You definitely pinned down shounen's biggest problem in the first 3 minutes the stakes are too high all the time. When the world is always ending the protagonist has to win. It's just all false tension.
And this is one of the many reasons why Hunter x Hunter is so good, the stakes are never "the world". Even with the last arc the world was in a "false" danger. At least that's how I interpreted it :)
right, even chimera ant arc's stake is not "the world". It is clearly shown later that Chimera Ants can be dealt with(and they were with a nuke) because their nature is a known thing. The latest arc is going beyond that so we'll see where it goes from there, if Togashi actually stop playing the hiatusxhiatus game...
Togashi ain't playing no game when he's stated multiple times during the HxH run that his back was in unbearable pain. I'd rather him take the breaks he needs to get a full recovery rather than push through the pain and only have breaks when he ends up reaching a point where he can't do it anymore. But I'm glad to see he's back, and honestly, he gets a lot accomplished in the chapters he releases. So hopefully we'll progress quite a bit even if it only lasts 10-15 chapters.
I feel that in Naruto the escalation problem made the battles worse too. In the Chuunin ark, the battles were all about strategy, it had powers and jutsus, but they were used the smart and logical way to trick each other, like in Temari vs Shikamaru. In the ninja war it was all about the biggest balls and powers, the scale got so big strategy got meaningless in the way of individual battles.
Cardboard Tenshi its not as black and white as this, when Naruto fought pain, and when samurai and the granny fought the puppet master it was still great
True, but there still was a TON of strategy. Shame that other cool characters like shikamaru, gaara and Lee got left behind and became unimportant. The kaguya Ark was pretty good, but the ridiculous power levels dragged it down a bit. It should've been more of a team effort. Instead it was basically a team 7 carry
@El Guapo Which is precisely why I can't psyche myself up to continue watching Shippuden. I made it past the Gaara arc at the beginning and just dropped off and it took ages to psyche myself up to even watch that much and that was years ago. Just the shear number of episodes was overwhelming and then hearing from people about all these ridiculously long battles/arcs with just all this overpowered DBZ shit...I lost interest. When I first got into Naruto (the original show) it was because I hadn't seen anything like it. These were kids engaged in some pretty mature, life-and-death scenarios. The fights were intimate and intense and carried with them personal stakes. As a kid, I remember seeing Sasuke get skewered with sowing needles, convinced he was going to die, tell Naruto he couldn't die yet, he needed to kill his brother. Back then, that was some pretty profound shit. Then Shippuden hit and every main character just went "over 9,000!". I got so fucking tired of seeing Sasuke's edgy ass and Naruto and Sakara constantly trying to find/redeem him I honestly wish Naruto had just rasengan'd him into oblivion early on. Plus, this elaborate, convoluted explanation for why the Uchiha are so powerful and Itachi wasn't evil and blah, blah, blah. Then Boruto came out and people told me (I didn't really mind spoilers given how long I'd procrastinated on watching Shippuden) Naruto and Sasuke both had kids and Naruto died and I was like "Well, then I already know the most essential info I needed, now there's no point".
The only critique i have is saying MHA is really a fourth wave. I'd say the third wave is smaller stories, Fairy Tail, Soul Eater, FMA, Blue Exorcist, etc. The normalization of shounen
I believe Full Metal Alchemist just hit all the right marks for shonen. They NEVER had to rely on becoming increasingly more porweful. The stakes were clear from the very beggining. It was always about the love between the brothers (with the full out war as a side dish). I think it really is the perfect example of a perfectly made shonen manga (and anime with brotherhood).
Yeah I pretty much agree. It would be nice if more shonen did that sort of stuff. I mean, I love action, but I also love getting to know the characters. Personally, I also like how the Digimon anime series doesn't exactly get as overpowered as other shonen tend to (well, except Digimon Xros Wars and Hunters IMO) and you tend to learn about the personal struggles of the characters such as losing family members or being unable to tell others of something that is holding you him/her back. The Digimon themselves were practically always the reason why their partners were able to become stronger as characters. I know it's not quite as popular as most shonen, but I think it's pretty good (not to mention it doesn't appear to have a bunch of filler as I've of some others having).
I think it is because the story quest focuses on learning and finding information rather than on becoming strong. There's a masterful escalation of stakes, but it's based on how much the brothers are discovering; every time they uncover a truth, ten more questions unfurl and draw you in deeper.
Agreed. And yet it never loses sight of the character developments, continuity of their relstionships, and the progress of the main plot that flourishes through the countless subplots of the abundant cast.
I'd put it with HxH; they're both shonen, but they're so vastly different from other works in the same genre that it's hard to put them in the same category. But yes, Gintama is one of the greatest shows to come out of Japan.
also Madara should have been the final boss, he had so much build up that the Kaguya asspull was just ridiculous at the end. Kishimoto just shouldn't have made him so OP that he didn't know how to kill him in the end
si Bongkukaye but imo the pain arc was the perfect arc in naruto. It balanced and blended together the large scale attack and naruto’s personal struggles really well. It had that nice jaw dropping attack on Konoha that pain did which is pretty good when writing anime, and then it incorporated naruto into it with the deaths of his comrades. Jiraiya’s death caused him to grow his hatred towards pain and Hinata’s death was the climax of that arc that led naruto into completely losing control of himself. Then they had that nice little parent child part which provided more character development. Say what you want about kishimoto messing up since the pain arc, but imo pain arc was the most important arc in naruto’s entire plot line, since most of the entire shippuden story revolves around pain. The pain arc answered the question of “what is the akatsuki”, allowed naruto to gain control over his emotions and the experiences from that arc which helps him later on in the story.
@si Bongkukaye May I remind you that latest 1/3 of war arc isn't exactly all that happened in Shippuden? Stop spamming comment that is obviously full of shit.
You should have added that One Punch Man is a response to the escalation paradox of comic books. By the way this is not an issue that starts in Shonen, or even with Dragonball. This happened in American comic books decades before Manga became popular. Look up stories about characters like Superman, Dr. Strange, etc. and you quickly find that each time the character has to show growth that they "escalate" the stakes and find themselves fighting against bigger and bigger odds until everything is just "this universe versus that universe" style storytelling.
I has to agreed with the comic side,the hardcore fans just went...chill.They sometime worship the characters to the point it's just....I don't know what to said about it ,it just annoyed.For example dc comic fans went 'blowup' after universe rebirth(I forgot what it name) because it literally make the all preview story 'pointless' to them. In my own opinion ,I stop follow westen comic(l was Asian) after reaching middle school because it feel just 'uncreative' .now all new comic story nowadays was just 'what lf' ,different setting but same characters,lt just boring after a decade if you follow it since you're a kids.
actually, the point of American comic book superheroes is that they don't change, so there isn't so much escalation as just doing the same thing over and over again. The escalation issue is very uniquely a shonen manga problem.
@@sledgetable172 HxH is unique ina sense its not a typical straight forward shonen where the MC is a selfless hero. Its one of the first series I've seen where the hero(Gon) became less and less unstable, that in the end his only best friend had to let him go.
I know I'm like two years late, but I thought it appropriate to list and timestamp the anime mentioned so spoilers can be avoided 0:21 Dragon Ball z 3:25 Hunter x Hunter 4:29 One piece 5:31 Naruto 6:54 Bleach 8:11 My Hero Academia
The weirdest in escalation has to be with Jojo as Part 1: Let's kill a big gay vampire terrorizing England Part 2: a guy, his mom, and his best friend fight ancient gods over a gem stone Part 3: The big gay vampire is back and this time we got to have a fight over Egypt Part 4: A businessman is inconvenienced by a group of thugs for his fetish Part 5: Big gay vampire had a kid and he wants to become don of the Italian mob Part 6: THE WORLD HAS BEEN RESET Part 7: Cripple boy gets told by Jesus to kill the president Part 8: Man with 4 balls must fight rock people to find a fruit
EpsilonKnight When? he won't say his Rohan side stories are either canon or not but he considers a terrible fanfiction canon? that whole novel takes a dump on Dio's character, it's just as bad as Jorge Joestar
Boku no Hero is one of the worst reads I had in recent memory, jesus it's so freaking bad, predictable, cliches all over it, etc.. At least the art is cool, but the writing is atrocious. Had a really great start, but then...
What I would change with Naruto: I’d give less focus into Sasuke and more into Naruto and other characters who had more potential other than being uchihas, like rock lee. Keep Naruto as an underdog and forget the reincarnation thing existed. Give an arc where Naruto is hunted by the akatsuki and has to leave with Jiraiya, giving more of an excuse to leave and make an arc where Naruto’s development is shown. And.....MAKE SAKURA ACTUALLY USEFUL!
@@jrodtdk4544 But for some reason Sakura is a main character I don't mind Sasuke atleast he is a badass and he was meant to be hated at first but come on sakura.... She is the reason why naruto isn't in my top 10 of alltime not the fillers
Thb Kishimoto can't write girls for shit,Sakura had so much potential to actually catch up to Naruto and Sasuke,but Kishimoto only gave her two power ups and then made her still blindly love Sasuke no matter if he tried to kill her.
@Pineapqles yep,that's pretty much it,and honestly I'm so salty about how Kishimoto wrote and developed her character,Sasuke almost killed her but nope she still loves him,Sakura is a genjutsu type but they decided to make her a medic,they even forgot to make her do at least one jutsu of her element type in the series,honestly,Kishimoto messed up (and it isn't only Sakura,almost all the girls from Naruto had so much potential but because Kishimoto can't write girls all was wasted)
I like jojo's bizzare adventure but I felt the show was ruined by bad voice acting, horrible animation, lack of character development, and horrible dialogue. Like why tf is dio stronger in Jojo's body than his own when he was obviously stronger than him when they fought years ago? Why is dio a bigger threat than the pyramid men who seemed a ton stronger than him? They constantly repeat things or explain every thing right after they do it like the viewer can't see what's happening. Speedwagon on would do this constantly and so does Joseph's character. I'll admit the story itself is pretty interesting but I can go without seeing it.
Deonta B read Vento Aureo and Stella ball ru- well, it’ll get better along the way. In plus Jonathan’s body isn’t as strong as Dio’s old body. Just his stand.
My favorite One Piece arc is most definitively the Water 7 arc... The Crew loses not only 2 members, one of them challenging the captain and causing a major internal conflict in the crew, but they also lose their ship at the end... The Arc is extremely personal and I love everything about it so much.
I thought they were at least funny, as they bickered among themselves (CP-9) just like the Straw Hats, and they had some interesting Devil Fruit powers too. There are a lot of other villains that aren't that that interesting, so I think the CP-9 is at least pretty good compared to the others that have been
Can we just take a moment to thank Toriyama for creating a genre? Also, even though I am a girl and shounen is made for young boys, the shows from the genre are just centred around getting better and are so inspiring and as a college student who has to work, I really need that.
@@amazingjay3957 Anyone can watch it and it's made for everyone yes, but it's marketed more towards a male audience which is true and what OP was saying.
Yes, & let me ask you, are Fushigi Yugi & Inuyasha, Shojo or Shonen? They happen to possess elements of both in them. Much as there are Shonen that are made to appeal to both genders there are also Shojo that feel almost Shonen in nature.
I feel like, in addition to the stakes-are-raised-again problem, there's also the problem of enemies constantly somehow being stronger than the last guy, even if that guy declared himself stronger than the universe or whatever. One way to fix this might be not to necessarily make the enemy physically stronger/faster, but to change up the tactics and give the protags a problem to work out. For example, in Detective Conan (not a fighting manga but bear with me), the mysteries don't necessarily become more difficult, there's just a different puzzle each time. And in One Piece, while some enemies are stronger than the last, some others just have tricks up their sleeves, like Devil Fruits. Gecko Moria wasn't terribly physically strong compared to Luffy's past enemies, but he was difficult to defeat because of his size and his DF ability, which made it easy for him to trick and capture his enemies.
I know what you're saying, but DB did start over twenty years ago. Despite that it inspired the modern shounen genre, it's time for a change in the good-evil dynamics, I'd say.
You're right, and this is something Naruto "solved" a long time ago. At least until the time skip, it was usually a much more technical matter of technique use and outsmarting an opponent rather than just 'more power'.
To me, the main problem with shows on the shounen genre is simply "The lack of consequences" or at least the big impact that the actions of the characters and how they echo. Most of the time, the heros survive out of casuality, pure dumb luck or unstopable willpower, bu they lack what's a "real sense of danger". USually we have an ambietience and "death flags" to trigger a character will die and this is both alluring but at the same time really predictable because when a character was struck or "desintegrated" ¿, oh look we can bring it back (i.e. Dragon Balls). I believe Dragon Ball made ane xample cause most of us were children and we didn't really know how to critique "suspense" or "surprise" factors. Nowadays, the fandom is less impressionable and most creators have to be a certain level of genius to shine in this. I like series that are roller coasters, but be in the roller coaster enough times or ride it enough and eventually it'll become boring.
I think where my hero academia did right in that respect is emphasize the danger of deku using his quirk improperly. he legit almost had his arms forever crippled because he was doing shit wrong. And also, when All Might gives his power to Deku, we see his power deteriorate throughout the series until that foreshadowing all comes together in the All For One arc, when he loses the most of his ability to wield One For All (now only for a second or so) we see a sense of mortality in All Might, the most powerful being in that universe. A symbol of peace was the light that originally seemed impossible to stamp out, but then the harsh truth reveals otherwise. In other words, we know full well that sometime in the close future, All Might's will meet his demise. (if there's any manga readers out there please, no spoilers!)
@@rondospectacle I think HxH is a different kind unlike most other shounen. I would even say that hxh is seinen disguise as shounen. Ppl say Chimera Ant arc is dark, i think the Dark Continent arc will be darker
Cuong Quoc I was talking about how things in hxh chain together. And I don’t think Hxh is a disgrace to shonen it started in 1998 even before one piece it define how shonen would be. And year I agree that arc will be darker.
Bleach is kind of a sad story for me. I love the world, several of the side character, especially Gin and Urahara, the aesthetic and style so much. Even in the anime, which I didn't watch very much, the soundtrack is probably my favorite in any non-music based anime. Yet it failed so much on getting the characters invested and keeping the story original, making me sad.
Same here, man. I actually got into Bleach near the end of the Fullbringer arc, which was after most anime fans had written it off. But the series appealed to me on a level that few series do, and I was able to squeeze a lot of enjoyment out of it in spite of its flaws. But I didn't like the direction the last arc took, and there came a point where I couldn't ignore the series' flaws any more. I've been watching some of the more popular anime recently, and while I usually like them, so far none of them have half the appeal to me that Bleach did. Some people point to My Hero Academia as a successor to Naruto, but it seems we're still waiting for someone to make a proper successor to Bleach.
@@Corrector1 Bleach seemed to be far more niche then I think people give it credit for, because I feel the exact same way. My favorite anime has got to be Fullmetal Alchemist, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the series was consistently good. That isn't something that can be said about Bleach. And yet, even then, the 1st arc of Bleach is always going to be at the top of my list. I mean, sure it can be read and enjoyed by a lot of people, But for those people that it really speaks to, it sings... I guess. I don't really know how to say it except that I still adore Bleach to this day. It kills me that it went so downhill.
While I'm mostly familiar with the major shonen, from what I've seen no other series has the kind of appeal that Bleach did which makes it sadder. Some people hold up My Hero Academia as a better Naruto. I'm still waiting for a better Bleach.
Because I've yet to run into a series that had the same appeal as Bleach did. It had a lot of cool stuff, it just wasn't well written most of the time.
Well as of now i can very much say that no, MHA did not learn from the mistakes of prior Shonen works and still ended up having the same issues like undeserving and stupid power ups that makes prior establishments obsolete, feels nothing but needless escalation because it's "Shonen", strips away much of tension in fights when the MC has more powers at his disposal and lastly runs into the very large risk of making other characters underutilized because of the very big power gap between them and the MC.
The problem came for mha was it made rules that were extremely personal and emotional but stick to it so close it didn't do anything special. Till this day mha has stayed the same way. And as things go mha has gotten more disappointing as a long form shonen. Two things that can add to this are First, the world is to big for it. The world expands and expands but it lost every aspect of realism to it. Whereas second, it never took any risk and tried to be personal. A great example would be, spoilers, midnight dying. It took the most safest characters to kill off and give a little emotional impact but it backfired because we didn't have any actual screentime or emotional attachment to her. She was just there in the background first then she died for the sake of death and then the author expected the reader to feel sad and I was like nope. So yeah, in the opposite the manga that were absolutely unexpected and underdogs such as black clover and demon slayer have become more interesting. Black clover giving the reader what it wants and increasing the pacing. And demon slayer making it's base, sticking to it's emotional writing rather than complex world building, and ending it way before.
100% disagree with "issues like undeserving and stupid power ups that makes prior establishments obsolete" the very first point for Deku was that he felt like he cheated to get the power and to prove that he deserves it despite the constant failures in his mind that is supposed to be the very point, his prior establishments are still mentioned and make his character him with Gentle and his justice, Shoto and Bakugo that furthers his sacrificial nature with saving to win theme but still under a cautious guise that he has to learn a new fighting style with his brace plus kick style, the failures in the overhaul arc still comeback to him when he has lil existential moment realising how high all his ideals are when he previously mentioned how he wanted to save everyone and win yet did none of that especially taking away his safety that he can trust OFA and how much he's promised to mom, All Might and thoughts to Nighteye.
@@tehcookievanilla1323 I think you may have missed what i said which isn't surprising given what i said was admittedly pretty vague. I was actually referring to Deku getting 6 new quirks on top of OFA which felt utter BS since not only does it feel horrendously contrived and stupid but also the fact that what you said pretty much meant nothing if Deku learning from his failures is given more power-ups rather than developing himself as a human being and learning other stuff to help him save people and defeat villains like martial arts, new combat strategies and creating gadgets to help compensate for the fact that he can never truly become as strong as All Might was at his prime with OFA no matter how hard he tries and instead should learn other things to help him. I don't mind the idea that Deku feel like he doesn't deserve to be All Might's successor since he can never use it the same way the latter did because that could open up to an interesting story were Deku comes to the realization that he doesn't need to be like All Might and should instead strive to be his own hero like focusing more on Full Cowl while also learning other stuff like what i said above even if he never gets praise for it and gets ignored because he doesn't have a "strong, flashy quirk" because that's not what being a hero is about, it's about doing the right thing and help people using the best of your abilities as you can. Of course none of that matter when Deku is just given 6 quirks on a whim because we can't have a battle Shonen series were characters get rapidly stronger with new powers no matter how ludicrous, contrived, illogical and counter-productive it is for the story, characters and writing.
@@lepnoxicray7398 I always felt like the reason world building is so lackluster is how the show can't help but introduce very interesting ideas but then does nothing with them. Examples such as those with villainous, mutant quirks or the quirkless suffering discrimination, hero society being corrupt, the state of heroes throughout the rest of the world and how they are thought of are never explored one bit and at most gets one brief mention before being forgotten by the author. And yeah this manga never truly takes risks and it's not just about killing characters but other aspects as well of the story. Things such as Deku being a quirkless fighter, Shigaraki becoming strong and independent in his own right, corruption in hero society that allow fake heroes to flourish and societal discrimination against groups i mentioned above are the things that the manga never tries anything with and instead goes with the conformist safe route for easy cash instead of being actually creative with the writing which is a damn shame since these have the potential for some great, compelling story to make this manga a worthwhile read at the very least.
I still think Gintama is THE Shounen Jump anime. It's long running, and it never had a single serious power creep. Also, every character is endearing in some way. That show has a huge cast, but I can still remember most of them (the villains' names tend to be looser in memory since they don't appear hardly at all, they aren't as important). Some of the arcs are just heart wrenching too. And the characters in the show react to the stakes JUST AS MUCH as the audience would. This makes it feel more believable when the characters DO go out and do something about it. In the end, the anime is about some a group of societal rejects doing the best they can to protect what's directly in front of them. Hell, they wouldn't save the world if nobody gave them a personal reason to, or forced them to do it by physically moving them to the problem. I love Gintama. It's just a batch of fun.
I think it's sad that people see HxH as subversive series. Saying that really doesn't give the show the credit it deserves. When you break down HxH to specifics, it really does nothing different with the shounen genre. The reason people like it so much is because it just does shounen well. I'd be willing to say it does shounen the best that shounen has been done in a very long time. I'm a huge fan of the show and I know other people are too. I want more people to really know why HxH is as good as it is. You want to talk about an actual subversive anime? Fuckin' Jojo's been here the entire time. Go get your fill of that goodness.
After the artifical world, HxH went downhill. I found the chimera arc disgusting, the whole cliched drama and distortion between Gon and Killua annoyed me.Killua specifically distanced himself and Gon did not mind... in the end, we got a emo nerd rage from Gon who looked stupid. More than that, we had the whole thing where Gon lost his nen... and now we have this crap arc which is boring.. I think the author had to take hiatus to create the never ending paragraphs and explanations in each chapter, this must have taken decades to prepare cause it never ends. The MC is now Kurapika and he sucks Kurapika was interesting because he meshed well with Leorio or he had other interesting characters that made his boring personality shine in comparison to charismatic ones. For example, Kurapika shone alone as the MC in the phantom arc because of the phantom troupe, who were nutters and had looney charisma, otherwise...... without the phantom troupe, Kurapika is a cheap Conan and the author sucks at detective stories.
To be fair he did show a nod to JoJo's when talking about exceptions lol. HxH being subversive isn't a bad thing by any means, it just makes it unique. I love the way it's arc structure seems random and yet is just non stop from story to story.
Escalation is not entirely the problem, the problem arises when escalation leads to core rules set in the universe to fall apart like not needing handsigns and instead resulting in "yelling for power" or non-explained power ups "I've been training for 10,000 years but in the 1 year since you came I am now 5 times stronger" (only one character in Bleach does not do this brownie points if you know who) escalation has to have meaning and follow your own rules "there is this thing called 'haki' that people you have seen have been using but now that you know you can gain power" My Hero does this well by showing us All Might a man who stands at the top and is the pinnacle of power in the world so we see the top then someone with no known power "the bottom" and can see the growth of the steps in-between throughout the series. Fullmetal Alchemist sets up with the Ice alchemist who created an array on top of all central and was attempting to freeze it we see a man with the power to freeze a city and throughout we see displays of power unseen but the rules are clearly set as we move along with a tease that there are powers that can break the rules. This in contrast to Naruto where they fly off the rails of power during the chunin exams and break their own rules for little to no explanation and run with it to the end of the series continuing to pull things out of their asses because 'plot' reasons we also see rebel Naruto go from a struggling youth who has to work for things continue to receive plot power-ups over and over to the point you forget why he ever envied Neji.
Your transitions between each series by using the manga panels and the music from each respective series was really well done. I always come back to this video just to see that for some reason.
Power Creep and Plot Escalation can really alienate an audience if pulled from no where. Naruto seemed to get this at the start, making the first arc a fight over a bridge and had the perfect route to take, making the story about correcting the status quo of ninja society and bringing an end to the cycle of war... BUT IT DIDN'T DO THAT! It was about the Uchiha, cursed blood lines, tailed demons who weren't actually evil, a rabbit princess from the poxy moon and redeeming Sasuke for some bloody reason!
Amen, especially the last part was such nonsense. Just trying to force some wannabe deep "look how grown up and forgiving we are, peace for everybody huiiii" bullshit in there.
I honestly have to agree with this. They could have been a lot deeper. I haven't actually finished Naruto shippuden but I know almost all of the spoilers. Sasuke pretty much did the equivilant of joining isis, but then they all forgive him and pretend nothing happens, and sakura still wants to marry him?
RagingPheonix this has been discused a lot and the conclution people came along is that, strange enought, Sasuke did nothing wrong (and i'm not trying to be sarcastic i'm completly serious) he didn't kill anyone, he didn't destroy anything or help making bad things, in the end he didn't do anything bad enought to be considered a criminal, yes he technically kill sanzo, well fuck sanzo he deserve it
It was heavily implied that Sasuke (or at least a member of the team he put together) killed Jay, a Kumogakure Ninja tracking them after they kidnapped Bee. Then there's the attempted assassination of the Kages at the summit meeting, his plan to destroy Konoha AND the fact that he tried several times to murder his best friends because "muh pain makes meh stronger!" which wouldn't have been so stupid if not not for the fact it was actually freaking true and the Uchiha are ACTUALLY POWERED BY ANGST!!!
Oddly enough, the "granddaddy" of Shonen seems to avoid most of the problems mentioned in the video. Fist of the North Star. I know everyone will probably disagree in that, since they likely see either Dragon Ball or even Arale or Kinnikuman as the true grandpappy, but I feel Hokuto no Ken defined many of the traits of a shonen manga. You have the selfless hero, the constant fighting, the weight of many always at stake......yet it manages to be one of the most personal and emotionally charged stories of Shonen Jump. I think what honestly separates it is the fact that the setting, characters, and themes all focus on the journey of one person: Kenshiro. True, we do see the lives of other people, but they all revolve around how they were affected by the main hero. Allies? It shows Ken saving their lives, talking things out with them, and doing all he can to protect their futures. Enemies? They're either immediately wasted or, if they do present a tangible threat, always have a logistical reason as to why they stay for so long. Hell, transformations do not exist in the manga, only certain abilities. Even so, these abilities tie in with the characterization of Kenshiro. The martial arts even play perfectly to each character. The world? It's already been destroyed. All that can be done is how Ken can help fix this place despite his destiny as a walking chaos bomb. In fact, even when it does escalate, it only goes as far as taking over the world. This allows whatever tyrant he's up against show how human they are, despite their monstrous presence and despicable actions. All-in-all, one of the first definitive Shonen Manga did away with most of the problems commonly associated with its genre.
Damien Suluai fist of the North Star was an awesome series because it was different than the others. I love it and I think it deserves much more attention. Fun fact: it actually inspired Dragon ball.
Sorry. I think the problem is that a lot of writers aren't good at keeping their rules consistent, and things tend to get thrown to the wayside the longer the series go on. You can make the characters more powerful while still giving them some limitations.
@@Corrector1 Absolutely or at least When introducing things like magical items They keep the same level of power that they had in the beginning Because like Maybe you don't know how to do the teleportation spell But using a teleportation stone Is pretty good And I agree with you I don't understand why people don't just want to lean on The idea of getting some assistance From people who are fans of their series To keep their s*** consistent That's pretty much wittlich Power scaling does But there's this weird dogma About wanting to keep creative consistency nowadays
and poor story telling. You can have alot of escalation but without a good story to back it up your anime becomes naruto and bleach levels of shit. A good example of escalation is One Piece
That was the problem i found with Gantz. Sometimes the plot would just completely shift out of nowhere, and i'd be stuck wondering if I missed a chapter.
everything that people find bad about JJBA (overpowered stands, lack of continuity, bad writing in general) are things that i find really charming about the series, actually! i think all of the weird shit that's always happening keeps it fresh. you liked the standard shonen journey and muscle men of part 3? well don't get too comfy because part 4 is a slice of life mystery and a shift to pretty boys! i love that.
@Lantang Satriatama what about Hellboy? Or Sandman? Or goddamn Cerebus which was written (and drawn I think) by the same guy from 1977 to 2004? Also there's lots of DC and Marvel comic runs that have been written by the same author for long periods of time, off the top of my head Chris Claremont wrote X Men from the mid 70s until the early-to-mid 90s, Geoff Johns wrote Green Lantern and a whole bunch of tie-ins for about 9 years, Brian Michael Bendis wrote Ultimate Spiderman for 14 years and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee wrote Fantastic Four for the entirety of the 60s until the early 70s.
OP anime is of clearly lesser quality than DBZ & Naruto. From what I understand One Piece is the rare case where the Manga massively outperforms its own anime. Naruto is the most successful of the 2nd Modern Wave animes, while OP reigned supreme among Manga. Also isn't OP a Wave 3 series now as Wave 2 ended with Naruto & Bleach ending, Wave 3 starting with Dragon Ball Super?
@@WaterKirby1994 I would agree that the OP manga is absolutely amazing but the case we're dealing with is the storytelling aspect of shonen manga through anime. As mentioned, Naruto suffered of extensively enlarging the stakes (such as the Ninja War) at a lower output of emotion throughout the story both anime and manga-wise. However, One Piece avoids that mistake by linking a larger scale event (such as Marineford), with increased stakes, to something personal to the main character and still achieve to make the story- both anime and manga-wise- appealing and captivating, despite its long story length, ironically, something that Naruto failed to achieve in it's shorter length story.
Honestly, MHA does such a good job avoiding escalation because no powers really deviate from how they're established to work. Dragonball Z, Naruto and Bleach, from my experience, had a real problem pulling new powers and abilities out of character's asses for the sake of character advancement, so eventually you'd be worn out with "they'll overcome this with some random ability." They'll be another super saiyan level, another ninja ability, some hidden zanpakto that'll move the characters onto some infinite "next level". But MHA's character's advancement seems to be purely from training and adapting, ya know, kinda like real life. Characters have an established Quirk, that doesn't really change, but they adapt how they apply it. They specifically have parts where the main characters are attempting to learn new ways of utilizing their abilities. Deku's whole progression at the beginning is learning how to even use One For All without blasting himself apart.
ThatAnimeSnob There are different departments within the school that are unrelated to being an actual hero that fights and rescues, some involving actual general studies (So you don't have to enroll to become a hero, the school is just number 1 in that regard). The number of students in the actual heroics department that have non-offensive quirks are very small in number, and one of them got an actual explanation. Usually they need to use their abilities creatively in order to get in. The system for accepting students into the heroics department is just unfair really, since it uses robots in a controlled environment. The kid with the brainwashing quirk got placed into a different department because of this.
The Otaku Dragon Slayer I wholeheartedly agree, I really hope between villain arcs the creator tackles these issues when the characters are focusing on school. Really gives another layer to the story.
Look i like boku no hero academia, but arent quirks almost exactly those "random abilities"? The manga is young and almost all of the big shounen start of strong, but who knows what will happen, the possibility is very real that eventually it will be world destroying quirks vs world destroying quirks
Why do HxH fans always got something to say about the Chimera Ant arc? That arc was a masterpiece. I understand if they disliked it because of the narration, but in my opinion that gave it more depth and helped me get a better understanding of it. Plus the dark tone was a really good touch. By far, my favorite arc in the series.
I think it's very much a personal preference. I personally liked the arc, for the villains deeper personality, his goals and his past. Not many shounen develop their villains to have such personal or relatable struggles. I actually read this arc, as opposed to watching it, but I really enjoyed the narrative boxes in the manga. They helped me keep track of the fast-paced-action, and the motives of all the characters in play. My personal favorite was the Kurapika crime arc- because it was so personal, and the stakes were much more down-to-earth, and therefore easier to "relate to" in a sense. Also I'm a sucker for that atmosphere.
@Excelsior Nah, I was hyped at the beginning of Yorknew but I was kind kf bummed when the only Phantom Troul vs Kurapika fight was against Uvo. The ant arc has Netero vs Meruem (best fight) and Gon being a fucking monster. It also has the character development of Meruem. The complaint that its not grounded in personal struggle doesnt work because the best part of the arc was Meruem and Gon who both had very personal story arcs. The narration was kind of dumb but the Youpi fight was pretty good anyway.
I wanna become a mangaka and create an anime and manga about ninjas but I want it to be what Naruto wasn't and hit all the right marks of shonen anime.
If you really want to make manga about shinobi, make it Seinen. Not Shonen. shinobi is not about loud boy dreaming high and become clan leader by having monster inside him. It is about becoming a perfect spy/assassin for their lord by endless training and discipline. Play TENCHU game if you want to know how shinobi work.
@@RRRRRRRRR33 itachi a "lame martyr"? No offense, but are you drunk?!? Itachi had NO motive for being evil and that made him a shit character. But the plot twist in shippuden made him one of the best characters in the whole of anime. His story was perfectly done and executed. All you're judging itachi by is how cool he looks and whether he's a good or bad guy. That's such a two dimensional way of thinking. Itachi is probably the best character in naruto. Tho my favorite character is obito.
shounen anime MC: i an going to die...i lost this battle shounen anime villain: your ambition and determination made you loose this batlle *HARD METAL STARTS TO PLAY* villain:O FUC*
That's One Piece right now. Luffy literally had a beauty sleep, wakes up and figures out the most advanced martial art in the world... just like that, lol The shonen combat genius, just another one among thousands
Naruto - Stumbled but didnt fall. Tbh i was expecting to her nothing but criticism about Naruto but it was handled well. It was a great story with great characters but the war arc was black mark. However the series still ended with the main goal completed and thats the underdog who no one believed in achieve his goal of becoming Hokage.
RasenRendan X true but just becuase the main protagonists goal was met doesnt mean it was a good anime lmao. If anything that is a bad thing. It means that the shows ending was most likely predictable from the start
So ur saying a story meeting its goal by the is a bad thing now? The whole point of Naruto was the journey of the underdog reaching his goal. Ofc how he got from hated outcast to Leader of his village and Hero of the world had its up and downs but you sound like ur reaching imo. Then that means Boku no Hero is a bad story cuz we know Deku will become the greatest hero by the end or is it still taboo to say anything bad about that series?
well sorry it was ruined for you but the fact the series lasted for 15 years means that it had a more positive effect than negative. Im not saying its perfect no series is but you gotta give it some credit in some aspects. There has to be something about the series you liked.
One Piece and HxH are my favorite but I always liked Bleach as well. The character and monster designs where always the biggest highlight for me (it was also the first anime I heard of ). I have still yet to read MHA but when the anime ends I'll definitely read it.
I like BnH but the fandom is really grating my nerves. You think it's the best thing ever? No shit, it's still only 140ish chapters in. The problems you illustrated in Dragon Ball, Naruto and Bleach didn't manifest until much later into their runs. How about we give BnH some time to breathe before we sing its praises for having saved the shounen genre?
Galero15 as a fan of MHA, I'll tell you that it's truth that fans tend to praise the series too much but this is not exclusive of My Hero Academia, ANY other series, shounen or not, even outside of anime have its fandom filled with people who think it's the best thing ever, but just as much as one should not count the opinions of the haters as "objective" criticism, we should not view the opinions of fans who praise it the same. And as you said, MHA still has a way to go as it's still a young series, being only 3 years old. It can either go and surpass everyone's expectations or end up disappointing us all (which I hope it doesn't)
Yeah, we just have to wait and see. BnHA isn’t even in its 200th chapter yet. So it’s flaws look miniscule compared to other shonen. Tho the fight scenes do need some improvement.
Donquixote Doflamingo That’s what I mean when I say the action was meh. Either it was lackluster or didn’t really mean much. I think that was due to the fact that the author hadn’t had much practice with action or stakes. Since both of his previous series were cancelled before much happened. So he’s learning on the job. The Gentle vs Deku fight was amazing though. Perfect use of Deku’s strengths and had amazing choreography. Plus Gentle feels real because he’s relatable.
Stands ARE balanced in the sense that nearly all stands can be 'unbeatable' if used properly, which makes fights come down to exploiting the flaws that a stand user will inevitably make because users aren't perfect as well as maximizing the advantages of your stand. Perfect example is a rat beating Jotaro in a one on one fight. Jotaro has one of the most powerful stands in the series, however by figuring out how far he could move while stopping time and leveraging the range of it's stand a rat, a RAT, manages to win. Its only by exploiting it's reload time and having Josuke as a second combatant did they manage to defeat it in that fight. Meanwhile they acknowledge that if they had better long range stands at the time the rat would have been a joke to defeat.
If bleach ended with the Aizen arc I think it would have been better than Naruto. Kubo said him self he I wanted it to end there. He also said that he just likes drawing cool characters and making them fight. The story was always secondary to him. Thats why a lot of characters did not get development.
I saw a translation of the interview on tumblr so I cant say how accurate it was. There is a great video explaining what happened to bleach by Super Eyepatch Wolf.
Bleach did not work as well as a long ongoing story as Naruto did.Naruto had more long term goals, getting Sasuke back , beating the Akatsuki and controlling the nine-tails. With Bleach Ichigo goal was to save his town and the people in it. But that is just my opinion other people liked the fullbring arc and quincy arc. I wish Kubo had time for the full ending but they made him rush so the ending was disappointing
I thought Bleach will ended in Aizen arc, but soon after Aizen arc there was a news said that Tite will continue the series for another 10 years, and I go "WTF are you doing????"...
By first arc I assume you mean up to the end of the Soul Society/ Rescuing Rukia arc (it's sometimes considered as the first 2-3 arcs) in which case I absolutely agree.
Hans Tang Bleach was my first anime (don't count Pokemon, Digimon, or Yugioh because those were too kiddish), and the saving Rukia arc was very good! The reason was because of personal stakes! Ichigo wasn't going to let his friend Rukia be executed and grew stronger in order to save her! His fights against Kenpachi, Renji and Byakuya were filled with great emotion and personal stories! Then Bleach after that fell.
The manga was pretty awesome until the Arancar Arc was finished...after that, imo, it went downhill....and well...we don't talk about the ending, let that one burn in the Seven hells
Um... OK. But the actual biggest problem with shonen; "POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!!!" Seriously, this cliche needs to die. Fairy Tail absolutely drove this one into the dirt. I'd love to vent on how poor Fairy Tail had become with the "friendship" angle, and how low the stakes are, when characters "die" only to be brought back in a couple issues, but yeah... The "friendship" angle. I love One Piece, but that is still strong, despite the nakama trope, yet so many are guilty of this. Attack on Titan, Bleach, Soul Eater, Naruto, Boruto (c'mon... You KNOW its going to happen), the list could go on. Hell, even great seinen like Berserk is starting to succumb to this cliche. There is hope, though. One Punch Man has been able to mostly divert from this trope, so far. I'd like to hear other examples, because my reading list has been slacking, lately.
I see that you are a fan, but sorry... I'm going to have to disagree. I have many problems with Fairy Tail (Including the correct spelling of "Tail". Fixed that). One more example I'll give (aside from the previously mentioned "Nakama Power"), is the lack of character development. There was never any growth to main characters like Natsu, and Gray... Maybe a little for Lucy. But the Natsu I met in the first chapters is the same Natsu in the last chapters... He just calls out different names for his attacks. Ok... One more quick one. The fan service is downright distracting. I'm trying to get into an action scene, then SUDDENLY BOOBS! Hey, I love boobs, but I don't think they should be thrown in my face during a fight.
Funky D just because the story is bit light hearted at the moment doesn't mean berserk is cliché. when miura wants to kill a character and bet he will in coming chapters, he does it when it means something and takes the plot forward. berserk is only getting better, only for those God forsaken hiatuses it is slow
if any manga deserves to go through the friendship is great crap, its berserk. papa guts has suffered enough and needs a break and let's be real, its only going to hurt like a real bitch when something does happen to one of them.
EXACTLY, the "as long as we're friends none of can die and we can beat anyone" trope is the whole reason I stopped watching fairy tail Idc if you use that in one or two fights but holy shit it's almost every single fight. And don't get me started on how most of the bad guys in fairy tail has some sort of a sad backstory.
It pains me to use Berserk and Fairy Tail in the same sentence, so please don't get me wrong, here. I mention Berserk because it could fall into the "Nakama Power" trap with a nudge, though I think Miura is too good to have Guts exposit about his need to be with friends, and get the Nakama Power-up. Where Berserk uses "Power of Friendship" as much more subtle character development, Fairy Tail uses it as a cheap Deus ex Machina.
boruto is trash Its really hard to create a world like One piece. And yes maybe mha will end before one piece, but it will never have the grandeur that one piece has. Btw i love both the series👍
The things I hate about certain shonen animes is the ridiculous power ups that the characters get. The multiple Dragon Ball series, Bleach, Naruto, if you look at them at the beginning to the end, their abilities have pretty much look completely unlike what they started out with. Now, sometimes that's a result of the personal growth and hard work that the characters have put in, like in Hunter x Hunter, and the series I've mentioned actually did do that, at least in the beginning. But Dragon Ball, Bleach, and Naruto just didn't know where to stop. They just kept adding more and more power to their characters until it became boring and repetitive watching them fight against villains that I don't give a damn anymore, no matter how much more powerful than the last villain they are because we all know what's going to happen anyway. It actually makes me sick, I've watched a few episodes of Dragon Ball Super, which apparently started out with some cat who was the god of destruction, and the strongest being in the universe or whatever. Then they add multiple versions of him, and then they add someone who looks fucking ridiculous who's apparently the new strongest, and I'm sitting there wondering how far they're going to milk this damn series. It'll only be fun for newcomers to the show who haven't seen the same thing a million times before. The next thing is how fucking long they are, and have episodes that you can skip without missing anything. Honestly I'd prefer having to wait a year for a new season than watching weekly episodes that have almost nothing happen in a single episode and have stupid filler arcs. The only shonen I've seen that I can exempt from this is Hunter x Hunter, that anime is amazing. Oh, and Jojo's, since I guess overall it now has a decent amount of episodes too. Now I'm laughing looking at how ridiculous this comment is but I just needed to go on a rant, it feels like the shonen anime I loved when I was younger has betrayed me, but in reality this is what those particular shonen were even before I discovered them. Now, I can happily enjoy Hunter x Hunter, My Hero Academia, Jojo, Attack on Titan, etc. I'm ready for the third wave.
Sadly MHA now has done the exact same thing which frankly has made it really hard to care about Shonen works when ass pull power ups are the goddamn norm of the genre at this point.
Escalation and the power of friendship are easily the worst problems. This video explains quite well why escalation sucks, but a perfect example of power of friendship: Fairy Tail! Damn, this series... I was invested for most part, but when the big baddie was revealed, all the cliches of the ancient master being defeated and etc.. And then, FRIENDSHIP! saves the day, lol All those noob characters that can't even be compared to the master, they power up their friendship and defeated the strongest dark mage (or something like that). I dropped Fairy Tail immediatelly after that, lol This thing continues even to this day, I believe there's at least 250+ episodes unknow to me. Same goes with Bleach, Aizen defeated, Ichigo recovering his powers in the most boring way possible, I abandoned right there. It's just too much man, it's so dumb.
Because this is a stupid cliche. Everything seems to be lost, the most powerful characters are defeated.. Suddenly, the noob characters got strong because they are "friends", defeating the invincible antagonist. There's nothing more dumb and stupid than this, it's a deus ex-machina. A cheap solution, just like characters transforming out of nowhere. Fairy Tail even uses a rank system, Natsu and his friends are clearly weaker than the top dogs (the guild master, that redhead dude copied from One Piece that I forgot the name, etc), the own plot establishes them as upcoming characters. How the hell they can defeat a foe that surpassed their master? It's simple: power of friendship. Only a complete fool can accept this kind of "solution".
Phantom lord: master defeated the evil master Jellal: natsu ate roid juice and powered up Laxus: used up to much energy and was defeated after he wiped the floor with the top dogs Hades: lost his source of power while FT had their magic tree Future rogue: natsu had help from a dragon Mard geer: demon defeated by a demon slayer Spriggan 12: and thats where we come to a problem Most of the major fights had legit endings its just that nearly every single fight has a friendship speech regardless of a random power up or not which is still annoying and overplayed.
Theres nothing wrong with friendship. It just depends on how it's written. Fairy Fail just happens to be an example of this being done poorly. It's not the standard of how friendship is written.
Even Ranma 1/2 had this problem way back in the day, and it carried over into its spiritual successor, Inuyasha. Every major arc is "The hero isn't strong enough to do X, so he has to train and learn a new technique that lets him do X. But after he does X, a new challenger appears who is completely unaffected by what the hero learned to do X, so now the hero has to train and learn a new technique that...." It's the same story, whether it's the Cashew fist -> Lion Roar Shot -> Heavenly Dragon Blast, or Wind Scar -> Backlash Wave -> Red Tessaiga -> Adamant Barrage -> Dragonscale Tessaiga -> Meido Zangetsuha, Or Kaioken -> Super Saiyan -> SSJ(#) -> SSJ Blue/Rose etc and on and so forth.
Thomas in Thomas The Tank Engine Is too strong they have nerfed him but he keeps coming faster the most best arc was the Thomas vs The World arc because it proves that Thomas is very OP and is better than god. Thomas is as strong as Cory from Cory In The House and i feel like they should do a collaboration but the only person Thomas can be beat by is the Handy Man because he knows all of his weaknesses. It says on chapter 2 of the Thomas the Tank Engine manga that Thomas can cross dimensions but he avoids going to Handy Man’s dimension because he is the ruler of the world but the most OP character in all of the world is shrek. He rules the Omni verse and sees when someone travels dimensions. He is the real OP character with his most famous companion Donkeh who is his pet and friend. Shrek and Donkeh are the most powerful characters but if Cory, Handy Man, and Thomas join forces they can beat them and be the new rulers of the Omni verse.
I remember when news of Bleach and Naruto ending there was worry over what would fill the shonen action show void. I'm glad My Hero Academia has come into the picture because no show has made me feel this way since classic Naruto. But it is still young so it can definitely still take the route of over escalating. Personally, I think Naruto could have still continued but have him deal with problems as hokage. It's not as high stakes as SAVE THE WORLD like the final arc, but can still be interesting. But it's better to leave Naruto where it is because it finally culminated in his dream job. But that's one potential way to continue his story. Marvel actually suffers from this problem a lot. Every hero is personally saving the world in his own movie and people wonder if the stakes are so high where are the rest of the Avengers?
I assume the movies happen concurrently, thusly they're all busy with their own shit rather than taking a day off when hydra takes over shield. I'm glad we got civil war, a movie where all the avengers showed up to help out in the conflict though
In terms of character development and writing in general, yes, it's leagues above anything I've came across. So much so that I think it's a match for some of the best works of fiction belonging to other mediums. The only other manga series that had the same effect on me was Berserk, years ago, but the fact that HxH is "just" a shounen is quite astounding. I'll never forget the second half of the Chimera Ants Arc.
I know this has nothing to do with the discussion but... does anyone know what's the name of the song that plays when Hunter x Hunter shows up in the video
kubo gave up on bleach himself after being pressured by his editors in certain directions he didnt want to see the story going so he lsot interest in it which u can see in the art and story getting worse and worse after the first arc
I love the way you edited this video! Even if Naruto lost some quality in the end, seeing the way you used the images of the manga with the main theme made me feel nostalgic
Man this analysis is amazing, love the editing its like I'm in a Weekly Shonen Jump magazine as I watch very ascetically pleasing to watch, keep up the great work earned a sub.
One piece is my all time favourite and I think the only thing it really did wrong is to drag Dressrosa for so long, otherwise it is an amazing story with progressive characters and unlimited possibilities which is still alive at now its 20th anniversary year :) I loved how hxh is different from all other anime I have seen, I loved how Dragon Ball kept growing and exploring more and more to the world, I loved how Bleach built up all the tension till Aizen arc with a few exceptions when story was too dragged out, I loved Naruto's spirit and how it evolved from one series to the Shippuden and not lose its charm much (though for me it did a littke bit). And now im enjoying Boku No Hero academia very much as it has become my second favourite and I hope for the manga and anime world to keep expanding and grow as time goes
Traffy The Meme Queen And yes, I've watched and read Naruto. In fact I finished the manga back in 2014, before I even started One Piece. The final arc was absolute horseshit. The final villain was introduced in the same arc without any backstory or foreshadowing at all, and everything was rushed as hell. With One Piece, Oda had planned out his story since he was a kid, so there is virtually no chance of One Piece having a bad ending
the all-seeing Rinnegan yeah I havent yet seen all of naruto, i got a lol stuck around 30s of eps in N shippuden because wasnt that exciting. Though i am sure to once finish it and have my opinion on that last part. And yes, Oda is an amazing story planner and every week is worth living to see new chapter come out and move closer to an ending we are all waiting (and also not waiting) for :D
Saruulbuyan Munkhtur Yea my complaints are more about the Dressrosa Arc in the anime as it had terrific animationand pace, otherwise I can totally see why Oda did what he did with the arc as I really grew to love every single one of the fleet members and there were so many
The anime is TOEI FAULT, The manga is EICHIRO ODA and so far ODA is probably THE BEST MANGAKA IN THE WORLD, even better than hirohiko araki ( jojo) Kentaro Miura ( Berserk) and other better artist and writers because his consistences, world building, storys, character development, is not the fact he does all of this pefectly, rather he does all of it in a consistent and good way that you never feel that is draging or TAKING FUCKING FOREVER DAMMIT MIURA WERE IS BERSERK NEW CHAPTER COMING YOU LAZY ASSHOLE!!!!! almost 5 or 6 CHAPTERS IN a YEAR!!!! and 2016 was even worse and 2015 WAS WORSE THAN THAT and lets not forget that GUTS AND HIS COMPANY WERE TRAP IN A FUCKING BOAT TRIP FOR ALMOST 8 YEARS!!!
I recently linked your video to one of my most recent videos concerning the 1999 television show, Digimon Adventure. I think you've done a good thing here; hopefully word gets around and creators of popular series will realize that simply creating and re-creating the same scenarios over and over again isn't always necessary in order to convey a story that fans will enjoy and love.
My thoughts on all of the major Shonen series: - Dragon Ball: Started out simple, but then it evolved into screaming and powering up for 10 episodes. - Yu Yu Hakusho: Essentially a prototype for Hunter x Hunter, an amazing series that gets overlooked nowadays in favor of Togashi's later work. - Hunter x Hunter: Maybe all those hiatuses are a good thing, gives more time for Togashi to flesh out the story. It's not perfect, but it knows what it's doing. - One Piece: Has a clear goal, but goes with the flow as to what goes on and how it gets there. Sometimes I wonder if Oda's just making shit up as he goes along, but that's just me who thinks that. - Naruto: Began small, but grew too big towards the end, but at least didn't fall apart (depending on who you ask). Hopefully Boruto will learn from his father's series. - Bleach: Was a great series, then crashed and burned. - Fairy Tail: Mashima, what are you doing? Mashima, STOP!!! - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: It's a manga... I can't really describe it beyond that. - My Hero Academia: The promising new contender, so far so good, it's already past 100 chapters and hopefully it will become something amazing. Anyone I'm forgetting about?
Really! i'm a fan of dragon ball franchise, and that meme your talking about is DEAD! yeah go watch Db super then tell to me, i know they're still screaming but at least its only seconds for now.
The end of One Piece is clear in Oda's mind. He has said that many time. Fuck, the reason he is still motivated to keep drawing One Piece after 20 fucking years is because he wants to draw the ending he has in mind. But yeah, he adds things in between as he goes on and has also said that he knows the end so he build up arcs that will lead towards it. The end is planned but not everything in between.
Not to nit pick but Fairy tail isn't shonen. the rest of those series are from Weekly Shonen Jump, where as Fairy Tail is from Weekly Shonen Magazine. When Jump stars victory came out there was a lot of fairy tail fans expecting natsu to be because hes from shonen but to be honest it would like expecting super man or batman to show up in the next avengers movie because they are all super heroes
Very nice topic and analysis, I totally agree. I love how you incorporated the music to your video. You were just explaining but there was a sudden burst of feels because of the music.
I just have to say I’m absolutely loving your videos and that this kind of thoughtful and supported analysis is what I live for, so thank you. I didn’t get far in these anime series when I was younger but after watching this video I would kill to watch you break down the ATLA series. Avatar is a freaking masterwork and I would love to see what you pull out of it.
What starts killing a series is *always* after time skips. Hunter x Hunter was the best anime because of avoiding such things like that. Boku No Hero is doing what HxH tried to do however in a bigger scale, plus HxH if really ends up with Gon being all grown up and all, it might get extremelly out of hand like Dragon Ball quite easilly, the Chimera Ant arc was like a tower perfectly balanced but if you touched it, it would easilly fall, the power levels were starting to become out of control with the introduction of Pitou, death of Kairo, and The King being introduced, however the story was so freaking well put, that ended up as a master piece.
+Quantum PhyZ I agree with you partly, only because IMO One Piece became much better after the timeskip thanks to the faster developing of the plot and more sensible fights, new characters, power levels etc
Your comment ignores the existence of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure which (at least until Part 5, arguably even farther than that) got better after every single time skip.
i Love bleach (One piece to an extent) and Naruto a lot but my biggest problems with them are as follows 1)for naruto the show promised ninjas and stealth but all we got was who could get over powered the fastest 2)One piece i just hate how many episodes they stretch out the arcs it feels like nothing gets done it took them over 2 episodes to fuckin climb stairs 3)Bleach and naruto dont give enough proper screen time and characters development for how many characters they have. thats about all i have that bothers me
You weren't promised ninja's and stealth in Naruto, you assumed that they would be stealthy. And they are to some extent. The only people that prefer not to follow the smart route are loud asses like Naruto, but both the show and the manga has had it's stealthy moments.Naruto does have good character development though, They develop certain characters very well, the only characters they stay away from are the ones the readers generally don't care about.You really can't say their character development is bad, because I can give you a thousand reasons it is good. In One Piece I do admit they stretch some of the episodes, but you can just read the manga I guess. But in every arc they accomplish something because it feels like the characters are actually at risk. I won't lie though, you're right about bleach. I think they overdeveloped Ichigo and underdeveloped everyone else.
Rei Rei overdeveloped Ichigo? I felt like I didn't even know the guy after watching the series....we started off with a bratty, sarcastic, smartass and we ended with a void character with a lack of direction. He's one dimensional in that sense....he didn't have any discernible traits or goals besides saving his friends, and a character that relies on a trope like that ... Well, they're as underdeveloped as can be.
I'm talking about overdeveloped in the sense that Ichigo always had to be the center of attention, the author focused too much on him instead of developing other characters like Sado. Look at how much power Ichigo has gotten throughout the series, none of it was really necessary, I felt he should've been Visored and that's it.
Hahahahhaha! Wow, you sure are a moron. Please, tell me what the first paragraph of the very first chapter of Naruto is. Can't be botehered? It talks about the nine-tails and how it can wipe out moutains with a single swip of a tail, or cause Tsunami's with a swish. That was sealed into Naruto. Of fucking course Naruto would be scaling to that level. What the fuck did you expect?
Rei Rei One Piece anime is horrible and doesn't pick up again till white beard. I get the huge grand line and the treasure thing being a main plot point but after that the show gets very repetitive and they just pile more characters on it. I dont even know what they were doing by the time they got sucked into the whirlpool and all of a sudden they're in some new place with giants. The White beard and the prison arcs pick up on a lot of things I felt were unfinished with characters like Crocodile and Lobster. The show is always filled with silly animations and constant jokes that nothing ever feels serious and the characters are never in any real danger.
Dude, I absolutely love the aesthetic of this video. You did just a good job editing it and your intros into each segment are so smooth. I have to say, that I really am curious to see the project file of this video just to see how you pulled this off.
Although I read my hero academia, I've never felt much attachment to it compared to other shows mentioned, Even bleach I feel like I got attached to it's main characters more. I would think that a few reasons would be 1-the setting; it gives a stronger childish tone than other shows; adding to that is the concept of Villains and Heroes. Makes making a world too black and white takes away alot of the excitement. 2- being school structured also takes away the unpredictability of a story in a sense of danger. 3- so much time being put on many characters that it feels like progress takes a long time. i
The Otaku Dragon Slayer Is Mob Psycho 100 a straight Shonen... huh. I suppose it technically is but it really feels weird to say that. I have always considered it to be it's own mix of genres. I guess One Punch Man is as well, maybe? It's not really a Seinen for sure but it isn't a Shonen through and through. Well, not a traditional Shonen.
I love Naruto but it, along with Bleach, ran into this problem though I would argue that Bleach ran into it much earlier than Naruto did. The powers became so grand and so earth-shattering (literally and metaphorically) that I as a reader could not *conceive* or *comprehend* it. They're basically gods now, or Dragon pokemon--only another of equal or greater power could defeat it. I felt so disconnected to the supposed magnitude of what was happening (even though in the back of my head I knew this was bad news bears) during the Ninja War Arc because these characters I grew up with were so above and beyond powerful--Naruto, Sasuke, Obito, and Madara--that I was like "How is it possible for someone to be THIS strong, really? How. They're only human beings.". They seemed untouchable To me, Naruto scaled its threats pretty well at first. The first threat was Zabuza and Haku, a team consisting of a rogue ninja with superb assassination skills and a teen boy with a rare, but not unstoppable, special ability. Then the threat became their comrades as they tried to prove themselves in the Chunin Exams, though very quickly it also became a two-pronged threat of danger both within the village and a force from the outside trying to attack it with Orochimaru having a hand in both. Yet, Orochimaru, for all his powers, was only one person. Then you have 10 individuals possessing the strength and wide range of abilities that counted Orochimaru as a *peer* but not superior nor inferior to them: Akatsuki. If a two man team can take down or incapacitate our favorite Jonin like Kakashi (who is not a Wharf because he has shown to handle himself very well in a battle with ninja like Zabuza, just as an example) or knock out a Kage (Deidara singlehandedly--lol--did so), and on top of that they're walking around trying to achieve some shady goal?! SHIT SON SHIT. To me, things started becoming harder to comprehend and focus on when Sasuke managed to survive Deidara's suicide bomb. He was supposedly nearly out of chakra yet he managed to summon Manda? After Jiraiya's death, Naruto went off to learn Sage Mode. While obvious parallels can be drawn between this and Yoda's teaching of Luke, Yoda was teaching Luke in some way how to be competent and good--experience and time would fill in the rest. For Naruto, he already had years of training, being a shinobi for a few years, and this was just enhancing and refining what he already knew plus giving him a mega boost. Sasuke's Susanoo was the exact same. Aaaand I really don't know what else to say other than one of my other main problems with shonen is that a lot of heavy things are watered down for kids to understand. Series like Deadman Wonderland and Death Note get really dark and psychological and to me are at the tipping point of being Seinen. Series like One Piece, Fairy Tail, and Ao no Exorcist are most definitely Shonen, and while Bleach and Naruto are indeed deeply rooted in Shonen, they have a lot of elements to them which, when you think about them, are very adult and ambiguous. There are elements in both Bleach and Naruto that are very straightforward: "Love conquers all" and "I'm a guy who just wants to protect my friends and family from assholes like you", but even when you get distracted by all that shit getting hammered into you, they still offer some really dark and disturbing peripheral ideas. "Fridge Horror", in other words. To me I think that Naruto does a better job at supplying gray morality, or at least giving the reader a chance to think about the concept of it, moreso than Bleach which is just "these people are only good guys because they haven't killed you yet, therefore there's not much to think about concerning 'morality'". Really the only morality questioning that is done is where Aizen is concerned and he's the one asking it, and of course it's so restricted to his character that it doesn't really prompt the reader to consider his ideas in the grand scheme of things, while several Naruto characters do because of their history, experiences, and the world they lived in. Aah I've said too much. Please don't take this as me thinking Naruto is the greatest manga of all time. I truly believe that Naruto has deep moments, or at least I am able to make parallels between what the series is trying to convey and issues IRL that I honestly can't with Bleach. I don't read One Piece so I can't say the same because I don't know (>_>).
Regarding the lack of "morality questioning" in Bleach, I think the most obvious and egregious example would be Kurotsuchi; he's literally a psychopath who has murdered and experimented on innocent people that he's supposed to protect but all of that gets swept under the carpet until the strongest emotional response to him is basically "he's a creepy guy and I don't like him". I've essentially only watched the Anime so don't know if this gets dealt with later on, though it goes on for far too long as it is. It gets even weirder when the end of the Fullbring arc has comments about how much Ichigo has changed the Soul Society; if they're willing to let such crimes go unpunished and even undiscussed has it really changed that much?
One of the weird things about Bleach is that it introduced a lot of moral ambiguity, but rarely followed through on it. I've always wondered why Kubo even bothered putting that stuff in if he was never going to address it. If all he wanted was a straight action series, than the Shinigami should have been unambiguous good guys from the start.
I love how shows like street fighter kept it simple. When they beat the final boss that was it. They also didn't try to make villains stronger and stronger but different in their styles and motivations. Thus keeping us interested while making the story progressing
You never talked about yuyu hakusho and how elements from that anime inspired a lot of the sentimental events in hunter X hunter like there was only a one image cameo of yusuke lol
Is there a character that could even possibly EVEN TOUCH Madara Uchiha? Let alone defeat him. And I’m not talking about Edo Tensei Uchiha Madara. I’m not talking about Gedou Rinne Tensei Uchiha Madara either. Hell, I’m not even talking about Juubi Jinchuuriki Gedou Rinne Tensei Uchiha Madara with the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan and Rinnegan doujutsus (with the rikodou abilities and being capable of both Amateratsu and Tsukuyomi genjutsu), equipped with his Gunbai, a perfect Susano’o, control of the juubi and Gedou Mazou, with Hashirama Senju’s DNA implanted in him so he has mokuton kekkei genkai and can perform yin yang release ninjutsu while being an expert in kenjutsu and taijutsu.
easy, Anti spiral, GER, The world Over heaven, Ultimate kars, Made in heaven, D4C, Goku SSJ blue kaioken X 100 ultra instinc rainbow yello+++++++++++ black vegito phase 10000# ( is a joke goku is a piece of shit) Killer queen primary bomb....all this characters except for that goku joke had one thing in common and that is they have HAX!!!!! one reason of why Goku would never be able to defead madara is because his fighting style is too conventional and is just BIGGER NUMBERS he doesnt have any single hax except people say he learned beerus techinque to erase someone out of existence which is not canon because the manga is wayyyyyyy behind the anime and the manga is following the SAME PLOT as the anime besides some minor changes like goku turning SSJgod like he does in super right now without any explanation, well the manga DOES explain it
Kawaki the genre of a fictional piece isn't always depicting it correctly nor is it always possible to put a work of art into a category - but statistically a genre tells us what we kinda ought to expect from a shonen :D so people who want to experience cowboy gunfights and setting suns tend to watch westerns more than scifi, and people who don't like transformation animes stay away from shonen :D (even though transformations aren't the only definitive aspect of shonen fiction) but imho, while i try to not care about genres, there are always prejudices some manga and anime series have to overcome in order to keep my attention. :)
Me, because Shonen isn't a genre, but just a demographic that tells you that it's for teenager boys (basically the most popular demographic if you want your manga to be recognized by the masses, because girls would read boys manga, but only a few boys would ever touch girls manga; the same with adults, they would like boys manga, but boys would find adults manga boring). For example Sports Manga is also Shonen but is considered like a separate genre. Death Note and Detective Conan are also Shonen, very different from Dragon Ball and the other manga examples provided here. But I guess that the most generic fight anime/manga is Shonen, so is has become like a genre, specially because a lot have been in the same magazine (Shonen Jump has become like a genre itself).
I actually loved this video because you went straight to the point from the beginning to the end of it. The edit was very well done as well, maintaining a consistent visual through all the video. I know this is an old video so things may have changed by now, but I only saw this today. Thanks for your hard work :)
I love this video, it looks truly great and talks about a very interesting theme, thanks. I feel like you could have talked about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, since it handled the scalation problem very well. Thanks for the video.
Приколы
You definitely pinned down shounen's biggest problem in the first 3 minutes the stakes are too high all the time. When the world is always ending the protagonist has to win. It's just all false tension.
And this is one of the many reasons why Hunter x Hunter is so good, the stakes are never "the world".
Even with the last arc the world was in a "false" danger. At least that's how I interpreted it :)
right, even chimera ant arc's stake is not "the world". It is clearly shown later that Chimera Ants can be dealt with(and they were with a nuke) because their nature is a known thing. The latest arc is going beyond that so we'll see where it goes from there, if Togashi actually stop playing the hiatusxhiatus game...
Togashi ain't playing no game when he's stated multiple times during the HxH run that his back was in unbearable pain. I'd rather him take the breaks he needs to get a full recovery rather than push through the pain and only have breaks when he ends up reaching a point where he can't do it anymore.
But I'm glad to see he's back, and honestly, he gets a lot accomplished in the chapters he releases. So hopefully we'll progress quite a bit even if it only lasts 10-15 chapters.
I think One-Punch Man did a great job at parodying the concept.
DJ Howard Yea, One Piece is also good at that.
I feel that in Naruto the escalation problem made the battles worse too. In the Chuunin ark, the battles were all about strategy, it had powers and jutsus, but they were used the smart and logical way to trick each other, like in Temari vs Shikamaru. In the ninja war it was all about the biggest balls and powers, the scale got so big strategy got meaningless in the way of individual battles.
Cardboard Tenshi its not as black and white as this, when Naruto fought pain, and when samurai and the granny fought the puppet master it was still great
Even then it seems like everybody in naruto was always THE BEST NINJA EEVVARRRH! Like every new character it's insane.
True, but there still was a TON of strategy. Shame that other cool characters like shikamaru, gaara and Lee got left behind and became unimportant. The kaguya Ark was pretty good, but the ridiculous power levels dragged it down a bit. It should've been more of a team effort. Instead it was basically a team 7 carry
It still retained some strategy. Even up to the end (in the anime) with Naruto vs. Sasuke.
@El Guapo Which is precisely why I can't psyche myself up to continue watching Shippuden. I made it past the Gaara arc at the beginning and just dropped off and it took ages to psyche myself up to even watch that much and that was years ago. Just the shear number of episodes was overwhelming and then hearing from people about all these ridiculously long battles/arcs with just all this overpowered DBZ shit...I lost interest.
When I first got into Naruto (the original show) it was because I hadn't seen anything like it. These were kids engaged in some pretty mature, life-and-death scenarios. The fights were intimate and intense and carried with them personal stakes. As a kid, I remember seeing Sasuke get skewered with sowing needles, convinced he was going to die, tell Naruto he couldn't die yet, he needed to kill his brother. Back then, that was some pretty profound shit.
Then Shippuden hit and every main character just went "over 9,000!". I got so fucking tired of seeing Sasuke's edgy ass and Naruto and Sakara constantly trying to find/redeem him I honestly wish Naruto had just rasengan'd him into oblivion early on. Plus, this elaborate, convoluted explanation for why the Uchiha are so powerful and Itachi wasn't evil and blah, blah, blah.
Then Boruto came out and people told me (I didn't really mind spoilers given how long I'd procrastinated on watching Shippuden) Naruto and Sasuke both had kids and Naruto died and I was like "Well, then I already know the most essential info I needed, now there's no point".
Sad Past
Bullied
Weak
Stupid
Unknown Parents
OP Sensei
Shounen MC Starter Pack
Don't forget the OP mentor
Don't forget getting powered up after they remember they have friends.
@@chidiibie8749 yeah lmao
I did a triple gattling gun nose exhale when I read that
Don't forget the ability to get flashbacks when they get defeated so they gain a random power boost.
The only critique i have is saying MHA is really a fourth wave.
I'd say the third wave is smaller stories, Fairy Tail, Soul Eater, FMA, Blue Exorcist, etc. The normalization of shounen
Jordan Nguyen agreed.
Jordan Nguyen hey Jordan is it a coincidence all these shows are on Netflix or is that what you went by "normalization"
In my opinion, manga like Fist of the North Star and JJBA are the first wave of shonen manga
I think he means "wave" as in "evolution" (or improvement) if anything, and also that he only uses the bigger shows as examples.
HammerHeart no i think he means modern shounen as in the shounen we know today which dragonball started before that shounen was pretty different
I believe Full Metal Alchemist just hit all the right marks for shonen. They NEVER had to rely on becoming increasingly more porweful. The stakes were clear from the very beggining. It was always about the love between the brothers (with the full out war as a side dish). I think it really is the perfect example of a perfectly made shonen manga (and anime with brotherhood).
Brotherhood was great, but I wish we got more action with the girl beyond showing they get together in the credits.
Yeah I pretty much agree. It would be nice if more shonen did that sort of stuff. I mean, I love action, but I also love getting to know the characters. Personally, I also like how the Digimon anime series doesn't exactly get as overpowered as other shonen tend to (well, except Digimon Xros Wars and Hunters IMO) and you tend to learn about the personal struggles of the characters such as losing family members or being unable to tell others of something that is holding you him/her back. The Digimon themselves were practically always the reason why their partners were able to become stronger as characters. I know it's not quite as popular as most shonen, but I think it's pretty good (not to mention it doesn't appear to have a bunch of filler as I've of some others having).
Carlos Díaz What makes this most impressive is that it took a woman (Hiromu Arakawa) to write the perfect shounen story. Let that sink in.
Why is it important whether it is a male or female? Each person has their own merit and isn't the same as everyone in whatever group you put them in.
I think it is because the story quest focuses on learning and finding information rather than on becoming strong. There's a masterful escalation of stakes, but it's based on how much the brothers are discovering; every time they uncover a truth, ten more questions unfurl and draw you in deeper.
dragon ball : first wave
naruto , one piece , bleach : second wave
bnha : third wave
.
.
gintama : troll wave
Fist of the North Star is the first wave...
C Vox
JJBA: the meme wave.
Hey, OPM can troll too!
C Vox Actually there was also Hokuto no Ken, YYH, and Ruroni Kenshin.... though these are sadly overlooked
+Living Jojo Reference People ignore them because they aren't as popular as they used to be.
Gintama deserves mentions for how it adheres, plays with, parodies, subverts and down right trolls with these tropes
Agreed.
And yet it never loses sight of the character developments, continuity of their relstionships, and the progress of the main plot that flourishes through the countless subplots of the abundant cast.
I'd put it with HxH; they're both shonen, but they're so vastly different from other works in the same genre that it's hard to put them in the same category.
But yes, Gintama is one of the greatest shows to come out of Japan.
Gintama is its own league
@Bhakt
well the fansubs explain the joke
@Bhakt
oh you didn’t hurt my feelings at all, just wondering if you saw the joke explanations or not lol
I think Cory in the House handled it best. The Battle for the White House arc in particular.
Man I've been hearing about this anime for a long time, should I watch it?
Crazelord91 was that the anime when Cory turned super Cory blue
@@dusanpredic5274 Yes, and red, megenta, oragne, teal, turquoise, black, white, egg shell, pink...
Crazelord91 this meme needs to DIE lol
@@fairoadiary TBF I wrote this 3 months ago when the meme was still a bit funny
And jojo just doesn't give a shit about this.
jojo is a genre of its own
araki figured out the perfect way to combat this problem with his part structure and the way stand powers are balanced.
Jojo is pretty much immune to getting stale. The structure keeps it fresh. This is probably a way harder thing to do though.
Well there was that one time in part 6 where things kinda escalated a bit too much for a lot of peoples taste
Stands powers are balanced? I completely disagree.
I will forever mourn Naruto's wasted potential.
Naruto was too much focused on Sasuke and the Uchihas, that's what killed it for me.
also Madara should have been the final boss, he had so much build up that the Kaguya asspull was just ridiculous at the end. Kishimoto just shouldn't have made him so OP that he didn't know how to kill him in the end
soil80 doesn’t help that susuke has zero character.
si Bongkukaye but imo the pain arc was the perfect arc in naruto. It balanced and blended together the large scale attack and naruto’s personal struggles really well. It had that nice jaw dropping attack on Konoha that pain did which is pretty good when writing anime, and then it incorporated naruto into it with the deaths of his comrades. Jiraiya’s death caused him to grow his hatred towards pain and Hinata’s death was the climax of that arc that led naruto into completely losing control of himself. Then they had that nice little parent child part which provided more character development. Say what you want about kishimoto messing up since the pain arc, but imo pain arc was the most important arc in naruto’s entire plot line, since most of the entire shippuden story revolves around pain. The pain arc answered the question of “what is the akatsuki”, allowed naruto to gain control over his emotions and the experiences from that arc which helps him later on in the story.
@si Bongkukaye May I remind you that latest 1/3 of war arc isn't exactly all that happened in Shippuden? Stop spamming comment that is obviously full of shit.
You should have added that One Punch Man is a response to the escalation paradox of comic books. By the way this is not an issue that starts in Shonen, or even with Dragonball. This happened in American comic books decades before Manga became popular. Look up stories about characters like Superman, Dr. Strange, etc. and you quickly find that each time the character has to show growth that they "escalate" the stakes and find themselves fighting against bigger and bigger odds until everything is just "this universe versus that universe" style storytelling.
I has to agreed with the comic side,the hardcore fans just went...chill.They sometime worship the characters to the point it's just....I don't know what to said about it ,it just annoyed.For example dc comic fans went 'blowup' after universe rebirth(I forgot what it name) because it literally make the all preview story 'pointless' to them. In my own opinion ,I stop follow westen comic(l was Asian) after reaching middle school because it feel just 'uncreative' .now all new comic story nowadays was just 'what lf' ,different setting but same characters,lt just boring after a decade if you follow it since you're a kids.
actually, the point of American comic book superheroes is that they don't change, so there isn't so much escalation as just doing the same thing over and over again. The escalation issue is very uniquely a shonen manga problem.
Just add opm to the unique gang (where JoJo and hxh were)
@@sledgetable172 HxH is unique ina sense its not a typical straight forward shonen where the MC is a selfless hero. Its one of the first series I've seen where the hero(Gon) became less and less unstable, that in the end his only best friend had to let him go.
@@FatGouf ayo no spoiling
I know I'm like two years late, but I thought it appropriate to list and timestamp the anime mentioned so spoilers can be avoided
0:21 Dragon Ball z
3:25 Hunter x Hunter
4:29 One piece
5:31 Naruto
6:54 Bleach
8:11 My Hero Academia
The weirdest in escalation has to be with Jojo as
Part 1: Let's kill a big gay vampire terrorizing England
Part 2: a guy, his mom, and his best friend fight ancient gods over a gem stone
Part 3: The big gay vampire is back and this time we got to have a fight over Egypt
Part 4: A businessman is inconvenienced by a group of thugs for his fetish
Part 5: Big gay vampire had a kid and he wants to become don of the Italian mob
Part 6: THE WORLD HAS BEEN RESET
Part 7: Cripple boy gets told by Jesus to kill the president
Part 8: Man with 4 balls must fight rock people to find a fruit
beautiful.
It's JoJo, you can not explain it or break it down. You got to experience it.
Hyaku Juu Hence the name "Bizarre Adventure. "
well, it isn't called "JoJo's Perfectly Sane and Logical Adventure"
Part 4: MONEY
Introduction of Dio: An experiment on how much an audience can hate one character.
Except until you read his diary and realize he is an ok guy who was misunderstood and hurt inside.
EpsilonKnight That shitty novel is terrible and I'm glad its not canon
Araki admitted it's canon. Eat shit.
where did he say it was canon?
EpsilonKnight When? he won't say his Rohan side stories are either canon or not but he considers a terrible fanfiction canon? that whole novel takes a dump on Dio's character, it's just as bad as Jorge Joestar
RUclipsrs: Boku no Hero will solve the problem of power escalation
Boku no Hero: OH MY SEVEN QUIRKS
Eh depends on what all deku’s other quirks are tbh. But that’s just my opinion
@@justaweeb1482 manga spoiler deku unlocked three quirks a black whip b float c danger sense not that powerful quirks
@@abdullahamr9941 yeah Ik
@@justaweeb1482 rn it looks like it's going less the route of power quirks and more special quirks that just give him more tools to use smartly
Boku no Hero is one of the worst reads I had in recent memory, jesus it's so freaking bad, predictable, cliches all over it, etc.. At least the art is cool, but the writing is atrocious. Had a really great start, but then...
What I would change with Naruto:
I’d give less focus into Sasuke and more into Naruto and other characters who had more potential other than being uchihas, like rock lee.
Keep Naruto as an underdog and forget the reincarnation thing existed.
Give an arc where Naruto is hunted by the akatsuki and has to leave with Jiraiya, giving more of an excuse to leave and make an arc where Naruto’s development is shown.
And.....MAKE SAKURA ACTUALLY USEFUL!
Sakura was useful Characters like Hinata and Tenten needed to be useful
@@jrodtdk4544 But for some reason Sakura is a main character I don't mind Sasuke atleast he is a badass and he was meant to be hated at first but come on sakura.... She is the reason why naruto isn't in my top 10 of alltime not the fillers
Thb Kishimoto can't write girls for shit,Sakura had so much potential to actually catch up to Naruto and Sasuke,but Kishimoto only gave her two power ups and then made her still blindly love Sasuke no matter if he tried to kill her.
@Pineapqles yep,that's pretty much it,and honestly I'm so salty about how Kishimoto wrote and developed her character,Sasuke almost killed her but nope she still loves him,Sakura is a genjutsu type but they decided to make her a medic,they even forgot to make her do at least one jutsu of her element type in the series,honestly,Kishimoto messed up (and it isn't only Sakura,almost all the girls from Naruto had so much potential but because Kishimoto can't write girls all was wasted)
@Just Another Nobody it's
Ton Ton
Jojo too weird to fit in the list
Quite BIZARRE right?
It's Jojo, it transcends Shonen and became it's own bizarre genre.
I like jojo's bizzare adventure but I felt the show was ruined by bad voice acting, horrible animation, lack of character development, and horrible dialogue. Like why tf is dio stronger in Jojo's body than his own when he was obviously stronger than him when they fought years ago? Why is dio a bigger threat than the pyramid men who seemed a ton stronger than him? They constantly repeat things or explain every thing right after they do it like the viewer can't see what's happening. Speedwagon on would do this constantly and so does Joseph's character. I'll admit the story itself is pretty interesting but I can go without seeing it.
Deonta B yare yare daze
well they deeflated the stakes after the pilar men and dio is not stronger in jojos body the stand made him stronger
Deonta B read Vento Aureo and Stella ball ru- well, it’ll get better along the way. In plus Jonathan’s body isn’t as strong as Dio’s old body. Just his stand.
My favorite One Piece arc is most definitively the Water 7 arc... The Crew loses not only 2 members, one of them challenging the captain and causing a major internal conflict in the crew, but they also lose their ship at the end... The Arc is extremely personal and I love everything about it so much.
Drawback of water 7 is that its a city/scenary and the villains arent interesting
I thought they were at least funny, as they bickered among themselves (CP-9) just like the Straw Hats, and they had some interesting Devil Fruit powers too. There are a lot of other villains that aren't that that interesting, so I think the CP-9 is at least pretty good compared to the others that have been
Same here that arc didn't have any big fights but was so emotional
To add on, Alabasta was so great because Luffy's speech to Vivi were incredibly personal.
I never understood why I loved that arc more than the amazing Marineford arc but now it all makes sense
That's why One Piece and Hunter X Hunter are the best! The storytelling is far more important than the escalations or power scales.
Facts, the best shonen in my opinion
Hunter x Hunter gets way too much credit
@@enigmafiresup4658 What can we say , it's a true masterpiece but not perfect...
What about FMAB?
What about JJBA, its creative asf and not your generic shonen, that's my opinion...
If you want to be disappointed, you should watch sword art online
They ruined Asuna's character
I think SAO descends past the point of disappointment. It has descended into the point of degeneracy if you ask me.
I know this a year ago but that's offtopic in terms of genre
We don't talk about that here
SAO in a nutshell -
Kirito : *breaths....
All the SAO girls : *€#₩₩ kirito-kun🥰
HxH only problem is hiatusxhiatus anything then that is good
O
GOD
not
Just
Call
Yes, please. Make the content you want to make, this is good.
justkallmekai This video was pretty educational of how shonen series came a long way, albeit a difficult journey for each series in the Shonen genre.
Can we just take a moment to thank Toriyama for creating a genre?
Also, even though I am a girl and shounen is made for young boys, the shows from the genre are just centred around getting better and are so inspiring and as a college student who has to work, I really need that.
He didn't create it. Just made it more popular.
I started college this year and if I can't get financial aid I might have to work for a year or 2 and save up before going back. I'm also 17
@@amazingjay3957 Anyone can watch it and it's made for everyone yes, but it's marketed more towards a male audience which is true and what OP was saying.
Yes, & let me ask you, are Fushigi Yugi & Inuyasha, Shojo or Shonen? They happen to possess elements of both in them. Much as there are Shonen that are made to appeal to both genders there are also Shojo that feel almost Shonen in nature.
@@WitheringZealot
Astroboy created Shounen.
Astroboy created fucking manga itself!
Fotns is just one of the first really manly shounen.
When Hunter x Hunter showed up, I was like, "YOU BETTER NOT BE TRASHIN ON HUNTAH HUNTAH... oh, ok... sweet!"
M o o d , but even tho HXH is my favorite anime, it has a few flaws (aaaand the hiatus).
@@ohohkaythen3269 it does the same shit naruto does, with the constant talking. Made me drop chimera arc
Why? Is it cuz you're one of those fanboys that gets angry when people criticise the thing they love?
@@martyvenkman860 no, its just another way to say that they'd love hunter x hunter
@@criminalconcept7126 Constant talking ins't a bad thing.
Death note have constant talking, and is well written.
I feel like, in addition to the stakes-are-raised-again problem, there's also the problem of enemies constantly somehow being stronger than the last guy, even if that guy declared himself stronger than the universe or whatever. One way to fix this might be not to necessarily make the enemy physically stronger/faster, but to change up the tactics and give the protags a problem to work out. For example, in Detective Conan (not a fighting manga but bear with me), the mysteries don't necessarily become more difficult, there's just a different puzzle each time. And in One Piece, while some enemies are stronger than the last, some others just have tricks up their sleeves, like Devil Fruits. Gecko Moria wasn't terribly physically strong compared to Luffy's past enemies, but he was difficult to defeat because of his size and his DF ability, which made it easy for him to trick and capture his enemies.
People know this.
But look at DragonBall.
Strength. Speed. Brawn.
As right as you are, there's a reason that DragonBall is still up there...
I know what you're saying, but DB did start over twenty years ago. Despite that it inspired the modern shounen genre, it's time for a change in the good-evil dynamics, I'd say.
pingo1387
exactly there's more to a good villain than just being stronger than the last guy the MC punched out
You're right, and this is something Naruto "solved" a long time ago. At least until the time skip, it was usually a much more technical matter of technique use and outsmarting an opponent rather than just 'more power'.
pingo1387
What kind of change? Like in Magi?
To me, the main problem with shows on the shounen genre is simply "The lack of consequences" or at least the big impact that the actions of the characters and how they echo. Most of the time, the heros survive out of casuality, pure dumb luck or unstopable willpower, bu they lack what's a "real sense of danger". USually we have an ambietience and "death flags" to trigger a character will die and this is both alluring but at the same time really predictable because when a character was struck or "desintegrated" ¿, oh look we can bring it back (i.e. Dragon Balls). I believe Dragon Ball made ane xample cause most of us were children and we didn't really know how to critique "suspense" or "surprise" factors. Nowadays, the fandom is less impressionable and most creators have to be a certain level of genius to shine in this. I like series that are roller coasters, but be in the roller coaster enough times or ride it enough and eventually it'll become boring.
I think where my hero academia did right in that respect is emphasize the danger of deku using his quirk improperly. he legit almost had his arms forever crippled because he was doing shit wrong. And also, when All Might gives his power to Deku, we see his power deteriorate throughout the series until that foreshadowing all comes together in the All For One arc, when he loses the most of his ability to wield One For All (now only for a second or so) we see a sense of mortality in All Might, the most powerful being in that universe. A symbol of peace was the light that originally seemed impossible to stamp out, but then the harsh truth reveals otherwise. In other words, we know full well that sometime in the close future, All Might's will meet his demise. (if there's any manga readers out there please, no spoilers!)
It's hilarious because up until the end of Boo Arc, there were stakes and tension in Dragon Ball
Runawaytourist
U ever watch hxh my guy
@@rondospectacle I think HxH is a different kind unlike most other shounen. I would even say that hxh is seinen disguise as shounen. Ppl say Chimera Ant arc is dark, i think the Dark Continent arc will be darker
Cuong Quoc
I was talking about how things in hxh chain together. And I don’t think Hxh is a disgrace to shonen it started in 1998 even before one piece it define how shonen would be. And year I agree that arc will be darker.
Bleach is kind of a sad story for me. I love the world, several of the side character, especially Gin and Urahara, the aesthetic and style so much. Even in the anime, which I didn't watch very much, the soundtrack is probably my favorite in any non-music based anime. Yet it failed so much on getting the characters invested and keeping the story original, making me sad.
Same here, man. I actually got into Bleach near the end of the Fullbringer arc, which was after most anime fans had written it off. But the series appealed to me on a level that few series do, and I was able to squeeze a lot of enjoyment out of it in spite of its flaws. But I didn't like the direction the last arc took, and there came a point where I couldn't ignore the series' flaws any more.
I've been watching some of the more popular anime recently, and while I usually like them, so far none of them have half the appeal to me that Bleach did. Some people point to My Hero Academia as a successor to Naruto, but it seems we're still waiting for someone to make a proper successor to Bleach.
@@Corrector1 Bleach seemed to be far more niche then I think people give it credit for, because I feel the exact same way. My favorite anime has got to be Fullmetal Alchemist, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the series was consistently good. That isn't something that can be said about Bleach. And yet, even then, the 1st arc of Bleach is always going to be at the top of my list. I mean, sure it can be read and enjoyed by a lot of people, But for those people that it really speaks to, it sings... I guess. I don't really know how to say it except that I still adore Bleach to this day. It kills me that it went so downhill.
While I'm mostly familiar with the major shonen, from what I've seen no other series has the kind of appeal that Bleach did which makes it sadder. Some people hold up My Hero Academia as a better Naruto. I'm still waiting for a better Bleach.
@@Corrector1
Bleach is garbage, why would you want any anime to "succeed" it?
Because I've yet to run into a series that had the same appeal as Bleach did. It had a lot of cool stuff, it just wasn't well written most of the time.
Well as of now i can very much say that no, MHA did not learn from the mistakes of prior Shonen works and still ended up having the same issues like undeserving and stupid power ups that makes prior establishments obsolete, feels nothing but needless escalation because it's "Shonen", strips away much of tension in fights when the MC has more powers at his disposal and lastly runs into the very large risk of making other characters underutilized because of the very big power gap between them and the MC.
you took the words right out of my mouth
The problem came for mha was it made rules that were extremely personal and emotional but stick to it so close it didn't do anything special. Till this day mha has stayed the same way. And as things go mha has gotten more disappointing as a long form shonen. Two things that can add to this are
First, the world is to big for it. The world expands and expands but it lost every aspect of realism to it.
Whereas second, it never took any risk and tried to be personal. A great example would be, spoilers, midnight dying. It took the most safest characters to kill off and give a little emotional impact but it backfired because we didn't have any actual screentime or emotional attachment to her. She was just there in the background first then she died for the sake of death and then the author expected the reader to feel sad and I was like nope.
So yeah, in the opposite the manga that were absolutely unexpected and underdogs such as black clover and demon slayer have become more interesting.
Black clover giving the reader what it wants and increasing the pacing.
And demon slayer making it's base, sticking to it's emotional writing rather than complex world building, and ending it way before.
100% disagree with "issues like undeserving and stupid power ups that makes prior establishments obsolete" the very first point for Deku was that he felt like he cheated to get the power and to prove that he deserves it despite the constant failures in his mind that is supposed to be the very point, his prior establishments are still mentioned and make his character him with Gentle and his justice, Shoto and Bakugo that furthers his sacrificial nature with saving to win theme but still under a cautious guise that he has to learn a new fighting style with his brace plus kick style, the failures in the overhaul arc still comeback to him when he has lil existential moment realising how high all his ideals are when he previously mentioned how he wanted to save everyone and win yet did none of that especially taking away his safety that he can trust OFA and how much he's promised to mom, All Might and thoughts to Nighteye.
@@tehcookievanilla1323 I think you may have missed what i said which isn't surprising given what i said was admittedly pretty vague.
I was actually referring to Deku getting 6 new quirks on top of OFA which felt utter BS since not only does it feel horrendously contrived and stupid but also the fact that what you said pretty much meant nothing if Deku learning from his failures is given more power-ups rather than developing himself as a human being and learning other stuff to help him save people and defeat villains like martial arts, new combat strategies and creating gadgets to help compensate for the fact that he can never truly become as strong as All Might was at his prime with OFA no matter how hard he tries and instead should learn other things to help him.
I don't mind the idea that Deku feel like he doesn't deserve to be All Might's successor since he can never use it the same way the latter did because that could open up to an interesting story were Deku comes to the realization that he doesn't need to be like All Might and should instead strive to be his own hero like focusing more on Full Cowl while also learning other stuff like what i said above even if he never gets praise for it and gets ignored because he doesn't have a "strong, flashy quirk" because that's not what being a hero is about, it's about doing the right thing and help people using the best of your abilities as you can.
Of course none of that matter when Deku is just given 6 quirks on a whim because we can't have a battle Shonen series were characters get rapidly stronger with new powers no matter how ludicrous, contrived, illogical and counter-productive it is for the story, characters and writing.
@@lepnoxicray7398 I always felt like the reason world building is so lackluster is how the show can't help but introduce very interesting ideas but then does nothing with them. Examples such as those with villainous, mutant quirks or the quirkless suffering discrimination, hero society being corrupt, the state of heroes throughout the rest of the world and how they are thought of are never explored one bit and at most gets one brief mention before being forgotten by the author.
And yeah this manga never truly takes risks and it's not just about killing characters but other aspects as well of the story.
Things such as Deku being a quirkless fighter, Shigaraki becoming strong and independent in his own right, corruption in hero society that allow fake heroes to flourish and societal discrimination against groups i mentioned above are the things that the manga never tries anything with and instead goes with the conformist safe route for easy cash instead of being actually creative with the writing which is a damn shame since these have the potential for some great, compelling story to make this manga a worthwhile read at the very least.
I still think Gintama is THE Shounen Jump anime. It's long running, and it never had a single serious power creep. Also, every character is endearing in some way. That show has a huge cast, but I can still remember most of them (the villains' names tend to be looser in memory since they don't appear hardly at all, they aren't as important). Some of the arcs are just heart wrenching too. And the characters in the show react to the stakes JUST AS MUCH as the audience would. This makes it feel more believable when the characters DO go out and do something about it.
In the end, the anime is about some a group of societal rejects doing the best they can to protect what's directly in front of them. Hell, they wouldn't save the world if nobody gave them a personal reason to, or forced them to do it by physically moving them to the problem. I love Gintama. It's just a batch of fun.
I think it's sad that people see HxH as subversive series. Saying that really doesn't give the show the credit it deserves. When you break down HxH to specifics, it really does nothing different with the shounen genre. The reason people like it so much is because it just does shounen well. I'd be willing to say it does shounen the best that shounen has been done in a very long time. I'm a huge fan of the show and I know other people are too. I want more people to really know why HxH is as good as it is.
You want to talk about an actual subversive anime? Fuckin' Jojo's been here the entire time. Go get your fill of that goodness.
why can't both be subversive?
hxh is overrated in many aspects but is definitely a good shonen.
One of rhe reasons I like HxH is because there are no truly good or evil characters. Everyone is a selfish prick in a way.
After the artifical world, HxH went downhill.
I found the chimera arc disgusting, the whole cliched drama and distortion between Gon and Killua annoyed me.Killua specifically distanced himself and Gon did not mind... in the end, we got a emo nerd rage from Gon who looked stupid.
More than that, we had the whole thing where Gon lost his nen... and now we have this crap arc which is boring.. I think the author had to take hiatus to create the never ending paragraphs and explanations in each chapter, this must have taken decades to prepare cause it never ends. The MC is now Kurapika and he sucks Kurapika was interesting because he meshed well with Leorio or he had other interesting characters that made his boring personality shine in comparison to charismatic ones. For example, Kurapika shone alone as the MC in the phantom arc because of the phantom troupe, who were nutters and had looney charisma, otherwise...... without the phantom troupe, Kurapika is a cheap Conan and the author sucks at detective stories.
To be fair he did show a nod to JoJo's when talking about exceptions lol.
HxH being subversive isn't a bad thing by any means, it just makes it unique. I love the way it's arc structure seems random and yet is just non stop from story to story.
Escalation is not entirely the problem, the problem arises when escalation leads to core rules set in the universe to fall apart like not needing handsigns and instead resulting in "yelling for power" or non-explained power ups "I've been training for 10,000 years but in the 1 year since you came I am now 5 times stronger" (only one character in Bleach does not do this brownie points if you know who) escalation has to have meaning and follow your own rules "there is this thing called 'haki' that people you have seen have been using but now that you know you can gain power"
My Hero does this well by showing us All Might a man who stands at the top and is the pinnacle of power in the world so we see the top then someone with no known power "the bottom" and can see the growth of the steps in-between throughout the series.
Fullmetal Alchemist sets up with the Ice alchemist who created an array on top of all central and was attempting to freeze it we see a man with the power to freeze a city and throughout we see displays of power unseen but the rules are clearly set as we move along with a tease that there are powers that can break the rules. This in contrast to Naruto where they fly off the rails of power during the chunin exams and break their own rules for little to no explanation and run with it to the end of the series continuing to pull things out of their asses because 'plot' reasons we also see rebel Naruto go from a struggling youth who has to work for things continue to receive plot power-ups over and over to the point you forget why he ever envied Neji.
I agree. I have more problem with inconsistency than with escalation.
bleach handled it fine
naruto still worked hard for everything he got and neji wasnt right.
Your transitions between each series by using the manga panels and the music from each respective series was really well done. I always come back to this video just to see that for some reason.
Same. This video just does something very right
Power Creep and Plot Escalation can really alienate an audience if pulled from no where. Naruto seemed to get this at the start, making the first arc a fight over a bridge and had the perfect route to take, making the story about correcting the status quo of ninja society and bringing an end to the cycle of war... BUT IT DIDN'T DO THAT! It was about the Uchiha, cursed blood lines, tailed demons who weren't actually evil, a rabbit princess from the poxy moon and redeeming Sasuke for some bloody reason!
Amen, especially the last part was such nonsense. Just trying to force some wannabe deep "look how grown up and forgiving we are, peace for everybody huiiii" bullshit in there.
I honestly have to agree with this. They could have been a lot deeper. I haven't actually finished Naruto shippuden but I know almost all of the spoilers. Sasuke pretty much did the equivilant of joining isis, but then they all forgive him and pretend nothing happens, and sakura still wants to marry him?
RagingPheonix this has been discused a lot and the conclution people came along is that, strange enought, Sasuke did nothing wrong (and i'm not trying to be sarcastic i'm completly serious) he didn't kill anyone, he didn't destroy anything or help making bad things, in the end he didn't do anything bad enought to be considered a criminal, yes he technically kill sanzo, well fuck sanzo he deserve it
It was heavily implied that Sasuke (or at least a member of the team he put together) killed Jay, a Kumogakure Ninja tracking them after they kidnapped Bee. Then there's the attempted assassination of the Kages at the summit meeting, his plan to destroy Konoha AND the fact that he tried several times to murder his best friends because "muh pain makes meh stronger!" which wouldn't have been so stupid if not not for the fact it was actually freaking true and the Uchiha are ACTUALLY POWERED BY ANGST!!!
stylishskater92 as I said before, fuck sanzo
Oddly enough, the "granddaddy" of Shonen seems to avoid most of the problems mentioned in the video.
Fist of the North Star.
I know everyone will probably disagree in that, since they likely see either Dragon Ball or even Arale or Kinnikuman as the true grandpappy, but I feel Hokuto no Ken defined many of the traits of a shonen manga. You have the selfless hero, the constant fighting, the weight of many always at stake......yet it manages to be one of the most personal and emotionally charged stories of Shonen Jump.
I think what honestly separates it is the fact that the setting, characters, and themes all focus on the journey of one person: Kenshiro. True, we do see the lives of other people, but they all revolve around how they were affected by the main hero. Allies? It shows Ken saving their lives, talking things out with them, and doing all he can to protect their futures. Enemies? They're either immediately wasted or, if they do present a tangible threat, always have a logistical reason as to why they stay for so long. Hell, transformations do not exist in the manga, only certain abilities. Even so, these abilities tie in with the characterization of Kenshiro. The martial arts even play perfectly to each character. The world? It's already been destroyed. All that can be done is how Ken can help fix this place despite his destiny as a walking chaos bomb.
In fact, even when it does escalate, it only goes as far as taking over the world. This allows whatever tyrant he's up against show how human they are, despite their monstrous presence and despicable actions.
All-in-all, one of the first definitive Shonen Manga did away with most of the problems commonly associated with its genre.
Indeed.
As much as I like part 2, I can't say I love it like part 1.
Damien Suluai fist of the North Star was an awesome series because it was different than the others. I love it and I think it deserves much more attention. Fun fact: it actually inspired Dragon ball.
wrong!!! hokuto no ken INSPIRED JOJO BIZARRE ADVENTURE!!
Hokuto had no character growth at all! Kenshiro was overpowered from the start and then it goes even worse. It's like a bad version of OnePunchMan
Алексей Порсев wow I’m sorry for you being gay
Remember when Rock Lee, Neji and 30+ other character that exist ever matters in shippuden? Peperidge farm does not remember.
Escalation isn't a problem Inconsistency is a problem
I agree.
@@Corrector1 You didn't need to agree But I'm glad that you did I'd like for you to explain why
Sorry. I think the problem is that a lot of writers aren't good at keeping their rules consistent, and things tend to get thrown to the wayside the longer the series go on. You can make the characters more powerful while still giving them some limitations.
@@Corrector1 Absolutely or at least When introducing things like magical items They keep the same level of power that they had in the beginning Because like Maybe you don't know how to do the teleportation spell But using a teleportation stone Is pretty good And I agree with you I don't understand why people don't just want to lean on The idea of getting some assistance From people who are fans of their series To keep their s*** consistent That's pretty much wittlich Power scaling does But there's this weird dogma About wanting to keep creative consistency nowadays
and poor story telling. You can have alot of escalation but without a good story to back it up your anime becomes naruto and bleach levels of shit. A good example of escalation is One Piece
Awesome work and agreed!
JaxBlade right?
Love your content you sexy beast
Belal DarkneSS resting is training!
is he just supposed to move heavy things all day every day?
Grimmlocked
true
ey b0ss can I habe the gainz plz
Lets not forget the eternal JoJo, 30 years and no escalation power problem in sight.
Ch4os4ever There may not be an escalation problem but some stands are fucking hax to no end.
Shinkeishitsuna I love Jojo and I agree. Araki forgets his own characters and plot points.
That was the problem i found with Gantz. Sometimes the plot would just completely shift out of nowhere, and i'd be stuck wondering if I missed a chapter.
everything that people find bad about JJBA (overpowered stands, lack of continuity, bad writing in general) are things that i find really charming about the series, actually! i think all of the weird shit that's always happening keeps it fresh. you liked the standard shonen journey and muscle men of part 3? well don't get too comfy because part 4 is a slice of life mystery and a shift to pretty boys! i love that.
Ch4os4ever Wait, GER didn't happen?
Just hearing that Naruto music makes me feel stronger. Man I love Naruto.
One Piece avoids this by being created by the genius that is Oda. His long form storytelling is unparalleled in comic history
No, plenty of comics and shonen have surpass that.
how
@Lantang Satriatama what about Hellboy? Or Sandman? Or goddamn Cerebus which was written (and drawn I think) by the same guy from 1977 to 2004? Also there's lots of DC and Marvel comic runs that have been written by the same author for long periods of time, off the top of my head Chris Claremont wrote X Men from the mid 70s until the early-to-mid 90s, Geoff Johns wrote Green Lantern and a whole bunch of tie-ins for about 9 years, Brian Michael Bendis wrote Ultimate Spiderman for 14 years and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee wrote Fantastic Four for the entirety of the 60s until the early 70s.
OP anime is of clearly lesser quality than DBZ & Naruto. From what I understand One Piece is the rare case where the Manga massively outperforms its own anime. Naruto is the most successful of the 2nd Modern Wave animes, while OP reigned supreme among Manga. Also isn't OP a Wave 3 series now as Wave 2 ended with Naruto & Bleach ending, Wave 3 starting with Dragon Ball Super?
@@WaterKirby1994 I would agree that the OP manga is absolutely amazing but the case we're dealing with is the storytelling aspect of shonen manga through anime. As mentioned, Naruto suffered of extensively enlarging the stakes (such as the Ninja War) at a lower output of emotion throughout the story both anime and manga-wise. However, One Piece avoids that mistake by linking a larger scale event (such as Marineford), with increased stakes, to something personal to the main character and still achieve to make the story- both anime and manga-wise- appealing and captivating, despite its long story length, ironically, something that Naruto failed to achieve in it's shorter length story.
Honestly, MHA does such a good job avoiding escalation because no powers really deviate from how they're established to work. Dragonball Z, Naruto and Bleach, from my experience, had a real problem pulling new powers and abilities out of character's asses for the sake of character advancement, so eventually you'd be worn out with "they'll overcome this with some random ability." They'll be another super saiyan level, another ninja ability, some hidden zanpakto that'll move the characters onto some infinite "next level".
But MHA's character's advancement seems to be purely from training and adapting, ya know, kinda like real life. Characters have an established Quirk, that doesn't really change, but they adapt how they apply it. They specifically have parts where the main characters are attempting to learn new ways of utilizing their abilities. Deku's whole progression at the beginning is learning how to even use One For All without blasting himself apart.
ThatAnimeSnob There are different departments within the school that are unrelated to being an actual hero that fights and rescues, some involving actual general studies (So you don't have to enroll to become a hero, the school is just number 1 in that regard). The number of students in the actual heroics department that have non-offensive quirks are very small in number, and one of them got an actual explanation. Usually they need to use their abilities creatively in order to get in.
The system for accepting students into the heroics department is just unfair really, since it uses robots in a controlled environment. The kid with the brainwashing quirk got placed into a different department because of this.
Astrological
I think that's a good thing for the story. Maybe in the future Deku can do more than just punch bad guys but also fix society's flaws
The Otaku Dragon Slayer I wholeheartedly agree, I really hope between villain arcs the creator tackles these issues when the characters are focusing on school. Really gives another layer to the story.
Look i like boku no hero academia, but arent quirks almost exactly those "random abilities"? The manga is young and almost all of the big shounen start of strong, but who knows what will happen, the possibility is very real that eventually it will be world destroying quirks vs world destroying quirks
beardtmonkey lets hope it wount get there but if it does i hope they handle it correctly
dude! the music in this vid has such a good flow
Something called syncing.
Why do HxH fans always got something to say about the Chimera Ant arc? That arc was a masterpiece. I understand if they disliked it because of the narration, but in my opinion that gave it more depth and helped me get a better understanding of it. Plus the dark tone was a really good touch. By far, my favorite arc in the series.
Agreed. 2nd best arc and thats only cause the best arc is my favorite on a personal level.
Beezzyy chimera ant is my all time favourite arc. It’s the most amazing arc I have ever seen on shounen genre
I think it's very much a personal preference. I personally liked the arc, for the villains deeper personality, his goals and his past. Not many shounen develop their villains to have such personal or relatable struggles. I actually read this arc, as opposed to watching it, but I really enjoyed the narrative boxes in the manga. They helped me keep track of the fast-paced-action, and the motives of all the characters in play.
My personal favorite was the Kurapika crime arc- because it was so personal, and the stakes were much more down-to-earth, and therefore easier to "relate to" in a sense. Also I'm a sucker for that atmosphere.
@Excelsior Nah, I was hyped at the beginning of Yorknew but I was kind kf bummed when the only Phantom Troul vs Kurapika fight was against Uvo. The ant arc has Netero vs Meruem (best fight) and Gon being a fucking monster. It also has the character development of Meruem. The complaint that its not grounded in personal struggle doesnt work because the best part of the arc was Meruem and Gon who both had very personal story arcs. The narration was kind of dumb but the Youpi fight was pretty good anyway.
Yare yare ,the first arc and last arc were better than the chimera arc
I wanna become a mangaka and create an anime and manga about ninjas but I want it to be what Naruto wasn't and hit all the right marks of shonen anime.
You probably won't.
Naruto got me into anime
Better get good at drawing and drawing fast then my dude. Mangakas have a hell of a lot of content to produce in a short time.
How's it going?
If you really want to make manga about shinobi, make it Seinen. Not Shonen. shinobi is not about loud boy dreaming high and become clan leader by having monster inside him.
It is about becoming a perfect spy/assassin for their lord by endless training and discipline. Play TENCHU game if you want to know how shinobi work.
That lee fight is literally my favorite naruto scene ever
Every scene featuring Itachi is my favorite scene, until they revealed he was a lame martyr all along. A shame, such a cool villain
The most overrated fight in the anime.
Tobi is a good boy There’s a difference between being overrated and popular
@@RRRRRRRRR33 itachi a "lame martyr"? No offense, but are you drunk?!? Itachi had NO motive for being evil and that made him a shit character. But the plot twist in shippuden made him one of the best characters in the whole of anime. His story was perfectly done and executed.
All you're judging itachi by is how cool he looks and whether he's a good or bad guy. That's such a two dimensional way of thinking. Itachi is probably the best character in naruto. Tho my favorite character is obito.
Shikamaru is numba wan!
WHY ONE PIECE'S SOUNDTRACK HIT US LIKE A FUCKING GIANT BOAT?
shounen anime MC: i an going to die...i lost this battle
shounen anime villain: your ambition and determination made you loose this batlle
*HARD METAL STARTS TO PLAY*
villain:O FUC*
That's One Piece right now. Luffy literally had a beauty sleep, wakes up and figures out the most advanced martial art in the world... just like that, lol The shonen combat genius, just another one among thousands
Naruto - Stumbled but didnt fall. Tbh i was expecting to her nothing but criticism about Naruto but it was handled well. It was a great story with great characters but the war arc was black mark. However the series still ended with the main goal completed and thats the underdog who no one believed in achieve his goal of becoming Hokage.
RasenRendan X Naruto becoming hokage was EXTREMELY satisfying
RasenRendan X true but just becuase the main protagonists goal was met doesnt mean it was a good anime lmao. If anything that is a bad thing. It means that the shows ending was most likely predictable from the start
So ur saying a story meeting its goal by the is a bad thing now? The whole point of Naruto was the journey of the underdog reaching his goal. Ofc how he got from hated outcast to Leader of his village and Hero of the world had its up and downs but you sound like ur reaching imo.
Then that means Boku no Hero is a bad story cuz we know Deku will become the greatest hero by the end or is it still taboo to say anything bad about that series?
RasenRendan X no im not saying its a bad thing im saying it can be a bad thing. But yea predictability can ruin a show for me and many other people
well sorry it was ruined for you but the fact the series lasted for 15 years means that it had a more positive effect than negative. Im not saying its perfect no series is but you gotta give it some credit in some aspects. There has to be something about the series you liked.
One Piece and HxH are my favorite but I always liked Bleach as well. The character and monster designs where always the biggest highlight for me (it was also the first anime I heard of ). I have still yet to read MHA but when the anime ends I'll definitely read it.
I like BnH but the fandom is really grating my nerves. You think it's the best thing ever? No shit, it's still only 140ish chapters in. The problems you illustrated in Dragon Ball, Naruto and Bleach didn't manifest until much later into their runs. How about we give BnH some time to breathe before we sing its praises for having saved the shounen genre?
Galero15 as a fan of MHA, I'll tell you that it's truth that fans tend to praise the series too much but this is not exclusive of My Hero Academia, ANY other series, shounen or not, even outside of anime have its fandom filled with people who think it's the best thing ever, but just as much as one should not count the opinions of the haters as "objective" criticism, we should not view the opinions of fans who praise it the same. And as you said, MHA still has a way to go as it's still a young series, being only 3 years old. It can either go and surpass everyone's expectations or end up disappointing us all (which I hope it doesn't)
Same. The fans do way too much
Yeah, we just have to wait and see. BnHA isn’t even in its 200th chapter yet. So it’s flaws look miniscule compared to other shonen. Tho the fight scenes do need some improvement.
Donquixote Doflamingo That’s what I mean when I say the action was meh. Either it was lackluster or didn’t really mean much. I think that was due to the fact that the author hadn’t had much practice with action or stakes. Since both of his previous series were cancelled before much happened. So he’s learning on the job. The Gentle vs Deku fight was amazing though. Perfect use of Deku’s strengths and had amazing choreography. Plus Gentle feels real because he’s relatable.
Karen LM Yeah I agree, although it's in this wierd limbo where it's massively overrated and downplayed at the same time
Shonen is driven by monetary gain... so they sacrifice quality for lenght.
hence why short series keep their quality, while sacrificying lenght.
Some shonen actually has good stories ex fma brother hood hxh
@@brownoutee hence the small length
Moreso, it's that the artists get tired of writing the manga and lose their drive to do well.
Mm one piece
Mmm naruto
Was brought here because everyone and their mother recommended it. And I see why.
Yeah
See Jojos bizarre adventure araki figured out the perfect way to combat this Problem with his part structure and the way stand powers are balanced.
stands are "balanced" , next joke please .
Stands ARE balanced in the sense that nearly all stands can be 'unbeatable' if used properly, which makes fights come down to exploiting the flaws that a stand user will inevitably make because users aren't perfect as well as maximizing the advantages of your stand.
Perfect example is a rat beating Jotaro in a one on one fight. Jotaro has one of the most powerful stands in the series, however by figuring out how far he could move while stopping time and leveraging the range of it's stand a rat, a RAT, manages to win. Its only by exploiting it's reload time and having Josuke as a second combatant did they manage to defeat it in that fight. Meanwhile they acknowledge that if they had better long range stands at the time the rat would have been a joke to defeat.
@@zinekaizerzen-pokemonunite1390 they are
If bleach ended with the Aizen arc I think it would have been better than Naruto. Kubo said him self he I wanted it to end there. He also said that he just likes drawing cool characters and making them fight. The story was always secondary to him. Thats why a lot of characters did not get development.
*> Kubo said him self he I wanted it to end there.*
Is there a source?
I saw a translation of the interview on tumblr so I cant say how accurate it was.
There is a great video explaining what happened to bleach by Super Eyepatch Wolf.
Well with that logic, if Naruto ended with the Pain arc it would be better than Bleach ended with the Aizen arc too lol
Bleach did not work as well as a long ongoing story as Naruto did.Naruto had more long term goals, getting Sasuke back , beating the Akatsuki and controlling the nine-tails. With Bleach Ichigo goal was to save his town and the people in it. But that is just my opinion other people liked the fullbring arc and quincy arc. I wish Kubo had time for the full ending but they made him rush so the ending was disappointing
I thought Bleach will ended in Aizen arc, but soon after Aizen arc there was a news said that Tite will continue the series for another 10 years, and I go "WTF are you doing????"...
This is why I like Mob Psycho 100 so much. Mob was always so strong from the very beginning that he needed to de-escalate, along with his stakes.
yugioh suffered from this. hence why he won every single battle because it was basically life of death
that Jounouchi vs Marik part...
Raphael from waking the dragons arc: "Beg your pardon? Did you say he won EVERY duel?"
@@bronxishomenomatterwhereig3149 everyone always have to be technical
@@zero1188 You literally said he never lost a battle, yet there was an episode in which he did.
Say what you will people, but I still think Bleach's first arc was the greatest shounen I ever feasted my eyes on
By first arc I assume you mean up to the end of the Soul Society/ Rescuing Rukia arc (it's sometimes considered as the first 2-3 arcs) in which case I absolutely agree.
Hans Tang Bleach was my first anime (don't count Pokemon, Digimon, or Yugioh because those were too kiddish), and the saving Rukia arc was very good! The reason was because of personal stakes! Ichigo wasn't going to let his friend Rukia be executed and grew stronger in order to save her! His fights against Kenpachi, Renji and Byakuya were filled with great emotion and personal stories! Then Bleach after that fell.
Soul society was a rip off of Saint Seiya's Sanctuary arc lol.
Even though I don't really like bleach, I do like the first arc too
The manga was pretty awesome until the Arancar Arc was finished...after that, imo, it went downhill....and well...we don't talk about the ending, let that one burn in the Seven hells
Um... OK. But the actual biggest problem with shonen;
"POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!!!"
Seriously, this cliche needs to die. Fairy Tail absolutely drove this one into the dirt. I'd love to vent on how poor Fairy Tail had become with the "friendship" angle, and how low the stakes are, when characters "die" only to be brought back in a couple issues, but yeah... The "friendship" angle.
I love One Piece, but that is still strong, despite the nakama trope, yet so many are guilty of this. Attack on Titan, Bleach, Soul Eater, Naruto, Boruto (c'mon... You KNOW its going to happen), the list could go on. Hell, even great seinen like Berserk is starting to succumb to this cliche.
There is hope, though. One Punch Man has been able to mostly divert from this trope, so far. I'd like to hear other examples, because my reading list has been slacking, lately.
I see that you are a fan, but sorry... I'm going to have to disagree. I have many problems with Fairy Tail (Including the correct spelling of "Tail". Fixed that).
One more example I'll give (aside from the previously mentioned "Nakama Power"), is the lack of character development. There was never any growth to main characters like Natsu, and Gray... Maybe a little for Lucy. But the Natsu I met in the first chapters is the same Natsu in the last chapters... He just calls out different names for his attacks.
Ok... One more quick one. The fan service is downright distracting. I'm trying to get into an action scene, then SUDDENLY BOOBS! Hey, I love boobs, but I don't think they should be thrown in my face during a fight.
Funky D just because the story is bit light hearted at the moment doesn't mean berserk is cliché. when miura wants to kill a character and bet he will in coming chapters, he does it when it means something and takes the plot forward. berserk is only getting better, only for those God forsaken hiatuses it is slow
if any manga deserves to go through the friendship is great crap, its berserk. papa guts has suffered enough and needs a break and let's be real, its only going to hurt like a real bitch when something does happen to one of them.
EXACTLY, the "as long as we're friends none of can die and we can beat anyone" trope is the whole reason I stopped watching fairy tail Idc if you use that in one or two fights but holy shit it's almost every single fight. And don't get me started on how most of the bad guys in fairy tail has some sort of a sad backstory.
It pains me to use Berserk and Fairy Tail in the same sentence, so please don't get me wrong, here. I mention Berserk because it could fall into the "Nakama Power" trap with a nudge, though I think Miura is too good to have Guts exposit about his need to be with friends, and get the Nakama Power-up.
Where Berserk uses "Power of Friendship" as much more subtle character development, Fairy Tail uses it as a cheap Deus ex Machina.
Sandly, the MHA segment age like milk. But overall, an amazing video, thanks for it :)
man, when One Piece came i literally got goosebumps
we all know MHA will end before one piece lol
boruto is trash Its really hard to create a world like One piece. And yes maybe mha will end before one piece, but it will never have the grandeur that one piece has. Btw i love both the series👍
The things I hate about certain shonen animes is the ridiculous power ups that the characters get. The multiple Dragon Ball series, Bleach, Naruto, if you look at them at the beginning to the end, their abilities have pretty much look completely unlike what they started out with.
Now, sometimes that's a result of the personal growth and hard work that the characters have put in, like in Hunter x Hunter, and the series I've mentioned actually did do that, at least in the beginning.
But Dragon Ball, Bleach, and Naruto just didn't know where to stop. They just kept adding more and more power to their characters until it became boring and repetitive watching them fight against villains that I don't give a damn anymore, no matter how much more powerful than the last villain they are because we all know what's going to happen anyway.
It actually makes me sick, I've watched a few episodes of Dragon Ball Super, which apparently started out with some cat who was the god of destruction, and the strongest being in the universe or whatever. Then they add multiple versions of him, and then they add someone who looks fucking ridiculous who's apparently the new strongest, and I'm sitting there wondering how far they're going to milk this damn series. It'll only be fun for newcomers to the show who haven't seen the same thing a million times before.
The next thing is how fucking long they are, and have episodes that you can skip without missing anything. Honestly I'd prefer having to wait a year for a new season than watching weekly episodes that have almost nothing happen in a single episode and have stupid filler arcs. The only shonen I've seen that I can exempt from this is Hunter x Hunter, that anime is amazing. Oh, and Jojo's, since I guess overall it now has a decent amount of episodes too.
Now I'm laughing looking at how ridiculous this comment is but I just needed to go on a rant, it feels like the shonen anime I loved when I was younger has betrayed me, but in reality this is what those particular shonen were even before I discovered them.
Now, I can happily enjoy Hunter x Hunter, My Hero Academia, Jojo, Attack on Titan, etc. I'm ready for the third wave.
Agreed with all that, fillers are sometimes needed, but they can be shortened so much, but are not.
Sadly MHA now has done the exact same thing which frankly has made it really hard to care about Shonen works when ass pull power ups are the goddamn norm of the genre at this point.
Escalation and the power of friendship are easily the worst problems. This video explains quite well why escalation sucks, but a perfect example of power of friendship: Fairy Tail! Damn, this series... I was invested for most part, but when the big baddie was revealed, all the cliches of the ancient master being defeated and etc.. And then, FRIENDSHIP! saves the day, lol All those noob characters that can't even be compared to the master, they power up their friendship and defeated the strongest dark mage (or something like that). I dropped Fairy Tail immediatelly after that, lol This thing continues even to this day, I believe there's at least 250+ episodes unknow to me. Same goes with Bleach, Aizen defeated, Ichigo recovering his powers in the most boring way possible, I abandoned right there. It's just too much man, it's so dumb.
Because this is a stupid cliche. Everything seems to be lost, the most powerful characters are defeated.. Suddenly, the noob characters got strong because they are "friends", defeating the invincible antagonist. There's nothing more dumb and stupid than this, it's a deus ex-machina. A cheap solution, just like characters transforming out of nowhere. Fairy Tail even uses a rank system, Natsu and his friends are clearly weaker than the top dogs (the guild master, that redhead dude copied from One Piece that I forgot the name, etc), the own plot establishes them as upcoming characters. How the hell they can defeat a foe that surpassed their master? It's simple: power of friendship. Only a complete fool can accept this kind of "solution".
Well said
*Claps in admiration* Bravo! Bravo!
Phantom lord: master defeated the evil master
Jellal: natsu ate roid juice and powered up
Laxus: used up to much energy and was defeated after he wiped the floor with the top dogs
Hades: lost his source of power while FT had their magic tree
Future rogue: natsu had help from a dragon
Mard geer: demon defeated by a demon slayer
Spriggan 12: and thats where we come to a problem
Most of the major fights had legit endings its just that nearly every single fight has a friendship speech regardless of a random power up or not which is still annoying and overplayed.
Theres nothing wrong with friendship. It just depends on how it's written. Fairy Fail just happens to be an example of this being done poorly. It's not the standard of how friendship is written.
That transition to My hero Aca gave me shivers, Great video man. Looking forward to a My hero vid :)
Even Ranma 1/2 had this problem way back in the day, and it carried over into its spiritual successor, Inuyasha. Every major arc is "The hero isn't strong enough to do X, so he has to train and learn a new technique that lets him do X. But after he does X, a new challenger appears who is completely unaffected by what the hero learned to do X, so now the hero has to train and learn a new technique that...."
It's the same story, whether it's the Cashew fist -> Lion Roar Shot -> Heavenly Dragon Blast, or Wind Scar -> Backlash Wave -> Red Tessaiga -> Adamant Barrage -> Dragonscale Tessaiga -> Meido Zangetsuha, Or Kaioken -> Super Saiyan -> SSJ(#) -> SSJ Blue/Rose etc and on and so forth.
Gas Bandit it doesn't matter if the story is similar , what matters is the way the author tells the story.
which is a big problem because toriyama cant write shit, inuyasha female mangaka cant do it either
You have no idea how weirdly excited I get when I see one of your video essays in my sub box.
literally got goosebumps when he said the third wave of shonen will be led by and saw deku's pic
7:47 had me super hyped
Thomas in Thomas The Tank Engine Is too strong they have nerfed him but he keeps coming faster the most best arc was the Thomas vs The World arc because it proves that Thomas is very OP and is better than god. Thomas is as strong as Cory from Cory In The House and i feel like they should do a collaboration but the only person Thomas can be beat by is the Handy Man because he knows all of his weaknesses. It says on chapter 2 of the Thomas the Tank Engine manga that Thomas can cross dimensions but he avoids going to Handy Man’s dimension because he is the ruler of the world but the most OP character in all of the world is shrek. He rules the Omni verse and sees when someone travels dimensions. He is the real OP character with his most famous companion Donkeh who is his pet and friend. Shrek and Donkeh are the most powerful characters but if Cory, Handy Man, and Thomas join forces they can beat them and be the new rulers of the Omni verse.
Nah doge could beat them any day
The hell, why only 9 likes? Shrek is coming to kill us all if we don't add more likes to this comment.
Best comment ever.
I remember when news of Bleach and Naruto ending there was worry over what would fill the shonen action show void. I'm glad My Hero Academia has come into the picture because no show has made me feel this way since classic Naruto. But it is still young so it can definitely still take the route of over escalating. Personally, I think Naruto could have still continued but have him deal with problems as hokage. It's not as high stakes as SAVE THE WORLD like the final arc, but can still be interesting. But it's better to leave Naruto where it is because it finally culminated in his dream job. But that's one potential way to continue his story.
Marvel actually suffers from this problem a lot. Every hero is personally saving the world in his own movie and people wonder if the stakes are so high where are the rest of the Avengers?
sor3999 Well... we got Boruto?
if you readed jojo or one piece or berserk or vagabond you wouldnt think or say that.
sor3999 What Genre does HxH fall into
Monty Monti action shounen.
I assume the movies happen concurrently, thusly they're all busy with their own shit rather than taking a day off when hydra takes over shield.
I'm glad we got civil war, a movie where all the avengers showed up to help out in the conflict though
You Forgot One-Punch Man which totally destroys the Escalation/De-Escalation with a Single Punch
yudhistirs OPM isn't a shonen though.
OPM isn't even an adventure show. It can kind of be for the side characters, but in essence it's just a comedy.
Yeah but the show isn't about the one punch. It isn't about 'achieving' but about many deeper themes like the recognition itself for achievement.
yudhistirs one punch man is more of a satire on shonen.
AmMar Śąma That's the joke
As an Inuyasha fan this video makes me depressed
why, i haven't see Inuyasha but what wrong with it
@Dyst0pianFutur3 DysFut11 abd sakura card captor 😂
But like: GinTama is perfection.
+HopOnTheHype not really perfection but one of the best animes ever
Everything got its flaws but Gintama did the best with them flaws. It's undoubtedly a masterpiece
@@lly_09 What flaw does GinTama have besides the fact that it ended, and the filler first two episodes?
First two fillers is the big flaw since it put off many viewers,, others are just fine
HXH is probably one of the best Shonen
Along with Ippo and Gintama
Nice to know
In terms of character development and writing in general, yes, it's leagues above anything I've came across. So much so that I think it's a match for some of the best works of fiction belonging to other mediums. The only other manga series that had the same effect on me was Berserk, years ago, but the fact that HxH is "just" a shounen is quite astounding. I'll never forget the second half of the Chimera Ants Arc.
I know this has nothing to do with the discussion but... does anyone know what's the name of the song that plays when Hunter x Hunter shows up in the video
Carlos Valdovinos the fact is that non of us is going to be alive to see it's ending
Man, my heart jumped when I heard You Say Run start playing.
i'm gonna guess it's because the hero always wins
*fights never end*
*or last 5 minutes of planet takes about 22 episodes*
Bleach lost its a greatness after the final getsuga and the imprisonment of Aizen. the thousand war had promise, but failed...
Emy Pierre-Louis It didn't really sucked.
Emy Pierre-Louis well imo Thousand Year was better than Aizen arc
Thousand Year War was supposed to be the bomb--Byakuya had to die just to make a statement that Soul Society is fucked. I wish Kubo had more time.
Dann Rageee I'm pretty sure there's only one Soul Society.....
kubo gave up on bleach himself after being pressured by his editors in certain directions he didnt want to see the story going so he lsot interest in it which u can see in the art and story getting worse and worse after the first arc
I saw "The Escalation Problem," Naruto, and Goku in the thumbnail and I was like: "ooooooh I know what this is gonna be about.."
I love the way you edited this video! Even if Naruto lost some quality in the end, seeing the way you used the images of the manga with the main theme made me feel nostalgic
Man this analysis is amazing, love the editing its like I'm in a Weekly Shonen Jump magazine as I watch very ascetically pleasing to watch, keep up the great work earned a sub.
Fairy Tail is too shit to even be mentioned. Mashima buried that story and is still burrowing his way to the Earth's core
SuperStrong He was capable to make every damm time the wrong choice😂😂😂
SuperStrong at least is finally ending
One piece is my all time favourite and I think the only thing it really did wrong is to drag Dressrosa for so long, otherwise it is an amazing story with progressive characters and unlimited possibilities which is still alive at now its 20th anniversary year :)
I loved how hxh is different from all other anime I have seen, I loved how Dragon Ball kept growing and exploring more and more to the world, I loved how Bleach built up all the tension till Aizen arc with a few exceptions when story was too dragged out, I loved Naruto's spirit and how it evolved from one series to the Shippuden and not lose its charm much (though for me it did a littke bit).
And now im enjoying Boku No Hero academia very much as it has become my second favourite and I hope for the manga and anime world to keep expanding and grow as time goes
Traffy The Meme Queen And yes, I've watched and read Naruto. In fact I finished the manga back in 2014, before I even started One Piece.
The final arc was absolute horseshit. The final villain was introduced in the same arc without any backstory or foreshadowing at all, and everything was rushed as hell.
With One Piece, Oda had planned out his story since he was a kid, so there is virtually no chance of One Piece having a bad ending
the all-seeing Rinnegan yeah I havent yet seen all of naruto, i got a lol stuck around 30s of eps in N shippuden because wasnt that exciting. Though i am sure to once finish it and have my opinion on that last part. And yes, Oda is an amazing story planner and every week is worth living to see new chapter come out and move closer to an ending we are all waiting (and also not waiting) for :D
Oda made dressrosa so long because he wanted to develop the straw hat fleet better.
Saruulbuyan Munkhtur Yea my complaints are more about the Dressrosa Arc in the anime as it had terrific animationand pace, otherwise I can totally see why Oda did what he did with the arc as I really grew to love every single one of the fleet members and there were so many
The anime is TOEI FAULT, The manga is EICHIRO ODA and so far ODA is probably THE BEST MANGAKA IN THE WORLD, even better than hirohiko araki ( jojo) Kentaro Miura ( Berserk) and other better artist and writers because his consistences, world building, storys, character development, is not the fact he does all of this pefectly, rather he does all of it in a consistent and good way that you never feel that is draging or TAKING FUCKING FOREVER DAMMIT MIURA WERE IS BERSERK NEW CHAPTER COMING YOU LAZY ASSHOLE!!!!! almost 5 or 6 CHAPTERS IN a YEAR!!!! and 2016 was even worse and 2015 WAS WORSE THAN THAT and lets not forget that GUTS AND HIS COMPANY WERE TRAP IN A FUCKING BOAT TRIP FOR ALMOST 8 YEARS!!!
I recently linked your video to one of my most recent videos concerning the 1999 television show, Digimon Adventure. I think you've done a good thing here; hopefully word gets around and creators of popular series will realize that simply creating and re-creating the same scenarios over and over again isn't always necessary in order to convey a story that fans will enjoy and love.
I loved Naruto, it was my first Anime, but I just couldn't finish it. I stopped really close to Naruto beating Madara. I just couldn't finish it.
My thoughts on all of the major Shonen series:
- Dragon Ball: Started out simple, but then it evolved into screaming and powering up for 10 episodes.
- Yu Yu Hakusho: Essentially a prototype for Hunter x Hunter, an amazing series that gets overlooked nowadays in favor of Togashi's later work.
- Hunter x Hunter: Maybe all those hiatuses are a good thing, gives more time for Togashi to flesh out the story. It's not perfect, but it knows what it's doing.
- One Piece: Has a clear goal, but goes with the flow as to what goes on and how it gets there. Sometimes I wonder if Oda's just making shit up as he goes along, but that's just me who thinks that.
- Naruto: Began small, but grew too big towards the end, but at least didn't fall apart (depending on who you ask). Hopefully Boruto will learn from his father's series.
- Bleach: Was a great series, then crashed and burned.
- Fairy Tail: Mashima, what are you doing? Mashima, STOP!!!
- Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: It's a manga... I can't really describe it beyond that.
- My Hero Academia: The promising new contender, so far so good, it's already past 100 chapters and hopefully it will become something amazing.
Anyone I'm forgetting about?
Masterge77 when you say "Oda's just making shit up as he goes along" what do you mean by that? Could you clarify for me please?
Really! i'm a fan of dragon ball franchise, and that meme your talking about is DEAD! yeah go watch Db super then tell to me, i know they're still screaming but at least its only seconds for now.
The end of One Piece is clear in Oda's mind. He has said that many time. Fuck, the reason he is still motivated to keep drawing One Piece after 20 fucking years is because he wants to draw the ending he has in mind. But yeah, he adds things in between as he goes on and has also said that he knows the end so he build up arcs that will lead towards it. The end is planned but not everything in between.
he also planned the story out many times when he was a kid, revising it a bit
Not to nit pick but Fairy tail isn't shonen. the rest of those series are from Weekly Shonen Jump, where as Fairy Tail is from Weekly Shonen Magazine. When Jump stars victory came out there was a lot of fairy tail fans expecting natsu to be because hes from shonen but to be honest it would like expecting super man or batman to show up in the next avengers movie because they are all super heroes
I really like how you structured this videos with the most notable tracks of the series leading into the discussion.
Very nice topic and analysis, I totally agree. I love how you incorporated the music to your video. You were just explaining but there was a sudden burst of feels because of the music.
I just have to say I’m absolutely loving your videos and that this kind of thoughtful and supported analysis is what I live for, so thank you. I didn’t get far in these anime series when I was younger but after watching this video I would kill to watch you break down the ATLA series. Avatar is a freaking masterwork and I would love to see what you pull out of it.
What starts killing a series is *always* after time skips. Hunter x Hunter was the best anime because of avoiding such things like that. Boku No Hero is doing what HxH tried to do however in a bigger scale, plus HxH if really ends up with Gon being all grown up and all, it might get extremelly out of hand like Dragon Ball quite easilly, the Chimera Ant arc was like a tower perfectly balanced but if you touched it, it would easilly fall, the power levels were starting to become out of control with the introduction of Pitou, death of Kairo, and The King being introduced, however the story was so freaking well put, that ended up as a master piece.
Quantum PhyZ Time skips in Dragonball didnt made the séries worst.
+Quantum PhyZ I agree with you partly, only because IMO One Piece became much better after the timeskip thanks to the faster developing of the plot and more sensible fights, new characters, power levels etc
Unless the timeskip has the series change plots, tone, genres, entire casts of character and settings.
Your comment ignores the existence of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure which (at least until Part 5, arguably even farther than that) got better after every single time skip.
Part 6 to Part 7 was a reverse time skip+ universe skip.
i Love bleach (One piece to an extent) and Naruto a lot but my biggest problems with them are as follows
1)for naruto the show promised ninjas and stealth but all we got was who could get over powered the fastest
2)One piece i just hate how many episodes they stretch out the arcs it feels like nothing gets done it took them over 2 episodes to fuckin climb stairs
3)Bleach and naruto dont give enough proper screen time and characters development for how many characters they have.
thats about all i have that bothers me
You weren't promised ninja's and stealth in Naruto, you assumed that they would be stealthy. And they are to some extent. The only people that prefer not to follow the smart route are loud asses like Naruto, but both the show and the manga has had it's stealthy moments.Naruto does have good character development though, They develop certain characters very well, the only characters they stay away from are the ones the readers generally don't care about.You really can't say their character development is bad, because I can give you a thousand reasons it is good.
In One Piece I do admit they stretch some of the episodes, but you can just read the manga I guess. But in every arc they accomplish something because it feels like the characters are actually at risk.
I won't lie though, you're right about bleach. I think they overdeveloped Ichigo and underdeveloped everyone else.
Rei Rei overdeveloped Ichigo? I felt like I didn't even know the guy after watching the series....we started off with a bratty, sarcastic, smartass and we ended with a void character with a lack of direction. He's one dimensional in that sense....he didn't have any discernible traits or goals besides saving his friends, and a character that relies on a trope like that ... Well, they're as underdeveloped as can be.
I'm talking about overdeveloped in the sense that Ichigo always had to be the center of attention, the author focused too much on him instead of developing other characters like Sado. Look at how much power Ichigo has gotten throughout the series, none of it was really necessary, I felt he should've been Visored and that's it.
Hahahahhaha! Wow, you sure are a moron.
Please, tell me what the first paragraph of the very first chapter of Naruto is. Can't be botehered? It talks about the nine-tails and how it can wipe out moutains with a single swip of a tail, or cause Tsunami's with a swish.
That was sealed into Naruto.
Of fucking course Naruto would be scaling to that level. What the fuck did you expect?
Rei Rei One Piece anime is horrible and doesn't pick up again till white beard. I get the huge grand line and the treasure thing being a main plot point but after that the show gets very repetitive and they just pile more characters on it. I dont even know what they were doing by the time they got sucked into the whirlpool and all of a sudden they're in some new place with giants.
The White beard and the prison arcs pick up on a lot of things I felt were unfinished with characters like Crocodile and Lobster. The show is always filled with silly animations and constant jokes that nothing ever feels serious and the characters are never in any real danger.
Dude, I absolutely love the aesthetic of this video. You did just a good job editing it and your intros into each segment are so smooth. I have to say, that I really am curious to see the project file of this video just to see how you pulled this off.
Yeah, this is one of the best edited anime videos.
Although I read my hero academia, I've never felt much attachment to it compared to other shows mentioned, Even bleach I feel like I got attached to it's main characters more. I would think that a few reasons would be 1-the setting; it gives a stronger childish tone than other shows; adding to that is the concept of Villains and Heroes. Makes making a world too black and white takes away alot of the excitement. 2- being school structured also takes away the unpredictability of a story in a sense of danger. 3- so much time being put on many characters that it feels like progress takes a long time. i
Bad taste
@@ryou7346 or an opinion
At least Mob Psycho 100 and My Hero Acedemia dodged this trap for the most part.
Yeah, that's why they're the Third Wave.
The Otaku Dragon Slayer Is Mob Psycho 100 a straight Shonen... huh. I suppose it technically is but it really feels weird to say that. I have always considered it to be it's own mix of genres. I guess One Punch Man is as well, maybe? It's not really a Seinen for sure but it isn't a Shonen through and through. Well, not a traditional Shonen.
Shounen is a demographic not genre. Even Gurren Laggan is a shounen, even death note is a shounen. Some moe anime are seinen (k-on manga)
Meh Meh Huh, I never thought of it like that. So basically Shonen is just a manga targeted to teens and young adult types strictly speaking??
Yes, shounen isn't a genre, granted there's gonna be things that pop-up in it because that's how marketing and legacy works. But it's a demographic.
I love Naruto but it, along with Bleach, ran into this problem though I would argue that Bleach ran into it much earlier than Naruto did. The powers became so grand and so earth-shattering (literally and metaphorically) that I as a reader could not *conceive* or *comprehend* it. They're basically gods now, or Dragon pokemon--only another of equal or greater power could defeat it. I felt so disconnected to the supposed magnitude of what was happening (even though in the back of my head I knew this was bad news bears) during the Ninja War Arc because these characters I grew up with were so above and beyond powerful--Naruto, Sasuke, Obito, and Madara--that I was like "How is it possible for someone to be THIS strong, really? How. They're only human beings.". They seemed untouchable
To me, Naruto scaled its threats pretty well at first. The first threat was Zabuza and Haku, a team consisting of a rogue ninja with superb assassination skills and a teen boy with a rare, but not unstoppable, special ability. Then the threat became their comrades as they tried to prove themselves in the Chunin Exams, though very quickly it also became a two-pronged threat of danger both within the village and a force from the outside trying to attack it with Orochimaru having a hand in both. Yet, Orochimaru, for all his powers, was only one person. Then you have 10 individuals possessing the strength and wide range of abilities that counted Orochimaru as a *peer* but not superior nor inferior to them: Akatsuki. If a two man team can take down or incapacitate our favorite Jonin like Kakashi (who is not a Wharf because he has shown to handle himself very well in a battle with ninja like Zabuza, just as an example) or knock out a Kage (Deidara singlehandedly--lol--did so), and on top of that they're walking around trying to achieve some shady goal?! SHIT SON SHIT.
To me, things started becoming harder to comprehend and focus on when Sasuke managed to survive Deidara's suicide bomb. He was supposedly nearly out of chakra yet he managed to summon Manda? After Jiraiya's death, Naruto went off to learn Sage Mode. While obvious parallels can be drawn between this and Yoda's teaching of Luke, Yoda was teaching Luke in some way how to be competent and good--experience and time would fill in the rest. For Naruto, he already had years of training, being a shinobi for a few years, and this was just enhancing and refining what he already knew plus giving him a mega boost. Sasuke's Susanoo was the exact same.
Aaaand I really don't know what else to say other than one of my other main problems with shonen is that a lot of heavy things are watered down for kids to understand. Series like Deadman Wonderland and Death Note get really dark and psychological and to me are at the tipping point of being Seinen. Series like One Piece, Fairy Tail, and Ao no Exorcist are most definitely Shonen, and while Bleach and Naruto are indeed deeply rooted in Shonen, they have a lot of elements to them which, when you think about them, are very adult and ambiguous. There are elements in both Bleach and Naruto that are very straightforward: "Love conquers all" and "I'm a guy who just wants to protect my friends and family from assholes like you", but even when you get distracted by all that shit getting hammered into you, they still offer some really dark and disturbing peripheral ideas. "Fridge Horror", in other words. To me I think that Naruto does a better job at supplying gray morality, or at least giving the reader a chance to think about the concept of it, moreso than Bleach which is just "these people are only good guys because they haven't killed you yet, therefore there's not much to think about concerning 'morality'". Really the only morality questioning that is done is where Aizen is concerned and he's the one asking it, and of course it's so restricted to his character that it doesn't really prompt the reader to consider his ideas in the grand scheme of things, while several Naruto characters do because of their history, experiences, and the world they lived in.
Aah I've said too much. Please don't take this as me thinking Naruto is the greatest manga of all time. I truly believe that Naruto has deep moments, or at least I am able to make parallels between what the series is trying to convey and issues IRL that I honestly can't with Bleach. I don't read One Piece so I can't say the same because I don't know (>_>).
TLDR
Regarding the lack of "morality questioning" in Bleach, I think the most obvious and egregious example would be Kurotsuchi; he's literally a psychopath who has murdered and experimented on innocent people that he's supposed to protect but all of that gets swept under the carpet until the strongest emotional response to him is basically "he's a creepy guy and I don't like him". I've essentially only watched the Anime so don't know if this gets dealt with later on, though it goes on for far too long as it is. It gets even weirder when the end of the Fullbring arc has comments about how much Ichigo has changed the Soul Society; if they're willing to let such crimes go unpunished and even undiscussed has it really changed that much?
Golden Robodude read the comment. it's interesting
One of the weird things about Bleach is that it introduced a lot of moral ambiguity, but rarely followed through on it. I've always wondered why Kubo even bothered putting that stuff in if he was never going to address it. If all he wanted was a straight action series, than the Shinigami should have been unambiguous good guys from the start.
I love how shows like street fighter kept it simple. When they beat the final boss that was it. They also didn't try to make villains stronger and stronger but different in their styles and motivations. Thus keeping us interested while making the story progressing
You never talked about yuyu hakusho and how elements from that anime inspired a lot of the sentimental events in hunter X hunter like there was only a one image cameo of yusuke lol
Pretty sure both YYH and HXH are done by the same author.
Is there a character that could even possibly EVEN TOUCH Madara Uchiha? Let alone defeat him. And I’m not talking about Edo Tensei Uchiha Madara. I’m not talking about Gedou Rinne Tensei Uchiha Madara either. Hell, I’m not even talking about Juubi Jinchuuriki Gedou Rinne Tensei Uchiha Madara with the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan and Rinnegan doujutsus (with the rikodou abilities and being capable of both Amateratsu and Tsukuyomi genjutsu), equipped with his Gunbai, a perfect Susano’o, control of the juubi and Gedou Mazou, with Hashirama Senju’s DNA implanted in him so he has mokuton kekkei genkai and can perform yin yang release ninjutsu while being an expert in kenjutsu and taijutsu.
That's when you know that the plot is convoluted as fuck
...You should maybe go outside some time. =/
Yhwach from Bleach. His powers are so broken that he almost comes off as a parody of overpowered characters.
easy, Anti spiral, GER, The world Over heaven, Ultimate kars, Made in heaven, D4C, Goku SSJ blue kaioken X 100 ultra instinc rainbow yello+++++++++++ black vegito phase 10000# ( is a joke goku is a piece of shit) Killer queen primary bomb....all this characters except for that goku joke had one thing in common and that is they have HAX!!!!! one reason of why Goku would never be able to defead madara is because his fighting style is too conventional and is just BIGGER NUMBERS he doesnt have any single hax except people say he learned beerus techinque to erase someone out of existence which is not canon because the manga is wayyyyyyy behind the anime and the manga is following the SAME PLOT as the anime besides some minor changes like goku turning SSJgod like he does in super right now without any explanation, well the manga DOES explain it
i dont read replies bruh are u dumb
Am I the only one who doesn't really care if the anime is a shounen or not
Kawaki the genre of a fictional piece isn't always depicting it correctly nor is it always possible to put a work of art into a category - but statistically a genre tells us what we kinda ought to expect from a shonen :D so people who want to experience cowboy gunfights and setting suns tend to watch westerns more than scifi, and people who don't like transformation animes stay away from shonen :D (even though transformations aren't the only definitive aspect of shonen fiction)
but imho, while i try to not care about genres, there are always prejudices some manga and anime series have to overcome in order to keep my attention. :)
Me, because Shonen isn't a genre, but just a demographic that tells you that it's for teenager boys (basically the most popular demographic if you want your manga to be recognized by the masses, because girls would read boys manga, but only a few boys would ever touch girls manga; the same with adults, they would like boys manga, but boys would find adults manga boring).
For example Sports Manga is also Shonen but is considered like a separate genre. Death Note and Detective Conan are also Shonen, very different from Dragon Ball and the other manga examples provided here.
But I guess that the most generic fight anime/manga is Shonen, so is has become like a genre, specially because a lot have been in the same magazine (Shonen Jump has become like a genre itself).
Elsa García fair point! :D
i see you're a man of culture, a true weeb.
kami-sama bless you
As long as it's good, I don't care at all.
I actually loved this video because you went straight to the point from the beginning to the end of it. The edit was very well done as well, maintaining a consistent visual through all the video. I know this is an old video so things may have changed by now, but I only saw this today. Thanks for your hard work :)
I love this video, it looks truly great and talks about a very interesting theme, thanks. I feel like you could have talked about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, since it handled the scalation problem very well. Thanks for the video.