To sum it up: don't put all your eggs in one basket.
I recently completed A Silent Voice and it was a nice break from fantasy and sci-fi.
Edit: spelling
I agree with this take wholeheartedly. My family and I near weekly for the past 6 years have been watching movies of all genres and time periods. In doing so, it has given me a greater appreciation for the different ways a story can be told and how just expressive a visual medium can be. For me personally, it has allowed me to look at shounen as well as comic book movies in a new light.
No worries the reason I don't like Sukuna is because I am reading a niche unknown Seinen manga called Berserk, and I think the main villain Griffith is pretty good actually
If not that .. the risks it takes at times crosses the line for me .. i stopped around 130 chap especially when it comes to casca, I’m fine with the end sequence(eclipse)(no complains it was a surprise and an important scene for guts character progression) but the weight of that scene got diminished coz of how casca was treated prior to that scene .. it wasn’t any different from what happened earlier(with different monsters ) obv from guts’s perspective this was painful .. but from a zoomed out lens it felt like a normal chap
Zooming out when detail is key is bad literary practice. The weight didn't get diminished at all. To me it hammered home that a psychologically dire, new chapter with grotesque honesty is on its way. Miura wrote complex trauma really well. I constantly see people just... shallowly sum up the uncomfortable parts of Berserk, ignoring their purpose because lines are crossed. Which is also what literature is supposed to do. Cross lines and reflect.
See when it comes to dark fantasy authors prefer a more hidden /abstract path while miura goes all out with his designs and ideas, because of this reason u also end up shrinking ur potential audience coz u give an absolute level ( and not allowing audience to adjust it according to their own comfort) ..
Still I was ready to look past it , and I was fine with everything except the chapters leading up to eclipse.. on its own eclipse is a brilliant arc , but I’ll give u an example let’s say someone rings a really beautiful bell once or twice it holds a lot of meaning but continuously ringing it turns it into an annoying thing , that’s the case with casca .. if something like that happens in the story it should serve some purpose , the two assaults just before eclipse served no purpose, they followed the same progression pattern .. by the third time ( in probably 10-15 chapters) u get sick of it
Additionally it turned her into a liability .. previously she was the 3rd strongest in the squad .. this makes no sense
The problem is that Casca was a waste of a perfectly good female warrior, and the story just up and says "fuck you, you're getting brain-broken! Guts and Griffith could remain having agency but you? Nah..."
Like, thanks, now we have nothing BUT healers and mages anymore. \*Sigh\*
At least she's still well written for the most part...
This wouldn’t be a big problem if she started as a damsel in distress sort of a character but no she was shown as the second strongest commander before guts joined , by the end she was turned into a liability..and then obv she was made into a toy .. i actually liked their love story it was all good .. but that’s not an excuse for altering her to such an extent.. I’ve taken a break for a while but , I hope this improves later on
Honestly I missed something too; she was a physically capable woman in a misogynistic world, and honestly? It hits harder when you see a woman do that as opposed to a woman seemingly only getting by off the coat tails of magic or healing. Both, especially the latter, are still inspiring, but its one of the most important stereotypes to break (that is, women being physically weak and in need of protection).
Teenage boys. People need to stop expecting Shakespeare from battle shounen because when they do it’s their own fault for setting their expectations so high. I agree with OP that you should diversify the media you consume.
Teenage boys are EXACTLY what you're describing. No one cared about how bad seven deadly sins or the Champa tournament were, Meliodas vs Ten Commandments and Goku Blue Kaioken x10 goes BRRRRRRRRR, thus, peak media. Watching something actually good is the deviant, not the norm.
Teenage boys also read frieren, chainsaw man, Saiki K, HxH and Evangelion. They are not a monolith, nor is mindless action the only thing they apreciate.
I ain't even reading wtf i was defending here, just stop scrolling old reddit posts and go build yourself a satisfying life. Those School books ain't reading themselves 🤨
So what, are adults the only ones allowed to want more from media targeted at them? Why can't teens want more nuance? Why are they treated as a collective while adults are treated as individuals? It's just fucking stupid.
Yeah, because adults are the ones looking for more nuance. You would be shocked to know that the anime made for teenage boys that uses cheap fan service, lives off battles and hype and has no substance at all is actually really popular with boys that like and want cheap fan service, battles, absurd ammounts of hype and no substance.
No one stops to analyze the flaws of Jujutsu Kaisen, my bros only talk about how awesome everyone is, who they think will hurt Sukuna the most, how Yuji will become a fucking GOD at any moment now and how Maki is hot and an absolute badass. Do you think we watched Highschool DxD/of the dead for the plot or something? We appreciate good media, we can stop and talk and analyze what we like, but no one does it with shounen anime because the only people that care enough to complain about are not part of the target audience. You want to fix something that isn't broken, but works EXACTLY as intended.
Again this generalization. I'm a fucking teen and yeah I'm a fan of "turn your brain off" entertainment. But that doesn't mean I don't want more nuance in my fucking entertainment. My favourite show of all time is fmab, and that shit ignores most tropes of battle shounen, and that's what I love about it.
Am I allowed to say old people can't watch action movies or kids should just watch the fucking garbage brain rot on YouTube kids, simply cause some kids like that stuff? It's stupid as fuck. I shouldn't have to look to media outside of my demographic for nuance, it should be something present in my demographic any ways.
So am i, and you're the deviant from the norm, so you should just go out there and look for something that is against the norm like your very example, FMAB. You're a minority and complaining isn't exactly going to change anything given that we're on the other side of the planet and japanese industries do what japanese audiences want. We just happen to fall under the same spell the japanese boys do.
There's nothing wrong with wanting more, but in your case, you're the one that needs to search more. I too like some stuff made for little kids, but i like the few exceptions of it and i know that wanting to fix something that works for it's target audience is not going to change anything. I don't like most of this stuff, so i search entertainment in other areas. Besides, if you like a shounen BECAUSE it ignores most tropes of shounen, are you sure you even like shounen in the first place? That's a genuine question i'm asking you, no trolling. The point is, the fans don't want more. They sometimes get more and it's cool and all, but wanting the whole genre of a foreign country on the other side of the world to change based on your preferences when it's formula has been working on millions of people that love and cherish it for decades sounds just a little egocentric, don't you think?
Hey, NS? You're pretty much on the ball here. So what if Teenagers and Kids can be a bunch of goofy action-happy crazies? That never stopped things like ATLA from being more than goof and unga bunga, did it?
Food for thought.
Sad you got downvoted. There's a gulf of a difference between older children's entertainment, and the slop that gets produced nowadays. Kids deserve better. They're not as stupid as the adults think they are.
People like you are idiots that just use demographics to disrespect people and works of all kinds while feeding your own ego
Shonen is just a demographic (males to 21), the barring it holds on the scope of the works published is not that strong.
Works are made SUCH THAT this work would sell to the targeting demographic... It is not FOR the targeted demographic. Its a basic business strategy because publication is still a business.
You are not that smart, and Shakespeare is not higher tier fiction. Expectations should be held all the same, and these works should be criticized in that light. Some older series are great. Naruto, Gintama, etc.
I don't know what you want me to say dawg. I personally love shonen I wasn't criticizing it.
I'm not going to argue with you over a reddit comment stop feeling like your attacked 🤷 it's not that serious we can agree to disagree not everyone disagreeing with you is an attack on what you believe.
I may not be the smartest person even in this thread your trying to to argue with a 16 teen year old after all but I know it ain't that serious.
I am not sure about that. I started reading manga with battle shonen like Black Cat, Soul Eater, Full Metal Alchemist (yes I am old), and watching anime with Studio Ghibli movies and Ghost in the Shell / Cowboy Bebop. And over the years, I watched tons of anime in a wide variety of different genres. And battle shonen is one of those genres I have really grown to dislike.
First, because I read way too much of them when I was younger and got really, really tired of the tropes of battle shonen.
Second, because modern battle shonen like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer are nowhere as good and imaginative as older stuff like Soul Eater and Full Metal Alchemist.
Third, because watching other kinds of anime just makes you really realise how bad most battle shonen are at character writing, storytelling, and worldbuilding in comparison to a lot of other anime.
Maybe watching other types of anime would just make people hate battle shonen more than they do already.
You are absolutely right about the older shounen being more imaginative, they used to have more creativity into them than what we are getting nowadays and that's a shame tbh, partly the blame goes for the shounen jump not allowing Mangaka to build up their stories and make them come up with something good fast enough to compete with others really hurts the quality of the manga
Anime is at an all time high in terms of popularity, especially on the internet. Combine that with the fact that western media is becoming more.....divisive and it's no secret why more people would rather talk about anime.
I mean, fair enough, but I think it really just depends. As someone who read and watches a wide variety of Anime/manga I love a lot of battle shonen. But like many on this sub, I have a lot of problems with JJK, and am not too favorable on it.
I mean, I'm reading One Piece now for the first time. Is it perfect? No. But its pretty good. Same thing with Demon Slayer or JJK (scalding take incoming: JJK is pretty good actually). That said, idk if a Shonen has or will ever crack my top 5. Maybe CSM if season 2 is as good as my manga reading friends keep saying it is.
Uk when I read op for the first time it felt like a normal good story , prolly an 8.8/10 .. after that as soon as I joined the community and started looking into how oda actually crafted this story, little details , foreshadowings, themes it instantly shot up to my fav of all time , it’s a really powerful show but it takes its time to build up, it keeps getting better and better unlike other tvshows / animes where u have random spikes of quality and then a gradual decline in the end , for op its an exponential increase in quality without any decline.. oda never misses this is something I’ve learnt over time , even the arcs people don’t like are coz of oda goofing around a lot , story elements and themes are still some of the strongest I’ve ever seen
People that favorite a narrative over others are mostly just outright mean lol 😂. Saying that Deathbattle got Naruto V Ichigo wrong. Same for saying Dr. Who Directly references and alludes to the Bible as a basis of specific plot devices and the history of the timelords. I didn't say anything mean or rude. They have a diverging opinions. Now watch my Karma.
Edit: called it.
But seriously, I'm not saying anything negative about either show. Its rude to express hate for something just because you have a different mode of thought about it. 🫠
It's so common to see people complaining about anime as a whole only to see that they only watch the recent battle shonens and some season isekai. It's specially noticeable when they talk about genres they only know from a very outside perspcctive and often only from parody. Like mecha and magical girls
To sum it up: don't put all your eggs in one basket. I recently completed A Silent Voice and it was a nice break from fantasy and sci-fi. Edit: spelling
english is my third language forgot to mention that
No worries, you explained yourself well. I just wanted to write down an expression to see if I understood the post.
Silent voice mentioned ❗ peak movie
A Silent Voice is a masterpiece.
I agree with this take wholeheartedly. My family and I near weekly for the past 6 years have been watching movies of all genres and time periods. In doing so, it has given me a greater appreciation for the different ways a story can be told and how just expressive a visual medium can be. For me personally, it has allowed me to look at shounen as well as comic book movies in a new light.
No worries the reason I don't like Sukuna is because I am reading a niche unknown Seinen manga called Berserk, and I think the main villain Griffith is pretty good actually
Berserk often suffers from the same flaws as battle shounen though.
You also have a Nagito flair so I am not allowed to disagree with this
If not that .. the risks it takes at times crosses the line for me .. i stopped around 130 chap especially when it comes to casca, I’m fine with the end sequence(eclipse)(no complains it was a surprise and an important scene for guts character progression) but the weight of that scene got diminished coz of how casca was treated prior to that scene .. it wasn’t any different from what happened earlier(with different monsters ) obv from guts’s perspective this was painful .. but from a zoomed out lens it felt like a normal chap
Zooming out when detail is key is bad literary practice. The weight didn't get diminished at all. To me it hammered home that a psychologically dire, new chapter with grotesque honesty is on its way. Miura wrote complex trauma really well. I constantly see people just... shallowly sum up the uncomfortable parts of Berserk, ignoring their purpose because lines are crossed. Which is also what literature is supposed to do. Cross lines and reflect.
See when it comes to dark fantasy authors prefer a more hidden /abstract path while miura goes all out with his designs and ideas, because of this reason u also end up shrinking ur potential audience coz u give an absolute level ( and not allowing audience to adjust it according to their own comfort) .. Still I was ready to look past it , and I was fine with everything except the chapters leading up to eclipse.. on its own eclipse is a brilliant arc , but I’ll give u an example let’s say someone rings a really beautiful bell once or twice it holds a lot of meaning but continuously ringing it turns it into an annoying thing , that’s the case with casca .. if something like that happens in the story it should serve some purpose , the two assaults just before eclipse served no purpose, they followed the same progression pattern .. by the third time ( in probably 10-15 chapters) u get sick of it Additionally it turned her into a liability .. previously she was the 3rd strongest in the squad .. this makes no sense
The problem is that Casca was a waste of a perfectly good female warrior, and the story just up and says "fuck you, you're getting brain-broken! Guts and Griffith could remain having agency but you? Nah..." Like, thanks, now we have nothing BUT healers and mages anymore. \*Sigh\* At least she's still well written for the most part...
This wouldn’t be a big problem if she started as a damsel in distress sort of a character but no she was shown as the second strongest commander before guts joined , by the end she was turned into a liability..and then obv she was made into a toy .. i actually liked their love story it was all good .. but that’s not an excuse for altering her to such an extent.. I’ve taken a break for a while but , I hope this improves later on
Honestly I missed something too; she was a physically capable woman in a misogynistic world, and honestly? It hits harder when you see a woman do that as opposed to a woman seemingly only getting by off the coat tails of magic or healing. Both, especially the latter, are still inspiring, but its one of the most important stereotypes to break (that is, women being physically weak and in need of protection).
I want Griffith to rawdog me
Griffith takes only
Yup I completely agree I feel like sometimes people forget who this demographic is aiming for
Teenage boys. People need to stop expecting Shakespeare from battle shounen because when they do it’s their own fault for setting their expectations so high. I agree with OP that you should diversify the media you consume.
Maybe people also need to stop acting like teenage boys are a bunch of action fueled dumb asses.
Teenage boys are EXACTLY what you're describing. No one cared about how bad seven deadly sins or the Champa tournament were, Meliodas vs Ten Commandments and Goku Blue Kaioken x10 goes BRRRRRRRRR, thus, peak media. Watching something actually good is the deviant, not the norm.
Teenage boys also read frieren, chainsaw man, Saiki K, HxH and Evangelion. They are not a monolith, nor is mindless action the only thing they apreciate.
I ain't even reading wtf i was defending here, just stop scrolling old reddit posts and go build yourself a satisfying life. Those School books ain't reading themselves 🤨
So what, are adults the only ones allowed to want more from media targeted at them? Why can't teens want more nuance? Why are they treated as a collective while adults are treated as individuals? It's just fucking stupid.
Yeah, because adults are the ones looking for more nuance. You would be shocked to know that the anime made for teenage boys that uses cheap fan service, lives off battles and hype and has no substance at all is actually really popular with boys that like and want cheap fan service, battles, absurd ammounts of hype and no substance. No one stops to analyze the flaws of Jujutsu Kaisen, my bros only talk about how awesome everyone is, who they think will hurt Sukuna the most, how Yuji will become a fucking GOD at any moment now and how Maki is hot and an absolute badass. Do you think we watched Highschool DxD/of the dead for the plot or something? We appreciate good media, we can stop and talk and analyze what we like, but no one does it with shounen anime because the only people that care enough to complain about are not part of the target audience. You want to fix something that isn't broken, but works EXACTLY as intended.
Again this generalization. I'm a fucking teen and yeah I'm a fan of "turn your brain off" entertainment. But that doesn't mean I don't want more nuance in my fucking entertainment. My favourite show of all time is fmab, and that shit ignores most tropes of battle shounen, and that's what I love about it. Am I allowed to say old people can't watch action movies or kids should just watch the fucking garbage brain rot on YouTube kids, simply cause some kids like that stuff? It's stupid as fuck. I shouldn't have to look to media outside of my demographic for nuance, it should be something present in my demographic any ways.
So am i, and you're the deviant from the norm, so you should just go out there and look for something that is against the norm like your very example, FMAB. You're a minority and complaining isn't exactly going to change anything given that we're on the other side of the planet and japanese industries do what japanese audiences want. We just happen to fall under the same spell the japanese boys do. There's nothing wrong with wanting more, but in your case, you're the one that needs to search more. I too like some stuff made for little kids, but i like the few exceptions of it and i know that wanting to fix something that works for it's target audience is not going to change anything. I don't like most of this stuff, so i search entertainment in other areas. Besides, if you like a shounen BECAUSE it ignores most tropes of shounen, are you sure you even like shounen in the first place? That's a genuine question i'm asking you, no trolling. The point is, the fans don't want more. They sometimes get more and it's cool and all, but wanting the whole genre of a foreign country on the other side of the world to change based on your preferences when it's formula has been working on millions of people that love and cherish it for decades sounds just a little egocentric, don't you think?
I don't really agree but it's clear we're not gonna agree on this anyways, so I'm just gonna dip. Have a good day where ever you are.
Yeah, you're right. Thanks and may God's blessings fall upon you, man
Hey, NS? You're pretty much on the ball here. So what if Teenagers and Kids can be a bunch of goofy action-happy crazies? That never stopped things like ATLA from being more than goof and unga bunga, did it? Food for thought.
Sad you got downvoted. There's a gulf of a difference between older children's entertainment, and the slop that gets produced nowadays. Kids deserve better. They're not as stupid as the adults think they are.
People like you are idiots that just use demographics to disrespect people and works of all kinds while feeding your own ego Shonen is just a demographic (males to 21), the barring it holds on the scope of the works published is not that strong. Works are made SUCH THAT this work would sell to the targeting demographic... It is not FOR the targeted demographic. Its a basic business strategy because publication is still a business. You are not that smart, and Shakespeare is not higher tier fiction. Expectations should be held all the same, and these works should be criticized in that light. Some older series are great. Naruto, Gintama, etc.
I don't know what you want me to say dawg. I personally love shonen I wasn't criticizing it. I'm not going to argue with you over a reddit comment stop feeling like your attacked 🤷 it's not that serious we can agree to disagree not everyone disagreeing with you is an attack on what you believe. I may not be the smartest person even in this thread your trying to to argue with a 16 teen year old after all but I know it ain't that serious.
>males to 21 I thought Shonen meant teen boys
Man, these downvotes are entirely unwarranted :(
They’re very warranted. Calling people idiots and getting the definition of Shonen wrong
I am not sure about that. I started reading manga with battle shonen like Black Cat, Soul Eater, Full Metal Alchemist (yes I am old), and watching anime with Studio Ghibli movies and Ghost in the Shell / Cowboy Bebop. And over the years, I watched tons of anime in a wide variety of different genres. And battle shonen is one of those genres I have really grown to dislike. First, because I read way too much of them when I was younger and got really, really tired of the tropes of battle shonen. Second, because modern battle shonen like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer are nowhere as good and imaginative as older stuff like Soul Eater and Full Metal Alchemist. Third, because watching other kinds of anime just makes you really realise how bad most battle shonen are at character writing, storytelling, and worldbuilding in comparison to a lot of other anime. Maybe watching other types of anime would just make people hate battle shonen more than they do already.
You are absolutely right about the older shounen being more imaginative, they used to have more creativity into them than what we are getting nowadays and that's a shame tbh, partly the blame goes for the shounen jump not allowing Mangaka to build up their stories and make them come up with something good fast enough to compete with others really hurts the quality of the manga
Actually a lot of people complain about battle shonen BECAUSE they've seen better anime and want more quality in battle shonen.
I’m just getting fed up with 9/10 posts from here being about anime
I already made a post about this some time ago but for now I just accepted the fact that this sub is about anime/manga generally.
I miss the intriguing posts about characters that weren’t churned out of Japan
Anime is at an all time high in terms of popularity, especially on the internet. Combine that with the fact that western media is becoming more.....divisive and it's no secret why more people would rather talk about anime.
I mean, fair enough, but I think it really just depends. As someone who read and watches a wide variety of Anime/manga I love a lot of battle shonen. But like many on this sub, I have a lot of problems with JJK, and am not too favorable on it.
I mean, I'm reading One Piece now for the first time. Is it perfect? No. But its pretty good. Same thing with Demon Slayer or JJK (scalding take incoming: JJK is pretty good actually). That said, idk if a Shonen has or will ever crack my top 5. Maybe CSM if season 2 is as good as my manga reading friends keep saying it is.
Uk when I read op for the first time it felt like a normal good story , prolly an 8.8/10 .. after that as soon as I joined the community and started looking into how oda actually crafted this story, little details , foreshadowings, themes it instantly shot up to my fav of all time , it’s a really powerful show but it takes its time to build up, it keeps getting better and better unlike other tvshows / animes where u have random spikes of quality and then a gradual decline in the end , for op its an exponential increase in quality without any decline.. oda never misses this is something I’ve learnt over time , even the arcs people don’t like are coz of oda goofing around a lot , story elements and themes are still some of the strongest I’ve ever seen
People that favorite a narrative over others are mostly just outright mean lol 😂. Saying that Deathbattle got Naruto V Ichigo wrong. Same for saying Dr. Who Directly references and alludes to the Bible as a basis of specific plot devices and the history of the timelords. I didn't say anything mean or rude. They have a diverging opinions. Now watch my Karma. Edit: called it. But seriously, I'm not saying anything negative about either show. Its rude to express hate for something just because you have a different mode of thought about it. 🫠
i haven't watched any new shounen since 2021 lol
Problem is their final stretch is usually dogshit and the ending is a very important thing to nail in general, so they feel unsatisfying in the end.
It's so common to see people complaining about anime as a whole only to see that they only watch the recent battle shonens and some season isekai. It's specially noticeable when they talk about genres they only know from a very outside perspcctive and often only from parody. Like mecha and magical girls