This will sound weird, but I am trying to understand deeply storytelling in general.

It seems to me that the entire point of anime, mangas in general, is to see two puppets, which are controlled by the story writer, to engage in a fight to death, in something like a scripted WWE match.

It may seem obvious, but I am trying to understand why all stories need conflict.
It may seem obvious as to why there should be a good vs evil battle.

But my question, is why?
Why does it need to have a conflict, I understand conflict is required to not be boring, but my question is why?
Why can't we imagine storytelling without conflict?

Is a law of the universe, in a methaphysical sense that storytelling requires two puppets to fight to death?

>>279981476 (OP)
Stop reddit spacing and I'll answer

>>279981476 (OP)
watch Non Non Biyori

>>279981476 (OP)
>Why can't we imagine storytelling without conflict?
Because what motivates the characters to do anything, if not conflict? "Conflict" doesn't have to be the end of the world on the line, it can be some high schoolers having to set up an exhibit for the cultural fair, or maybe it rains when they want to go to the park, or maybe it's someone in love. What would a story without conflict look like?

>>279981476 (OP)
Pay attention in English/Language Arts class.

>>279981673
ive read over 100 books and honesty i doubt i could write 10 pages
reading and writing are not the same

>>279981476 (OP)
>It may seem obvious, but I am trying to understand why all stories need conflict.
Because the actual point of storytelling is that the teller and the audience are in conflict. Education, transformation, reinforcement. The teller is a conduit for the Muse to work on those who cannot yet hear Her song, thus why Homer begins by chanting "Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell the story."

The big important factor in Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces isn't just woah cool all these stories are following patterns and networking references, what everyone seems to miss in that thesis is the place stories originally held as the foundation of social belonging. Transforming a child into a citizen requires a story, and the conflict of reworking inert materials into something new.

You've actually picked up on something real here.
Dragon Ball Z's fights, for instance, are not centered around action. If anything, they are centered around drama and theatrics. People miss this. It's kabuki theater turned up to eleven.
If you're watching your typical aurafarming That Time My Dick Actually Worked Thanks To Magic power fantasy, it's done way more clumsily than in more drama-heavy series like DBZ and Naruto, but the fights really are meant to be vehicles for drama and argumentation as much as spectacle. And that goes for a lot of the Jump series; off the top of my head Shaman King and Yu Yu Hakusho often do the same thing.
That said, there are plenty of stories in anime and manga that don't have that form of conflict. There's internal conflict, there's conflict in the form of an impersonal problem to be solved, there's conflict in the form of benign resistance on the way to a goal, there's man vs nature, there's man vs technology, etc.

>>279981476 (OP)
Sorry OP but you cant use that picrel and expect me to read more than a paragraph when I'm obviously busier masturbating.
Choose your own battles better.

>>279981768
Rookie numbers, but I guess by this wretched era's standards you might as well have a PhD.

>>279981768
NTA, but writing's just a tool you have to keep practicing in order to get better at, the same as reading. But at the same time, seeing what things work in your favorite books can help you understand what devices you can employ in your own writing.

>>279981476 (OP)
that's just simply not true, especially in Japanese media
what the fuck are you smoking

>>279981768
This that's the reason why people that critique something (movies/comic/manga/etc) and then try their luck doing the same usually fail.
Knowing why something sucks and what makes it good doesn't mean you'll do it better than the people with years working on that

>>279981476 (OP)
conflict is necessarily linked to change whether its resolution causes it or prevents it
and the feeling of change or consequences is the essence of stories
I have a hard time putting this in a way that isn't a platitude

>>279981476 (OP)
>when pic is more interesting than OP

>>279981476 (OP)
because it engages your the frontal cortex which cares about the stuff that differentiates you from other animals: computation, prediction. which should be quite exciting for a normal human, eons of evolution inscribed in our brains that correct prediction means the difference between life and death. whether it's about the trajectory of a projectile or the outcome of a conflict it's automatically engaging, and very satisfying when successfully done.
(needless to say conflict is NOT absolutely necessary in fiction; in our country we had to study a lot of local writers who were masters of language; of action, not so much. pages and pages of nature description and shit. god they were boring.)

>>279983601
>pages and pages of nature description and shit. god they were boring.
Sounds better than pages and pages of the protagonist's thoughts on how boring his life is.
t. Dutch literature class survivor