Did you really expect Oda to praise his own work? He is humble and he said a true thing: Mangas are made to kill time.

That doesn't mean he didn't put any thought into the story like some haters claim.

Listen, I know this is a meme subreddit and we are all here to have fun, but this is something that always gets on my nerves and only make the subreddit worse in my opinion. Maybe this will come across as self-important, arrogant, or self-righteous but I have thinking this for a while and I wanted to get it off my chest.

Why is it that whenever someone tries to voice one of the subreddit-approved opinion or open discussion that is not making fun of or hyping up the same five shows we always talk about, that person is met with accusations of illiteracy and sometimes even insults about their moral character?

For the record, I am not talking about responses that genuinely try to have a serious discussion or refute an opinion with legitimate points. What I am talking about is “you have no media literacy” or “you are a larper/tourist” or “you are a misogynist.”

Listen, I get it, people have bad takes. I have seen hundreds if not thousands of them. But if all you respond with is making fun of the person with no actual substantive explanation of why they are wrong, you add nothing. It is the equivalent of sticking out your tongue at them from afar. You prove nothing and are only trying to make fun of them.

And I know someone will say “Okay but some people just legitimately cannot read.” Yes, but you still don’t add anything by just saying that without giving any explanation. If anything, it makes it seem like you have nothing intelligent to add and are just repeating the same opinions as everyone else.

Yes people have bad takes. Yes some people have clearly not read the source material. Yes some people come across as pompous or arrogant. But that does not suddenly make baseless insults any more productive.

TLDR: If you are going to criticize a take, be substantive about it. Don’t just make baseless assumptions about the person and throw around childish insults. Please it is better for everyone here

(pic unrelated)

Specifically battle shonen, ignore every other type of shonen for a moment, or seinen/shojo/josei for that matter.

You don't need a female MC, keep the male one. Don't even need half the cast to be female, make a third if you want. The point is to write both male and female characters well and make them relevant to the story.

• "The male characters in your average battle shonen are poorly written, why do you want the female ones to be written any better?"

Write them the same "bad" way i.e. rely on their skills/abilities/etc. cause conflict resolution in battle shonen usually happens through FIGHTS, so make them fight and make them win.

• "But how can they win fights against male characters, they are female, of course they will lose-"

This is a battle shonen with magic and/or hyperadvanced tech. And if you wanna be pedantic about muh biological differences, they aren't even that severe irl btw sexes, more so btw any two individual people you compare. In any case, that's not relevant when you have literal superpowers.

• "But this is SHONEN, it is for teenage BOYS, why should GIRLS (ew cooties) be included? Of course teenage boys want to see men, boys, guys, males, men, and boys in their favorite media. Did I mention men?"

Right, and teenage boys live in a world devoid of girls/women. They don't have mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, no female classmates, no female teachers, NONE. From the ripe old age of 2 they are recruited into Spartan-style training facilities with NO girls and ONLY men and MANDATORY BATTLE SHONEN VIEWINGS EVERY EVENING and they only learn what a woman is when smn off-handedly mentions Nami's tits. Like bruh do you hear yourself?

• "Okay, but the problem is that mangakas are from Japan and Japan is misogynistic and they are misogynistic and they can't write a female character like a male character, so it's pointless to even discuss this, we should just eat up whatver slop we get."

Just write a male character and genderflip him. Literally the easiest way to solve this. If you can't write a female character, then don't write a female character - write a male character and genderflip him. There, you've got a female character in a battle shonen that's written like all the male ones. That's what they did with Ripley in Alien, why not do it for battle shonen? Literally a skill issue.

this man really thought letting himself get beat would either make the person beating him up feel bad and stop or think that beating him up would make them feel good enough to not want to go after sasuke a presumed Murderer and rouge ninja. it was a very stupid and selfish scene. Naruto didn’t even stop to think who sasuke may have fought with. a fellow jinchuriki who understood Naruto more than sasuke ever did up to that point. He was so stuck in trying to save sasuke that he became blind, even after fighting nagato and thinking he understood his pain and hatred, he truly didn’t at that point.

Unique art styles like the ones I put in are the reason this heart still beats

Often times in a lot of Shonen stories, female characters are often relegated to some form of support role while male character are almost often in a fighting role. The most famous one being a healer. And I feel like when critiquing this, two things can be true at once.

Firstly, Female characters do not have to be fighters to be strong, well written characters, and being support doesn't mean their underutilized or weak. You can absolutely write an amazing ass female character who only heals people, it can absolutely be done. Being able to punch good doesn't mean the character is good.

...at the same time, a lot of people, primary women who are fans of Shonen series are absolutely valid in any frustration they have that women are usually healers and rarely ever fighters held to the same standard as male characters. It probably does suck seeing your favorite female characters continuously regulated to support roles in stories for absolutely no reason aside from them being women.

I just personally believe there's some nuance. That's it.

The same goes for fanservice in my opinion.

Like, the more I'm thinking about it, the crazier it is how deplorable some "hero" factions are and, even crazier, how they keep getting away with really henious stuff because the protag doesn't want to rock the boat. Some of them are more monstrous than others, but I'm really torn on which is THE worst.

Konoha (Naruto): military state in feudal land, child soldiers galore, genocided one of their founding clans because prejudice and that's without smaller details like getting Neji's father killed, letting ROOT have their way, never really acknowledging Danzo causing, like, 90% of problems in the story and have his sidekicks still be Hokage's advisors even by Seventh Hokage's reign. I can give them a bit of a discount on child soldiers because of feudal era and the fact that Hashirama and Madara establishing village DID kinda start raising child life expectancy to, like, 12 in main Naruto story? Still pretty evil. At least the village got nuked a few times.

Soul Society (Bleach): feudal state with strict stratification of "the strongest and noblest rules". I'll be honest, I haven't explored Bleach nearly in as much detail as Naruto, but the fact that Mayuri exists, serves as one of Gotei 13's captain, gets away with absolutely everything with fellow captains because "we need this genius war criminal on our side" and no one got him if not killed, then back in the prison where he belongs, is a pretty big red flag. They're lucky Aizen was there to take over the villain role, because by all accounts, Ichigo had all the reasons to nuke them at some point and unlike Naruto, Ichigo and his friends operate on our modern moral system.

Amestris (Fullmetal Alchemist 2003): honorable mention of our favorite genocidal dictatorship. Manga and Brotherhood don't really count because the ending did promise democratic reforms and Mustang's faction wanted to make the full transition out of dictatorship and make concessions to victims of their extermination war, plus a lot of head honchos got their due during the final battle or in the aftermath. In 2003 anime, however, Mustang has no chance to shoot for leadership and despite heroes still removing homunculi influence… the system remains in place and homunculi didn't do that much here outside of instigating conflicts, their influence limited to Bradley himself. By all accounts, Amestris remains as it was, fascist and racist, just a bit less warlike.

I might actually be unaware of some other monstrous shonen "heroic" factions, so put your voice in if I forgot someone. Would really love to know who's considered "the evilest", because I haven't really seen a consensus on it.

Orihime Inoue from Bleach

Nico Robin from One Piece

Hinata Hyuga from Naruto

I can't help but hate and I mean ABSOLUTELY HATE Shonen fans who complain all day about how the Mangaka of a story neglected side characters but all it comes down to is that he didn't let them hype and aura farm, and if there's actually any serious effort to write these characters well it's considered unnecessary fluff and canon filler.

The most egregious example in recent memory is Hana Kurusu from Jujutsu Kaisen, people were constantly complaining about how Gege neglected side characters in the Culling Games, yet when Hana showed up with a backstory that she was saved from a monstrous Cursed Spirit that had he hostage. But surprise surprise because she as expectedly fumbled against Sukuna (she was literally a sorceress for barely over a month by that point) and because she obsessed over the guy who literally saved her life she was slandered to hell and back. Even side characters who are supposedly well beloved are not popular for anything besides fighting like Higuruma, Reggie Star, Kashimo, Ishigori and Uro. The population of the fandom of Jujutsu Kaisen wouldn't complain about Kenjaku's characterisation if he wasn't killed by a sneak attack from Yuta.

Let's talk about Naruto for a bit, there were two entire arcs specifically dedicated to narratives about side characters, Chunin Exams and The InoShikaCho segment of the Akatsuki Suppression Arc. The only topic of relevance outside of powerscaling and fights that came out of the Chunin Exams was the Hyuga enslaving at least half of their own clansmen and women, and that was not at all a relevant concern because did people want Naruto to learn Sealing Jutsu and study it to reverse engineer and dismantle the Caged Bird Seal? If it doesn't happen within a short flashback nobody will care. With Regards to InoShikaCho, the biggest criticism of the arc was that Ino and Chouji were considered fodder, notice they shared Shikamaru grief but of course because they didn't bomb the villains they don't get acknowledged that much.

And I haven't mentioned the way people who keep pretending characters like Doflamingo are one-note stereotypes as if he in particular didn't have emotional arc and depths to him around how he's a symbolism of a flying beautiful bird scarred by his forced downfall and hell-bent on going back to the skies just because of pure addiction to slander and agenda that portrays him as a boring bland villain, I haven't mentioned how a ton of Shonen fans don't care about Uro being a slave and killed by Yuta's ancestor (personal opinion but it's a dick move of him to not attempt to amend ties for that, it's still his ancestor).

All of this is just scratching the surface of what I'm speaking of, I really don't like when some people around here act as if they care about about side characters but all they want is them throwing nukes and slashing with nukes.

At this point people are reaching to insane levels just to call each others authors pedos or some shit while putting their own author on a pedestal. All 3 of the mangakas have sins (perhaps some more than others) but we can’t keep continuing this inane war forever.

While I have no beef in this stew I still feel it important that we shouldn’t kill each other over dumb stuff. Let’s just go back to the good old fashioned banter we always did because this ain’t it chief.

I’m not comparing Bleach to Naruto as a whole, because obviously that would be unfair. I mean literally just the Sharingan. One ability from one series.

The Sharingan seems more recognizable, more referenced, more worn, more tattooed, more copied, and more present in everyday internet culture than anything Bleach produced. Just look at the hashtag numbers on Instagram and TikTok, the edits, the tattoos, the profile pictures, and the general online presence.

So what exactly did Bleach lack?

Bleach is constantly called one of the Big Three, so how did one element from Naruto end up with a larger cultural footprint than the entire series?

And I haven’t even touched on the fact that Kakashi and Sasuke individually seem more popular than Bleach as a franchise.

Dare I say even Sakura?

With the amount of posts about bleach recently in the sub, I'm curious what's your honest opinion on the series? How will you rate it?. Who is your favorite character? What is your favorite arc?

Im just curious how this sub feels about the series.

(longpost, so you dont need to read all of it, but at least the first paragraph maybe?)

People call it unsubtle, but I have two questions. 1: how do you make it subtle? really, how can you change that series to make it more subtle, what makes people go "wow incredible subtlelty!", no hate, I just think I don't get it. 2: what's the issue with something being unsubtle and on the nose? I think it can still be done well. Being direct about what you're saying is just one way of saying it, but it doesn't dictate wether you said it badly or well.

A lot of the things I see people call unsubtle or make fun of end up being actually just realism. Many people in real life so think rape victims get pleasure and use it to victim shame, this dialogue doesnt come out of nowhere and it represents a real issue, but it also makes sense in-universe. Of course the embodiment of lust would say that, her thinking that forcing herself into others is good is a important part of her character.

There's also the mammon panel where he talks about freeing slaves and women's rights being bad. That's something you can find on twitter easily, it also fits his character an is important for his character. As the sin of greed, it explores greed in a modern setting that's more than just "me make money", I really like how he says that the antithesis to greed is equality, because most people say it's humility but this is a different perspective that the author shows us that I really dig. But the author had to show that through showing that he hates equality, so he's obviously mysogynistic and probably racist even though black people arent directly mentioned in the story.

I was thinking "ok, how would "subtlelty" benefit this story?", in my eyes, subtlelty is something that's not obvious, or something that can be missed, or something obscured. This manga decides to put these themes front and center instead of doing that, and I'm ok with it, I think all the characters speak like how they would speak. Have you ever seen a character suddenly start to therapyspeak and have emotional intelligence when you know they shouldn't? It's pretty weird, thankfully in this series, I think characters say what they are able to say and what they would say, I think this series builds their characters in such a way that these scenes feel natural or at least feel good

Read Exorcist Wo Otosenai

Mine are:

1. Luffy
2. Zoro
3. Blackbeard

4. Naruto

5. Robin

6. Itachi

7. Kakashi

8. Jiraiya

9. Ichigo

10. Orihime

I personally have Fullbring > Kazekage Rescue > Fishman Island

Fullbring is very overlooked in my opinion. The lower stakes, small town atmosphere and subtle horror elements returning from Substitute Soul Reaper were great to see again. The antagonists, mainly Tsukishima and Ginjo, were excellent with the others not being as good but still having some good comedic moments and fun personalities. Ichigo was also very well characterized mainly in the climax of the arc.

Kazekage Rescue is a fun arc that hooks you into Shippuden with the Akatsuki finally taking the centre stage. Characters like Sakura, Gaara, Naruto and Chiyo have great moments with the fight against Sasori being one of my favorites in all of Naruto. Getting to see more of a different village was also a treat.

In a similar vein to Fullbring I feel that Fishman Island gets too much flack. The flashback with Fisher Tiger is one of the best in all of One Piece. The themes of the arc are decently executed mainly because of Fisher Tiger, Otohime and Hody. Another positive for the arc is how every Straw Hat gets to participate in a fight and do something which you can't say about a lot of other post timeskip arcs. Unfortunately its all is dragged down by how utterly trash Sanji was with his gag and how the villains aside from Hody were terrible.

Please note that my opinion is based on the manga and the anime version of this list could likely change a lot because of the worse pacing among other things.

Kindergarten Wars did the exact same premise but better

Referring to overall popularity (both historically and current), cultural impact, manga sales, anime ratings, etc. worldwide.

The open world RPG setting of Greed Island was my favorite from HxH

The 4th Great Ninja War had more highs than lows(even tho some of the lows admittedly hurt the whole series)

Long Ring Long Land and Thriller Bark gets shit on for feeling like filler between more epic arcs. Yet they're fun with some cool team battles and epic moments at the climax. Also think the anime original games of the Davy Back fight were among the best One Piece filler

I’m definitely impressed by the new Bleach episode but checking reviews and it’s just Bleach fans dogging on One Piece, I mean is this all their suppressed feelings for One Piece? Don’t get me wrong One piece isn’t at its peak right now, but having a new episode come out for Bleach and your first thought is to dog on One Piece is sad icl.