Shonen Anime's Biggest Problem

I'm a huge fan of Shonen Anime, but it has its issues. Let's talk about one of them.

[wophful]

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.

[golorfindel]

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).

[slat]

Sad Past
Bullied
Weak
Stupid
Unknown Parents
OP Sensei

Shounen MC Starter Pack

[BestgirlJordanfish]

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

[cardboardtenshi]

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.

[cvox]

dragon ball : first wave
naruto, one piece, bleach : second wave
bnha : third wave
.
.
gintama : troll wave

[hayane]

HxH only problem is hiatusxhiatus anything then that is good

[alexbenavidez]

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

[matheusvasiliauskassoares]

Jojo too weird to fit in the list
Quite BIZARRE right?

[LILFOC]

Gintama deserves mentions for how it adheres, plays with, parodies, subverts and down right trolls with these tropes

[vsprodctions]

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

[Crazelord]

I think Cory in the House handled it best. The Battle for the White House arc in particular.

[PazuChill]

I will forever mourn Naruto's wasted potential.

[NeonNokt]

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.

[Runawayturist]

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.

[endritguri]

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.

SAKURA ACTUALLY USEFUL!

[justkallmekai]

Yes, please. Make the content you want to make, this is good.

[fgregerfeaxcwfeffece]

Introduction of Dio: An experiment on how much an audience can hate one character.

[LatteDragon]

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.

[ocek]

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.