My Hero Academia and Black Clover: Two Sides, One (Shonen) Coin

let's face it the manga landscape has changed drastically on November 10th 2014 the manga for Naruto ended with its rival series bleach ending two years later in 2016 these facts might not mean much in isolation but when considering the influence both series had over their decade-long runs it really does present the beginning of the end for an era of Shonen bleach Naruto we're of course part of the legendary big three the three manga series that ruled over Shonen Jump and enjoyed worldwide success with one piece being the third and arguably most successful one and when they ended they left a significant gap in the manga world one piece was and is still going strong of course but there was now definitely space for new series to claim their spots next to oldest pirate adventure and interestingly the timing of this gap meant that now many mangas and authors who were aiming for the spots where people directly influenced an impact by the big three so we now had series aiming for the top and most importantly no longer in the shadow of the big three that were actively learning and trying to improve on the big three formula and while many series popped up over the last four years there are two that are not only very special in their current standing in the manga landscape but also get constantly compared to each other these two series are Co hey Haruko she's my hero academia and yuki Tabitha's black clover now I don't want to compare them in order to figure out which is better you can go to Twitter for that you'll find plenty of civil discussions about it no for me because of how they have exploded in popularity the much more interesting constructive conversation lies within too questions what did these two series and her authors learn from the big three and how do they apply what they learned in their own unique way immediately when glancing at either of these series you can already tell that they borrow a lot from the big three and the Shonan formula in general MHA is a story of young deku a kid born without superpowers when they are the norm he soon however does gain a power that is both extremely powerful and dangerously difficult to control armed with that he sets out to become the number one hero black clover meanwhile is the story of hasta a young orphan who is born into the clover kingdom a fantasy nation in which magic is everything unfortunately asta was born with the rare condition of being completely unable to use magic after being bestowed with the unique power to cancel out magic he becomes a real player in the world and sets out to achieve his dream of becoming the wizard king just by these synopsis you can quickly tell that they take heavy inspiration from series like Naruto and one piece the former is especially important since the powerless loser going on a quest to eventually become the head of his Society is an idea that was very much tied to the identity of Naruto and Naruto does seem to be the series these two stories learned the most from at least at first glance now for starters if you have read mhm A & B see what is the biggest difference between them and the old school show none of the big three the most prominent one in my opinion is the pacing Naruto Bleach and especially one piece where and still are heavily criticized for their pacing and rightly so events took ages to happen fights were drawn out and the down times were so extended that you sometimes ran the danger of forgetting what was even half and for a while it seemed like glacial pacing like that was just how long running shown in a hat to be structured this remained a major point of contempt for the genre one author that really took that criticism to heart was Tabata and almost in a defiant response to the conventions of Shonen wrote black clover in a way that makes reading it feel like hopping onto a rollercoaster the pacing is lightning-fast with characters appearing and reappearing fights happening and ending and arcs being set up and resolved at an incredible speed nothing ever lingers longer than a few chapters and it gives the series an insane amount of forward momentum which means that reading it will always feel like you're witnessing progress which in turn makes reading it satisfying and while this approach definitely solves the issues the slower pacing presented it does come with its own set of problems naturally as any one piece fan will tell you slow pacing if used correctly can do wonders at contextualizing the characters the world interactions within that world as well as provides significant buildup for the eventual climaxes of the arcs if you speed up the pacing to racecar levels you will obviously lose some of these advantages as it unfortunately is the case of black clover due to how fast the story progresses there is only very little time to create nuance or subtle moments for the characters everything has to be rushed along so a lot of growth and development for these characters is very quick and on the nose which if you care about the sort of stuff is a bit of a shame additionally the setup build-up and resolution of any given arc or plot point are never far enough apart for that point to have the impact I feel it could have had with a lot of these big moments and reveals I just find myself wishing that we would have had more time for these ideas and concepts to loom and spread their shadow and influence over the story while BC tries to speed up its pacing to enormous velocities MHA takes a more balanced approach to that it is definitely a lot faster in its pacing than the original big three but it is also nowhere near the speed of BC and this comes with benefits thanks to a somewhat slower approach concepts and characters have a lot more room to breathe and to develop and build up can naturally be more fleshed out and then at resolution be more satisfying because of it twitter user at thomas ilya six made a fantastic thread on twitter highlighting all the little hints and mysteries that have been able to develop thanks to the time the story takes with its progression there are so many intriguing ideas that are sure to be addressed in the future and every chapter where they are hinted at but not resolved simply adds to that intrigue I'll link the thread in description I highly suggest you check it out if you are at all interested in the series the bottom line is that you too taking things a bit slower MHA manages to find a comfortable middle ground where it's still faster paced than any of the big three but still slow enough to give all of its ideas ample time to develop and impact the story but of course this approach isn't flawless there are several points where the pacing does that back into very regressive speeds which can at worst really hurt the momentum of the story and even when the pacing is at its best there is an argument to be made about whether or not the focus of the story is on the right aspects of it branching off from pacing however there is a second big facet of writing that both black clover and my hero allowed to be influenced by those who came before characters the cast of any Shonen is often a huge point of attraction for many fans yet it's also the aspect that very often suffers the most from the Shonan formula all too often to the side characters fade into obscurity as the story progresses and escalates while also becoming boring and scarcely utilized or developed the most infamous examples of that would be Dragon Ball and within the big three Naruto this phenomenon influenced both PC and MH a but in different ways in BC most characters are given very distinct and immediately clear personalities that are simple but likeable the incredibly fast pacing doesn't really allow for any drawn-out introspective dives into a character's personality so BC does was it what it can in the limited time by making characters incredibly expressive of their core personality and only develops them through small but well-constructed bits of characterization that usually happen mid-battle the only exception of this happens after a big fight in which hasta is injured very heavily and I do believe that that moment sticks out and is so beloved by fans due to this change in formula this can give a lot of the characters a very rushed and unfinished feel but it really is just character work reduced to the minimum time possible in order to not slow down to a story while making each of them memorable and deep enough to serve that story and be likable black clover is just very very invested in keeping its speed going this is also amplified by Toyotas readiness to constantly utilize almost his entire main and supporting cast most of the black poles have at least some involvement in every major arc and this keeps them and their struggles fresh in our minds and because those struggles and personalities are only expanded upon in very short and small segments Tabata can include them easily without bloating New York this has the effect that every event feels like it inspires and effects everyone not just the primary players in the particular arc so makes the cast especially the bull's work as a shallow but ultimately competently written and likeable group except gosh gosh mhm I on the other hand seems to have retained a different lesson from the big three and especially Naruto how to handle a large cast I touched upon this briefly in my first video on MH a watch it but essentially a big problem Naruto had when it came to its characters was that it tried to introduce and characterize all the characters as early as possible by the time the time-skip happened the vast majority of the character work especially regarding the secondary cast had already been done this presented two problems one the first half of the series was incredibly bloated with characterization the Naruto cast was more so in order to fit in almost all of their stories who seemed to get a retelling of their entire life any time they stepped up which made the show feel a lot more melodramatic than it really was and to it meant that by the time Shippuden the second half happened there really were no character arcs left for these goobers which caused them to all fade into the void of useless characters save for one or two that will get one last hurrah so after Naruto stumbled horikoshi set out to design a character pattern for himself that would avoid and prevent those issues the solution he came up with is simple he introduces characters early on but reserves the actual development for when they are relevant it sounds super banal but this has many benefits he can keep a character in the background evolving them mostly through implication and Inter action which manages to keep them in the readers minds and then when an arc central conflict aligns with a major theme of a character's backstory he can develop them and give them depth out of seemingly nowhere without it feeling contrived and forced since they were always there this creates a feeling that any character could at any point get their moment their shine which makes us more attentive to their background actions and in turn makes us notice that implicit of development more this is how characters like Kirishima and Aoyama suddenly got their shine after a long time of seeming unimportance additionally it naturally stretches out the character work and prevents certain parts of the story from feeling bloated with it while other parts being seemingly devoid of it another aspect horikoshi seems to put heavy focus on is to make the motivations and struggles of his characters not only deeply psychological and personal but also a lot more small-scale and relatable Naruto and one piece are filled with backstories of varying levels of tragedy and while most of them are effective there is an argument to be made that they tended to overshoot that tragedy and making it so overblown that it became hard to probably connect to it horikoshi seems to have taken that too hard and so instead of destroyed villages mass-murdering brothers and genocide we get abuse neglect and oppression which while not being as grand and dramatic as the others definitely have a higher potential of landing their emotional impact since these are personal and emotional issues we as normal as people have a much easier time grasping as opposed to earth-shattering cataclysms and almost cartoonish levels of cruelty one lesson horikoshi seemingly didn't learn from Naruto's folly however seems to be cast sized nemetrix cast is insanely large and constantly being expanded and they're justified worries that he just might not be able to keep up with that as I said in the aforementioned video I do believe he trapped himself a bit when he created a school setting because that setting inherently requires a large cast to feel believable Tabata meanwhile managed to find a good balance in cast size with the idea of Magic's quads and the black bulls in the context of characters there is one last aspect of these series that I want to discuss at length about their evolution and the lessons they've learned and that is how to construct and deal with the main character the big boy at first glance both a stand Deku seem incredibly similar to Naruto shunned and unappreciated by society they through hard work earned their place and become a leading figure of said society and while this summary of their character arcs is functional it completely misrepresents the very important differences between the two first off I want to disagree with the notion that both hasta and Deku are completely inspired by Naruto while both definitely take a few cues from him it's deku who takes after Naruto in a more complete way asta however is more of a mix between Naruto and Luffy from one piece now what the do I mean by that the core ideas behind Deku and hasta are fundamentally different Deku story is all about his growth both as a person and as a hero when we first meet him his dreams are just that dreams besides a bit of hero research he hasn't really done anything to pursue them since he inherently was made to believe that they were almost unachievable so the story becomes as much about Deku becoming a more confident and emotionally well round purse as it is about his power growing ever stronger deku going from a shy and incredibly emotional child to a strong and confident hero is the point of his story arc this is why I cry so much why there are so many training arcs and why his growth is so incremental because that growth and the details of it are the main drama horikoshi wants to communicate with his story this is in concept extremely similar to what Masashi Kishimoto tried to do with Naruto with his emotional development into a tempered reasonable adult being the central idea until it wasn't because Naruto was a mess Tabata on the other side seems to have clearly different intentions with Asta's character arc yes he does start out powerless and shares some similarities to Naruto right down to the demon but the core message behind hasta is absolutely not the same as a story might initially seem like it's about a weak kid becoming stronger but in reality once you look at it astha is already immensely powerful when the series starts he has already trained most of his life to become the Chad as Chad - ever Chad this in addition to his magic cancel ability makes him a formidable fighter and far from a weakling but even more importantly asta is already confident and optimistic regarding himself and his abilities he doesn't get an arc of him learning how to believe in himself and how to grow because that has already happened before the story started and while one can critique that as lacking character growth I see it more in the vein of how I see Luffy from one piece the story isn't about how the world and characters influence him it's about how he influences the world and its characters Luffy and asta both are pillars in their stories unwavering forces of will that no matter how many times the waves of reality and despair clash against them never lose sight of what they want and what they need PC has many instances where characters become inspired or intimidated by us the sheer force of will and desire the story is about how hasta being this cornerstone of just pure will and want lifts up the people around him making them realize their own potential and making them realize how important hasta is to them and to their society and while these elements do also exist in MHA the focus on it is much stronger in black clover if I had to sum it up I'd say that my hero is the story of how Deku becomes the pillar that holds up and influences society while black clover is the story of how hasta becomes recognized as the pillar he had already become and how his influence and impact spreads throughout the world in its people it's a subtle difference but an important one in my opinion there are of course other aspects we could talk about like the fights but I think what I really wanted to say with this video is that both my hero academia and black clover are natural evolutions to the Shonan formula they both looked to the big three and learned similar lessons from their mistakes yet they both try to fix and prevent those mistakes in her own series in very different ways Tabata set out to create a compact fast and efficient manifestation of what makes shown and what it is with a heavy focus on ever escalating action scenes essentially taking what his predecessors did and trying to do the same but faster and better horikoshi however attempts to focus on the weaknesses he observed in the big three and tries to craft a story full of character and meaningful buildup while still paying respect to the tropes and ideas he borrows from he essentially tries to fill out the gaps the big three never addressed this creates two inherently different experiences if you want a fast-paced action rump with decent lower likable characters and without having to worry too much about the bigger picture most of the time then black clover will be right up your alley if you prefer a slower more methodically built-up story with a focus on motivations characters and society over choreographed and constructed action every chapter then MHA will scratch that itch the point is they both set different goals when it comes to what they want to be and so far at least mostly excel at being exactly that while still presenting two very interesting and meaningful evolutions of the shown and idea one is the yin to the others yang essentially my hero academia and black clover are two sides of the same Shonen coin and as always thanks for watching take care bye you [Music] you

Channel: Oceaniz

Views: 340,148

Rating: 4.8752594 out of 5

Keywords: MHA, BC, My Hero Academia, Black Clover, One Pice, Naruto, Bleach, Shonen Jump, Shonen, Anime, Manga, Japan, Oceaniz, Oceaniz96, Asta, Deku, Izuku, Midorya, Horikoshi, Tabata

Id: wPZiRv2FQgo

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2018