(Please note: this post contains plot structure spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. If you aren’t up-to-date on both manga as of the date of posting you might want to hold off.) The battle shōnen genre is no stranger to angst. The period of Weekly Shonen Jump I grew up reading was full of it. Yu Yu Hakusho, Shaman King, and even early One Piece all had heart-pounding moments that made my hands shake around the paperback cover. Shōnen’s reputation as a whole mainly extends in the opposite direction – protagonists overcome the odds with the power of friendship, the bite of friendly rivalry, or the motivation of having something to fight for, but I would posit “Battle Shōnen Angst” is just as central to the genre.
All That Is Shōnen Melts Into Angst
The phenomena I want to look at here is not the usual Battle Shōnen Angst. Most writers prepare their framing, world-building, and commercial image for the emotional tone they want. The ideological clashes and minor geopolitics that early One Piece introduced fit with their pirate motives. It treated trials with emotional clarity, despite lacking nuance. Yu Yu Hakusho had a gritty, hard-boiled, self-aware tone from the start, and continued to deliver. Shaman King was about kids fighting with dead spirits. Shit was fucked.
No, the angst I am concerned by is the capitalist stress present in late-game Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Here are the structures that I feel both series shared from the beginning:
- Much of their early following stuck around thanks to a lovable cast;
- Story patterns and arcs arose from routine ideological conflict;
- Slice of life segments served to further the story and give the reader a break. The characters are living as though their lives are not just the plot.
These features are bread and butter for any battle shōnen. They had a good formula going. People were invested. What happened?
What If You Held A Final Battle And Everyone Came
Both of these stories had a massive, cast-spanning conflict that could have served as the satisfying ending of the current story. The conflicts killed off, sidelined, or undermined many beloved characters from the series. Both of the conflicts have resulted in a sort of pre-apocalyptic dark age reminiscent of Y2K anxiety. Since the event didn’t resolve with completion via doomsday, it spilled over and continues to balloon. Sound familiar?
In short, it feels as though the only possible explanation is that both of these manga are making too much money to be given a graceful end.
And so the stresses of capitalism step into the picture. This is the current state of both series:
- The story stretches past its tonal catharsis and made into a grinding, ceaseless conflict. Down-time and side stories take up little space, or are non-existent;
- Many new characters appear with little background or emotional investment;
- Extant characters change in ways that makes their earlier development feel moot in the new environment. With some, we wait for months or years for them to rejoin the plot. (I cry.)
Out of the Sci-Frying Pan…
These changes come with concrete impacts for the reader. Not everyone wants to read Attack on Titan in every story they pick up. Some people literally cannot due to trauma. Some simply aren’t in the market for those kinds of stories. Grimdark has a time and a place, and when you establish a series’ tone and gain readers you must be cognizant as to why they stuck with it.
“Meanie,” I can hear you say. “This is the intellectual property of the author! It’s their story to tell, and they’re allowed to write how they want.” First, writing what you want doesn’t prevent readers from coming to their own conclusions about what you meant. Second, the modern publishing field is not quite built around that.
Any art that involves more than one person proceeds based on a social contract. That must be a factor in storytelling decisions, or you risk endangering your audience.
ANYWAYS. Time for an example. As capitalist stress increases, the conditions for the exploited become even more precarious. Let’s talk about women.
How It Started (Feminist?)
Both JJK and MHA are known to differing degrees for their women characters. In my opinion, early JJK has some of the best women in all of shōnen. They’re idiosyncratic, selfish, proud, spiteful, clever, and very, very strong. The series’ trademark violence did not feel vengeful towards any one demographic or identity.
Meanwhile, I would argue MHA doesn’t respect its women much in the big picture (and often in the smaller pictures). I’m hardly the first to do so and I won’t be the last. In spite of this, it’s clear that the women in main cast have clear traits, personalities, and boundaries that don’t consign them solely to the role of being googly-eyed, small-voiced vending machines delivering attention to men.
Then the Big Bad Event happens, and both stories sink into a stark, misogynistic “comfort” zone.
How It’s Going (Misogynist.)
JJK keeps introducing tough-guy and oddball types I don’t care about at all to fight men I used to care more about. We get a new woman on occasion, and I won’t mince my words – the new women in the story suck. One has a fixation for feudal relationship stereotypes, then leaves after doing nothing. Another flies around the skies naked with only her chest and groin rendered invisible. She is suitably clever, and has some backstory, but still…why. Maki Zenin thou art not.
Speaking of Maki, her pre-hiatus travesty is worth its own essay, one that I don’t have time to go into here. I implore you still to consider the Zenin Clan plot point in the larger context of what I’m discussing.
MHA seems to have backpedaled on its gender politics platform even worse. It kills not one, not two, but three women in the span of a couple dozen chapters. This feels like a cheap ploy to buy time. The worst part is two of the three women barely impact the plot after Horikoshi went out of his way to involve them. Their introductions impose upon the story rather than emerge from it organically. They have a few panels of backstory, some one-size-fits-all empathy, and then bam. Fridged. Listen, we get the point that One For All and Shigaraki are bad dudes. We’ve known for hundreds of chapters. They’re the main antagonists, remember? We don’t need more evidence that they’re evil.
We especially don’t need that evidence delivered at the expense of the massive demographic of women who are some of MHA’s most dedicated fans.
Gritpicking
I’m not against a gritty violent plot. I have come to be a great fan of the works of Tatsuki Fujimoto and his former assistant Yuji Kaku. Both write distressing stories but set up the world to be able to manage that emotional range. Chainsaw Man might be gory and nauseating as the day is long, but it also has complex explorations of awkwardly developing sexuality and cross-gender platonic friendship. Yuji Kaku’s sense of humor goes a long way to lighten up Hell’s Paradise Jigokuraku. In addition, several of the character arcs brought me to tears and none of that could have happened without considerable downtime dedicated to making me care about them.
Furthermore, world-spanning disasters are not subjects I shy away from in my readership. Black Clover features apocalypse after apocalypse but it is framed with religious fantasy, featuring devils, magic, and medieval aesthetics. It has not led to quite the same feeling JJK and MHA exhibit. The latter titles take place in the modern day, and assume the existence of capitalism in their premises.
In A Stroke Of Dramatic Irony, Here Is A Conclusion
Welcome to capitalist realism, they seem to say. Deal with it. The charming slice of life is gone. While still present, the ideological conflict now abrades our attention and investment. Characters both literally and metaphorically shout into loudspeakers about their worldview. Our favorite cast members disappear unceremoniously. Edginess is brought to the fore and women suffer heavy losses. As long as it makes money, why stop?
I wrote this whole thing then found this TV Tropes entry… I should spend more time on there. If you enjoyed this rant, check out my other posts. If you disagree with my distinctions between Battle Shōnen Angst and capitalist stress, you think Battle Shōnen Angst shouldn’t be capitalized, or just plain hated my opinions, I encourage you to tell me in the comments and help boost my analytics. 🙂
Special thanks to my friends C., L., and B. for having the conversations with me that led to this post.