Battle Shonen Stuff

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Manga-wise, on the other hand, Rurouni Kenshin is my favorite, and there haven't really been much to match up to it in terms of keeping me entertained.

Yeah, Rurouni Kenshin is easily the best mainstream shonen manga that I've ever read. Its honestly my favorite manga in general.

Anyway, my issue with shonen these days are the constant usage of main leads that has to be a Goku mirror. Seriously, Naruto, Luffy, Natsu, and Gon (potentially more, I don't know)

Gon is nothing like Goku or those other characters, though. A lot of people don't take the time to actually look at and analyze his character, but aside from having the appearance of a spunky, generic shonen good boy, he's one of the most morally gray protagonists that are there in shonen series. Take notice to how he never looks down on any of his friends that resort of killing, like Killua and Kurapika, and has no issues killing himself when he has to. He has that sense of adventure and that well-mannered sort of attitude that you might expect of typical shonen characters, but his view of the world and his judgement of people have nothing to do with the standard morals that most of these characters follow. When Kurapika was trying to hunt down and eliminate the Genei Ryodan, he didn't try to stop him from killing just because "killing is bad," but rather tried to lighten the weight of his burden by helping him out in hopes that he didn't have to do anymore killing if Gon could help it. Also, in the last arc of HXH, Gon developed into a far more aggressive and ruthless character, and this is done pretty well as it happens gradually over the course of a long arc rather than abruptly just for the sake of being edgy. At one point he becomes so determined to carry out a goal of trying to resurrect a dead ally that he basically holds an innocent person hostage in order to get the only person who can possibly perform such an act to do so. And in all this time its not portrayed as something cool or edgy, but how his character is degrading for the worse based on an impossible ideal. At any rate, he is not the same breed of character as the ones you mentioned. That's just the standard appearance he presents that might seem to hold true under normal situations, but HXH is a series that constantly puts its characters in anything but standard situations down the line.

[Grave]

Yeah, I stopped reading HxH way before those arcs you were talking about (I think). I think it was somewhere around when Gon and company was going to Killua's house that I stopped reading.

When I say Goku clone, it has nothing to do with morals or appearance. It's that "airhead" trait that I can't stand. They're a genius when it comes to fighting, but an idiot when it comes to everything else. I'm just too tired of that trope.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Even that trope pretty much gets dropped in later arcs of the series. Togashi actually makes it a point to show how that carefree attitude can lead to bad consequences despite good intentions, and Gon has to learn from that. Most other shonen series portray that as being a good thing, which is what really bugs me.

Either way, HXH is probably the smartest long-running shonen that's still going. Its also probably one of the darkest shonen series that I've seen, though it falsely presents itself as a more positive-spirited series in the beginning.

Anyways, I do agree with you in regards to the other characters. I can't stand the generic do-gooders who are complete morons when it comes to anything but fighting. Oddly enough, I didn't mind it with Goku in Dragon Ball mostly because it was played to comedic effect. But it I absolutely loathe how ever since then nearly every shonen series has saw fit to copy that character type just because Dragon Ball made it popular. Now we have a ton of clones of the same exact character type projected into most mainstream shonen series and it rightfully drives people (including myself) insane. I even complained about boring, generic shonen main characters on multiple occasions in this thread alone.

Ideally I'd want more characters along the lines of either Yusuke from YYH or Kenshin from RK. With Yusuke, he doesn't always care about doing what's right but rather just focuses on getting the job done. And while he's not necessarily that intelligent outside of fights, he doesn't act like a carefree moron either. He actually has personality and substance to him, and whether its just being a punk or conversing with other characters in-between fights, he's always an interesting character to be around. With Kenshin, I like the fact that he's actually an adult with years of wisdom behind him. I know that this character isn't done more often in shonen because its marketed more to kids and its probably more popular to make teenage heroes for those types of series with the adults really only serving as the mentors. But I like that for once we have a character who has already had all of his training (or most of it, in this case), and who has already made a name for himself in the world he lives in. In this case, you see that he is living a bit of a sad life as a wanderer, atoning for the mistakes and bad deeds of his past. I like the element of his past constantly coming back to haunt him, and how layered and matured his character is. Its really refreshing for a shonen series, and rather than being about some annoying kid always talking about how he'll be so great in the future (yet still not developing at all despite hundreds of chapters worth of time to have the opportunity to develop), its about an adult who is living his future and despite having had the best of intentions in his youth, it turns out that his future isn't all that it was cracked up to be.

Really, I don't necessarily need more shonen characters like Yusuke or Kenshin (I'd prefer something more unique, anyways), but at this point anything is better than the generic "good kid" that plagues most shonen series these days.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I think what separates Gon is that he's not a genius at fighting. The only thing he was ever fast at was learning how to use Nen. Seriously, Killua is stronger than him, Leorio is smarter than him, and Kurapika is more knowledgeable about the world than him. He's a simple kid, yes, but nothing he does ever strikes me as stupid so much as ignorant of the world. He's also the most childish and the most selfish of any of his friends (even Killua) and is by far the most unstable. You know you've got problems when Killua (the trained assassin) is berating you for doing something cold.

He's not my favorite character in the manga (he's actually my least favorite of the main four), but again that's partially because of the negative traits he has. It has nothing to do with the character being written badly or whatever.

But I agree about getting bored of the air-headed hero. It's like they can't give the character a motive for being good other than because... he is. Which is unbelievably lazy.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I could've sworn that I posted here.

In terms of anime I don't really watch any shonen anymore. I read them which I'll get to in a bit. The only shonen that I'll actually watch (and that's because I own them on dvd) are Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Rurouni Kenshin, Death Note and Yu Yu Hakusho. And those are the ones that're better suited for me. I've tried watching Naruto, Bleach, Soul Eater and Fairy Tail, and for the most part I've stuck with Naruto and Bleach for a little bit, but eventually ended up giving up on them due to inconsistent animation, bad dubs, and v/a's that went with the annoying characters. One Piece I ended up dropping after maybe 3-5 episodes. The series is far too ugly for my taste. Fairy Tail and Soul Eater never clicked, not to mention that Fairy Tail is another one of those series that cheats and used recycled animation (I hate that)

When this happened to me I sort of drifted away from anime outside of stuff like Monster or Bakuman. Shonen has been milking the same formula for too long without many, if any, new ideas. I've kind of gone back and watched (or read) more older stuff based on recommendations. It's how I found stuff like Shounen Gumi (the GTO prequel), Slam Dunk, and Martian Successor Nadesico. Mostly because the new guys aren't making things I'm into.

With all that being said I don't know what Psyren did, because it didn't bring anything new to the table. Hell it has teens saving the world for goodness sake, but everything in it just felt like a breath of fresh air. It's like it took elements from Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, and Back to the Future (exaggeration) and combined them to make something fresh (I still can't explain why it feels refreshing). I like the entire cast of characters. Everyone used their frickin domes (not many series like that) and everyone held their own. It's just too bad that Japan didn't care for it (yet they prefer the Naruto's, Bleach's and One Piece's... "shrugs").

I had more to say, but I'm having constant brain farts

Psyren and Enigma were like this with me, too. They didn't offer anything new (Psyren even started out as Gantz-lite, then completely blew it out of the water while Gantz never became more than trash), yet their execution revealed an author who cared about story, characters, and basic bits that make all stories great. They were well paced, they had an interesting battle between good and evil, motivations beyond because, and every character was likeable in some way.

But they weren't clones of one of the big three so no one was interested.

I doubt Bakuman would have lasted if it wasn't written by the Death Note guys since they could keep a phenomenal pace up.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I just watched Y Ruler of Time's 2-part video on The Downfall of Bleach. While these videos are a bit old, I felt that they were definitely a good watch, and in many was emulate what I find to be wrong with so many shonen in general these days. That is to say, a lot of the problems that he points out about Bleach are things that I can apply to a lot of series, such as introducing too many new character at once without properly developing any of them, and before you even get a chance to know them as a reader, you get introduced to yet another slew of new characters for almost no reason at all. There's also the element of dragged out fights, generic villains that act smart at first but then end up losing out of sheer stupidity, and just really recycled plots.

As for his comments specifically pertaining to Bleach, I do have to agree with them wholeheartedly, though. Keep in mind, I stopped reading the series YEARS ago at some point in-between the Hueco Mundo arc and the Arrancar arc. Its just got far too grating for me to keep up with. I mean, I have my problems with stuff like One Piece (which is so formulaic right now and has pretty much bored me off of the series for at least a while) and Naruto (which I still find boring right now, even though everyone else thinks its "so epic" in its current arc), but neither of those series ever came closer to driving me up the wall as much as Bleach ever did. It just commits every cardinal sin of bad writing. I was one of those people who got into Bleach back when it was popular, and when I first watched it I legitimately liked everything up to the end of the Soul Society arc (of course, now I have problems with the series when I look back on even that arc, but I won't deny that it was when the series was clearly at its peak in terms of quality and popularity), but then the series veered off-track so quickly that it just forced me to finally give up on it, and it takes A LOT for a series to make me do that. For the record, I still read Naruto despite not having liked it for years if only because it has become a habit to stick with the series since it was one of the first manga that I ever read. Its just ridiculous how wrong this series has gone, as if Kubo was actively trying to write the worst material that he could think of. There are loads of inconsistencies abound, the most painful of which is when he makes character who have undergone complete character arcs early on in the series completely regress and become even bigger idiots than they ever were just for the sake of pushing on the plot a little bit longer (or in most cases drawing out some pointless fight). He was pulling shit even when I quit the series years ago, and from all of the complaints that I have constantly heard from fans, he has just made that problem even worse (if it could have even gotten any worse than it was), as time went on.

Its such a shame because most modern shonen seem to have, unfortunately, been influenced by Bleach quite a bit. To be fair, they were probably influenced by the popular parts of Bleach back when the series was at its peak, but for whatever reason a lot of shonen seem to be taking after Bleach's many vices, as well. Maybe its just me who sees things that way, but after having watched those videos, it really brought up my issue with just how bad shonen can really be when its written bad, and unfortunately there are far too many examples of that, and as this video shows, Bleach is probably the most notorious example of bad shonen writing.

[Rynnec]

Kubo and Kishimoto seem to be having a "who can write the most bullshit" competition. Both manga have their moments, but their buried in all the crap the others pull.

FWIW, I think Bleach is at least slightly better than Naruto. Which isn't really saying much, but it's been kinda slowly getting better-ish. At the very least Ichigo's more tolerable a protagonist than Naruto, Orihime and Rukia aren't anywhere near as annoying and useless as Sakura (they're stil pretty bland, but at least they can be legitimately amusing when they're not angsting or bitching), and all of Ichigo's rivals are easily more effective as rival's than Sasuke. There's also the fact that Bleach's story, while crappy, isn't as stuck up its own ass like Naruto's seems to be, plus as horrible as characters like Mayuri and Yamamoto are, at least they're not put up on a fucking pedastal like Itachi is. Seriously, the guy mind-raped his little brother and murdered his entire clan for poorly explained reasons, and we're supposed to believe he's this great misunderstood hero?

OTOH, there's quite a few minor characters in Bleach that grate on me to no end, and they get quite a bit of focus for god knows what reason, any humor that's outside of a slice-of-life context is very hit-or-miss, and Kubo takes fucking forever to answer any important questions in the narrative.

I dunno, I sorta have I love-hate relationship with this manga if you couldn't tell.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just because I was bored, I would like to hear other people's opinions on the tropes that they detest about shonen anime the most. All of the stuff that makes them uninteresting, annoying, or downright un-watchable for you. Then, I'd like to see you or others offer up some ideas on how to get rid of or improve upon those said tropes to make for a potentially good shonen series.

I'll be listing some of my own later, but I mainly want to see other people's opinions on this one.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Training arcs.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Training arcs.

I agree, but I would like to point out that I believe Dragon Ball is the one and only shonen series to have ever done training arcs right. They had a very Karate Kid-esque vibe to them, which just made the training segments actually interesting to watch to see how they payed off later. Most shonen series don't get that, and in the end most training arcs become a cheap way of padding without having the talent to add in any substance to them. Training arcs COULD be a great way to actually further develop characters in shonen series, but I doubt most shonen mangaka even know what character development is, let alone have the talent to actually pull it off right.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Training arcs.

I agree, but I would like to point out that I believe Dragon Ball is the one and only shonen series to have ever done training arcs right. They had a very Karate Kid-esque vibe to them, which just made the training segments actually interesting to watch to see how they payed off later. Most shonen series don't get that, and in the end most training arcs become a cheap way of padding without having the talent to add in any substance to them. Training arcs COULD be a great way to actually further develop characters in shonen series, but I doubt most shonen mangaka even know what character development is, let alone have the talent to actually pull it off right.

Well, Dragon Ball was the first to have the whole crazy and funny training to get massively more powerful idea so I let it go as it is. But I mean devoting whole sections of a story for a good guy to carrot and a stick up to the next bad guy is beyond tired now. At least do it Dark Tournament style while it is masked behind the actual plot or something.

I find most in the genre now merely get held back by things like that "We gotta have a training arc", "We gotta have a tournament arc", "We gotta make the good guy lose here" whether it suits the story or not.

[Rynnec]

I despise asspull powerups out of nowhere and invincible/omniscient villains with no personality other than "smug master planner" and poorly-explained/pretentious motivations.

I'm also not too fond of "emo" rivals.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To me, you should only attempt an cliche sort of arc if you can actually bring your own spin to the formula, and try to make it potentially better than other works in the genre that have come before it. For that reason, nobody should try to make tournament arcs in shonen series anymore. The Dark Tournament arc is the best one that was ever written and still to this day firmly stands at the best in the tournament sub-genre of story arcs. I don't see anything ever topping it, so why bother even trying?

Here's another shonen trope that I hate:

-The main character has to be the strongest if his "team" or "group," and any leader-figure in a shonen series HAS to be physically stronger (or at least in terms of special abilities0 than everyone he leads.

My problem is: Why should that matter? Is the message that good and proper leadership requires physical dominance? That's a horrible lesson to teach to kids.

On this note, despite all of your faults with Togashi, even you have to give him credit for completely avoiding this trope in HXH. Gon is far from the strongest in his group (he is shown on multiple occasions to be behind both Kurapika and Killua, and even many other supporting characters who join him) and....there is no point in the entire series where any of that matters. There is no drive for Gon to be physically better than his friends, but just to improve himself for the sake of, well....improving himself. That's pretty fucking refreshing. I like that he's still willing to go out and help anyone he can and will take responsibility for covering his own ass in battle, despite knowing that he's usually at a disadvantage in both power and skill. What makes him stand-out and get the other characters to "follow" him, is because he has charisma, and he has the personality and wit to bring characters together for whatever cause or goal he's trying to work toward or help them work toward. He isn't exactly a leader, but he is the closest thing to a leader among his group of friends, and they would always rally behind him, but not because he's the strongest, but because he's a person that they can have faith in no matter what.

Another example, albeit in a sports series instead of a battle series, is in Slam Dunk. Sakuragi Hanamichi is pretty much the weak link on his team until the very end of the series. And....that's just fine. His team knows that he has a lot of passion for what he's doing (even if he doesn't always realize it), and they can see his potential to be truly great one day. He also is the one guy that can always boost team morale when things look like they are going south fast, so on that end I appreciate that the author doesn't automatically make him a great player, but rather a great TEAM player. Once again, he's not exactly the captain of his team, but you could argue that he is just as useful as good ol' "Gori" in that he in many ways is still responsible for helping lead the team to victory in terms of pumping them up on a psychological level. I am so glad that they didn't just have him surpass his rival Rukawa. They instead kept Rukawa as the goal he needed to work toward, and even by the end of the series he's still nowhere near as good as him, but by that point the rewarding feeling you get comes from how you know he has gained Rukawa's complete respect, even if Rukawa himself would never admit it at that point. I like stuff like that, personally.

Why do so few other shonen ever share that concept? I don't normally mind this trope too much, but it does get annoying in how its exploited in most shonen series these days.

[Spark Of Spirit]

On this note, despite all of your faults with Togashi, even you have to give him credit for completely avoiding this trope in HXH. Gon is far from the strongest in his group (he is shown on multiple occasions to be behind both Kurapika and Killua, and even many other supporting characters who join him) and....there is no point in the entire series where any of that matters. There is no drive for Gon to be physically better than his friends, but just to improve himself for the sake of, well....improving himself. That's pretty fucking refreshing. I like that he's still willing to go out and help anyone he can and will take responsibility for covering his own ass in battle, despite knowing that he's usually at a disadvantage in both power and skill. What makes him stand-out and get the other characters to "follow" him, is because he has charisma, and he has the personality and wit to bring characters together for whatever cause or goal he's trying to work toward or help them work toward. He isn't exactly a leader, but he is the closest thing to a leader among his group of friends, and they would always rally behind him, but not because he's the strongest, but because he's a person that they can have faith in no matter what.

Another example, albeit in a sports series instead of a battle series, is in Slam Dunk. Sakuragi Hanamichi is pretty much the weak link on his team until the very end of the series. And....that's just fine. His team knows that he has a lot of passion for what he's doing (even if he doesn't always realize it), and they can see his potential to be truly great one day. He also is the one guy that can always boost team morale when things look like they are going south fast, so on that end I appreciate that the author doesn't automatically make him a great player, but rather a great TEAM player. Once again, he's not exactly the captain of his team, but you could argue that he is just as useful as good ol' "Gori" in that he in many ways is still responsible for helping lead the team to victory in terms of pumping them up on a psychological level. I am so glad that they didn't just have him surpass his rival Rukawa. They instead kept Rukawa as the goal he needed to work toward, and even by the end of the series he's still nowhere near as good as him, but by that point the rewarding feeling you get comes from how you know he has gained Rukawa's complete respect, even if Rukawa himself would never admit it at that point. I like stuff like that, personally.

Why do so few other shonen ever share that concept? I don't normally mind this trope too much, but it does get annoying in how its exploited in most shonen series these days.

You can go further back to YYH if you want. Before Sensui's defeat, there is no clear "strongest" member of the group (though Yusuke is probably the best it is hardly dwelled upon very long) and he isn't really the leader in Chapter Black despite it as different people take charge when they need to.

Slam Dunk is another good example as is the newer one Kuroko No Basket (his skills have nothing to do with "strength") but even sports manga rarely go down this path. The main character is usually a star player overshadowed by possibly one rival on the same team.

Training arcs are good at a story's start when you want to delve into the world and the characters need something to do to pass time, but when the story starts it always feels like a crutch these days to have it stop because the hero needs to pump iron.

I despise asspull powerups out of nowhere and invincible/omniscient villains with no personality other than "smug master planner" and poorly-explained/pretentious motivations.

I'm also not too fond of "emo" rivals.

I kind of think the rival concept has been way too overdone. Friendly competition is nice, but not when it takes away from the story. Kenshin and Saito was a good rivalry, but I think Naruto and Sasuke might have ruined it for years to come.

To add to your power-up annoyance, I dislike when the character tells his enemy how his attack works. That is beyond stupid for anyone in a fight to do.

[Rynnec]

I despise asspull powerups out of nowhere and invincible/omniscient villains with no personality other than "smug master planner" and poorly-explained/pretentious motivations.

I'm also not too fond of "emo" rivals.

I kind of think the rival concept has been way too overdone. Friendly competition is nice, but not when it takes away from the story. Kenshin and Saito was a good rivalry, but I think Naruto and Sasuke might have ruined it for years to come.

Yeah, it's characters like Sasuke that really drag the concept down. Rival's like Vegeta, Saito, Grimmjow, and Char are the ones I prefer. But for the most part, rivalries are better when they start out as one of the central focuses of the story (like in S-CRY-Ed) rather than derail it (like in Naruto).

To add to your power-up annoyance, I dislike when the character tells his enemy how his attack works. That is beyond stupid for anyone in a fight to do.

Completely agreed. Why can't more mangaka just explain them in chapter notes or have another character figure out how the power works by themselves and then explain it. If there was one thing Bleach did right, it was having Gin outright lie about how his powers work to his enemy.