Yeah, Soul Eater is sort of meh, but the manga is definitely readable. It also has some good character songs. If you didn't like Death the Kid, just wait until Excalibur.
I am honestly surprised to hear this given how "GREATEST ANIME EVER!" it was when it first came out.
Then again... Naruto was the same thing (then again it had potential... that it squandered), then again Bleach was the same thing...
Hmmm... It is like every once in a while there is going to be a very popular and highly regarded shonen action show that people will look back at later and just go "meh"
The first arc(s) were actually good(in my opinion). Its just... they degrade at variable rates. Kinda proportional to how insane the power level of the main character/everyone gets.
IMO this is the core problem with shonen, and it stems in no small part from the genre being more-or-less all about power fantasies for tweenaged boys. When an author starts with that power escalation, they've doomed themselves to writing shit, because if you get into a Lensman arms race with
individuals, sooner or later you'll arrive at the point where everything about the premise is batshit insane in the worst possible way.
Especially when it devolves to characters asspulling random I WIN moves, or worse, antagonists who aren't actually a challenge and just have a stupid gimmick or keep running away.
Basically, "power levels" are the problem, both when they are inconsistent and make all but a few characters irrelevant, when they endlessly escalate, and when they have no downsides. One of the key elements of writing in a bullshit superpower is that it has to have an equally bullshit drawback: Superman is fucking Superman, but you can make him worthless with a lump of rock. Balefire erases anything it touches from existence, but it
erases anything it touches from existence, and the more power put into it, the longer back in time those things didn't exist. The Berserker armor makes you strong, fast, and removes all sensations of pain, and can even fix injuries on the go, but it does this by forcing your body to ignore all its own warnings, stabbing you with metal spikes to reinforce your skeleton, and can cause you to temporarily go insane to the point where you see everything around you as an enemy. Shit like that.
What we get instead from shonen is a couple chapters/one episode of power incontinence and "oh teh noes so hard to control" (and maybe a bit character to sacrifice) before the status quo returns with an additional set of bullshit powers for the protagonist. Even the simplistic wish-fulfillment crap would be more interesting if characters had to work for their power instead of getting it in a short training montage/through plot coupons (or, gods forbid, if the entire series progressed in some way not linked to how much glowing crap people can shoot), if someone other than the main character and their main enemy at the time mattered in the power scheme of things, and if there wasn't all the fucking sexism.
Seriously, on that note. Think about the shonen series out there. Now think about the number of competent female characters. How many of them are irrelevant in fights by the second arc? How many of them are stuck with the crappy support powers/roles? How many of them get one spotlight moment where they're real members of the cast before they go back into the fucking support/emotional leash bench? How many of them do all their awesomeness offscreen because they're tokens who don't travel with the protagonists? How many of them can even pass the Bechdel test? Naruto's one of the biggest offenders here, but most of them do it at some level. I mean, of all the places where you'd expect to find relative gender equality, wouldn't the ones where people blow each other up with magic bullshit and superpowers be it? Or is there an assumption that children can't possibly empathize with people of the other gender? That might be the biggest bullshit of them all.
That's the end of that rambling, incoherent rant on why I fucking hate shonen norms.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3143829 times)