The Three Generations of Shonen Jump
Introduction:
Shonen Jump has defined my life for a really, really long time. Most of my favorite shows from when I was a young boy, like Dragon Ball and Yu-Gi-Oh, were Shonen series, and they greatly shaped my tastes in fiction to this day.
While I sporadically read series like Naruto and Bleach, it wasn’t my main focus. Then, towards the end of my high school career, I got back into Shonen after a really, really long break. Suddenly, I was speeding through series like Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure at a breakneck pace. Now, in the early years of my college career, I’m continuing to plow through new Shonen series at a brisk pace, with The Promised Neverland, JuJutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man being my latest obsessions.
For those that don’t know, “shonen” is a Japanese term that refers to the demographic of young boys. Therefore, “shonen manga” is any series that is aimed at young boys, often characterized by:
Fantastical worlds
Excitable, extroverted (generally male) protagonists who wear their heart on their sleeve
A heavy emphasis on hand-to-hand martial arts, superpowers and action
Intricate and open-ended power systems
And slapstick comedy
Don’t get me wrong, not everything needs to follow these guidelines to the letter to be considered “shonen.” Death Note and Yugioh trade martial arts for psychological thrills and card games, respectively, yet they’re still just as intense. Chainsaw Man’s particular sense of humor is more black comedy than slapstick, yet it still applies. I’m just saying, these are general guidelines that most series follow.
Due to these guidelines, “shonen” became more than a demographic: it became a genre in its own right. It’s pretty easy to look at a lot of modern anime and say “Yep, that’s a shonen,” because there’s such a distinctive aesthetic to shonen manga. Shonen Manga have very distinctive character arcs, dialogue tropes, artwork, designs and story structures unlike anything else in manga (or just in fiction, period).
Weekly Shonen Jump is a Japanese magazine that has been running since 1968. It is the best-selling manga magazine of all time and one of the longest-running manga magazines; even when we factor in American comics, it is still the best-selling comic magazine. And as the name might imply, Weekly Shonen Jump (or WSJ as fans sometimes abbreviate it online) publishes exclusively shonen series aimed at young boys.
All of the series I mentioned earlier are or were published in Weekly Shonen Jump at some point or another, though I should point out that being in this magazine is not a prerequisite for being a “shonen” series, and there are other Shonen magazines. Soul Eater is just as much a shonen as anything else, and it’s published in Monthly Shonen Gangan, for example. And as bizarre as it might be to include it in the same category, even Attack on Titan is technically a Shonen, though it’s not published in WSJ.
As with any other genre, the current generation of shonen creators were often fans of previous groundbreaking works. This leads to what I’ve dubbed the “cumulative effect” of shonen magazines; in much the same way modern fantasy authors like George RR Martin, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson reinterpret old ideas of the fantasy genre, modern shonen authors reinterpret old ideas of the shonen genre.
In this essay, I will break down the history of the modern shonen genre (and, more specifically, Weekly Shonen Jump) into three distinct generations, with their own tropes, influences, aesthetics and ideas.
First: A Quick-Run Through:
Before I really get into things, I need to break down just what those three generations of Shonen are. Then, I will have three sections explaining what each of those three generations did.
While the magazine had been around for sometime before this, the Shonen conventions as we really know it started in the mid-80s and continued into the mid-90s. This is Generation 1 of Weekly Shonen Jump, and it defined a lot of the genre’s ideas and tropes.
Generation 2 started almost right afterwards, beginning in the late 90s and continuing into the early-to-mid 2010s. This was when the genre conventions became modernized, and they started spreading out to the west.
Generation 3’s start overlapped with the end of Generation 2, and it’s continued from the early 2010s into the present day. Generation 3 consists of groundbreaking series that not only spread to the west, but became outright mainstream in the west, mainly because they rewrote and reinterpreted huge parts of the Shonen formula.
Part 1: The Creation of the Shonen Formula (1983 - 1995):
Like I said earlier, Shonen Jump has been around for longer than a lot of us have been alive. Yet, most of its early comics were slapstick comedies, none of which really touched on the magazine’s full potential for action, drama and human stories.
That all changed in the 80s and early 90s, a transformative period where Shonen Jump stories started taking themselves seriously and expanding to new territory. Many influential series were released during this window: Saint Seiya, Bastard!!, YuYu Hakusho, and the critically-acclaimed Slam Dunk, at one point voted the #1 manga of all time.
All of those deserve their own essays, but in this section, I want to really focus on three major series that characterized the 80s: Fist of the North Star, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Dragon Ball.
All of these went on to influence the manga landscape (and especially Shonen) but in very, very different ways. Actually, scratch that. Saying that they “influenced” the manga landscape feels like a total understatement; it’s like saying that the Theory of Relativity merely “influenced” physics and astronomy. These three stories didn’t just change the game, they fucking rewrote it.
To begin with, Dragon Ball is responsible for:
Many of the over-the-top character designs we know in Shonen, particularly for villains
The normalization of merging science fiction and fantasy ideas in Shonen
The introduction of the all-loving, spiky-haired “Shonen hero” archetype
The introduction of the stock “Shonen rival” archetype in Vegeta who later influenced characters like Sasuke, Bakugo, Kaiba and Killua
The idea of defeat leading to friendship and some villains being easily redeemed
The popularization of longer, arc-based stories
The concept of transformations and power-ups in Shonen manga, both for heroes and villains
And, consequently, the problem of power creep in Shonen manga
On the other hand, Fist of the North Star’s dystopian setting and ultra-violence was groundbreaking at the time, but in a totally different way. It didn’t introduce concrete character archetypes or transformations, but it’s ultra-violence influenced series such as Mortal Kombat, Bastard!!, Berserk and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
One thing that Fist of the North Star and Dragon Ball had in common was “Ki,” which in the early 80s was something of a game-changer for the Shonen landscape. Before this, the idea of supernatural powers in Shonen being not just explained in-universe but being crucial to the overall plot was unheard of. Then, Akira Toriyama and Tetsuo Hara pulled Ki from Chinese Mythology, explaining that, as a “life energy” inherent in all beings, people with above-average amounts of Ki could develop superpowers and participate in over-the-top fights.
This started a trend in Shonen manga, where heroes and villains alike used the same catch-all energy source for their superpowers. It’s so common that it’s almost funny to think about how it never happened, but had Toriyama and Hara together not implemented Ki, we would never have gotten Nen, Cursed Energy, Chakra or even Haki. All of those things are crucial to their respective stories, and they all owe their existence (in some part or another) to Toriyama and Hara.
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A second ago, I mentioned the influence that Fist of the North Star had on JoJos. While that’s technically true, it feels like an oversimplification, and I don’t want anyone to think that JoJos is just off-brand North Star, so let me elaborate.
Yes, JoJos had the ability to get more violent because of the trail that FOTNS blazed for it. (Indeed, JoJos is often considered one of the darkest, least kid-friendly titles in this magazine for children, to the point that it’s become a joke amongst the fandom how profusely characters bleed from wounds.) And yes, FOTNS’s characters influenced the big, muscled men of early JoJo’s parts, like Jonathan, Joseph, Dio, Caesar, and Part 3-Jotaro.
But while Araki never let go of his love for bloody fight scenes, he soon broadened his influences: looking to Greek sculptures, classical paintings and modern fashion trends, he developed a wholly unique visual identity with a larger emphasis on realistic proportions, bizarre poses, eccentric fashion and statuesque facial features.
Araki didn’t just broaden his artistic influences; he also broadened his narrative influences. Hirohiko Araki is an outspoken fan of Hollywood movies, and it shows. He turned JoJos into an anthology, a love letter to the art of storytelling, with each Part highlighting one of his favorite genres.
Part 1 is Bram Stroker’s Dracula but with more action
Part 2 is an “around-the-world” story set during WWII, akin to Indiana Jones
Part 3 is a mix of action-adventure with urban fantasy set during the modern day
Part 4 is a small town murdery mystery
Part 5 is a Godfather-esque tale about the Italian Mafia
Part 6 is a prison break story
Part 7 is a western
And Part 8 is a psychological / surreal horror thriller
JoJos was always a wholly unique entity because of how much Araki drew from everything around him, and it informed future writers for Shonen Jump just how weird they could get with their stories and how nutty their powers could become.
For those who have read my essay about “Power Systems in Writing,” you’ll know that I classify Stands as an Open-Ended power system, meaning that Stand powers manifest in a different way for everyone, leading to enormous diversity of fight scenes. Nothing quite like that existed in Shonen manga before JoJos; entire power systems like Cursed Energy or Nen might not exist if Araki hadn’t shown that this diversity could work within the pages of Weekly Jump.
Essentially, coming out of the mid-90s, we essentially had three main pillars of Shonen, which would influence the magazine in different ways:
Dragon Ball’s existence led to a line of action-comedies starring plucky extroverts trying to be the best in fantasy worlds
Fist of the North Star normalized grotesque violence, science fiction elements and dystopian settings in Shonen manga
And JoJo’s created its own market built around eccentric character designs, Hollywood-style narratives and diverse power systems
Part 2: The Modernization of the Shonen Formula (1995 - 2016):
After the end of Dragon Ball, Shonen Jump needed something new to fill that void. Yes, JoJo’s was still ongoing, but like I said before, it scratched a different itch entirely. It was too dark, perhaps too violent to really become mainstream like Dragon Ball ever was.
With the journey of Son Goku complete, Shonen executives needed a new pulse-pounding fantasy series with the same type of action, comedy and relatability to draw in readers of all ages. Enter: the Big Three.
For those that don’t know, the Big Three refers to three series that redefined the magazine for decades and brought manga into the west. These three series are Naruto, One Piece and Bleach. All three of these stories were heavily inspired by Dragon Ball, and it shows. To rattle off a few examples:
Naruto and Ichigo both have a powerful evil sealed inside them (the Nine-Tailed Fox and the Hollow Form), similar to Goku’s Great Ape form
Luffy, Ichigo and Naruto all have a series of transformations inspired by the Kaioken and Super Saiyan forms. In addition to the two I just mentioned, we also have Luffy’s Gears, Naruto’s Sage Mode, and Ichigo’s Final Getsuga, Vasto Lorde and Fullbring, among others.
All three series use the “defeat means friendship” trope that Dragon Ball popularized
In fact, friendship and companionship are major themes of all three series, just like in Dragon Ball
The Naruto-Sasuke dynamic was heavily inspired by the Goku-Vegeta dynamic
Haki, Chakra and Bankai all have similarities to Ki from Dragon Ball
Certain character designs are heavily inspired by those found in Dragon Ball, such as Kaido’s dragon form from One Piece being an homage to Shenron
And Naruto and Luffy are both teenagers trying to be the best in their respective areas (being the Pirate King for Luffy, and becoming the Hokage for Naruto), similar to how Goku wanted to become the best martial artist in the world
It’s interesting to see how each of these authors had different takeaways from reading Dragon Ball. Tite Kubo was inspired by Dragon Ball’s villains, so by his own admission he tried to make the villains of his series as intimidating and gripping as possible. Eichoro Oda was inspired by the fantastical world of Dragon Ball, so his manga emphasizes adventure and romanticism. Finally, Masashi Kishimoto was inspired by the intense rivalry between Goku, so he made the Sasuke-Naruto relationship the main focus of his whole series.
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But these three weren’t the only members of Shonen Jump’s second generation. Others released during this window include: Death Note, Yu-Gi-Oh, Gintama, Reborn!, Bobobobo Bobobo and D. Gray Man. Again, all of those are beloved in their own right (with Gintama being a particularly interesting narrative that satirizes and parodies Shonen manga without ever straying from its roots as one), but I think the first three are most relevant to our discussion.
Death Note and Yu-Gi-Oh continued upon a “line of thought” established by Araki. Death Note combines mind games, psychological warfare, mysteries and horror in a way that feels adjacent to Araki, but simultaneously more mystical, more grounded and more uncomfortable.
Take Ryuk, for instance. As a Shinigami, he can only be seen by people with their own Shinigami, much like Stands. But whereas Stands evoke feelings of awe and wonder as we ponder what they’ll do next, with brilliant eye-catching designs; Ryuk is just...horrifying to look at. He’s a callous, morbid God of Death with a twisted sense of humor who came to the human realm just to fuck around.
I already discussed this in my thematic comparison of Yugioh and JoJos, but I feel confident in saying that Yugioh continues a few trends started by JoJos. It has an Egyptian Aesthetic, a focus on horror and supernaturalism (though horror only appears in the early segments), and the martial arts and psychic combat was abandoned in favor of mind games built around “Duel Monsters,” not unlike the complexity of Stand Battles. To top it all off, the main character even has a spiritual companion only he and other people like him can see; though unlike a Stand, people like Yami Bakura, Yami Marik and Atem are treated as fully fleshed-out characters with their own motivations, goals, strengths and weaknesses.
…compared to those two, Gintama goes in a completely fucking different direction.
See, Gintama marked a turning point for Shonen. We were now at a point where the tropes popularized by Dragon Ball and the Big Three had been around long enough that it was now a free market for satire and parody, and this was a manga that makes fun of those tropes (albeit in a very playful, loving way; Gintama laughs with Shonen manga more than it laughs at it). Gintama expertly combined the emphasis on action and drama the genre recently popularized with the pure comedy of the magazine’s early days. The end result is a story that, while primarily a comedy, can also flip to a drama at the flip of a switch.
Gintama was one of those manga that was just hard to even explain. When the author calls it a “science fiction human drama pseudo-historical comedy,” you know you have something special on your hands. And it’s that bizarre blend of genres that only works because the Big Three and Dragon Ball had modernized and refined what Shonen can be.
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One interesting existence from this era is Hunter x Hunter. Togashi’s masterpiece started publication in 1997, right at the beginning of this second generation of Shonen manga. Unlike its peers, it doesn’t take inspiration from just one of Shonen’s previous three “bodies of thought.” Rather, it synthesizes elements from all three of Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star and JoJos, creating this unique atmosphere that can’t really be found anywhere else.
Let me explain what I mean:
The first arcs are very heavily reminiscent of Dragon Ball, with Gon being something of an homage to kid Goku’s innocence. Like Goku, Gon is a simple boy with an intense desire to get stronger and stand atop the world, a single-minded attitude about life and his goals, a close group of comrades, and an intense rage when those comrades are hurt or killed. Also, whereas other Shonen series of the era merely imply this fact about their protagonists, Gon outright states that he loves fighting, a trait he shares with Goku.
However, Nen as a power system has almost nothing to do with Ki from Dragon Ball, besides being a generic life-energy that fuels superpowers. The remarkable diversity of Nen and the potential for complex mid-match mind games seems much more inspired by JoJos. Togashi later introduced Nen Beasts, which, in execution, are almost indistinguishable from Stands; and certain Nen techniques function very similar to corresponding Stands from JoJos, such as Prince Tserridecnich’s Parallel Future being inspired by King Crimson and Epitaph.
Finally, even from the earliest stages of the manga, Hunter x Hunter was far more willing to veer off into ultra-violence than its peers, in a manner not unlike Fist of the North Star. I’ve often said that Fist of the North Star would feel more at-home in a seinen magazine, and certain parts of Hunter x Hunter (like the Chimera Ant Arc) certainly have a seinen vibe to them.
All in all, this led to Hunter x Hunter being a unique presence in the world of shonen. Nothing quite like it has occurred before or since, not even the Big Three, though you can bet your bottom dollar it’s inspired quite a few other series.
Part 3: The Reinvention of the Shonen Formula (2014-Present):
If Generation 1 introduced the Shonen formula, and Generation 2 modernized it for a newer audience, Generation 3 outright reinvented it.
I consider this “third Generation” of shonen manga to have really started with My Hero Academia’s publication in 2014. This new generation consists of several series, but I want to highlight seven specifically: My Hero, Demon Slayer, Black Clover, JuJutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Dr. Stone and The Promised Neverland.
Just as Dragon Ball influenced the “Big Three,” so too did the Big Three influence those seven stories. But whereas Dragon Ball was the king of that first generation, and One Piece was the king of the second generation, one thing that makes this third generation of Shonen rather unique is that I can’t really point to a single manga from these last few years that’s stood above the rest. Yes, Demon Slayer is the obvious example, being that it outsold fucking One Piece, but it was also a relatively brief run, lasting only four years and 200 chapters. My Hero Academia has arguably a larger scope and more mainstream presence in the west, but it also doesn’t hit quite the same highs. JuJutsu Kaisen has universal love from die hard Shonen fans and critics of the genre alike, and has been cited as one of the best gateway anime of the last decade, but in the west it’s still quite niche.
In any event, this new generation of manga became much more experimental, tweaking not just tropes, but the entire genre in ways we hadn’t seen before:
After Death Note and Yugioh paved the way for non-action Shonen manga, that legacy was carried by Dr. Stone, which took the same shonen energy but applied it to science and invention instead of games or psychological warfare. The Promised Neverland arguably did something similar, using psychological thrills and a prison break setting but with a lot of shonen character archetypes.
On that topic, horror became one of the biggest genres in Weekly Shonen Jump in the last decade, and authors freely explored and experimented with new subgenres of horror. Of the seven series I mentioned earlier, four of them (Neverland, Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man and JuJutsu Kaisen) are horror series. Whereas Kaisen and Demon Slayer were action/horror hybrids, Neverland excelled in Hitchcockian suspense and psychological thrills, and Chainsaw Man is a black comedy/surrealistic horror series. I think it’s worth noting that every one of those stories took the manga world by storm in some way or another.
The heroes of modern Shonen became kinder, gentler people. Not that we never had decent human beings as Shonen protagonists before, but this last decade has seen an onslaught of character-driven stories where the emotions of our protagonists are front and center. Deku’s shy, sensitive disposition and Tanjiro’s empathy are standout examples of this.
On the flip-side, we also saw more bizarre shonen protagonists moving in the opposite direction. Senku from Dr. Stone is certainly one of the more eccentric, sarcastic protagonists I’ve seen in any manga, and Denji from Chainsaw Man stands out from the crowd because of his vulgarity and skewed view of the world.
All across the board, pacing was drastically improved in this new generation. This was already a bit of an issue with Dragon Ball, but it really became a problem with the Big Three, particularly with arcs like the Thousand Year Blood War and the Fourth Shinobi War. Newer mangaka took note of this, and went to great lengths to make their arcs much faster and trimmed off any fat. The fact that the entirety of Chainsaw Man’s first part is shorter than the Dressrosa Arc is a great example of this contrast.
Finally, influences were getting wider, leading to manga with really interesting powers and visual identities. JuJutsu Kaisen feels like Shonen spirit combined with B-movie horror, and Yuki Tabata (the author of Black Clover) stated that he’s influenced by Berserk. For those that have read it, Berserk is about as far out from Shonen as you can get, but seeing Tabata pay homage to it in his own story is really fascinating.
All of these factors lead to some completely oddball, out-there masterpieces. Maybe it’s just because I read it recently, but Chainsaw Man stands out as an example of just how much the shonen genre has changed, pushing the boundaries just like Fist of the North Star did 35 years prior. The difference is that Chainsaw Man also takes character archetypes from previous generations of Shonen, gleefully subverts them, and mixes it with equal parts slasher horror, psychological horror, surrealism and black comedy. Like Hunter x Hunter before it, it takes inspiration from so much that it becomes a genre-defying entity.
Part 3.5(?): The Legacy of Naruto:
I was initially going to make this part of the previous section, but I decided it was such a rich topic that it needed its own section entirely. In many ways, Naruto became the Dragon Ball of its era, at least when we consider how it shaped main characters and group dynamics.
Not everything in this third generation was inspired by it, but Naruto hugely inspired three of my personal favorite series, and three of the biggest modern Shonen epics: My Hero Academia, Black Clover and JuJutsu Kaisen.
Let me explain:
Much like Team 7, each of these manga have a loveable and friendly main character missing one or both parents (Deku, Asta, Yuji); a fiercely independent, sometimes rash or impulsive female best friend (Ochako, Noelle, Nobara); a prodigious rival with a complicated past (Bakugo, Yuno, Megumi); and an eccentric mentor who turns out to be hugely relevant to the villain’s plot (All Might, Yami, Gojo).
Those main characters all have deep-seated emotional insecurities that clearly take after Naruto more so than any of the genre’s other icons:
Deku obsessively wants to become a hero, often going on self-destructive paths and severely injuring himself to prove a point.
Asta is worried he’ll never achieve his dreams in a world where magic is everything, and he acknowledges he only has physical strength, but he buries these under bravado and confidence.
And in his attempt to fulfill his grandfather’s wish, Yuji has become a daredevil, always selfishly trying to help people so he can die and be selfless in his final moments.
All of the protagonists are inexperienced outsiders, like Naruto Uzumaki, but how the authors handle that outsider status varies.
Asta is magicless in a fantasy world, and Tabata uses this for drama. Asta has to deal with elitism and discrimination at every turn of his adventure.
Horikoshi also plays this for drama. Deku does have a Quirk, but he’s a novice with almost no control over it. On top of having to deal with the years he was bullied for being quirkless, he also has to master a power that breaks his bones with every use.
On the other hand, Akutami uses this trope for comedy. Yuji has no experience with cursed energy...but it doesn’t matter, because he’s a superstar athlete who can punch through brick walls, and he’s a natural prodigy anyways.
The female protagonists are, in almost every way, a vast improvement over those seen in Kishimoto’s magnum opus. This is true of pretty much every manga of the generation, but whereas Demon Slayer’s Nezuko, Chainsaw Man’s Power, and The Promised Neverland’s Emma feel like wholly original creations of their authors; characters like Ochako, Noelle and Nobara feel like direct responses to and evolutions of Sakura. Yes, Ochako has the same curse of often being reduced to the limelight, but in a bit of meta commentary, she actually acknowledges that she’s growing too complacent as a love interest, so she suppresses her feelings for Deku to focus on earning for her family. That’s…actually really clever. Noelle’s arc is far more plot-relevant, and one of the best character arcs in modern Shonen, period. Her superiority-inferiority complex is a well-written character flaw that makes sense given her backstory, and her growth from selfish magical flunky to powerful but selfless Magic Knight is awe-inspiring. Nobara isn’t as relevant to the metaplot of JuJutsu Kaisen as Noelle is to Black Clover, but she’s the best improvement over Sakura. She’s relatable while still being flawed; she has an awesome Cursed technique; she’s always ready to fight; and she has no unnecessary romantic subplot. Nobara is also engineered to be a foil to her two best friends: she’s smart-mouthed, rude and has a gleeful bloodlust that Megumi and Yuji lack. Where those two are selfless to the point of self-sacrifice, Nobara is so selectively empathetic she comes across as rude and uncaring.
Circling back to one of the things that defined Naruto’s identity, all three series reinvent the Naruto-Sasuke rivalry in some way:
Yuno and Asta have the same basic personalities as Naruto and Sasuke, with one being an underdog and the other a prodigy, but the twist is that they’re best friends. They have the fierce competitiveness of Naruto and Sasuke, but with all the playfulness and joy of Gon and Killua’s friendship.
Megumi and Yuji fit the basic personality of rival and protagonist, respectively, and they have ideological differences, but they’re more like companions than anything else.
And as I explained in my essay “Subversive Rivals in My Hero Academia,” even though Bakugo and Midoriya’s relationship is the center of the manga, Todoroki acts as a more stereotypical, Sasuke-esque rival to both Midoriya and Bakugou, pushing them to grow stronger just as much as they push each other.
All three series have an eccentric mentor figure who acts as a power ceiling for the early arcs, only to be relevant to the grander narrative and the villain’s schemes, much like how Kakashi was secretly Tobi’s teammate. Yami’s magic is the key to the Tree of Qliphoth, All Might is the arch-nemesis of All For One, and Gojo is the former best friend of Suguru Geto, whose capture is required for Geto to enact his plans.
The pacing is improved drastically in all three of these shows. Black Clover, in particular, has gained a reputation for flying through events at a breakneck pace, and it’s only recently started slowing down and having more decently-sized arcs.
On that note, all three series feature tournament arcs. The tournament arc had already been refined by Kishimoto, but Tabata, Akutami and especially Horikoshi further revised it to near-perfection. One of Kishimoto’s biggest problems was introducing too much of his supporting cast in the Chunin Exams, so Tabata, Akutami and Horikoshi all went to great lengths to introduce more of their casts before or after their arcs so it wouldn’t feel so overwhelming.
All three series play with the idea of Naruto’s superpowered evil side (a concept first inspired by the Ozaru and Super Saiyan forms of Dragon Ball). Asta plays it most straightforwardly, by having Asta meet and eventually befriend the devil responsible for his powers. Yuji subverts it by making it clear that he will never, ever befriend Sukuna, who’s a despicable entity built up as the final villain of the manga. Deku subverts it even further, adopting a stronger but crueler persona post-time skip that has nothing to do with supernaturalism; he assumes this darker persona purely because his own mental health is deteriorating.
A major theme in all three series is familial heritage, family burdens and revenge, all of which seem loosely inspired by Sasuke and Itachi’s complicated relationship with the Uchica clan. Shoto has to bear the weight of his father’s expectations, and Megumi is chained to the Zen’in clan, Maki aims to outright surpass them. Noelle also has to deal with being the black sheep of a family full of talented Mages. None of these stories about the Silva, Todoroki or Zen’in clans are outright the main focus of the story, but they’re all the most important subplot.
Notably, only Noelle’s story has any sort of happy resolution. Maki eventually slaughters her clan only after her twin sister is killed, and it’s clear that all members of the Todoroki family (Enji included) are left broken husks of their former selves. It fills a reader with a sort of bitter emptiness, not unlike when Sasuke learned the truth of his brother and his clan.
Spelling it all out like that, it’s easy to see how Naruto was the most influential manga in Shonen’s second generation. Kishimoto’s saga is a flawed one, but it obviously sparked the imagination of many incredibly talented authors. In much the same way that Kubo, Oda and Kishimoto all had different takeaways from Dragon Ball, I think Akutami, Tabata and Horikoshi all had different takeaways from Naruto.
Akutami wanted to explore the implications of having a horrible, violent demon living inside you.
Tabata wanted to make the themes of powerlessness and social ostracization central to his story.
And Horikoshi wanted to explore a raw, realistic and complicated Shonen rivalry.
Sidebar: I’m not saying JuJutsu Kaisen, Black Clover and My Hero are this generation’s Big Three; the Big Three is a very specific concept and a product of its time that refers to three long-running series who defined their magazine and brought manga to the west. Manga already is in the west, so it doesn’t make any sense to have a “second Big Three” because, frankly, it’s a bit redundant.
But these are three incredible series, Big 3 or not, and it’s fascinating to analyze how they were inspired by the pillars that came before.
Conclusion:
This essay was a hell of a lot of fun to write. Sitting down and pouring over all sorts of series, their themes, characters, imagery and action is the sort of thing I live for, but this analysis was especially fun to make because I got to discuss so much.
I got to discuss parallels between some of my favorite series, differences in power systems, the histories of my favorite tropes, and all while educating you on the history of Weekly Shonen Jump.
In the future, I hope to write essays like this once some of these series have finished, so I can make a larger, grander retrospective about the entire third generation of Shonen Jump. But, for now, I’m signing off. Thanks for reading.
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