What Makes Shounen...Shounen?

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In reading Toriko, I was struck by how perfectly the art, tone, and plot captured the essence of shounen. And yet, the art didn't mimic Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece. Indeed, the art and plot of all those titles are remarkably different.

It got me thinking: What sets Shonen Jump-style shounen titles apart from other genres?

Wikipedia's article about shounen manga states: "Shounen (å°‘å¹´) manga (æ¼«ç”») is typically characterized by high-action, often humorous plots featuring male protagonists. The camaraderie between boys or men...is often emphasized. Attractive female characters with exaggerated features are also common, but are not a requirement....After the case of Tsutomu Miyazaki, depictions of violence and sexual matters became more highly regulated in manga in general, but especially in shonen manga. The art style of shounen is generally less flowery than that of shoujo manga." The article on shounen itself states: "Shounen manga is a popular genre of Japanese comics, generally about action/fighting but often contains a sense of humor and strong growing friendship-bonds between the characters." (Yes, yes; don't use Wikipedia as a primary source. But that's a good synthesis of several definitions, such as ANN's.)

So, we have five standard traits:


 * 1) High action
 * 2) Frequent humor
 * 3) Male protagonists
 * 4) Camaraderie and growing bonds of friendship
 * 5) Mild to moderate explicit violence or sexuality

Each of those traits have interesting elements to them.

What exactly is high action? I suppose it means action sequences beyond the bounds of everyday action. In shounen, characters don't just get into a shootout; they throw fireballs at planetary evils, run up sheer cliffs, and evade giant robots.

Interestingly, this usually necessitates another world. Of the half-dozen big shonen titles I can think of from the past decade or so, almost all are set in fantasy worlds (Naruto, One Piece, Toriko) or alternate realities (Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragon Ball Z).

We do see frequent humor in shounen titles. Why has that become a staple?

Part of that trend can be laid at the feet of Osamu Tezuka. He loved to spice up even his most serious stories with humor. Tezuka's so influential that everyone followed suit, especially for kid-oriented manga.

It's also just not much fun to read an action story that stays serious for hundreds of pages. If the tension is never alleviated, it can't build effectively.

The male protagonist is an obvious element: shonen is aimed at boys, particularly pre-teen boys, for whom Girls Are Icky. (Indeed, girls are Bulma; mercurial and bizarre).

I find the element of camaraderie most intriguing. Any shonen title involves a long-running action story. An ongoing theme of shounen is the education of combat: what you learn about somebody by fighting with or against them. I could write quite a bit about this--it makes sense, but it's dangerous--but suffice to say that it's about the only way to justify the story: it's not just about super-powerful people pounding on each other; it's about what they learn by doing so.

Finally, there's the violence and sexuality. Manga exhibits both, but they're not explicit. You won't see internal organs in a typical shounenmanga release, and death is often impermanent. Sexuality is limited to adolescent attempts to see girls naked or rapture over the feelings of a woman's breasts. It's actually quite rare for shonen to deal seriously with the consequences of violence or sexuality.

So, those are the five core traits of shounen. Anything I've missed?