How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

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ABED
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 1:45 pm

8000 Saiyan wrote:
ABED wrote:Streaming makes trying new stuff really easy. Apparently FMA:B is on Netflix. I MIGHT try that, but I wasn't a big fan of the original FMA. I am watching The Twilight Zone for the first time, and I finally got around to seeing The Godfather III. Even if I don't like some of these things, trying new stuff and expanding my horizons always gives me some pleasure.
Did you like it or hate it?
I didn't hate it, but didn't like it either. It's watchable, but it's plot is often hard to follow, and it's too long. Of course, Sofia Coppola is terrible and completely outclassed, which is the thing everyone brings up. I wouldn't put it in the same league as the first two.

To connect this to the topic, I'm still glad I watched it. Trying new things, even things out of my comfort zone like mobster movies, is good. There's joy to be found in watching stuff you love multiple times, I do think humans need to try new experiences. Even seemingly trivial things like new foods and movies. If all you do is watch the same things, it's not psychologically healthy.
The only thing the 'original' FMA and Brotherhood have in common is the first third of the series.
Well, I don't think I got through even 1/3 of FMA before calling it quits. If a show can't grab me in some respect by episode 3 or 4, I stop.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Sat Jan 20, 2018 1:57 pm

ABED wrote:
8000 Saiyan wrote:
ABED wrote:Streaming makes trying new stuff really easy. Apparently FMA:B is on Netflix. I MIGHT try that, but I wasn't a big fan of the original FMA. I am watching The Twilight Zone for the first time, and I finally got around to seeing The Godfather III. Even if I don't like some of these things, trying new stuff and expanding my horizons always gives me some pleasure.
Did you like it or hate it?
I didn't hate it, but didn't like it either. It's watchable, but it's plot is often hard to follow, and it's too long. Of course, Sofia Coppola is terrible and completely outclassed, which is the thing everyone brings up. I wouldn't put it in the same league as the first two.

To connect this to the topic, I'm still glad I watched it. Trying new things, even things out of my comfort zone like mobster movies, is good. There's joy to be found in watching stuff you love multiple times, I do think humans need to try new experiences. Even seemingly trivial things like new foods and movies. If all you do is watch the same things, it's not psychologically healthy.
The only thing the 'original' FMA and Brotherhood have in common is the first third of the series.
Well, I don't think I got through even 1/3 of FMA before calling it quits. If a show can't grab me in some respect by episode 3 or 4, I stop.
I'd recommend watching Goodfellas, The Departed, Angels With Dirty Faces and White Heat.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:00 pm

Saw the first two. Never even heard of the last two.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:03 pm

ABED wrote:Saw the first two. Never even heard of the last two.
They're from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Michsi » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:10 pm

ABED wrote:
8000 Saiyan wrote:
ABED wrote:Streaming makes trying new stuff really easy. Apparently FMA:B is on Netflix. I MIGHT try that, but I wasn't a big fan of the original FMA. I am watching The Twilight Zone for the first time, and I finally got around to seeing The Godfather III. Even if I don't like some of these things, trying new stuff and expanding my horizons always gives me some pleasure.
Did you like it or hate it?
I didn't hate it, but didn't like it either. It's watchable, but it's plot is often hard to follow, and it's too long. Of course, Sofia Coppola is terrible and completely outclassed, which is the thing everyone brings up. I wouldn't put it in the same league as the first two.

To connect this to the topic, I'm still glad I watched it. Trying new things, even things out of my comfort zone like mobster movies, is good. There's joy to be found in watching stuff you love multiple times, I do think humans need to try new experiences. Even seemingly trivial things like new foods and movies. If all you do is watch the same things, it's not psychologically healthy.
The only thing the 'original' FMA and Brotherhood have in common is the first third of the series.
Well, I don't think I got through even 1/3 of FMA before calling it quits. If a show can't grab me in some respect by episode 3 or 4, I stop.
It's been years, so please forgive me if I misremember something, but FMA and FMA:B differ a lot in tone. The 2003 version takes the the darker, more somber aspect of the story and gets really philosophical by the end of it. Some might say even a bit too edgy. Many found that BONES' original ending to be unsatisfactory, but their take on the homunculi and the depth they gave to certain characters and events was appreciated.
Having said that, I do think FMA:B is a step or two above it's predecessor, simply because it has a more consistent plot and a proper ending. It's not without it's flaws though, and I remember being pretty disappointed with the first ten or so episodes. They were obviously trying to speed through the part of the story that was also covered in the first series and in turn had some pretty important moments look weaker compared to the 2003 version. Also they're attempt at humor sometimes falls flat, for me at least.
Give FMA:B a go, but try to make it to episode 20. I know it's a lot, but it's one of those series that is slowly building up to something great, same as DB.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:16 pm

But DB wasn't spending those first episodes setting up something that will eventually payoff down the line. Yes, the stories got better, but that first arc is a complete story. And while some will disagree, I was hooked from the beginning. Some shows, like Buffy, take time to find their footing, I was still hooked by the characters from pretty much the jump.

I'm not a fan of stories that are boring as they set stuff up even if it has a good payoff. I would rather be interested the whole way through. The Count of Monte Cristo is great all the way through even though it's long and takes time for stuff to pay off.

I would suggest reading classic literature as well during the hiatus.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Michsi » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:31 pm

ABED wrote:But DB wasn't spending those first episodes setting up something that will eventually payoff down the line. Yes, the stories got better, but that first arc is a complete story. And while some will disagree, I was hooked from the beginning. Some shows, like Buffy, take time to find their footing, I was still hooked by the characters from pretty much the jump.

I'm not a fan of stories that are boring as they set stuff up even if it has a good payoff. I would rather be interested the whole way through. The Count of Monte Cristo is great all the way through even though it's long and takes time for stuff to pay off.

I would suggest reading classic literature as well during the hiatus.
Yeah, but you have 10 or so episodes that are maybe so-and-so and then about 40 episodes of the good stuff. The payoff, as in the final battle and the ending, is great, but I'm not saying the build up to it is all bad, it's just the beginning of it. Music, fight choreography, characters, I found all of that to be pretty damn good.

There's no shortage of fun stuff out there to help with the loss of weekly DB, but there is no replacing DB ;_;

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Chuquita » Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:38 pm

I go by the three episodes rule when it comes to anime, but really I follow the first episode rule more often, especially if it has potential to be a crowded season.

Like...I tried out 7 series this season on first episode alone. Dropped 2 kept 5.

Keep in mind most anime series I watch nowadays are one season and done seasonal anime that end with 12 episodes, maybe 24. I don't do big franchises outside of dbs, op, and precure though that one's technically rebooted every year so it's more a genre.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Michsi » Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:51 pm

Chuquita wrote:I go by the three episodes rule when it comes to anime, but really I follow the first episode rule more often, especially if it has potential to be a crowded season.

Like...I tried out 7 series this season on first episode alone. Dropped 2 kept 5.
That's actually a pretty an impressive watched-to-dropped ratio, given that they tend to put the most effort in the first episode to get viewers hooked, and then it all goes downhill from there.
FMA:B works because it has 50+ episodes. If it had only 12 or 25 episodes it'd be harder to recommend when a fifth of it's run time isn't that great.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Hellspawn28 » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:20 pm

If people are going to recommended One Piece, FMA, and My Hero Academia to Dragon Ball fans because they are Shonen, I guess we can recommended Devilman Crybaby too since it is based on a Shonen manga as well. I feel like those three don't have much common in Dragon Ball at all (Even FMA which tries to deal with more darker and deeper themes than DB does).

I feel like stuff like Fist of the North and YYH are more closer to DB than those two. Heck even Goku: Midnight Eye at least somewhat more closer to DB than FMA if you ask me.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Michsi » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:45 pm

Hellspawn28 wrote:If people are going to recommended One Piece, FMA, and My Hero Academia to Dragon Ball fans because they are Shonen, I guess we can recommended Devilman Crybaby too since it is based on a Shonen manga as well. I feel like those three don't have much common in Dragon Ball at all (Even FMA which tries to deal with more darker and deeper themes than DB does).

I feel like stuff like Fist of the North and YYH are more closer to DB than those two. Heck even Goku: Midnight Eye at least somewhat more closer to DB than FMA if you ask me.
I can't speak for Go Nagai's original work, but Devilman Crybaby very clearly falls into the category of seinen, at least by today's standards. There is an inherent optimism and feel-good nature to shonen manga, and Devilman Crybaby is closer to Game of Thrones than DB in that regard.
YYH has a long history of being compared to DB,probably because it was published alongside DB in the early '90s. On the other hand, Fist of the North Star was the shonen manga poster-child of a different era . I recommend this lovely piece to help explain what I mean : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIh85_bCudk , Dragon Ball included.

FMA is very obviously the most different from all the examples I've mentioned, and has close to nothing in common with DB's themes,(Arakawa has cited many shonen manga as sources of inspiration) but you can definitely see some of DB's aesthetic in her work.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Jackalope89 » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:57 pm

Here's what I'll do;
Go back and watch Dragon Ball again.
Watch DBZ (maybe Kai, maybe throw in some of the filler episodes from the original, here and there)
Watch the DBZ films (Broly and Pantera REALLY go well together).
Go through Super.
And then, watch GT.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Chuquita » Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:02 pm

Michsi wrote:
Chuquita wrote:I go by the three episodes rule when it comes to anime, but really I follow the first episode rule more often, especially if it has potential to be a crowded season.

Like...I tried out 7 series this season on first episode alone. Dropped 2 kept 5.
That's actually a pretty an impressive watched-to-dropped ratio, given that they tend to put the most effort in the first episode to get viewers hooked, and then it all goes downhill from there.
FMA:B works because it has 50+ episodes. If it had only 12 or 25 episodes it'd be harder to recommend when a fifth of it's run time isn't that great.
Of the two I dropped, the reasons were one of them felt like it worked best as a standalone and I couldn't imagine watching 11 more episodes of likely the same (one of the slice of life shows, the boy and girl teasing each other), yet remixed content while the other one I dropped I did so because it ended up not being what I was hoping for going in (one of the magical school shows ended up way less plot than I wanted).

The 5 shows that I kept are:
A Place Further than the Universe
Violet Evergarden
Laid Back Camp
Sanrio Danshi
Slow Start

Of those, the only one I still may drop if the 3rd episode doesn't go well is Slow Start. It's got fluid animation(Ajay's tweeted gifs of it), but lacks the overarching plot of Place or the learning something new about Camp.

I should mention none of those shows have anything in common with Dragon Ball, so I can't recommend any of them for a replacement.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by mecha3000 » Sat Jan 20, 2018 8:00 pm

Not that anyone cares anymore, but just want to expand upon the whole wuxia debate real quick (even though I said it strayed away from the topic). Putting Dragon Ball and other shonen in the same category is not meant to say ITS THE SAME GENRE. It's the equivalent of saying "Hey, both Samurai Jack and Ben 10 are both action cartoons so once Jack ends maybe you'll want to check out Ben 10 because it's another action cartoon". Same thing for the shonen thing. No one's (or at least in my case) exactly or not intentionally saying Dragon Ball and My Hero Academia are the same genre (I even pointed out Academia is more superhero-oriented). I was just saying if you like Dragon Ball, maybe you'll like My Hero Academia. Alright, I've got it all out now.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Zephyr » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:33 pm

Professor Freeza wrote:What do you suggest in particular?
I mean, I was hoping you'd drop some inklings of what you're overall interested in, so I could make more specific and tailored suggestions. Regardless, here's a variety of different stuff that I personally really love:

- First thing I'd suggest is Berserk, which DragonBallKing beat me to the punch on. A seinen-demographic manga, it's got a lot of gratuitous violence and sexual activity; it manages to be graphic, horrific, and badass all at the same time. The art is incredible, every panel is breathtaking on its own. The story deals with a variety of philosophical themes, from the schools of both ethics and metaphysics. Do humans determine their own destiny? Do the ends justify the means? And it doesn't have to flat out ask you these things, you're more than likely to ponder them yourself as you're reading. The broad overarching character arcs that the main protagonist, Guts, goes through are powerful, and you'll feel some legitimate pain for him. The characters experience some extreme trauma (Kentaro Miura pulls no punches), and they grow from it in interesting ways. I'd avoid the anime though; while the 1997 one isn't offensively bad in any category (like the 2016/2017 one is), it's very sparse, and gives you but a chunk of the story, and is thus not in any way a substitute. Though if you do check out the anime, you'll be blessed by the musical stylings of Susumu Hirasawa.

- Anything and everything by Satoshi Kon. Magnetic Rose, Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent, and Paprika. The line between reality and fantasy being blurred is a common theme in all of his works, but the line is blurred by different things in different works. Sometimes it involves dreams, other times deteriorating mental health, and other times it's something as simple as unreliable or vague narration. The animation is absolutely stellar, with cuts that would be almost entirely impossible to replicate in real life. Susumu Hirasawa is present here as well. Millennium Actress in particular is my favorite, and brought me to tears by the end.

- Another anime that I'd recommend highly is Naoki Urasawa's Monster (I'd recommend the manga, which came first, but I've yet to read it; it's on my to-do list, though). This one isn't as fresh in my mind as the above material, so I don't have quite as much to gush about, but the story fantastic. Another work which will very likely make you question the conventional boundaries of morality. A great deal of ambiguity regarding certain arguably-supernatural elements will keep you guessing to the end.

- I hadn't thought to suggest it, but ABED brought up the Twilight Zone, and if you haven't seen that yet, holy shit check it out. A classic among classics. Mostly spooky atmosphere, often tragic stories with a great deal of horrifying twists you don't see coming (and not graphically horrifying, just horrifying to even think about), with some rather uplifting stories here and there as well.

- Fan of live action comedy? One of my favorite comedians is Dave Chappelle. He debuted in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and then went on to star in my all time favorite movie, Half Baked, arguably the definitive "stoner comedy". Chappelle's Show was a fantastic sketch comedy show by him, which put comedic twists and spins on race relations (and other topics as well). His standup is also godly, and in the past 12 months he's released four new specials, all of which I'd argue collectively make up the peak of his career. And I'm not saying that lightly, as someone who never thought he'd top Half Baked and Chappelle's Show.

- Anything and everything by Quentin Tarantino. His works are always filled with snappy, quick-witted, strong-willed characters, who inevitably come into bloody conflict with one another, over often (but not always) ultimately petty shit. Samuel L. Jackson is in pretty much all of them, and he's amazing every time. Pulp Fiction is always at or near the top of everyone's "greatest films of all time" lists, and it's there for good reason. Reservoir Dogs is also great, but not as ubiquitously praised as highly. Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained are both revenge fantasies, seeing the protagonists unleash all hell on Nazis and slave owners respectively. Kill Bill is another high profile work of his (broken into two parts), another revenge story, but more personal (not that Django wasn't personal as well, but it had a more broad scope as well), and it's got a lot of martial arts in it. I think my personal favorite of his, though, is The Hateful Eight. Maybe it's the "stranded in a cabin during a blizzard in the wild west" atmosphere that does it for me, but I love the shit out of this one.

- I've no idea what your music tastes are, but I've recently become infatuated with a Japanese Black Metal band named Sigh. They push a lot of genre boundaries, and their songs can get fucking bonkers, throwing in all kinds of random timbres, and it always seems to work. I'm aware that 'harsh vocals' are a turn off for most (I was in that camp until a couple of years ago, so I understand), but if that's no barrier of entry for you, then definitely give their catalog a listen. Imaginary Sonicscape was their first album I listened to, and it's great. The opening track has this fucking sweet guitar fill around the 2 minute mark. Gallows Gallery is another solid album by them, featuring less harsh vocals, and all kinds of neat things, like more synthesizers and shit and extreme distortion, like at the beginning of this track. My current all time favorite song, however, comes from their album "In Somniphobia", titled "The Transfiguration Fear". Does all kinds of shit, throwing in claps, bells tolling, whistling, humming, and there's even a fucking saxophone solo that segues perfectly into a guitar solo.

- What kind of games are you into? My favorite game series is Sonic the Hedgehog; in particular, the stretch of classic 2D pinball physics games. Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic CD, Sonic 3K, and most recently, and my favorite, Sonic Mania, all exhibit this specific flavor of 2D platforming. It's a very geometric game, levels being filled with angular slopes and ramps, as well as curved quarter pipes and half pipes. Thanks to Yuji Naka's programming talent, Sonic is theoretically able to use this kind of terrain to build and utilize momentum in interesting ways that make the platforming more nuanced. Thanks to Hirokazu Yasuhara's level design, this potential is realized. Rolling down slopes grants a lot of horizontal momentum, jumping at the peak of a slope with a lot of horizontal momentum in tow gives you a super jump, holding down the jump button when you fall down onto an item box or enemy allows you to ricochet back up to your original height, quarter pipes allow you to exchange horizontal momentum for vertical momentum (and vice versa, depending on which end you go into it from), and so much more. Mania may not be made by either of these men, but it continues their creative legacy with an unrivaled level of care and authenticity and polish.

Other favorites of mine across various media:

Manga:
[spoiler]- The Enigma at Amigara Fault[/spoiler]
Anime:
[spoiler]- Akira
- Azumanga Daioh
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- The Big O[/spoiler]
Western Animation:
[spoiler]- Futurama
- South Park
- The Boondocks
- The Venture Bros.
- Xavier Renegade Angel[/spoiler]
Live Action TV:
[spoiler]- Breaking Bad
- Game of Thrones
- Tales from the Crypt
- The X-Files[/spoiler]
Live Action Film:
[spoiler]- 10 Cloverfield Lane
- American Psycho
- Airplane!
- Batman Returns
- Conan the Barbarian
- Dogma
- Hardcore Henry
- Mindwalk
- Jeepers Creepers
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
- Office Space
- Predator
- The Big Lebowski
- The Matrix
- The Shining
- The Terminator[/spoiler]
Video Games:
[spoiler]- Bioshock
- Crackdown
- Cuphead
- Dark Souls
- Downwell
- Dungeon Siege
- Elemental Master
- Fable: The Lost Chapters
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Golden Axe II
- Golden Sun
- Hyper Light Drifter
- La-Mulana
- Legend of Grimrock
- Odallus: The Dark Call
- Painkiller
- Race the Sun
- Raiden II
- Resident Evil 4
- Spelunky
- Spyro the Dragon
- Super Metroid
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Vectorman[/spoiler]
Music:
[spoiler]- Black Sabbath (Paranoid)
- Body Count (Body Count)
- Crystal Logic (Manilla Road)
- Ensiferum (Ensiferum)
- Evil Technology (VHS Glitch)
- I Hate You With A Passion (Dre Dog/Andre Nickatina)
- Licensed to Ill (Beastie Boys)
- Master of Puppets (Metallica)
- Nothing is Sacred (Grinder)
- Lonerism (Tame Impala)
- Rust in Peace (Megadeth)
- Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (Iron Maiden)
- Slayer (Show No Mercy)
- System of a Down (System of a Down)
- The Chronic (Dr. Dre)
- The Doors (The Doors)
- The Legacy (Testament)
- The Years of Decay (Overkill)[/spoiler]

I know that's a lot, but I hope you check out and enjoy at least some of it! :thumbup:
mecha3000 wrote:Not that anyone cares anymore, but just want to expand upon the whole wuxia debate real quick (even though I said it strayed away from the topic). Putting Dragon Ball and other shonen in the same category is not meant to say ITS THE SAME GENRE. It's the equivalent of saying "Hey, both Samurai Jack and Ben 10 are both action cartoons so once Jack ends maybe you'll want to check out Ben 10 because it's another action cartoon". Same thing for the shonen thing. No one's (or at least in my case) exactly or not intentionally saying Dragon Ball and My Hero Academia are the same genre (I even pointed out Academia is more superhero-oriented). I was just saying if you like Dragon Ball, maybe you'll like My Hero Academia. Alright, I've got it all out now.
One problem with this entire conversation is the term "genre" itself. It tries to connote too much. Action, comedy, horror, drama, and the like are one kind of thing. Sci-fi, Western fantasy, wuxia, and the like, are another kind of thing. The former entail incredibly broad emotional reactions that the audience is predominantly intended to feel, while the latter seems to imply a kind of setting and thematic family. I can have a sci-fi action-comedy story, I can have a drama-horror wuxia story, and so on.

We've got (at least) four components we're working with, here: genre (broad shit), genre (setting), medium, and demographic. Different demographics have their conventions. Different media have their conventions. Different broad genres have their conventions. Different genre-settings have their conventions. Hell, you could say there's a fifth one that has more to do with cultural context/region/language/etc. And, naturally, different combinations of these components have their own combined conventions.

As far as Dragon Ball is concerned, it is an eastern action-comedy wuxia animated (or illustrated) children's story. My Hero Academia (along with Naruto, One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fist of the North Star, etc.) is an eastern action-comedy animated (or illustrated) children's story, so it has a lot in common with Dragon Ball. It shares several components, so it's going to share several conventions, and thus it's natural to recommend to others wanting "more of what Dragon Ball offers". Ben 10 and Samurai Jack are both western action animated children's stories. So, naturally, I see the compulsion to lump them all together. That's a lot of common components, so there's a lot of common convention, to be sure.

These are all "action animated children's stories", action cartoons for kids. There's nothing wrong with these in and of themselves, but when the thread seems to largely entail suggesting that people stay in that bubble, it's rather disappointing. Children's media is more limited and less challenging, by design, so if that's part of someone's diet (and it's absolutely fine for it to be), it should be in the minority. I can't think of a single good reason to encourage that someone make that the bottom of their media food pyramid, though. Hell, I couldn't even really justify suggesting that actual children limit their diet like that. No, this isn't snobbery. No, this isn't looking down on people. And no, it's not having a chip on one's shoulder about appearing "more mature". It's about growth, and either fostering it or stifling it. Foster that shit. Someone finishes a kids' series? Maybe place other kids' series at the bottom of your suggestion priorities. Maybe look at other common components to base suggestions on. There are plenty of other components one could be looking for commonalities between.

Regarding the whole "battle shonen" thing, I think what has created this whole confusion is Dragon Ball itself, and its fans-turned-mangaka. Dragon Ball was an eastern action-comedy children's wuxia animated (or illustrated) series. Fans of the series who would go on to draw their own manga (Oda, Kishimoto, etc.) unconsciously took certain bits of Dragon Ball's wuxia themes and tropes and put them into all sorts of non-wuxia series, transforming the overall conventional landscape of the "eastern action-comedy children's animated (or illustrated) series" industry. "Battle shonen" would realistically denote this specific mutation. They took some of the more prolific ways Akira Toriyama spun one of its particular components, and divorced those spins from the genre they originated from. "Battle shonen" shares a lot of common thematic stuff with wuxia stories (because of Dragon Ball), but without the overall setting.

The problem is that it's detached, one step removed. It's like trying to learn how to draw human anatomy, by studying other drawings, rather than real life. You can't learn anatomy that way. Much in the same way, Dragon Ball was drawing more "from life". Toriyama was obviously watching all kinds of wuxia shit. If these guys want to tell a wuxia story, and the bits they copy from Dragon Ball indicate that they very much do, even if it's on an unconscious level, then their works would be better off if they likewise lifted the wuxia themes from more essential, prolific, and genre-defining wuxia works. Dragon Ball, while indeed itself wuxia, didn't codify anything, it just gave a unique spin on it (thanks to Toriyama's artistry and sense of humor). As it stands now, it exists in some uncanny valley.
Michsi wrote:Again, I'm all for broadening your horizon and by all means, encourage the fandom to give Chinese fiction a try, that is absolutely lovely, but please don't do it while putting down those who went to look for more manga instead of Wuxia.
Within the context of what I went into above, I imagine Kunzait's particular discomfort stems from the fact that of all of Dragon Ball's independent components, it's nature as a wuxia thing seems to be the most seldom sought-after common-component for people looking to "branch out" afterwards. And I mean, something's gotta be dead last, but for it to be behind even the "kids' demographic" component, I can't disagree with the issue he's taking.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Michsi » Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:27 am

Zephyr wrote:
Michsi wrote:Again, I'm all for broadening your horizon and by all means, encourage the fandom to give Chinese fiction a try, that is absolutely lovely, but please don't do it while putting down those who went to look for more manga instead of Wuxia.
Within the context of what I went into above, I imagine Kunzait's particular discomfort stems from the fact that of all of Dragon Ball's independent components, it's nature as a wuxia thing seems to be the most seldom sought-after common-component for people looking to "branch out" afterwards. And I mean, something's gotta be dead last, but for it to be behind even the "kids' demographic" component, I can't disagree with the issue he's taking.
Be that as it may, it's still not fair IMO to frame it as if it was this egregious ignorance on the part of the uninitiated fan. Wuxia and wuxia-themed fiction and movies have been around for far longer than Dragon Ball and anime in general, I'd assume most already recognized this component, but still chose to look for more Japanese animation instead. Dragon Ball is inherently more anime/manga than it is Wuxia.

But as I've mentioned, I'm all for recommending new types fiction, expanding your cultural knowledge and finding new things to appreciate and enjoy. I intend to take a closer look at what Kunzait recommended there, since I haven't tried out that much of this genre myself.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Kunzait_83 » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:56 am

Michsi wrote:Regarding western influence, I wasn't talking about the surface level stuff either, like pop culture references, name puns. etc, but style, layout and direction.
One could argue that the Wuxia elements are also there mostly for style rather than substance, since it never delves deeply into the ins and outs of the martial arts lifestyle.
Dragon Ball is literally ABOUT the martial arts lifestyle. Its main character devotes his ENTIRE existence above all else to training and growing his skills, learning under a wide assortment of different teachers and masters, creating new fighting techniques, competing and testing those skills against worthy adversaries, etc. Its literally the martial arts lifestyle distilled.

There are indeed a LOT of finer details in all that that are glossed over, and that other Wuxia aimed at more mature audiences delve more deeply into on the regular. This has less to do with Dragon Ball being less of a martial arts/Wuxia series, and much more to do with it being one that is FOR SMALL CHILDREN. Yes, of course its going to skimp on a lot of more technical ins and outs of how these characters craft their techniques, because at the end of the day it is an action/adventure comic/cartoon for 7 year old boys. You're not going to get countless pages upon pages of exposition regarding precisely how Tenshinhan or Piccolo learn to better hone and refine their Ki cultivation skills like you would in a Jin Yong novel: the former is for middle school boys, the latter is for grown-ass adults.

Not only that, but not for nothing this is also Akira Toriyama we're talking about here. That sort of in-depth detail is just NOT what he's all about as a comics author. Toriyama is all about free-form, off the cuff spontaneity: grinding his way through the day to day, hour to hour details of how Muten Roshi fine tuned the technique for performing the Kamehameha was NEVER going to be something that was focused on in a manga from the same guy who made "Poo on a stick" into the deadliest weapon imaginable in Dr. Slump, beating Upright Citizen's Brigade to that particular punch by almost two solid decades.
Michsi wrote:And if memory serves, one of the key elements of Wuxia heroes is fighting for righteous causes, righting wrongs, avenging loved ones, and following very strict codes of honor and chivalry, something DB very actively seems to want to avoid. Goku fights for the sake of fighting, and please correct me if I'm wrong, isn't this a pretty grave martial art faux pas?
Wrong on virtually all counts. Fighting primarily for the sake of personal growth and being a better/more skilled warrior is one of THE core motivating drives of a great many Wuxia heroes (and villains) from Linghu Chong and Guo Jing on down to Ouyang Feng, Dongfang Bubai (who went so far as to remove his own genitals purely for the sake of better mastering a forbidden martial arts technique) and the Wang Xiao brothers. Fighting for the sake of perfecting the art of fighting is one of the most singular cornerstones of the entire genre itself. This is almost impossible to miss across almost virtually every given work in the whole genre.

Furthermore, all those other motivating factors are definitely still present and accounted for within Dragon Ball. Goku fights to avenge Kuririn (twice: its kind of a HUGE deal and plot driving force both times), Gohan eventually fights to avenge his father, Piccolo and Goku both fight Freeza in some part to seek justice for the deaths of the Namekians, etc.

Codes of honor and chivalry indeed encompass archaic warrior's codes and morals, which to one degree or another still abound in DB. From virtually almost EVERY character insisting on one on one duels 98% of the time, to placing training of oneself and one's pupils above numerous day to day obligations of normal family life, to Goku insisting on treating his fight with Piccolo as a tournament bout despite the danger he poses to the world, a great deal of the character actions that many Western fans find to be "incomprehensible" are often times just the characters abiding by old school martial arts sentiments of honor and fairness.

Even Vegeta's "You're Number One" speech at the end of the Boo arc basically consists of Vegeta finally recognizing what it means to fight as a true martial artist (like Goku has, which is what's always kept him a step ahead), fighting to defeat oneself rather than one's opponent, as opposed to the brutish, narcissistic thug he'd been for most of the series prior. The idea that there's never an end to the path of a martial artist, that there's always someone better out there, that there's no ceiling and you fight and you improve until you die (and in Bangsian Wuxia, you don't even stop then)... these are ALL core warrior's philosophies depicted across virtually almost the entire genre.

Muten Roshi goes on about it quite a bit in the 21st Budokai arc as his core lesson to Goku and Kuririn, and also tries to impress upon Tenshinhan in the 22nd Budokai what it means to fight for honor and personal betterment rather than for greed and vanity. Its all delivered in a much more simplified, straightforward way than it would be in most other Wuxia because again: this is being written at an audience of 6 to 12 year olds, while much of the genre is considerably older-skewed.

By that same token, there's a LOT of other much deeper notions of archaic warrior's chivalry that DB obviously DOESN'T get into (like a lot more of the political/anti-authoritarian overtones of many Wuxia stories) because again: Toriyama and grade school-level audience. To say nothing of the HEAVY degree to which melodramatic romance and byzantine love triangles often play a role in the genre outside of DB because again: its Toriyama, and the guy by his own account just doesn't do romance in general.

Fighting for the sake of honorably improving oneself and to help others is among the HIGHEST virtues in all of Wuxia. Its fighting to bully and to dominate the weak and the powerless that is frowned upon (which is what Vegeta embodies for the vast lion's share of his time in the series until he finally gets his head out of his ass, as does Tenshinhan during his brief stint as a villain).
Michsi wrote:I'm not trying to ignore the Wuxia side of DB, but to point out that those who enjoy it can find, and have found, the same type of enjoyment in manga that have been considered DB's predecessors.


A manga that is often considered one of DB's key-most Shonen Jump predecessors is none other than Fist of the North Star. Which, surprise surprise, is... a Wuxia manga/anime (transposed into a Mad Max-like setting). Of course there are other, non-Wuxia manga that DB no doubt took influence from as well, but that's to be expected from almost ANY given work of any given level of creative variety (which DB exhibits in no small shortage of).

One Piece, Naruto, FMA, etc. are, of course, hardly DB's "predecessors".
Michsi wrote:It's not the misconception of the western fan that OP, OPM, Naruto etc are similar to DB. The editors of Weekly Shonen Jump actively have tried to create more Dragon Ball like stories. Bleach's Kubo Tite had been given a copy of DB to use as reference when he was struggling to come up with a story to publish(he was literally told to "do something like this"), Kishimoto had been told to give Naruto a rival 'like Vegeta', Oda very visibly tried to mimic DB's quirky designs despite the fact that he had worked and studied under Nobuhiro Watsuki.
You're confusing "corporate suits mandating that other authors follow in the footsteps of their biggest cash cow to create more money sponge franchises" with "tangible genre connections". How many times has a MASSIVELY successful work lead to executives SCRAMBLING wildly to recreate and duplicate its success, down to forcing as many elements of that work as they can think of that helped lead to its success (at least in their minds, be it right or wrong) into as many later works as possible?

You said it yourself: the suits at Shueisha put a copy of a DB tankobon on Tite Kubo's desk and effectively said "Make something just like that" (ironically, he ended up making something WAY more like Yu Yu Hakusho than DB). That's hardly doing the point you're trying to make - that these other Shonen works are some kind of organic, holistic outgrowth from Dragon Ball - any favors. This is little more than pure, profit-driven corporate thinking (copy and double down on what made money last quarter), not raw creative artistry.

No one's going to deny that Sasuke isn't basically a distaff Vegeta knockoff: that's one of the "surface elements" I was speaking of earlier that these later Shonen series copied off of Dragon Ball. That doesn't however make Naruto any less of a Ninja Fantasy series, who's creative DNA stems far, far, FAR infinitely from countless examples of Japanese Ninja pop culture (especially for children) like Sarutobi Sasuke (who's fucking NAME was even lifted for the aforementioned Vegeta ripoff) or Shonen Jiraiya, than it does the Chinese kung fu folklore of Dragon Ball.

There ARE certainly cultural connections between those two otherwise disparate genres (stemming largely from Japan's history of blatantly stealing wholesale from Chinese culture at varying periods in history), but they certainly are generally speaking entities that branched off and evolved separately and independently of one another more than enough across a VAST length of time (decades if not centuries) to distinguish them as otherwise only distantly related. Not at all claiming that this is even remotely your (or anyone else's) intent, but to lump the two together and brush aside the VAST gulf of differences between than is almost tantamount to saying "Pffft. Chinese, Japanese, its all the same slanty-eyed Moo Goo Gai Pan Karate nonsense."

I've at no point denied the impact and the influence DB has had among other later Shonen franchises. I simply contend that those influences are often EXCEEDINGLY shallow and awkwardly/inelegantly forced more times than not. Not that authors like Oda and such aren't clearly die hard, enthusiastic, genuine fans of Toriyama and DB: but I'd argue that most of them generally have missed a lot of what made DB work so well in the first place, and produced incredibly hollow and empty imitations.

Zephyr summed it up perfectly before so I'll just highlight it here:
Zephyr wrote:Regarding the whole "battle shonen" thing, I think what has created this whole confusion is Dragon Ball itself, and its fans-turned-mangaka. Dragon Ball was an eastern action-comedy children's wuxia animated (or illustrated) series. Fans of the series who would go on to draw their own manga (Oda, Kishimoto, etc.) unconsciously took certain bits of Dragon Ball's wuxia themes and tropes and put them into all sorts of non-wuxia series, transforming the overall conventional landscape of the "eastern action-comedy children's animated (or illustrated) series" industry. "Battle shonen" would realistically denote this specific mutation. They took some of the more prolific ways Akira Toriyama spun one of its particular components, and divorced those spins from the genre they originated from. "Battle shonen" shares a lot of common thematic stuff with wuxia stories (because of Dragon Ball), but without the overall setting.

The problem is that it's detached, one step removed. It's like trying to learn how to draw human anatomy, by studying other drawings, rather than real life. You can't learn anatomy that way. Much in the same way, Dragon Ball was drawing more "from life". Toriyama was obviously watching all kinds of wuxia shit. If these guys want to tell a wuxia story, and the bits they copy from Dragon Ball indicate that they very much do, even if it's on an unconscious level, then their works would be better off if they likewise lifted the wuxia themes from more essential, prolific, and genre-defining wuxia works. Dragon Ball, while indeed itself wuxia, didn't codify anything, it just gave a unique spin on it (thanks to Toriyama's artistry and sense of humor). As it stands now, it exists in some uncanny valley.
Michsi wrote:To you, the core of DB maybe Wuxia, I'd say the core of DB is purely humor, and then later action.
"Action/comedy" is about the most thuddingly generic, unhelpfully non-descriptive genre category you can possibly use for something as exceedingly idiosyncratic and specific as Dragon Ball. There's a LOT of otherwise fairly specific genre efforts that one can broadly generalize as "action" or "comedy" or "action/comedy". Action and comedy are two of the most COMMON features across media as a gigantic whole. Drunken Master can be classified as an "action comedy". To leave it at that and TOTALLY brush aside that its very clearly a martial arts film specifically is just being absurdly reductive for no real reason.

Dragon Ball is CLEARLY doing something that's WAAAAAAAAY more specific than just "punching followed by funny stuff happening". To deny that is to be almost intentionally obtuse. You know it, I know it, everyone else here generally knows it.

It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to pinpoint exactly what it is that DB is doing: martial arts high fantasy derived heavily if not wholly from Chinese kung fu folklore and Taoist mythology. We already have a word for that: Wuxia. A genre which even has its own thorough history of genre-blending with sci fi, horror, slapstick wackiness, and other such modernistic trappings (lest people continue to press that those things make DB less Wuxia). Its all filtered heavily through the same Dr. Slumpian creative lens of Toriyama's other works: but its still Wuxia all the same.
Michsi wrote:Battle shonen manga may be a made-up fan term, but I'd say it has valid reasons for existing, and it's no different from the term "Super Hero" genre. It encompasses manga that are similar in feel, themes, mentality - which, again, is actually the intention most of the time. It's not just taking some action oriented stories and lumping them together for the sake of simplicity, it's recognizing a specific set of characteristics. Basically, just as a certain type of story comes to mind when hearing "Wuxia", same thing applies to "Shonen manga".
Fist of the North Star can also be (and typically IS), under most criteria for this sort of thing, broadly categorized as "Battle Shonen". Remind me exactly what it has - in terms of tone, mentality, concepts, etc. - in common with something like One Piece or Hunter X Hunter or Toriko or My Hero Academia? What about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? Where's the "feel good spirit of lighthearted, childlike friendship" endemic to that one?

And if you want to just leave it at "Shonen Manga" as a broader whole, then hoooooo boy. You know what else are examples of "Shonen Manga"? Violence Jack (its first half anyway), Guyver, Barefoot Gen, Area 88, Wild 7, Rokudenashi Blues, City Hunter, Devilman, Baoh, to name but a few along with TONS more besides I can easily name off.

Help me to understand exactly where something like this:

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In ANY remote way conjures similar images and feelings and thoughts as something like this:

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Or where this:

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Is comparable in tone and feel and ideas to this:

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These are ALL clear and unarguably factual examples of "Shonen Manga/Anime".

You see what I mean about how INSANELY broad and sweeping that "genre label" is and how EXCEEDINGLY unspecific, useless, and without any semblance of cohesive thought or consistency in tone or themes it ultimately amounts to?

Demographic is NOT remotely the same thing as genre. The latter specifies what KIND of story you're telling. The former simply cordons off which broad age group you're aiming it at. Saying "I'm writing a children's story" does NOT in ANY WAY specify what KIND of story you're writing. It simply specifies that that's the intellectual level that you're aiming for.

Shonen Manga (or Battle Shonen, whichever you choose) is a bullshit non-genre that was coined specifically by a generation of foreign fans (relative to these works' native Japan I mean) who mistook an era of children's manga and anime born out of Japanese manga publishing and animation executives scrambling to copy Dragon Ball's success for being a specific and singular genre, in no small part due to their COLOSSAL degree of ignorance, inexperience, and general lack of intellectual curiosity to explore very much of anything else beyond those confined boundaries. Including other examples of children's manga and anime that doesn't fit within those post-Dragon Ball "action" confines, as well as examples of NON-child aimed manga and anime. In many extreme cases, including almost ANYTHING else that isn't made specifically for children.

Imagine if there existed a segment of Japanese fans who REALLY got heavily into the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon when it was imported to Japan, and got SO into it, that they then hunted down virtually every shitty bargain basement TMNT ripoff that came in its wake (Biker Mice From Marts, Street Sharks, and so forth), and mistook THAT to be the TOTALITY of "American kids' animation" and lumped it ALL in together as part of one singular, unifying genre (with its own unique tropes, etc.) that's supposed to embody virtually EVERYTHING that's EVER been animated in America (or damn close to it).

Imagine thinking that "obsession with random junk food" was a "genre trope" that's so endemic to this - horribly skewed - perception of broader American animation, that it comes to be what almost ALL Japanese kids think of when they hear the words "American cartoon". And that the works of Disney, Warner Bros, and more creator-driven titles, to say nothing of non-kids' Western animation like Ralph Bakshi, Bill Plimpton, Peter Chung, Mike Judge, etc. are almost ENTIRELY ignored and either unknown entirely or otherwise WILDLY under-discussed and under-studied/under-examined.

As beyond ludicrous as all that sounds (because it certainly IS beyond ludicrous), that's almost PRECISELY the rough equivalent of what's happened here in American anime fandom post-Toonami and FUNimation's DBZ over the last 17 someodd years, when we take "Shonen manga/anime" to mean "genre or specific style of storytelling" when a LOT of it purely boils down to "Dragon Ball made a fuckload of money for the latter half of the 80s/first half of the 90s, lets try and repeat that success as much as humanly possible from now into perpetual infinity".

You have to blatantly ignore and throw aside a whoooooooole GARGANTUAN swath of anime and manga history and output (Shonen and non-Shonen alike, much of it fairly historically important, influential, and iconic outside the boundaries of the mainstream Western CN-esque bubble of popular Shonen titles for the past decade+), purely because most Western fans who primarily grew up on Cartoon Network anime have no idea about them, in order to walk away with that impression of things: and ignoring and glossing over virtually almost all non-Shonen and a vast majority of pre-DB Shonen is PRECISELY what the majority of the fanbase has done for the lion's share of the 2000s and 2010s. Which is what's lead to this whole "Shonen manga means this genre here" meme and why we're even having this discussion in the first place.

The problem with this ENTIRE dynamic of categorization is that its both clearly and easily provably incorrect on a raw factual basis, and that its borne out of pure ignorance and mass inexperience (culturally) with so much beyond a VERY tiny and warped sliver of the broader manga/anime mediums.

Just because a LOT of people are convinced that something is correct and repeatedly insist that its correct, even across a long period of time, does not mean that it is therefore actually correct and can stand up to any kind of serious scrutiny.
Michsi wrote:Again, I'm all for broadening your horizon and by all means, encourage the fandom to give Chinese fiction a try, that is absolutely lovely, but please don't do it while putting down those who went to look for more manga instead of Wuxia. DB has been the stepping stone for many to the manga/anime industry and they have found various other stories to enjoy and love in similar capacity.
I have NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with people getting into more manga and anime. By any and all means, explore the living FUCK out of both mediums: there's SO MUCH of incredible worth and value to discover and treasure in both.

My problem is that the obsession with Shonen has lead to VERY little serious exploration of either medium throughout much of the past 15-17 years, aside from other Shonen titles of a VERY limited scope and variety. Indeed for many, its lead to very little serious exploration of ANY other genres and styles of storytelling across OTHER mediums (live action and literary especially) apart from other children's works.

Getting into anime and manga through Dragon Ball and Pokemon, and having the sum total of what its lead you to discover across almost 20 years amount to basically little more than "Naruto, One Piece, FMA, Fairy Tale, Innuyasha, MHA, SAO, Yu Gi Oh, Digimon, etc. down the list of usual Shonen Action suspects" pretty much means that you've explored almost damn near close to NOTHING of any remote genuine significance that these mediums actually have to offer - damn sure not to an adult mind that's past high school level (hell, grade school level) - and have almost seemingly gone out of your way to avoid doing so.

I'm not even putting down Shonen as a broader category: I'm on a Dragon Ball forum for fuck's sake, and there indeed exists a LOT of other Shonen titles I happily call favorites of mine.

What I'm putting down is a continued stubborn refusal to do exactly what so many people in this thread are supposedly championing (some I would argue quite hypocritically): branching out of one's comfort zone and expanding one's horizons beyond the same damn library of interests they've had since elementary school.

The Toonami generation of fans (and those after them as well) have already well and thoroughly explored to death Dragon Ball-derived Shonen action anime and manga. We've spent the better part of 15+ solid years mainlining and overdosing on gobs upon endless gobs of One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Hunter X Hunter, Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, Digimon, Fullmetal Alchemist, and nowadays One Punch Man, Sword Arts Online, My Hero Academia, Fairy Tale, etc. We've soundly and thoroughly narrowed off and limited the scope of popular anime and manga by TREMENDOUS orders of magnitudes over the course of the last 17 or so years down to things that in large part are simply the by-product of endless riffing and franchising off of specific beats and stylistic tics that Dragon Ball helped to popularize (and more importantly, make a mint off of).

Now we've had new DB content for the first time in about 20 years, and its soon to be coming to an end (for how long, no one knows yet) and people are wondering "what do we do with ourselves now?"

Do you think that maybe, just MAYBE one might find this a prime opportunity to suggest that more people here unhitch themselves from the self-made prison post-Dragon Ball Shonen Action Megafranchises, and instead suggest they either explore this whole OTHER genre that DB took WAY more from and that almost NO ONE in this fandom has EVER given the slightest bit of thought to exploring (largely because most didn't even know it was a thing in the first place)? Or perhaps branching out into manga and anime and other works from other mediums that are NOTHING AT ALL in the SLIGHTEST BIT like the same old usual types of Shonen we've been collectively, as a fanbase and as a community, circling around and laser-focusing on (to the direct exclusion of SO MUCH else its maddening) endlessly for almost damn near 20 years?

"No more Super! What do we do now?"

"Maybe Wuxia? Seinen? Almost no one here usually talks or knows much about those..."

"No, no, no. We want to explore and expand our horizons to NEW stuff that's BEYOND just stuff like Dragon Ball! Hey, how about more Naruto or My Hero Academia?"


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This community has long always had a VERY specific and narrow "box" (embodied by this very sort of Shonen over the past decade and a half) that its almost NEVER or VERY RARELY ever ventured very far outside of. I'm simply stressing that maybe its long past time it finally got the fuck far, FAR outside of it at long last.
Michsi wrote:Be that as it may, it's still not fair IMO to frame it as if it was this egregious ignorance on the part of the uninitiated fan. Wuxia and wuxia-themed fiction and movies have been around for far longer than Dragon Ball and anime in general, I'd assume most already recognized this component, but still chose to look for more Japanese animation instead.
This is where I can say I think you're VERY wrong. While yes, Wuxia and Wuxia-themed fiction and movies have indeed been around far, far, far, faaaar longer than Dragon Ball and anime as a whole and that its very well know throughout much of the world (East and West), you are incorrect in assuming that most of DB's and Japanese anime's current Western fanbase since the late 90s/early 2000s - as a subculture within itself - have been aware of it or recognize it. OLDER eras of fans here did, sure. Later ones though... far less so.

This disconnect is SOLIDLY due to, yes, egregiously widespread ignorance: and that ignorance stems from this particular fanbase (indeed a VERY substantial swath of Western anime fandom since the early/mid 2000s) having a GREAT deal of difficulty moving past and exploring wider media as a whole within more adult-oriented realms and beyond children's works.

This isn't 100% universal of course: almost nothing ever is. There are obviously exceptions to this within this fanbase. But overall, broadly speaking, this is a community of people who traffic more or less 90% of the time squarely within grade school-level cartoons and TV shows for small children and has continually demonstrated a SEVERE allergy to non-children's works of almost ANY sort. To a greatly unhealthy and extreme degree.

This is and has been a long-since crippling problem in this fanbase, its been at the source of a LOT of people's misinformation about a LOT of things in these kinds of discussions (DB-related, anime/manga-related, and general media-related, among countless other topics), and its long-since needed to be addressed.

If you're not among this fairly large swath of fandom, then congratulations. You're not the kind of fan I'm talking about.
Michsi wrote:Dragon Ball is inherently more anime/manga than it is Wuxia.
Its both. Dragon Ball is an anime manga of the Wuxia genre (or rather a Japanese-filtered interpretation of it, since its primarily and innately a Chinese genre, that's been plenty dabbled in by other foreign/non-Chinese creators for foreign/non-Chinese audiences).

Anime and manga are NOT genres anymore than Shonen is. Anime and manga are MEDIUMS and there exists a STAGGERING variety of styles and types of stories within those mediums to make painting all of it categorically as comparably the same sort of thing an incredibly silly exercise in futility. There's SO much variety, that saying "Dragon Ball is more anime/manga than it is Wuxia" is tantamount to saying "Ghost in the Shell is more anime/manga than it is Cyberpunk".

Its an incredibly dumb non-distinction to make. Anime/manga doesn't in ANY WAY point to its style of storytelling or its genre: simply that its a cartoon/comic made within the Japanese printing/animation industry for a Japanese audience primarily. No more, no less.

This is a medium that is home to works as dizzingly diverse and distinct from one another as Perfect Blue, Only Yesterday, Now and Then/Here and There, Real, Grave of the Fireflies, Azumanga Daioh, Mephisto, Ranma 1/2, MPD Psycho, Vampire Hunter D, Jiraishin, Akira, Dead Leaves, Cat Soup, Shamo, Your Name, My Neighbor Totoro, Fist of the North Star, Twilight of the Cockroaches, Lone Wolf and Cub, Birth, Macross, Ultra Heaven, Lupin III, Crying Freeman, Crayon Shin-Chan, Homunculous, Me and the Devil Blues, Gunsmith Cats, Urotsukidoji, Dr. Kishiwada's Scientific Affection, .hack, Zoids, Appleseed, Genocyber, Teito Monogatari, Golgo 13, Sailor Moon, Icaro, Crows/Worst, Haruhi Suzumiya, Blame!, Memories, 2001 Nights, Windaria, Evangelion, Belladonna of Sadness, Cleopatra, FLCL, Auction House, Cowboy Bebop, One Piece, Angel's Egg, Metropolis, Mad Bull 34, Patlabor, Gurren Lagann, Noir, Planetes, Gon, Tomb of Dracula, Hellsing, Riki-Oh, Death Note, Millennium Actress, Sanctuary, Dr. Slump, Midori: Shojo Tsubaki, Black Magic M66, Cat Ninden Teyandee/Samurai Pizza Cats, The Legend of Mother Sarah, goddamned Pokemon and Maya the Bee, and on and on and on.... and that's all BARELY even BEGINNING to scratch the surface.

Anime/manga is NOT purely a collection of stereotypes and stylistic tics that overrides proper genre just because anime/manga that most often fits within that narrow box is what most Western fans of the past 15 years happen to over-focus on. Its as dense and broadly reaching a medium as any other.

Dragon Ball is a Wuxia anime/manga. Just like Naruto is a ninja fantasy anime/manga, One Piece is a pirate adventure anime/manga, Parasyte is a body horror anime/manga, The Wind Rises is a historical fiction/drama anime, etc.
Michsi wrote:But as I've mentioned, I'm all for recommending new types fiction, expanding your cultural knowledge and finding new things to appreciate and enjoy. I intend to take a closer look at what Kunzait recommended there, since I haven't tried out that much of this genre myself.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
mecha3000 wrote:
ABED wrote:Shonen is about demographic, it's not a genre.
Well, you get the point. No fan who aren't Kanzenshuu users or Padula fans will not know what wuxia is. Most DB fans don't even know what wuxia is so to them - A series like Dragon Ball and Naruto are somewhat interchangeable in terms of how they consume it. That's my point. Once again, not trying to debate demographics or genres or whatever. Still, I appreciate the clarification.
Padula's one thing (and for sure, he more than knows what he's talking about on just about all fronts). But most Kanzenshuu users (with a VERY minimal number of exceptions) had absolutely no clue what Wuxia was and were unaware that it was something that existed for more than a decade and a half, despite it having infinitely more to do with DB than a vast chunk of most Shonen often tends to. The whole point of places like this is to FIX things like that, to inform and educate people who don't know these things, not to further encourage going about being blissfully unaware and to discourage learning. Which seems to be the undertone of this entire response.

And to repeat what I said earlier in a more condensed fashion: fans HAVE BEEN INCORRECT to consider stuff like Naruto and DB as "interchangeable". Both those particular series, while they DO of course share SOME commonalities, are ultimately from two very different (and only distantly related) genres - ninja fantasy vs kung fu fantasy - from across two very different cultures (Japan and China). At the very least though, they're by comparison far more connected/related than DB tends to be with other Shonen series (try all you want, there's almost no way to fudge a high seas pirate adventure being the direct "successor" and counterpart to a martial arts fairy tale derived from Chinese folklore, save for the author of the former constantly ranting and raving about how much he loves the latter and the publishing/animation companies for both bending themselves over backwards to market them together because $$$).
mecha3000 wrote:Not trying to impose on the wuxia vs. shonen talk because all discussion is welcome and warranted, but it strays a bit away from the point of the topic. If you're a DB fan, I don't want anyone feeling like they're required to turn to wuxia for their new source of entertainment following Super's ending. If fans want to get into My Hero Academia, I really do suggest it because at the end of the day, they both still fall under the genre of shonen. I was born in the later part of the '90s so growing up, I didn't have new DB so Naruto was what my generation turned to and there's no problem turning to My Hero in DB's absence. The whole wuxia debate shouldn't determine what is worthy of being your new series (not saying that is exactly what was being suggested). Like VegettoEX and many others have stated, it's also good to get into things that aren't remotely DB-related in genre or tone.
A few things:

1) If you're going to take the time to respond to something I posted earlier, its generally seen as a good idea to at least read what I wrote first. I know that ABED already corrected you on this awhile back, but to respond to a whole post which spends much of its time arguing for the idea that Shonen isn't a real genre with "because at the end of the day, they both still fall under the genre of shonen", thereby COMPLETELY glossing over the entire point of the post in which you're responding to... that's unbelievably frustrating and only pushes the sense that I'm sometimes talking to a wall with my posts here.

Read what I wrote earlier: Shonen isn't a real genre. All Shonen amounts to is "Japanese comic/cartoon aimed at Japanese schoolboys roughly ages 5-13". That can (and indeed does) cover a LOT of different types of stories and genres. Its NOT a singular category, and Dragon Ball is not analogous to One Piece or One Punch Man or My Hero Academia or Toriko or Hunter X Hunter or Fullmetal Alchemist, nor are ALL of them synonymous with one another, all SOLELY based on the fact that they're all series made for Japanese elementary school boys.

Though they're all to some degree or another constrained by their target demographic (because, as Zephyr noted earlier just now, children's media is to one degree or another inherently limiting, especially for an adult), these are all still ultimately some WILDLY different kinds of stories covering a VAST breadth of different genres and subject matter (superheroes, pirates, martial artists, steampunk, etc): even though a bunch of them awkwardly shoehorn in various ill-fitting elements (emotional beats, stylistic tics, etc) from DB purely due to DBs insane popularity and its incredible influence on some of the artists behind these other later series.

And yes, I'm going to be so bold as to again say that virtually almost the ENTIRE post-2000 Western anime fanbase of the past 15+ years has indeed been flat out WRONG, I repeat WRONG (hold the Trump memes please) to lump all of Shonen together into a singular genre and to make up/project "tropes" onto it (when much of those tropes - not all, but a great deal - are simply kung fu fantasy fiction tropes that DB used and are being ripped off by later non-martial arts series solely because DB did it).

2) Is there ANYONE here who honestly, sincerely thinks that Shonen as a whole is something that seriously NEEDS defending or championing here? Or any further promoting? You have to be either EXTREMELY new to both this particular community and to this fanbase as a broader whole or incredibly dense if you somehow think that Shonen isn't THE DEFAULT setting that virtually the ENTIRE online Dragon Ball fandom has subsisted on for the better part of a decade and a half now.

Take a cursory look around this place, or ANY and ALL other Dragon Ball communities out there. Hell, look at a GIANT chunk of general anime communities out there: people are MORE than plenty aware of other modern Shonen action series of the past 15 years, and have been for well over a decade of that time. Not only that, but most fans practically mainline the stuff seemingly 24/7. If we're not talking about Dragon Ball around here, then we're generally talking about One Piece, One Punch Man, Naruto, Pokemon, Digimon, Yu Gi Oh, Hunter X Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist, various Nintendo franchises, etc.

I make a point to highlight Wuxia for the very simple reason that its of FAR greater consequence to Dragon Ball than almost ANY of these other Shonen series usually tend to be (a few notable exceptions aside), and this is ultimately at the end of the day a Dragon Ball forum and community dedicated to analyzing the living fuck out of anything and everything even tangentially related to DB: and Wuxia is a GARGANTUAN T-Rex of a critical component to Dragon Ball's DNA that just about EVERYONE both here and in most corners of fandom for the better part of the 2000s and 2010s were almost universally overlooking.

And one of THE main reasons that most of fandom was overlooking it for so long? An impossible to deny single-mindedly narrow fixation upon Shonen, and children's media as a broader whole in general, oftentimes at the direct expense of virtually EVERYTHING ELSE that's out there.

Are we seriously going to act like people NEED to be told or reminded that Naruto, Bleach, My Hero Academia, Fullmetal Alchemist, One Piece, etc. are things that are out there? That these are "little franchises that could" that need every last ounce of fandom push and support to get the word out there on them, and that they're somehow NOT over-marketed, overexposed, over-analyzed, over-discussed, and over-obsessed over monolithic mega-franchises that virtually every single man, woman, child, and microscopic amoeba within anime fandom of the past decade+ are at a bare minimum PLENTY beyond aware of and have just as likely consumed 40 times over by now?

I'm of course not saying that people don't have a right to like them. I'm obviously not discouraging people their passion for them. What I AM saying though is, don't act like ONE lone dissenting voice saying "Hey, maybe a bunch of these titles aren't as relevant to DB as most people have been saying they are, and hey, maybe check out this VERY dense and VERY relevant whole GENRE of martial arts fantasy that almost NO ONE in fandom of the last 10+ years has been highlighting" is somehow beyond the bounds of reason and must be brushed aside to make way for yet MORE endless harping on Weekly Shonen Jump's 2000s and 2010s lineup (as if this community hasn't done an ENDLESS amount of that for its ENTIRE existence now).

Because god forbid we make anyone feel like they might actually be in danger for one second of learning about something that's TOTALLY new to them and expanding their media intake beyond the bookshelves and TV habits of 3rd graders in Tokyo.

And 3) I wholeheartedly 1000% more than agree: absolutely it is good - imperative even - to get into things that aren't remotely like Dragon Ball. Variety and broadening one's horizons far beyond the scope of one's childhood comfort zones are things that are CRITICALLY important for a developing young mind. If a majority of my posts throughout my whole entire time in this community can be said to share a common theme, this would very much indeed be that theme.

So with that being said... why is it that we seem to almost ALWAYS be over-focusing on other series that most people here all claim (regardless of whether someone like me agrees with it or not) are "spiritual counterparts" of Dragon Ball? Be they One Piece, Naruto, Academia, HxH, Alchemist, etc? You yourself earlier just made the claim, and I quote:
mecha3000 wrote:If you're a DB fan, I don't want anyone feeling like they're required to turn to wuxia for their new source of entertainment following Super's ending. If fans want to get into My Hero Academia, I really do suggest it because at the end of the day, they both still fall under the genre of shonen.
If most people here agree that they get into other Shonen action series primarily because they're so much like Dragon Ball to them (and that is indeed very much what most people here almost always say and do), why are we largely in here suggesting that they fill the Dragon Ball Super shaped hole in their media diet with yet MORE of this sort of thing? Especially in a thread where a bunch of people are at least VOICING the notion that "one should get out of one's comfort zones more often and explore the new and unfamiliar"?

Like I said before: Shonen is ultimately no more and no less than the Japanese equivalent of children's action cartoons and comics. Generally aimed at the 5 - 13 demographic. Imagine replacing those with just their American equivalents: are we seriously going to make the case that an adult mind is totally fine with accepting almost nothing but a steady diet of Teen Titans, Ben 10, Danny Phantom, Gargoyles, Justice League, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Avatar, and so forth and suchlike? Without ANYTHING ELSE of ANY other nature to offset? Because subsisting on largely little more than the Weekly Shonen Jump oeuvre is literally no different at all from that, merely swapping out the cultural end of the globe that its from.

I make the case as strongly as I do for moving into Wuxia from Dragon Ball not only because it is of a far greater spiritual connection to DB than many Shonen action franchises are, but also because unlike other Shonen action franchises its something that most people (here and in broader DB fandom) HAVEN'T been focusing on already and largely HAVEN'T already known about beforehand and have almost NO experience with whatsoever. Unlike other Shonen properties, exploring Wuxia would largely be a COMPLETELY new venture for almost EVERYONE that posts here (shy of myself and maybe two or three other individual voices here or there).

Furthermore, an awful, awful LOT of Wuxia is also actually aimed at adults rather than children, which gives them a GREAT deal more room to explore more deeper and denser ideas than something like Dragon Ball or other Shonen properties tend to.

And by that very same token, you want to hear from recommendations that are TRULY as far removed from Dragon Ball as humanly possible? There's sooooooooooo much out there that exists far, far, far beyond the borders of Shonen or children's franchises in general that I could easily talk about for ages.

I know that there are some degree of users here who are still kids themselves, and that's totally fine of course. But I know that the overwhelmingly VAST majority of people here tend to be people in their 20s. Which would make you adults at this point. Instead of a deluge of Japanese kids' cartoons, go check out something like Masaki Kobayashi's Human Condition Trilogy. Or look into the incredible surrealist political illustrations of Ralph Steadman. Or look up Marjane Satrapi's excellent autobiographical comic book (and its animated film adaptation) Persepolis. The existentialist poetry of Henri Michaux. The collected works of Philip K. Dick or Kurt Vonnegut. Ever read Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, or Breakfast of Champions? What about the writings of J.G. Ballard, or James Ellroy, or Elmore Leonard? Jean-Paul Sartre perhaps?

What about the films of David Cronenberg or Sidney Lumet or Sergio Leone? Or Steve McQueen (the current director, not the iconic 60s actor, though his movies are great too)? Who here's seen Shame, Hunger, or 12 Years a Slave? And what of John Carpenter? Most people know Halloween and The Thing, but what about Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness, They Live, Escape From New York, Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13? Or his own wacky little Americanized ode to Wuxia, Big Trouble in Little China? Akira Kurosawa? Who here's actually hunkered down and for real sat through Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, The Hidden Fortress, Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, Ran, etc?

What about going REALLY far outside most people's comfort zones and checking out the work of a writer like Marquis de Sade? And some of the films based on his writing, like Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom? Or the horror/fantasy epics of Clive Barker? Beyond Hellraiser/The Hellbound Heart, you've got AMAZINGLY ambitious mind and genre-bending works from him like Imajica, Cabal, and The Scarlet Gospels. Or the works of 1950s Beat Poetry icon William S. Burroughs? Naked Lunch, Junkie, Nova Express, Queer, Cities of the Red Night, etc.

Who here has seen recent movies that just came out in 2017 like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, or The Shape of Water, or Get Out, or Mother? Ever seen any other Darren Aronofsky movies? Pi, Requiem For a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, etc? What about David Lynch? He just put out a brand new Twin Peaks series last year. Seen that? Seen the original Twin Peaks? Seen Lynch's other classic films, like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, etc? What about art house darling Gaspar Noe? Seen Irreversible? I Stand Alone? Into the Void? Or Charlie Kaufman? Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche New York? Yes, no?

Or branching off Wuxia, Wong Kar Wai is among the greatest ever Chinese filmmakers out there. He's dabbled a bit in the Wuxia genre, notably with the incredible Wuxia film Ashes of Time (itself a revisionist prequel to Jin Yong's Condor Heroes saga), but what about his other totally non-Wuxia romantic dramas? Chungking Express, Happy Together, Days of Being Wild, In the Mood For Love, and Fallen Angels are some of the most unforgettable emotional wallops you'll ever see.

I'm sure plenty of people here know Harry Potter and have seen all of the movies: one of the best liked of them, Prisoner of Azkaban, was directed by a guy named Alfonso Cuaron. Ever tried digging into some of his other work? Children of Men or Y Tu Mama Tambien for instance? Shane Black's the guy who directed Iron Man 3, but he was better known long before that for making some of the most purely fun, hilariously dark witted buddy-action comedies of all time: most famously the first two Lethal Weapons, but also a LOT more besides those. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang? The Nice Guys? The Last Boy Scout? The Long Kiss Goodnight? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Or we can keep this strictly to other anime and manga. As I've said in numerous other threads, there's a LOT of manga and anime out there that are NOTHING alike whatsoever with Shonen. After all, the anime and manga industry originally became famous and took off among Westerners for the fact that they cater to viewers and readers of OTHER demographics beyond just children and beyond the boundaries of children's action schlock.

Who here's read a manga called Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths? An amazing WWII manga that is an autobiographical account of the author's (Shigeru Mizuki) real life experiences portraying the down-in-the-muck reality of being a Japanese soldier trudging through the battles of New Guinea on various suicide missions, often with bitingly cynical gallows humor. Or 2001 Nights? A hard sci fi anthology manga of loosely connected short stories which are heavily influenced by the classic Kubrick masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey?

What about Me and the Devil Blues, which is an incredible fictionalized biopic about 1930s blues icon Robert Johnson? Or Ultra Heaven, a manga about a ridiculously batshit dystopian future where ALL mind-bending psychedelic drugs are 100% legal and over-indulged in by society at large, creating a doped up, strung out world of desensitized junkies living in a perpetual fog of stoned, hallucinatory tripping out, with an art and visual style unlike ANYTHING you've ever seen before to match their view of the world?

Or how about the legendary and aesthetic-defining ero guro work of Suehiro Maruo? Anyone who loves horror mangaka like Junji Ito absolutely owes it to themselves to become acquainted with Maruo's work. Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show is about as unforgettable an experience as they come, and in the 2000s he did manga adaptations in his own unique style of two Edogawa Rampo stories (The Strange Tale of Panorama Island and The Caterpillar). Rampo himself is an incredibly prolific Japanese writer who's work is also very recommended checking out in general.

Or what about Belladonna of Sadness, one of the most strikingly unique anime films ever made (to this day even, despite being made way back in the early 1970s) depicting a nightmarishly surreal account of the gang rape of a beautiful young girl by a vicious local baron and his court in medieval France, and the fallout and trauma of the experience upon the girl's shattered psyche? What of Robot Carnival, the astounding and once-iconic anime anthology headed up by none other than Akira's Katsuhiro Otomo and a murderer's row of some of the all time greatest Japanese animators to come out of the 1980s bubble economy's golden era for the medium? Or Angel's Egg, one of Mamouru Oshii's greatest anime films, which is a thoroughly abstract and hauntingly bizarre impressionistic allegorical fairy tale-like story representing (as some have long interpreted at least) his own real life lost religious faith as a lapsed Japanese Catholic?

How about the awesome, ass kicking classics of Yoshiaki Kawajiri? Of Ninja Scroll, Goku: Midnight Eye, Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku, Cyber City Oedo 808, The Running Man, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust fame? Hell, Running Man is itself a segment in yet ANOTHER astounding Otomo anthology known as either Neo-Tokyo or Manie Manie Labyrinth Tales, depending on where you are, which is also well worth one's time.

What about exploring the INCREDIBLE work of anime legend Rintaro? Dagger of Kamui in particular has long been one of my all time personal favorite anime films ever: for good reason, as its utterly unlike much else out there (how many ninja epics can you name where the main focus is an Ainu warrior who globe trots to early 1800s North America, fights racist cowboys and befriends Native Americans and Mark Twain himself, all on his quest for revenge against a corrupt Buddhist Monk responsible for the slaughter of his family and his exile from his own village amidst the backdrop of the dawn of the Meiji Restoration?). What about the relatively recent (2011), and insanely gorgeous ode to anime's bubble economy heyday Redline? Or its spiritual predecessor Trava: Fist Planet? Dead Leaves? Hells?

Or now that Devilman: Crybaby is a Netflix hit, who here's gone through Masaaki Yuasa's prior output of amazing anime? Everything from Kemonozume, Mind Game, Tatami Galaxy, and the Genius Party anthology shorts? Or hey, what about the ORIGINAL Go Nagai Devilman manga and its original late 80s/early 90s anime OVAs? By that same token, for Shonen anime that isn't your conventional action "pew pew!" fare, who here's seen Barefoot Gen, a duology of anime films depicting the experiences of survivors in the direct aftermath of the atom bombing of Hiroshima? Or Leiji Matsumoto's timelessly immortal Galaxy Express 999 (featuring Masako Nozawa in her OTHER iconic role besides Son Goku, Tetsuro Hoshino)? Or Arcadia of My Youth, THE definitive Captain Harlock epic space adventure? Or Area 88, one of the most emotionally gut wrenching aerial fighter pilot dramas you'll ever see? Space Adventure Cobra? City Hunter? Guyver?

I mean, I could just as easily fill pages upon pages upon endless pages worth of recommendations that have precisely NOTHING to do with Dragon Ball whatsoever and works across a variety of mediums that are galaxies upon galaxies far removed from Shonen and can lead one down an infinite number of different rabbit holes.
Last edited by Kunzait_83 on Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:52 am, edited 12 times in total.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:49 am

I've seen 12 Years a Slave and it was quite overrated.
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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Michsi » Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:49 am

Kunzait_83 wrote: *snip*.
I'm not going to pick apart your entire post, but try to get to the core points of it.

I'll try to summarize my idea with a couple of simple question.

Do you consider Disney's Mulan wuxia or incorporating elements of wuxia?
And does anything that focuses heavily on martial arts automatically categorize it as wuxia? Wouldn't you say Chinese culture as a whole needs to be more present in order for it to constitute as wuxia and not just take some aesthetic cues from it?

My point of the martial art mentality is that Goku's character readily embraces his self-centered and selfish desire for challenges to the point he is being deemed as reckless. That was what I was referring to. It's not just about perfecting the art and self-improvement, it's about enjoying the thrill of battle for the sake of the thrill.

It's this distillation that I think needs to be taken more into account than just mere "Oh, it's just Toriyama being Toriyama, and it's for kids". Likewise I say DB isn't really SF or a space opera just because it has wacky technology like capsules and time travel or that it introduces space later.

And Fist of the North Star was very visibly inspired by 80's american action heroes like basically pretty much every shonen manga of that era . The author said he wanted to make a MC like Bruce Lee, but I don't think that alone or the acupressure points techniques are enough to call it wuxia. He cited way more western works and artist as inspiration, not just Mad Max.

My example with Kubo Tite was only there to prove that there was an active effort to mimic DB. Whether or not you agree with this practice of letting popular trends dictate art is besides the point , the result is in fact "tangible genre connections." Ironically, "corporate suits" had a huge role to play in DB's evolution, since Toriyama has always openly admitted to listening to suggestions from his editors and was always concerned with what was popular and what wasn't. There's no need to turn one's nose up at the editorial department, manga artists often relied on their input and were grateful for it.

As far as your gifs for Shonen Manga : like every trend, it evolves and changes over time, which is why I was careful to add 'by today's standard' when talking about Devilman Crybaby. The more violent and gore filled examples are both from a different era, when censorship was far more lax and creators had a lot more freedom. DB too has experienced this change. You won't be seeing Bulma's nipples on screen anymore, that's for sure.
My problem is that the obsession with Shonen has lead to VERY little serious exploration of either medium throughout much of the past 15-17 years,
You like what you like, and this "obsession" with shonen is proof of it's appeal to a large number of fans that like it for it's flashiness and cartoony simplicity.
So many times I've heard someone say "I feel like watching something silly and fun" and turn to DB or OPM or OP or Gintama to fullill that need.

For the record, I'm not a shonen battle manga enthusiast nor do I fancy myself a connoisseur. I enjoy the genre to an extend, but I don't favor it over others as a rule. I just like studying trends.
mecha3000 wrote:Not that anyone cares anymore, but just want to expand upon the whole wuxia debate real quick (even though I said it strayed away from the topic). Putting Dragon Ball and other shonen in the same category is not meant to say ITS THE SAME GENRE. It's the equivalent of saying "Hey, both Samurai Jack and Ben 10 are both action cartoons so once Jack ends maybe you'll want to check out Ben 10 because it's another action cartoon". Same thing for the shonen thing. No one's (or at least in my case) exactly or not intentionally saying Dragon Ball and My Hero Academia are the same genre (I even pointed out Academia is more superhero-oriented). I was just saying if you like Dragon Ball, maybe you'll like My Hero Academia. Alright, I've got it all out now.
For what it's worth, I think you have every right to see a similar appeal in these action oriented stories. So many remember DB for the beam struggles and earth shattering displays of power, and while I think DB is much more than that, it's their prerogative to like what they like and seek similar thrills from other shows. When you feel like eating chocolate, you are not going go look for cheese-flavored crackers. You may settle for something that is just sweet, but if it fills the need the same way chocolate would have, then that's good. Cheese-flavored crackers are for another time, when you feel like consuming something different.
If someone's comes to me saying they've enjoyed Dragon Ball and would like to watch something 'like that', I'm not going to start telling them to "try out other types of fiction too" Would I'd like to start gushing over Vinland Saga. Yeah, and I'd definitely recommend it at some point, but it wouldn't be my first choice, because most likely that wasn't what they were looking for.
Last edited by Michsi on Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How to ease the pain of the upcoming hiatus

Post by Hellspawn28 » Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:02 am

8000 Saiyan wrote:I've seen 12 Years a Slave and it was quite overrated.
Off Topic, but I do have to agree since I found Roots to be better.
You like what you like, and this "obsession" with shonen is proof of it's appeal to a large number of fans that like it for it's flashiness and cartoony simplicity.
So many times I've heard someone say "I feel like watching something silly and fun" and turn to DB or OPM or OP or Gintama to fullill that need.
I like light hearted and silly stuff too since I own Azumanga Daioh on DVD and Baka & Test is one of my favorite anime of this decade for how funny the wacky humor is. I do agree with Kunzait that most people are only into the popular recent Shonen Jump stuff. I do think DB fans should check out stuff that is similar to DB, but not anime related. TV channels like El Rey Network play a bunch of old kung fu movies that help inspire Toriyama to create Dragon Ball. Sure the dubs are cheesy and the movies are pretty old, but they are great nevertheless.
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