The Gaming Den

Naruto, Bleach, and OP are good case studies in character design if you ask me. If as an author you want your audience to react in certain ways to a character or whatnot, don't buck the trends/cliche of making the main character the coolest and stronger and hottest, the secondary female character the sexiest in a tsundere/girl next door kind of way, so on. It's fine to add hidden depths and whatnot, but appearance should come first.

If One Piece was drawn more like conventional shonen it would be even more popular than it is right now.

Or, hell, let's talk about Teen Titans for a bit. If you compile a list of peoples' favorite Titans characters, Cyborg will be dead last. Why?

If you compare the characters just by what's on paper, he should easily be the most popular character. Cyborg has the moves, he has the powers, he has a funny and intelligent personality and is the least threatening. He should easily be able to trounce Robin (who is paranoid and hypercompetitive) and Beast Boy (who is selfish and immature). But he doesn't. Why?

Because he's the least attractive of the gang.

So what does that mean, friends? If you're creating a main character cast, take care to make every character achingly pretty and handsome. Always make the main lead the 'coolest', otherwise you'll get a Kamina situation.

As far as the audience at large is concerned, it's not what's inside, it's what's outside that counts.

For the record, I like Cyborg better than Beast Boy. But then, I think he's uglier, too.

Eh, Beast Boy was always a wuss, ever since he botched that Terra situation. Cyborg was a little better. Of course, I'll never understand why Raven got an entire season of fanservice.

Counterpoint: Fairy Tail's rejection by potential fans on the basis of it "looking too much like OnePiece"...


.. even though, no, it doesn't; it looks far more sane and 'pretty'.

The dialogue isn't as witty, the battles not as epic, and the character interaction a bit stilted... but when judging by appearance alone Fairy Tail wins outright.

I suspect, as I've mentioned in another thread largely ignored weeks ago, that there's something else at work here:
• Pirates
• Ninjas
• Samurai

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So what does that mean, friends? If you're creating a main character cast, take care to make every character achingly pretty and handsome. Always make the main lead the 'coolest', otherwise you'll get a Kamina situation.

The Kamina situation is actually the more common one in anime (seriously ... Naruto the coolest?). I feel your conclusion is non sequitur.

Gelare wrote:Eh, Beast Boy was always a wuss, ever since he botched that Terra situation. Cyborg was a little better. Of course, I'll never understand why Raven got an entire season of fanservice.

I think that question ansswers itself. Certainly, I find her to be the most attractive of the Titans. Beating out even Bee.

-Username17

sigma wrote:The dialogue isn't as witty, the battles not as epic, and the character interaction a bit stilted... but when judging by appearance alone Fairy Tail wins outright.

I agree. Fairy Tail is readable but nothing special. When I downloaded a torrent of the stuff I read all what was in there but didn't stop.

What I was trying to get at though is despite how well-written and designed One Piece is, more than a handful of fans can't stand to look at it because it's not 'pretty' enough. The fact that One Piece manages to completely destroy any other shonen competition despite this major handicap just leaves me in awe.

MfA wrote:The Kamina situation is actually the more common one in anime (seriously ... Naruto the coolest?). I feel your conclusion is non sequitur.

What I'm saying is that you should avoid having your main character be Simon when you have Kamina in the cast. Otherwise you'll have fans declaring that TTGL is the best 8-episode anime ever. There are quite a few common traits common in adventure fiction that will turn people off to your character.

- Looking uncool. Luffy, fortunately, doesn't look all that weird compared to the rest of the cast so he gets to escape it--but his series suffers a different problem altogether. Naruto is much less fortunate.

- Not wangsting enough. I know this seems weird, but people actually want a level of inner turmoil in their characters. We mock characters like Squall and Batman all the time, but the fact of the matter is that angst sells. Unless:

- Wangsting and being a wuss. I'm looking at you, Shinji. Actually, not making your main character flat-out the strongest in the heroic side of the cast (except for the mysterious guest star who occasionally passes through) will piss off the fans and make people wonder why Cyclops or Naruto is the leader of the team. But if you combine these two things at the same time you'll be guaranteed to have a character the fans despise--unless the action isn't the point of the series.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

sigma wrote:The dialogue isn't as witty, the battles not as epic, and the character interaction a bit stilted... but when judging by appearance alone Fairy Tail wins outright.

I agree. Fairy Tail is readable but nothing special. When I downloaded a torrent of the stuff I read all what was in there but didn't stop.

What I was trying to get at though is despite how well-written and designed One Piece is, more than a handful of fans can't stand to look at it because it's not 'pretty' enough. The fact that One Piece manages to completely destroy any other shonen competition despite this major handicap just leaves me in awe.

You grabbed a torrent for it? Huh.
After years of reading Naruto and OnePiece by downloaded chapters, one at a time, I jumped at the chance for sites such as Onemanga and Bleach Exile's on-demand 'streamed' scanlations.
They literally have everything ... but to you, Lago, that's just preaching to someone that knows all about it anyway. Needs mentioning to others every now and then.

Although, it's good to have BLAME and Abara on file... That's a keeper.

So, yeah, don't grab chapters one at a time folks. Get them in fuckhuge torrents or view them from sites.

---

Currently on "Negima" since I saw pieces on the Chan a week ago.
Skipped to the most recent few, went "Wow that's good shit" but the early chapters are, unfortunately, mostly about Japanese highschool, panty shots, and a prepubescent wizard teacher of an all-girls class.
I'll.... stick it through.

http://www.onemanga.com/Mahou_Sensei_Negima%21/1/13/

(Bleach was like this; I had avoided it for a long time since it was nothing but high school bullshit and drama, but my girlfriend insisted that I keep with it as "You'll like it. Trust me." After Ichigo died they stayed in the afterlife and I was very pleased.)


Seriously, there are some battles later on in Negima (past 100 or so) that blow Naruto and DBZ straight out of the water.
Perhaps not comparable to OnePiece (as far as I can tell) but damned good.

Eventually you'll get to this: http://www.onemanga.com/Mahou_Sensei_Negima%21/241/04/

Frank wrote:http://fc76.deviantart.com/fs19/f/2007/ ... ingAHV.jpg

... wow.

Haha, I clicked to view the pic at full size - a little carelessly perhaps, as I'm still wearing my powerfists - and the page zoomed in on her boobs.

All I actually know of TT is adultified (as in, "now they look like adults!") porn of Raven and Starfire.

Also, I still haven't watched a single episode of OMGBLEACHISTHEBEST and I feel better for this fact. Must check out the earlier episodes of Negima though, if it's high school (I loved Azumanga Daioh, for comparison) and panty shots (I loved Ikkitousen, for comparison).

Koumei wrote:Haha, I clicked to view the pic at full size - a little carelessly perhaps, as I'm still wearing my powerfists - and the page zoomed in on her boobs.

Just in case you didn't notice it, you know. Computer knows best.

I've only seen 7 episodes of Bleach, maybe a few YouTube clip battles with the super-hollows later, not much.
I read all of it. Much better that way.
Stretching single chapters of manga in to 20-minute shows goes against my grain or something; OVAs are good IMO since there's no straightjacket to the plot-per-episode pace, animu movies of shows sometimes good, but usually not regular series.

Believe me, if you like panty shots... you'll like a good part of the early Negima. I find it tacky and personally don't have a thing for pubescent Asian girls, but some people do, so, yeah.

As mentioned previously I'm mostly in it for the spellcasting battles.

I counter Lago with Kaibutsu Oujo. Who cares that the viewpoint character is nowhere near good in a fight. Still an excellent anime, haven't read the manga though.

I counter Lago with Kaibutsu Oujo. Who cares that the viewpoint character is nowhere near good in a fight. Still an excellent anime, haven't read the manga though.

I never said that the manga/anime wouldn't be good--on the contrary--I'm just saying that it will never be as marketable as it could be.

I don't really think so. Kaibutsu Oujo is helped by the fact that the main character, Hime*, isn't the biggest combat badass on the team. The show would lose a lot if she didn't need Reiri and Riza to cover for the times where her own skill wasn't enough. And Hime is very awesome with a variety of weapons.

* The story is about her even if Hiro is the viewpoint. He is near worthless in a fight despite being essentially indestructible.

I know that this is a really old thread bump, but just for starters I was wondering if we could butt our heads up together and come up with an anime premise that could be as marketable as possible.

Action-adventure shounen seems to sell better than other genres, so this post will probably be focused into that.

So I guess let's come up with some villains, a premise, and a main character sheet? I'm interested to see with what you come up with.

While we're here, I just want to say that Rosario + Vampire is completely awesome. It even has the bonuses of being a vampire story that doesn't promote oppression of women and gay people or fund right-wing terrorists in Africa.

What specifically about it is awesome and what can we use from the story for our theoretical Ultra-Anime?

Oh, I wasn't thinking in terms of what we could use, I was just throwing it out there for fellow anime fans.

Okay, it's:
[*]A high-school harem ecchi romance/comedy with monster-of-the-week fights
[*]The fights are short, sharp and powerful, ranging from 1 second to 185 seconds (the bat actually tells you after the fight is over)
[*]It has fan service on the levels of Ikkitousen (a good thing)
[*]Despite being made to appeal mostly to guys (ecchi + harem), girls aren't given Shounen Manga Girl Syndrome, where they are there to be helpless. The male is pretty pathetic, and his role is more or less to unit all the (powerful) females. This means that holy shit, an animu that shows the girl's knickers all the time and has them fighting over an average boy is actually pretty empowering to girls.
[*]The second season has some spanking scenes, though I admit that's more "Why I like it", not a universally good thing
[*]It shows what happens when cat girls grow up into adults
[*]The music is fucking awesome. Opening? Decent enough. Closing? Pretty good (similar to M.O.V.E stuff) but starting with a part of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d-minor (the Vampire Pipe Organ music) on the electric guitar. But the background music throughout is what really does it.
[*]There's a pleasant amount of girl-girl love going on, particularly in second season.
[*]The bat. Also, the breaching of the fourth wall ("You mean he's not just a narrator?")

You can get all the anime cliches in the pot but there are a few things that can make or break an anime.

I liked some of the arcs in One Piece, the Soul Society Arc in Bleach, and Naruto during the Chuunin Exams. If you're going to have an interesting Anime I think it should focus on sweet spots like that.

Elements I think that did it for me: Introduction of interesting characters. Initially these characters show one obvious trait that hooks you to them and have a decent to compelling story behind them.

Things look hopeless. The bad guy has to seem bad. Whatever he wants is probably bad and has real consequences.

The heroes lose. It is critically important to me that the Heroes out and out LOSE a fight or two. If they win at everything that is boring.

Fights should be to the point and concise. There shouldn't be a lot of need to have an observer thinking a paragraph a second there to explain what's going on. It should be SEEN.

Fan service is fine but hopefully doesn't detract from what's going on.

No Harem please. For various reasons (Fruits Basket, Eikenen-sp?-,etc) I hate them.

Positive ending. Though I'm a fan of a number of Bad ending anime (Berserk and Ga Rei Zero being 2 of my favorites) the people want to be happy at the end of the day. So just cut it close.

Beginning, Middle, End. Don't let it go on for too long because filler sucks.

sigma999 wrote: Currently on "Negima"

Keep reading sir, its awesome.

There's a fine line balance between 'harem' and 'having female characters that are interesting'. If you have a heterosexual male protagonist, they're probably going to be interested in more than one girl.

It's probably best not to make them all live together, but...

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA wrote: If One Piece was drawn more like conventional shonen it would be even more popular than it is right now.

One Piece is the highest selling manga in it's home territory. It beat Dragon Ball in overall sales and kicks the crap out of Bleach and Naruto in Japan.

Smelly fangirls and that atrocious 4Kids dub are the main things keeping OP from repeating that success here. Your original position seems to be "what can we do to get smelly fangirls to shlick over our characters", and the fujoshi is a periphery demographic; like otaku who watch Pretty Cure and shit. Making hot female characters for shonen series tends to work out better: Oh! Great still gets work, there's a metric fucktonne of Big 3 porn, and Cameltousen is on it's 4th season. Hell, look at the Touhoues, ZUN draws like a chimp with the Downs, and you can't swing a stick on Pixiv without running into Touhou fanart.

That being said, a lot of people like a good mix of comedy and action, as well as a robust cast of 2-dimensional characters. A common complaint of Bleach is that the earlier strips where you had Cloudcuckoolander Orihime, Tatsuki, Ichigo's bitch ass friends, et.al. People think Nalto is picking up because it's focusing on Ol' Dirty Bastard Killerbee, and say so every time they don't focus wholly on Naruto or Sasuke (see: Team Gai, Akatsuki, the Kages, the Chuunin Exams).

People also respond positively to Kubo's Omake strips and general silly shit. Gintama is pretty big in Japan, and it's 70/30 lulz to action, whereas the generally beloved series (OP, FMA, early Bleach, Kekkaishi, Negima(?!), Soul Eater) are 30/70 at their most goofy. Hell, even Dragon Ball Z had the "Goku learning to drive" episode and DB was mad goofy.

W EDIT: People tend to shit on harem/ecchi manga though, Koumei (unless it was made by Ken Akamatsu, Rumiko Takahashi, or named Tenchi Muyo). If we're trying to hit broad market appeal, we can have a loose collection of girlies who like the main character (or who are the main characters, hello Claymore/Negima). Shit, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Bakemonogatari are basically harem-types but are considered "deep" and interesting because they hide their power levels well.

Remember, I never said it was for some "we should make an animu" project. Indeed, my reason for liking harem animu is "there are a lot of interesting and pretty girls". Keep in mind that I don't actually give a shit about how most people react to various shows, with the exception of "If fanboys bang on about it, I have no interest in watching it".

Uho.

Fanboys certainly bang (or beat) on about harem anime as well though. Why do you think moe exists?

Yeah, but I haven't encountered any of them. So I will never watch Bleach or Noorootoo, for instance, but I haven't met any of the annoying fanboys for, I dunno, Agent Aika.

Mask, right now female readers make up >40% of Shounen Jump's demographic and it's still growing.

There's absolutely no reason not to pander to fangirls other than revulsion by the (male) writers.