One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that anime and manga as a whole has developed this habit of every shonen series is secretly a philosophical masterpiece. Every movement or a character’s development has to symbolize existentialism and that every villain has to represent capitalism, facism or the human condition and they all become some massive graduate thesis.
But over time, after actually divulging my reading of manga since 2005, I’ve come to the correlation that it is not that deep. And no it’s not an insult.
Shonen Manga literally is the demographic for young boys, most of these stories that we find out are adventure, excitement, competition, friendships, cool fights, and larger-than-life characters. Which usually means that they focus on secondary deep and serious ideas, which doesn’t mean they can’t be explored but it’s really secondary nature if anything.
But here’s the thing most people often confuse themes with philosophical work, but every story has themes. A sports movie has themes. A superhero movie has themes. Even Johnny Quest has themes, that doesn’t make them profound.
Perfect example is Naruto, yes, we discuss loneliness, revenge, inherited hatred, forgiveness and the cycle of violence. Those are legitimate themes, but the story can’t spend hundrends of chapters and time dissecting these systems, psychology, or ethics with the level of complexity you find in older manga.
Instead it presents those ideas in a digestible way through action scenes and emotional character moments. That’s great storytelling.
But it’s not deep. It’s shallow. The same for Dragon Ball.
Everyone loves to paint Goku as this buddhist monk, and self-actualization and yeah you definitely state those influences came from somewhere. But Toriyama was famously straight forward about his writing process. He’d focus on comedy, pacing, memorable characters, and exciting fights over talking about intricate pilosophical allegories.
But there are absolutely shonen manga that do more than this, Hunter X Hunter, talks about the ambuiguity of good versus evil in increasingly complex ways. Fullmetal Alchemist talks about militiarism, imperialism, grief, sacrifice, ethics in science and the cost of ambition. One Piece actually breaks the mold for addressing systemic oppression, inherited injustice, slaverly, authoritarinism, corruption, discrimination, and freedom.
So honestly, the problem in’t really recognizing Depth, the problem is acting like every series occupies the same place on that spectrum. Dragon Ball isn’t trying to be Berserk. Naruto isn’t trying to be Crime and Punishment. And they don’t need to be, every story chooses it’s priorities, some prioritize spectacle, emotion, philosophy and some manage all three but most really don’t.
And that’s fine.
I think at the end of the day, we forget that depth isn’t a meter or a ruling, it’s a spectrum.
That’s why I wish the saying “it was trash but I loved it” was more popular
people are ashamed to admit that whatever they like is not high art that should be admired by all of society
it’s fine to like trash
it’s fine to like something that isn’t high art or lacks a strong message
And looking at more current shounen, like Boku no Hero Academia, it’s honestly just a lot of other shounen, rehashed for a modern audience. Horikoshi didn’t really break any new ground there. He just wrote a cool story.
I personally reject the notion that every book has to be Shakespeare. Manga is specifically a low brow medium, though it doesn’t have to be. Coming into the world of manga and complaining that it isn’t literature is like complaining there isn’t porn in Sesame Street… or, I dunno, something like that. You’re looking for something targeting one group in a thing targeting a completely different, and often incompatible group.
The other day, I saw some would-be high brow readers trying to trash Dungeon Crawler Carl. At no point do Dinniman’s books try to convince anyone they are fine literature, or anything other than isekai trash, just made by an American… and better than most, if not all the isekai that tries to ride on the coattails of Sword Art Online. While I do appreciate the sci-fi stuff (like time dilation) in SAO, let’s be honest, Kawahara invented nothing and the first few books are based off of .hack//SIGN anyway, which in turn is based off of memes from EverQuest and World of WarCraft. Anyway, isekai, or “trapped in another world”, hasn’t been high brow since, I dunno, Twain or Carroll, and I wouldn’t even say those are. They’ve always been low brow, for fun, and sometimes laughs. And people who try to hold them to a higher standard are only fooling themselves.
(Note that Sword Art Online and Dungeon Crawler Carl are not manga. SAO is light novels (YA fiction) and DCC is a series of American books (NOT for children!). Still, they’re kinda manga adjacent and absolutely shounen. There are SAO mangas out there, but I haven’t read them. I’ve read… I dunno how many SAO books. Through the third season. I stopped just before the war season.)
