶ 381:
** In "Failsafe", the entire team is defeated by the invading aliens without achieving any victory where the team was successful in running numerous offense action. {{spoiler|The entire point of the training exercise was to see how the team could cope after losing the league as support.}}
* Surprisingly averted in ''[[The Weekenders]]''. The characters' parents are all [[Reasonable Authority Figure|reasonable authority figures]] who're receptive and in-touch with their children, and just about ''always'' have the right thing to say. (Especially Tino's mom, who is [[Genre Savvy]].) Even Tish's mom, when she is shown as acting like a child eventually realizes that it was bothering Tish and stopped, but nevertheless enjoyed the weekend she spent with Tish and her friends. Carver's dad, portrayed as a rather uncaring authority figure by Carver is simply just stern...and it was Carver misinterpreting every chore and favour as a "punishment".
* [[Disney]] cartoons in recent years tend to subvert this. In ''[[Gravity Falls]]'', Grunkle Stan is, from the start, far more on the ball regarding the weird happenings in than Dipper and Mabel assume, and manages to be the hero numerous times. In both ''[[The Owl House]]'' and ''[[Amphibia (TV series)|Amphibia]]'', the protagonists' parents are a ''little'' skeptical at first when they learn what their daughters are facing, but in both cases, they catch on ''fast''.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* In [
* Bullying. Bullied children often have a difficult time getting help from adults - some adults see it as a [[Rite of Passage]], some assume that the bullied child is oversensitive, others may just think it's not a big deal and some may believe that the child being accused of bullying would never do such a thing because of a certain status (such as having straight A's).
** This is especially true when the bullying is between siblings. Many adults are unable to distinguish the difference between sibling rivalry and outright bullying. And it's especially true if the ''younger'' sibling is the bully, as the older one will likely be accused of making up stories for the sake of attention and ignored (this is the reason the youngest of siblings is often considered "[[Spoiled Brat|spoiled]]").
Line 397 ⟶ 403:
[[Category:Adults Are Useless]]
[[Category:Depressing Tropes]]
[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]
| |||