Sorry guys, I haven't read Berserk entirely, nor have I seen FMA. Turns out they have pretty good representation, that's my bad. I'll make a part 2 to this video eventually.
Guts is a pretty poor example of a disabled character. Half the time reading Berserk I forget that he's missing an eye and missing an arm. For the eye thing alone he is never shown having trouble seeing at night or in the rain, bad hand eye coordination, depth perception gone, limited field of vision(having a blind side), being really vulnerable if any debris landed in his eye since he wouldn't have his other eye to rely on. And for his missing arm: Phantom Pain, his stump swelling or circulation problems, needing to take breaks from using his prosthetic, loss of balance, tying something (hand and teeth), how does he put on his armor? There's probably many things I'm missing but little details like that would have gone a long way to characterize Gut's better. Honestly it feels more like he's disabled for edgy dramatics instead of actually suffering the consequences of what happened at the Eclipse.
I would also recommend mushoku tensei for this as well. It's shows him struggle with his hand being gone till the end of the season. I don't even know if he is going to ever get it back and the way it shows him taking longer to do basic things. It's a nice if understated touch.
@2shadowgamer2 they just don't focus on it because it's not the main point of the series, and they were focusing on more important things. When they did focus on how guts body has been affected by all of his battles, it shows that he can barely see, barely taste, he misses his arm and its ability to grab and feel. He's deeply sad about all of his senses that he's lost from his battles and the armor stealing his senses. He just can't afford to show that weakness inside a confrontation so we don't have much time for that. I believe we've seen him struggle with his body falling apart on multiple occasions during confrontations, so I think we can all find a happy middle ground there yeah?
Guts' prosthetic arm is actually pretty realistic in functionality, besides shooting a cannon out of it. Basically the only thing it's good for is gripping his sword.
[Minor Berserk Spoilers ahead] Guts also gets into a situation where he is very badly injured in ways he will probably never recover from, and instead of ignoring that his friends tell him they modified his equipment in a way that he’ll be able to use it despite his new chronic injuries.
There's also a really good scene that shows he can't pick up things with his prosthetic, it's only good for gripping his sword because the fingers are magnetized (that's not explicitly stated I don't think but it does make the most sense) (even if miura doesn't fully commit to showing the experience of using it mid combat)
Something that often get's overlooked with guts because... let's be honest most people haven't actually read the manga is that it actually isn't a fully functional replacement, rather it has very limited grip strength and is stiff as a mofo like a lot of real prothetics. The cannon part is by far it's best use case. There is even a scene later on where he fails to save someone as a direct consequence of him only having a fake arm.
Later on in the story, when he tries to save someone in particular from falling, he reaches out to them with his metal hand, he had forgotten it’s just a tool and can’t hold the person in particular with his hand so they slip out of it.
Also worth noting he's based on a real dude named Götz von Berlichingen, who lost his hand and had a pretty top of the line prosthetic for the 1500's. No hand cannon, tho.
I think I heard somewhere that cartoon network told adventure time writers to give Finn his arm back because it wasn't marketable or something. At least later on in the series we see that Finn wasn't wearing his new robot arm all the time like we see in distant lands: obsidian.
An important thing about Finn. Every representation Finn haves in early seasons in different universes and future versions of himself, he was always missing an arm. So even though he gets his arm back for a few episodes, I honestly always thought it was temporary because Finn's character is always so tied to that fact
one thing i really like about finn from adventure time is that in adventure time together again finn is given the choice to take on any form hes had throughout his whole life and he chooses to be the version of himself without the arm, really shows that he came to accept it as part of him
@@sassas1487 its a person by person basis thing, some people accept it as part of themselves and some dont. neithers the correct answer, its just what feels right for u
@@NerdMarcie Choosing to not have your arm back is the wrong answer. Why would anyone choose to hinder themselves intentionally? I understand the whole acceptance thing and whatnot, but acceptance comes from a place of powerlessness, you can’t grow your arm back, you can’t turn back time, you’ve got no choice but to accept it. Accepting things is not the same as desiring things, we do it when we’re completely cornered. Believe it or not, disabilities affect your functionality and are a huge disadvantage. Choosing to remain blind and stumbling in the dark sounds stupid.
The only example I can think of off hand of a character having to adjust to a prosthetic other than Adventure Time is Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon, weirdly.
Guts is a good example. Up until he gets the Berserker armor his prosthetic can only grip stuff. It moves like a mitten as in all the fingers at once. The way he holds his sword is that there is a MASSIVE magnet in the palm that is only magnetic to the fairy steel that the handle is made from. (cuz the sword is 2 pieces, blade and handle held together by a massive bolt) After he gets the Berserker armor it fuses with his prosthetic and he can use each finger individually.
I think whats depressing about the berserker armour though is that even if guts gets to use his arm again... the issue comes that every time guts uses the armour he loses more and more of his senses which... honestly i dont even need to say how terryfying that is.
@@quoiquelveaux1890 The comic spread of the Berserker armor possessing Guts for the first time where his limbs snap, spin around, then heal back into the right place is one of the pages that always makes my skin crawl. Like, there's giant spreads that are definitely more terrifying at a glance but that one is so brutal.
@@quoiquelveaux1890yeah i agree. I think Guts’ prothetic is still a good example and fine writing even with the berserker armor. The armor literally eats into him and will rob him of EVERYTHING physically and mentally, and the only good thing it has ever brought him was using his left arm again and the ability to save his loved ones. But at the end of the day, he is still stacking up MORE disabilities the more he uses the armor. The cons in the long run are almost outweighing the pros. He almost can’t function well without having it on.
The armour doesn't heal, it forces the limbs back into places with spikes. Somone mentioned it perfectly that Guts lost of senses has to do with literally losing skin with each use of the armor. He's lost muscle mass from his injuries too, as in his flesh has fallen off. It certainly is one of the most bizarre phenomenons I've seen.
Eda loses her arm in The Owl House, and in a world full of magic where she could probably get a magical prosthetic, she just replaces it with a big hook. Icon.
I like to believe she could very easily get some magical replacement (abomination arm/gauntlet would be pretty simple to whip up probably) but chooses to have a hook arm cause it looks badass. Gotta impress all the kids at her new school, yknow?
With Metal Gear Solid V, I think the best amputee representation is not actually Venom Snake but Kazuhira Miller. Not only did he lost an arm but also a leg and has photophobia on top of that. And unlike Snake, he refused to have bionic replacement limbs. He still able to lead and instruct the Diamond Dogs company and still able enough to snatch and disarm a rifle pointed at him.
That Guts scene where he looks at his cut off arm you showed is actually a very powerful scene. He tried to save Casca with it but the grip wasnt enough and they both fell. Later after they have both been saved, he looks at his arm and says "Even if we painstaking piece togther something lost, I guess it doesn't mean it will be back to normal." Which not only refers to his arm but to Casca and his new group. For Casca,Guts doesnt know if she will still love him even after they do the ritual in Elfhelm and for the party, while he cares for them, they will never truely replace the friends hes lost during the Eclispe. Truely beautiful scene.
How to Train your Dragon is basically a movie about a rockstar dragon who loses one of his tail fins and gets a prosthetic from a quirky human with asthma.
@@mohamedrayanetobbal9334 I think this idea of him needing someone to be able to do something that was basic for him naturally is very interesting, as it portrays that even if you manage to deal with it, you will never go back to the way you were before, this represents a lot of caretakers of disabled animals who need take extra care and attention to your pets
I'm surprised you didn't talk more about ed elric. Throughout the show Ed is always having to get his prosthetic repaired and upgraded, and how much he actually misses his arm and leg, despite them kind of being objective improvements, at least in combat. He wants his body and brother back more than anything in the world and is willing to do borderline uncool things for it. There's even an extensive scene showing Winry fitting the arm for Ed and that absolutely brutal scene that shows them connecting the nerves where he screams in pain (I know that's probably not super realistic but it shows the hardship he has to go through after losing an arm). He fights on despite it all and it's super powerful.
I was reminded of the scene where Edward is fighting and his arm stops mid way through the fight, and he barely makes it out alive. All because a screw was missing.
It's not super realistic given today's technology, but it's also not unrealistic, as in that's a likely reaction when you're connecting something directly to the nerves.
Wrath from 2003 is super interesting he was given limbs by Ed an his yearning to be human is a source of tension this line from Armstrong lives rent free in my head when he speaks to Ed "Then what would you do Ed would you tear them from his body an sow them on yourself" "Course not" "Then your better off not knowing the truth"
If i remember correctly, in The Walking Dead comic when Rick loses his hand became a turning point for the character. It shows the aftermath of it, he had to re-learn how to shoot a gun, he wasn't able to put enough strength into his hatchet strikes, even people died when he failed to save them because of losing his limb
Man, my arm broke a year and a half ago, and gave me a lot of problems, and still is. It makes me kind of frustrated, but your content made me fell a lot better. You made me realise that it isnt the end of the world for me, despite of my dificulties, it wasnt as bad as your case of course, thats why your content meant a lot to me, thanks dont stop.
5:35 also even without the alarm he has the same reaction when his prosthetic arm looks like it’s not supposed to look arms are not supposed to do that 😂
@@TORQ111 Possibly in part because those things are _expensive_ so like, if I slapped my laptop as a joke or something and the hinge just... unhinged, I'd probably freak out too. I wouldn't _quite_ say I see my laptop as part of me.
Best disabled representation is Ash Williams(he’s pretty much exactly what you complain about with these kind of characters but he has a chainsaw hand that’s sick af)
@@Pasclesrm tbf if you live in a magic world it is natural you'll get a magic solution but i do also think your allowed to not have magic be a perfect solution, it'd be neat if the tradeoff is that you constantly have to keep reupping yourself to have the arm work ad it's entirely dependant on you having enough magical juice for it to work having it have a severe downside
Actually, Edward Elric dealt with prosthetic trouble plenty, some examples: His automail starts malfunctioning in the fight in lab 5 when Winry forgets to put one of the screws in, which eventually leaves it to go totally limp mid-fight and he can’t do anything about it, also the entire surgery for automail and aftermath recovery was very painful and uncomfortable for him and isn’t typically done on kids but he insisted and even pushed himself to recover in a year due to his guilt, Every time he is getting a new upgraded one to fit his growth or to fix damage he causes to it he goes through sharp pain because it has to be disconnected and reconnected to the nerve endings in his shoulder or leg in the process when it’s put back on-sometimes he’s forced to have to do it himself, like in the 2003 anime when Barry the Chopper captures him, ties him up, and takes his arm off to make him helpless to perform alchemy-it leaves him to find a way to get out of the ropes without an arm. He’s clever enough to do it but has to dodge an armed fully grown serial killer while trying to get his automail arm back and reconnect it himself-he is rightfully terrified and feeling helpless and panicked throughout the encounter, Scar destroys his arm completely and he nearly gives up then and lets Scar kill him b/c he has little means of fighting him off without it and it humbles him greatly from how cocky he was facing against him from the start of that fight (in the 2003 anime he actually learns from that battle and goes on to constantly change the metal in his arm by quickly transmuting it in his next fight with Scar, so Scar is left clueless on how to deconstruct it b/c it’s no longer steel like before), he vomits and struggles greatly when digging his mom’s grave up in the rain and is stated to be sick to his stomach b/c his nubs ache when the weather changes, He has to be careful in extreme heat, like when he crosses the desert and needs to soak in cold water or else his metal automail port will start to burn his skin, Same goes for extreme cold when he visits Briggs, since it runs the risk of giving the skin around his port frostbite, and he actually needs his mechanic to come and bring him an entirely new arm made from a different metal alloy that wouldn’t be as sensitive to cold. Another bonus he experiences from this new metal is it makes his automail much lighter weight so he ends up being a little faster and more nimble in his movements than when he was hauling around his steel ones, It’s also speculated by Winry and another Automail engineer that his stunted growth might be a result of his bones having to support and bear the weight of his automail leg and arm for so long starting from such a formative year (12 years old) for growth. Even when he gets his arm back at the end, in both series he is still left with his automail leg, he is never fully “healed” or restored from the mistakes he made that made him an amputee in the first place, and he’s perfectly fine with that. Arakawa (the Fullmetal Alchemist mangaka) said she put a lot of effort studying disabilities and talking to different disabled people she met about how their loss of a limb impacts their lives and how they feel about having prosthetics and the pros and cons they experience, and put that into her work when she made Ed disabled, and I think it definitely showed. I honestly think she made one of the best disabled main characters with Edward. He’s severely disabled, yet sometimes we barely notice it in the show because it doesn’t totally define who he is or stop him from living his life, and in some ways, he even learns to adapt to it and moderately thrive with them. He’s put at a disadvantage because of it plenty of times, but he’s never seen as weak or totally helpless, and isn’t babied by other characters because of it. He’s also never shown to be ashamed to be disabled or needing automail, but is rather only ashamed of what his loss of his limbs are connected to with his past actions.
Full metal alchemist did it quite well in my opinion. Putting aside the whole magic thing about how they move and connect it to their nerves. Ed did have to go through a lot for the prosthetic, he had to have surgery to get them on, had to relearn how to write, suffered from phantom pains, the weight was stunning his growth, he had to get it readjusted periodically since he was still growing and when going to really hot or cold places, he had to get them fitted with new materials or get straight up new ones that wouldn't conduct heat so much or give him frostbite.
Y'know, I had a friend that thought their life was over when they lost their arm. But after watching your videos, they've softened a little. I won't say these videos cured them, or made them immediately go "this is okay", but they actually feel like life goes on now. And I think that's a really powerful mindset shift. Cheers.
A better disabled representative from JoJos would definitely be Johnny. The story really does go into great lengths to show the audience how much he struggles without his legs, that moment in the first few chapters where he desperately tries to cling to his horse with a piece of wood sticking through his leg really sticks out to me. You can definitely tell that JoJo's back in the early few parts was more "doing stuff because it seems cool" rather than providing a particularly deep narrative compared to stuff from part 4/5 onwards.
I think araki realized the potential of this in part 5 after polnareff struggling to reach the arrow due to losing his legs lead to him finding out about requiem
@@alexsere3061 It really depends on who is being represented. For someone who has permanently lost the use of their legs, they may see Johnny as poor representation. But for other people in different circumstances, it may mean something more. As an example, I was born with congenital true dismetria, which means my legs weren't the same size. When I was 8yo, the size gap was so big I had to go through surgery procedures because I would have problems with my balance and my spinal column. There were complications, and to sum it up, I had to spent 10 years of my youth in a wheelchair. It was tough, but with physiotherapy, through ups and downs, I was able to slowly be able to walk again. So, for me, Johnny is an example of very good representation of my struggles.
Love your point about characters not fixing/overcoming their disability but succeeding in spite of it or finding their own solution to problems! Its actually a fantastic opportunity to be creative in showing how a character can adapt to certain situations (and their progression in their overall adapting) or how much effort they are willing to put in to do certain things others might find easy/simple.
It's also a human reminder of weakness, as in while we are strong there are just somethings we have no real guarnteed ability to just overcome. We do have limits, BUT againd that doesn't mean we can't work with them. A critism i have with Gurran Lagan is it's message of overcoming limits is too extreme and ingorant of those who'd bring a great argument not only about Spiral power but also just about human limits aswell. I now realise how much they could've benefited from having more disabled people bringing realism into this theme, becuase you can?t believe your way a new functional hand, but you can live without it.
and yet they still accidentally drew him with two arms in one scene of the boruto anime. Also important to point out that Naruto DOES get his arm back- feels like a cop out
i was just about to mention it! i think it's kind of cool that even if naruto gets his magic prosthetic, sasuke decides not to get one, although i haven't watched boruto in a while so I don't really remember if we can really see him dealing with that
In fma (idk about the anime but in the manga) there is a lot of emphasis and time spent on Edward's learning how to acclimate to the prosthetics (extensive and excruciating physiotherapy and rehab), his phantom pain, the impact om his general health (not growing up enough because of the strain), etc. Plus it breaks all the time and is often very unreliable, leaving him without for long stretches. Maybe you'll enjoy the manga more!
Play Wolfenstein II. The Scottish character Fergus loses his arm in the beginning and has to come to terms with a dieselpunk prosthetic that, for lack of a better term, wants to kill him. It's treated for laughs a lot of the time, but it really keeps getting in the way and it only finally works in the end when he learns to get the programming under control.
One thing that the FMA animes glossed over is Ed having trouble with his automail arm. The manga has a couple scenes of him needing to put it on, but it is noticeable. Another good representation I feel is this veteran from the Netflix Punisher show, season 2, where you see him putting on the powder, the sock and all that for his leg.
I think I read somewhere that it also affects his clothing choices. He wears clothes that won't get stained easily by the oil from his limbs. There's also that bit where his arm wasn't fixed properly and it stops working in the middle of a fight.
This video was super helpful to me as an artist/writer. I have a character who lost their arm, and I was worried that as an able bodied person I wouldn't be able to portray them correctly. Keep up the good work
Really cool video! I love that you’re sharing your perspective, making us viewers think about an experience that most of us have never even considered… On the point of characters with badly functioning prosthetics that malfuncion in the heat of action, one of Adventure Time’s most emotionally impactful episodes features exactly that, when he accidentally kills fern (who in essence is Finn, as he was the finn-sword, and so on) through his prosthetic (equipped with voice commands)… all brilliantly connecting the to struggle of his lost arm, which in the show is framed as an exploration of the self (which later manifests in the existence of Fern)… Also, I remember reading about something called Ghost Limb Syndrome, which i guess is perhaps also paralelled in the episode of the tower which you mentioned? Again, great video! :O
I’ve always liked how at the end of Naruto, Sasuke opts out of getting a prosthetic arm and continues his life with one arm. And while he’s not an amputee, I also love the way Guy continues to live his life to the fullest after losing the mobility in his leg. They never have to overcome their disabilities and are shown still thriving with them.
Replacing a limb with a perfect prosthetic is like the diet version of a character dying and then instantly being brought back to life. Don’t write like a coward, when you chop an arm off don’t you dare give it back.
Depends on the story. Character being brought back in a setting that has readily available resurrection is way different from the same thing happening in a setting that never previously mentioned resurrection at al. The same way it doesn't make any sense why a character would stay without a replacement limb when the setting has readily available healing magic or prosthetic technology. Writing a good story is more important than not writing like a coward.
Its like anakin and luke they both lose their hands but in that galaxy far far away they have prosthetics technology there, but when Ani became Vader he struggled with his prosthetics and kinda overcome using the force
Adventure Time still had times when the prosthetic failed or had issues. It's not like it was a 100% perfect arm replacement. The grass hand arm kinda was like that for a bit but that ended up having a whole host of other issues.
I'm currently writing a sci-fi novel about a character who loses an arm, you've been very helpful and have given me a lot to think about in regards to how I should go about it.
If there is something I can mention, it's Dunban in Xenoblade Chronicles. While he doesn't lose an arm, the use of his right arm is all but gone due to a war injury. Over the course of the introduction, he continually tries to use his right arm to no avail. It all comes to a head when there is a call to action a year after receiving his injury, he then uses his left arm to use a sword instead of his right as he used to. After that event, he spends time learning his new left handed style off screen until he eventually catches up with the party later. Dunban then basically shows in all but words that he took this injury as a time to step down as a hero and step up as a mentor to the next generation. He can't do the things he used to, but the next generation of heroes can do even better. And he later uses that experience of accepting loss and adapting into a great conversation with the 7th party member.
I'm surprised no one has mentionned Violet Evergarden yet. Despite not being the point of the anime, the prosthetic arms play an important role in Violet's character. At the beginning of the anime, when Violet is writing a letter to the Major, we see her struggle a lot to use her prosthetics, but she persists given how important Gilbert is for her. Losing both of her arms pretty much made her useless in the army, hence why she ends up with the Auto Memory Dolls in the first place. The bloody world of war that she knew suddenly shattered, leaving her unprepared for a normal life. Furthermore, whenever she takes her gloves in order to write a letter, we see the clear blend of fear and astonishment in her clients faces. These "glove-removing scenes" serve as a reminder of Violet's troubled past, an inevitable weight she has to carry on (both literally and metaphorically). There's so much more I could mention but I feel like I would explain it horrendously so let's just leave it like that. If anything, I cannot recommend enough Violet Evergarden.
While she becomes pretty perfect with her arms pretty fast, she uses a typewriter because it was very difficult for her to use a pen. They also require some maintenance.
YES! THANK YOU! I just mentioned her in a comment myself lol. People need to stop sleeping on that show, fr. It really is such a beautiful, emotionally compelling story. ❤
I think Guts does a great representation tho. If you have read the manga, there is a chapter called Bubbles of Futility that talks about the things that we lost and we cannot replace. Him losing his hand and his eye are vital to his story arc about overcoming his difficulties and continue to struggle in live. Although I can see that when it's REALLY about the struggle in the specific topic, Berserk ignores it like any other show or manga or whatever. Great video btw, love your channel.
Something I see very few people bring about Finn is that [SPOILERS] In the finally when he, Simon and Betty are getting digested by Gorb, they all return to their "primal" or "natural" form, but in the case of Finn, he still doesn't have his arm. So it goes to show, plus a dialogue he said when he got his prostetic, that he just accepts that he's an amputee now, and he's fine with it, he considers the lack of an arm as a part of who he truly is
After learning more about amputees, I wrote a short story about one of my characters with a robotic arm and cybernetic eye. It’s about his morning routine. Waking up and putting his arm on and putting his eye back in.
I love how Adventure Time (eventually) settled on Finn's acceptance of losing his arm and while the new metal arm did have some nifty gadgets it never felt like it it made him physically stronger like most fictional robot arms do. It was more like a cool multitool than a super-weapon. The leg equivalent would be Hiccup's leg from HTTYD, which was also really cool and useful while still maintaining a grounded feeling.
Guts's arm is a good example though. The chapter that he gets it he is being taught how to use it, being told how to operate it, and he dislocates his shoulder because there was too much powder in the cannon, there is also a much later chapter where he tries to save someone from falling off a boat forgetting his arm can't grip anything that isint a sword handle and so he fails.
One example of a character getting a prosthetic in a series which I’ve not seen mentioned in the comments yet is Yang Xiao Long from RWBY. Specifically, her arc during the show’s fourth Volume (basically another word for season). To attempt to surmise the show’s events relating to Yang and her prosthetic up until this point: For the first three Volumes, Yang is shown to be a carefree, outgoing thrill seeker with a love of puns. During the big climax of V3, Yang sees her teammate/partner (Blake Belladonna) getting stabbed by her ex-teammate partner (Adam Tauros) and rushes in to save her, getting her arm cut off for her troubles. Blake gets herself and Yang out of there, the looming threat of her ex going after her and everyone she loves makes Blake run away from her team to keep them out of harm’s way - effectively abandoning Yang when she needed her the most. This experience leaves her bedridden, traumatised, extremely bitter towards Blake, and turning her into a recluse. In V4 after an unknown time skip (around half a year or so at most), Yang has managed to settle into her new lifestyle as an amputee but still has significant trauma of what happened to her, experiencing nightmares and mild panic attacks at something like a plate breaking. She is then offered a brand-spanking new state of the art robo-arm from her father, but is hesitant to trying it on. Sometime later Yang confides her reluctance in confronting her fears to her father and some of her old teachers, leading to this exchange with her father: _“Everyone keeps talking about me getting back to normal. And I appreciate it, but...this is normal now.”_ _“Well, normal is what you make of it”_ _“What is that supposed to mean? Do you want me to just pretend like nothing happened? I lost a part of me. A piece of me is gone. And it's never coming back.”_ _“You're right. It's not coming back. But that doesn't have to stop you from becoming who you wanna be. You're Yang Xiao Long, my sunny little dragon…You can do whatever you put your mind to. So whenever you're ready to stop moping, and get back out there, I'll be there for you.”_ She also overhears her dad telling her old teachers that the reason why he hasn’t gone looking for Yang’s younger sister is because: _“I've got to... look after some things.”_ The next morning, she and her father begin training with her new arm, after Yang decided to take the first step she needed. What’s interesting is that the way she describes the prosthetic is as: _“I thought it would be just this huge weight, but it feels... natural. They did a great job with this thing.”_ Which, while this is because it’s your stereotypical unrealistic sci-fi ‘Upgrade’, I think that in this sense it also shows or represents how the biggest hurdle Yang wasn’t her physical trauma but her mental. Now of course later on, Yang manages to get her confidence back. Becoming a smarter and stronger person as a result of this. For the rest of the series, Yang’s amputee nature isn’t particularly brought up that much though. With the next two Volume’s dealing more with more of her emotional trauma; particularly coming to grips with her feelings of frustration on why Blake left her in Volume 5, and finally having their partnership come back stronger than ever as the come together to take down the same man who severed it in the first place. There are a couple of instances where it comes into play: In Volume 8 when trying to convince a magical spirit to put their robot friend’s soul in a newly made fleshy body (it makes a bit more sense in context), we get this exchange: _“Okay, but if I take the robot parts out of her, that would leave...”_ “The girl who's always been there underneath it.” *Yang flexes her arm, drawing attention to her prosthesis.* _“The mechanical parts are just... extra.”_ Then in Volume 9 she ends up losing her prosthetic arm for a bit, so for a few episodes she’s just walking around with one arm while they try to get it back. Then later when she ends up inhaling the fumes from some magic leaves (I swear it makes a bit more sense in context), she ends up chatting with a past version of herself who offers her the possibility of going back to who she was before to be _‘Whole again’_. To which Yang responds: _“No. My losses, my failures. Those more than anything are what have shaped me into who I am, showed me how I need to grow. If there’s something I’m missing, it’s not because I lost it. It’s because I haven’t found it yet. And the only way to do that is to keep going.”_ RWBY as a series may have received _a lot_ of criticism over the years. And admittedly there have been some vocal cries regarding it doing a poor job portraying the amputee topic. Such as Yang’s arm effectively functioning as a full-on upgrade. Or how when another character sacrifices their arm and gets a prosthetic to show how much they’re willing to sacrifice it gets treated as a visual metaphor for ‘losing a piece of their humanity. And look, I am not an amputee. So, I can’t speak for which pieces of media are or aren’t positive or negative examples of representation. But I do remember watching this arc with Yang, particularly during Volume 4 and for the first time in the show…I actually really, really liked her character. And that has stuck with me, so…I thought I would share for those who might be interested. And for those that aren’t…well then you can just ignore me. Regardless, thank you for making this video. It was an interesting and informative watch. P.S. This took me like an hour to type up fully! So, I hope it reads well. Edit: I have just seen a comment thread started by @ND99007, discussing this very character and the effectiveness of her arc...now I feel a bit silly.
To be honest, I was expecting the mention of Yang from RWBY somewhere in the comments, so I'm going to yap a little bit if you don't mind. I feel like it is kind of a big deal when it's a turning point for Yang in terms of her character development. If you compare V1-V3 Yang, with End of Volume 4 Yang, it feels like the loss of her arm is a reminder of what her dad, Taiyang, said back on their conversation in their sparring match: _-"You've always been one, to burn brighter than anyone else, whether it was with your smile, or... well, I remember your first haircut (chuckles). But you gotta keep a level head, and keep your emotions in check... (sigh)... You definitely have your mom's stubborness."_ Like, sure, we saw that Yang's temper was a potential problem in a fight, but it always benefitted her more than handicapped her. That is, until Adam, where a single strike from him cut off her arm because she was too angry to think straight. To quote Taiyang once more: _"But what happens if you miss, what happens if they're stronger? What then? Now you're just weak and tired"_ TL;DR: I guess you could say that Yang losing her arm is a big but necessary turning point of her character, and it made sense considering everything that happened before in the previous volumes.
Kotallo in Horizon Forbidden West is a character who front and center is forced to deal with the sudden loss of his arm, and what it means for him as an elite warrior. The guy isn't exactly an open book, but through interacting with him you get to see he is marching forward despite having received a blow he essentially considers made him worthless. And eventually, almost just through force of motion, he manages to come to terms with being an amputee. He also gets a side quest in which he is given the opportunity to get a prosthetic arm, but at the end of the test run he takes it off, saying he'll use it when he needs to, but that lacking an arm is proof of what he's gone through and thus a part of him.
Watching your videos is really insightful on the experience of people who have lost limbs, thank you for making these videos and shedding more light on it. I’ll admit I never gave it that much thought.
I like how Elden Ring handled prosthetics. Malenia was born cursed with a rot. It would devour her body, taking her right arm, left and right leg. You do get a good luck at her shoulder stump too. Her twin brother, Miquella, desperately tried to find a cure. He managed make a needle of unalloyed gold that stopped the progession of the rot. He also made her the prosthetics she uses (which have incredible detail). She trained and became an unparalleled warrior despite everything working against her. I love this because it shows the love the siblings have for each other and the resolve and strength of Malenia.
And I enjoy that Malenia's sword isn't just a sword that she holds and that's it. It's attached to her prosthetic and requires the prosthetic in order to be used
More than anything else she does with it I just fucking love the way she puts it on. Something about the way it slots into place and the satisfying "clunk" sound is so cool for some reason. Also that one trailer were Radahn chops it off and she casually catches her sword with the other arm? Badass.
In the Eragon book series the main character (Eragon) at the end of the first book has a scar across his back that completely f^cks him up, seizures and all that. As someone who was reading this post back surgery I really connected to this. And then half way through the second book he’s miraculously healed! That sucked. So I completely understand what you’re saying.
Nice a new video! I'm ready to get schooled. Also: As a writer, thank you so much for your videos. They are a treat to watch and are very informative. (Especially because one of my main characters is actually missing an arm.) Your video on prosthetics was eye-opening, and I actually realize it's more interesting to write around the difficulties of an IRL one instead of making it a perfect second, more metallic, limb.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has some great moments when dealing with an amputation and the resulting aftermath. The main character Jack Mitchell looses his arm(and his friend) during a mission, which presents a lot of emotional baggage. The first part of the game after getting his new arm has moments where the arm malfunctions and Mitchell can't control it. During the end of the game, Mitchell's arm is put out of commission and has to deal with using one a single arm, which he ultimately sacrifices to defeat the Johnathan Irons, the antagonist. Mitchell says after, "Irons gave me a second chance, and I gave it back." This is an amazing story of acceptance and loss.
That one character in Wolfenstein losses an arm and his new one has a mind of its own is a good example I can think of cause it does become easy for him to use later on. 5:39
Guts was inspired by a 15th - 16th century German lord who lost his arm during a siege. He got extremely lucky when he found a blacksmith that forged him a prosthetic metal hand that was so good that he could even write with it. He wielded a 2 handed sword and become known as "Gotz of the Iron Hand".
@@brianhowe201 From what i have been able to gather, it was never stated he could no longer use the sword. Just that he was able to use items such as shield and a quill. Im guessing he was still able to use it even with a prosthetic.
No, Miura had been asked about that in the past and he was surprised, it was just an extremely hilarious coincidence. Even then, the only things both have in common apart from a similar name (because Guts's name is literally guts, as he was born from his dead mother's entrails and remains) is that they used a big sword (common for mercenaries of the time) and having a prosthetic arm.
@@-----Alcatraz------ yes, history is full of extremely weird coincidences like that one, our confirmation bias makes us ignore the times things don't line up and pay close attention to any seemingly emerging patterns. One of my favorite examples are the different pyramids around the globe, the have nothing to do with each other besides the fact that multiple civilizations discovered that that is the most effective way to stack rocks really, really high.
Theres actually a great moment with guts and his prothestic. During the boat arc Cassca falls off the boat and guts tries to catch her but uses his metal hand and it goes into how its still just metal and cant replace the old limb. Im not doing it justice here but its really introspective on what guts has lost and what hes trying to gain now
Quickly becoming one of my favorite channels. For someone with so few videos, you found a voice, editing style, and sense of humor and all three are spot on 🤝
You are so cool. I love your channel so much. I know nothing about being an amputee or video games or even half of these movies, but you’re always entertaining and I feel like I learn something every time. Keep making good shit man you rock
As a game designer its always fun seeing videos like these. Been subbed since the first one popped off but just wanted to say love seein vids like these or the blind dude a couple months back uploading his playthrugh of TLOU. Dont typically get to actually hear/see the specific target audience to some of these extremely edge case things lol
One of my favorite Arm Amputee characters is Barret from Final Fantasy VII, Rebirth specifically does such a good job of showing how traumatic something like that is, with him being tortured by visions of the incident in the Temple of the Ancients, and also struggling with menial things that come more easily to the rest of the party like climbing or loosening a knot. Him willingly choosing a machine gun instead of a regular artificial arm to fight the evil corporation that ruined his life is a major part of his character. The game never lets you forget that the arm is a prosthetic, It never just blends into the background to the point you forget it's even there. It's always front and center because it's integral to Barret's story and character.
Having a gun where a hand should be is symbolic of his choosing to interact with the world mostly through violence. The games are not subtle, and they don't really approve of Barrett's bombing of a power plant that definitely caused a lot of collateral damage. It comes full circle when he confronts his mirror in Dyne, who also has a gun for a hand but does not have Marlene, and Dyne loses his humanity entirely.
I think shanks is a great representation of someone without a arm, like bro is one of the most notorious pirates in the world and the man has a arm, a sword and a dream
fighting over your arm around 5:40 reminded me of the scenes in Dr. Strangelove as the doctor was fighting against his arm- like exactly what you're doing lol
A great classic movie that shows the difficulty of adjusting to prosthetics is 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives. It helps that the actor Harold Russell actually did lose his hands to a grenade in WWII, so he brought his own lived experience to the performance that won him TWO OSCARS (they gave him an honorary one thinking he might not win Best Supporting, but he did anyway). Obviously it’s a very old movie, but it was a huge milestone in showing amputee representation in a way that displays both the PTSD of having such a life changing injury, but also how those around him learn to embrace him and help him adapt back to civilian life. It’s easily the best part of an already great classic movie that is dated and yet incredibly ahead of its time
i just wanna say bro, im a 25 yr old guy and have been chronically on youtube for most of my life. I am being fully honest whenever i say you are one of the most captivating creators i have come across. i just finished every video you have straight and i love them all. huge respect to you for finding the bright side about this disability and being able to be so positive about it. i love that tho most videos are about ur amputee, your personality is the main thing for me. like i said youre very captivating and just an enjoyable guy to watch. yes i do love all the humor you put in about your accident cause its well written and funny as hell. i really do wish you only the best in this creator journey and hope for so much success for you. you seem like an awesome guy with a great relationship with your partner. its been 3 weeks since you posted and i really hope to see alot more from you. youll always have a fan from me, much love bro. keep it up.
Yang from RWBY had a whole season her being depressed and mad after she lost her arm and rejecting the idea of using one, towards the end she decides to use it and we see a bit of her training and getting used to use her new arm for fighting. Basically making her ready for next season when she back in battle.
@Appletank8 yeah but at that point you have to cut it a little slack for being fiction. She's the cool punchy lady they're not gonna not have her punch. I get what you mean but even that first part is a major step
@@Appletank8 Not really, she does basically what she already did before losing it. It's not like she had trouble punching a mech to pieces with her bare fist. As far I remember we haven't seen a moment where the prosthetic comes in clutch, but we also haven't really seen a moment when it hinders her for whatever reason, and the way she uses it outside of combat is pretty much a normal hand.
@@frescopino7866 There's one moment in I think volume 5 where someone tries to grab her arm but she just lets it disconnect from her body and keeps running
I think the character of Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump is a great example. After having lost his legs and his entire platoon(besides Forrest) in the Vietnam War, he spends years alone and angry, numbing his pain in alcoholism and only finding pseudo-companionship in the prostitutes he pays for. Just like Jamie Lannister, he gets his own baptismal moment, when he faces off against God in the form of a Hurricane, screaming and challenging him for His worst. When the storm settles, he basks in the now settled ocean, feeling the he has made his peace with God. He accepts his circumstances, thanks Forrest for saving his life, and at the end of the film, returns for Forrest's wedding standing with prosthetic legs and a wife by his side. Such a great character who's entire arc in the film is about the long struggle of being an amputee, how he finally accepts his life the way it is, and finally finishing it with showing how he now lives a fulfilling happy life where he no longer lets it be defined by his amputee status.
0:41 while i do see what you are saying, luke losing his hand does have significance after the initial moment. During his last fight with darth vader he beats him up bad which parallels the fight on screen, but when vader is on the floor luke notices that vader also had a proshetic hand just like him. This is the moment that snaps him out of his rage and fully embrace his jedi nature. Also vader himself has a lot of instances where his proshetics bother him if u read the tie in material.
its crazy how star wars is one of the few pieces of media that features a disabled hero and villain. and said amputated limb does become a plot point that makes the main character reconsider his actions.
I once made a d&d character named Voss, who was a Gnoll with dwarfism and missing his right arm. He'd always be that way and was used to being slower than other people at doing certain things. Despite this he became an incredible sailor and fighter. A demigod gave Voss the option to remove his disabilities (he'd be full size and have a second arm), and under pressure from the rest of his party, he decided to do it. It didn't go well. Learning to use his right arm was hard and while it was just as strong as his left one, it wasn't as dexterous. He would often complain that it didn't feel like it should be there. Often he would just let it hang limply at his side, leaving it open to be grabbed and used as leverage to pin him. Being larger came with it's own problems. He had gotten use to riding with one of his companions but due to his medium size he was now too heavy for both of them to ride at the same time. The game ended before I could explore it further but I enjoyed playing Voss while I had him.
I mean, sure in such a high magical realm someone is bound to get healed eventually, but one should allow for roleplays. Though I suppose one can always go the magical disability route.
2:40 i'm pretty sure that most of adventure time was planned from the start (or at the very least, a good chunk of it was) so i think the writers always planned for finn to permanently lose his arm. they'd always put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the grass sword is a part of him, but also it's own separate thing, so it makes sense that after the grass sword grew into a new arm for him, it'd eventually get detached again
In the game Horizon Forbidden West, one of your new allies loses an arm early in the game. You end up doing a few sidequests later tp help him gather the stuff for a prosthetic. By the end he’s pretty accepting of his situation and has found his worth again, opting only to wear and use the arm when necessary (namely and predictably, whilst kicking ass). Kotallo is neat, I like Kotallo.
Baiken, instead of having a new and improved arm (especially in a world where there's tecnology for it), went with the cooler option of just having a lot of random things up her sleeve, literally.
Don't know if this is the best example, but one I find interesting is Chai from Hi-Fi Rush. He volunteered to get his disabled arm replaced with robotic prosthesis so he could try to fulfill his dream of becoming a rockstar, and due to an accident that caused him to have his MP3 player mix with it (if you played the game, it makes sense), he gets labeled a defect by the company and has to fight his way out
GOD dude thank you for voicing this. I'm not an amputee, but my right arm is disabled and i have been feeling the same way! its hard to get representation for disability, especially in fantasy settings it tends to just have a magical bandaid placed on it and labeled as "all is well no disability here!" its nice to have what i feel were my own jumbled thoughts voiced so succinctly in a video !
We all know the best amputee in gaming is ALL OF THESE THOUGHTS RUNNING THROUGH MY HEAD, ARM ON FIRE VEINS BURNING REEEED, FRUSTRATION IS GETTING BIGGER, BANG BANG BANG *PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER!*
There is Devil May Cry 5 with Nero. Losing his arm really affected him, is a major plot point, and his multiple replacements are even a gameplay mechanic.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick Yet he continues to use the Devil Breakers his friend makes in the epilogue and credits as pointed out directly in a cutscenes. Plus it's implied the "magic arm" he grew only stays active if has the energy to do so. So I think it counts.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormickI think the symbolism is better than that. He is reaching out specifically when his arm grows back. He's reaching out to his father who took his arm. Despite the terrible thing his father did, Nero still wants to have a connection with him.
In the third part of a story I'm maybe going to write eventually, a character named Gary Patin does lose his right arm in a fight against Pierre, and nearly dies. However because he was an emesary of a divine being of persistence, he manages to survive, and in an act of desperation manages to manafest a spectral ghost hand, which cannot interact with physical matter, but can be used to wield his trident. It was inspired by the idea of a phantom limb, that I've heard about in the past.
Sekiro does something right with losing an arm, through the sculptor. Though they also have that wonderful prosthetic with all the crazy utilities and perfect range of motion, which, to their credit, apparently took a long time to make, as told by the sculptor. There's also just the one prosthetic arm between the sculptor and your player character, so he gives his away to you, leaving himself without an arm of his own. There's also a number of enemies also missing their arms, and with no prosthetics to see.
There's... Far better characters both written and at the representation stuff. We're not speaking about Power scaling, we're speaking about writing, hon
Had a scroll through and didn’t see anyone mentioning this, but Rick from the walking dead comics (not the tv show, cause it doesn’t happen there) I think is actually a great example of this, it’s only his hand he loses but I think covers many of the thoughts presented here. My memory may be foggy on it so it might not be as good as I remember, but could be interesting to see an analysis of that! Especially towards the end of the comics where rick basically just doesn’t use his prosthetic anymore, the statue (spoilers) left after his death is missing an arm. Aaron from the TV show of the walking dead also loses his hand, and there are definitely some interesting moments of how he deals with it in a zombie apocalypse setting.
Baiken from guilty gear comes to mind! She’s amazing! So, despite having her whole arm taken off, one of the stronger characters in the setting, and unless you count the odd assortment of weapons hid up her sleeve, she has no prosthetics to speak of, instead developing a one handed, very kick focused, fighting style to assist her on her quest of vengeance And again, among the other members of the cast, including Gears (the gears in GG are like, powerful magic people) like series protagonist Sol Badguy, she is uncompromising in her resolve and ability, outclassing Gears and other powerful beings like them, not bad for just a normal human (well, as normal as someone can be in the setting of guilty gear)
I have never clicked a thumbnail so fast in my life. I am SO ready to hear about this individual's experience, and his feeling about representation in vidya
If you somehow haven’t seen Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood even though you referenced it, YOU REALLY NEED TO SEE IT. The English dub is fantastic, pacing is breakneck and story fantastic. A very easy watch, and houses many of your wants for amputee representation (be it a limb or someone’s entire body missing).
Man, I don't know if you read The Walking Dead comics, but there is a major character that lose his arm (I won't say who to not spoil) and, of course, it follows him for a long time. I didn't finished the comics but from what I read, it has a big impact, he have difficulties to accommodate to it, he feels phantom pain and he even loses fights because of it. But he overcome it, and it shows how good of a survivor he is, he adapt his ways in fighting (using pretty violent techniques), he accept the fact that he lost it and even better, it's a major plot point, a scar reminding him of the dangers of this new world. I highly recommend the comic, it is absolutely great (well, at least where I am it's great), every chapters delivers hard and badass moments
Surprised I didn't see Vash the stampede on that list tbh its still one of those "future prosthetics" but his narrative with it is pretty interesting regardless
hey, man! right now i'm writing a character missing his left arm (born without it) & i've been doing a ton of research into people's experiences--your videos have been a massive help & a beautiful insight into what it's like to have one arm... tsym for that !! :-D
i’m one of the few that actually like what breezy did for AT, finn only gets his arm back by embracing the new reality he lives without one, and regains it with the awareness that it is not truly his, and he is destined to lose it. once he finally loses his arm *for good* he is completely accepting to the surprise of bonnie, he’s a different person now.
Sorry guys, I haven't read Berserk entirely, nor have I seen FMA. Turns out they have pretty good representation, that's my bad. I'll make a part 2 to this video eventually.
Guts is a pretty poor example of a disabled character. Half the time reading Berserk I forget that he's missing an eye and missing an arm.
For the eye thing alone he is never shown having trouble seeing at night or in the rain, bad hand eye coordination, depth perception gone, limited field of vision(having a blind side), being really vulnerable if any debris landed in his eye since he wouldn't have his other eye to rely on.
And for his missing arm: Phantom Pain, his stump swelling or circulation problems, needing to take breaks from using his prosthetic, loss of balance, tying something (hand and teeth), how does he put on his armor?
There's probably many things I'm missing but little details like that would have gone a long way to characterize Gut's better. Honestly it feels more like he's disabled for edgy dramatics instead of actually suffering the consequences of what happened at the Eclipse.
I would also recommend mushoku tensei for this as well. It's shows him struggle with his hand being gone till the end of the season. I don't even know if he is going to ever get it back and the way it shows him taking longer to do basic things. It's a nice if understated touch.
you better watch fmab its the most peak shit to ever peak
@2shadowgamer2 they just don't focus on it because it's not the main point of the series, and they were focusing on more important things. When they did focus on how guts body has been affected by all of his battles, it shows that he can barely see, barely taste, he misses his arm and its ability to grab and feel. He's deeply sad about all of his senses that he's lost from his battles and the armor stealing his senses. He just can't afford to show that weakness inside a confrontation so we don't have much time for that. I believe we've seen him struggle with his body falling apart on multiple occasions during confrontations, so I think we can all find a happy middle ground there yeah?
Should read Berserk and make a series of it :)
Guts' prosthetic arm is actually pretty realistic in functionality, besides shooting a cannon out of it. Basically the only thing it's good for is gripping his sword.
[Minor Berserk Spoilers ahead]
Guts also gets into a situation where he is very badly injured in ways he will probably never recover from, and instead of ignoring that his friends tell him they modified his equipment in a way that he’ll be able to use it despite his new chronic injuries.
There's also a really good scene that shows he can't pick up things with his prosthetic, it's only good for gripping his sword because the fingers are magnetized (that's not explicitly stated I don't think but it does make the most sense) (even if miura doesn't fully commit to showing the experience of using it mid combat)
[Spoilers for the berserk boat ark]
He also tries to save Casca from falling but fails, because he can’t really grab with his prosthetic arm
[Spoilers for the berserk boat ark]
He also tries to save Casca from falling but fails, because he can’t really grab with his prosthetic arm
You can probably fit a cannon/gun into a prosthetic somehow
Something that often get's overlooked with guts because... let's be honest most people haven't actually read the manga is that it actually isn't a fully functional replacement, rather it has very limited grip strength and is stiff as a mofo like a lot of real prothetics.
The cannon part is by far it's best use case.
There is even a scene later on where he fails to save someone as a direct consequence of him only having a fake arm.
IIRC, the fingers don't even really move, they just have like, magnets in them to grip to the sword hilt and that's all they can do.
@RahkshiMaster yeah, rikert mentions the magnets when we see him give the arm to guts
Later on in the story, when he tries to save someone in particular from falling, he reaches out to them with his metal hand, he had forgotten it’s just a tool and can’t hold the person in particular with his hand so they slip out of it.
@ChickenNuggetCancer just say it's casca, we're all real shiters here
Also worth noting he's based on a real dude named Götz von Berlichingen, who lost his hand and had a pretty top of the line prosthetic for the 1500's. No hand cannon, tho.
I think I heard somewhere that cartoon network told adventure time writers to give Finn his arm back because it wasn't marketable or something.
At least later on in the series we see that Finn wasn't wearing his new robot arm all the time like we see in distant lands: obsidian.
Fools.
They could've made a Finn action figure with swapable arms (each sold separately).
@@shinyagumon7015 I wonder if Fern would have been ever created if they kept Finn armless
@@shinyagumon7015 finn becomes marketable plushie
that's fuckin stupid
"I think I heard"
I love it with Finn. They showed both sides, the realistic struggles and fun whacky side with the OP metal arm.
An important thing about Finn. Every representation Finn haves in early seasons in different universes and future versions of himself, he was always missing an arm. So even though he gets his arm back for a few episodes, I honestly always thought it was temporary because Finn's character is always so tied to that fact
one thing i really like about finn from adventure time is that in adventure time together again finn is given the choice to take on any form hes had throughout his whole life and he chooses to be the version of himself without the arm, really shows that he came to accept it as part of him
That episode is honestly a masterpiece all around. Made me cry.
That's actually really sweet.
Would any disabled person actually do that? Me personally i'd want to have it back. But im not disabled so what do i know?
@@sassas1487 its a person by person basis thing, some people accept it as part of themselves and some dont. neithers the correct answer, its just what feels right for u
@@NerdMarcie Choosing to not have your arm back is the wrong answer. Why would anyone choose to hinder themselves intentionally? I understand the whole acceptance thing and whatnot, but acceptance comes from a place of powerlessness, you can’t grow your arm back, you can’t turn back time, you’ve got no choice but to accept it. Accepting things is not the same as desiring things, we do it when we’re completely cornered.
Believe it or not, disabilities affect your functionality and are a huge disadvantage. Choosing to remain blind and stumbling in the dark sounds stupid.
The only example I can think of off hand of a character having to adjust to a prosthetic other than Adventure Time is Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon, weirdly.
toothless is such good representation. what an icon
Hiccup too had to adjust losing his leg too.
Also hiccup kinda
"Off hand"
My first thought is Peeta in The Hunger Games but the movies removed it (he lost a leg in the book)
Guts is a good example. Up until he gets the Berserker armor his prosthetic can only grip stuff. It moves like a mitten as in all the fingers at once. The way he holds his sword is that there is a MASSIVE magnet in the palm that is only magnetic to the fairy steel that the handle is made from. (cuz the sword is 2 pieces, blade and handle held together by a massive bolt)
After he gets the Berserker armor it fuses with his prosthetic and he can use each finger individually.
I think whats depressing about the berserker armour though is that even if guts gets to use his arm again... the issue comes that every time guts uses the armour he loses more and more of his senses which... honestly i dont even need to say how terryfying that is.
@@quoiquelveaux1890dang never realized this. The only time Guts gets to use his left arm properly again is when he literally not in control. Tragic
@@quoiquelveaux1890 The comic spread of the Berserker armor possessing Guts for the first time where his limbs snap, spin around, then heal back into the right place is one of the pages that always makes my skin crawl. Like, there's giant spreads that are definitely more terrifying at a glance but that one is so brutal.
@@quoiquelveaux1890yeah i agree. I think Guts’ prothetic is still a good example and fine writing even with the berserker armor. The armor literally eats into him and will rob him of EVERYTHING physically and mentally, and the only good thing it has ever brought him was using his left arm again and the ability to save his loved ones. But at the end of the day, he is still stacking up MORE disabilities the more he uses the armor. The cons in the long run are almost outweighing the pros. He almost can’t function well without having it on.
The armour doesn't heal, it forces the limbs back into places with spikes. Somone mentioned it perfectly that Guts lost of senses has to do with literally losing skin with each use of the armor. He's lost muscle mass from his injuries too, as in his flesh has fallen off. It certainly is one of the most bizarre phenomenons I've seen.
Eda loses her arm in The Owl House, and in a world full of magic where she could probably get a magical prosthetic, she just replaces it with a big hook. Icon.
Also considering how many times she’s taken off her limbs thanks to the curse, she’d be very used to the concept.
I like to believe she could very easily get some magical replacement (abomination arm/gauntlet would be pretty simple to whip up probably) but chooses to have a hook arm cause it looks badass. Gotta impress all the kids at her new school, yknow?
@@EldestOrion Alador: “Eda, you know I could make you a new arm in a few minutes, right?”
Eda: “But the aesthetic…”
@@FrostyTheSnowPickle prosthetic*
@@Vintenuthewizard ?
With Metal Gear Solid V, I think the best amputee representation is not actually Venom Snake but Kazuhira Miller. Not only did he lost an arm but also a leg and has photophobia on top of that. And unlike Snake, he refused to have bionic replacement limbs. He still able to lead and instruct the Diamond Dogs company and still able enough to snatch and disarm a rifle pointed at him.
This! Also his love of burgers
Yeah, Miller gets the fuckin raw end of the deal in that explosion. In comparison, Venom Snake barely lost anything lol
@@Finalblue1234 I think the loss of identity was a pretty big deal for Venom. "Ishmael" was the one who was basically unaffected lol.
@@Finalblue1234i dunno, that huge piece of shrapnel near his brain seems like a huge health risk.
@@Finalblue1234that wasn’t cause of the explosion, it was cause of later
That Guts scene where he looks at his cut off arm you showed is actually a very powerful scene. He tried to save Casca with it but the grip wasnt enough and they both fell. Later after they have both been saved, he looks at his arm and says "Even if we painstaking piece togther something lost, I guess it doesn't mean it will be back to normal." Which not only refers to his arm but to Casca and his new group. For Casca,Guts doesnt know if she will still love him even after they do the ritual in Elfhelm and for the party, while he cares for them, they will never truely replace the friends hes lost during the Eclispe. Truely beautiful scene.
Berserk is beloved in the manga community and heavily underrated, elsewhere.
How to Train your Dragon is basically a movie about a rockstar dragon who loses one of his tail fins and gets a prosthetic from a quirky human with asthma.
Cmon, give him some slack he is cute, and he needs hickup, so it is a bad dispality
@@mohamedrayanetobbal9334 I think this idea of him needing someone to be able to do something that was basic for him naturally is very interesting, as it portrays that even if you manage to deal with it, you will never go back to the way you were before, this represents a lot of caretakers of disabled animals who need take extra care and attention to your pets
@bolacha7645 thank you but say it him
@@mohamedrayanetobbal9334 Sorry, I just wanted to complement your idea
@bolacha7645 it's OK. I'm just kidding I wish you didn't take it to heart
I'm surprised you didn't talk more about ed elric. Throughout the show Ed is always having to get his prosthetic repaired and upgraded, and how much he actually misses his arm and leg, despite them kind of being objective improvements, at least in combat. He wants his body and brother back more than anything in the world and is willing to do borderline uncool things for it.
There's even an extensive scene showing Winry fitting the arm for Ed and that absolutely brutal scene that shows them connecting the nerves where he screams in pain (I know that's probably not super realistic but it shows the hardship he has to go through after losing an arm). He fights on despite it all and it's super powerful.
I was reminded of the scene where Edward is fighting and his arm stops mid way through the fight, and he barely makes it out alive. All because a screw was missing.
It's not super realistic given today's technology, but it's also not unrealistic, as in that's a likely reaction when you're connecting something directly to the nerves.
He also gets his arm back at the end of it all, though, which plays into what was said about disabilities being solved/overcome.
@@j-wenningfair, but not his leg
Wrath from 2003 is super interesting he was given limbs by Ed an his yearning to be human is a source of tension this line from Armstrong lives rent free in my head when he speaks to Ed "Then what would you do Ed would you tear them from his body an sow them on yourself" "Course not" "Then your better off not knowing the truth"
If i remember correctly, in The Walking Dead comic when Rick loses his hand became a turning point for the character. It shows the aftermath of it, he had to re-learn how to shoot a gun, he wasn't able to put enough strength into his hatchet strikes, even people died when he failed to save them because of losing his limb
Man, my arm broke a year and a half ago, and gave me a lot of problems, and still is. It makes me kind of frustrated, but your content made me fell a lot better. You made me realise that it isnt the end of the world for me, despite of my dificulties, it wasnt as bad as your case of course, thats why your content meant a lot to me, thanks dont stop.
5:16 its nice to know that even if i lose a limb ill still get to have the universal human experience of a limb randomly falling asleep
5:35 also even without the alarm he has the same reaction when his prosthetic arm looks like it’s not supposed to look arms are not supposed to do that 😂
@@TORQ111 Possibly in part because those things are _expensive_ so like, if I slapped my laptop as a joke or something and the hinge just... unhinged, I'd probably freak out too. I wouldn't _quite_ say I see my laptop as part of me.
Randomly? It never happens randomly. That's not universal, something's just wrong with you.
@@Raoul.Eh, no bud. Its completely normal.
@@Raoul.ruh roh raggy
Best disabled representation is Ash Williams(he’s pretty much exactly what you complain about with these kind of characters but he has a chainsaw hand that’s sick af)
It's at least realistic though. He doesn't get some magical prosthetic, he just straps a chainsaw to his nub
@@Pasclesrm at least not until poker night
@@Pasclesrmhe gets a hand temporarily in army of darkness
@@Pasclesrm tbf if you live in a magic world it is natural you'll get a magic solution but i do also think your allowed to not have magic be a perfect solution, it'd be neat if the tradeoff is that you constantly have to keep reupping yourself to have the arm work ad it's entirely dependant on you having enough magical juice for it to work having it have a severe downside
Groovy.
Actually, Edward Elric dealt with prosthetic trouble plenty, some examples:
His automail starts malfunctioning in the fight in lab 5 when Winry forgets to put one of the screws in, which eventually leaves it to go totally limp mid-fight and he can’t do anything about it,
also the entire surgery for automail and aftermath recovery was very painful and uncomfortable for him and isn’t typically done on kids but he insisted and even pushed himself to recover in a year due to his guilt,
Every time he is getting a new upgraded one to fit his growth or to fix damage he causes to it he goes through sharp pain because it has to be disconnected and reconnected to the nerve endings in his shoulder or leg in the process when it’s put back on-sometimes he’s forced to have to do it himself, like in the 2003 anime when Barry the Chopper captures him, ties him up, and takes his arm off to make him helpless to perform alchemy-it leaves him to find a way to get out of the ropes without an arm. He’s clever enough to do it but has to dodge an armed fully grown serial killer while trying to get his automail arm back and reconnect it himself-he is rightfully terrified and feeling helpless and panicked throughout the encounter,
Scar destroys his arm completely and he nearly gives up then and lets Scar kill him b/c he has little means of fighting him off without it and it humbles him greatly from how cocky he was facing against him from the start of that fight (in the 2003 anime he actually learns from that battle and goes on to constantly change the metal in his arm by quickly transmuting it in his next fight with Scar, so Scar is left clueless on how to deconstruct it b/c it’s no longer steel like before),
he vomits and struggles greatly when digging his mom’s grave up in the rain and is stated to be sick to his stomach b/c his nubs ache when the weather changes,
He has to be careful in extreme heat, like when he crosses the desert and needs to soak in cold water or else his metal automail port will start to burn his skin,
Same goes for extreme cold when he visits Briggs, since it runs the risk of giving the skin around his port frostbite, and he actually needs his mechanic to come and bring him an entirely new arm made from a different metal alloy that wouldn’t be as sensitive to cold. Another bonus he experiences from this new metal is it makes his automail much lighter weight so he ends up being a little faster and more nimble in his movements than when he was hauling around his steel ones,
It’s also speculated by Winry and another Automail engineer that his stunted growth might be a result of his bones having to support and bear the weight of his automail leg and arm for so long starting from such a formative year (12 years old) for growth.
Even when he gets his arm back at the end, in both series he is still left with his automail leg, he is never fully “healed” or restored from the mistakes he made that made him an amputee in the first place, and he’s perfectly fine with that.
Arakawa (the Fullmetal Alchemist mangaka) said she put a lot of effort studying disabilities and talking to different disabled people she met about how their loss of a limb impacts their lives and how they feel about having prosthetics and the pros and cons they experience, and put that into her work when she made Ed disabled, and I think it definitely showed.
I honestly think she made one of the best disabled main characters with Edward.
He’s severely disabled, yet sometimes we barely notice it in the show because it doesn’t totally define who he is or stop him from living his life, and in some ways, he even learns to adapt to it and moderately thrive with them. He’s put at a disadvantage because of it plenty of times, but he’s never seen as weak or totally helpless, and isn’t babied by other characters because of it. He’s also never shown to be ashamed to be disabled or needing automail, but is rather only ashamed of what his loss of his limbs are connected to with his past actions.
Full metal alchemist did it quite well in my opinion. Putting aside the whole magic thing about how they move and connect it to their nerves. Ed did have to go through a lot for the prosthetic, he had to have surgery to get them on, had to relearn how to write, suffered from phantom pains, the weight was stunning his growth, he had to get it readjusted periodically since he was still growing and when going to really hot or cold places, he had to get them fitted with new materials or get straight up new ones that wouldn't conduct heat so much or give him frostbite.
Y'know, I had a friend that thought their life was over when they lost their arm. But after watching your videos, they've softened a little. I won't say these videos cured them, or made them immediately go "this is okay", but they actually feel like life goes on now. And I think that's a really powerful mindset shift. Cheers.
A better disabled representative from JoJos would definitely be Johnny. The story really does go into great lengths to show the audience how much he struggles without his legs, that moment in the first few chapters where he desperately tries to cling to his horse with a piece of wood sticking through his leg really sticks out to me. You can definitely tell that JoJo's back in the early few parts was more "doing stuff because it seems cool" rather than providing a particularly deep narrative compared to stuff from part 4/5 onwards.
Yeah because Polnareff's arc about getting over his sister's death was because it seemed cool
I think araki realized the potential of this in part 5 after polnareff struggling to reach the arrow due to losing his legs lead to him finding out about requiem
But he still gets to walk away at the end, so I think it's just another example of this point
@@alexsere3061He does but it's at the very end of the part and we never really see him do anything while he's able to walk.
@@alexsere3061 It really depends on who is being represented. For someone who has permanently lost the use of their legs, they may see Johnny as poor representation. But for other people in different circumstances, it may mean something more. As an example, I was born with congenital true dismetria, which means my legs weren't the same size. When I was 8yo, the size gap was so big I had to go through surgery procedures because I would have problems with my balance and my spinal column. There were complications, and to sum it up, I had to spent 10 years of my youth in a wheelchair. It was tough, but with physiotherapy, through ups and downs, I was able to slowly be able to walk again. So, for me, Johnny is an example of very good representation of my struggles.
Love your point about characters not fixing/overcoming their disability but succeeding in spite of it or finding their own solution to problems! Its actually a fantastic opportunity to be creative in showing how a character can adapt to certain situations (and their progression in their overall adapting) or how much effort they are willing to put in to do certain things others might find easy/simple.
It's also a human reminder of weakness, as in while we are strong there are just somethings we have no real guarnteed ability to just overcome.
We do have limits, BUT againd that doesn't mean we can't work with them.
A critism i have with Gurran Lagan is it's message of overcoming limits is too extreme and ingorant of those who'd bring a great argument not only about Spiral power but also just about human limits aswell.
I now realise how much they could've benefited from having more disabled people bringing realism into this theme, becuase you can?t believe your way a new functional hand, but you can live without it.
Cool video homie, never really thought about it but now I will everytime I see a prosthetic in a show. 👍
Sasuke, lost his arm, never got it back, still badass without it, Refuses to elaborate, leaves (gets stuck in a tree)
and yet they still accidentally drew him with two arms in one scene of the boruto anime. Also important to point out that Naruto DOES get his arm back- feels like a cop out
i was just about to mention it! i think it's kind of cool that even if naruto gets his magic prosthetic, sasuke decides not to get one, although i haven't watched boruto in a while so I don't really remember if we can really see him dealing with that
In fma (idk about the anime but in the manga) there is a lot of emphasis and time spent on Edward's learning how to acclimate to the prosthetics (extensive and excruciating physiotherapy and rehab), his phantom pain, the impact om his general health (not growing up enough because of the strain), etc. Plus it breaks all the time and is often very unreliable, leaving him without for long stretches. Maybe you'll enjoy the manga more!
Ed not growing up enough is, I'm fairly sure, because his body is also trying to nourish Al's and keep it growing too. Also he doesn't drink his milk.
I think he doesn’t grow enough because Al’s body was feeding off of Ed’s
That’s also in FMAB so idk what he saw lmao. Still really good video
@@HeroGamingFan Pretty sure he was just supposed to be short, genetically.
The manga did do a good job, there's this scene where he's sitting in bed just holding it because it hurts. Dude looks like he's in severe pain too.
Play Wolfenstein II. The Scottish character Fergus loses his arm in the beginning and has to come to terms with a dieselpunk prosthetic that, for lack of a better term, wants to kill him. It's treated for laughs a lot of the time, but it really keeps getting in the way and it only finally works in the end when he learns to get the programming under control.
TNO and TNC prominently feature characters with disability and strongly focuses on their struggles to overcome it, BJ included.
@@brandonwise5170what would BJs disability be? His PTSD or massive well of trauma?
I LOVE Fergus so much. He's my favourite.
@@mr.tomatohead3709 In TNC he literally was in a wheelchair for a while.
@mr.tomatohead3709 he's also a head in a jar for a little bit
One thing that the FMA animes glossed over is Ed having trouble with his automail arm. The manga has a couple scenes of him needing to put it on, but it is noticeable.
Another good representation I feel is this veteran from the Netflix Punisher show, season 2, where you see him putting on the powder, the sock and all that for his leg.
the series has those a bit still also in the 2003 movie he builds his own which was cool him building a far less helpful but usable arm is neat
I think I read somewhere that it also affects his clothing choices. He wears clothes that won't get stained easily by the oil from his limbs.
There's also that bit where his arm wasn't fixed properly and it stops working in the middle of a fight.
This video was super helpful to me as an artist/writer. I have a character who lost their arm, and I was worried that as an able bodied person I wouldn't be able to portray them correctly. Keep up the good work
Really cool video! I love that you’re sharing your perspective, making us viewers think about an experience that most of us have never even considered…
On the point of characters with badly functioning prosthetics that malfuncion in the heat of action, one of Adventure Time’s most emotionally impactful episodes features exactly that, when he accidentally kills fern (who in essence is Finn, as he was the finn-sword, and so on) through his prosthetic (equipped with voice commands)… all brilliantly connecting the to struggle of his lost arm, which in the show is framed as an exploration of the self (which later manifests in the existence of Fern)…
Also, I remember reading about something called Ghost Limb Syndrome, which i guess is perhaps also paralelled in the episode of the tower which you mentioned?
Again, great video! :O
Greatest RUclipsr in the world.
Truth!
Fr
Hands down :P
I dunno, I feel like he's missing something.
White privilege 🌚🌝
Wtf am I even saying
I'm just joking
Don't come at me aggressively
It's all love 🫶🏾
I am ur black friend 🌚🌝
I’ve always liked how at the end of Naruto, Sasuke opts out of getting a prosthetic arm and continues his life with one arm. And while he’s not an amputee, I also love the way Guy continues to live his life to the fullest after losing the mobility in his leg. They never have to overcome their disabilities and are shown still thriving with them.
I was just about to mention these!
Replacing a limb with a perfect prosthetic is like the diet version of a character dying and then instantly being brought back to life. Don’t write like a coward, when you chop an arm off don’t you dare give it back.
Depends on the story. Character being brought back in a setting that has readily available resurrection is way different from the same thing happening in a setting that never previously mentioned resurrection at al. The same way it doesn't make any sense why a character would stay without a replacement limb when the setting has readily available healing magic or prosthetic technology. Writing a good story is more important than not writing like a coward.
Take one look at cyberpunk edgerunners and say that shows shouldnt replace limbs with upgraded mumbo jumbo versions
Its like anakin and luke they both lose their hands but in that galaxy far far away they have prosthetics technology there, but when Ani became Vader he struggled with his prosthetics and kinda overcome using the force
Adventure Time still had times when the prosthetic failed or had issues. It's not like it was a 100% perfect arm replacement.
The grass hand arm kinda was like that for a bit but that ended up having a whole host of other issues.
@@proxy90909cyberpunk isn’t about “here’s why you should never get cool tech limbs” lmfao
I'm currently writing a sci-fi novel about a character who loses an arm, you've been very helpful and have given me a lot to think about in regards to how I should go about it.
"I went through so much character development."
I'm going to steal this line thanks.
If there is something I can mention, it's Dunban in Xenoblade Chronicles. While he doesn't lose an arm, the use of his right arm is all but gone due to a war injury. Over the course of the introduction, he continually tries to use his right arm to no avail. It all comes to a head when there is a call to action a year after receiving his injury, he then uses his left arm to use a sword instead of his right as he used to. After that event, he spends time learning his new left handed style off screen until he eventually catches up with the party later.
Dunban then basically shows in all but words that he took this injury as a time to step down as a hero and step up as a mentor to the next generation. He can't do the things he used to, but the next generation of heroes can do even better. And he later uses that experience of accepting loss and adapting into a great conversation with the 7th party member.
as a plus his swings an run-cycle due to the hand swap just looks really nice so I ended up switching to him often just to look at it
@@senritsujumpsuit6021though it is kinda cool and funny at the same time seeing him climb up vines using only one arm.
@@paperluigi6132 flexbun dunflex
Shulk also echoes this arc in Future Redeemed.
I love how in his idle poses you see him trying to exercise his damaged arm too
I'm surprised no one has mentionned Violet Evergarden yet. Despite not being the point of the anime, the prosthetic arms play an important role in Violet's character.
At the beginning of the anime, when Violet is writing a letter to the Major, we see her struggle a lot to use her prosthetics, but she persists given how important Gilbert is for her.
Losing both of her arms pretty much made her useless in the army, hence why she ends up with the Auto Memory Dolls in the first place. The bloody world of war that she knew suddenly shattered, leaving her unprepared for a normal life.
Furthermore, whenever she takes her gloves in order to write a letter, we see the clear blend of fear and astonishment in her clients faces. These "glove-removing scenes" serve as a reminder of Violet's troubled past, an inevitable weight she has to carry on (both literally and metaphorically).
There's so much more I could mention but I feel like I would explain it horrendously so let's just leave it like that. If anything, I cannot recommend enough Violet Evergarden.
While she becomes pretty perfect with her arms pretty fast, she uses a typewriter because it was very difficult for her to use a pen. They also require some maintenance.
It's so good, yeah!
Frik, now I need to watch through it again... 😅
YES! THANK YOU!
I just mentioned her in a comment myself lol. People need to stop sleeping on that show, fr. It really is such a beautiful, emotionally compelling story. ❤
I hear there are a lot of differences between the manga and the anime. Should I read it first or watch?
I think Guts does a great representation tho. If you have read the manga, there is a chapter called Bubbles of Futility that talks about the things that we lost and we cannot replace. Him losing his hand and his eye are vital to his story arc about overcoming his difficulties and continue to struggle in live. Although I can see that when it's REALLY about the struggle in the specific topic, Berserk ignores it like any other show or manga or whatever. Great video btw, love your channel.
Something I see very few people bring about Finn is that
[SPOILERS]
In the finally when he, Simon and Betty are getting digested by Gorb, they all return to their "primal" or "natural" form, but in the case of Finn, he still doesn't have his arm. So it goes to show, plus a dialogue he said when he got his prostetic, that he just accepts that he's an amputee now, and he's fine with it, he considers the lack of an arm as a part of who he truly is
After learning more about amputees, I wrote a short story about one of my characters with a robotic arm and cybernetic eye. It’s about his morning routine. Waking up and putting his arm on and putting his eye back in.
7:28 Was losing your arm your canon event??? @champutee
It was for character development
I love how Adventure Time (eventually) settled on Finn's acceptance of losing his arm and while the new metal arm did have some nifty gadgets it never felt like it it made him physically stronger like most fictional robot arms do. It was more like a cool multitool than a super-weapon. The leg equivalent would be Hiccup's leg from HTTYD, which was also really cool and useful while still maintaining a grounded feeling.
Guts's arm is a good example though. The chapter that he gets it he is being taught how to use it, being told how to operate it, and he dislocates his shoulder because there was too much powder in the cannon, there is also a much later chapter where he tries to save someone from falling off a boat forgetting his arm can't grip anything that isint a sword handle and so he fails.
Shanks from One Piece must be the king of « yeah I’ve lost an arm but who gives a shit lol » xD
One example of a character getting a prosthetic in a series which I’ve not seen mentioned in the comments yet is Yang Xiao Long from RWBY. Specifically, her arc during the show’s fourth Volume (basically another word for season).
To attempt to surmise the show’s events relating to Yang and her prosthetic up until this point:
For the first three Volumes, Yang is shown to be a carefree, outgoing thrill seeker with a love of puns.
During the big climax of V3, Yang sees her teammate/partner (Blake Belladonna) getting stabbed by her ex-teammate partner (Adam Tauros) and rushes in to save her, getting her arm cut off for her troubles.
Blake gets herself and Yang out of there, the looming threat of her ex going after her and everyone she loves makes Blake run away from her team to keep them out of harm’s way - effectively abandoning Yang when she needed her the most.
This experience leaves her bedridden, traumatised, extremely bitter towards Blake, and turning her into a recluse.
In V4 after an unknown time skip (around half a year or so at most), Yang has managed to settle into her new lifestyle as an amputee but still has significant trauma of what happened to her, experiencing nightmares and mild panic attacks at something like a plate breaking.
She is then offered a brand-spanking new state of the art robo-arm from her father, but is hesitant to trying it on.
Sometime later Yang confides her reluctance in confronting her fears to her father and some of her old teachers, leading to this exchange with her father:
_“Everyone keeps talking about me getting back to normal. And I appreciate it, but...this is normal now.”_
_“Well, normal is what you make of it”_
_“What is that supposed to mean? Do you want me to just pretend like nothing happened? I lost a part of me. A piece of me is gone. And it's never coming back.”_
_“You're right. It's not coming back. But that doesn't have to stop you from becoming who you wanna be. You're Yang Xiao Long, my sunny little dragon…You can do whatever you put your mind to. So whenever you're ready to stop moping, and get back out there, I'll be there for you.”_
She also overhears her dad telling her old teachers that the reason why he hasn’t gone looking for Yang’s younger sister is because:
_“I've got to... look after some things.”_
The next morning, she and her father begin training with her new arm, after Yang decided to take the first step she needed.
What’s interesting is that the way she describes the prosthetic is as:
_“I thought it would be just this huge weight, but it feels... natural. They did a great job with this thing.”_
Which, while this is because it’s your stereotypical unrealistic sci-fi ‘Upgrade’, I think that in this sense it also shows or represents how the biggest hurdle Yang wasn’t her physical trauma but her mental.
Now of course later on, Yang manages to get her confidence back. Becoming a smarter and stronger person as a result of this. For the rest of the series, Yang’s amputee nature isn’t particularly brought up that much though. With the next two Volume’s dealing more with more of her emotional trauma; particularly coming to grips with her feelings of frustration on why Blake left her in Volume 5, and finally having their partnership come back stronger than ever as the come together to take down the same man who severed it in the first place.
There are a couple of instances where it comes into play:
In Volume 8 when trying to convince a magical spirit to put their robot friend’s soul in a newly made fleshy body (it makes a bit more sense in context), we get this exchange:
_“Okay, but if I take the robot parts out of her, that would leave...”_
“The girl who's always been there underneath it.”
*Yang flexes her arm, drawing attention to her prosthesis.*
_“The mechanical parts are just... extra.”_
Then in Volume 9 she ends up losing her prosthetic arm for a bit, so for a few episodes she’s just walking around with one arm while they try to get it back.
Then later when she ends up inhaling the fumes from some magic leaves (I swear it makes a bit more sense in context), she ends up chatting with a past version of herself who offers her the possibility of going back to who she was before to be _‘Whole again’_. To which Yang responds:
_“No. My losses, my failures. Those more than anything are what have shaped me into who I am, showed me how I need to grow. If there’s something I’m missing, it’s not because I lost it. It’s because I haven’t found it yet. And the only way to do that is to keep going.”_
RWBY as a series may have received _a lot_ of criticism over the years. And admittedly there have been some vocal cries regarding it doing a poor job portraying the amputee topic.
Such as Yang’s arm effectively functioning as a full-on upgrade. Or how when another character sacrifices their arm and gets a prosthetic to show how much they’re willing to sacrifice it gets treated as a visual metaphor for ‘losing a piece of their humanity.
And look, I am not an amputee. So, I can’t speak for which pieces of media are or aren’t positive or negative examples of representation. But I do remember watching this arc with Yang, particularly during Volume 4 and for the first time in the show…I actually really, really liked her character. And that has stuck with me, so…I thought I would share for those who might be interested.
And for those that aren’t…well then you can just ignore me.
Regardless, thank you for making this video. It was an interesting and informative watch.
P.S. This took me like an hour to type up fully! So, I hope it reads well.
Edit: I have just seen a comment thread started by @ND99007, discussing this very character and the effectiveness of her arc...now I feel a bit silly.
To be honest, I was expecting the mention of Yang from RWBY somewhere in the comments, so I'm going to yap a little bit if you don't mind.
I feel like it is kind of a big deal when it's a turning point for Yang in terms of her character development.
If you compare V1-V3 Yang, with End of Volume 4 Yang, it feels like the loss of her arm is a reminder of what her dad, Taiyang, said back on their conversation in their sparring match:
_-"You've always been one, to burn brighter than anyone else, whether it was with your smile, or... well, I remember your first haircut (chuckles). But you gotta keep a level head, and keep your emotions in check... (sigh)... You definitely have your mom's stubborness."_
Like, sure, we saw that Yang's temper was a potential problem in a fight, but it always benefitted her more than handicapped her. That is, until Adam, where a single strike from him cut off her arm because she was too angry to think straight.
To quote Taiyang once more:
_"But what happens if you miss, what happens if they're stronger? What then? Now you're just weak and tired"_
TL;DR: I guess you could say that Yang losing her arm is a big but necessary turning point of her character, and it made sense considering everything that happened before in the previous volumes.
Im sorry but Im only subscribing because I saw big boss at 0:12
Face to face with the man who sold the world
Im big boss, and you are too
we live and die by your orders, Boss!
He really kept us waiting, huh?
He's pretty good.
Kotallo in Horizon Forbidden West is a character who front and center is forced to deal with the sudden loss of his arm, and what it means for him as an elite warrior.
The guy isn't exactly an open book, but through interacting with him you get to see he is marching forward despite having received a blow he essentially considers made him worthless. And eventually, almost just through force of motion, he manages to come to terms with being an amputee.
He also gets a side quest in which he is given the opportunity to get a prosthetic arm, but at the end of the test run he takes it off, saying he'll use it when he needs to, but that lacking an arm is proof of what he's gone through and thus a part of him.
Whoop, beat me to it.
3:06 Avatar: The Last Airbender does this with Toph and pretty much anyone who's seen that show can say that your formula works in that case
Toph roasting people who forget she is blind dang mood
A small detail I love is that Toph never looks at people when talking to them. Such a great constructed show
@@degg7129 even if she was not blind why would she care enough too
Watching your videos is really insightful on the experience of people who have lost limbs, thank you for making these videos and shedding more light on it. I’ll admit I never gave it that much thought.
I like how Elden Ring handled prosthetics. Malenia was born cursed with a rot. It would devour her body, taking her right arm, left and right leg. You do get a good luck at her shoulder stump too.
Her twin brother, Miquella, desperately tried to find a cure. He managed make a needle of unalloyed gold that stopped the progession of the rot. He also made her the prosthetics she uses (which have incredible detail).
She trained and became an unparalleled warrior despite everything working against her. I love this because it shows the love the siblings have for each other and the resolve and strength of Malenia.
And I enjoy that Malenia's sword isn't just a sword that she holds and that's it. It's attached to her prosthetic and requires the prosthetic in order to be used
I hate them both.
It’s actually based off a real prosthetic used by a real guy who used a prosthetic in combat. Even the design of it. God Elden ring is so cool
More than anything else she does with it I just fucking love the way she puts it on.
Something about the way it slots into place and the satisfying "clunk" sound is so cool for some reason.
Also that one trailer were Radahn chops it off and she casually catches her sword with the other arm? Badass.
In the Eragon book series the main character (Eragon) at the end of the first book has a scar across his back that completely f^cks him up, seizures and all that. As someone who was reading this post back surgery I really connected to this. And then half way through the second book he’s miraculously healed! That sucked. So I completely understand what you’re saying.
2:53 “at least prosthetic arms are based” They sure are!
Nice a new video! I'm ready to get schooled.
Also: As a writer, thank you so much for your videos. They are a treat to watch and are very informative. (Especially because one of my main characters is actually missing an arm.) Your video on prosthetics was eye-opening, and I actually realize it's more interesting to write around the difficulties of an IRL one instead of making it a perfect second, more metallic, limb.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has some great moments when dealing with an amputation and the resulting aftermath. The main character Jack Mitchell looses his arm(and his friend) during a mission, which presents a lot of emotional baggage. The first part of the game after getting his new arm has moments where the arm malfunctions and Mitchell can't control it. During the end of the game, Mitchell's arm is put out of commission and has to deal with using one a single arm, which he ultimately sacrifices to defeat the Johnathan Irons, the antagonist. Mitchell says after, "Irons gave me a second chance, and I gave it back." This is an amazing story of acceptance and loss.
That one character in Wolfenstein losses an arm and his new one has a mind of its own is a good example I can think of cause it does become easy for him to use later on. 5:39
I was just going to comment this, its Fergus if you picked him over Wyatt at the start of New Order and continue into Wolf2
Guts was inspired by a 15th - 16th century German lord who lost his arm during a siege.
He got extremely lucky when he found a blacksmith that forged him a prosthetic metal hand that was so good that he could even write with it.
He wielded a 2 handed sword and become known as "Gotz of the Iron Hand".
I thought he held a shield with the hand.
@@brianhowe201 From what i have been able to gather, it was never stated he could no longer use the sword. Just that he was able to use items such as shield and a quill.
Im guessing he was still able to use it even with a prosthetic.
No, Miura had been asked about that in the past and he was surprised, it was just an extremely hilarious coincidence. Even then, the only things both have in common apart from a similar name (because Guts's name is literally guts, as he was born from his dead mother's entrails and remains) is that they used a big sword (common for mercenaries of the time) and having a prosthetic arm.
@@wumbojet Really?
Damn, that's one enormous coincidence.
@@-----Alcatraz------ yes, history is full of extremely weird coincidences like that one, our confirmation bias makes us ignore the times things don't line up and pay close attention to any seemingly emerging patterns.
One of my favorite examples are the different pyramids around the globe, the have nothing to do with each other besides the fact that multiple civilizations discovered that that is the most effective way to stack rocks really, really high.
Theres actually a great moment with guts and his prothestic. During the boat arc Cassca falls off the boat and guts tries to catch her but uses his metal hand and it goes into how its still just metal and cant replace the old limb. Im not doing it justice here but its really introspective on what guts has lost and what hes trying to gain now
Quickly becoming one of my favorite channels. For someone with so few videos, you found a voice, editing style, and sense of humor and all three are spot on 🤝
You are so cool. I love your channel so much. I know nothing about being an amputee or video games or even half of these movies, but you’re always entertaining and I feel like I learn something every time. Keep making good shit man you rock
Nice vídeo and editing, good use of sounds too, love the minecraft music touch when mentioned furiosa crafting her arm
As a wheelchar user who was born with cerebral palsy. I appreciate that you said you couldn't talk for people who were born with disabilities
!!! really appreciate seeing stuff like this, very helpful as a writer and nice to go ”YEAH! EXACTLY!” along with as a disabled person.
your content is wholesome af I can't lie so glad I subbed keep it up bro
As a game designer its always fun seeing videos like these. Been subbed since the first one popped off but just wanted to say love seein vids like these or the blind dude a couple months back uploading his playthrugh of TLOU. Dont typically get to actually hear/see the specific target audience to some of these extremely edge case things lol
I went through so much character development is how I'll describe any hardship from now on. Funniest thing I've heard in a while! ❤
One of my favorite Arm Amputee characters is Barret from Final Fantasy VII, Rebirth specifically does such a good job of showing how traumatic something like that is, with him being tortured by visions of the incident in the Temple of the Ancients, and also struggling with menial things that come more easily to the rest of the party like climbing or loosening a knot. Him willingly choosing a machine gun instead of a regular artificial arm to fight the evil corporation that ruined his life is a major part of his character. The game never lets you forget that the arm is a prosthetic, It never just blends into the background to the point you forget it's even there. It's always front and center because it's integral to Barret's story and character.
Having a gun where a hand should be is symbolic of his choosing to interact with the world mostly through violence. The games are not subtle, and they don't really approve of Barrett's bombing of a power plant that definitely caused a lot of collateral damage. It comes full circle when he confronts his mirror in Dyne, who also has a gun for a hand but does not have Marlene, and Dyne loses his humanity entirely.
I think shanks is a great representation of someone without a arm, like bro is one of the most notorious pirates in the world and the man has a arm, a sword and a dream
Dude it took me so long to find another One Piece comment. I like how he just has to live with it and succeeds anyway.
fighting over your arm around 5:40 reminded me of the scenes in Dr. Strangelove as the doctor was fighting against his arm- like exactly what you're doing lol
A great classic movie that shows the difficulty of adjusting to prosthetics is 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives. It helps that the actor Harold Russell actually did lose his hands to a grenade in WWII, so he brought his own lived experience to the performance that won him TWO OSCARS (they gave him an honorary one thinking he might not win Best Supporting, but he did anyway). Obviously it’s a very old movie, but it was a huge milestone in showing amputee representation in a way that displays both the PTSD of having such a life changing injury, but also how those around him learn to embrace him and help him adapt back to civilian life. It’s easily the best part of an already great classic movie that is dated and yet incredibly ahead of its time
i just wanna say bro, im a 25 yr old guy and have been chronically on youtube for most of my life. I am being fully honest whenever i say you are one of the most captivating creators i have come across. i just finished every video you have straight and i love them all. huge respect to you for finding the bright side about this disability and being able to be so positive about it. i love that tho most videos are about ur amputee, your personality is the main thing for me. like i said youre very captivating and just an enjoyable guy to watch. yes i do love all the humor you put in about your accident cause its well written and funny as hell. i really do wish you only the best in this creator journey and hope for so much success for you. you seem like an awesome guy with a great relationship with your partner. its been 3 weeks since you posted and i really hope to see alot more from you. youll always have a fan from me, much love bro. keep it up.
Yang from RWBY had a whole season her being depressed and mad after she lost her arm and rejecting the idea of using one, towards the end she decides to use it and we see a bit of her training and getting used to use her new arm for fighting. Basically making her ready for next season when she back in battle.
I hate RWBY but even I'll admit that's solid character writing and good representation
sure, but afterwards her prosthetic is arguably a better arm than a flesh one.
@Appletank8 yeah but at that point you have to cut it a little slack for being fiction. She's the cool punchy lady they're not gonna not have her punch.
I get what you mean but even that first part is a major step
@@Appletank8 Not really, she does basically what she already did before losing it. It's not like she had trouble punching a mech to pieces with her bare fist. As far I remember we haven't seen a moment where the prosthetic comes in clutch, but we also haven't really seen a moment when it hinders her for whatever reason, and the way she uses it outside of combat is pretty much a normal hand.
@@frescopino7866 There's one moment in I think volume 5 where someone tries to grab her arm but she just lets it disconnect from her body and keeps running
I think the character of Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump is a great example. After having lost his legs and his entire platoon(besides Forrest) in the Vietnam War, he spends years alone and angry, numbing his pain in alcoholism and only finding pseudo-companionship in the prostitutes he pays for. Just like Jamie Lannister, he gets his own baptismal moment, when he faces off against God in the form of a Hurricane, screaming and challenging him for His worst. When the storm settles, he basks in the now settled ocean, feeling the he has made his peace with God. He accepts his circumstances, thanks Forrest for saving his life, and at the end of the film, returns for Forrest's wedding standing with prosthetic legs and a wife by his side. Such a great character who's entire arc in the film is about the long struggle of being an amputee, how he finally accepts his life the way it is, and finally finishing it with showing how he now lives a fulfilling happy life where he no longer lets it be defined by his amputee status.
0:41 while i do see what you are saying, luke losing his hand does have significance after the initial moment. During his last fight with darth vader he beats him up bad which parallels the fight on screen, but when vader is on the floor luke notices that vader also had a proshetic hand just like him. This is the moment that snaps him out of his rage and fully embrace his jedi nature. Also vader himself has a lot of instances where his proshetics bother him if u read the tie in material.
its crazy how star wars is one of the few pieces of media that features a disabled hero and villain. and said amputated limb does become a plot point that makes the main character reconsider his actions.
Do not entertain this clown
Also his stuff is made purposefully not as good as they could be so vader doesn't become more powerful than palpatine
I once made a d&d character named Voss, who was a Gnoll with dwarfism and missing his right arm. He'd always be that way and was used to being slower than other people at doing certain things. Despite this he became an incredible sailor and fighter.
A demigod gave Voss the option to remove his disabilities (he'd be full size and have a second arm), and under pressure from the rest of his party, he decided to do it. It didn't go well.
Learning to use his right arm was hard and while it was just as strong as his left one, it wasn't as dexterous. He would often complain that it didn't feel like it should be there. Often he would just let it hang limply at his side, leaving it open to be grabbed and used as leverage to pin him.
Being larger came with it's own problems. He had gotten use to riding with one of his companions but due to his medium size he was now too heavy for both of them to ride at the same time.
The game ended before I could explore it further but I enjoyed playing Voss while I had him.
I mean, sure in such a high magical realm someone is bound to get healed eventually, but one should allow for roleplays. Though I suppose one can always go the magical disability route.
2:40 i'm pretty sure that most of adventure time was planned from the start (or at the very least, a good chunk of it was) so i think the writers always planned for finn to permanently lose his arm. they'd always put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the grass sword is a part of him, but also it's own separate thing, so it makes sense that after the grass sword grew into a new arm for him, it'd eventually get detached again
I love how you are always so positive!
In the game Horizon Forbidden West, one of your new allies loses an arm early in the game. You end up doing a few sidequests later tp help him gather the stuff for a prosthetic. By the end he’s pretty accepting of his situation and has found his worth again, opting only to wear and use the arm when necessary (namely and predictably, whilst kicking ass).
Kotallo is neat, I like Kotallo.
and this is why baiken is a bad bitch
I specifically clicked on this video waiting for her to be discussed!
Baiken, instead of having a new and improved arm (especially in a world where there's tecnology for it), went with the cooler option of just having a lot of random things up her sleeve, literally.
I was hoping someone would mention her!
She's such a gal.
Real
@@GloriousSquizoKing.>*pulls rocket launcher from arm nub*
>*monk begin to chant*
>"It's Baiken time"
your edits are perfectly timed and funny as hell.
i really like masimo from luca, especially in the short Ciao, Alberto like it’s SO well done dude
Don't know if this is the best example, but one I find interesting is Chai from Hi-Fi Rush. He volunteered to get his disabled arm replaced with robotic prosthesis so he could try to fulfill his dream of becoming a rockstar, and due to an accident that caused him to have his MP3 player mix with it (if you played the game, it makes sense), he gets labeled a defect by the company and has to fight his way out
HFR has a lot to say about the way corporations use disability as a lever to control and hurt people.
i fucking LOVE hi-fi rush dude. kinda wish we had some more scenes where he fiddles with his new robotic parts
On top of this, he is shown actually learning to play guitar in the credits, in spite of his prosthetic arm.
Very interesting video. Success in spite of a drawback is far more interesting in a story. Great vid bud!
GOD dude thank you for voicing this. I'm not an amputee, but my right arm is disabled and i have been feeling the same way! its hard to get representation for disability, especially in fantasy settings it tends to just have a magical bandaid placed on it and labeled as "all is well no disability here!"
its nice to have what i feel were my own jumbled thoughts voiced so succinctly in a video !
This guy's great! Real chill, disarming personality.
We all know the best amputee in gaming is
ALL OF THESE THOUGHTS RUNNING THROUGH MY HEAD, ARM ON FIRE VEINS BURNING REEEED, FRUSTRATION IS GETTING BIGGER, BANG BANG BANG *PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER!*
I thought 1 armed gohan was the coolest shit in the universe as a kid
5:32 dude became an amputee²
There is Devil May Cry 5 with Nero. Losing his arm really affected him, is a major plot point, and his multiple replacements are even a gameplay mechanic.
I mean…[Spoilers]
He does grow it back, though. Even if it’s symbolic for coming into his own power, I doubt it’s gonna get terribly high marks.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick Yet he continues to use the Devil Breakers his friend makes in the epilogue and credits as pointed out directly in a cutscenes. Plus it's implied the "magic arm" he grew only stays active if has the energy to do so. So I think it counts.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormickI think the symbolism is better than that. He is reaching out specifically when his arm grows back. He's reaching out to his father who took his arm. Despite the terrible thing his father did, Nero still wants to have a connection with him.
“Kyrie is gonna love this one-…”
@@EdgardoJCruz-dk5kv That’s not a bad argument. I guess there’s some wiggle room.
In the third part of a story I'm maybe going to write eventually, a character named Gary Patin does lose his right arm in a fight against Pierre, and nearly dies. However because he was an emesary of a divine being of persistence, he manages to survive, and in an act of desperation manages to manafest a spectral ghost hand, which cannot interact with physical matter, but can be used to wield his trident. It was inspired by the idea of a phantom limb, that I've heard about in the past.
Sekiro does something right with losing an arm, through the sculptor. Though they also have that wonderful prosthetic with all the crazy utilities and perfect range of motion, which, to their credit, apparently took a long time to make, as told by the sculptor. There's also just the one prosthetic arm between the sculptor and your player character, so he gives his away to you, leaving himself without an arm of his own. There's also a number of enemies also missing their arms, and with no prosthetics to see.
Sasuke might be the best representation. He straight up refused another arm and fights alien gods with his one arm for a living.
There's... Far better characters both written and at the representation stuff. We're not speaking about Power scaling, we're speaking about writing, hon
@@Spid4r1 Yet you're not naming any?
Had a scroll through and didn’t see anyone mentioning this, but Rick from the walking dead comics (not the tv show, cause it doesn’t happen there) I think is actually a great example of this, it’s only his hand he loses but I think covers many of the thoughts presented here. My memory may be foggy on it so it might not be as good as I remember, but could be interesting to see an analysis of that!
Especially towards the end of the comics where rick basically just doesn’t use his prosthetic anymore, the statue (spoilers) left after his death is missing an arm.
Aaron from the TV show of the walking dead also loses his hand, and there are definitely some interesting moments of how he deals with it in a zombie apocalypse setting.
Same thing I thought of! It makes his character a lot more badass
Baiken from guilty gear comes to mind! She’s amazing! So, despite having her whole arm taken off, one of the stronger characters in the setting, and unless you count the odd assortment of weapons hid up her sleeve, she has no prosthetics to speak of, instead developing a one handed, very kick focused, fighting style to assist her on her quest of vengeance
And again, among the other members of the cast, including Gears (the gears in GG are like, powerful magic people) like series protagonist Sol Badguy, she is uncompromising in her resolve and ability, outclassing Gears and other powerful beings like them, not bad for just a normal human (well, as normal as someone can be in the setting of guilty gear)
I think she’s also canonically stronger than Nago. Who by the way, was able to go toe to toe with Sol Badguy and survive
@@captainamedeus7047I love the three part arc in the arcade mode of Chip, Anji, and Baiken, like damn please leave Nago alone guys!
Dittoing my first thought was Baiken.
GUILTY GEAR MENTIONED‼‼‼
BAIKEN MENTION HELL YEAHHH
I have never clicked a thumbnail so fast in my life.
I am SO ready to hear about this individual's experience, and his feeling about representation in vidya
If you somehow haven’t seen Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood even though you referenced it, YOU REALLY NEED TO SEE IT. The English dub is fantastic, pacing is breakneck and story fantastic. A very easy watch, and houses many of your wants for amputee representation (be it a limb or someone’s entire body missing).
Champutee upload? It’s a great day. I also feel like a learn new things with every one of your videos.
Man, I don't know if you read The Walking Dead comics, but there is a major character that lose his arm (I won't say who to not spoil) and, of course, it follows him for a long time.
I didn't finished the comics but from what I read, it has a big impact, he have difficulties to accommodate to it, he feels phantom pain and he even loses fights because of it. But he overcome it, and it shows how good of a survivor he is, he adapt his ways in fighting (using pretty violent techniques), he accept the fact that he lost it and even better, it's a major plot point, a scar reminding him of the dangers of this new world.
I highly recommend the comic, it is absolutely great (well, at least where I am it's great), every chapters delivers hard and badass moments
Yeah its rick fucking grimes and he loses in the new show too
Surprised I didn't see Vash the stampede on that list tbh its still one of those "future prosthetics" but his narrative with it is pretty interesting regardless
FINALLY A COMMENT MENTIONING VASH
🧑🏼🔧
bashu za sutampedo
hey, man! right now i'm writing a character missing his left arm (born without it) & i've been doing a ton of research into people's experiences--your videos have been a massive help & a beautiful insight into what it's like to have one arm... tsym for that !! :-D
i’m one of the few that actually like what breezy did for AT, finn only gets his arm back by embracing the new reality he lives without one, and regains it with the awareness that it is not truly his, and he is destined to lose it. once he finally loses his arm *for good* he is completely accepting to the surprise of bonnie, he’s a different person now.