Audience-Alienating Premise: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Suicide Island]]'': The title itself will probably scare away a number of people. The premise goes like this: the Japanese government has lost big chunks of money due to hospitals being crowded with people attempting to commit suicide. In response to this, the government gives these people the choice of trying to live on or die. If these people choose to die, they will then sign papers, they will be rendered unconscious (nicely), and they will wake up to find themselves on the titular Suicide Island. They are declared [[Unperson|UnPersons]] and they can do ''whatever'' they want on the island, as long as they don't try to leave...but there are really no means (and likely not even desire) to leave anyway. The premise itself will probably scare a number of people off, because they might think it's just a story where they get to watch people commit suicide. While some of the characters do, it ends up scaring the other characters into trying to live on and make the best of their situation. The story could be compared to ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' on some levels. Also, the story examines the minds of these characters, to help the reader understand why they would want to die in the first place. The examination reveals some dark stuff about Japanese culture, like the [[Hikikomori]], pressures of society, [[There Are No Therapists]] (actually, there are in this story, but it doesn't seem to be working), the stigma of shame, and so on. Indeed, the story seems to be a critique of how Japanese society has something fundamentally wrong with it, and is causing people to not really ''live''. It's likely that this story did not sell well in Japan, and it's hard to say how well it would have sold in other countries, since there is no way to sugar-coat this story!

* ''[[Wandering Son]]'' portrays puberty and LGBT issues - especially transgendered ones - quite seriously. This puts off many people (mostly cis heterosexuals) since it's outside of their comfort zone or they're so used to comedies about the subject.