Tropes and Cliches

Tournament Arcs

I have this weird love hate relationship with tournament arcs. I love them because we meet new  characters, established characters get expanded upon, and we get plot heavy. I hate them because we get new characters who will not matter at the end ( give or take a few) because they somehow get killed, it's sometimes filler episodes (something very few people like), or it's dragged out so long it might as well be filler.  These are my main problems, because there are other problems, but I can live with it. 

Now when I say we get new characters or character development, we get spoiled sometimes. For example ( and I will be using it and both Shippuden and Next Gen( Boruto) as examples because they have some good examples) in Naruto, we get the Sand Siblings ( Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari), Naruto's old classmates, a previous class before them ( Neji, TenTen and Rock Lee), and some unimportant side characters outside of Kabuto. Now Naruto's old classmates we get to see some expansion on their characters. Shikamaru is a tactical genius,Sakura cuts her hair as a symbol of her not being weak anymore ( even though she could have stabbed the chick in the leg to prove the same point), Hinata wants to break out of shell but is too sensitive to do so( until the next season) and her and Neji's family are a bunch of assholes for that stupid family curse ( which we can understand why Neji is the way he is until that little vibe/reality check he recieved from Naruto), Rock Lee is a badass but as to put in more effort due to the lack of skill in gen or ninjustu,etc. Even with the new characters we are spoiled. Gaara, Temari and Kankuro are siblings, but we find that Temari and Kankuro are terrified of Gaara for a good reason: He is a living weapon, sleep deprived and a bit murder happy. Kabuto we later find out is workiing with the show's bad guy, and that a lot of the older ninjas of the village are war vets who were no older than them( possibly younger) when they went to war.

Now when I say the tournament is often a filler, I mean it could be a canon but is either dragged out or filled with filler content( flash back episodes with specific characters that don't really add much to the plot, odd beach day but the character complains that they need to be training,etc.)

Tournaments are almost always single-elimination; the characters will not face the same opponent more than once. Proper seeding will be entirely ignored, and yet even so the hero will always find himself facing tougher and tougher opponents every round. In Naruto, it's a three part thing. First a written exam to test how well they can cheat without getting caught( I'm serious) because as a ninja, you're job involves how to gather info. The second part was essentially cross between capture the flag and a literal fight to the death. The third and final part was the actual tournament, where they had to weed out the weaker or "needs improvement" genin from the prospects. and then an actual tournament where the winner won't necessarily be promoted as the person who loses can be promoted, it's basically a "who has the best skills"

Now this is somewhat on the chill end...oh, right...forgot to mention that tournaments can fall on a spectrum. On one end we have a chill tournament with very little chance of injury and a prize and on the other end we have the tournaments where you should expect a few casualities. And then we have those that fall in the middle where there is some chill but you could die due to a few well placed hits. Now this depends on who makes the rules. If it's a local tournament then it can be somewhere between chill and could die with a few well placed hits. If it's the villian, then expect like...five deaths.  
Now my final reason on why I hate tournaments..."all or nothing" stakes. What do I mean by that? Well Let's drift from Naruto and enter Dragonball and Yugioh..starting with Yugioh. Our main protagonist Yugi/Yami Yugi have a lot of tournaments that start as or advertised as a fun little game where first place gets a large cash prize. But in reality it's normally a life or death situation. And before you ask "why is it 'all or nothing' because it seems like you hate death matches.?" hush and I'll explain. With "all or nothing" it's one of those things where it's more than a life or death. In the example I used, one of Yugi's loved ones lands in the Shadowrealm and could possibly die. There is also a friend's sister who needs the money for eye surgery, a guy could lose his entire company, and possibly an angry little nugget who wants revenge on Yami Yugi for what ever reason.  
Now looking at Dragonball...those are in fact all or nothing. Why? Because they literally keep putting the fate of the Earth on deathmatches. Cell wants to face the strongest of Earth's fighter and threatens to blow up the Earth should they all lose. Oh, the gods gathers all the universes to fight and the losing universe team's home get blown up. Why?

And I'm going to ignore all of Mortal Kombat because that's essentially it's own chapter. So tournaments are really fun to write. You can develop established characters and introduce new characters. But you can also make it pointless. It's really up to the writer. How? Tourney rules or the lack of them. Like there can be a "no weapons" rule but someone finds a way around it. Also the stakes because nothing is more played out than placing someone's fate in the hands of a death match.