What is it about shonen anime that you hate the most?
What tropes, cliches or what ever you would like to call them just ruin the experience for you? Edginess? Wacky humor? Bad pacing? The power of friendship?
Think of them.
Got it?
If you had to make a shonen, what would you do to put a twist on those annoying cliches that would set it apart from other shonen?
Alternatively, what cliches would you keep that you like?
End it after 25 episodes
Less powerleveling, make it more ability-based so you can keep enemies always a threat.
More cute girls, especially the ones that can fight and have cute bushy eyebrows
Protagonist is older, competent, likes women, and doesn't have super strength/speed as his main power
Over explaining obvious bs. That shit was insufferable in Kuroko.
Nakama power, i can't stand it
I'm a sucker for beast modes and monstruous transformations, as edgy that may sound
Bu..but muh nakamas.
>MC wants to be the storongest ever
>is dumb and loud and eats a lot
Particularly dislike the latter, it's blatant appealing to the lowest common denominator.
I said nakama power, not nakamas, big difference
The only thing that really bothers me with Shonen is missed potential. Usually this just manifests as over adherence to cliché which is just boring, but sometimes something unique manages to completely undermine itself so strongly (infamously DBZ, more recently SamFlam and 7 Deadly Sins) that it actually angers me.
For this reason I find shonen with a healthy dose of self awareness and narrative honesty to be the best, ONE's works being standout examples
Jojo is particularly guilty of the characters narrating out loud what we can already see. Maybe it saves panels in the manga, but the anime could do without most of that shit.
When people within the series watching a fight dick ride the fighters and do background commentary on every single action, saying shit like "wow only the most powerful can pull off the triple dive chakra mana energy giga breaker". Anime in general suffers from a lot of telling and not just showing and it makes fights boring and disjointed. HxH got a bit weird in the Chimera ant arc when the narrator would cut off the fight every 15 seconds to tell an entire story about how skilled the fighters are being
This is a bad habit of Araki's that he was already aware of back in Phantom Blood, but by the time you get to Battle Tendency the narration becomes almost necessary, doubly so in Stardust Crusaders.
At least that's true in print, in the anime the narrator just felt fucking forced most of the time.
OP here
i honestly wondered what the fuck was happening in that arc
i think two episodes were 90% narrator talking and explaining shit and I just couldnt believe that was the direction they chose. it was like i was watching some alternate version of hxh
were they trying to be poetic? was it like that in the manga? i was totally bewildered
Same, but for some reason i don't have a problem when that happens in tournament arcs
>The power of friendship?
My only problem is that none of them do it in any meaningful, realistic manner. Heck, most of them just mean "MC wins because he has faith in his friends" instead of "MC's faith in his friends is tested". It doesn't actually mean anything.
However, the concept is very human and runs very deep, so series that do it genuinely are amazing.
>Edginess
Make it as aggressively anti-edgy as possible. People's parents are alive and appear on-camera regularly, conflicts are "stop this from happening" instead of "kill this person", no one has a dark backstory that justifies their assholery, series is focused more on MC & co. broing out than rarr powerlevels
>Supporting cast is useless/can't catch up
Cast remains roughly at the same power level throughout the majority of the series, MC must rely on teamwork and smart fighting to succeed.
>Battle commentators
See above, every member of the MC's party contributes to the fights whenever they happen.
>Dense MC
The MC has a crush who becomes his girlfriend midway through
>CHOSEN ONE/superpower lottery
Everyone who has a power has it by putting effort in specializing themselves into a single style so much they obtained their super-ability. Not even the MC gets a free pass.
In JoJo it's less Araki/the narrator sperging out (those are often interesting and informative, re: the spread about how Super Fly works), but rather the characters blabbing on about this or that (re: Everyone repeating like three times how Super Fly repels attacks)
I don't mean the narrator, but the characters themselves. For instance, Iggy vs Pet Shop:
>Pet Shop seals his wound with ice
>Iggy: "He froze the wound to stop the bleeding!"
Most fights are full of shit like that, saying out loud what we can already see.
What does Samurai Flamenco have to do with the other shows you mentioned? It sounds like you expected it to be an actual battle shounen or something, which is hilariously misguided.
When the bulk of the cast becomes irrelevant. This is really easy to fix. Just have every character contribute something as is the case in most Western superhero media. Taking it further, base success in battle off of strategy and on the clever use of unique abilities and techniques rather than on raw power.
>Anime in general
*Long-running shonen in general
It is the only part of the industry that needs to waste time, so it's the only part that pulls this.
>Heroes power is that he can punch really hard
>Villains power is that he can punch even harder
>Eventually hero has some epiphany or training arc to be able to punch even harder than the villain
>Villain is punched to death
>Introduce new villain that can punch 10 times harder than the last
>Repeat until sales die
I'm triggered that you use a HxH OP image here when it deconstructed shounen.
Shounen tend to suffer from needing to be milked. Ala Shounen Jump. They keep going and havenowhere to go
Personally, i'd like shounen if the author was able to take their time to work through and get a good story out. It's sort of why I liked FMA, the author knew what they wanted from the start, did their thing, then there was a definitive end
I call this the Kubo effect, you introduce too many mainstays without any character arcs or development and they just serve as fight filler
I used it more in relation to the fact that Im asking you what traits set a shonen above the rest
>deconstructed
Subverted, and even that isn't much. Also, shonen isn't a genre to be deconstructed.
What I dislike even more about DBZ than the cast becoming useless is that the guys who do get to fight aren't unique, they all pretty much have the same skillset since there's no practical difference between one ki blast and the other. It's all about the power level. Even the hand to hand fighting is pretty much the same for everyone.
>Personally, i'd like shounen if the author was able to take their time to work through and get a good story out
I hate it when the heroes don't kill villains. It's stupid. There needs to be more MCs willing to kill a bitch.
So... Post time skip one peice?
image cut off for some reason
1. Power of Friendship/Willpower saving the day: they do the yelling and the motions for the power-up but it doesn't actually happen. Instead they get their shit kicked in and learn (the ones that survive, anyway) to fight for real instead of relying on nebulous ideas like courage and being in a pinch bringing out the best in you.
2. Teenagers saving the world because they're special: nope. They have can more raw power if it's necessary to write a power fantasy, but they don't have the finesse and experience to win against adult masters. They must learn and train to actually be good at whatever the plot dictates they must do.
3. Girls are always love interests and/or jobbers: fuck that. At least one girl who is written to be strong and as competent as the guys should be shown that way. Without her being ultra masculine. Just a cute girl who doesn't job and can take care of her own shit.
The girls aren't cute, they have tiny waists and oversized titties
>I'm a sucker for beast modes and monstruous transformations, as edgy that may sound
Same here. Bijuus, titans, hollows, elder gods dwelling inside a middle schooler's body etc. I love them all.
I mean, one point off is pretty close, dude.
>Anime introduces a gang of villains
>doesn't get completely BTFO and replaced with a less chrismatic, more power group within the next arc
Swear the fucking god i'm going kill myself if Togashi doesn't finish this manga
Being 400 episodes long with over half of that being pure filler while still not finished when they could just tell the god damn story in 24 episodes like a normal show.
By the way, I have no idea what happens in Hunter X Hunter, but I saw my first episode of it this weekend on Adult Swim or whatever while I fell asleep in my hotel room and it looked kinda cool. Apparently the whole thing is some sort of Temen-ni-gru or Honnōji Academy where you fight your way up the floors for some reason. Looks kinda neat.
>they do the yelling and the motions for the power-up but it doesn't actually happen. Instead they get their shit kicked in and learn (the ones that survive, anyway) to fight for real instead of relying on nebulous ideas like courage and being in a pinch bringing out the best in you.
I think this happens in HxH with Gon's reaction to Kite getting killed. Attempts the yelling and powering up but Killua literally knocks some sense into him and they retreat. It fits your other two criteria too, plenty of strong female chars (despite a lack of them at the beginning) and the MCs are even sitting out the current arc.
Nakama power can sometimes work
One example is Soul Eater since there was actual in universe reason for why characters where stronger the more nakama power they had (specifically there soul where better in sinc and as a result amplified each other)
But then Soul Eater went to shit
tournaments
Nigga he said take their time, now waste their time.
I love how they all care deeply about each other and their home. I believe it was even stated that they do philanthropic work. Pretty much the best "villain squad" of all time
I love when the Mc loses their shit and simply wins a fight through sheer ANGER alone
i feel like the excessive narration was used to illustrate the scope of their mission. If certain circumstances or elements of the fight weren't made explicitly clear, there would be much confusion as to what might have been going on within the heads of the combatants themselves. Explaining at length what might be happening at any given moment is an effective way of presenting the mission in such a light that says "You REALLY can't fuck up here, so please think before you act". I believe that the narration was meant to reflect that, but it just ended up coming off as an obstruction to the action. Were HxH any less of a series, I would protest. But due to the nature of the show and its cut-dry power system, I think that it fits.
>typical shonen
>HxH
AHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Just read the manga. It's so much more than the premise implies.
I do like Hiatus x Hiatus. I'm excited for Leorio getting a chance to do stuff as soon as it comes back.
HxH is one of the best Shounen out there because its really dark.
Unlike most of them the "uncharacteristically kind and idealistic" MC is actually presented as a character flaw in Gon.
Killua was a straight up assassin and only really cared about Gon and their close friends.
God I miss that show so much. Its what shounen should be. The worst kind of shounen I think is DBZ.
I give Araki a small pass on this since Jojo's originally started as a fist of the north star parody
>it's a "shounen thread turns into a HxH circlejerk" episode
The manga had absurd levels of tension and there was a looming sense of dread throughout the whole arc because everything just happens without pause. Although the fights were cool, the anime didnt quite capture the same feeling due to the narration that basically reset all the built up tension each time
>muh "Thinking Man's Shounen"
Right, but in JoJos case a LOT of panels would make no sense in print without some kind of narrated context, especially with Araki's style.
That's fair, the increasingly complex and nuche Stand abilities do justify well-done explanations and breakdowns of their capabilities. Araki does often overkill it though
Sam Flam went to shit the second it cashed in it's decently grounded opening arcs for retarded over the top "parody" that had nothing to say about the material being parodied. I never expected it to be a battle shonen story, but I expected something more critically aware than "hurr remember power rangers guise"
Same shit different smell
How would you have ended this battle?
>"parody"
SamFlam was in no way a parody of anything.
That's an entirely valid argument. You just can't translate that kind of suspense to animation as easily. While the manga presented certain elements of the Chimera Ant arc as a psychological drama, the anime decided to make it an action drama with heavy focus on the intricacies of the battle itself, giving off a highly analytical feeling to the arc as a whole. I felt that what went unsaid and had to be picked up by the narrator did much to raise the stakes in the audiences' minds.
Hiso is kill.
Probably put in some bullshit backstory flashback to really drive it home that he was gonna be dead.
Oh right, I forgot the defining element of Tokusatsu is to take only the most retarded parts of the genre seriously, therefor Sam Flam must be the MOST DEEP TOKUSATSU SERIES EVER
It's still shit man
The fight itself could have been a few chapters shorter, but the ending was absolutely perfect. A creative usage of Hisoka's abilities and post-death Nen that gives him a clear character flaw and stakes in the upcoming arc. I can't wait to see where Togashi takes this.
>HxH spoonfreeds its audience the concept of moral neutrally arc after arc
>fans are convince its a cut about the rest
Kid/untrained mc beating a master unless they are talented as fuck or had some type of cheat..it's bullshit.
More and better training montages, base them on real world concepts and tie the training in with the story. I like that shit.
Less or little romance. Shit is awful. Stop it.
Power levels are good but make it so that power is not the end all be all and bring up skills and talents and consequences that routes that very thing.
Powerlevel will kill the shounen before it even gets off the ground.
But don't make it all keikkakku shit. That gets asspully as fuck and breaks it worse then just being a straight power vs power thing.
Simple explanations for abilities that are hammered home and show off the abilities, skills, power levels etc so that we can get a real understanding of what they mean.
There will be one designated explainer and one designated dumbass who is trying to learn. The people in the anime explaining shit to the audience thing will be kept to an absolute minimum.
Not set in or around a school
Not set in or around a large city or suburb.
The cast are not plot/shipping gay.
More adventure settings where it's actual adventure and they are out doing things.
No friendship powers. It can be shown as a way to help someone try harder or even change the minds of certain people at certain moments. But "heart of the cards/spirit bomb sword" type shit? Fuck that and fuck you.
You mean moral neutrality? And where was it spoonfed?
1. Nice strawman, retard.
2. I'm not even the guy you were arguing with, I just saw a retarded statement and called it out.
3. Not even that guy said anything about SamFlam being deep.
4. Not a battle shounen.
The same exact way for maximum butthurt
HxH avoids many of the pitfalls that tick people off in this thread. One of my favorite moments is when Morel calls Killula out on judging a nen user simply by the strength of their aura; he then spends every fight delivering on this, trouncing enemies who on paper possess more power than him with a clever application of his own. Different characters get more or less focus placed upon them depending on the arc, dodging the tendency towards marginalizing side characters in battle shonen; in Chimera Ant Gon was the MC but everyone involved, from Knuckle to Killua contributed, with Gon not even being the one to make the final kill. In York Shin the MC was Kurapika. None of the battles felt drawn out either.
>Not set in or around a school
School setting is fine if they actually do something with it, or just ignore it and leave it as a side activity of the characters due to their age. Mob Psycho 100 and MHA are good examples of the former, while JoJo DIU is a good example of the latter
I actually like asspull power-ups that have some basis like "he used to eat spicy ramen every morning, so now he punches you with fire punches". I guess I enjoyed it mostly from Bleach and Naruto.
Things I hate the most are characters dying and then not really dying and the villains becoming the good guys after the MC beats them. Absolutely sick of that.
Its pretty much implied throughout the series that Gon is a crazy son a bitch with skewed morality.
An example would be how he detests the concept of murder, yet he shows no animosity towards hardened killers like Hisoka or Killua. It's almost as if he permits such acts as long as he does not have to bear witness to the act itself. His code of ethics is a contradiction of itself.
If where strictly talking about anime, pacing and filler
But in general, the biggest sin for me a shonen can do is neglect there main character
Usually most bad shonen wind up with a MC as a robotic punching machine that gets forced into fight A, to fight B, to fight C, to cancellation
Just giving the guy some goddamn down time can help a little where he isn't forced to fight, train, be at the beck and call of the side characters, etc. and let him do what ever wants in his free time (might be able to even inject a smidge of personality in em)
>No Machi, Shizuku, or Pakunoda
>Korthopi is a cute trap
Why
That isn't spoonfeeding though
Make it clear that the Nen is manually keeping him alive. He only has a few hours at most to kill as many troupe members as possible to piss Chrollo off.
It is a primary character trait that Gon is just like a wild animal
Anything is fine as far as I'm concerned as long as it is
1. Properly foreshadowed. No asspulls.
2. Show and don't tell.
Otherwise do whatever.
Wasn't Gon supposed to be a subversion of characters like Son Goku who are "innocent animals"?
having been raised as one, thats not hard to believe. Him being the MC, it becomes one of the major themes in the series that moral codes are not uniform across a group of people that would normally consider themselves friends. This conflict of ideologies if highlighted near the mid-point of the Chimera Ant arc where Gon says those few words to Killua that completely crush his entire understanding of Gon as a person, causing Killua to change his entire perception of Him. "Maybe he isnt the young boy with a heart of gold I thought he was" Animals don't have actual psychological issues and the means to take action upon them.
Well YYH is still leaps and bounds better than HxH so I don't know what everyone is smoking
How much of it do you think is falseflagging/shitposting?
Those scenes when Gon just goes batshit insane for no reason? Morel's test? Razor's test? Neferpitou's request? These are all just examples of the audience being fed this information over and over again. The only reason people keep calling HxH a deconstruction of the shounen genre is because these plot elements are made unmistakably clear.
Up until it shat itself at the last moment.
Anyways I need to go back and give YYH a thorough read, is the anime any good or should I stick to the manga? I have no idea how good/bad early YYH was, manga-wise.
All of it.
Ridiculously drawn out fights.
Thematic transparency isn't spoonfeeding. Spoonfeeding is GEE WHILLIKERS SHINJI SURE HAS PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS STEMMING FROM PARENTAL NEGLECT THAT CONTRAST WITH HIS OWN FATE AS THE "FATHER" OF THE NEW POST-INSTRUMENTALITY WORLD, HUH MISATO
so this is a debate of personal definitions, then? well, shit.
Spoonfeeding is the repeated and explicit demonstration of similar or identical story chunks or thematic arguments. HxH demonstrates this definition perfectly.
Similar to this, I hate the cast saying unnatural things as a way to convey information to the reader. People don't greet old friends with lines like "Hey bro, we've been friends since we were kids! You know I'm always late!" or make observations like "Oh the school's Madonna is passing by. Everyone in the school loves her! She's elegant and has great grades and is nice to everyone. Gee I hope she notices me today!" Don't try to tell us. Fucking show us. You can draw these things, you don't have to have your characters spew plot and setting information. Shounen is the worst of this since it assumes young boys can't look at pictures and read and get the point if it isn't spelled out.
Spoonfeeding by defintion providing people with so much help or information that they do not need to think for themselves.
The entire scope of Gon's moral hypocrisy was explained by the narrator and Killua in the CA arc during the palace invasion before the audience could even form it's own conclusion.
...
>MC is still ridonk powerful (cause who isn't satisfyed when they beat the shit out of that annoying villain
>instead of having the love and adoration of everyone, he's greatly feared, even by his team mates
>someone that ridiculously strong and ruthless is goddamn terrifying
>no even cute waifus "think he's kinda cute", no, he's an overpowered sperglord that nobody really likes
>the villains are seen learning new powers and trying to get stronger, but still lose to this disgusting edgelord
>eventually hero gets his endgame, but figures that he was such a douche getting it that all he's really found is sadness/emptiness
>sad end
The amount of episodes. Like holy shit why is HxH over 100, why does Kenshin have 30 filler episodes, why does Naruto have over 80 filler eps before Shippuuden?
Niggas needs to fucking stop with the 18mins of talking and/or flashbacks while the actual fight is 3 mins long; it's not entertaining in the least bit.
Because the anime is produced concurrently with the manga and is in danger of running past the manga's story development depending on the anime team's and mangaka's independent scheduling, so Filler is created that gives the anime studio something unobtrusive to air while the mangaka continues to work on the next story segmeny.
Are you actually new to anime man?
If you're looking for shounen tropes to hate, HxH is definitely not the best place to look.
This.
>MC tells everybody to fuck off with their shit because he actually wants to live a normal life, or has something actually important to do.
If only this ever happened.
It happens a lot, actually. It's a common premise lately. And the MCs are usually whiny, dense cunts who say something like "I just want my every-day life back!" every other line. Meanwhile, everyone else cheerfully puts up with his shit as girls blush and practically offer to strip for him. They actually manage to be worse than hot-blooded idiot MCs.
Doesn't apply to hxh 2011 tho
>
Don't forget to mention that the MC isn't even in the current arc.
Friendship power is actually a legitimate one.
Only neckbeards and edgelord think that they are self-made people. If shonen does anything right, it's their colorful rosters of supporting and starring casts.
Asspull power-ups are certainly a no-no for me though. I love a good training montage, as it shows the hard work required to improve oneself. However when the character just whips something ridiculous on the spot, I just mentally tune out.
>implying that Gin isn't the new mc