User blog comment:Angel Bridge/blog/@comment-31635856-20171031012821/@comment-995426-20171031023028

The quote is also seen in, in chapter 19: , pages , , , and , and also references that exact same memory from Kirby and the Warp Crystal, redrawn in MNT Gaiden art style. That version of represents what may be the most extreme deconstruction of this trope, as his psychological destruction has been so extreme and his chances of finding redemption are so remote, and he's encumbered by mental illness. To get better, someone has to want and make a consistent effort to try to get better. And even then, it's impossible to imagine the recovery being perfect. The suffering inflicted never actually goes away&mdash;best case scenario is that a person grows and strengthens bigger than the suffering's ability to keep tearing them down. People always have baggage, and they make their own happy endings.



Archie TMNT actually reminds me somewhat of MNT Gaiden Donatello's situation. It could be conceivably argued that he is evil, or a sociopath, or in some way mentally ill. Whatever the case, he's not right in the head, and has a tendency to be axe-crazy. For him, even redemption in the end is never perfect; he's never anywhere near overcoming the underlying instabilities that made him so criminally violent in the first place. But what does drive him to do a good thing is something rather simple: To choose to care enough for someone else that he is willing to protect them, even if it means his own destruction.



Of course, considering this version of Slash, one can wonder if he may have actually considered this the easier route. Staying alive but remaining unstable, he was always going to be a danger to anyone he would care about. But dead, he would be a danger to nobody. Yet no matter how you analyze it, everything about this character's situation is tragic, and the fact that he actually made real attachments with other people makes it bittersweet, both for him and for the people he left behind.

But now I'm rambling severely. There seems to be no end to how this trope can be described and analyzed.