Why do so many Shounen manga and mangaka make the concept of death into a laughing stock? Why do they insist on depriving the deepest most primal fear in the human psyche of the impact and respect it commands?
I get that their works are mainly targeted towards kids and teenagers, but even then, I suspect that people within this age range also want a story to have tension and consequences to derive from events as big as a character death.
But instead, all the potential ramifications of death, from both and emotional and narrative standpoint, are constantly squandered. Does this annoy anyone else?
Gabriel Nelson
Killing characters potentially kills off that part of the audiences interest in the Manga.
Waifu / Husbando killing is fraught with risk.
Easton King
That's a shame. It essentially means that an author's story is dictated by popularity, money and subsequently, editors. The one who actually writes the story that came from their own head gets no say in the matter.
Carson Cox
Come to think of it, I can't think of the last instance where a popular character died in a battle action shonen and stayed dead.
Nathan Robinson
I can think of Jiraiya, Ace and Yamamoto, although I don't know if the latter was all that popular.
Justin King
It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't CONSTANTLY baiting the idea, if a character is "dying" every 20 chapters then you're gonna stop giving a shit about any of the conflicts.
I don't mind it when the character being revived becomes a significant plot point though, that can be fun.
Daniel Rogers
because japs don't believe in death, since they're a bunch of filthy fucking ghost-worshipping shinto Buddhists.
Logan Moore
That's why no one gave a shit when Juvia "died". Because everyone and their dog knew that she was going to come back.
Carson Young
Seinen has similar qualms but seemingly takes more risk.
There are also Manga that are written Volume-by-Volume, I think.
Serial novels have similar problems I think.
Some great long-winded literary works were serial novels.
Adrian Walker
Happens in any long running media really, most of the longer TV shows aren't going to kill off fan favourite characters either.
Joseph Turner
Are there any examples of a death in a Seinen series that the author eventually or immediately went back on?
William White
Because most battle manga inherently have death as the ultimate consequence but don't really want the characters to be gone.
American comics kill and bring back characters all the time as well.
Julian Thompson
In a way this is related. Basically most Japanese believe that they will get resurrected anyways thus lack fear of death. So in a way I'm not surprised that 'death' gets downplayed even in their media. But there a lot other different reasons.
Jonathan Harris
>American comics kill and bring back characters all the time as well. Japanese manga have revolving door style death as well. What superman did to death in American comics, Goku did to japan.
Both regions don't commonly treat death as a finality just as badly as the other.
Connor Martinez
Americans do the same.
Nolan Nelson
I havent read Fairy Tail in years. Why the fuck does Juvia look so generic now?
Luke Barnes
Is that why suicide rates are so high over there?
Cameron Bennett
One of the most annoying things in One Piece is that every time "shit gets real" in an arc, by the end of it it turns out nobody was really dead. Not even faceless cannon fodder characters. The only characters not dead from a flashback were Ace and Whitebeard
Matthew Wood
I don't know why you would expect any different from Fairy Tail, a manga that routinely squanders any potential it tries to build.
Aiden Thompson
I'll never know why people compare Shokugeki to this shit, it actually runs with the ideas it has instead of resetting every arc
Alexander Smith
This used to piss me off about One Piece, and in a handful of cases it still does, but I actually like how the idea is crushing a person down, punishing them, to give them another chance. Only a few will die and when they do it's major.
That's why shit like YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I'M THINKING OF seems retarded, because there's no good reason the person SHOULDN'T die.
At any rate, I mostly don't get it with most series.
Daniel Peterson
Dragon Ball especially has been guilty of giving its characters too many get-out-of-jail-free cards in regards to death. The ending of the Namek arc would have been so much better without that bullshit about >lel dont worry guise we have an even better wish-granting dragon than yours and he can being ppl back from the dead as many times as you want XD It completely trivialised the deaths of Vegeta and Krillin and turned the paradigm of death itself into little more than an inconvenience that no one has to really be scared of anymore.
Andrew Brown
Magi was horrible with the death baiting in the previous arc.