Fashion in Shounen Anime

approximately 96 of all the discourse that has ever taken place involving shonen anime and or manga has revolved around combat with a solid 73 of those conversations having been started by some variation of the essential question which anime fight guy is the fightiest there are nearly infinite possible permutations of this query any combat based comparison between two characters is really just a granular aspect of it but all of them are equally pointless because the answer is a raleigh and it has been since 1980. even when you ban gag manga meta knight from the brackets though the question doesn't get much more interesting especially not now that annos voldigoad exists i absolutely understand why this conversation is so ubiquitous and unending anime fights are the apex of human artistic achievement and once you've seen two or more anime it becomes impossible not to imagine additional battles between your favorite fighters from them and while we've all been busy expending words at each other many of them quite cussy over a topic that's mostly just fun to think about we've left a lot of potentially fun to talk about ones languishing on the table like the fashion choices of our favorite anime heroes which are often more fly than goku fly fishing from his flying nimbus through the window of an airplane that's being carried by superman who could maybe beat goku in a fight but definitely not in a fit off and he's not even close to the drippiest dragon ball character that'd be piccolo in his iconic driving school ensemble followed closely by bulma in most of the things she wears and then future trunks inherited her fashion sense to tie with videl for third on the totally objective tier list that i just invented in my head hey look at that we've already managed to pull four z fighters and friends into this conversation who'd hardly merit mention in a typical fight-focused fracas and we've barely even begun whereas those arguments are so played out that one could predict the first 40 forum pages of any given death battle thread in a chess style opening book this conversational ground is so fertile and untrodden that i a man who needs his girlfriend to dress him for the anime awards can make meaningful contributions to it simply by gesturing toward clothing i enjoy like vegeta's bad man shirt finally he beats goku at something and i don't even have to gesture outside the boys club bubble in which i'm most comfortable even though this video would definitely be better if i knew anything about sailor moon but instead i can point to the tokyo street style savviness of its shonen contemporary yuyu haku show which in addition to raising the bar for writing and action in its genre helped to forge a whole new bar made of gold in space on the fashion front sure dragon ball had its stylish individuals to set it apart from the mad max chic of fist of the north star but every single character in yuyu haku show is an entire look unto themselves even now few shonen heroes can match the effortless casual cool of yusuke urameshi kuabara remains the quintessential boncho or boss delinquent karama constantly looks like he just swaggered off a runway and even after three decades most angsty sword boys are still playing catch up to hie who don't need no fidget spinner belts on his iconic black trench coat and on the girl's end of things botan's fits are all unquenchably fire this is the one area where yuyu hakusho still outdoes hunter hunter besides creating the template for the perfect tournament arc this increased focus on fashion may be yuyu hakusho's single greatest contribution to the shonen battle genre though togashi didn't make that contribution alone three years before it started running in 1987 rumiko takahashi accidentally invented horrom anime with her answer to dragon ball rhonda half and in that series we get to see an eclectic collision between traditionally inspired chinese martial arts attire and comfy casual 80s tokyo streetwear resulting in what are still some of the cutest girls fits in any boys manga ever especially shampoo but especially especially ronko also in 1987 hirohiko araki began jojo's bizarre adventure bringing his impossibly dapper victorian gentleman and later world war ii era indiana jones inspired adventurers to the pages of shonen jump that said it would take the series a couple time skips to catch up to current trends in 1989 and even when he began working with modern styles araki continued marching to the bizarre beat of his own drum while you will not find a more iconic anime boncho than jotaro cujo he's anything but quintessential the huge gold chain colorful zig-zaggy belts and gold-buttoned hat that becomes hair at some indeterminate point on his skull all mark his aggressively customized school uniform as high fashion an aesthetic that permeates all of araki's work in jojo's world everyone just hits the streets like models hitting the runway right down to the statuesque posing each character possessed of their own wholly unique sense of style that perfectly matches their personality not every outfit's a winner but the vast majority of them are and ariki's designs have only gotten bolder and more beautiful with each subsequent installment perhaps one could argue that he peaked with rohan kishibe and jolene cujo there is a reason they were the focal point of his gucci collabs but the fact that he's done gucci collabs kinda says everything right there when it comes to fashion in anime and manga hirohiko araki's only real competition is himself and he's never stopped trying to one-up that jerk at every turn no shonen drips harder than jojo only differently yuyuhakusho drips differently and because its approach to drawing on current trends is a lot easier to emulate than the incomprehensible genius of araki's artwork you tend to see more anime that drip like it or like it would if it were drawn now even the creators of manga whose settings don't support modern fashion like one piece will indulge themselves on occasion or many occasions with art spreads reimagining their characters in street clothes and other fancier modern attire when oda's asked to do a fashion magazine cover he goes all out actually i could write an entirely separate video about one piece's sometimes cartoony pirate fashion and probably will at some point in the future characters in one piece change outfits with impressive regularity it's got its own in-universe labels it's got brooke and nami and robin and usopp heck oda's even thought about the individual fashion sense of each of the straw hat pirates and how some luffy need a little help from others to not look like their mom picked out their swashbuckling attire to loop back to jojo though sorry one piece tends to distract me there are some other recent-ish shonen things with their own elevated sense of style shaman king springs to mind even as a kid who knew less than nothing about anything related to fashion i could tell yo asakura had it going on in a way that the heroes of most of my favorite other anime at the time definitely did not and his nakama and foes alike were equally styling by the way holy metaroli i am so excited for that reboot you may have noticed i said most just now because there is one other anime franchise i loved as a kid that had drip for days blending then modern punk style with a cyberpunk twist and a little bit of egyptian bling for flavor that's right i'm talking about yu-gi-oh which in its heyday featured some of the dopest fits in anime period there has never been a better dressed man fictional or otherwise than seto kaiba though yami yugi comes pretty close especially when he stops using his sleeves but really just about everyone in the original anime looks great joey makes the simple t-shirt and jeans look work bakura rocks that striped undershirt button-up combo pegasus oozes as much class as he does generally creepy vibes merrick looks great in both his mad villain cape and that cool hoodie vest thing and he's got just enough too much gold on and then his sister ishizu's dress is breathtaking in at least a couple ways and with those hair accessories she looks gorgeous veil on or off my valentine's fit was a favorite of mine when i was younger for uh entirely unaesthetic reasons but also i think the lace-up tube top mini vest matching skirt and detached sleeves look fantastic on her in as non-thirsty away as my terminally male brain can process and of course the ever-changing outfits of taya gardner can't be ignored either from the cute pink vest she wore on duelist kingdom all the way up to the ponytail look she sports in dark side of dimensions she uh wears a lot of stuff that makes it hard to think about style what i'm trying to say is that kazuki takahashi is a low-key master of horny fashion in a way that probably deeply affected me in my formative years though at least he's equal opportunity with it don't worry serenity you're in good hands with duke devlin very good hands he wasn't as hands-on with the character design in later yu-gi-oh entries but his aesthetic sensibilities still informed those series designs in very positive ways at least early on in the franchise's history i'd say that gx is probably the peak of yu-gi-oh fashion simply because all of the dual academy's uniforms have a vague cabinet to them even some of the teachers got style despair and the series has kaiba man who's just kaiba but with a blue eyes white dragon helmet which scientifically speaking makes him more kaiba than kaiba and thus the flyest yu-gi-oh character by default things went a bit downhill with ds the cyberpunk biker garb is just a little on the busy side though it does fit the series very extra setting and akiza and jack atlas at least are still decently drippy which becomes increasingly harder to say about any character from zexel onward it feels like the series started ignoring real trends altogether in favor of accentuating its own ugiosity and it increasingly does not work then sevens went way too hard in the other direction and just ended up looking like a generic yu-gi-oh knockoff but i am trying to make a mostly positive video about shonen anime drip here not continue my ted talk on the decline of modern yugioh so let's take a quick break from the card game ad for a entirely different kind of ad before we shift gears to something that still has style this video is brought to you by expressvpn as of 2021 still the best vpn you can get according to techradar cnet tom's guide and other tech experts now i'm no expert you should see the computers i've built but i still feel expressvpn's consistently blazing fast best in class speeds in my bones when i'm connecting to the web through their premium servers in 94 different countries and as a non-expert i deeply appreciate their easy to use one-click apps available on most devices you can name and their 24 7 customer support live chat which lets me get answers to any questions i might have in seconds which is especially valuable because for any wannabe tech experts who are watching this they also offer a really versatile tool set that allows you to install expressvpn on your router and tunnel traffic from your game consoles smart tvs or other unsupported devices through expressvpn so not only can you use their service to connect to netflix canada with a single click and binge ghibli movies to your heart's content you can enjoy those family classics with your family in the comfort of your living room without needing a fancy entertainment center pc to see for yourself what makes expressvpn so special and find out how you can get three months free just click the link in the doobly-doo or head to expressvpn.com basement today a lot of people have a lot of feelings about how bleach went down but there's not a single soul on this planet who will tell you that tita kubo's fashion game ever declined from its inception bleach had the best dressed characters in modern manga each decked out in constantly rotating street savvy attire one almost suspects that kubo had more fun dressing these characters than he did using them in stories and fights his imagination when it comes to fashion forward fits is unparalleled on every splash page in every op and ed bleach's characters are dressed to the nines getting out and get ups that would make any tokyo trend hopper salivate and on top of that the series features some of the slickest fantasy fashions out there every captain of the soul society is a style icon it helps that their uniform with the white howery over the black shihaku show is so inherently striking and cool but each one makes it their own by accessorizing doing their hair up or just wearing it different the rank and file soul reapers look pretty damn good in their own right too the simple black uniforms nothing to sneeze at and ichigo wears it especially well i also like the contrast with what the irancar wear both in terms of how the uniforms are colored and shaped they wear western style button or zip up jackets over their white hakama as opposed to the traditional japanese black kosode of the shinigami as i mentioned in my fave fights of 2020 video tite kubo's proven he's still got it with burn the witch and it's really cool watching him break away from the style of tokyo and harajuku to draw on london's fashion scene instead but in talking about that i'm pulling the conversation toward the current state of shonan drip and before we get there i want to take some time to appreciate a different show about style and shinigami soul leader there are two types of clothing in anime forever clothes the cool getup your hero naruto's around in for all of his life or until a time skip gives him a redesign and actual clothes that human beings would change out of and throw in the wash regularly typically manga whose heroes change their clothing tend to be more fashion conscious which makes sense if you think about it if you're thinking about that stuff as a writer you probably have some interest in it as an artist too you're inclined to design fashion whereas if you think of your heroes as heroes in costumes that you draw well naruto sure does wear a neon orange jumpsuit not saying it's not a look just that it's a look naruto has a strong personal brand every character and soul leader also has a strong personal brand their clothing is so tightly tied to their designs that their characters could not exist without it what would death the kid be without the majestic symmetry of his uh his dad's face jacket to offset the striking asymmetry of his hair what are patty and liz without their perfectly mismatched voom cowgirl get ups without that gangsta fit how are we supposed to know not to [ __ ] with soul the only other thing he can exist in is a satanic zoot suit and yet that zoot suit is fly as [ __ ] as is his regular tracksuit blackstar's outfit is loud as loud as it can go and it goes to 11. it's all the ninja wow black star very cool but it is not i cannot stress this enough a neon orange jumpsuit this my friends is a look the flared collar highlights his on brand hairstyle perfectly his tank top and pants are just the right level of baggy accentuating his muscles and long legs the gloves are your perfect one allotted accessory the bolted on metal ninja scarf is exactly too much enough this is the fit of a man who knows he's amazing and is just waiting for the time he doesn't fail to prove it to everyone black star drips the entire cast of soul eater drips in ways that anime characters designed around their costumes rarely do i am continually amazed by the level to which these clothes work maca might be the coolest shonen protagonist and then on the other hand in a show that has both forever costumes and normal clothes there's deku look i love superhero costumes i think my hero academia has very cool superhero costumes hori koshi clearly studied the heck out of some quality spider-man stuff but cool superhero costumes as we established with my diss on superman at the start of this video are not fashion unless they're edna mode originals or worn by non-peter parker spider people or mina ashido obviously and neither are most of the casual fits in hiroaka like mina kaminari and jiro are the only characters who show any personality or sense of style in their choice of clothing him kotoga's whole thing is just being messy on purpose and she's still got one of these strongest looks simply by virtue of having a thing at all most of the characters just look dorky whether they're out on the town lounging around in the dorm in class or going to a fancy party even the class bullies a dork and that makes sense they're in a top prep school for super cops two of the dorkiest conceivable institutions but then most of the villains are pretty dorky too like stain is just a psychotic almight nerd wearing all of the ninja turtles laundry at the same time mr compress is the most strikingly stylish member of the league of villains and he is literally a magician overhaul almost had something going on with the ornate plague mask and purple faux fur lining on his green jacket but then he had to go and ruin it with the white work gloves that match his shoes that match his tie after labor day to be clear hirohaka's got incredibly strong visual design in most other departments you'll just find better fits for its characters and a lot of fan art and that's fine because plenty of modern shonen are picking up the slack for its lack of decent slacks it's a terrible line but i i felt compelled to include it black clover for example has some of the coolest western fantasy clothes i've seen in anime even in the first episode both asta and yuna have a clear sense of style and the many wizard cloaks they get when they join their respective squads perfectly complete their respective looks those cloaks are straight up genius in my opinion just big enough to give every squad mate a uniform look while leaving plenty of room for individual stylization both in how the characters choose to wear them and what they wear under and over them they're every bit as brilliant as the soul reaper uniforms which is saying a lot i could and maybe will at some point make a whole video just talking about fantasy military uniforms and stuff like that fma attack on titan serif of the edge valkyria chronicles then maybe diss naruto a little bit because like the headbands are cool but like man if you ever wore one of those to school you know those headbands are not cool you see the former two of those everywhere at anime cons for good reason though on the subject of uniforms jujutsu kaizen's school uniform game is exceptionally on point in a tastefully low key way from yuji's comfy red collar to toge's turtleneck to kugisaki's belt which really accentuates her figure perfectly to satoru gojo's irap everyone accessorizes just enough to distinguish themselves without undermining the fundamentally simple style of the uniform itself except megumi who does nothing with it which is also perfect accessorization because he is canonically very boring and everyone else being not boring makes his boringness stand out as interesting that's an important thing to remember fashion game is a meta game you gotta pay attention to what the other players are doing if only so you can more confidently ignore it like satoru gojo does still wearing his school uniform and making it work despite working as a teacher and then on the flip side you've got anatomy rocking that salaryman chic dotted tie excellent choice and those goggle glasses add just the right level of strangeness to the ensemble like bleach these characters also look great in their off days the whole first ed is just them doing a casual fashion show conveying their personalities to us solely through style and body language kugisaki showing us that she's got both impeccable understated taste with the simple overall ensemble and also that she's got a hyperactive too much gene with all those shopping bags which she knows how to carry and preemptively styled that simple outfit to complement great taste and golly she's cute they're not quite as cute as satoru gojo whose entire dance sequence screams one inescapable fact at your face this guy [ __ ] the other modern pillars of shonen jump are a little less modern in their sensibilities yet no less drippy in their execution demon slayer for instance has permanently raised the bar for yukata and kimono designs in anime and manga with its seemingly endless array of gorgeous eye-catching patterns some fits like tanjaros and nezukos are understated yet effective while others looking at you shinobu will never stop looking at you shinobu take the entire idea of traditional japanese clothing in radical new directions and then there's kibitsuji muzon whose style as is only appropriate for an immortal vampire king or the king of pop is truly timeless dr stone's style meanwhile is anything but it don't get more retro than this inspired fusion of traditional japanese elements modern tokyo fashion lab coats and caveman loincloths gen asigiri deserves to be a fashion icon senku's personal brand is as strong as brands get though nobody else could pull it off sucasa makes the whole primeval warlord thing look simultaneously brutal and elegant and every single girl's outfit manages to be fresh and unique while simultaneously proving kiyoshi from prison school's groundbreaking thesis about human evolution you know the one dr stone's artist boichi is a certified booty genius the promised neverland is very thankfully about as far from that stylistic school as you can get and you may not think of it as stylish but think again its characters do for the most part only wear one thing in two gendered variations but that one thing is striking in its elegant timeless simplicity as is isabella's nunish uniform emma and rey are due for some very good costume changes in the near future of the anime and where we're at presently sanju and mujica both sport quality fantasy fits i especially love the cascading interlocking layers of her robe also there's a whole other layer of fashion meta to get into with the demon's masks but we're starting to run pretty long and i should make another promise neverland video i could keep going basically forever this is an infinite topic and speaking of infinity skate the infinity's cast is packed end to end with instant icons eye's yellow hoodie and wonder egg priority is perfect kimono jihen's got a spooky sort of drip going on hori mia is basically about personal style the girls in other side picnic look great and compliment each other perfectly the ones to watch for winter 2021 alone could double this video's length and every show i've already mentioned deserves to be picked apart with far greater analytical depth than its own exhaustive video essay which speaking honestly i'm probably not equipped to make but my goal today was only to take an inert ball that i think could do some serious rolling and give it a little influencerly push i'm hoping that more fashion-minded folks in the comments and other anime essayists video and otherwise will be able to render everything i've just said conversationally obsolete inside a month or two three questions to help get that started one what anime do you think has the most style two which shonen character is the drippiest of them all for bonus points answer this question in the form of a tier list and three what anime fantasy world do you think has the best fashion overall let me know down in the comments and please argue with each other about it without being toxic we're trying to have fun here please argue with me too i was definitely way too mean to deku you can also at me on twitter if and when you've made a video of your own oh and if you have time maybe check out these videos of my own i'm jeff though professional [ __ ] bag signing out from my mother's basement

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 498,900

Rating: 4.9487653 out of 5

Keywords: Mother's Basement, Anime, anime outfits, stylish anime, jojos bizarre adventure, attack on titan, anime fashion, best dressed anime, bleach, yu yu hakusho, dragon ball, bulma, dbz driving school, jujutsu kaisen, jujutsu kaisen ED, Satoru gojo, Yu-gi-oh, yugioh, duke devilin, seto kaiba, hirohiko araki, tite kubo, Ranma, soul eater, naruto, my hero academia, shaman king, shonen anime, shonen drip, fashion in shonen, fashion in anime, one piece, Demon Slayer, shonen jump, gucci

Id: lh2w0dNqq-s

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/CrashDunning]

I'm glad Soul Eater got as much attention as it did.