Battle Shonen Stuff

[Nel_Annette]

Honestly, what I wanted was what I originally expected to happen when I first watched the show: Aizen gets away, Soul Society can't handle the guy or his new Espada, and they all fade into the background as Ichigo, Uryu, Chad, Orihime, and possibly Tatsuki (did I mention I always liked that character), his sisters, and a few of their other friends basically discovered their powers, and had to become stronger than Soul Society to defeat Aizen. I would have loved that. Instead, I get to watch Hitsugaya fighting a pair of tits that he wasn't supposed to stand a chance against in the first place.

[Spark Of Spirit]

That's actually where I thought it was going, too. That seemed to be the obvious direction where it would go, but he sort of stayed in his safety zone after Aizen got away and kept basically doing the same arc over and over.

[Rynnec]

I do think the very beginning of Bleach had potential, but it never had the chance to be fleshed out beyond fight after fight and giving his friends powers that were never properly explored (Why is Chad even in the story?) for 100 soul reapers and 700 hollow variants.

Naruto sort of had a good pace near the beginning, but Bleach has always had pretty terrible pacing despite its early potential. I don't think Kubo was ready to write a mainstream shonen, as the way he has made Bleach drag on longer and longer shows it.

Considering his previous series (Zombie Powder) was cancelled after some unspecified breakdown, you're probably right.

I think whatever problem's that plagued Kubo when writing Zombie Powder continue to thrive in Bleach, and he most likely realized this sometime during the Hueco Mundo arc (as that's where things started to become really noticeable), unfortunately, by that time Bleach has proven itself to be too popular to discontinue, so Kubo was in way too deep to back out. At least, this is my theory for Bleach's jumping of the shark.

Honestly, what I wanted was what I originally expected to happen when I first watched the show: Aizen gets away, Soul Society can't handle the guy or his new Espada, and they all fade into the background as Ichigo, Uryu, Chad, Orihime, and possibly Tatsuki (did I mention I always liked that character), his sisters, and a few of their other friends basically discovered their powers, and had to become stronger than Soul Society to defeat Aizen. I would have loved that. Instead, I get to watch Hitsugaya fighting a pair of tits that he wasn't supposed to stand a chance against in the first place.

Either the Arrancar arc shouldn't have started so soon, or HM shouldn't have been so damn long.

[gunswordfist]

In light of recent happenings in Naruto...

Offscreen fight-resolutions: Hate'em or are indifferent to them?

Is this for real? Especially if you mean like how Saiyuki did it...

[gunswordfist]

Naruto fell apart prety fast around the Chase Sasuke arc and did not improve with part 2. It was a shame because it did have the potential.

But Bleach... why do you need 40 characters that do nothing but fight and 30 more that lose all the time?

Bleach has no redeeming qualities. I just consider it bad Yu yu Hakusho fan fiction.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The sad thing is that I believe I've actually even read YYH fan fiction that's more interesting than any story-arc from Bleach.

[gunswordfist]

That's sad.

I wish the show loved up to the potential of it's first episode. I still stand by saying it's the show's best episode. It's the only one that's funny, it doesn't have a drawn out fight or time split between far too many characters and it's actually interesting.

[Rynnec]

Speaking of Bleach, I came across a link to This article on Ichigo. While it did put a few things into perspective for me, it also reinforces the idea that while the ideas of his character development are good, it's the execution that leaves a lot to be desired.

But what really set me off is the first paragraph, it's made very clear that the writer hasn't read much shounen other than the Big 3 and DBZ (and possibly a few other modern mainstream shounen like DGrayman). When you have only those manga to compare to, then of course Ichigo would look better in comparison.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I think my problem with that series of posts (which is what it is as stated at the top of the page, rather than an actual article) is that while the author of them does a decent enough job of backing up his claims of Ichigo's actual character development with examples and such, it doesn't do anything to convince me that he's actually a well-written character. He's still mostly bland and boring, and as Rynnec pointed out, its clear that the author of these posts hasn't really read many shonen manga to compare Bleach to. There are a plethora of other mainstream shonen series, both old and new, that at least have the same level of basic character development that Ichigo goes through, however in some cases they are just handled much better through via far more talented writing from more experienced or more creative mangaka. Yoshihiro Togashi in particular can masterfully develop his characters, and with the exception of the latter half of the Chimera Ant arc, he can do so with a crafty sense of subtlety that doesn't just blatantly point out the gradual changes that his characters go through over time.

With Bleach, for anything interesting that happens with the characters, I feel that it is immediately hindered by sloppy writing for both the actual story and most of the other supporting characters, but who can blame Kubo for screwing up so much with them when he has so damn many characters introduced at once. Managing all of those characters and keeping other consistent would be a tough job for anyone. The problem is that its Kubo's fault for just forcing out more characters than he could ever handle in such short amounts of time. This is where I feel more mangaka, shonen or otherwise, should take ques from Naoki Urasawa. If you want to have a grand story with lots of characters while also keeping consistent character development and depth for most of them, then you need to take a close look at how Uraswa handles his characters and gradually introduce them one after another, and if need be switch from one main character to another and tell the story surrounding them. However the transitions must make sense rather than being abrupt (though Uraswa is guilty of doing this himself at least a few times in both Monster and 20th Century Boys), and they must have a way of connecting back to the stories following the various other main characters in the series.

This is of course very hard to accomplish and takes an extremely skilled, experienced, and talented writer. Of course, that's why people like Urasawa are so highly revered in the first place, because they are a rare-breed of talent that can back up their grand stories and numerous characters with consistently high quality. Now it'd be unfair to compare Bleach, a weekly serialized shonen series, to the more sparsely released material from Urasawa who clearly has less limitations on what he can write based on his core demographic being older audiences, but it certainly doesn't exclude Bleach from being compared to other long-running shonen series that can do what it does and do it far better while being placed under the same constraints. I may be biased, but I still say that Yu Yu Hakusho nailed down the "modern" shonen formula perfectly far before series like Bleach were even conceptualized, and to me at least it still does it better than any other long-running shonen series that I have read.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, me and Spark/Desensitized were messaging each other earlier about how ridiculously low a certain manga series I used to read and that Spark still follows has sunk to utter rock bottom. From there we kind of expanded our discussion into all of our pet peeves with modern shonen series in general, and I thought that this could generate some interesting discussion to some of you guys as well, so I'll continue our conversation over here, on this thread.

For the record, I think most would agree you're right. The "big three" have been popular for the last decade and change and they have really stifled any legitimate criticism or change in the industry because everyone refuses to stop reading those manga or anything like it.

My biggest problem is that the more I look at it, the more the three series seem to do the same thing (just to extremely different degrees of success) with bland main characters (though Naruto was a loner, Ichigo was a punk, and Luffy was basically Goku) and extremely shallow antagonists with side characters who are entirely useless. IMO, the only difference is the quality of the writers behind them.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but Sensui....Shishio....why are memorable and intelligent villains like this who aren't pretentious up the ass and come off as just threatening enough without seeming overpowered so hard to come by in this day and age. Those are great and memorable villains, and you'd think that a lot of shonen manga would try to capitalize on making villains of that calibur as well, but we usually get some boring bad guy who had some generic tragic back story that makes him think he's doing the right thing by basically being a very uneducated interpretation of what someone would expect a fascist with super abilities to be like. Seriously, though, even the villains that are technically "smart" in most modern shonen still suck because they are written with very little substance to them. I mean, hell, even freaking Freeza from Dragon Ball was more interesting than most villains today.

Yeah, I'm sure it gets better after Skypiea but I can't really exaggerate that it really did kill all momentum of enthusiasm I had for it. Every time I've tried to read it since I just can't get into it. But I do acknowledge that he puts a lot into it and deserves much of his success for it, but Skypiea was essentially a terrible version of Alabasta without any of the good points and I had a feeling it was a formula he would milk again with varying degrees of success and I thought I'd merely read enough.

True, while I wouldn't say it was terrible myself, Skypiea was mostly pretty boring and really hurt the momentum the series had been building up to that point. Then it quite naturally took a while for Oda to build that momentum back up, and the Water Seven arc is honestly pretty slow but I do feel that the Enies Lobby is the best arc to use the standard One Piece story arc formula, and Thriller Bark was entertaining for what its worth. Impel Down and Marineford kept me reading because they were at least a different formula from what One Piece had been known for at the time. Once the time-skip happened, though, we were back to square one, and I have since become really fucking tired of Oda relying on the same tricks that he's been using in this series for well over a decade, now.

If the man would do something about his vices (seek help already) then he could absolutely be the best shonen mangaka out there. But he also hasn't really done much in a decade except end an arc and meander about for a while, so I don't even know on what level I can judge his work.

Truth be told, despite how much I bitch, moan, and rant about my problems with the Chimera Ant arc, I have to be honest and say that I still liked it on the whole, as flaws as it really was. What pisses me off is how most fans think its his best work for no other reason than "ZOMG its SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO epicz and has rly powerful villainz n' shit!" Well, OK, that's an exaggeration, but whenever I try to point out that I think the arc has big problems to any blind idiot in the HXH fan-base (which I despise, despite it being one of my own favorite shonen series), they tell me off and just chalk it up to Togashi being eccentric or whatnot. My response is simply: eccentricity doesn't excuse anyone from lazy to downright bad writing.

Anyways, that said, I still can't deny that I really do like the arc on the whole. It has a ton of interesting concepts and the main ones are executed well. Meruem is a horribly overpowered villain, but his actual character progression and psyche are extremely well-done and he's a thoroughly interesting character to analyze. The arc also introduces some fucking awesome characters, Knuckle (an obvious call-back to Kuwabara in and of himself) easily being my favorite addition to an already rather large cast of characters. And for all of my problems with it, the arc still managed to keep me reading and wondering what happened next, even if it had me pissed off at times, and that's a testament to Togashi's talent as a writer to keep me coming back for more. It really reminded me of when I used to watch Yu Yu Hakusho on a weekly basis on Toonami and couldn't stand it every time an episode ended as I was always eager for the next Saturday to come so that I could continue the story. Its a show that constantly kept me coming back for more, and IMO was a better series than HXH due to being more consistent with its quality (though to be fair HXH is a far more ambitious series than YYH).

I would actually like a character who is good yet who isn't milquetoast, honestly. Kenshin, Kuwabara, or Tenma. They all have realistic faults, but are all unabashedly good guys and are excellent characters for it. But I do agree with your point, too, anyone who isn't a boring bland lead or an Emo Joe character would be a huge step up from what we have now.

Seriously, I'm just flat-out tired of the Gary-Sues out there who have the roles of protagonists in mainstream shonen series. Mangaka try to disguise that by giving them pseudo-attitudes, but they just turn out to be gimmicks (like he's a punk or a delinquent), without the substance to make those characters interesting and to make those gimmicks work.  For example, you can call a character like Oga from Beelzebub a delinquent or whatnot, but he doesn't have the substance of a true delinquent character. That character type was made famous by characters like Onizua from Shonan Junai Gumi (he's no longer a delinquent when he's an adult in GTO, though, but that is a natural progression of his character), who brought the comedic factor to the roll, and the fantasy-like interpretation of those characters in YYH brought another kind of substance to that character type. Yusuke brought the "bad-ass" factor to it while also having a sense of dignity and intelligence to him that defies what you would associate with that kind of character, while Kuwabara made the whole honor code and respect factor of that character type a really commonplace theme. Most modern shonen just try to emulate that old-school character type without seeming to understand the substance of what made those kinds of characters work in the old-school series that made them popular. That's merely just one example of me finding that most of the younger mangaka just don't seem to put much substance behind their characters in general.

I don't understand it at all. It was literally one of those moments where you already have it figured out in your head, but because the author pulls a cheat it just ends up insulting you. Berserker wasn't fast enough to beat Hermit back when the manga started, and now Kenichi is far faster than him and somehow Berserker keeps up with him? Based on what? He didn't train or anything, you can't get faster like that. If I'm not mistaken Hermit actually said that Berserker was at his limits in speed and strength because he didn't train which is why he beat him...

So how can he be stronger and faster than someone who is like 16 times stronger and faster than him? Because watching forms doesn't improve strength or speed.

So, I just read the last few chapters up to the current point just so I could see what you're talking about. I think I saw it mentioned that Berserker had been "practicing" on his own while Kensei just taught him key points about how to effectively use his Ki. But I may have just read a different translation or something of the sort. Either way, though, I still think its bogus that Matsuena downright contradicted his theme of training trumping over pure talent. It was implied in one of the most recent chapters that Berserker is just naturally able to fight on Kenichi's level, but that's utter bull-crap. I don't care how "talented" he is or how much of a "genius" he is. There is a limit to how rapidly you can increase the power of a character. If this series made any lick of sense, then there's no way that Berserker could have gained that much strength, speed, and skill in order to fight on the same level as Kenichi since the Ragnarok arc based mostly on his talent. Just having a few key things taught to you without any strict training and still getting that powerful is stupid. If that logic were consistent throughout the series, then Takeda should be multiple times stronger than Kenichi, and she's actually said to be talented and unlike Berserker he has a master class fighter training him on a daily basis. The complete inconsistency of characters' levels of strength in this series really show just how little Matsuena gives a shit about his own series. Like I said, the dude obviously stopped giving a shit years ago, which is why I learned to stop giving a shit and stop reading the series altogether, as well. It used to be a fun little guilty pleasure. Now I just feel guilty for sticking with it as long as I even did, way past when it went from decently fun to downright embarrassing.

[Spark Of Spirit]

So, me and Spark/Desensitized were messaging each other earlier about how ridiculously low a certain manga series I used to read and that Spark still follows has sunk to utter rock bottom. From there we kind of expanded our discussion into all of our pet peeves with modern shonen series in general, and I thought that this could generate some interesting discussion to some of you guys as well, so I'll continue our conversation over here, on this thread.

Our conversation kind of blew out, so I'm eager to see what everyone else thinks as well. 

For the record, I think most would agree you're right. The "big three" have been popular for the last decade and change and they have really stifled any legitimate criticism or change in the industry because everyone refuses to stop reading those manga or anything like it.

My biggest problem is that the more I look at it, the more the three series seem to do the same thing (just to extremely different degrees of success) with bland main characters (though Naruto was a loner, Ichigo was a punk, and Luffy was basically Goku) and extremely shallow antagonists with side characters who are entirely useless. IMO, the only difference is the quality of the writers behind them.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but Sensui....Shishio....why are memorable and intelligent villains like this who aren't pretentious up the ass and come off as just threatening enough without seeming overpowered so hard to come by in this day and age. Those are great and memorable villains, and you'd think that a lot of shonen manga would try to capitalize on making villains of that calibur as well, but we usually get some boring bad guy who had some generic tragic back story that makes him think he's doing the right thing by basically being a very uneducated interpretation of what someone would expect a fascist with super abilities to be like. Seriously, though, even the villains that are technically "smart" in most modern shonen still suck because they are written with very little substance to them. I mean, hell, even freaking Freeza from Dragon Ball was more interesting than most villains today.

I think most people take the easy way out and think "What if I just made Stalin the villain and changed his name and tweaked his goal?" Because most villains just seem like that to me nowadays. They either want to destroy the world because evil or they want to rule it because they are superior. The thing is, there are different reasons for why someone would want to do either of those things (as in real life) but those are never explored. Now, I'm not expecting a villain like Johan Liebert out of a shonen, but even characters like Shishio or Sensui had different wrinkles in their motivations that were both true to life and interesting to read about. Frieza might have been pretty straightforward, but he still had character besides being just evil- he actually used his brain.

Yeah, I'm sure it gets better after Skypiea but I can't really exaggerate that it really did kill all momentum of enthusiasm I had for it. Every time I've tried to read it since I just can't get into it. But I do acknowledge that he puts a lot into it and deserves much of his success for it, but Skypiea was essentially a terrible version of Alabasta without any of the good points and I had a feeling it was a formula he would milk again with varying degrees of success and I thought I'd merely read enough.

True, while I wouldn't say it was terrible myself, Skypiea was mostly pretty boring and really hurt the momentum the series had been building up to that point. Then it quite naturally took a while for Oda to build that momentum back up, and the Water Seven arc is honestly pretty slow but I do feel that the Enies Lobby is the best arc to use the standard One Piece story arc formula, and Thriller Bark was entertaining for what its worth. Impel Down and Marineford kept me reading because they were at least a different formula from what One Piece had been known for at the time. Once the time-skip happened, though, we were back to square one, and I have since become really fucking tired of Oda relying on the same tricks that he's been using in this series for well over a decade, now.

Yeah, I mean I get why it's still going- because it's objectively the best thing in Shonen Jump on an effort scale, but that doesn't necessarily mean I enjoy it. But there has yet to be a shonen to beat it at its own game. Which in over a decade is downright embarrassing for the genre. If One Piece leaves unchallenged when it ends, I don't consider that a good thing, I consider that meaning everyone was scared to compete against it.

If the man would do something about his vices (seek help already) then he could absolutely be the best shonen mangaka out there. But he also hasn't really done much in a decade except end an arc and meander about for a while, so I don't even know on what level I can judge his work.

Truth be told, despite how much I bitch, moan, and rant about my problems with the Chimera Ant arc, I have to be honest and say that I still liked it on the whole, as flaws as it really was. What pisses me off is how most fans think its his best work for no other reason than "ZOMG its SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO epicz and has rly powerful villainz n' shit!" Well, OK, that's an exaggeration, but whenever I try to point out that I think the arc has big problems to any blind idiot in the HXH fan-base (which I despise, despite it being one of my own favorite shonen series), they tell me off and just chalk it up to Togashi being eccentric or whatnot. My response is simply: eccentricity doesn't excuse anyone from lazy to downright bad writing.

Anyways, that said, I still can't deny that I really do like the arc on the whole. It has a ton of interesting concepts and the main ones are executed well. Meruem is a horribly overpowered villain, but his actual character progression and psyche are extremely well-done and he's a thoroughly interesting character to analyze. The arc also introduces some fucking awesome characters, Knuckle (an obvious call-back to Kuwabara in and of himself) easily being my favorite addition to an already rather large cast of characters. And for all of my problems with it, the arc still managed to keep me reading and wondering what happened next, even if it had me pissed off at times, and that's a testament to Togashi's talent as a writer to keep me coming back for more. It really reminded me of when I used to watch Yu Yu Hakusho on a weekly basis on Toonami and couldn't stand it every time an episode ended as I was always eager for the next Saturday to come so that I could continue the story. Its a show that constantly kept me coming back for more, and IMO was a better series than HXH due to being more consistent with its quality (though to be fair HXH is a far more ambitious series than YYH).

My issue with HXH is something I alluded to before in another thread.

I don't understand what the point is anymore.

YYH was about a punk growing up into a man (though the anime had to salvage that) and becoming a better person, but I thought HXH was about the search for Gon's father. If it's not that, then what is it about? I'm not even sure he knows anymore.

I would actually like a character who is good yet who isn't milquetoast, honestly. Kenshin, Kuwabara, or Tenma. They all have realistic faults, but are all unabashedly good guys and are excellent characters for it. But I do agree with your point, too, anyone who isn't a boring bland lead or an Emo Joe character would be a huge step up from what we have now.

Seriously, I'm just flat-out tired of the Gary-Sues out there who have the roles of protagonists in mainstream shonen series. Mangaka try to disguise that by giving them pseudo-attitudes, but they just turn out to be gimmicks (like he's a punk or a delinquent), without the substance to make those characters interesting and to make those gimmicks work.  For example, you can call a character like Oga from Beelzebub a delinquent or whatnot, but he doesn't have the substance of a true delinquent character. That character type was made famous by characters like Onizua from Shonan Junai Gumi (he's no longer a delinquent when he's an adult in GTO, though, but that is a natural progression of his character), who brought the comedic factor to the roll, and the fantasy-like interpretation of those characters in YYH brought another kind of substance to that character type. Yusuke brought the "bad-ass" factor to it while also having a sense of dignity and intelligence to him that defies what you would associate with that kind of character, while Kuwabara made the whole honor code and respect factor of that character type a really commonplace theme. Most modern shonen just try to emulate that old-school character type without seeming to understand the substance of what made those kinds of characters work in the old-school series that made them popular. That's merely just one example of me finding that most of the younger mangaka just don't seem to put much substance behind their characters in general.

This might sound harsh, but I think it's that most people who write manga these days have only ever read manga. So their version of a hero is not a "hero", it's a "shonen hero" which dilutes the original purpose of a hero. You could tell reading Kenshin that its writer was a history buff, you could tell reading Dragonball that the writer loved fairy tales, you could tell reading YYH that the writer was a fan of ghost stories, and all that helped separate the wheat from the chaff in uniqueness and variety. Not to say there isn't anything inherently wrong in preferring the genre of manga, but I'm pretty sure Tezuka wasn't just satisfied looking at himself in a mirror all day. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the writer of Gantz does.

I don't understand it at all. It was literally one of those moments where you already have it figured out in your head, but because the author pulls a cheat it just ends up insulting you. Berserker wasn't fast enough to beat Hermit back when the manga started, and now Kenichi is far faster than him and somehow Berserker keeps up with him? Based on what? He didn't train or anything, you can't get faster like that. If I'm not mistaken Hermit actually said that Berserker was at his limits in speed and strength because he didn't train which is why he beat him...

So how can he be stronger and faster than someone who is like 16 times stronger and faster than him? Because watching forms doesn't improve strength or speed.

So, I just read the last few chapters up to the current point just so I could see what you're talking about. I think I saw it mentioned that Berserker had been "practicing" on his own while Kensei just taught him key points about how to effectively use his Ki. But I may have just read a different translation or something of the sort. Either way, though, I still think its bogus that Matsuena downright contradicted his theme of training trumping over pure talent. It was implied in one of the most recent chapters that Berserker is just naturally able to fight on Kenichi's level, but that's utter bull-crap. I don't care how "talented" he is or how much of a "genius" he is. There is a limit to how rapidly you can increase the power of a character. If this series made any lick of sense, then there's no way that Berserker could have gained that much strength, speed, and skill in order to fight on the same level as Kenichi since the Ragnarok arc based mostly on his talent. Just having a few key things taught to you without any strict training and still getting that powerful is stupid. If that logic were consistent throughout the series, then Takeda should be multiple times stronger than Kenichi, and she's actually said to be talented and unlike Berserker he has a master class fighter training him on a daily basis. The complete inconsistency of characters' levels of strength in this series really show just how little Matsuena gives a shit about his own series. Like I said, the dude obviously stopped giving a shit years ago, which is why I learned to stop giving a shit and stop reading the series altogether, as well. It used to be a fun little guilty pleasure. Now I just feel guilty for sticking with it as long as I even did, way past when it went from decently fun to downright embarrassing.

If they mentioned it, I must have missed it but... it's still a pretty lousy excuse. Let's also consider that in the tournament that Siegfried was apparently "the closest to being a master class fighter" and how Takeda as well shot up the ranks with his training. Berserker leapfrogging them all by training for at best a couple of weeks is massively insulting to every other character in the manga and its fans.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This might sound harsh, but I think it's that most people who write manga these days have only ever read manga. So their version of a hero is not a "hero", it's a "shonen hero" which dilutes the original purpose of a hero.

That's the exact same impression I've been getting with currently running shonen manga as well. Some might argue that the mangaka are strictly only trying to market their manga to Japanese people, but even if you try to cater to a specific demographic, crap material is still crap. Stuff like Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin and whatnot originally came out at times when manga and anime were extremely niche in the west (they are still technically niche, now, but they are popular enough to the point that tons of anime and manga get localized over here on a regular basis, now). So, naturally, those series were also written with just their local country in mind, but since the writers behind them were talented and the stories were so well written, it turns out that they had a really broad appeal beyond just their target demographic, and Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin were both huge hits when they aired on Toonami. Its clear that people like Togashi and Watsuki had multiple influences beyond just other manga. Hell, Watsuki has stated before that he was a fan of some Marvel comics, notably X-Men and Spider-Man; you can actually see little tributes to both in certain character designs of his, with Aoshi's original trench coat heavily resembling that of Gambit's, and there was that one villain in the Revenge arc who's costume was such as obvious reference to Venom. The basic point, though, is that these 2, and many other old-school shonen mangaka, drew from multiple inspirations of their own rather than just what was popular at the time, and the result were the production of stories that felt like stuff that they really wanted to write and put a lot of passion into writing. And we got such classic and memorable manga series through those talented writers. Rather than just copying what was popular, they became popular on many of their own merits and became trend-setters for future manga.

Unfortunately, many upcoming mangaka apparently only tried to crib off of what made those manga popular, and didn't try to incorporate enough unique substance and flavor of their own, and it seems like the process was that the newer generation of mangaka were only being influenced by the older works of other mangaka. it seems like they were just trying to emulate what was popular from previous hit series to make a popular series of their own, rather than just a generally good one. Hell, even mangaka who clearly had tons of other influences and had great series when they first started out, such as Oda with One Piece, has dragged his series on for so long that its now an extremely derivative version of itself, which is to say the latest arcs seem to merely only try to crib off the success of the older arcs, and the result is laughable at best and just flat-out stale most of the time.

I'm not saying that current or future mangaka have to take inspiration from non-Japanese or even non-manga material (though it certainly wouldn't hurt), but rather that they just need to incorporate their own inspirations into what they think makes a good story while making sure to really focus on making their story good and standing out on its own merits. I just can't help but feel that the current mental state of mangaka in the current shonen industry is to just try and stick with whatever makes their series popular, whether its really quality work or not. A quote from Bakuman, one of the best shonen manga in recent memory, says it best: "If its interesting, people will read it." Yeah, its not the exact quote word for word, but that basic idea is just so damn true, yet nobody seems to follow that mentality anymore with currently running shonen series. Maybe that's just me, but I honestly feel that way, and I really have tried to appreciate a lot of current series on their own merits, but I have such a hard time even getting into any of the plethora that I have been trying to read.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm not going to beat around the bush about this, but I'm a huge fan of good versus evil stories and they're my favorite types of stories. It's why Monster is my favorite manga. But that doesn't mean all it takes to make a story is to have a good guy and a bad guy for me to be satisfied. You have to explore emotions, motivations, and desires, and show exactly how everyone came to be where they are and why they're going there. This isn't a truth for manga, but for pretty much all stories. People want to be invested in a story for it to mean something to them.

The problem is that manga (and anime) doesn't do this as much anymore. Emotions don't go deeper than vague anger and happiness, motivations are never deeper than "he does it because that's who he is", and desires are never anything other than "I want it because I don't have it", and that's not been enough for me as a reader. But they're all like this now.

That might be why there's so many school mangas/shows with same cast of characters. Because all these people know is school and teenagers, they don't look very far in the world they live in for inspiration. I think all the social interaction problems Japan is going through right now might be proof of that. They want shallow material, so that's why they're getting it.

[Rynnec]

difference is the quality of the writers behind them.
I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but Sensui....Shishio....why are memorable and intelligent villains like this who aren't pretentious up the ass and come off as just threatening enough without seeming overpowered so hard to come by in this day and age. Those are great and memorable villains, and you'd think that a lot of shonen manga would try to capitalize on making villains of that calibur as well, but we usually get some boring bad guy who had some generic tragic back story that makes him think he's doing the right thing by basically being a very uneducated interpretation of what someone would expect a fascist with super abilities to be like. Seriously, though, even the villains that are technically "smart" in most modern shonen still suck because they are written with very little substance to them. I mean, hell, even freaking Freeza from Dragon Ball was more interesting than most villains today.

That's what bugged me about the revelation of Tobi's identities and motives in Naruto. What could've been a decent Joker-esque "doing it for the lulz"-type villain was turned into yet another "tragic" villain with generic motives. A similar problem also exists with Sasuke, who's whole conflict and character arc have been done, and done better. The only thing interesting about Sasuke's turn to villain-y is that we actually got to see it firsthand...except Sasuke was pretty one-dimensional before his heel-turn so I can't really get into his character because it feels that Kishimoto's making him more complex than he really is.

Really though it's a shame because the sub-villains of these series are intresting enough, it's the main villains that are the problem. The only villain in shounen that I really thought was memorable (as in, legitimately a good villain, and not like Aizen, who's really only remembered for how asinine his plots and "motives" were, and I use that word VERY loosely when it comes to him) is Light Yagami.

I think most people take the easy way out and think "What if I just made Stalin the villain and changed his name and tweaked his goal?" Because most villains just seem like that to me nowadays. They either want to destroy the world because evil or they want to rule it because they are superior. The thing is, there are different reasons for why someone would want to do either of those things (as in real life) but those are never explored. Now, I'm not expecting a villain like Johan Liebert out of a shonen, but even characters like Shishio or Sensui had different wrinkles in their motivations that were both true to life and interesting to read about. Frieza might have been pretty straightforward, but he still had character besides being just evil- he actually used his brain.

Seems that most writers think that giving them a sad backstory is enough, unfortunately they usually only get these backstories right before they die, when revealing them when they were still alive would have fleshed out their characters much more, and nothing really interesting is done with them.

Seriously, I'm just flat-out tired of the Gary-Sues out there who have the roles of protagonists in mainstream shonen series. Mangaka try to disguise that by giving them pseudo-attitudes, but they just turn out to be gimmicks (like he's a punk or a delinquent), without the substance to make those characters interesting and to make those gimmicks work.  For example, you can call a character like Oga from Beelzebub a delinquent or whatnot, but he doesn't have the substance of a true delinquent character. That character type was made famous by characters like Onizua from Shonan Junai Gumi (he's no longer a delinquent when he's an adult in GTO, though, but that is a natural progression of his character), who brought the comedic factor to the roll, and the fantasy-like interpretation of those characters in YYH brought another kind of substance to that character type. Yusuke brought the "bad-ass" factor to it while also having a sense of dignity and intelligence to him that defies what you would associate with that kind of character, while Kuwabara made the whole honor code and respect factor of that character type a really commonplace theme. Most modern shonen just try to emulate that old-school character type without seeming to understand the substance of what made those kinds of characters work in the old-school series that made them popular. That's merely just one example of me finding that most of the younger mangaka just don't seem to put much substance behind their characters in general.

Doesn't really help that said heroes really aren't that entertaining to watch. I myself would like to see more shounen Anti-Heroes, ones who have actual vices and flaws and isn't just a goody-goody in disguise of one (the only one that immediately comes to mind is Gamma from Zombie Powder, and his series was eventually canceled), someone like Sol Badguy, Ragna, or even Yuri Lowell and Dante, but actually originating from a manga. That, or more Kenshin/Vash's. Someone who's older than most of the immediate cast but still gets a fleshed out character arc y'know?

Yeah, I mean I get why it's still going- because it's objectively the best thing in Shonen Jump on an effort scale, but that doesn't necessarily mean I enjoy it. But there has yet to be a shonen to beat it at its own game. Which in over a decade is downright embarrassing for the genre. If One Piece leaves unchallenged when it ends, I don't consider that a good thing, I consider that meaning everyone was scared to compete against it.

Speaking of that, was there ever a manga around that was as good as Dragonball in effort by the time it was ending its run?

[Spark Of Spirit]

Tobi's reveal probably would have gone over better if it was revealed much sooner. And if, you know, he wasn't so shallow as to obey Madara because he was too dumb not too.

Speaking of that, was there ever a manga around that was as good as Dragonball in effort by the time it was ending its run?

You know- there was something out there that had vague rankings of manga throughout the years but I can't for the life of me remember what it said. But there was a substantial break between the Dragonball and Z halves to where I'm sure something had to come up to compete with it. After all, the first part took a while to take off in popularity as well. So it wasn't like ten straight years at #1 or anything.