The argument fanboys have at every convention, ever

[laceblade]

For n00bs to the anime scene: "Shounen" (or shonen) manga is that which is marketed toward boys. The girls are often voluptuous and useless and kidnapped, and the protagonist boys have EPIC ANGST that must be overcome. This angst is always overcome by fighting, be it ninja-style or ghost-killing style. The protagonist's goal is usually to level up a lot and generally pwn n00bs.

Is the separation of shoujo and shounen manga sexist? This should be the topic of another post.

Anyway, so I'm only 3 volumes into Bleach, but I'm ready to list the reasons why it's better than Naruto (of which I read ~32 volumes):

-- The narrative pacing is actual...narrative pacing.
-- Girls do things other than whine about Sasuke
-- It's a personal preference, but I like the art style more
-- A single fight does not take 6 volumes to reach its conclusion
-- Characters do not spend entire fights explaining the flow of their chakra, or explaining in great detail how their SEKRIT ULTIMATE MOVE works. I like this. I don't care about the schemantics behind somebody's bad-ass fight move. I care about who gets hit, who hit them, how cool it looks, and who dies afterward.
-- It's actually funny, when it tries to be funny
-- The characterization that protagonist Ichigo gets in volume 3 makes me care about him a lot more than I ever cared about the protagonist of Naruto.


Of course, all these things could soon change.

Feel free to use the comments to weigh in on how you feel about Bleach v. Naruto.

Comments

[tigrin.livejournal.com]

You will change your mind about Bleach after the first arc. Trust me. The newer chapters of Naruto are actually better than Bleach IMHO, because Bleach has settled into a rut of long fights between minor characters that no one cares about.

[dimensionwitch.livejournal.com]

Epic ninja series are too epic for me. I can't stand super long shounen series with no resolution, so I could never get into either.

[sir-hellsing.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind I comment here randomly, I was checking out hellsing' fl and this post showed up. Bleach commits every shounen sin after one of the female protagonist is taken for Ichigo to rescue. :/

Shounen is a tiny sexist, but shoujo is too against boys sometimes (they act as token romantic interest UNLESS they are a shounen-ai-friendly series).

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Bleach does eventually sink into longer fights, but remain infinitely superior to Naruto in every way.

Though, a lot of it is that the mangaka actually likes more than 2 characters, especially the girls. Ichigo is still the lead, but it's much more ensemble, and did I mention that Tite Kubo actually treats the female characters as worthy entities, not necessary evils there to make a few guys look good?

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

Shounen Jump is a weekly, and I think the incredible time pressure that involves - like, 20 or 30 pages scripted, drawn, inked, etc, every week!? - dooms even the best mangaka to Endless Epic Fights, especially when writer's block hits. The good shounen/seinen manga - they're out there! - are more likely to be found in the monthly magazines. (Lately I'm grooving on Piano no Mori, The Piano Forest.)

[britrock37.livejournal.com]

I will say....I don't really like Bleach that much.....especially after it's first story arc. In fact, I actually enjoyed it at first, and then I had to stop reading it.

HOWEVER! I like it infinitely better than Naruto. The whole "whining about Sasuke" thing drives me crazy, for one thing...and really...I just found it stupid all around. You're right...at least Bleach has what seems to be some semblance of a story. Plus the female characters (Orihime and Rukia--well, Rukia at the beginning) actually have personality and can hold their own in a fight. I REALLY like Orihime. She's one of the main reasons I can actually deal with Bleach in a lot of regards. I've not gotten too far into the second arc (and I read like 4 volumes of Naruto before deciding that it could go to hell), so I'm not the most credible source, but if I were picking, Bleach is definitely the better of two pretty bad series that everyone seems to love.

[lavendersleeves.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that the distinction is any more sexist than saying that the Baby Sitter's Club is geared toward girls, or that Playboy is aimed at men. There are deserters in every camp; if you look at junior high school students, I think you'll find that the Shounen readers tend to be girls, whereas the boys (lately) seem to prefer sports-related comics, which are a separate genre.

Personally, I think that fans abroad misunderstand the labeling of manga and genre. Like in any media, the publisher has a lot more to do with the collection than, say, what genre the magazine spine attributes itself to. In the same way that Pixar has very specific guidelines that it will use to determine which stories they will animate and which they won't, Jump (Naruto, Bleach, D. Grayman), Shounen Sunday (Conan, Inu Yasha) and Young King Ours (Trigun, Hellsing) publish entirely different kinds of stories and have different, eh, what's-it's. Creeds, mottos, whatever. (Jump's motto is to publish hopeful adventure stories about young men. How they ended up with Death Note is entirely beyond me).