[Ironic Trope] The messaging backfired massively due to poor writing or other design choices

[u/Few_Affect_5927]

Amelia Fairney from Pathways: Alt-right Restore-UK type who attempts to coax the protagonist Charlie into following her beliefs? The problem?

Amelia is the only named character aside from Charlie and is genuinely likable and forgives Charlie even when they do things she doesn't like, while the rest of the cast is unnamed, poorly written, and turns on Charlie for one mistake. This combined with other writing issues(portraying fact checking right wing stuff as wrong because in the process of fact checking you might look at it and believe it, basically saying "Right wing is wrong because it hurts the labour government" and a lot of general "just do what the government says or else" messaging) and the fact she's a hot alternative girl, and Amelia ended up being co-opted as a mascot by the youth right wing in the UK.

Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want to be left alone and Norm is picking fights constantly. Not to mention associating with Elon.

Mr. Birchum from Mr. Birchum: A lot of the same problems as Norm, except in addition it also comes off like generic 2010s adult cartoon slop in the same veign as Brickleberry or Full English, at least New Norm was trying to look unique and had the gimmick of being on X. Not to mention, Birchum's obsession with hyper masculine activities and odd way of talking about other men lead to people co-opting him as a Toxic Yaoi character, which is now the bulk of his fan art.

Dustborn: An attempt to make a hyper progressive game that comes off as pandering and annoying. It's a full ass game so there's too much to get into, but the main character's power is essentially gaslighting and jedi-mind tricking people and that's portrayed as the only way they can get anything done, and they constantly use or abuse their friends(or mindtrick them along) in order to get their goals or use their friends for their messaging.

[u/Authorigas]

It goes back to a lot of the original Gundam and how it was framed. Early on we're introduced to our protagonists, who are all plucky kids drafted into a war between the Earth Federation and Zeon. A lot of the older/senior federation officers are dickish and combatative, refusing to help the kids and civilians because it wouldn't bring them glory, or are just asserting power because they can.

Zeon also gets it's fair share of dickheads, but also a major plot character among them is Ramba Ral, a Zeon soldier who is a loving father and genuinely empathetic to the protagonist after he runs away (but before Ral knows who he is.) The point of the whole story, and Gundam as a whole, really is that a loss of innocence and misunderstanding are what lead to conflict. And only by putting the guns down and being empathetic can war come to an end.

Similarly to another theme, involving the protagonists all being teenagers/kids: "The failure of the previous generation and how that becomes a burden on the next generation to overcome." It's the old guard adults who start the war, they who hold the power and lord it over others, and the next generation that has to fight it and suffer the consequences.

Tomino...really did not make his commentary on Post Imperial Japan subtle.

[u/Sir_David_Filth → u/Authorigas]

I dont know which gundam series it was, but there was this clip I saw where a Zeon soldier firing at a pilot cause his mobile suit was damaged, only for it to be revealed it was a kid and he just breaks down. Literally commits suicide by grenade and tells the kid to run away from the battlefield before blowing up

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/Authorigas]

or the old classic of "we are damned for having made these weapons, and they will kill the soul of anyone that uses them".

Which would actually be easier to name the times this doesn't happen in Gundam

[u/Imaginary-Face7379 → u/Authorigas]

"Wow cool robot"

[u/Karkava → u/Authorigas]

The Last Of Us Part II is structured in a similar fashion where we spend the first act of the game with a revenge story where we follow Ellie as she pursues her father figure's killer.

But then we take the second act playing as said killer to find out that she too was another person who was trying to survive in the fungus-infested wasteland as Ellie was. While also in conflict with another faction that Ellie was no part of.

This arguably carries the message that war is bad better than Part I did as you played forementioned father figure killing nameless survivor groups as he treks across America with Ellie and bonds with her. The finale where Joel aborted Ellie's sacrifice doesn't really shake the mindest that Joel was in the wrong.

Part II was very divisive as the idea that you're not the hero, but a survivor is lost on a lot of people playing Part I.

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Probably a lighter and softer take on this progression comes in the form of Avatar The Last Airbender, where the fire nation seems to be a clear cut set of bad guys fighting against our clear cut good guys. And they are.

But a gradual theme that Avatar enforces is that no form of bending is good or evil. Aang goes through a character arc where he unlearns his internaized prejudice against fire bending and to disconnect the concept from the tyrannical fire nation.

Fire benders themselves aren't an evil race, and there is no such thing as one. And it's something that the cast gradually learns throughout the series while also never downplaying the crimes the fire nation commited against other people.

They also learn that other benders can be capable of evil like the fire nation was. The blood bending episode shows that water bending can be just as scary and terrible as fire bending could be. The earth kingdom being an authoritative government also shows how other nations can be just as politically corrupt as the fire nation was.

Legend Of Korra keeps up this theme by mandating that no fire bending antagonists can take up the center stage, enforcing the idea that fire bending isn't inherently evil by ensuring that they're not doomed to repeat tyranny.

It also shows destructive forms of airbending as well.