Animu tangent split from LTD (there are spoilers...you've been warned)

[Makoeyes987]

Well i really don't want to think of just the end of Dragonball. I kinda hated the Buu Saga and would have much rather had it all end with Cell.

But I just don't see how you can say DBZ has strong female characters when the absolute strongest one is way weaker than all the most important characters.

18 is an important character. I never just thought of the Saiyans as the only important characters in the series.

I guess I would just think a series with strong female characters would have at least onr, preferably more, females who are in what I'd call the "top tier".

Well fair enough, but I just think its kinda unfair to just brush 18 aside cause she's not "top tier." She was top tier when introduced and even now she's still one of the strongest Earthlings in the story, despite not being top tier.

For instance, let's talk about the shounen I said was my favorite earlier. Yu Yu Hakusho. This series was pretty piss poor when it came to strong female characters. Sure Shizuru was badass and Keiko wasn't as bad as some make her out to be but where are the females who could pwn Yusuke in a fight? Who could beat Toguro like a bitch?

YYH is so one of my favorite shonen series as well. Oh God, glad to see another who appreciates that one. And here I was thinking you were truly out of your mind!

Yeah, YYH has a very well rounded cast of badass females, both in terms of personality AND combat.

The answer was provided in the Three Kings Arc. (which kinda sucked but eh) Mukuro was not only insanely powerful, she had a long history of abuse and mistreatment. She overcame it all and became a King, or rather, Queen, in a frickin' Demon World.
It's even implied she could be the strongest fighter in YYH. (Her or Raizen Prime)

Yup. Mukuro. The bitch who beat the shit out of Hiei and punched a hole through him when he got too uppity and rude for her taste. God, she's kickass.

So I'd say YYH at least has a strong female character because she can go one on one with any other guy in her verse and either trash them or equal them.

I guess we do just have fundamentally different ideas of strong females.

YYH definitely does. Fair enough then.

*scratches head* Been almost a decade or so since I first watched Yu Yu Hakusho and I still don't get it. I guess she's not all-woman but...she's not a man...er, oh nevermind.

That's a man. She's really a man who just dresses up as a woman, and even got breast implants. But she still has a penis and balls.

In the original anime and manga, she's a guy who just wants to be a woman, but wants to keep her penis. Yeah.

 

[Makoeyes987]

OH GODDAMNIT, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW.

YOU'RE NIKKOLAS. IT'S YOU AGAIN, YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS GAVE IT AWAY. DID YOU REALLY THINK WE'D FORGET IT?!!? CHRIST.

 

[Gabranth]

Best of Both Worlds.
Or so they say...

But I kinda wondered if it was part of her demon species ya know. Like they were naturally hermaphroditic.
But it's just a shemale. That's cool too.

AI really didn't like how the seire ends with Yusuke being way weaker than all the other big guys. He's weaker than Raizen still, weaker than Yomi, weaker than Mukuro...weaker than all of Raizen's friends....
Lame.

Though I guess he's done really well considering they've all had hundreds or thousands of years of experience and he's had about four.

Is there a shounen where the protagonist gains strength through years of dedicated training and effort instead of just being gifted with awesome and the ability to raise their power level several dozen times faster than everyone else?

EDIT:
Hehe, been wondering how long it'd take ya.
Well it's been fun Mako. I do enjoy debating with you guys every now and then when I'm bored.
Later.

 

[Super Mario]

LOL

 

[Makoeyes987]

Oh for fuck's sake. I can't believe this.

I was already feeling an odd since of...familiarity, with the debating style and odd statements and tastes.

But the fucking visual kei avatar finally raised the red flags and I knew this shit was too eerily familiar.

Yeah. It's been real fun. Something tells me, I should say something along the lines of "see you later" rather than "enjoy your ban." Fuck.

 

[Celes Chere]

Lol... well, that was a strange turn of events.

 

[looneymoon]

Sorry, I must admit I didn't read most of those teel dear posts.

As for female characters in shounen: I think the problem tends to be that shounen manga is written by boys for boys. Therefore the male lead character and his male archnemesis tends to get the awesome powerups and best arcs. Whereas the female characters, who may have the potential to be awesome, tend to be shafted into the fanservice role. Any character depth tends to be secondary to their sexual appeal. And when they don't have that faservicey role, then their entire arc tends to be centred around the hero and his arc. It kinda puts a damper on the whole "strong woman" portrayal.

I can't speak on behalf of Naruto or Bleach, but I think a series like DragonBall (which imo is pretty much a shounen archetype) is heinously guilty of this. Hell, same with Rurouni Kenshin, a series I like without any nostalgic attachments.

SORRY AGAIN IF I'M REPEATING ANYTHING THAT'S ALREADY BEEN SAID AND SHOT DOWN

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

Some female-centric series that I did not realize were shounen: Azumanga Daioh, Yotsubato, Haruhi, First Love Limited, Lucky Star, Victorian Romance Emma, Sasami: Magical Girl's Club and Silent Mobius (it's an all-female police force and the strongest person in the series is Kasumi).

Shounen can be full of surprises.

 

[Joker]

Azumanga Daioh

lolwat

 

[Eerie]

Shoujo can be surprising too like Rose of Versailles [that I didn't like], Ningyou Kyuutei Gakudan, Yamada Tarou Monogatari and generally, a lot of horror stories.

I think the real difference between shounen and shoujo is that shounen takes a classical fighting stance. While there are fighting series in shoujo [Sailor Moon, but also Tsubasa Reservoir, etc], it's not the main genre. What I appreciate about shoujo is that it focuses a lot on the characters and their developments, and add a lot of cultural reference that I enjoy very much.

The distinction between shounen and shoujo tends to be washed away because both girls and boys read both genres nowadays. So authors tend to expand their worlds.

Also, shounen have female mangaka [Black Cat, FMA], as shoujo have male authors [one of my favourite shoujo mangaka is a guy - Dengeki Daisy, as well as all his other works, as gems, IMHO].

 

[Splintered]

There are a few shounen that are really good about the whole strong females thing, but most of the popular ones aren't exactly equal. But that's mostly because, as I said before, there's a huge divergence in the gender ratio, and there tends to be a lot of strong characters introduced, used for an arc, and then move on. A guy oriented manga is going to have more guys in it, that's the way it works.

Not all shoujo portray their female leads particularly better than their shounen counterparts, the difference is that they tend to have more female fighters so there's more room for variety.

OH GODDAMNIT, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW.

YOU'RE NIKKOLAS. IT'S YOU AGAIN, YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS GAVE IT AWAY. DID YOU REALLY THINK WE'D FORGET IT?!!? CHRIST.

Who? Is there a story attached to this red capslocks post?

 

[Ryushikaze]

Some female-centric series that I did not realize were shounen: Azumanga Daioh, Yotsubato, Haruhi, First Love Limited, Lucky Star, Victorian Romance Emma, Sasami: Magical Girl's Club and Silent Mobius (it's an all-female police force and the strongest person in the series is Kasumi).

Shounen can be full of surprises.

Several of those really should not fall into shounen. Azu and Yotsu especially should fall into the family or 'all' category much like a Ghibli film, and Emma really isn't all that Shonen. It truly lacks what 'defines' the shonen genre.
But that just gets back to my gripe that the basic genre delineations are stupid and really ought to be revised.

Also, Nikkolas was a permabanned poster. Gabby was his sockpuppet. Gabby got banned.

 

[Celes Chere]

Azumanga and Lucky Star are Shonen? And Victorian Romance Emma, too? Alriiiiighty then, I did not know that. xDD

O-M-G, I love Silent Mobius. I haven't seen it in ages.

 

[Eerie]

The shounen and shoujo genre really are determined by a simple thing: where they are published first. If they're published in a shounen magazine, it's going to be shounen. If it's published in a shoujo magazine, it's going to be shoujo. As simple as that. After that, seinen, josei, shounen and shoujo magazine will have different ways of handling their series [especially seinen and josei that are for adults], but you can find all genres whithin one genre.

For example, Maison Ikkoku is... SEINEN. Yes it is. _o/

I think it's easier to understand "shounen" and "shoujo" once you know that. There are great mangas, no matter where they were published, and but the vast majority is sucky anyway. That's how it is, no need to put a limit "I read only shoujo" "I read only shounen", because it's like giving up on good manga under the false pretense that it's not meant for you.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

Emma is actually seinen, I suspect because of meido moe and the occasional flash of boobs. But then again, so is Chi's Sweet Home, a story about kittens. It's pretty odd.

Personally, I'm looking forward to reading 'Fujoshi Kanojo' when it gets translated because it was hilarious from the stuff I've read. She sees everything as a potential yaoi couple, including her boyfriend and his best friend. :B

 

[Ryushikaze]

The shounen and shoujo genre really are determined by a simple thing: where they are published first. If they're published in a shounen magazine, it's going to be shounen. If it's published in a shoujo magazine, it's going to be shoujo. As simple as that. After that, seinen, josei, shounen and shoujo magazine will have different ways of handling their series [especially seinen and josei that are for adults], but you can find all genres whithin one genre.

For example, Maison Ikkoku is... SEINEN. Yes it is. _o/

I think it's easier to understand "shounen" and "shoujo" once you know that. There are great mangas, no matter where they were published, and but the vast majority is sucky anyway. That's how it is, no need to put a limit "I read only shoujo" "I read only shounen", because it's like giving up on good manga under the false pretense that it's not meant for you.

And I quote

But that just gets back to my gripe that the basic genre delineations are stupid and really ought to be revised.

 

[Celes Chere]

She sees everything as a potential yaoi couple

She and I would get along swimmingly.

 

[Eerie]

@Ryu: I got that, but don't you think that it's mainly you who are confining what should be shounen or shoujo? I mean, even in their narratives, the stories are not the same, although they tend to use the same tricks. I think it's a bit sad, because there are boys who like to read romance from a guy POV, and thus this genre also exists in shounen, for example [although, there's a lot of harem in those ones XD].

Why should shoujo be always about love stories? Why can't it be something thrilling, with a heavy plot? Girls also like fighting manga.

And by washing away those differences, the mangaka are able to give more depth to their stories, by giving their characters or plot something more.

You say "genres should be redefined", but that's something I can't agree on; as long as something is good, be it romance or fight, is it really important to tag it one way? Video Girl Ai was a shounen focused on romance, yet it doesn't belong to shoujo, since the way it was written was definitely for guys. Because of that, this was a "shounen". Should I tag Ningyou Kyuutei Gakudan as shounen because it's horror with a dark world?

Variety is what people like. It's also good that people expand their universe through reading various things [here, it's manga, but it's the same for all the books]. If I should stick along with shounen and shoujo genre, then, since I'm a woman, does it mean that I definitely shouldn't have read Stephen King while I was a teen because it was "horror and violent"? Or Asimov because there's no romance in there?

See what I mean? I think you're trying to tag mangas when it's way more various than that. Because they're mangas, what applies for books shouldn't apply? I don't think so.

 

[Makoeyes987]

What's the point of a classification system if it doesn't classify anything consistently? Not about variety, just about classifications actually making sense and describing what properly fits within.

Anyways, the latest chapter of Bleach came out. And just...holy shit.

People were complaining about his pacing before, but now the it just keeps moving faster and faster. Goddamn.

 

[Eerie]

I've been on Bleach all day long, seriously. I'm still digesting the chapter. The colour page's poem reminds me of Ichigo's "the sun that locks Heaven" from SOULs. I'm also very smug because I predicted Ichigo's inner world being underwater _o/

Also, you may have missed it, but shounen and shoujo, even when storytelling the same kind of stories [be it romantic or fighting] don't do it the same way. That's the trick.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

Spoiler

lol am I the only who thinks Tensa Zangetsu looks vaguely like Rukia?

Also if Tite Kubo kills Tatsuki I will never forgive him.

 

[Super Mario]

So guys lemme tell you something. Yesterday someone recommended me a children's manga called Narutaru/Shadow Star for a read cos I was researching for a small strip I was drawing....




At the first Chapter I was like:


:johnorange: hay dis is a cute manga lol



then by chapter 2 - 3 it suddenly spiralled to...something else entirely:






Then a few chapters later I was

Then by the middle of the series I was



:hurry:




And then when it all ended and all the misery died down to a

Spoiler

Kill em all

Trope I went:

lllooooooolllll

 

[Max Payne]

People were complaining about his pacing before, but now the it just keeps moving faster and faster. Goddamn.

Yeah, you are such a blatant fanboy. The pacing is the same as it always was.

Don't mistake plot progression for good pacing. I mean, Aizen is on his way to fuck EVERYTHING up, and Kubo manages to find a retardedly convenient plot device to give Ichigo a sudden chance to train?

What a joke.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Spoiler

What I really like, is how this is all coming full circle, in terms of Aizen and Ichigo finally having a personal conflict to motivate their conflict.

Before, as Aizen stated during their first confrontation...Ichigo didn't really have a personal reason to fight him. Aizen hadn't killed any of his friends, despite her kidnapping, Orihime was safe. In the end, Aizen's plot hadn't truly inflicted personal harm or loss onto Ichigo's world. There was no hatred in his actions.

With Aizen now setting Tatsuki and Ichigo's classmates in his sights, as he basically goes on a rampage through Karakura town, the shit just got real. Ichigo is going to have to kill Aizen or watch as he systematically murders each and every resident until its a mass grave.

The fucker's right there in his home town killing everyone. It's the zero hour now, and the Gotei 13 can't save everyone. It's either Ichigo and his dad, or no one else.

Yeah, you are such a blatant fanboy. The pacing is the same as it always was.

Don't mistake plot progression for good pacing. I mean, Aizen is on his way to fuck EVERYTHING up, and Kubo manages to find a retardedly convenient plot device to give Ichigo a sudden chance to train?

What a joke.

You pessimistic prick.

And that's inherently bad because...? Retardedly convenient? Not really. Unless you thought the Room of Spirit and Time, and Shadow Clone technique were retardedly convenient.

Unless you want Ichigo to get raped and beaten to death while his dad basically does all the fighting.

 

[Super Mario]

The point is Mako, it's not as convincing or as engaging... But I still love to read Bleach to see it end. : ( Or get cancelled either way, it just feels slow atm. Like I don't know where the series is heading at. X(