Battle Shonen Stuff

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I think that Gundam 0080 does count as shounen, but is don't consider it to be "battle shounen," hence why I didn't rank it (otherwise it'd be really high on my list).

[VLordGTZ]

Favorite Battle Shonen Manga:

1. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Stone Ocean being my favorite part)
2. Dragon Ball
3. Hunter X Hunter
4. One Piece
5. Yu Yu Hakusho

Anime:
1. Yu Yu Hakusho
2. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
3. Dragon Ball
4. Hunter X Hunter (1999)
5. Hunter X Hunter (2011)

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Nice lists, CX and VLord.

As far as manga goes, if I could, I would've ranked pre-time-skip OP on there, but everything after that point has just felt markedly inferior to me, personally.

As for JoJo, I might rank it higher after reading parts 4, 5, and 6, but I'm still slogging through part 3 right now since I'm balancing reading it with multiple other series.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I think that Gundam 0080 does count as shounen, but is don't consider it to be "battle shounen," hence why I didn't rank it (otherwise it'd be really high on my list).

I counted it because Gundam in general is a mecha battle-series, and 0080 does have those kind of battles in it (even if there aren't that many).

Nice lists, CX and VLord.

Thanks. 

As far as manga goes, if I could, I would've ranked pre-time-skip OP on there, but everything after that point has just felt markedly inferior to me, personally.

OP ranks so high on my list mainly because of how good it was pre-timeskip. Even though the stuff after has been mediocre, I can't ignore how much I loved everything from Baroque Works through Marineford. Also, OP was one of the first manga I ever read, alongside Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, and has been something I've been invested in for nearly a decade now, so unless it becomes godawful or worse in the future I'm just always going to have an appreciation for it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I always have an appreciation for it....it's just a specific part of it that I appreciate.

As I did earlier in either this thread or the Favorite Anime thread (I honestly can't remember which and I'm too lazy to check), I ranked my favorite story arcs from shounen series, and several OP arcs are among them, for me.

I think that Marineford is one of the top 10 (arguably even top 5) manga story arcs ever, and I'd also rank Baroque Works, Enies Lobby, Thriller Bark, and Impel Down within my top 20-50, so I have plenty of love for the series. It's just that the mediocrity of the last few years of the manga has knocked it down for me, personally.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Here's a discussion point that I've wanted to bring up for a while, but have modern shounen manga and anime gotten considerably more....well, "safe," over the years?

Now, to be clear, I'm not trying to make this one of those "modern shounen suck and only the classics are awesome" discussions, because that's not really what I mean....even if it is completely true....

It's more that I've noticed the trend that lately, a lot of shounen have gotten considerably less violent and lighter in tone. And yes, I know that there are exceptions to this, but I'm talking about the broad general overview of series as a whole. Fr instance, stuff like JoJo and Dragon Ball could be incredibly violent at times, but both of those were never considered to push the boundaries between shounen and seinen back in the 80's and 90's. Today, most shounen would never go that far, and the ones that do have either been going on for a long time already (such as HXH, which is from the 90's) or usually have an overly dark presentation from the outset (like Attack on Titan), and use the gore to enhance the feeling of being dark and foreboding (which I find to be its way of attempting to compensate for relatively weak writing).

But I don't care that much about the violence factor, because after all I just want a good story, but that's my main problem, actually. Maybe it's just the stuff that I read, but too many shounen seem to be playing it safe with whatever formula that they stick with. None of them ever seem to want to evolve their characters or plots, take on challenging subject matter, or ever really change the status quo. In essence, they don't want seem to want to do anything that they perceive younger audiences might not get, which I think is bull, personally. Series like HSDK, Beelzebub, Bleach, D. Gray-Man, and so on are all criminal of this, just to name a few (but this applies to many more). Stuff like Astro Boy, Black Jack, Ashita no Joe, and many other classics were never afraid to delve into more mature subject matter in a way that didn't necessarily make the reading material inappropriate for younger audiences, but instead rather cleverly brought these important aspects of life to their attention, and presented it to them in a considerably simple and easy to comprehend fashion without ever actually talking down to them. And most importantly, they did this ins careful manner by using SUBTLETY, something which I feel that most modern shounen in general are flat-out incapable of. My case in point is that the few shounen that do try to bring mature subject material to the forefront really do bring it to the forefront in every way possible. They basically scream out "WE ARE TALKING ABOUT REALLY MATURE STUFF RIGHT HERE; THIS IS CUTTING EDGE AND MAKES OUR MANGA DARK AND HIP AND RELEVANT, SO PLEASE LOVE US AND TALK ABOUT HOW PSEUDO-MATURE WE ARE!" Yet, I notice that these sorts of manga either don't have the writing talent to back their mature subject matter and come off as being not nearly as smart as they think they are (such as Naruto), or even if they are decently written, can still be a bit overbearing with painfully obvious symbolism and the aforementioned lack of any subtlety since the characters just seem to be a but too fixated on pointing out how big of a deal the subject matter is, which doesn't feel realistic to me and kind of takes me out of the experience (Magi, on occasion, has done this, and for the record I do like that series).

Anyways, that's just my opinion, and it's what I've noticed, but I'm hardly an expert on the subject, so I want to hear other people's opinions.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Bland and formulaic. Bleach is plenty violent and bloody, but it's still incredibly generic.

I've said it before, but I think it's just evidence of the authors lack of any outside interest besides manga. Togashi was a huge horror/paranormal fan which lead into YYH and Level E being unique, Watsuki had a love of history and samurai, Inoue Takehiko writes sports stories and explores the meaning of the game, Toriyama loved fantasy and fairy tales which explains all his work, and going back further Tezuka was interested in pretty much everything.

Look at our story arc list and what do you see? A story written by someone who cares about education and plays around with it (GTO), a story deep in the world of rock music and questions on industry ethics (BECK), a detective noir that escalates into supernatural craziness (Death Note), and a kid show based on a video game that deals with all sorts of questions on morals and responsibility without being moralizing or heavy-handed (Digimon Tamers)? Now of the modern shonen you just listed, which even come close to that level of interest of matters outside of "writing manga because manga is cool"?

I think it's an insular view of the world that leads to so much generic material out there. "Where's the cool rival?", "What's our main character's motivation? Eh, friendship is good enough.", "In this fight scene the good guy keeps killing the bad guy, but he actually moved a split second before he hit him! Isn't that original?", "This power looks cool, but make sure the side-characters never reach the main character in effort. Oh, and the final battle has to be one on one. Because the fate of the world matters less than the hero's pride.", "Well, the bad guy's dead. So what should the next one look like?"

There's always been a lot of generic stuff out there, but I don't think we've been swimming in it nearly as much as we are now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Bland and formulaic. Bleach is plenty violent and bloody, but it's still incredibly generic.

I've said it before, but I think it's just evidence of the authors lack of any outside interest besides manga. Togashi was a huge horror/paranormal fan which lead into YYH and Level E being unique, Watsuki had a love of history and samurai, Inoue Takehiko writes sports stories and explores the meaning of the game, Toriyama loved fantasy and fairy tales which explains all his work, and going back further Tezuka was interested in pretty much everything.

Look at our story arc list and what do you see? A story written by someone who cares about education and plays around with it (GTO), a story deep in the world of rock music and questions on industry ethics (BECK), a detective noir that escalates into supernatural craziness (Death Note), and a kid show based on a video game that deals with all sorts of questions on morals and responsibility without being moralizing or heavy-handed (Digimon Tamers)? Now of the modern shonen you just listed, which even come close to that level of interest of matters outside of "writing manga because manga is cool"?

Tezuka in particular was very interested in medicine (he actually had a medical degree before he even became a full-fledged mangaka) which you can really see the influence of in Black Jack. He was a also a huge fan of Disney, from what I've read, and particularly had a liking of the Scrooge McDuck character.

And yeah, it just feels like most modern mangaka haven't had any influences outside of any other manga, and worse yet, some of that manga is from their contemporaries who also haven't had any other influences. One of the few modern mangaka who does is Eichiro Oda, but even he hasn't been showing much of that influence lately, and has work has been considerably more bland because of it. In the pre-time era of the series, you could see all sorts of outside influences which really helped his work stand out. For instance, one of his favorite films is The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the Thriller Bark arc of One Piece felt like a huge homage to that, and really felt inspired. We don't get anything like that from the series, anymore. Other mangaka are even worse yet, so it's no wonder that I'm having trouble finding many good currently running shounen manga these days.

I think it's an insular view of the world that leads to so much generic material out there. "Where's the cool rival?", "What's our main character's motivation? Eh, friendship is good enough.", "In this fight scene the good guy keeps killing the bad guy, but he actually moved a split second before he hit him! Isn't that original?", "This power looks cool, but make sure the side-characters never reach the main character in effort. Oh, and the final battle has to be one on one. Because the fate of the world matters less than the hero's pride.", "Well, the bad guy's dead. So what should the next one look like?"

You forgot the most prominent one: "Does this shot have enough pointless T&A in it? Because we can always afford to add more. The story can wait; this is far more important."

There's always been a lot of generic stuff out there, but I don't think we've been swimming in it nearly as much as we are now.

An even generic stuff from back in the day could still oddly feel more inspired than a lot of stuff from today. Take Flame of Recca for example. It largely just copied tropes from so many 90's shounen manga at the time, and relative to a lot of that stuff, it was about as mediocre as you could get, yet comparing it to any of the modern shounen from above that I mentioned, I'd easily take it over any of those (except for Magi, which is actually a good series) since it still feels like its actually still doing something decent with its limited scope of inspiration, as opposed to those other manga, where the creators claimed to be inspired by better series, yet don't show any of what made those other series great in their own work.

And good bride, would it kill anyone to actually let their characters age anymore? In Dragon Ball, we got to see Goku and his friends grow up from childhood into adulthood (hell, Goku is a grandfather by the end of the series). In JoJo we get to see the story unfold through generations of the JoJo family line. In a modern manga like HSDK or Bleach, we spend 500+ chapters of absolutely no progression of any meaning other than the characters apparently getting stronger with each new bad guy, which loses it's relevance after a while. Do fans of that just not want to see the main characters evolve and grow? Are people that desperate to keep to the status quo?

[LumRanmaYasha]

Here's a discussion point that I've wanted to bring up for a while, but have modern shounen manga and anime gotten considerably more....well, "safe," over the years?

It's more that I've noticed the trend that lately, a lot of shounen have gotten considerably less violent and lighter in tone. And yes, I know that there are exceptions to this, but I'm talking about the broad general overview of series as a whole. Fr instance, stuff like JoJo and Dragon Ball could be incredibly violent at times, but both of those were never considered to push the boundaries between shounen and seinen back in the 80's and 90's. Today, most shounen would never go that far, and the ones that do have either been going on for a long time already (such as HXH, which is from the 90's) or usually have an overly dark presentation from the outset (like Attack on Titan), and use the gore to enhance the feeling of being dark and foreboding (which I find to be its way of attempting to compensate for relatively weak writing).

Eh...maybe. But there's still plenty of shonen coming out these days that are pretty violent. I mean, look at some at the stuff that happens in Franken Fran.

Spoiler

[close]

And on the battle-shonen side, here's some stuff that happens in Toriko.

Spoiler

[close]

^Those last two pages just happened two weeks ago.

Like Spark says, I think the real problem is that a lot of shonen these days are just too formulaic and don't take enough risks with their stories and characters, and otherwise don't do anything to make themselves feel like a fresh experience. A lot of the shonen manga I enjoy keeping up with, like Toriko, Assassination Classroom, and Shokugeki no Soma, are not necessarily innovative for their respective genres, but they do what they do well and get a good grasp on their characters and world and prioritize them over being cool or epic and make sure to stray from genre conventions just enough to give their own flavor on the formulas, and are thus able carve out their own identities, and not feel like they are generic.

But I don't care that much about the violence factor, because after all I just want a good story, but that's my main problem, actually. Maybe it's just the stuff that I read, but too many shounen seem to be playing it safe with whatever formula that they stick with. None of them ever seem to want to evolve their characters or plots, take on challenging subject matter, or ever really change the status quo. In essence, they don't want seem to want to do anything that they perceive younger audiences might not get, which I think is bull, personally. Series like HSDK, Beelzebub, Bleach, D. Gray-Man, and so on are all criminal of this, just to name a few (but this applies to many more). Stuff like Astro Boy, Black Jack, Ashita no Joe, and many other classics were never afraid to delve into more mature subject matter in a way that didn't necessarily make the reading material inappropriate for younger audiences, but instead rather cleverly brought these important aspects of life to their attention, and presented it to them in a considerably simple and easy to comprehend fashion without ever actually talking down to them. And most importantly, they did this ins careful manner by using SUBTLETY, something which I feel that most modern shounen in general are flat-out incapable of. My case in point is that the few shounen that do try to bring mature subject material to the forefront really do bring it to the forefront in every way possible. They basically scream out "WE ARE TALKING ABOUT REALLY MATURE STUFF RIGHT HERE; THIS IS CUTTING EDGE AND MAKES OUR MANGA DARK AND HIP AND RELEVANT, SO PLEASE LOVE US AND TALK ABOUT HOW PSEUDO-MATURE WE ARE!" Yet, I notice that these sorts of manga either don't have the writing talent to back their mature subject matter and come off as being not nearly as smart as they think they are (such as Naruto), or even if they are decently written, can still be a bit overbearing with painfully obvious symbolism and the aforementioned lack of any subtlety since the characters just seem to be a but too fixated on pointing out how big of a deal the subject matter is, which doesn't feel realistic to me and kind of takes me out of the experience (Magi, on occasion, has done this, and for the record I do like that series).

Anyways, that's just my opinion, and it's what I've noticed, but I'm hardly an expert on the subject, so I want to hear other people's opinions.

There are a lot of series more preoccupied with being edgy rather than truly engaging their subject matter, especially in battle-shonen series. But there are still great series that tackle serious issues really well. A Silent Voice is a fascinating exploration of the consequences of long-term bullying, people with disabilities, guilt and regret, and from both personal experience and observation I feel it nails the mark adeptly, while Silver Spoon takes a look at the tough world of agriculture and farming and presents a coming of age story that looks at the challenges of achieving one's dreams and how things often do not pan out the way one wants. Both series were clearly developed from the personal experiences and interests of their respective authors, and it shows. They rank as two of my favorite manga ever, and my fourth and second favorite manga currently running, respectively.

While I'm not reading any other shonen manga besides those two that I find nearly as well-done on a subject, character, and story level, I do think there's still plenty of enjoyable stuff out there. Maybe later today I'll make a short list of some series I could suggest to other people and why I enjoy them.

Tezuka in particular was very interested in medicine (he actually had a medical degree before he even became a full-fledged mangaka) which you can really see the influence of in Black Jack. He was a also a huge fan of Disney, from what I've read, and particularly had a liking of the Scrooge McDuck character.

Yup, Tezuka greatest influences were Disney animated features and the works of Carl Banks and Will Eisner. The influence is clear in his style, especially in his earlier and more kid-friendly series. Tezuka was actually already a mangaka (and a successful/renowned mangaka, at that) while he was still in medical school, and chose to stick with it full-time after deciding it was what he enjoyed doing best.

Toriyama loved fantasy and fairy tales which explains all his work

Eh, you're describing Rumiko Takahashi moreso than Toriyama. Toriyama's interests are more in sci-fi, kung-fu movies, crude humor, and automobiles (there's a reason why he frequently drew so many highly-detailed drawings of cars/planes/bikes in all his series), all of which are excessively evident in Dr. Slump. Dragon Ball did take inspiration from Journey to the West, but Toriyama never was too interested in fantasy or fairy tales, rather, he liked a lot of action-y stuff in popular culture (hence why some of the most recurring characters in Slump include Suppaman, a Superman-parody, Parzan, a Tarzan parody, and Obotchaman, an Astro Boy-parody, and why monster movie characters like Godzilla and Gamera make appearances in background scenes every now and again).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I knew you'd respond that there are still violent series, CX, hence why I tried to make it a point to say MOST, not ALL. Looks like that was a futile effort on my part, though.

There are a lot of series more preoccupied with being edgy rather than truly engaging their subject matter, especially in battle-shonen series. But there are still great series that tackle serious issues really well. A Silent Voice is a fascinating exploration of both the consequences of long-term bullying, people with disabilities, guilt and regret, and from both personal experience and observation I feel it nails the mark adeptly, while Silver Spoon takes a look at the tough world of agriculture and farming and presents a coming of age story that looks at the challenges of achieving one's dreams and how things often do not pan out the way one wants. Both series were clearly developed from the personal experiences and interests of their respective authors, and it shows. They rank as two of my favorite manga ever, and my fourth and second favorite manga currently running, respectively.

True, there are those kinds of shounen series as well, but then it does paint how the battle shounen genre in particular is facing a huge drought right now. It's very telling how currently, most of your favorite running shounen manga are almost anything but battle oriented series.

While I'm not reading any other shonen manga besides those two that I find nearly as well-done on a subject, character, and story level, I do think there's still plenty of enjoyable stuff out there. Maybe later today I'll make a short list of some series I could suggest to other people and why I enjoy them.

To be clear, I do know that there are plenty of great non-shounen manga currently running, like the stuff from Urasawa, as well as REAL, Vagabond, and Vinland Saga, but in regards to shounen series, the great ones are much fewer from what I've seen, and for battle series in particular, they are practically non-existent right now. Toriko may be good, HXH is on hiatus again, and One Piece has been in a real slump for years, IMO. Some of the sports series like KnB and Haikyuu are pretty entertaining, but even those get stale really quickly when they become too predictably formulaic.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Well, a lot of what I'm reading right now are shonen manga, and I enjoy the majority of what I keep up with, so I meant as such. 

FTR, here's all the shonen series I keep up with and like/think are good in rough order, excluding OP, HXH, and DC:

Silver Spoon (slice of life/drama)
A Silent Voice (slice of life/drama)
Yotsuba&! (slice of life/comedy)
Toriko (battle-shonen)
Gintama (action/comedy) - Admittedly, I'm not caught up, but I do read the current chapters whenever it's not in a serious arc, and it hasn't dropped in quality.
Magi (battle-shonen)
Shokugeki no Soma (cooking)
Assassination Classroom (action/comedy)
The Seven Deadly Sins (battle-shonen)
Fuuka (slice of life/music)
Magi: Adventure of Sinbad (battle-shonen)
Rin-ne (action/comedy) - This is also the only one of Rumiko Takahashi's series that I'm not a "fan" of, but it's still entertaining for the most part.
Peephole (horror/comedy) - Admittedly kind of a guilty pleasure, but I find it fun to read.
Attack on Titan: Before the Fall (battle-shonen)  - Is actually better than the main series, imo.

Only Silver Spoon and Silent Voice are personal favorites of mine, but I enjoy all these series a fair bit. Some might not be other people's cup of tea, of course, so besides my two favorites I would also broadly recommend Gintama, Yotsuba&!, Soma, and Fuuka to most anyone.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That does highlight the fact that only 5 of those are battle shounen, and of those I really think of Sinbad more like a part of the Magi series than a separate manga, even though it is technically a stand-alone manga that can be viewed on it's own, and only loosely ties in as a prequel to the main series.

That said, even then, how many of those would you honestly say are close to the level of quality of some of the classics that I was mentioning, in terms of telling compelling and straightforward stories while tackling some more mature themes in a more subtle manner? Of those ones mentioned, I only keep up with Magi/Sinbad, and as previously stated, I like the franchise, but I do also find that it's one of those series that wears its moral messages on its sleeves, rather than giving the reader more room for their own interpretation without anything explicitly having to be spelled out for them. Hunter X Hunter has done this as well, ever since the Chimera Ant arc, and while I loved Meruem's development, it was anything but subtle.

Of course, your list also does highlight that I should probably be reading more non-battle-oriented shounen series, as that seems to be where the majority of the writing talent is going in the medium, these days.

[Spark Of Spirit]

To be honest, when was the last time the manga world went nuts over a new battle manga that ended up being mega popular? Naruto? Bleach? One Piece? That's a loooooooooooong time without another huge hit.

I suppose Toriko counts, but it's nowhere near as popular as the other three are worldwide. And still, that's only one. two of the three are probably ending this year, and there's really nothing looking to replace them in popularity any time soon.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Um, Attack on Titan. That's the biggest thing in the anime/manga fan community right now period.

Magi is also incredibly popular, and Sins has been picking up in popularity as well. As far as Jump goes, though it's not technically a battle manga, Assassination Classroom has already become the #2 series running in Weekly Shonen Jump after One Piece.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Attack on Titan still doesn't seem to be a mainstream thing as far as I can see. But sure, okay. I still don't see any of the others as anything all too big. Certainly not on the level of the other three at their peak.