the origin of the term traces back to Hesiod's Five Ages of Mankind (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, Iron), which was later incorporated into Plato's Noble lie (saying that men are made of gold, silver, bronze/copper). this was latter whittled down and reinvented over time, up until the US Olympics, which cemented them as three definitive placements (after the original Greek Olympics only gave first place a wreath, and the first couple US Olympics gave Gold to first and Silver to the runner ups) like everything else, there's no real reason that we settled on 3, since it started as 4 or 5 and only became 3 over time
@@Lextoriasbe it in narrative or any other obswrvable aspect of life, two is a coincidente, three is a pattern. Every time I see a set of three, I always go back to this idea. Still, nothing but intuition to back up this thought ❤
0:08 as an information and library scientist, can confirm! There's a ton of studies about this!! In many ways, the science of information is both about how our brains work and a sociological examination across cultures, time, disabilities, indigenous cultures, and even linguistics. Organization of information is always biased- and that's a neutral statement! It's been used to serve communities as well as harm them
@@JollyWally12349 yeah facts but to me personally the way it was structured just resonates well with the 3 shows especially with the context of thier plot. Being One Piece about Nakama/friends, Naruto believing in himself and his Efforts to becoming Hokage, and BLEACH having both of the previous qoutes to help get the Victory that's well earned.
Thank you for this! A video I wanted to exist! From my experience, the "big 3" debates mostly radiated out of 4chan. It was weird too bc when SJ first started publishing in the US, the big pushers of the magazine were yugioh & dragonball z, and i viewed Naruto, One Piece and Shaman King as the big 3 of stuff that was introduced to US audiences thru manga before their anime started publishing. When Bleach started, it wasn't even in the magazine. However, when Bleach and Naruto hit Adult Swim they very quickly became the most-popular anime in the US on a level that expanded the fanbase of anime considerably. When all those new people investigate they find out that One Piece by this point was THE biggest manga in Japan, so it couldn't be left out of the conversation even tho it wasn't really popular in the US (bleach and Naruto shared most of their fans, OP was often rejected by those fans). To me, it was always more like Naruto and Bleach were The Big 2, and One Piece was the technical inclusion; until Naruto and Bleach went so far downhill, and OP just kept growing into something singular. Now, it's like people try to find "the big 3 (not including obvious champion One Piece)." If you ask me, Astro Boy, Dragon Ball and One Piece are the Big 3.
A new terminology I've heard being tossed around relating to Jump is "the Fujimoto effect." Where not only has Tatsuki Fujimoto, the author of Chainsaw Man and Look Back, taken the Jump formula in a different direction by not basing everything on the story formula Dragon Ball laid out, and every shonen battle series has since followed like a roadmap, but also because many of his assistants keep making big hits, such as Dandadan, Hell's Paradise, and SpyxFamily.
I don't think it's just fujimoto tho, you can see how all of them influenced each other post fire-punch. Look at fujimoto's work pre fire-punch, his writing for people was not consistently good, but the absurd scenarios and comedy was top notch. After fire-punch however, his stories are now more people focused, but the things he was good at are still present. Edit: this is the reason I like the term children of Fire Punch
Re: Gilgamesh being "2/3 god, 1/3 man" TL;DR: They counted differently, back then. In G's time, children were assumed to have a legit lineage tie to every man their mother slept with around about the time she got pregnant. "2/3 god, 1/3 man" mean Gilgamesh's mother (a goddess) had both a mortal *and* a divine lover.
Great video. I was sent here by a friend in Discord. In a sea of anime RUclipsrs who put out content farm videos, your channel is an exception. Side note/suggestion: I’d love to see you tackle the “K-On! profile pic” phenomenon and why that anime became associated with racist weebs. Politics aside it would be an interesting topic to explore; not only its impact on K-On’s reputation but also the ties anime as a whole has with alt right internet culture.
Bleach being considered a Big 3 is always weird to me. I grew up on Bleach but I remember irl and online, in the circles I was in, Bleach was kind of the butt of jokes and Naruto was THE thing in my high school. I never seen One Piece take off until the mid 2010's so I mostly assumed Naruto was THE big one and Bleach was just a red-headed step child. It is nice to see as an adult that Bleach is fondly remembered, least the first 60 episodes but it seems people are starting to appreciate it now.
Yea but that was mostly online. Bleach was for a time more known in America then One Piece. I remember seeing Loads of Naruto manga at my primary school, a handful of Bleach, Death Note and no One Piece.
@@KingAgniKai Yeah, was more speaking about my experience with Bleach. I loved the show but for me during High School in the mid-late 2000's, Bleach was unheard of or got roasted. Naruto was huge in my area, almost on par with the CoD teens. My High School loved Naruto and CoD.
@cherryboywriter6299 bleach is more popular than HxH. Pre-covid it was Naruto mainly and the Bleach in the early 2000s. One Piece blew up in the West during and after covid lockdowns
I grew up in the 2000s and have never been into anime that much. I've dabbled, mostly observed from the sidelines. In my mind, the big series at the time was always Naruto, Inuyasha, and Dragon Ball. Specifically in that order. I'd never even heard of One Piece until people became obsessed with how long the series was, and Bleach was always just kinda off to the side. But, this is anecdote. I just think it's an interesting one.
I think the 3 thing is quite simple , to be able to sit on something it needs to have at least 3 legs for the platform to be stable , you even have old pottery portraying divinity where pots have 3 legs , extrapolate from that what you will but i think it has something to do with stability .
Huh. I know next to nothing about watches, but I would have imagined Rolex to be one of them. It's certainly one of the most well known to outsiders, right?
@BalthazarSturm Rolex, Omega, and Breitling are often though of as a group of three as well, as three of the most well known (more moderate level) Swiss luxury watch brands. In these cases , Patek, Audemars, and Vacheron commonly get referred to as the "Holy Trinity" of watchmaking instead. You'll mostly see references to Patek, Audemars, and Vacheron when you see references to "the big 3 of watchmaking" though.
@@BalthazarSturm You could think of Rolex as being more analogous to Dragon Ball Z (as both are one of, if not the most, well known to outsiders, yet fall outside of "the big 3").
@ Yeah, but this man games, surely he knows Aonuma. So it’s gotta be a bit. Also the fact that’s the first picture? Definitely a problem, like, how does that even happen.
Fairy Tail is not a Shonen Jump property, and the "Big 3" specifically refers to the era after the end of Dragon Ball. The "Big 3" are what kept the magazine afloat after the end of Dragon Ball. As for what 4th place would be... well, that's Hunter x Hunter. 5th place is Gintama. 6th is Yugioh.
I still consider dragon ball, Naruto, and one piece the big 3 because those are the 3 biggest manga in the biggest magazine in the biggest manga publisher. When I hear Shonen jump I think of those protagonists(also that jump force cover lol). to be honest the gaps between bleach, Naruto, and one piece these days is just insane, they have over 100 million sales in between each of them. And bleach is out sold by newer and older titles, even demon slayer out sold bleach in only 4 years. Like a lot of others bleach was irrelevant when I was growing up and watching anime, but I’m happy it gets some love now.
I grew up thinking "The Big 3" was something quantifiable, but I eventually learned the same lesson you did. The term itself doesn't really mean anything concrete, but it's fun to think it does from time to time because we all love doing that sort of thing.
what's really interesting to me is that "The Big 3" really felt like a reasonable term back in the early 2010s, like sure Bleach was always the least popular one, but they still felt like they belonged together, like that was just what everyone who was into the medium was watching but nowadays one piece is still going, clearly eclipsing the others, while naruto at the very least has left a significant pop culture legacy - kids these days getting into anime might not watch naruto at the rate kids back in my day did, but you're still hard-pressed finding someone who likes anime and doesn't at least know the very basics of the main characters and plot from cultural osmosis. and bleach just... mostly vanished. it's basically only ever brought up when discussing whether or not it should've been in the big 3 in the first place. people who aren't into anime probably won't even recognize the characters. that's why it feels so out of place to me these days I think. one piece and naruto are still unavoidable, but bleach? very avoidable.
Thinking Bleach has vanished is inaccurate. Instagram reels are always going wild with Bleach edits and memes, especially as the new season is coming out
Bleach was never the least popular one here in England during the 2010's, One Piece was only the most popular in Japan for the longest time, here it was the one ppl knew about but didn't actually watch & only really blew up in the past few years. I say all this as someone who began with Naruto, quickly watched Bleach afterwards since it was recommended & then didn't get into One Piece until maybe 3 years later by which point it became my favourite, but of all the friends I had who watched anime, only a select few of us watched One Piece.
They objectively do belong together. There are 3 shonen jump manga from that era who've sold more than 100 million volumes total. The Big 3. Each of the 3 traded top spots in the magazine both in sales and popularity at the time as well. 4th place was Hunter x Hunter, which even Bleach outsold 3 to 2. Naruto being twice as successful as Bleach doesn't exactly say Bleach doesn't belong. It just shows how very steep the cliff is. Naruto is almost dead even with Dragon Ball of all things, the titan that the "Big 3" came in to replace.
11:36 Romance of the Three Kingdoms was almost certainly influential throughout Asia? It is THE seminal historical work, it's Asia's "The Odyssey". Wild understatement
I was literally just practicing Mimi's Delivery Service on guitar and got confused when it popped on as the background music. Thought my other tab was still playing the song lol
I think 3 is basically the easiest form of ranking. If you have 1, there's nothing to compare to. 2 is just either/or. You can organize 3 into parts or points for better comparison. 3 points can also form a triangle which is a shape vs a line or a single point. I think it's also the 1st where it's a group with an odd number. Odd number asymmetrical stuff is a bit more interesting than even symmetrical stuff as well and I think 3 is the first that does it.
Even the videos conclusion is a group of 3. "That we love to group things(1), rank things(2) and organize things(3)". Whether intentional or not (if you're reading this, just claim it was intentional), realizing that really brought everything together nicely.
17:14 so I googled to check and although the picture you chose comes up as Eiichiro Oda, that’s not him. It’s actually Eiji Aonuma, the producer of Zelda.
I remember seeing big 3 discussions from around the time I started getting into anime (like 2011?? I think?) I mostly remember them accepting the Big 3 as a given, and then building further from that. An often reoccurring one being you having to choose a team, which one of these 3 is your top choice? But seeing how Shonen Jump was partially dependent on having a couple of top series for it's visibility, I do wonder what the discussions looked like after Naruto and Bleach got finished. I know online (western!!) fan discussions have talked about the 'new Big 3 (yes one piece is still here)' & people asking what was up with the Big 3 actually and did One Piece win? How were/are the discussions framed by the team of Shonen Jump and do they still stick to those 3 principles laid out by Kazuhiko Torishima, things like that.
As a kid when I was first getting into anime I always viewed it as the big 5 because the site I used to watch these shows had links to sister sites at the top, so I just thought everyone knew the big 5 as DBZ, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto and Fairy Tail.
Maybe the concept of putting things in to "Three" comes from colors... First you have Primary color, mostly know as Red, Green & Blue, then you have one of the Color theory know as Triadic, that is very common used in art, and very pleasing to human eye... so maybe it is something in human nature that just tend us to "see" things in three groups, but also help us mix this three groups into anything, like you can mix the RGB colors to anything on canvas... but who really knows, this is just a idea that just sparkled in my mind just now
The number probably reflects our obsession with simplicity. Most things are actually grouped in two, we just don't notice it because it mostly takes the form of for/against something, so it doesn't feel like a grouping. A group of three is the most complex grouping where we can also easily conceptualise the interaction between each pair of elements. Our minds are really bad at understanding groups of 5 or more things in one go, so even a grouping of 4 will be undesirable, since it comprises 6 comparisons between pairs. We don't even think that much about groupings of higher numbers. Like, we can have 7 sins, or something like that, but it's not something you'll easily conceptualise as a single group. You have to think of them one by one, which makes it clunky for practical reasons other than to make it sound like an important number.
Lex like me has fallen to the google image results of Oda, unfortunately that is not Oda but an Eichiro that worked on the Zelda series. I learnt this the hard way gamer 😢 great video as always
Honestly, it kinda manes sense to think in 3s. One is the best. Two makes rivals, the Thesis and Antithesis. Three is balanced. The Triangle is the strongest shape in Nature. It is small enough to mean something being one to achieve it and big enough to make it possible. If it was the Big One, How could you beat it?. If it were the Big Two, those would be rivals, you could not get in the middle. With three, that doesnt happen. It makes sense in, for example, manga printed by the same company.
It's really interesting seeing this sort of retrospective look at the big 3. As someone who was actually there, there is a reason. It's just not based in logic or data. It's not something you can research publicly. It's based in culture. Before the big 3, anime was incredibly niche. The big 3 are what transformed anime into the mainstream worldwide powerhouse that it is today. Things like sales aren't going to illustrate this, especially in the west, because we didn't have access. We were ALL pirating. We didn't really have a choice. Translation was so slow that it was generally months, or even years, behind. I wouldn't say anything in the video was wrong, but it's only part of the story. It's just interesting to see how history can change over time due to lost information and not taking into account personal experience.
One minor nitpick I'd like to point out is that Tite Kubo's name isn't pronounced 'tee-tay', it's 'tight', or 'taito' if you're Japanese. Tite is a pen name, not his real name, the dude literally named himself after the English word tight, which is pretty rad.
Honestly it's not all that complicated, they wee known through some anime at one point, and in the 2000's any scalation site would always feature those 3 series. It just became slang for the 3 really popular normie shonen jump titles. Part of why Fairy Tail became popular is it also started appearing on those sites and it felt like we had a 4th series to add to the mix.
There wasn't any anime community I was aware of when I started watching. I think the first time I heard them called the Big 3 was from the Tom the Toonami robot calling them that during a Naruto preview or something, like, 20 years ago.
I'm pretty sure in japan one piece has only ever been beaten twice during its run whilst all of the big 3 were going so I wouldn't say that other series pushed it out I also think when people say they're the best selling they mean for their time period not oat as obviously dragonball and the others had already finished so they had more time to accumulate sales Though by its prime op had the highest sales ever in 2011 within a single year at 38m sales in just japan that year which wasn't beaten till demon slayer got 82m in a year
3 as well as being a prime number is also sometimes considered to be a system even in its distribution but capable of conflict, embalance, or competition. So wether if it is the gods of greece in competition while being equally powerful or the christian trinity being considered perfection in its simultaneous balance; things in a group of three will perpetually seem as greater, more powerful, or more potent to a primitive instinct. The next number that carries this type of association is the number 7; which is a prime number as well, but it's also larger making it harder to associate with random topics. Humans just want unimportant things to seem important by either expanding or decreasing a list of dominant examples to fit in a similar way to how junk listacle articles usually come in 10's.
WHAT THE HECK I WALKED BY MY BROTHER AND HE STARTED PLAYING GOOD KID AND THEN I PRESSED PLAY ON THE VIDEO AGAIN AND GOOD KID WAS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND
3 is normally a big number because triangles is the sturdiest 2d polygon we retroactively make big 3s like the father the son the holy spirt. The Holy spirt is not in the bible.
My explanation for "The Big 3" is nothing scientifical. It's something more "artistical" in nature. In short, if you have any sort of love for anime, then you "must" love at least one of these animes, and if you love one of them, then you must love the others as well, because they're the same kind of things you love, just in a different package. So, they are "The Big 3" because they are 3 animes that are simply a must watch if you're an anime fan. Of course, talking about anime fans of the time. New anime fans (from the last decade or so) can easily not watch any of the big 3, since 2 are over already and one is like 1K episodes so ain't no way today's Gen-Z have enough patience to sit through that.
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With that hair I feel like I'm in the room with a mob boss with a interest in anime and I have no choice but to listen
Or Hannibal
Even the concept of Gold, Silver and Bronze is an iteration of the Big 3. Why did we chose just those three metals and not like 2 or 5?
the origin of the term traces back to Hesiod's Five Ages of Mankind (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, Iron), which was later incorporated into Plato's Noble lie (saying that men are made of gold, silver, bronze/copper). this was latter whittled down and reinvented over time, up until the US Olympics, which cemented them as three definitive placements (after the original Greek Olympics only gave first place a wreath, and the first couple US Olympics gave Gold to first and Silver to the runner ups)
like everything else, there's no real reason that we settled on 3, since it started as 4 or 5 and only became 3 over time
@@Lextorias your effort in research stuns me
@@Lextoriasbe it in narrative or any other obswrvable aspect of life, two is a coincidente, three is a pattern. Every time I see a set of three, I always go back to this idea. Still, nothing but intuition to back up this thought ❤
0:08 as an information and library scientist, can confirm! There's a ton of studies about this!! In many ways, the science of information is both about how our brains work and a sociological examination across cultures, time, disabilities, indigenous cultures, and even linguistics.
Organization of information is always biased- and that's a neutral statement! It's been used to serve communities as well as harm them
To me the real big 3 was always the friends we made, the efforts we expended, and the victories we achieved along the way
Basically One Piece, Naruto and BLEACH😂
@@imwitdamob2nd Or really any shonen anime/manga from the last 15 years.
@@JollyWally12349 yeah facts but to me personally the way it was structured just resonates well with the 3 shows especially with the context of thier plot. Being One Piece about Nakama/friends, Naruto believing in himself and his Efforts to becoming Hokage, and BLEACH having both of the previous qoutes to help get the Victory that's well earned.
3 (4) grand soups of Japan is not something i expected to learn about in this video but boy am i hooked
Thank you for this! A video I wanted to exist! From my experience, the "big 3" debates mostly radiated out of 4chan. It was weird too bc when SJ first started publishing in the US, the big pushers of the magazine were yugioh & dragonball z, and i viewed Naruto, One Piece and Shaman King as the big 3 of stuff that was introduced to US audiences thru manga before their anime started publishing. When Bleach started, it wasn't even in the magazine. However, when Bleach and Naruto hit Adult Swim they very quickly became the most-popular anime in the US on a level that expanded the fanbase of anime considerably. When all those new people investigate they find out that One Piece by this point was THE biggest manga in Japan, so it couldn't be left out of the conversation even tho it wasn't really popular in the US (bleach and Naruto shared most of their fans, OP was often rejected by those fans). To me, it was always more like Naruto and Bleach were The Big 2, and One Piece was the technical inclusion; until Naruto and Bleach went so far downhill, and OP just kept growing into something singular. Now, it's like people try to find "the big 3 (not including obvious champion One Piece)." If you ask me, Astro Boy, Dragon Ball and One Piece are the Big 3.
If the Big 3 is so good, why haven't they made a Big 4 and France?
A new terminology I've heard being tossed around relating to Jump is "the Fujimoto effect." Where not only has Tatsuki Fujimoto, the author of Chainsaw Man and Look Back, taken the Jump formula in a different direction by not basing everything on the story formula Dragon Ball laid out, and every shonen battle series has since followed like a roadmap, but also because many of his assistants keep making big hits, such as Dandadan, Hell's Paradise, and SpyxFamily.
Silly term, has nothing to do with Fujimoto himself, also many Shonen battle stories don't follow a DB like story structure anyways
I don't think it's just fujimoto tho, you can see how all of them influenced each other post fire-punch.
Look at fujimoto's work pre fire-punch, his writing for people was not consistently good, but the absurd scenarios and comedy was top notch. After fire-punch however, his stories are now more people focused, but the things he was good at are still present.
Edit: this is the reason I like the term children of Fire Punch
That's a nice argument Mr. Lextorias, but too bad I will depict your box as the soy wojak!
Re: Gilgamesh being "2/3 god, 1/3 man"
TL;DR: They counted differently, back then.
In G's time, children were assumed to have a legit lineage tie to every man their mother slept with around about the time she got pregnant. "2/3 god, 1/3 man" mean Gilgamesh's mother (a goddess) had both a mortal *and* a divine lover.
So, I guess they were the Big 3 of their time. (/Ba-dum TSS)
As School House Rock taught me many years ago
"3 is a magic number"
Great video. I was sent here by a friend in Discord. In a sea of anime RUclipsrs who put out content farm videos, your channel is an exception.
Side note/suggestion: I’d love to see you tackle the “K-On! profile pic” phenomenon and why that anime became associated with racist weebs. Politics aside it would be an interesting topic to explore; not only its impact on K-On’s reputation but also the ties anime as a whole has with alt right internet culture.
Bleach being considered a Big 3 is always weird to me. I grew up on Bleach but I remember irl and online, in the circles I was in, Bleach was kind of the butt of jokes and Naruto was THE thing in my high school. I never seen One Piece take off until the mid 2010's so I mostly assumed Naruto was THE big one and Bleach was just a red-headed step child. It is nice to see as an adult that Bleach is fondly remembered, least the first 60 episodes but it seems people are starting to appreciate it now.
Yea but that was mostly online. Bleach was for a time more known in America then One Piece. I remember seeing Loads of Naruto manga at my primary school, a handful of Bleach, Death Note and no One Piece.
@@KingAgniKai Yeah, was more speaking about my experience with Bleach. I loved the show but for me during High School in the mid-late 2000's, Bleach was unheard of or got roasted. Naruto was huge in my area, almost on par with the CoD teens. My High School loved Naruto and CoD.
Bleach was always a joke.
Naruto is also pretty bad too so like it's really been just a one piece world.
(read HxH)
@cherryboywriter6299 bleach is more popular than HxH. Pre-covid it was Naruto mainly and the Bleach in the early 2000s. One Piece blew up in the West during and after covid lockdowns
I grew up in the 2000s and have never been into anime that much. I've dabbled, mostly observed from the sidelines. In my mind, the big series at the time was always Naruto, Inuyasha, and Dragon Ball. Specifically in that order. I'd never even heard of One Piece until people became obsessed with how long the series was, and Bleach was always just kinda off to the side. But, this is anecdote. I just think it's an interesting one.
I think the 3 thing is quite simple , to be able to sit on something it needs to have at least 3 legs for the platform to be stable , you even have old pottery portraying divinity where pots have 3 legs , extrapolate from that what you will but i think it has something to do with stability .
In the watch collecting world, the "big 3" are Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Vacheron Constantin.
Huh. I know next to nothing about watches, but I would have imagined Rolex to be one of them. It's certainly one of the most well known to outsiders, right?
@BalthazarSturm Rolex, Omega, and Breitling are often though of as a group of three as well, as three of the most well known (more moderate level) Swiss luxury watch brands. In these cases , Patek, Audemars, and Vacheron commonly get referred to as the "Holy Trinity" of watchmaking instead.
You'll mostly see references to Patek, Audemars, and Vacheron when you see references to "the big 3 of watchmaking" though.
@@BalthazarSturm You could think of Rolex as being more analogous to Dragon Ball Z (as both are one of, if not the most, well known to outsiders, yet fall outside of "the big 3").
I can’t tell if you’re using Eiji Aonuma’s picture for Eiichiro Oda as a bit because it’s a common mistake or if you actually made the mistake.
😏
if you google Oda that's the first picture. so I assume that's why
@ Yeah, but this man games, surely he knows Aonuma. So it’s gotta be a bit. Also the fact that’s the first picture? Definitely a problem, like, how does that even happen.
He's Eiji, Eiichiro Oda is just a pseudonym
Love the Good kid instrumental in the Outro! :)
As well as the video of course!
Great video! Love when people try and talk about the Big Three, it's so entertaining
I thought it was Dragon Ball instead of Bleach.
I even thought that a big 4 would be something like Fairy Tale
Bleach was way more popular than Fairy Tale in the West, both in the 2000s and now.
Fairy Tail is not a Shonen Jump property, and the "Big 3" specifically refers to the era after the end of Dragon Ball. The "Big 3" are what kept the magazine afloat after the end of Dragon Ball.
As for what 4th place would be... well, that's Hunter x Hunter. 5th place is Gintama. 6th is Yugioh.
I still consider dragon ball, Naruto, and one piece the big 3 because those are the 3 biggest manga in the biggest magazine in the biggest manga publisher. When I hear Shonen jump I think of those protagonists(also that jump force cover lol). to be honest the gaps between bleach, Naruto, and one piece these days is just insane, they have over 100 million sales in between each of them. And bleach is out sold by newer and older titles, even demon slayer out sold bleach in only 4 years. Like a lot of others bleach was irrelevant when I was growing up and watching anime, but I’m happy it gets some love now.
Dragon Ball transcends the concept of big 3
Excellent Lex 👍 I love how you boil a topic down to its essentials and serve it up so everyone can get it.
Awesome video. I just wanted to thank you for all the work and research you always put into your videos
Banger after banger, I’m so happy I found your videos!!
the amount of research and effort is crazy, much respect Lextorias
Your videos are really interesting and informative, always leading to somewhere I wouldn’t have guessed. Good work, keep it up 😎
"Three is the number of the count, and the number of the count shall be three." It's literally in the Bible.
The insight was great to get an understanding. Also, nice choice in outro music👍
YAY!!! My man is back!!!
Less interesting to get caught up in the details? Man, that's why I'm here, I love those details!! Keep explaining ALL the details :)
I grew up thinking "The Big 3" was something quantifiable, but I eventually learned the same lesson you did. The term itself doesn't really mean anything concrete, but it's fun to think it does from time to time because we all love doing that sort of thing.
Love these type of videos!!!!!
what's really interesting to me is that "The Big 3" really felt like a reasonable term back in the early 2010s, like sure Bleach was always the least popular one, but they still felt like they belonged together, like that was just what everyone who was into the medium was watching
but nowadays one piece is still going, clearly eclipsing the others, while naruto at the very least has left a significant pop culture legacy - kids these days getting into anime might not watch naruto at the rate kids back in my day did, but you're still hard-pressed finding someone who likes anime and doesn't at least know the very basics of the main characters and plot from cultural osmosis. and bleach just... mostly vanished. it's basically only ever brought up when discussing whether or not it should've been in the big 3 in the first place. people who aren't into anime probably won't even recognize the characters. that's why it feels so out of place to me these days I think. one piece and naruto are still unavoidable, but bleach? very avoidable.
In highschool and adulthood I have met Dragonballs fans, One Piece fans, Naruto fans but never a Bleach fan. And I was a teen in 2010.
Thinking Bleach has vanished is inaccurate. Instagram reels are always going wild with Bleach edits and memes, especially as the new season is coming out
Bleach was never the least popular one here in England during the 2010's, One Piece was only the most popular in Japan for the longest time, here it was the one ppl knew about but didn't actually watch & only really blew up in the past few years. I say all this as someone who began with Naruto, quickly watched Bleach afterwards since it was recommended & then didn't get into One Piece until maybe 3 years later by which point it became my favourite, but of all the friends I had who watched anime, only a select few of us watched One Piece.
They objectively do belong together. There are 3 shonen jump manga from that era who've sold more than 100 million volumes total. The Big 3. Each of the 3 traded top spots in the magazine both in sales and popularity at the time as well. 4th place was Hunter x Hunter, which even Bleach outsold 3 to 2. Naruto being twice as successful as Bleach doesn't exactly say Bleach doesn't belong. It just shows how very steep the cliff is. Naruto is almost dead even with Dragon Ball of all things, the titan that the "Big 3" came in to replace.
This was a great video looking into the apparent history of something.
great video brother
What a great video thank you for the work you do
11:36 Romance of the Three Kingdoms was almost certainly influential throughout Asia? It is THE seminal historical work, it's Asia's "The Odyssey". Wild understatement
Awesome outro Song!! Love @GoodKid!!
love your content! youtube randomly recommended it to me a few weeks ago and been enjoying it a lot !
Your nice is cool too! nice look
I was literally just practicing Mimi's Delivery Service on guitar and got confused when it popped on as the background music. Thought my other tab was still playing the song lol
It's really funny because the grouping things in three is a known phenomenon and the scientists who study it are just going "WE DON'T KNOW!!!"
Mans always dropping videos just when the youtube drought is getting bad. Another banger buddy.
I didn't think of these 3 at all, but I don't generally watch battle shonen.
Thanks for sharing this video! I hope you have a great rest of your day :)
The chapter titles are sending me. This video's another certified banger 🤘
Mimi's Delivery Service at the end has me jamming - great video!
My guy went from three popular animes to fucking illuminati confirmed in a millisecond
Great video. Really enjoyed this one.
I think 3 is basically the easiest form of ranking. If you have 1, there's nothing to compare to. 2 is just either/or. You can organize 3 into parts or points for better comparison. 3 points can also form a triangle which is a shape vs a line or a single point. I think it's also the 1st where it's a group with an odd number. Odd number asymmetrical stuff is a bit more interesting than even symmetrical stuff as well and I think 3 is the first that does it.
0:05 "group things, rank things, and organize things" 3 again
Mimi's delievery service is the outro song for those wondering its by a band called Good Kid and their shit slaps
Even the videos conclusion is a group of 3. "That we love to group things(1), rank things(2) and organize things(3)". Whether intentional or not (if you're reading this, just claim it was intentional), realizing that really brought everything together nicely.
17:14 so I googled to check and although the picture you chose comes up as Eiichiro Oda, that’s not him. It’s actually Eiji Aonuma, the producer of Zelda.
I don't believe you
@ yeah, don’t know how Google got that mixed up and it doesn’t help that Oda is kinda camera shy 🙃
Another great video
I remember seeing big 3 discussions from around the time I started getting into anime (like 2011?? I think?)
I mostly remember them accepting the Big 3 as a given, and then building further from that. An often reoccurring one being you having to choose a team, which one of these 3 is your top choice?
But seeing how Shonen Jump was partially dependent on having a couple of top series for it's visibility, I do wonder what the discussions looked like after Naruto and Bleach got finished. I know online (western!!) fan discussions have talked about the 'new Big 3 (yes one piece is still here)' & people asking what was up with the Big 3 actually and did One Piece win? How were/are the discussions framed by the team of Shonen Jump and do they still stick to those 3 principles laid out by Kazuhiko Torishima, things like that.
13:46 Man, KILLED me XD
Nice job)
Now I need a ranking video
Same thing with 7
Saptarishis the seven sages in ancient india
7 gods of fortune that's venerated from india to Japan etc...I can't remember all
7 dragon balls!
That feel of excitement when a Lextorias come out but then a bit of disappointed that it isn't an hour long.
There were three birds outside my window while I had this video playing.
Big Three Birds confirmed.
Oh I didn’t expect to hear Good Kid music that’s pretty cool
The big 3 were the most popular manga during the late 2000s to early 2010s that really mainstreamed manga and anime.
17:04 i have to ask.
Is this part of the running gag that people use Eiji Aonumas picture instead of Odas picture or was this done by accident?
who the heck is Eiji Aonuma
As a kid when I was first getting into anime I always viewed it as the big 5 because the site I used to watch these shows had links to sister sites at the top, so I just thought everyone knew the big 5 as DBZ, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto and Fairy Tail.
Fairy tail? Over Pokemon?
I didn’t make the site, that’s just what was there
@@isthisajojoreference my b
in terms of quality, friendship effort and victory was correct. But you cant lack in any one of those.
Maybe the concept of putting things in to "Three" comes from colors... First you have Primary color, mostly know as Red, Green & Blue, then you have one of the Color theory know as Triadic, that is very common used in art, and very pleasing to human eye... so maybe it is something in human nature that just tend us to "see" things in three groups, but also help us mix this three groups into anything, like you can mix the RGB colors to anything on canvas... but who really knows, this is just a idea that just sparkled in my mind just now
Great video.
At 5:32 that's the Arabic numeral 3 not the Roman numeral 3. The Roman numeral three is III.
The number probably reflects our obsession with simplicity. Most things are actually grouped in two, we just don't notice it because it mostly takes the form of for/against something, so it doesn't feel like a grouping. A group of three is the most complex grouping where we can also easily conceptualise the interaction between each pair of elements. Our minds are really bad at understanding groups of 5 or more things in one go, so even a grouping of 4 will be undesirable, since it comprises 6 comparisons between pairs.
We don't even think that much about groupings of higher numbers. Like, we can have 7 sins, or something like that, but it's not something you'll easily conceptualise as a single group. You have to think of them one by one, which makes it clunky for practical reasons other than to make it sound like an important number.
Hi Lextorias :D
For me the big three were just kind of the vibe. Nothing quantifiable but like the vibe was there
Also hell yeah, good kid outro
Ending with Good Kid. I like it!
4:42 I could of sworn this was a re-upload, but then I realized I was thinking of the Totally not mark video
Same. I couldn’t recall OG video until I read your comment 😂
As an Old Animefan, I have always thought that more popular generally does not always mean that it is the best anime.
Well, that's kinda the point. They didn't say they are the best anime, just explaining how the label even came about.
This applies to new anime as well
Lex like me has fallen to the google image results of Oda, unfortunately that is not Oda but an Eichiro that worked on the Zelda series. I learnt this the hard way gamer 😢 great video as always
no its him. he told me its him
@@LextoriasI know bud. I know he did. 😭
Honestly, it kinda manes sense to think in 3s. One is the best. Two makes rivals, the Thesis and Antithesis. Three is balanced. The Triangle is the strongest shape in Nature. It is small enough to mean something being one to achieve it and big enough to make it possible. If it was the Big One, How could you beat it?. If it were the Big Two, those would be rivals, you could not get in the middle. With three, that doesnt happen. It makes sense in, for example, manga printed by the same company.
It's really interesting seeing this sort of retrospective look at the big 3. As someone who was actually there, there is a reason. It's just not based in logic or data. It's not something you can research publicly. It's based in culture. Before the big 3, anime was incredibly niche. The big 3 are what transformed anime into the mainstream worldwide powerhouse that it is today. Things like sales aren't going to illustrate this, especially in the west, because we didn't have access. We were ALL pirating. We didn't really have a choice. Translation was so slow that it was generally months, or even years, behind. I wouldn't say anything in the video was wrong, but it's only part of the story. It's just interesting to see how history can change over time due to lost information and not taking into account personal experience.
One minor nitpick I'd like to point out is that Tite Kubo's name isn't pronounced 'tee-tay', it's 'tight', or 'taito' if you're Japanese. Tite is a pen name, not his real name, the dude literally named himself after the English word tight, which is pretty rad.
Honestly it's not all that complicated, they wee known through some anime at one point, and in the 2000's any scalation site would always feature those 3 series. It just became slang for the 3 really popular normie shonen jump titles.
Part of why Fairy Tail became popular is it also started appearing on those sites and it felt like we had a 4th series to add to the mix.
3 is a good number if you're bad with knives.
Still waiting on that "history of voice acting" video
There wasn't any anime community I was aware of when I started watching. I think the first time I heard them called the Big 3 was from the Tom the Toonami robot calling them that during a Naruto preview or something, like, 20 years ago.
It's 3 because 2 is boring and 4 is too much.
I'm pretty sure in japan one piece has only ever been beaten twice during its run whilst all of the big 3 were going so I wouldn't say that other series pushed it out
I also think when people say they're the best selling they mean for their time period not oat as obviously dragonball and the others had already finished so they had more time to accumulate sales
Though by its prime op had the highest sales ever in 2011 within a single year at 38m sales in just japan that year which wasn't beaten till demon slayer got 82m in a year
Also check out Totally Not Mark's dive into this subject.
3 as well as being a prime number is also sometimes considered to be a system even in its distribution but capable of conflict, embalance, or competition. So wether if it is the gods of greece in competition while being equally powerful or the christian trinity being considered perfection in its simultaneous balance; things in a group of three will perpetually seem as greater, more powerful, or more potent to a primitive instinct. The next number that carries this type of association is the number 7; which is a prime number as well, but it's also larger making it harder to associate with random topics. Humans just want unimportant things to seem important by either expanding or decreasing a list of dominant examples to fit in a similar way to how junk listacle articles usually come in 10's.
5:35 the ROMAN numeral?
idk why I thought of adding that while recording. "numeral 3" sounds weird and "western arabic numeral 3" did not even occur to me
WHAT THE HECK I WALKED BY MY BROTHER AND HE STARTED PLAYING GOOD KID AND THEN I PRESSED PLAY ON THE VIDEO AGAIN AND GOOD KID WAS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND
Should be noted that The Big 3 originated from American anime fandom when those 3 where at their most popular with the US fans
3 is normally a big number because triangles is the sturdiest 2d polygon we retroactively make big 3s like the father the son the holy spirt. The Holy spirt is not in the bible.
TotallyNotMark done a video on this too, good shit from both of yous👏🏽
It’s called the big 3 because of the impact it had at the time. Like putting most of us on and sales.
My Big 3 are now Date a live, lupin the 3rd and Alfred Jodocus Quack!
Why?
Because I never gave a shit about One Piece, Naruto or Bleach.
17:07 That’s NOT Oda 😂😂😂
Im pretty sure it’s one of the creators of The Legend of Zelda
google says otherwise 😏
EYESHIELD 21 MENTION 🔥🔥
17:04 That is not Oda sadly lol
I was just watching the R34 deep dive when I saw the vid got uploaded seconds ago
i grew up watching naruto and some other shonen anime cuz they're awesome, i.e animations, effects, and story lore.
The Big 3 will never be duplicated ever again
My explanation for "The Big 3" is nothing scientifical. It's something more "artistical" in nature.
In short, if you have any sort of love for anime, then you "must" love at least one of these animes, and if you love one of them, then you must love the others as well, because they're the same kind of things you love, just in a different package.
So, they are "The Big 3" because they are 3 animes that are simply a must watch if you're an anime fan.
Of course, talking about anime fans of the time. New anime fans (from the last decade or so) can easily not watch any of the big 3, since 2 are over already and one is like 1K episodes so ain't no way today's Gen-Z have enough patience to sit through that.
One Piece: Mothafuck tha big 3 its just big ME ! And your best work is a light pack Prince out live Mike Jack ! BOOOM ! (Naruto & Bleach)