Michsi wrote:Kunzait_83 wrote:*snip
While I might not be as familiar with Wuxia as you are, I think you are overestimating it's role when it comes to DB. Yes, it owes a lot of it's themes to this genre and it was based on the famous "Journey to the West", but Toriyama has been influenced by western media just as much. From a stylistic point of view, MHA is actually very much like DB, and while they do not share the same type of direction and differ in themes, the core shonen battle manga value, which is to be better/the best and strive for more power, is still there.
Also, the authors of most of those manga you mentioned, One Piece, Naruto, FMA, etc., they all have cited DB as a major influence, so it's absolutely fine to turn to them to during times of DB drought. I don't think comparing them to DB is a mistake. They're different enough to not feel like DB, but have enough of DB like charm to be enjoyed. I recommend FMA Brotherhood wholeheartedly btw.
Of course Toriyama borrowed a lot from Western media. I never denied that, and that's certainly inarguable. But the elements taken from Western media (The Terminator, Cinderella, etc.) are for the most part largely more smaller, surface level details. The Boo arc having a Cinderella-themed naming scheme, various character designs borrowed from a bunch of Hollywood movies, and a couple of plot beats for the Cell arc taken from the first Terminator movie, etc. are all of a MUCH smaller scale compared to the role that martial arts fantasy fiction plays in the very foundation of the series: Wuxia's influence eats up the root-most core and guts of the ENTIRE story, driving everything from the nature of the Dragon World itself, the characters' motivations and ideals for fighting, the manner in which the fights play out, the elaborate and insane training methods, the fundamental nature and dynamics of the master/student relationships and fighters' rivalries, etc.
Dragon Ball takes from a smorgasbord of disparate and eclectic influences largely because Toriyama is a very eclectic kinda guy with a whole
lot of different media interests. But when looked at in its totality, its VERY hard to argue that martial arts media as a whole, Wuxia in particular, isn't the overarchingly biggest elephant in the room out of all the other (no doubt still prominent) influences present. Virtually every single story arc is some variation on a Wuxia plotline, more than 90% of the principal characters are classic or contemporary Wuxia archetypes, all of the fighting itself, the fighting techniques, the training, the supernatural concepts and mythology in and of themselves, and the reasons motivating the fighting are virtually
across the board taken from Wuxia media of some sort.
Yes, OF COURSE there's heaptons of other stuff in there as well, and ALL of it taken together is important to making DB what it is: but almost all of the other elements tend to very often be secondary to the root core martial arts fantasy heart that's beating underneath it all. The Freeza arc for example has heavy Space Opera elements to it: that doesn't therefore make DB a Space Opera series.
The core meat of the Freeza arc's story is still a Wuxia story: martial artists recovering mystical artifacts from the clutches of an oppressive imperial tyrant modeled after the Dongfang Bubai-esque villain mold (androgynous, albino-colored, effete, aristocratic, faux-polite, cruel and sadistic, abuses their army of warrior underlings as sacrificial pawns despite possessing MASSIVE power themselves, uses piercing/impaling Chi techniques and finger-poking hand to hand strikes, etc.) with one or several of the main heroes also harboring a personal honor-motivated reason for vengeance upon said-villain. The Space Opera trappings are WINDOW DRESSING that jazzes the whole thing up and lends it a unique flavor: but its ultimately just window dressing that's spicing up an otherwise fairly bog-standard type of Wuxia story that's been done numerous times. Take the Wuxia formula, but throw it "In spaaaaaaaaace!" and add aliens.
Its a gumbo stew of disparate elements taken from all over the place, but most of those elements revolve and orbit around a central core that is almost overwhelmingly dominated by a martial arts fantasy identity.
And as far as "Shonen Battle Manga" goes, I've long argued that that is a completely and utterly made up, non-existent genre. Most examples of "Shonen Battle Manga" tend to either be just straight up Wuxia manga themselves (Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, etc.) or manga that are copying vague beats and themes from Dragon Ball without any of the underlying context or understanding for WHY they were in DB and why they worked there (virtually everything from Naruto to One Piece to FMA, etc). Off the top of my head, Saint Seiya and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are two of the RARE examples of Shonen series that fit the "Battle Shonen" conventions without being either Wuxia/martial arts series or DB derivatives. And two random examples do not a "genre" make.
"Being the best/striving for more power" is NOT a "Shonen Battle Manga" theme: that is, and always has been a general martial arts fiction theme, including Wuxia, going back THOUSANDS of years ago into incredibly ancient myths and stories. Dragon Ball took from those stories and themes and ran with them to tremendous success; and other Japanese Shonen manga soon followed trying to ape it. That DOESN'T make it a "genre staple" for a genre that doesn't actually exist. That makes it a genre staple for a genre who's existence predates ALL of these examples by countless
centuries, and that other works had ripped off - context-free - from one specific contemporary example that was wildly successful.
All of those Shonen manga HAVE clear-cut genres that they follow: Naruto is a ninja fantasy series (which is indeed its own distinct genre from Wuxia with its own distinct history, with only some VERY tangential cultural crossover connections), One Piece is a high seas pirate adventure series, etc. These series ALL follow their genre conventions more or less to the letter, and the elements they borrow from DB (training, growing stronger, cultivating friendly and bitter rivalries with other training students from other schools or orthodoxies, etc.) are almost ALL across the board general martial arts and Wuxia themes that DB used because its a Wuxia series and that these other Shonen series are lifting from purely because DB used it, regardless of how ill-fitting they happen to be within the context of the genres that they happen to be working within.
"Battle Shonen" took off as a meme primarily due to the HUGE proliferation of Shonen series following DB that tried desperately to "follow in its footsteps" by taking piecemeal, disjointed elements from it and stapling them awkwardly and haphazardly into totally unrelated types of stories... combined with a latter-day fanbase that is so thoroughly unfamilliar with martial arts fiction of any sort outside of DB and a small handful of other examples that it doesn't recognize where these things ACTUALLY came from originally, and thus chalk it up to "this must just be a Shonen thing". It isn't: its usually either a Wuxia/martial arts fiction thing, or a DB ripoff thing.
If Battle Shonen boils down to anything resembling an actual, tangible genre, then all it ultimately amounts to is simply... general action/adventure stories made for Japanese little boys. That's an INCREDIBLY broad template that does NOT at all adhere to a set of "core themes" and "tropes" unto itself. Again, that's like saying that Transformers, Batman, Dexter's Laboratory, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are all in the same genre together just because they're cartoons for small little kids.
Most of what fandom for the last 15 or so years has been describing as "Battle Shonen" is a hodgepodge of disparate motifs drawn from a VERY general array of Japanese little kid action franchises, many if not most of them ripped off flagrantly from Dragon Ball. Which in turn, took many if not most of them from general martial arts fiction and Wuxia fantasy. That isn't a "genre": that's a vast collection of fanboys projecting and filling in the gaps of their ignorance with confirmation bias culled from an EXCEEDINGLY limited pool of Japanese comics and cartoons and without a whole lot of experience with the kinds of root martial arts fiction source material that directly spawned something like Dragon Ball.
So no, MHA is almost NOTHING like DB in terms of genre. Any similarities they share generally boils down to the fact that they're both Japanese action serials aimed at grade school boys, and DB in particular happening to be such a MASSIVELY influential series upon nearly all other Japanese little boy action serials that followed in its wake, regardless of their actual respective genres. That isn't a shared genre: that's a shared culture and industry. Not even remotely the same thing, no more than stuff like G.I. Joe and Ben 10 somehow being seen as sharing the same space genre-wise.
But yeah... anyways. Stuff to check out without new DB coming out should DEFINITELY include exploring the rest of the Wuxia genre. There's a LOT of it, to a virtually bottomless degree, and its more than enough to keep one busy and engaged with stuff that's VERY much in the same exact vein as DB for about several lifetimes or so.
