Why is the tournament arc such a common arc in shonen? Is it a cultural thing? Or is it something else?

Why is the tournament arc such a common arc in shonen? Is it a cultural thing? Or is it something else?
Is it that shonen authors are fucking hacks?

>he hates tournament arcs
why

A showcase of skills learnt and an opportunity to do some worldbuilding. It's hype as fuck too. How can you not like it?

Because it's an easy excuse to get people to fight and show off powers.

Good excuse to introduce a lot of new characters and make them fight.

I'd argue it's a sign of poor pacing if you need to introduce a lot of side characters at once. Same with the fighting aspect really, since if you are worried about the series not having enough fights it's a better idea to switch the narrative to other character or group than to recycle tropes.

It's a an easy way set up fights, especially if it's between friends, and introduce a large amount of characters.

Plus the author can have characters who normally wouldn't fight each other and he can have good guys fight bad guys without killing each other. Basically it allows him to write "who would win threads" in universe but he still doesn't have to commit to anything because "they were holding back in the tournament lol".

Everyone saying that it's for reasons related to storytelling is both wrong and naive.

It's because tournaments are cheap to animate. Production gets to reuse the same simple backgrounds over and over again for a long string of episodes while also giving them an excuse to have an announcer spend half of each episode narrating whatever just happened while the characters just stand there and stare at each other.

You're a fucking idiot, when authors wrote tournament arcs, they didn't even know if they were gonna get an anime.

because in shows where competition is the driving plot device it only makes sense to boil it down to the simplest form so you can focus on showing off characters and powers rather than a contrived plot replete with arbitrary excuses for people to fight one another. Honestly I have more problems with the "heroes raid the villain base, allies say 'go on ahead I'll handle this' one by one until the protagonist faces down the antagonist alone" formula than with tournaments.

Because one of the highlights of martial arts IRL are tournaments.

Same applies to sports manga/anime, imagine those without tournaments?

>kids complain about tenkaichi budokai parts now

You niggers need to tone down the contrarianism and the edge.

I don't think One Piece's author is capable of creating any different scenario than that. It's been repeated so many times in every arc

Who are you quoting?

Why are you asking that instead of why the MCs go through the weakest enemies first.

One Piece literally just had a massive two-year long tournament arc.

Goku never had to fight Yamcha on tournaments, did he?

The dislike for tournaments is something I don't share, not a bit.

That's because yamcha is there to lose to show how powerful the next guy is.

Tradition in manga. Mainly because its a plot device that generates builds up tension, has character growth, character introduction, story plot, etc.

Its a pre-made ready for use scenario where lots of useful things in action manga could be done at the same time.

Animating fights however is way more expensive than anything so using your own logic here.

One Piece had many actual settings for fights you know.
The boat and that fucking hill were great. They used the environment in their writing.

I actually really like the recent NnT tournament.

> big 16 team/4 round/15 match setup with 2-on-2 teams
> two decent one-chapter fights
> one great two-chapter fight
> fourth fight seems like shit until suddenly the entire tournament gets fucked, and shit only escalates from there

everyone was thinking it's be impossible for the middle arc to end around chapter 200, but it seems pretty likely now frankly.

They haven't had an actual non asspull fight after episode 5. So you liking that is really a telltale

the only thing asspull in the 2nd tournament (including the aftermath) was escanor's midnight sunshine.
everything else was built up to.

...

That reminded me of that time when Kishimoto was forced by his editor to do a tournament arc, then he was again forced to have a villain interrupt it when he finally started liking the idea.

A lot of modern shounen dont have tournament arcs though. I dont think its just some "japan" thing or a for some technical reason like saving time on making backgrounds or something like that.

Rather its Dragon Ball & Co that just made authors go OF COURSE SHOUNEN NEED A TOURNEY ARC! But now that the reign of these old shounen are ending, we only have a comparatively small amount of tourney arcs, except of course spots series. But there tourneys are an integral part of the "sports":

I love tournament arcs. They're actually pretty rare outside of sports manga these days. My Hero Academia and NnT being the most recent ones

Tournament arcs are a really easy way to a)introduce a lot of new and old characters, b)have a lot of fights and c)introduce new techniques, ie, the three things that most battle shounen are for. The problem with tournaments though is that the anime versions of them tend to take forever and sometimes even in the manga itself, they can be paced very poorly (Hi Battle Angel Alita: Last Order), but they can be loads of fun

There is very rarely a manga with a tournament arc and there wasn't some really memorable or well-known moment in it even in the bad manga. Pic related, my favorite fight in Negima

Because you don't have to think of a plot during that time.

It's a stalling tactic. Tournament arcs can be dragged out for ages with little to no plot advancement or character development.

They're also popular, though I personally have gotten a deep distaste for them. Usually a big warning sign when they show up.

It's an easy way to introduce a bunch of characters at once and give people other than the MC time to shine.

Since the stakes don't need to be high, you can actually afford to have your MC lose, thus giving fights more tension.

It's fun.

it's a way for a mangaka to get paid to experiment with character design by throwing a lot of shit against a wall and seeing what sticks.

> and stall the plot for future plot planning