Yeah, Parasyte is a very, very cherished and beloved personal favorite of mine, going back to the manga in the mid-90s; my eyes practically bugged out of my skull with shock and joy when the much newer anime was first announced: though I'm definitely not a fan of a few of its design choices for some characters, namely Shin at the beginning, its overall a very solid adaptation and I couldn't be happier that its now a series that younger fans actually at least KNOW exists rather than responding to the title with blank puzzlement. But its in no way, shape or form Shonen in the slightest, so its not at all relevant to this thread.Doctor. wrote:Seems like you like Yu Yu Hakusho quite a bit. Are you not interested in Hunter x Hunter? Level E is also pretty good.Kunzait_83 wrote:snip
I was gonna say Parasyte seems like your kind of manga, but then I figured it probably isn't really within the Shounen demographic.
Hunter X Hunter left a very bad taste in my mouth going back ages ago, and very little of what its done since then has really done much to remedy that. To me its always just been boilerplate, generic turn-of-the-millennium Shonen, with its various stabs at "deconstructing" that whole formula in its later arcs coming across as not terribly interesting or compelling or nearly as "deep" as people like to make it out as. It touches on some decently cool martial arts fantasy/wuxia stuff here or there in certain arcs, but its nothing that YYH hasn't already done VASTLY better.
Level E is a title I really, really need to revisit: I only checked it out once forever and ever ago, and only fuzzily remember it now. All I clearly remember is a few interesting visuals.
Yu Yu Hakusho is easily a better series overall than even DB in my eyes (which obviously I think fairly highly of to begin with), and its basically neck and neck with Fist of the North Star for my all time personal favorite Wuxia anime/manga series; Fist only juuuuust about edges it out, mainly due to Hara's jaw droppingly incredible art and how much I adore the series' world, its themes, and its ridiculously brutal martial arts fighting styles/techniques. YYH though utterly trounces and downright embarrasses pretty much ALL of the various later post-DB "Battle Shonen" series, including its creator's own HxH, and its not even remotely close at all.
It has some of the all time best character dynamics, ingeniously thought out and executed martial arts/wuxia fights and setpieces, spectacular visuals, art, and general design sensibilities, and by far the most interesting and richest subtext of pretty much ANY of these series bar none and without question (that's actually, genuinely there as subtext and not clumsily, amateurishly clunky emo teen-esque monologuing/soliloquising from the various characters that spells everything out in crayon... *cough*Naruto&OnePiece*cough*). It isn't even a contest: YYH is lightyears beyond most of its later competition, HxH included, and would be my immediate go-to were I to recommend only one "Battle Shonen" series to anyone who otherwise is put off by anime/manga.
Not to mention most of YYH's characters are genuinely down to earth, likable, and relatable, as opposed to most of the irritatingly obnoxious, punchable little shit stains that populate most other post-DB Battle Shonen shit: even HxH's Gon is little more than yet another in an endlessly, tiresomely long line of annoying Goku knockoffs ala Luffy, Naruto, etc. And no amount of tepidly dull and milquetoast "genre deconstruction" in the series justifies the hollow, repetitive tiredness of Gon's whole "simple, upbeat, cheerful, naive country bumpkin looking for adventure" shtick that's been done to death endlessly since DB ended (while totally and utterly missing the entire point of why it worked in DB to begin with).
Yusuke, while something of a familiar trope himself (albeit from a TOTALLY different genre: that of bosozoku/delinquent manga & anime) is at least cut from a refreshingly different cloth than most other latter-day Shonen protags: and one that's vastly, vastly more relatable to actual, real life flesh and blood human beings (troubled, loner kid with a bad home life) than the cartoonishly mascot-esque clowns that often act as the centerpiece of many if not most Battle Shonen/Dragon Ball Wannabe series.
For all the bullshit sentimental "right in the feels" moments that many of these series positively live and die on as they fall all over themselves to grope at their audience's heartstrings, there isn't a single damn bit of over the top ridiculous maudlin emotional grandstanding in modern Shonen that in any way matches the simple, low key, understated humanity of moments like Yusuke's wordless, subtle reaction of seeing his mother (who he'd never gotten along with at all prior) break down sobbing in genuine (and non-over the top ala Kuwabara) grief at his funeral after Yusuke initially though that no one in his life would miss him or care that much after he'd died.
Well shit, DB, One Piece, and Yu Yu Hakusho are the only anime in general that I've watched substantially, so I'd go:
