Cerebus Syndrome: Difference between revisions

** Not to mention all the drama during both [[Unlucky Childhood Friend|Kaede]] and [[Victorious Childhood Friend|Asa's]] arcs. And the drama [[The Rival|between them]].

* ''[[GaoGaiGar]]'' to ''[[GaoGaiGar]] Final'': The light-hearted original series did dip its toe into seriousness every so often, but it was primarily a fun super-robot show. With the release of the OVA Final it goes into darker and edgier territory. By the second episode...{{spoiler|One character's lover is killed by what appears to be the cute kid lead of the series, who is himself killed by the main character. Then, said main character is captured by the villains and brainwashed into fighting the good guys.}} And in the final episode, {{spoiler|despite having defeated the [[Big Bad]], all but two members of the main cast are trapped at the other end of the galaxy, dying, and with no foreseeable way to get back to Earth.}} Nevertheless, the OVA remained true to the series' central theme of courage overcoming opposition throughout - it merely explored some of the more dramatic aspects of fighting a seemingly hopeless battle against a seemingly invincible foe.

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ]]'' initially starts out with the old monster of the week routine with plenty of campy slapstick comedy despite the fact that [[This Is Reality|it's not anime]]. Then episode 18 rolls around and the story starts picking up momentum, and the comic mischief is eventually displaced by more serious content. By the time [[This Is Reality|it becomes anime]], the tone of the series becomes something more along the same vein as ''[[Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam|Zeta Gundam]]''.

* The first half of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', while still dramatic, is actually somewhat light-hearted at times. Then the series slowly shifts to being disturbing and insane. Though it was always rather introspective to begin with, it doesn't quite compare to later half. Then ''[[It Got Worse|It]]'' ''[[Gainax Ending|Got]]'' ''[[Mind Screw|Worse]]''.

** The [[Spin-Off]], ''[[Puella Magi Kazumi Magica]]'', is going the same way. The first few chapters were practically a [[Magical Girl]] series played straight - the monsters turn back into humans, the power of teamwork saves the day, and the tone was generally lighthearted and comedic. {{spoiler|Then the [[Mysterious Watcher]] reveals herself as the [[Knight of Cerebus]].}} Things got serious in a hurry.

*** Chapter 8 of ''Kazumi'' [[Cerebus Rollercoaster|brings back the comedy from earlier chapters.]] [[Mood Whiplash|It doesn't last]].

* ''[[Sakigake Otokojuku]]'' started as an [[Affectionate Parody]] of the shounen genre, with lots of slapstick humor, telling the misadventures of the Otokojuku's 1st Years, and their relationships. Then from the 4th volume onwards, all the story arcs are [[Tournament Arc]]s, that enters a [[Stealth Parody]] territory of the genre.

* ''[[Naruto]]'' receives a shot of Cerebus Syndrome every now and then. At first this show was about the lovable Naruto and his comedic antics with a dark backstory lightly touched upon. Then Team 7 went on their first C-ranked mission a few episodes in and suddenly the stakes are raised to potential death. Then Orochimaru decides to invade the Leaf Village near the end of the Chunin Exams which only had one plotline death ([[It Was His Sled|the Third Hokage]]) but more lives were at stake then before. After the timeskip, Akatsuki takes the role of main antagonists (Orochimaru is put on the side) and they have plans of world domination. They even go so far as to kill Asuma, Shikamaru's sensei, which greatly affects him. The latest dose happens in the Pain arc, where Pain invades the Leaf just like Orochimaru, but actually causes several plotline deaths and devastates the Leaf village even more. {{spoiler|Though the characters killed get an [[Author's Saving Throw]] via Nagato's sacrifice.}}

* ''[[Ghost Sweeper Mikami]]'' gets into the syndrome once Ashtaroth starts getting prominent (although you could arguably trace it back to Medusa's introduction). However, Shiina ''never'' lets this obstruct the original comedic qualities, leading to a pretty fair amount of [[Mood Whiplash]].

* ''[[Haibane Renmei]]'' is initially quite cheery and light-hearted, but roughly half-way through shifts into something darker and much more dramatic.

* [[Mawaru Penguindrum]] starts as a wacky series about the Takakura brothers's tragicomic attempts to keep their sister alive. By episode 8, we learn that the people involved in this are quite more [[Humans Are Flawed|complex and flawed]] than they look, but there's still quite a [[Mood Whiplash]]. By episode 18, not only more secrets and complexities are revealed (alongside many [[Freudian Excuse]]s), but {{spoiler|one character straight up tries to ''kill'' another and almost manages to kill said chara and maim another.}} And by episode 21, after MANY other [[The Reveal|reveals]], shit has hit the fan like whoa. [[It Got Worse]], indeed.

* ''[[Gosick]]'' has a case of this, with the tension and scale of the story underlying each mystery building greater and greater towards the climax, eventually dropping the romantic comedy scenes altogether.

* ''[[Popotan]]'' is in no way only comedic to begin with, but even so its first couple of episodes at least has more laughs than tears. The later ones do not. The biggest example is without a doubt {{spoiler|Konami's death}} in episode 9, which marks the transition from dramedy to regular drama.

* Happens once in a while in ''[[Gintama]]''. The Benizakura, Itou, Yoshiwara, Jiraia, Kabukichou (and other) storylines are way more serious and dramatic than the usual lazy-ass, nose-picking, potty humored regular episodes. Also, any time [[Knight of Cerebus|Takasugi]] shows up, shit gets serious. And then he goes away, and the series goes back to the normal idiocy. It's also notable that even in the serious stories, the series still maintains a certain level of dorkiness.

 

== Comic Books ==

* Inverted by the ''[[Evil Dead]]'' films, which started out as genuinely terrifying and ended up becoming [[Bloody Hilarious]].

* The Adam Sandler film ''[[Click]]'' starts off as a wacky comedy about a man who can pause and fast forward his life with a magical remote control. It eventually shifts from him making a hot blonde jogging go in slow motion to him {{spoiler|fast forwarding through his life until he grows old and dies}}.

* ''[[Three Kings]]'' starts out as a madcap comedy/heist film until about a third of the way through, when we see a Republican Guardsmen execute a begging Iraqi civilian woman (in slow motion, no less).

* Many of [[Pixar]]'s films are starting to become much darker than the last.

* The novel ''[[Nuklear Age]]'' by ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' author [[Brian Clevinger]] plays with this trope, mirroring the development of comics as a medium. It starts out over-the-top and cheesy, quickly becomes over-the-top and genuinely entertaining, but, near the ending, it becomes over-the-top yet heart-wrenching.

* Joseph Heller's ''[[Catch-22]]'' uses this trope brilliantly. From the beginning it depicts a hopeless and bleak world that the central character wants nothing more than to escape from, but as the book progresses it starts using the same things it [[Black Comedy|played for laughs early on]] to a much more devastating and serious effect, such as the absurd and tongue-in-cheek importance of the mess hall officer {{spoiler|leading to a few riots, multiple missing parachutes and a tragic bombing, all for the sake of manipulating cotton markets}}.

{{quote|The rumor spread through Ankh-Morpork like wildfire -- which had spread through Ankh-Morpork quite often since its inhabitants had learned the phrase "fire insurance".}}

* ''[[The Hobbit]]'' was written for children and adults. It starts off pretty fun and silly, but becomes more solemn by the end. ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', which was [[Canon Welding|welded]] into the same world after the fact, was written for a more adult audience and is much darker than ''The Hobbit''. Although Tolkien strenuously denied that the story was an allegory for World War II, Tolkien was a World War I veteran, and the horrors of both World Wars almost certainly influenced the major themes, such as corrupting power, just and unjust war, and the necessity of change in the meantime.

* ''[[The Inkworld Trilogy|Inkheart]]'' gets pretty damn depressing and extremely violent. In the second two books of the trilogy, which take place in the Inkworld, it turns out the place isn't the wondrous fantasy world it appears to be. The villains in these novels make Capricorn seem like a harmless bully by comparison, and even the heroes all seem to have prominent dark sides.

* To a certain extent, ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series by [[Douglas Adams]] invokes this trope with ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Mostly Harmless|Mostly Harmless]]'', written around the time Adams suffered some [[Creator Breakdown|private personal difficulties]] that led to him writing an incredibly depressing ending to the series. He wanted to write a sixth book to counter the Cerebus Syndrome but his infamous [[Author Existence Failure]] stopped him. [[Eoin Colfer]] wrote ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/And Another Thing|And Another Thing]]'', but everyone is certain it will never match Adams' own unwritten sixth ''Hitchhiker's'' book.

* This is visible in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' where the first mbooks start out with a rather cheery atmosphere but progressively darken until the very existence of the Castle is threatened in ''Darke''.

 

* ''Otasuke Girl'' was a short DTV Japanese series about a superpowered high school detective girl. While most of the episodes were very lighthearted, featuring humorous recurring characters, bad guys who were more silly than threatening, and the title character using hilarious fighting techniques like hiting her oponent's face with her butt while shooting 'hip punch!', the series finale featured little to no humor, with a story about children's disappearance and Otasuke Girl being put in a coma. Even if all went back to normal at the end, ending this lighthearted series on such a dark episode gave a really weird feeling.

* ''[[Super Sentai]]'' seems to be more lighthearted for the first 10 episodes while we get to know the characters before getting more arc based and dramatic after the story kicks in. Since new series start without so much as a week's break after the last one, this run of lighthearted episodes may count as a [[Breather Episode]] after how serious the last ten episodes of a series seem to get.

* The ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' comic ''Equinox: Defender of the Horde'' was rather silly and light-hearted at first, but near the end of the first series it starts getting more serious and dark, to the point where by the end of the last story it is almost completely serious.

* They're getting faster. ''[[Modest Medusa]]'' began in January 2011, began its first serious arc by June, and lampshaded the drama influx by the arc's end in August.

* ''[[The Lounge]]'': Originally a gag-a-day strip, inclusion of longer story arcs led to some more serious plots being incorporated, culminating {{spoiler|in serious family conflict between Italy Ishida and her father, and the introduction of the children of her father's former business partner, hellbent on destroying the family business}}

* ''[[Sinfest]]'' resisted for a long time, but has been creeping into territory for the last few years.{{when}} It started with the story of Fuschia the Devil-Girl falling for Criminy and wanting to be human, and since has involved characters falling into various realms (Hell, The Reality Zone, The River Lethe) to to angst over character flaws that had previously been played for laughs. The recent addition of a young feminist on a big wheel condemning characters for their chauvinistic ways and causing Monique to have the most seriously played character development arc yet has fans crying foul.

* ''[[There She Is]]''. A story about a girl bunny who falls in love with a boy cat. The first three episodes are extremely cute and hilarious, but by god does it [[Fantastic Racism|get]] [[Interspecies Romance|sad]] by episode 4.

* The ''[[Ask a Pony]]'' blog ''Ask Jappleack'' started off with [[Surreal Humour]], [[Dead Baby Comedy]], [[Black Comedy]], [[Crosses the Line Twice]], and the likes. But after {{spoiler|Applebloom dies}}, and Jappleack is asked "What's the point of growing apples?", Jappleack goes through a bit of an existential crisis. Much drama follows.

** In ''The Mario Mafia'', the use of [[Trigger Happy|guns]] follows this trope, with initially machine guns causing [[Amusing Injuries]], until [[Minecraft|Steve]] [[Killed Off for Real|kills]] most of the Koopalings with [[Improbable Aiming Skills|a single shot each]]. (Maybe partially [[Justified Trope|justified]] in the way that all other characters, except [[Splatoon|Meggy]], have a [[A-Team Firing|really crappy aim]].) Falling from a height is also deadly only if you are a [[Designated Villain|"bad"]] guy/girl at the end of the movie.

*** Then again, this is [[Black Comedy|generally]] [[Played for Laughs]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Index Syndrome]]

[[Category:Series Tropes]]

[[Category:Tone Shift]]