Battle Shonen Stuff

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I generally agree with that logic for most things in general, be it long-running manga, television, movie series, book series, video game series, and just about anything, really.

I always enjoy things for what they do right and with the exception of things meant to stand alone as a single entity like stand-alone movies or books (and even in that case there are some exceptions), I always still enjoy the well-done segments regardless of the uneven quality that the rest of the work in question may hold. I mean, hell, just take my outlook on Hunter X Hunter for example. I have a ton of problems with Togashi's writing for this series, and I have never been shy about complaining about it. Yet, I also hail it as one of my favorite Weekly Shonen Jump manga. Why? Because what it does that I absolutely love, in the end, far outweighs it's numerous shortcomings. Togashi' makes up for his sometimes seemingly inexcusable blunders by also producing some of the finest written content that I have ever seen in any manga, shonen or not, and while it doesn't erase the bad stuff, it does end up meaning a lot more to me in the end and is what I ultimately judge my overall enjoyment of the series on. For as much as the Dark Continent arc bored me in the beginning, I legitimately like what he has been doing with the series and characters over the past several weeks, and all of a sudden that occupies my mind far more than what I didn't like before that. Of course, that's all just my personal opinion on the matter, but you get the idea.

And despite the up-and-down quality of One Piece past the time-skip, I still legitimately love the first half of One Piece. Trope-heavy as it is, Oda produced some of the most exciting and emotionally-driven story arcs that I have read. I can still go back to Enies Lobby or Marineford and get chills down my spine from scenes like Luffy dealing that devastating final series of blows to Rob Lucci after fighting his ass off for so long throughout the entire arc, and experience an utter gut-punch to my feelings when I read the heart-wrenching conclusion to the Whitebeard War. I may hate the Fishman Island arc and feel so-so on other parts of the series, but that never diminishes how much I love what I love about the series.

Long-running serializations certainly have their weaknesses, but they also have the advantage of telling the kinds of stories that you simply just can't get from other forms of entertainment with limitations around those circumstances. That's what I love about shonen series.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, this has been eating at me for quite a few years, now, and I really wanted to get my wide array of thoughts on this matter off my chest.

Ever since the cultural phenomenons that were Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon hit the West like a giant meteor in the late 90's, shonen anime and manga have been a huge staple of the medium's fandom in North America. Following suit, series like Naruto and Bleach exploded (albeit to somewhat of a lesser degree, but still a highly notable one) in the mid-2000's, creating a new wave of fans on top of the already existing ones from just a few years ago. For an overwhelming majority of anime and manga fans that I know both personally and online, many got into the medium itself through at least one shonen series of any kind, and mostly of the battle variety at that. Of course, those were the most popular of the bunch, but thanks to gateway channels like Cartoon Network's Toonami block, or YTV for those who lived in Canada, tons of other shows managed to find their way down the pipeline and convert even more people into fans.

However, as something grows so absurdly in popularity, it also inevitably incurs its detractors. In the early 2000's, quite a few people who had either had their gateway drug into Japanese entertainment of this variety through other series or movies (such as Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, Perfect Blue, etc.), or those who moved on from shonen to other series of that nature thanks to the advent of the Internet and fansubs, ended up turning against this movement of "childish" and "generic" crap. Now, admittedly, this animosity wasn't entirely baseless. The most popular series', as mentioned above, were rife with problems that long-running shonen series were prone to have in anime for. This was especially the case for the three that were adapted from source material which required the use of filler to prevent the anime from catching up to the manga. While I only liked one of those aforementioned series, anyways, that being Dragon Ball Z, I will fully acknowledge that its' base form already had its flaws, and when translated to anime much of those were expanded on in addition to new ones being added, most notably bad filler and huge pacing issues (and that's not even taking into account the bad English dubs and altered soundtracks that we got back then). Much of this crowd eventually evolved into anime critics for popular websites as well as video reviewers, and to this day we still have a large part of the community with a heavy bias towards shows and manga of this nature. They had a taste for more "artful" stuff that was "intelligent" and "challenged them" and "changed their philosophy on life" in some profound way. And the thing is, these are all certainly great qualities to have in a show. I love shows like that myself. The problem lies in how many people I ran into online (and occasionally in person) who seemed to be more concerned about how their opinions on anime and manga made them look rather than how passionate they really were about a series (one of the reasons I feel that people over-praised the original FMA back when it was the only adaptation, and then turned on it later once Brotherhood came out).

For a time, almost anything with the shonen label on it was treated as plebian fodder. With the exception of perhaps some sports series and less battle-oriented stuff, anime and manga from this genre were seen as a "guilty pleasure" sort of entertainment at best from a certain crowd. The reason for me bringing all of this up is because, at one point in time (in fact, not all that long ago all things considered), I was in danger of almost becoming one of these people. I had been told off before for my "uninspired" taste in cliche, trope-heavy series, and I desperately wanted to shake that notion away. So I tended to only support a few shonen series which I had deep attachments to, and while I had a passion and love for others, I either hid that or in some cases even convinced myself that they were just guilty pleasures and that my real favorite stuff was much more deep and intricate stuff. And the thing is, while I definitely did love plenty of non-shonen shows, I still had a strong and unshakable attachment to the genre. I was so wrapped up in not wanting to seem dumb that I ended up being dumb in even attempting to deny my true feelings on something.

And to set the record straight, I love plenty of non-shonen series. My taste is rather varied, and I like pretty much anything that can hold my interest on some level. I adore almost anything by creators such as Naoki Urasawa and Shinichi Watanabe, have been incredibly sucked into the stories and characters of Takehiko Inoue's later works such as Vagabond and REAL, was deeply impressed by legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka's more mature content such as Ode to Kirihito, and in general I am a huge fan of way too many other series and movies to name. There are classics like Otomo's Akira, Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion, Makoto Yukimura's Vinland Saga, and various others. I'm hardly an expert, but you can get the idea that I have read and watched my share of anime and manga of all kinds, so I'm not being ignorant of what else is out there. And you know what else, a lot of those creators would most likely agree. It's no secret that Urasawa is a huge fan of and draws a lot of influence from classic shonen manga, and Takehiko Inoue flat-out got his start in the shonen genre, which makes it very telling when you consider the fact that Slam Dunk is still by far his most successful manga to date. The idea of bringing all of this up is that I find it flat-out ridiculous that people would draw some overly-generalized bias on anything called a shonen manga when, just like the works of the mangaka above, that only does as much as describe a very roughly approximated target demographic rather than being an indicator of the quality of the individual work which happens to bear that label.

Of course, that brings us to the simple question: Why did battle shonen appeal to me (and so many other people) so much in the first place? Was it really the anime and manga equivalent of junk food, or was there something more in the mix? Well, there are two things that ended up changing (and rightfully fixing) my view on the genre. Firstly was a little manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata called Bakuman. It's a manga that details the amount of hard work, effort, energy, sleepless hours, talent, technique, and life-time that creators who are obsessed with and deeply love their craft put into their work. This is most likely true of every shonen manga out there, even ones that you and I may not like. So for one thing, I came to realize how much the good shows and manga that I liked were genuinely good because the creators behind them genuinely cared about their material rather than being concerned about how much money they could make off of it. FYI, the average mangaka who doesn't come out with a Dragonball or Naruto-level mega hit doesn't exactly make a lot of money, even if their serialization is considered relatively successful. And animators get paid so little by most companies that they might as well be slaves (Toei Animation in particular is notorious for how horrible they have treated their staffs in the past). So you can bet that the people behind these works are doing it because it means so much to them that they are willing to put up with the hardships. The second thing that helped alter my opinion back to what I truly felt was this very board. It's having the freedom to express myself in a small but friendly community without fearing being judged as "dumb" or having poor taste, and also discovering that quite a few people held very similar opinions to my own, that I was able to reassess my stance on the shonen genre over time.

Here's thing thing: yes, there are a lot of shit shows and manga that have plagued the genre. However, there is shit stuff in EVERY genre, so that's a real moot point. It may not have helped that some of the most popular examples of battle shonen out there were series that weren't very good when looked at through a more critical eye, but they also hardly represented everything that the genre could offer. And yes, a lot of shonen series, including many that I myself love, follow very over-used formulas and are full of their share of tropes that you can predict. What people fail to understand is firstly, tropes are not inherently a bad thing. Chances are, most of the stuff you watch, including what you like, follows at least some of the tropes of the genre that it's a part of. Even works of fiction meant to subvert big tropes often end up succumbing to other ones in the process. The point being that none of these things alone are enough to judge a series' quality on, yet for some reason I see tons of people already willing to dismiss anything with the shonen label slapped onto it if it even remotely has any qualities that are in other series of this nature. It doesn't matter if it crafts an interesting story that develops interesting characters and produces excellent world-building which creates a really terrific experience that can in fact entertain many people for quite a long time. Over the years, I have encountered numerous series with high-quality value on par with any other great or critically acclaimed series, and it's all about playing to the strengths of the style of story-telling that this genre allows its creators to produce. And now, more than ever, is this concept being realized in numerous works.

Take for example, a series like My Hero Academia. People who checked out just one episode of the anime were quick to point out how on a surface level it's just a typical story with a typical protagonist who's an underdog with no talent or abilities and will obviously rise in rank over the course of the series and prove himself against all of the naysayers. What irks me about such a criticism is that not only is it really ignorant to judge a series that early on simply because of what they assumed from an episode or two, but it's also very naive and narrow-minded for people to not actually notice that there's more going on in the series than what's on the surface level, and that's where its true themes and values lie. What's so brilliant about this series is in how it takes common cliches like that but finds a way to present them not only in a manner that helps the story and character development flow well, but also manages to expand on how interesting and nuanced its world can be. Going past the surface level of kids training at the Hogwarts of superhero high-schools, we learn that the increase in people being born with Quirks has expanded to such a point that the act of being a superhero is a highly commercialized career choice. Other members of societies use their abilities in performing ordinary mundane tasks, and being born completely Quirkless like Midoriya is actually considered to be an abnormal defect. We also get elements like politics and media playing heavily into the story, and cleverly being introduced into the mix gradually. The government needs to have some control over heroes in a way that gives people faith in their system, but that also means regulating their actions in a way that's not always in the immediate best interest of justice. The media loves any opportunity to run with a hot story and question the safety and structure of highly esteemed establishments like UA Academy. And in this world where heroics have become a profitable commodity and service rather than a pure form of good will, you naturally have very understandable and appropriate reasons for villains to also exist. Just dismissing all of this as a "generic shonen" is unreasonably stupid given how much more there is to it and how expertly it's all crafted.

Another thing that's been notable about the genre in recent years is how many remakes of older shonen manga we have gotten that have also helped bring in a new wave of fans for classics that didn't get much of a chance in the day. We of course have stuff like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which was a more faithful adaptation of the original manga, and famous examples of modern shonen adaptations of older long-running series like Level E, Hunter X Hunter, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Of particular note, though, is the criminally underrated Ushio and Tora. Starting last year (and completing its run this very week), this popular long-running series from the 90's ended up receiving a full-fledged anime adaptation detailing its entire story, and it's just more proof of the plethora of superb material from the genre there is to pull from. To me, U&T is the bar by which long-form story-telling for any serialized action series should be measured. What starts out with a simple enough premise of two unlikely heroes teaming up fight evil quickly evolves into an incredibly engaging and epic quest to save a fully realized world with a sizable cast of supporting characters who are just as interesting and well developed as the two main leads. We get a story with pieces that all fit together from beginning to end, and one of the most interesting mythologies that I have experienced in any form of fiction. What makes the mythology and world building elements of U&T so memorable is in how it works in tandem with the story and character development. For instance, Tora's past spans several-thousand years, and thus he is a very cleverly-crafted surrogate character for the audience to learn the extensive history of the world which he inhabits without it feeling like we are being force-fed extraneous exposition. And since the series draws from all kinds of Eastern mythology rather than staying strictly Japanese, we get extensive insight into subject material that we would otherwise be completely oblivious to. What completes the full package is in how this series exhibits one of the most deviously threatening yet simultaneously interesting "final-boss" style villains that I have seen in a long time. Hakumen no Mono works as that "ultimate dark entity" so well, which is a villain archetype that is actually incredibly hard to pull off. Most works of fantasy utterly fail at making such a villain interesting because they tend to come as a bad combination of being too powerful for their own good and portraying very shallow and boring personalities with little to no depth. Fujita throws Hakumen in the face of all of that mediocrity and crafts a villain that does have all of those qualities which most of his kind lack. In essence, U&T is yet another series that can easily be dismissed as a "standard shonen" but contains so much more to its make-up and context that the people who generally dismiss works from this genre simply for the sake of arbitrary biases are really missing out.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I could go on with even more examples. Just take a look at Weekly Shonen Jump. Good god am I a massive fan of this publication. Oh sure, it has had its stumbles with numerous series and I am no fan of the previously mentioned titles Naruto or Bleach, but there's so much else on offer throughout the history of this publication. When you consider the multitude of series that I grew up with in addition to many of the great works that have come out over the years, WSJ is my equivalent of what Marvel and DC are to many huge superhero fans. There's Eichiro Oda's legendary One Piece, which despite its fluctuating quality in recent years, contains some of the richest and most rewarding story-lines in any comic book that I have ever read for those ready to actually have fun with the series and let their pre-conceived discrimination of Oda's art-style go. Akira Toriyama's world-famous Dragonball, while suffering its fair share of blunders in animated form, remains to be one of the most expertly crafted works in the medium. There are very few comics that I have read which can match the breadth and fluidity of Toriyama's incredibly fluid and highly imaginative artwork, and how he can use it to expand his humor and enhance his story in a way that even makes it easy to forgive his narrative weaknesses and problems balancing his cast in the later arcs. There is the publication's famous variety of excellent competition-based series that have made their mark over the past several decades, like Takehiko Inoue's aforementioned Slam Dunk, Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata's zany collaboration in Eyeshield 21, Yumi Hotta's highly unique Hikaru no Go, and even currently running works such as Tsukuda Yuto and Saeki Shun's Food Wars!, and Haruichi Furudate's Haikyu!!, which is of particular note for having one of the most well-directed, animated, and scored anime adaptations of any manga that I have ever seen. It essentially serves as living proof of my belief that any standard story can be made excellent through incredibly well-designed execution. And in addition to other famous action-fare like Hirohiko Araki's first six parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Yoshihiro Togashi's incredibly esteemed Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter X Hunter, it's a wonder how anyone could accuse WSJ of being anything other than rightfully deserving of its well-renowned glory and legacy. And yes, that's not mentioning even half of the great offerings from the publication solely based on what I have actually read so far, and that's also excluding tons of great non battle-oriented manga from them like Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Ohbata's collaborations among many other series of note. But of course I would be amiss to leave this off at just those without mentioning my absolute favorite work from the publication and one of my favorite works of fiction of all time, Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin. The Remembrance story-arc in particular is perhaps one of the most effectively tragic and profoundly meaningful character pieces that I have ever read. When you read something as masterfully written as that, I can't even fathom how arbitrary words like "shonen" can even begin to phase the sheer quality on display here.

And I wouldn't be caught dead before bringing up two of the most undisputed classics of the battle shonen genre. Despite its uneven quality, Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy is a so-called "children's manga" with the shonen label on it, but explain to me how that means anything negative in any regard when it is a work renowned world-wide for some of the most iconic and meaningful story-lines ever published in comic book form? And that reputation is not merely held just in Japan. For one thing, check out LumRanmaYasha's excellent piece on the Once Upon A Time arc in our Top 30 Story Arcs list from a couple of years ago if you want a good example. Or read something like The World's Greatest Robot story-line. This is the very story-line that Naoki Urasawa would eventually re-imagine in the form of the critically-acclaimed series called Pluto; as in, a Seinen manga which was directly written to explore the complex and poignant themes disguised in the form of a Shonen manga. Why I specifically bring up this example is just to show how even the restriction of age demographic truly has no bearing on the actual quality or intellect of the material being presented. Sure, the content itself may be written and illustrated in a way that can be considered suitable for younger audiences to view, but that does not inherently limit its potential for exploring mature and intriguing themes that many older audiences would find interesting. It may go over the heads of any children reading it, but on some level they notice and appreciate the extra care and effort put into giving them a story that takes them seriously as an audience, and looking back on such works as an adult can uncover so much more to appreciate that you may not have understood before. In fact, the true beauty of it all is that in presenting these themes to us in the form of a children's shonen manga, Osamu Tezuka has effectively highlighted the importance of these themes to people of all kinds, regardless of gender, race, culture, time period, or age.

The other notable example is of course my favorite manga of all time, Ikki Kajiwara (Asaki Takamori) and Tetsuya Chiba's Ashita no Joe. However, since I've already rambled on for far too long at this point, I'll just lazily plug in my earlier piece of writing on it from a few years back.

Having said all that I have said so far, though, I must bring up one more point to conclude my thoughts here. If I had to pick one thing about the many good shonen series that I like, the one thing that they have in common that attracts me to works of this nature in the first place, the one thing that I feel people really should understand to have a better grasp on what people like me find so special about titles of this genre when they do actually come together in a way that truly works, it's the ability of this form of entertainment to sum up and display such an enormous amount of emotions, feelings, and heart in a single, short, compact moment that rewards you for all of your investment up to that point. I'm talking about iconic scenes that eternally stay with me. Scenes that never fail to send chills down my spine or warm my heart or even manage to combine both. Slam Dunk is a shonen series that gave me an unforgettable, tense, and exciting moment where in the final seconds of the Shohoku Vs. Sannoh match, after hundreds of chapters of character development, Rukawa finally puts all of his trust in Sakuragi by passing him the ball and allowing him to take that final, fateful shot which would decide the outcome of their match. I remember scenes like Piccolo from Dragonball completing his redemption arc by using his own body to shield his pupil Gohan from a Nappa's fatal Ki blast, saving his life in the process, and in effect he has shown his compassion for the son of the very man of whom it was his life-goal to kill. In One Piece I feel a sense of both pride and emotion when Whitebeard makes his final stand in the face of certain death at the conclusion of the epic Battle at Marineford, and that's not even mentioning the numerous other iconic moments where Luffy and crew manage to overcome overwhelming odds to reward my investment in the story with some of the most memorable defeats of unforgettable villains in any manga. At the conclusion of all of the death, bloodshed, and carnage that Jotaro Kujo and his friends have had to endure in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders, I feel a sense of genuine accomplishment along with JoJo when he deals that final fatal blow to DIO. The resolution of Meruem's character arc in Hunter X Hunter is one of the greatest endings to a character arc that I have seen in any piece of fiction, yet it's only second to the moment that cements Killua's personal redemption from an earlier scene in that very arc. When Kenshin Himura cradles Tomoe's lifeless body in his arms after she carves that iconic scar on his face in Rurouni Kenshin, followed shortly by that scene of Kenshin wandering off into the distance to start his path of atonement, I am endowed with an array of complex yet somehow also rather simple feelings that I can't even properly put into words. When I re-watch that final farewell scene from Digimon Tamers, my eyes still tear up to this day and I just can't control it. And whenever I revisit the amazing conclusion of the Rikiishi arc in Ashita no Joe and I read those iconic words "Stand up and fight, Joe!" I am immediately overwhelmed by a sense of drive, and I actually legitimately go back and read this scene whenever I am facing a tough time in my life. Yes, that's how much a scene from a "mere shonen" manga means to me.

My ultimate goal with all of this was just to express my own honest feelings on how passionate I am about so many shonen series. This wasn't really meant to change anyone else's mind or views on this subject matter, and if it seems silly to you for me to go into this much extraneous detail then that's fine, and you're not exactly wrong. However, I suppose you could say that this was meant as a form of me coming to terms with myself. While I have felt this way for a long time, it feels good to just come right out and say it. I hate that I ever even tried to deny myself the right to genuinely like what I like for even a short period of time. Just like any other genre, shonen of any kind, be it battle-oriented or not, is not inherently a good or bad thing. However there are a shit-ton of shonen that I love, and I have absolutely no shame in that, and never should. Several series that mean so much to me are shonen, and that just means that they are pretty fucking awesome in my book.

So, in conclusion: Fuck the naysayers, fuck the critics, fuck the snobs, and fuck anyone else who tells me otherwise. Peace out.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Awesome post!  You've articulated so passionately everything that makes shonen series so entertaining and meaningful, and how personally so many of them mean to you. I was also once self-concious about some of the series I liked once upon a time, but now I realize that's ridiculous. If a series resonates with you on a strong emotional level and you can articulate why, you should feel no shame about enjoying it, nor should you care about being looked down upon by so-called elitists who decry shonen as somehow lesser entertainment. It's no exaggeration to say that I think of my favorite moments from series like Ashita no Joe, Astro Boy, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho and countless others everyday - all of which are battle shonen series, and yet all of which so different from one another in tone and genre. And how anyone can dismiss phenomenal pieces of storytelling like the Rise of Joe Yabuki, Once Upon A Time, Remembrance, or Chapter Black just because they come from battle manga and are series ostensibly aimed towards kids is just ridiculous and doesn't give them the respect and appreciation they really deserve.

And yes, everybody who wants to understand the appeal of shonen manga and the manga industry in general should read Bakuman. There's no manga that does a better job describing all the hard work and passion that goes into making a great series in such a competitive and taxing profession.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Thanks! This is very much a class of anime and manga that I have only come to appreciate more over the years for just how engaging it can be when it's done right, and for as many low quality series that there are, I can think of a ton of good to great ones.

And I really can't say enough how much I love the duo of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. They just have such a deep and passionate understanding of good manga and how to play to the strengths of the Shonen formula, hence why Death Note and Bakuman are easily among my favorite WSJ series and manga in general. And yeah, I won't deny that Platinum End has been rather disappointing for me, but one "meh" series doesn't wash out the excellence of two great series before it, one of which really helped educate and shape my views on the Shonen genre at large, and it still wouldn't stop me from getting excited about and reading their future works. Just like the characters in Bakuman, this duo likes to experiment with different ideas, and while they may not always work out, you can definitely tell that they learn from their experiences. So just like how I am eternally grateful to Nobuhiro Watsuki for Rurouni Kenshin alone, Ohba and Obata have earned the right to fuck-up from time to time and it still wouldn't diminish my respect and admiration for them. And to be clear, I don't consider PE to be a terrible manga; just a really mediocre one.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Very good series of posts.

It's sort of similar to what happened to me and Flame of Recca. For a long time I sort of ignored it as a decent shonen, but not anything particularly great. But as the years past, I kept thinking back on it and how well it did things I really appreciate. Then I finally broke down and started re-reading it and I can't deny that it is one of my favorite manga. That's one of the reasons I started that feature (that I should hopefully get back to in a few weeks) not only to give the series more attention but to explain just why I like it so much. I now own 1/3 of the series and I keep wondering why I put it off for so long. It's clearly one of my favorites.

I like that you brought up Death Note, because I think it perfectly encapsulates what you were talking about with the FMA backlash. Let's be real, Death Note is about absolute power corrupting and if it can be stopped. It's a detective noir thriller with a compelling cast of characters.

But it's not a philosophical work of brilliance. It was never meant to be anything but a good story of a corrupt teenager who tries to remake the world in his own image. I bring this up, because, well, do you remember the reaction to it when it first came out? It was as if people had to explain away why they liked a shonen series. It couldn't be just because it was well written and engaging with great themes. No, it had to be because it was a work of high art making a commentary on how "bad guys are really good guys and good guys are really bad guys" and how much of a "hero" Light Yagami actually was. Heck, look at all those remakes and random films that don't get the appeal of the original series. How many of them do you think ever used the term "shonen" to describe the series? I'm betting less than zero.

But it was a shonen. It followed all the trappings of the genre without crossing into seinen territory. The police and their allies were the protagonists and Light was the antagonist. It's not that subversive except that we are seeing the story from the bad guy's perspective. That's it. But you probably couldn't find anyone to admit it succeeded as a shonen without adding in a jab at shonen itself.

And I will continue to give Nobuhiro Watsuki infinite chances until he retires. If you wrote Rurouni Kenshin, you would earn just as many chances from me, too.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Thanks for the comments!

In regard to Death Note, it always really bugged me how people used to praise it so highly for what it wasn't. I love Death Note. It's a great series, but it's not a deep, philosophical exploration of the themes of what makes a person just. It's a fun suspense thriller that's meant to keep you hooked by seeing how its key characters work their way around interesting and desperate situations. In that manner, it has a lot more in common with something like Kaiji than Neon Genesis Evangelion, and that's not a bad thing by any means. I remember back on TV.com this one jerk-off who always bragged about how "sophisticated" his taste was since he liked a lot of deep and mature Seinen manga and anime. However he did admit to liking Death Note but said that it really shouldn't be a shonen. That really just frustrated the hell out of me in ways that I couldn't properly express at the time. Out of curiosity, I wonder if Foggle remembers any of this, because he was there too at the time.

What irked me even more is when haters started bashing the series for failing to actually be the deep, philosophical work that so many fans claimed it was, but it was so clear to me that people had painted a very inappropriate picture of the series that completely misrepresented what it truly was. Even the author himself (or herself?) said that Death Note was not by any means a complex or intricate series. Ohba flat-out admitted to coming up with the story on the spot every week like most shonen mangaka pretty much have to do because of the nature of their work, and said that people claiming that Light was some sort of tragic hero were overthinking things a bit too much. In that interview that I read, Ohba stated that Light is definitely evil, and that L is somewhat evil. It's as clear and simple as that, and anyone reading the manga for what it was could see and appreciate that. But, now, we had snobs who could also see that the manga and anime were good but didn't want to look "dumb" for liking a shonen, so they had to differentiate it from the rest of the genre as much as possible, and that really ended up hurting the series' reputation in the long run.

As for Nobuhiro Watsuki, I think the reason that I still have faith in him, despite RK being his only work that I outright love, is firstly that none of his post-RK works are actually bad by any means. Gunblaze West, Busou Renkin, and Frankenstein are all decently enjoyable series in their own rights that I don't regret having read (although, I admit that I only read about halfway through Frankenstein, so I have no idea if it gets any better or worse). However, as you mentioned in an earlier post, Desensitized, there was just something missing from each of those works that prevented them from having that "complete package" feeling that Rurouni Kenshin had. The thing is, each of those series had at least a moment or two, from what I can recall, where I got a sense of that old magic that Watsuki worked to make RK such a winning formula. But, that's just it: they were relegated to mere chance moments rather than him being able to hold that feeling throughout most of his series' runs. If Watsuki has produced nothing but bad or uninspired content after RK, then I'd probably have no faith in him and figured that he just lucked out. Instead, because I love RK so much and because his proceeding works have had traces of greatness sprinkled throughout their overall average but entertaining serializations, I do still hold faith that Watsuki still has it somewhere within himself to produce another truly great work again. And even if his next work is on the level of the rest of his post-RK stuff, I'll still hold out that hope on my end, because even with his weaker stuff, I still get that sense that he's really trying and busting his ass to make something that the readers will enjoy. I just believe that he needs to rediscover his roots in order to truly move forward with higher quality work again.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Here's a quote that's going to be considered controversial for modern anime and manga fans, who will probably misunderstand what he's saying. From Michihiko Toei:

"I'm wonderful just the way I am," "each of us is special by nature," "you don't have to be number one" — the truth is, all the creative works that say this are lying to make sales. If they say it, everyone will happily buy them. If we really believe this, making a recovery in our lives becomes harder. From the late '90s to the early 2000s, themes like "you don't have to put in effort," "you don't have to overdo it" and "you don't have to persevere" became common, but take a look at the lives young people brought up on this are leading. If you look at the protagonists of manga popular in the '70s, you'll understand that it was a time where if you didn't put your life into organizations or missions or skills, you wouldn't be accepted... well, all right, maybe I get the feeling that this goes too far, but if you don't put everything you have into life, you'll be left with nothing but regret.

"Putting everything you have into life" might be a weird expression, but isn't the outlook of someone like Kazuhiko Shimamoto better?

Now, I know three arguments will spring up from this.

1. He's just an old man waxing nostalgic! Things were not better back then! They're better now!
2. He thinks people should overwork themselves to death!
3. He's telling people to not be themselves!

All of which, are incorrect.

His argument, which is centered on shonen, by the way, is that it's supposed to inspire its audience to greater heights. It's easy to tell a story about someone who doesn't need to improve or grow in any way. It's also a really lame concept that is a breeding ground for Mary Sue characters. "Being true to yourself" is not the same as thing as not trying the best you can. The reason he says works that don't inspire are lying to make sales, is because the stuff that has this central message is usually garbage that is forgettable in the long run even if initially successful. It's also not a true message that you should never try to aim higher than you are.

It's funny that he put a timetable like that, too. The end of the '90s through much of the '00s was full of shonen exactly like that.

Look at Hitman Reborn!, for instance. There are no characters that aspire to anything, have no real motivation to fight, but there sure is a lot of cool flashy stuff going on, isn't there? The main character is never proven wrong about anything (because he has no goals except to be left alone, despite having ample reasons to change his mind) and never grows at all except in physical strength. The series was such a flash in the pan that it had a crappy ending just like Shaman King, only it never got a proper later add-on like the latter series did. And it probably never will because its fanbase already moved on to the next boring series. They had their pick of the litter through most of the '00s.

This isn't as much of a problem as it was a couple of years ago, however. My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Food Wars, World Trigger, Haikyuu!, and others, in Jump alone, show many characters with defined ambition and goals beyond being placated with mediocrity. There's something about a story where the characters always do their best that speaks to me in a way that others do not. But as for shonen, I would argue that it's a key component that should always be part of the story in some aspect. It's also why a lot of the stuff he's talking about rubbed me wrong a while back.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I don't really see why too many people (if any) would take that the wrong way. His statement seems pretty clear. It makes perfect sense that characters that aspire to better themselves and constantly strive for some form of self-improvement would be more endearing than most characters that are just OK with who they are and have no character arcs whatsoever. Static characters can work in short stories and movies, but in a long-running serialization they get stale quickly. Take something like Prince of Tennis, where the main character seems unbelievably great at the beginning. It just gets really boring since he really has nothing to overcome, so what's the point of him being the main character? Why are we following him throughout the story if he has nothing to gain in the first place? It just gets boring. Of course, there is an exception to this logic with characters like Joe Yabuki, who are intentionally written to initially have little to no values. Joe Yabuki has natural talent as a boxer, but doesn't really have any drive or passion to be one for a large portion of the first part of the story. However, what keeps him interesting during this part of the story is how he is not portrayed as a bad-ass for it, but rather as a heavily flawed character with a rather sad lack of meaning to his life. It makes it all the more rewarding when he gradually develops and finally does gain that drive to become the icon that he eventually does.

Now, that's not to say that every character has to have a goal to be interesting. Characters like Yusuke Urameshi have no real ambitions so to speak of. Throughout all of Yu Yu Hakusho, he's not striving for some ultimate dream like a lot of other shonen characters. Yet, why then are we still invested in him as a character? It's because despite all of this, he is still growing and bettering himself throughout his character arc. Yes, he does get stronger as the series progresses, but more than that he continually evolves towards a sort of emotional maturity that makes it satisfying to stick with him as each new dilemma comes into his life. So in that regard, with or without a goal, if the character is progressing himself or herself in some notable way throughout the course of the series, then it's usually a story worth sticking through to the end.

So yeah, I agree with Michihiko Toei's outlook on how always trying to be the best person that you can be, and never being satisfied with just where you're at right now, is an admirable quality to have, and a theme that's infinitely more interesting than one of "just be happy with yourself", which may work as good PSA BS, but tends to not make for such an interesting character or story to follow.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I doubt anyone here would take it that way, but I'm sure there are many who would on the usual sites.

It's funny you bring up Prince of Tennis, because I almost used that as an example myself. It's such a flat series, especially considering how boring the main character is. There's just nothing to hook you in to the story.

[Spark Of Spirit]

With the ending of many series from the unofficial Silver Age of Jump, I'd like to do a bit of a comparison between the two eras. Those eras being what is running now, and what was running then.

This is what Jump runs now:

Haikyuu!!
One Piece
Black Clover
My Hero Academia
Boruto
Samon the Summoner
Kimetsu no Yaiba: Blade of Demon Destruction
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Souma
Hinomaru Zumou
Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club
Toriko
Yuna of Yuragi Manor
Gintama
World Trigger
Kochikame
Takuan and Batsu's Daily Demon Diary
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
Mononofu
Bleach
Nisekoi
Chronicle of Isobe -Life is Hard-


This is what they were running in the dead center of the Silver Age at this time in 2006:

Eyeshield 21
One Piece
Naruto
Bleach
D.Gray-man
Maison Du Penguin
Hitman Reborn!
Zan
Taizo Moteo King Saga
Gintama
Over Time
Kochikame
Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro
To-LOVE-Ru
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo
Muhyo & Ryoji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation
Mieru Hito
Mx0
Murasame-kun
Prince of Tennis
Jaguar


HxH ran in both and started before them so it doesn't count as a point for either era. It's also technically a Dark Age series like One Piece which also doesn't count for either. Kochikame speaks for itself.

I also counted series from the middle of the year. This way neither Death Note or Assassination Classroom count for either era even though they both ended in their respective years, but you can talk about either if you want. For the sake of the topic, they sort of canceled each other out in my mind. That said, they are both great series for what they do.

It's a ten year spread, just as it was between the previous age and the Golden Age. So, what to say? It does feel like Jump has changed a lot since 2006, just as it did since 1996. But I have to be honest and say that the series list from 2006 does almost nothing for me as a whole. For one, a few of those series were canceled pretty fast, and for another, a lot of what's there is bland. Of course, there are some great series in there like Eyeshield 21, Bo^7, Muhyo & Ryoji, Neuro, and Mx0, the rest doesn't hold up very well. Even Gintama wasn't that great at the beginning, but is now far ahead of where it started. But as a whole, I don't find the list from 10 years ago a very cohesive list of weekly series.

I'm not of the opinion that the Silver Age holds a candle to the Golden Age, but I also don't think it stacks up to what's in the magazine now. For one, the battle manga in the magazine now is undoubtedly better as a whole. The sports series are more consistent (E21 is great, PoT is not) and feature some pretty out there concepts. The comedy is more well rounded, though romance is still pretty much the same. Oh, and since so many series are doing well and series are naturally ending, nothing has been canceled in a surprisingly long time. This gives the series more time to grow.

The biggest thing for me is that I just plain like more of the series running now than I did ten years ago. Looking at the list, I'd guess the only series not something I enjoy reading would be Yuna (To Love Ru for the same reason), Toriko (because I'm lost), Samon (though it might have improved), and Bleach (for obvious reasons). Everything else is pretty good at what it does, and some are on the path to being outright all-time favorites.

Guess what I'm saying is that I consider the current age far more of a Silver Age than the one from ten years ago. It reminds me more of Jump at its peak.

Here's hoping they can keep it up.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Jump's lineup is indeed much better than it was a decade ago. I enjoy or appreciate almost every series running to some extent, with the exceptions of Yuna, Bleach, and Takuan & Batsu (I'm reevaluating my judgement on Samon after I read more chapters past what the english Jump run), but the most important thing about them is that they all feel distinct in tone and feel from each other with different strengths and niches. Their lineup is just so much more eclectic and interesting than it was a decade ago, and there's most certainly at least one series they're currently running that will attract your attention and you'll enjoy. Overall, it's just a great time to be a Jump fan, and I'm hoping the new blood that'll replace the soon-to-be ending series helps solidify this new era of Jump as it's second strongest after the Golden Age.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To be honest, there were more series that I liked running from that decade than I expected. To be honest, I haven't kept up with a whole lot of WSJ manga from the present, but I do enjoy what I'm reading in general. Still, I tend to not divide things up too much by what era they came in, and just like Jump as a whole for the plethora of good series that it has produced over the years, regardless of when they came out.

I would say that MHA is a better battle shonen series than anything else that was running in Jump ten years ago aside from One Piece, but One Piece was a much stronger manga ten years ago than it is now (not to say that it's bad now, but it was undeniably in its prime about a decade ago). Meanwhile Prince of Tennis was awful, but Eyeshield 21 was excellent. However I find Haikyuu!! to be a rather average manga (I love the anime, of course), but Straighten Up! and Food Wars! pick up the slack as far as competition-based manga series go.

Also, isn't Boruto serialized in one of Jump's monthly spin-off magazines? I'm not sure if it's part of the Weekly Shonen Jump line-up.

Anyways, my point is that while I can certainly agree that Jump is in a really good place right now, and that there were a large number of series that I really disliked from ten years ago, I also feel that Jump, to its credit, didn't exactly slouch last decade either. It may not quite compare to the Golden Age and might not be quite as strong as what we have now, but I wouldn't call it a particularly weak offering either. I mean, hell, the fact that you actually managed to list five of those good series that you did from just that year alone is pretty telling. And if you include the decade as a whole, you also have stuff like Hikaru no Go, Death Note, and JoJo's Bizarre Adenture: Stone Ocean to consider, among others.

I think it would be a fair statement to say that Jump was in a long transitional period between its Golden Age and now during that point in time, and to some extent it still is transitioning, but it managed to find its footing quite well this decade. That doesn't however mean that it had nothing going for it even when it was struggling through some of its weaker years. If anything, my only major gripe from that era of jump was that series like Naruto and Bleach ruled the battle genre and consequently we got eve more sub-par stuff like D. Gray-Man and Hitman Reborn. So, you could say that last decade had a fairly weak output in good battle manga, but it still had quite a few good offerings of manga in general.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Boruto is monthly, but it runs in normal Jump.

I'm just using the popular terms. I mean, the so-called "Dark Age" gave birth to Hunter X Hunter, One Piece, and was carried by Rurouni Kenshin. And that's supposedly its "weaker" era.

Shonen Jump has been a pretty consistently entertaining magazine since its inception, but I think now is the first time since the Golden Age that ended in the mid-90s that they've been this strong as a whole. I find myself surprised by how much in there I actually enjoy a good deal.

[LumRanmaYasha]

To be honest, there were more series that I liked running from that decade than I expected. To be honest, I haven't kept up with a whole lot of WSJ manga from the present, but I do enjoy what I'm reading in general. Still, I tend to not divide things up too much by what era they came in, and just like Jump as a whole for the plethora of good series that it has produced over the years, regardless of when they came out.

I would say that MHA is a better battle shonen series than anything else that was running in Jump ten years ago aside from One Piece, but One Piece was a much stronger manga ten years ago than it is now (not to say that it's bad now, but it was undeniably in its prime about a decade ago). Meanwhile Prince of Tennis was awful, but Eyeshield 21 was excellent. However I find Haikyuu!! to be a rather average manga (I love the anime, of course), but Straighten Up! and Food Wars! pick up the slack as far as competition-based manga series go.

Also, isn't Boruto serialized in one of Jump's monthly spin-off magazines? I'm not sure if it's part of the Weekly Shonen Jump line-up.

Anyways, my point is that while I can certainly agree that Jump is in a really good place right now, and that there were a large number of series that I really disliked from ten years ago, I also feel that Jump, to its credit, didn't exactly slouch last decade either. It may not quite compare to the Golden Age and might not be quite as strong as what we have now, but I wouldn't call it a particularly weak offering either. I mean, hell, the fact that you actually managed to list five of those good series that you did from just that year alone is pretty telling. And if you include the decade as a whole, you also have stuff like Hikaru no Go, Death Note, and JoJo's Bizarre Adenture: Stone Ocean to consider, among others.

I think it would be a fair statement to say that Jump was in a long transitional period between its Golden Age and now during that point in time, and to some extent it still is transitioning, but it managed to find its footing quite well this decade. That doesn't however mean that it had nothing going for it even when it was struggling through some of its weaker years. If anything, my only major gripe from that era of jump was that series like Naruto and Bleach ruled the battle genre and consequently we got eve more sub-par stuff like D. Gray-Man and Hitman Reborn. So, you could say that last decade had a fairly weak output in good battle manga, but it still had quite a few good offerings of manga in general.

There definitely is a lot of great series and modern classics that came out of Jump in the 00's than people give it credit for. But I feel that the current era has proven itself more consistent in the quality of its series, and with the direction that they and Jump as a whole have been taking, I think that more of them will be well-remembered down the line years from now, whereas about half of the stuff they were running in 2006 either didn't last long, aged well, or has fallen into obscurity. But definitely, the biggest and best change in Jump now is that battle-manga no longer dominates the lineup, and there's a lot more variety and creativity in their series and lineup as whole.