To be fair, the character's "warm and fuzzy" life comparable is probably akin to Evangelion minus all the characters being mentally screwed up nine ways to Sunday. Which isn't terrible, minus the fighting aliens part.
The series actually is more of the "rain, then sun, then rain" cycle you describe. There are perfectly normal sequences at times (mostly in the first half of the series) where characters go to school, plan events, go on team bonding activities, etc (a comparison for pure grimdark might be Texhnolyze). The 2004 series did rack up the depression score in episodes ~21 to 26 and it looks like this series is hitting the same point.
The problem in a long running series though is that the "cost" is typically not all that bad. It'll be something they can work with and most cases have the character return back to their old selves at some point. Rarely do you get something like a debilitating injury (one that would force either them to sideline the character permanently or force the artists to change how they animate the character) and instead fall back on "they're lying in bed" or "they're a mummy". It really doesn't end up feeling like a cost for me.
It's certainly hard for a long runner to make things exciting without the "anybody can die" effect in play since they need to keep their character healthy but need to find a way to make danger actually feel like danger. This goes double if it's a main character (triple if it's THE main character) since you know they can't do anything bad to them. Cinemasins provides the perfect example of this in some movie called Divergent around the 12:45 mark (of the video, not the counter in the top-right corner):
EDIT -
Holy hell. Turns out we have a new winner for most badass pilot in the series only playing second fiddle to the series' protagonists.
cut out some of the stuff again but anyway
you do have a point again, but I still think even in story-focused stuff where it's about facing danger (not all shows I watch are like that lol) it can be enjoyable regardless, i.e. let's dumb this down and say we have 3 options
- a main character that we're honestly attached to (probably a good guy since it's easier to deal with our feelings for villains) dies
- a main character suffers a lasting repercussion of some sort that invokes some level of emotion from us, but doesn't die
- nothing notably bad happens
for 1, this seems to be what you need. for me, 1 works but it can be a bit sad. in a way, I can sometimes take comfort in plot armor, as silly as it is, because I'm an emotional wuss and I worry about whether characters I like will survive or not. being torn apart is cool once in a while, but I'm not a masochist so if you do it too much I flip tables in my frustration/sadness
2 also works for me though. not necessarily stuff like losing an arm only to get a mechanical look-alike or being hospitalized at the end of the show but returning in the epilogue, because those are essentially remedied, but for instance, two characters who were good friends might, due to plot circumstances, end up becoming mortal enemies and having to hurt each other and they never reconcile in the end.
*reads your post again*
ok you specified long-running series... so I guess something like One Piece would bother you then, yes? because we know that Luffy can't die until we find One Piece (that'd be a terrible way to end it) and therefore he must defeat the villains in front of him. so I guess you'd find that boring, huh? Well, I suppose that's still fair, but for me the journey is still important. Even if there are no costs, but usually there are. Whether they are immediate (a super important character does die in One Piece and in a series that has very few non-flashback deaths, it made a HUGE impact), or implied to come in the long-term (Luffy has been in so many life-threatening situations that he's pushed his body enough to lose probably decades of years off his life--and he just kind of shrugged it off at the time but it's clear the author wouldn't have literally said stuff like "you'll lose 10 years of your life" if it wasn't important).
That aside, I guess when I'm reading OP I don't think about the end so much. I guess to some extent, that kind of thought process would make it more boring. It's kind of logical and takes me out of the immersion of the world--to really enjoy it I need to live in the moment, and that means taking things at face-value and saying "OH SHOOT THERE IS THIS SUPER TOUGH DUDE HOW IS LUFFY EVER GOING TO BEAT HIM" and being like, ok, he'll probably have to beat him eventually, but we don't have a stinkin' clue how, and then we speculate and come up with ideas and think, is he going to get destroyed his first time? and if so, how will he escape alive to fight a rematch later? or will someone else take this guy out? what kind of new abilities can we expect? and when can we expect the epicness of the fight--that kind of tension builds up and then it blows up at the climax
in essence, we generally know who will win, but we might not know when they will win, how they will win, why they will fight each other, how their abilities work, how tough it'll be, where they'll fight, and what the consequences of that battle will be. in One Piece, battles aren't just over and then boom, you forget about them right after. especially now. even if we know someone will win a fight, what exactly that will lead to in the next part of the story is a mystery.
so I think we fans of such shows, comics, written works, etc. have a lot to think about and a lot to look forward to, and just knowing that the good guys will win doesn't hurt our ability to enjoy everything else that is offered.
hopefully that poorly-made wall of text made some sense, I am tired and... zzz...
