#most voted shonen jump characters

[raamitsu]

THAT IS MY G.O.A.T—JO RIGHT THERE AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNT EVEREST 🏔️

[stopthebig3]

There was a Japanese poll on favorite shonen jump female characters in one magazine and Sakura was #1 for women and #2 for men. So naturally, Sakura stans are bragging and getting more energy to be toxic to people. But the TOTAL count of votes was 2872! That's basically nothing. And that number is what all of these many characters got together. So it means maybe around 200 votes for one character. Even an average Naruto post on tumblr has more likes than that. But I hate how the craziest and most toxic fandom gets more arrogant due to things like these.

And remember there was a poll once in Animage where Sakura was the most hated for both men and women. link You really can't act like the whole jump readership is giving their votes.

[greatwyrmgold]

I've been thinking about pacing.

Back when I was posting random thoughts about every new Shonen Jump title, I kept complaining about how they feel the need to cram everything into chapter 1. Premise, worldbuilding, main characters, some of the key supporting characters, primary antagonists, plot structure, tone, maybe a quick thesis statement. Everything gets a little time, nothing gets much development.

Contrast that with Oshi no Ko. The inciting incident is chapter 9. We get a whole chapter dedicated to the inciting incident, and we don't see it until we get eight chapters establishing our main characters and themes. We don't get the premise until the end of chapter 10. A whole volume of almost pure setup.

A slow pace, but OnK wouldn't work without it. Imagine if the 228 pages of volume 1 were compressed to the 50-ish that some Shonen Jump debuts get. Volume 1 is bookended by huge status quo changes—Dr. Amamiya's death and subsequent reincarnation, and Ai's murder and Aqua's revenge.

Realistically, we'd get maybe a dozen pages of Dr. Amamiya and his patients, maybe chapter 1 could end with Ai getting stabbed, and that leaves about 35 pages to tell the entire story of Aqua and Ruby's peaceful childhood. And that would be pretty slow by modern Shonen Jump standards; if we tried to squish Ai's death and Aqua's declaration of vengeance into chapter 1, so the reader knows what to expect and get excited about in chapter 2 (and maybe vote for OnK in the weekly popularity poll so the series doesn't get cut?), there would be less than half a chapter for the peaceful childhood.

Even if you cut Sarina and Ruby, that's not enough time to sell the reader on either Dr. Amamiya's life cut tragically short or the peaceful childhood Aqua lost when Ai was murdered. And for all my criticisms of how Ruby's character arc was wrapped up, OnK would not work without her. She's essential, and so is the time spent establishing the "normal world" before each of volume 1's status quo shifts.

You cannot tell Oshi no Ko under the constraints of a typical Shonen Jump debut. So it's a good thing Aka Akasaka wasn't working under those constraints! For starters, OnK is serialized in Young Jump, not Shonen Jump. More importantly, Akasaka got pretty famous from Kaguya-sama, so readers and editors alike are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt where they wouldn't for the mangaka of those new Jump series.

Shonen Jump puts its mangaka under a lot of pressure. If they succeed, they could become one of the most famous authors in the world, a small step below living legends like Eiichiro Oda. But if they fail—if volume 1 tankoban sales are weak or your weekly popularity poll results start to slump—they might find out they have got a month to wrap up their story before it leaves the magazine. And that includes the chapters they already submitted.

So you can't just tell a good story. You have to convince readers that you're going to tell a good story from chapter 1, you have to explain that story in the first 50 pages; you have to keep convincing readers that your story is worth reading, worth supporting, worth continuing.

You can't write Oshi no Ko under those constraints. In fact, I'm not sure you can tell any story.

I get the theory behind Jump's editorial practices. If you only let the strongest stories endure in your magazine, you'll have a handful of really strong stories plus a constant churn of new ones, good for both novelty and for increasing the odds that one of the new hopefuls will turn out to be one of those strong stories.

But that pressure forces authors to adapt or die, and the adaptations make the stories weaker. They constrain the stories in Jump to premises that can be fully explained in a handful of pages, squeezed between the handful of pages explaining their protagonist and the handful explaining the setting and so on and so forth. They also constrain how those relatively simple stories can be told, making it harder to build on those simple concepts.

And that's a problem Oshi no Ko didn't face. Say what you will about the back third or so, it had a really strong opening, specifically because of its slow pace.

[siflshonen]

I also want bakugo to win but what’s wrong with deku?

Just because he is the main character doesn’t mean he’s the most popular or that we should pity vote him so he “gets a turn”!

He’s been on virtually every shonen jump/giga jump cover that features MHA, he’s on plenty of the volume covers in some way, and frankly I’m SICK OF THIS DUDE!

If this is about voting a character who hasn’t won before out of respect or so they get the statue and represent the spirit of the series in 4D space, vote All Might!

[marunalu]

I feel like Hori and the whole fandom got gaslit into thinking Bakugo is the most popular character when the japanese polls don't measure at all the real favorite characters

I mean the mangakas who work for shonen jump know perfectly well that the polls are not accurate and rigged. There is just not much they can do about jumps rules. As much as I hate bakugou but he IS popular in japan but I think he wouldnt always win the polls if people couldnt spam and vote multible times in these polls. Its not only unfair to the readers who cant affort that, its also cheating and destroys the purpose of what a poll is actually there for. In every other poll outside of japan and in which you can give only one vote bakugou is still always in the top 10 or even in the top 3 but its ALWAYS izuku who wins! So thats why I take the non-japanese polls way more serious. Bakugou is popular yes, maybe even top 3 popular but he is not as popular as izuku and I would also go so far and say as shoto is (because in most of these polls shoto wins second place after izuku).

[sueske]

The Kishi poll is so funny. ‘You know what he did’

Some people will vote for making the worst hetero ships canon, while others will vote for putting the ‘gay agenda’ in their fav shounen. Some for Boruto existing.

I wish we knew exactly what Kishi actually wanted with his story and what changes his editors forced but it’s hard to say. Especially with how his interviews contradict each other.

One of the longest running things I’ve heard about Kishi is how he’s a misogynist because his male characters are always more powerful and female ones suck. And his story is always worse for female characters. I don’t think making a shounen story having OP male characters is enough to be called a misogynist, especially when the target demographic is young-teen boys, but it also feels weird how none of the Konoha 11 girls are in any way amazing or their canon version memorable compared to their male counterparts. What are your thoughts on the ‘Kishi is a misogynist’ debate?

I mean most of his contradictory interviews are about the endgame couples. kishi said he wanted more mission type arcs like the low but his editor made him write a tournament instead. he wanted the sns vote2 battle to be a close fist fight but jump said no to the point that kishi said they really bothered him about it. I guess they settled on a compromise. he fought 5 years to include the reverse harem jutsu in before editors said okay. he also said that a lot of the ideas he had were unshonen like. he also said he had a lot of trouble writing the pein arc, and I think this is where he really struggled with those unshonen like ideas. he also said that because it's a shonen, even though he doesn't agree with some of what's in the manga, it's shonen so it has to be 'hopeful' - although for the last two links there don't seem to be proper sources for and I can't be bothered to dig too deep into them, so take them as you will. anyways he was fine with ending naruto how it was without boruto, from the start he envisioned the end as sns' reconciliation. so it seems there's lots of stuff he fought for/had to change but at the very end he said everything he wanted to put in the manga he did which is like? (I think that's the source, it's one of those post series interviews that he said that in but I'm not gonna watch all of that again sorry). I guess he gave up on other things but what was most important to him (obviously the bond between sns) he fought for until the end to write.

as for the misogyny bit there's a poll running check it out here 😀 as for my own personal opinion on it hmm I think I'll keep my thoughts to myself for now.

[tempenensis]

Hi Lele :) Good news! (ignoring Megumi's current status in the manga)... I saw a tweet from a jpn fan saying that Megumi became the 3rd character in Shonen Jump's history to get the most votes in a popularity poll (in paid voting format). The podium was previously occupied by 3 Dragon Ball characters. That's all, take care Lele!

Yeah! I saw that tweet and literally went "Yeahh, that's my boy!!". A little bit of positiveness because if I think about Megumi in the manga I will just be in pain

[maoam]

if twitter's representation of the votes is accurate then sakura is definitely going to win. she has the most dedicated fanbase and the narutop99 tag is overwhelmingly filled with people who voted for her. no other character comes close 🤢

Think positively, if Sakura won that if anything will finally convince the Japanese that their polls are easily spammable.

Even Kishi said Sakura has immensely hated, I'm sure the Shonen Jump staff are aware of this as well. 😂They would never buy Sakura winning over Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi.

[sasukesun]

Hi bella, I’ve read somewhere that because of chapter 698, sasuke decided to help naruto with his plan and with that, completely let go of his desire for justice and now only does everything he can to make naruto’s dream a reality. that he has apologized to sakura for naruto’s sake because naruto wanted team 7 to be together again. but sasuke didn’t change his plan about making the elders pay because of naruto but when he spoke to itachi the last time and tried to understand why itachi did what he did. The truth behind the massacre should be revealed, even if in the end it seems as though it wasn’t because of itachi’s wish, so that what he did wasn’t in vain. Itachi as a character really ruined a lot of things and it’s strange when people say naruto was the reason sasuke gave up on justice for his clan. naruto and sasuke working together doesn't mean sasuke blindly follows naruto's wishes, it's just about naruto giving sasuke hope for a better future and that they can rely on each other and share their pain. Sasuke doesn’t need to apologize to Sakura or let go of wanting justice and I don’t believe naruto would tell him to do such a thing, during the war when he was scolding him it just seemed like it was light and unserious. i don't think it's a coincidence that kakashi was the one who defended sakura and not naruto. because kakashi are sakura are similar when it comes to their treatment of sasuke, and as a result it's clear why sasuke's most important person is naruto and not sakura or kakashi. why he loves naruto but not the rest of team 7. the story portrayed sasuke as wrong and naruto as right when it came to what they believe a hokage should be and how they should deal with injustice. But vote 2 isn’t really about politics, it’s about them as people and the love they have for each other. That love prevailed and that there is hope and sasuke doesn’t need to do things alone anymore. So to say vote 2 is the reason sasuke let go of his wishes, that naruto is the villain and that boruto happened as a consequence of vote 2 seems like it’s coming from biased people who don’t understand naruto and sasuke's relationship. Naruto does earnestly love sasuke, he respects his opinion and is willing to hear his side. I don’t doubt the fact that naruto is good for sasuke and that they need each other. But I would like to know what you think, is chapter 698 about sasuke setting his desire for justice aside for naruto? does naruto expect sasuke to apologize to sakura? is naruto really disregarding sasuke's wishes and thinks he is the only one who's right?

i think i know which post you’re talking about and i believe you misunderstood it a bit.

chapter 698 pushes to the idea of naruto and sasuke working together, the chapter itself isn’t the problem, the problem is what it comes after it. the post says kishimoto breaks the rules of storytelling, which would be this narrative of them working together and balancing each other, it’s not what happens after chapter 698 though. in boruto, sasuke abandons his previous views and only does things in “naruto’s way” (which i wouldn’t even call it naruto’s way because naruto also wanted to change the shinobi system and we see in boruto that things haven’t changed). kishimoto prioritised an easy “resolution” over satisfying character arcs (to both naruto and sasuke), he worked for a magazine, and plenty of his ideas weren’t adequate to be published, he did a lot to show that sasuke is, in fact, naruto’s equal in every possible way, no wonder their final battle ends in a tie, but dealing with the problems with the shinobi system more radically and really addressing its darkest issues was a difficult battle to win against shonen jump and the magazine’s ideals, especially when japan itself has a history with the ideals in question. so sasuke’s “darkness” must be abandoned, otherwise the ideas would be very unshonen.

and sasuke’s apology to sakura is related to it because addressing her and kakashi’s terrible behaviour towards him would make it look like he’s not over “the darkness and resentment”, to the general public of course. naruto tries to be a peacekeeper, his scolding during war is light but it’s true that he wants everybody to get along. sasuke doesn’t care, he doesn’t make a point of being considerate towards kakashi and sakura or wanting to get along with them, but after chapter 698 he acts civil towards them for the sake of naruto. firstly because he understands that naruto would like a good relationship between team 7, but mostly because he knows if naruto knew about how he feels about kakashi’s hypocrisy and sakura’s ego, naruto would probably take sasuke’s side and confront kakashi and sakura… and that wouldn’t make them get along. he bears such burden for naruto (and there’s also the fact that kishimoto knew he had to pair sasuke and sakura together so he needed a mediocre token apology so ss wouldn’t look that bad for the sake of boruto). ideally, without considering the general public’s reaction, sasuke would act the same way and kakashi and sakura would have to apologise to him, but even making naruto ask for their apology would make it look like sasuke is “still resentful”, so, practically, none of that happens and sasuke does things for the sake of naruto, since it would be a lot of work and nuance to the general public. see? that’s an easy resolution over a satisfying character arc and it serves what shonen jump wishes very well, it’s the same about the politics.

yes, naruto gives sasuke hope, naruto sees the lighter side while sasuke sees the darker and they balance each other out. chapter 698 is about that, even sasuke’s monologue is about that, but the rest… isn’t. those moments could’ve stayed the same and the ending could’ve been completely different, they don’t push to boruto or go against the narrative but what those moments propose isn’t also what happens in the ending of the manga unfortunately, for other external reasons

[andreabandrea]

Most transgender character ever poll

- canon trans woman in a piece of media by a trans creator (2 votes)

- random cis anime boy from shonen jump (1 cisbillion votes)

[tokiro07]

Cipher Academy ch. 18 thoughts

[Stop the Count!]

So remember how I said that Anonymity has most likely been using her Glasses Weapon to cheat on every assignment up to this point as a foil to Iroha? Well turns out I’m a god damn fool and Anonymity’s Glasses Weapon was much more obvious than I gave it credit for: instead of her censor bar hiding or literally being her Glasses Weapon, it’s the result of her Glasses Weapon, [Personal Package], literally censoring identifying information about herself. In other words, she’s been doing all of her puzzle solving completely freehand. She’s perfectly capable of putting in effort and succeeding, she just favors efficiency, and cheating happens to be the most direct method of achieving results. Kogoe puts it best when she says “she isn’t a threat because she’s a cheater, she’s a threat who also cheats”

I wonder how far her Glasses Weapon goes though: I assume Personal Package is projecting the censor bar in real time, and her profile card being blacked out could easily have been a part of Kogoe’s design for the murder mystery, but does it only affect machines that are looking directly at her? It actually seems like everyone is censoring her name when they speak, is that diegetic or just so we the audience don’t learn her name? Her introductory crossword is written in magazine clippings, did she literally do that to hide her handwriting, or is Personal Package overwriting her handwriting?

If Personal Package can censor identifiers at a distance and with no way of knowing that it’s happening, can it censor her fingerprints? Is her voice censored? If CA ever gets animated, will she be voiced with text-to-speech? Ostensibly she’s supposed to be from Kansai, which I assume is reflected in how she talks in Japanese, but could it be that Personal Package gave her a fake accent? Is Anonymity even a girl in the first place, or is she secretly a second boy in the class?

Finally, if Personal Package can work at a distance, how? How can it censor people’s words without even being in range? Could it possibly be that this world is all in some kind of simulation so data can be hacked and changed from anywhere at any time?!?!? Probably not, but if that turns out to be the case, just remember I said it first right here and now!!!

If Personal Package really does censor everything, face, voice, handwriting, fingerprints, etc., then I think it’s pretty likely that Nisio is revisiting Shonen Shojo (Ill Boy, Ill Girl), a short running series of his from almost a decade ago where the main characters had a disease that kept them from discerning the identifying features of anyone who didn’t also have the disease. What was especially fun was that Boy’s censorship was marker ink while Girl’s was ribbons, helping to illustrate the difference in their takes on their condition and other people. It’s a good read, I recommend it! Anyway, Personal Package seems like it’s a weaponized form of said disease

Back to the topic at hand, we learn that the final round of the leading class private selection does in fact involve a vote, but it’s only for establishing the starting conditions for the round itself rather than determining the winner, and instead of literally voting for the preferred candidate, the class is essentially voting against their unpreferred candidate. They even bring up an interesting point that the second or third preference might get the most votes overall because while everyone may prefer someone else, they all might agree that one candidate is a solid runner up. I wonder if Nisio is making a subtle comment on the Jump popularity poll system which works the same way, asking people to vote for their top 3 and allowing for a universal second place to beat out the divisive first place. I wouldn’t be surprised, considering how the popularity polls have generally been unkind to him in the past (I think I can count the number of times Medaka Box had the cover to itself on one hand...)

Anyway, Yosaimura gets first place for exactly that reason; because Toshusai, Iroha and Anonymity are fairly divisive, every student would naturally vote against one of them, but no one has a reason to vote against Yosaimura, giving her the lead despite the fact that no one has any particular reason to vote for her either

Humorously, Toshusai is surprised that she only lost two votes “given her personality.” She thought she was going to be more generally disliked because of how prickly and crude she is, so I assume she failed to consider the fact that the question at hand is “who can we entrust our lives to,” and that she’s far and away the most clearly capable of the candidates

Similarly, Anonymity only lost three votes and she’s just as surprised because of how much of an unlikable jerk she is. No one knows anything about her, no one is her friend, and everything she’s ever said to the class has been callous, dismissive, and cruel (horrible girl, my beloved), so if this were a popularity contest, she’d have lost without any question. In a measurement of pure skill, intelligence, and general leadership qualities, though, Anonymity has proven herself more than capable. Sure, her personality might lead to her literally sacrificing some or everyone for the sake of victory, but apparently that’s still better than...

Iroha, who only got five votes total, because he’s still kind of a wuss and way too straight-laced. He’s slow to solve puzzles but also tends to jump to conclusions, he doesn’t take advantage of the tools he has available because of his own pride, and he’s easily swayed by his emotions. Again, in terms of pure popularity, I think there’s a good chance that Iroha would have had a much tighter race against Toshusai on the basis that he seems to have endeared himself to the class pretty well by this point, but he’s actually more of a wild card than Anonymity in a certain way, doing things like recruiting a third member to what was supposed to be a two-person cell

However, the votes are merely a reflection of the classes’ impression of the candidates’ skills; the true measure of their ability and value as cipher soldiers can only be determined in practicum. In this case, Leaky Poker, a modified Blind Man’s Bluff where the cards are all hidden behind puzzles and the chips represent the votes received in the previous phase

Now, I haven’t the foggiest idea how to figure out what each card is, but I’m decently confident that “left chest” is a Hearts suit and the golf club and Clubs 49 are both Clubs. Just a feeling

This also seems like a good time to note that I was wrong about this being a more traditional tournament bracket, with Nisio instead opting for a battle royale between all four candidates. I suppose I should have seen it coming, as this is a much faster and more direct method for determining who’s the best candidate among the four

CG suggests that this game is tailor made for Anonymity, as not only is she excellent at code-breaking, she also has a built-in poker face, and also antithetical to Iroha, who almost definitely won’t use his Glasses Weapon to win this fight even if it’s his only chance. I think that that might be the intention, though: putting Iroha in a situation where he’s at as much of a disadvantage as possible to either force him to use his Glasses Weapon or prove that he doesn’t actually need it just like Anonymity. If it’s the latter, that should prove to the class that he deserves their votes beyond a shadow of a doubt

Iroha calls and raises Anonymity’s bet, going all in in the first round despite the fact that it’s extremely unlikely that he was able to solve everyone’s codes just as quickly as Anonymity did. He seems to be banking on the fact that he’s very good at keeping up a smile when he’s up against the wall, which carries a very troubling implication for his past. We know he’s been abused by his parent(s) and that he’s witnessed multiple people die, at least some of whom were presumably friends of his, so this is almost certainly related to his backstory. I’m very worried about what we’re going to learn about Iroha in the coming chapters

I do think it’s very interesting that Iroha asks Anonymity if she can keep up a poker face. I mean, of course she can, right? It’s the ability of her Glasses Weapon, she doesn’t actually need to. Ah, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? While she doesn’t rely on her Glasses Weapon to solve puzzles, she does rely on it to protect her emotions; in other words, if Personal Package fails for any reason, she won’t have her own skill to fall back on anymore, and she might not be capable of keeping up a bluff; Iroha, on the other hand, is already skilled at regulating his expression, and will naturally have the advantage in that area. This ties back into why he doesn’t use his Glasses Weapon; if he has a repeat of the code battle against Omomuro where his battery runs out or his signal gets jammed, he can’t risk being unprepared to fight on his own

Therefore, I predict that the one that Anonymity relies on and can’t do on her own will fail her, putting her on the back foot because she didn’t put in all of the effort she possible could have, costing her the victory that she prioritized above all else. Whether or not Iroha actually wins the election I can’t say, it may well be too early in his development for him to be awarded that position, but his mentality and philosophy are going to beat out Anonymity’s for sure

[kuronekoo98]

Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) is one of the most successful shonen manga in recent years, with tens and tens of millions of copies around the world and an ever-expanding franchise. The record manga born from the pen of Koyoharu Gotouge has in fact succeeded in the feat of ousting the legendary One Piece from the top of the Shueisha house sales and the film, Demon Slayer: the Mugen Train, has become the anime film with the highest revenue in history. First published in February 2016, Demon Slayer was therefore one of the backbones that have supported the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine over the past few years. In the spring season of 2019 the opera was then transposed into an animated adaptation by studio Ufotable and from there the franchise of Tanjiro and companions flew into the stratosphere, reaching levels of popularity that had never been seen before. How not to mention, for example, the renowned episode 19 of the first season, which completely broke through the barriers of prejudice and the mainstream by plunging to the top of Twitter's worldwide trending. A survey was recently proposed on the Ranking. net website, which deals with drawing up rankings of the most varied genres and topics. However, despite the not particularly large pool of voters, these types of polls are often indicative of a general trend or liking that, as votes increase, would see its hierarchy consolidate instead of being overturned.

So no matter what, let’s take a look at the 20 favorite Demon Slayer characters from the Japanese public, in descending order.

20) Yoriichi Tsugikuni 19) Ukogi 18) Doma 17) Kanae Kocho 16) Makomo 15) Tengen Uzui 14) Akaza 13) Sabito 12) Sanemi Shinazugawa 11) Inosuke Hashibira 10) Obanai Iguro 9) Mitsuri Kanroji 8) Tanjiro Kamado 7) Kanao Tsuyuri 6) Shinobu Kocho 5) Nezuko Kamado 4) Kyoujurou Rengoku

3) Zenitsu Agatsuma

2) Muichirou Tokitou

1) Giyuu Tomioka

[lesbianakaashi]

The Forgotten Shounen: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

This is not a “Why you should watch/read khr” or anything like that. This is just me going into the deep dive and throwing my findings at you. I’m making this because khr used to be my favourite series when I was 15 (I had plushees, posters, tradingcards, the art book etc) and now as an adult I constantly find myself baffled at how unknow it seems to be.

1. Okay first what is khr?

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! or just Reborn! is a series by Akira Amano which was published in Weekly Shounen Jump from 2004 to 2012 (with 42 volumes) and got an anime adaption which run from 2006 to 2010 on Tv Tokyo (with 202 episodes and one OVA).

2. What’s it about?

Khr is a parody of the italian mafia and plays in a world where the mafia is heavily influencial. The protagonist is the japanese middle schooler Sawada Tsunayoshi who is known as “No good Tsuna” because of his failing grades, general weak and cowardly personality and weak physics.

He becomes aware of the mafia world when a 2 year old baby called Reborn arrives at his house claiming to be the greatest hitman and declaring himself his home tutor. Reborn was send by the 9th head of the Vongola famiglia who is ready to retire and looking for a new heir. Which of course, is supposed to be Tsuna and now it's Reborns job to shape him into a worthy sucessor.

Tsuna rejects the violence of the mafia world and refuses the position as the 10th. Thanks to Reborn and his general craziness Tsuna meets different people and starts to make real friendships. Reborn wants 6 of those friends to be Tsuna's future guardians, basically a group of people which will be closest to him in the vongola famiglia. Tsuna might have no interest in those positions but the friendships he builds with them become really precious to him.

Reborns arrivial also brings in the enemies of the Vongola family which leads to Tsuna being forced to engage in battles. Generally Tsuna openly avoids fights and prefers to run away but will put himself in danger for his friends' sake or because of something Reborn did.

Through out the series Tsuna matures and gains strenght but he never becomes a power fantasy. He's just a guy with many flaws who grows through the human connections he makes.

Personally I think the relationship between Reborn and Tsuna is one of the best student teacher reltaionships in all of manga only topped by Mob and Reigen from Mob Psycho 100. Especially the last arc really underlines their unique relationship to me.

Furthermore, khr offers a new and unique battle system: The flames. I'm not gonna go into to too much detail but the general idea is that one fights with their dying will flame which basically turns off your the savety switch so you can fight with everything you have. The flames are seperated into different categories such as: sky, storm, mist, rain, sun, lightning and cloud and have different attributes asigned to each one. Tsuna's use of the sky flame and his transformation when using it is still one of my favourite shounen transformations to this day.

3. What happened?

The series did really well and then not so well over the course of its serialisation. After the manga got an anime adaption it increased in populairty and video games, light novels, and other products such as CDs were created based on the series. Reborn is one of the best selling series of Weekly Shōnen Jump and has sold around 30 Million volumes overall. It was and still is very popular in Japan but rather unknown in the west.

According to the article "The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump: A Look at the Circulation of Weekly Jump" khr was the 10th bestselling series in Weekly Shōnen Jump, with a total of 7 million copies sold in 2007.

This number increasing to 15 milion in 2008. Which placed khr into the 4th best selling series of 2008 in Japan.

Between 2008 and 2010 those sales declined but still kept strong with khr as the 6th top selling manga in 2009, 8th best selling in 2010 and then 24th best selling in 2012.

In November 2014, readers of the Da Vinci magazine voted khr number 17 on a list of Weekly Shōnen Jump's greatest manga series of all time.

After the anime came to an apprupt stop in 2010 for unknown reasons the manga sells took a visible hit. (Apparently the studio wanted to put the anime on halt because they were busy with other projects and give Akira Amano time to develop her story but I couldn't find any source for this claim) Furthermore, the rushed last chapters of the manga in 2012 declined the popularity of the series even more. There's no offical statement as to why the manga was ended in such a way but it's reasonable to assume that Jump either cut it considering the decreasing sales or Akira Amano choose to end it for personal reasons.

Nontheless, Tsuna not being included in Jump Force (a fighting game where you can play as different characters from Jump) in 2019 even tho he made it in earlier Jump Stars games also underlines the decreased interest in the series.

Rumors on a reboot or anime adaption of the last two arcs surface from time to time but are genereally unlikely. Artland the studio which made khr has gone bankrupt around 2015-2016. It might be taken on by another studio but rather uncommen especially with such an old series.

4. Art style

The khr anime ended over 10 years ago and the old art style might not be appealing to newer audiences.

Especailly because the anime adaption follows Akira Amanos old art style which heavily developed within the years. Here a picture comparing characters in the new art style:

A modern anime adaption in the new art style would be aesthetically pleasing. It would probably look similiar to Psycho Pass since Akira Amano did the concept art for this series.

(My personal art student hot take is that both art styles are unique and fun. Up to this day Akira Amano still has my favourite art style and even if the amount folds in the characters clothing is a little extreme I love it dearly.)

5. Criticism

The show is not without flaws and even if I greatly enjoy it it wouldn't be right not to adress them.

Daily Life Arc:

A lot of people view the first 20 to 25 episodes as fillers and quickly lose intererst in the series. This is due to the fact that Akira Amano inteded the series to be a gag manga and focuses the first chapters on world building, character introduction and comical narratives. It's rumored that the decision to develop the story into a battle shounen was made because the sales weren't doing well enough at first. So the first chapters/episodes may seem titidious but are necessary for the story and the development of the characters. The tonal shift from a more gintama like gag manga to a darker battle focused story can also be offputting to some viewers.

Either way a lot of people blame this arc when discussing why khr never got an english dub or didn't end up on Toonami. I've also read that the manga never finished serializing in the north america. However, it finished in other western languages like german and spanish.

Censoring:

The anime censors A LOT. From Gokudera's smoking habit, Yamamoto's whole character arc which deals with heavy themes such as depression and suicidal thoughts. The general bloodiness of the manga was censored and sometimes whole chapters and characters were left out even if those were important to the devolopment of others.

Filler episodes:

Out of the 202 episodes the anime has around 29 filler episodes which makes roughly 14 %.

Sexism:

Even if Reborn was written by a woman most female characters are rather flat and their storylines often tied to a male character in one way or another.

Genereal things:

Khr, like many other long running series, is sometimes criticised for a lack of world building or unpopular narrative choices.

6. Hope?

Khr isn't exactly dead. As stated before the series is still very popular in Japan and still gets new merch pretty regulary. There are also petitions floating around for a reboot or a new anime season but those never get a lot of traction. Furthermore #Reborn2期アニメ化 (#Reborn2ndAnimation) used to get some traction on twitter not too long ago. Last year the Anime News Network did a poll on which anime the readers would like to see a rebooot of and khr placed second.

Either way here's a collection of recent khr things I could find.

- In 2018 a new bluray set was released in north america

- The khr stage play reached yet another new season

- A mobile game was released last year

- Currently ongoing anime cafe event called "Concerto di Vongola"

- Last month there was an event with the former VAs and stage play actors where they discussed their favourite khr episodes.

- There has been an increase in blind reacts to the openings on youtube which might bring in a new fan base. The biggest one I could find had around 90k views and was made in 2019. On this note check out the soundtrack. The first openeing Drawing Days by SPLAY still makes me go insane (but I'm biased of course)

There also renewed hope for a new season/reboot because Shaman King, Inuyasha and Bleach got anounced for new seasons after a long hiatus. It's important to keep in mind that the circumstances for those series are differnt tho. For example bleachs new anime is often tied to the immense success of the gatcha game.

7. Conclusion

Khr is a series which used to be a flagship for Weekly Shounen Jump and is deeply beloved by it's fans, especially in Japan. It influenced other shounen series like bnha. It would be nice to see it gaining a bigger fanbase in the west :)

[everyneji]

I hear people say no one cared about Neji before his death. Is/was Neji popular? I don't think many people dislike him, but he doesn't seem to be many people's most favorite character. I'm new to the fandom (I know I'm late) so it's just my first impression

Well, as ever, it depends where you're engaging with fandom, but Neji has always held a decent level of popularity for a character who only got plot for two early arcs and proceeded to do nothing for the next ten years. Shonen Jump only conducted character popularity polls up to 2011, but from those we gather: POLL #1: 12th place (288 votes) POLL #2: 13th place (396 votes) POLL #3: 10th place (1,174 votes) POLL #4: 6th place (3,222 votes) POLL #5: 7th place (2,497 votes) POLL #6: 8th place (1,785 votes) DATABOOK 3 COMPILATION POLL: 7th place (9,362 votes) 10th EN ANNIVERSARY POLL: 4th place with 8% of the vote POLL #7: 15th place (1,794)

So you know, shoutout to the ~2000 Japanese Shounen Jump subscribers who were dedicated Neji stans through it all.

I think to understand Neji's popularity level you need to consider why he was such an effective choice as a Konoha 11 character to kill off to show the Violence of War. Yes he died to play cupid, but he was also a character that was liked and had a decent overall story, without being essential to the plot. Like, maybe Kiba or Shino could have gone out encouraging Naruto to make a move on their teammate, but, well.

It was a running joke on the Naruto Forums back in the day that Neji was death flagged, and that Kishimoto wasn't going to let him do anything until he died, so we had some idea this was coming. If Neji did marginally anything in the manga, it would get a decent response as demonstrated by this excerpt of a classic parody page:

Overall, I'd say that Neji is a mid tier character popularity wise (top tier in our hearts, of course.) People did 'care' more after he died, but this is more because they want to either use his death as a reason to criticize Naruto/Hinata or to critique Kishimoto's writing overall. I don't think he really gained many new fans after his death so much as he became a battering ram for these kinds of discussions.

[stillness-in-green]

they don’t see the Japanese fan talking about her hopes for the end of the series riding on her perception of Horikoshi as being relatively progressive and sensitive.

what kind of end is she hoping for?

She had observed that HeroAca had been good about delving into societal issues thus far, and she enjoyed seeing male and female characters getting along, so she hoped that the series wouldn’t have a forced hetero-romance ending–what I think Western fandom tends to call things like “timeskip marriage endings.”

This is something shonen-oriented properties (and not just them; we have ‘em here, too) have been doing for a long time, but discussion about it has been growing in Japan, along with the expected pushback from people accusing those who complain about it of being gross fujoshi(1)/strident feminists trying to force their BL pairings/radical views about women onto this innocent dude author just trying to write his story.

There are, of course, lots of reasons why someone might not want to see HeroAca end with timeskip romances. Sure, some might have BL pairings they prefer, but for myself, at least, I don’t want to see it because I don’t want to see any author who thinks relationship drama is too boring to bother giving it any screentime jam in relationships at the end anyway. That sort of thing treats women as little more than rewards for men to get at the end of the story, or like settling down is what you do after all the interesting parts of your life are over, and it’s regressive tripe. It seems women in Japan are getting more comfortable expressing that sentiment openly as well.

There are actually quite a few elements I’ve heard of Japanese people (fans and haters alike) pointing to as indicative of Horikoshi being relatively forward-thinking. Hit the jump for some brief, generalized musings.

So there are, of course, the obvious/big things, like that the series borrows elements from Western superhero comics (disliked by the hardcore nationalist types, who think it’s pandering to the U.S.), or that the Japan it portrays is a brightly colored dystopia with lagging regard for human rights (generally seen as a good portrayal of a bad thing).

Then there are the smaller things. For example, many Western fans point to Magne and Tiger as Bad Trans Representation because they’re seen as regressive stereotypes or jokes, and Magne is the series’s first named character death, in a much more gruesome display than the manga had tended to portray up to that point.

Conversely, some Japanese readers point to Magne and Tiger as Trans Visibility, and feel the manga is portraying trans characters in a positive light. After all, Tiger is a hero, and Magne’s embrace of her identity is something the manga goes out of its way to see her praised and even envied for. Horikoshi may have some outdated ideas of what trans people look like, but it does not seem to be the case that those designs are coming from a place of malice.(2)

Another thing I’ve heard is the matter of Jirou’s parents–specifically, the husband taking his wife’s name, rather than the other way around. The law in Japan states that married couples must have a single family name, but doesn’t specify that it must be the wife who takes the husband’s. Obviously, it’s by far the most common choice (96%!), but every so often, you do see the opposite–and because it’s so uncommon, it remains somewhat controversial.

My general impression of the Japanese fan response to HeroAca is that it’s much easier for them to see the broader societal scope of the work. While it’s obvious from the numbers that the hero kids are wildly more popular with, at least, the voting readership, you still get those discussions of the ways that e.g. while the villains are too extreme in their actions, they still have legitimate complaints that have to be reconciled(3) in order for the series and its world to reach a happy conclusion. Even the people involved in the work say similar things, like Uraraka’s voice actress talking about the upcoming events of the anime changing from being about justice versus evil into being a clash between two different ideas of justice, or Horikoshi himself talking about how Shigaraki will be the greatest challenge to Deku’s drive to save.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we’re still stuck with Hero Stans baldly misquoting a three and a half year old interview to say that Horikoshi himself says Shigaraki is too far gone to be saved while Villain Stans talk about the blatant, obvious injustices in the series as if they’ve unearthed some great mystery the author himself put in completely unintentionally.(4)

Anyway, disclaimer that I don’t read Japanese fluently, nor do I hang around in Japanese fan spaces on the regular, so take these viewpoints with a grain of salt; they are, after all, isolated opinions plucked with the randomness of what Twitter spits out in response to search terms, and there’s no guarantee that they represent a larger fan consensus. And Horikoshi is still a product of his culture, with all of the problems it very definitely has, particularly where rampant sexism is concerned, and of course people are allowed to talk about that, and be uncomfortable with it.

Still, I wish the tumblr fandom were a bit more willing to research and weigh cultural contexts outside of their own when talking about BNHA, rather than falling all over each other to judge the work and its author without even thinking about the lenses they themselves are bringing to the table--be it the most extreme of the Hero Stans' normalized views of state-funded police violence or the most extreme of the Villain Stains' dogmatic tumblr ethics that are still steeped in black and white moralism about who it's okay to bully/oppress/kill.

----

(1) You know, just in case you thought that fujoshi was an outdated smear word in Japan or think that people who try to explain to Western fans the word’s origins as a reclaimed insult are lying. No, it’s still in active use by the kinds of fandom 2channers who came up with it to begin with. The new one in their lexicon, which came up in the responses in question here, is fuemi (腐ェミ), a mashup of fujoshi and feminist, for double the derogatory scorn!

(2) Given that the trans community has been arguing against having to Perform Gender to an outsider’s specification in order to be accepted, I think Magne’s relatively butch presentation is just fine, but of course, I have my doubts that Horikoshi is all that up to date on gender presentation discourse. Still, her lips are the only thing I would change about her design, because they call to mind visual stereotypes about “gonk” characters who can certainly be noble or sympathetic, but can also be cheap comic relief–and as often much worse. On the other hand, Sato from Class 1-A has them, too, and the worst coding that commonality suggests is “underdeveloped,” so again, I don’t see maliciousness being a factor there.

(3) I wrote that Why Deku’s Ultimatum To Overhaul Is Bad post a while back? I’m pleased to note that I did have brought to my attention some similarly worded feelings from a Japanese fan: that Deku being unwilling to face Overhaul’s feelings while still demanding that Overhaul change them is not a good or heroic way to go about facing villains. A sentiment from a One Piece antagonist was referenced: “Justice doesn’t win; justice is whoever wins.” In other words, Deku was exhibiting a “might makes right” mentality, not at all in line with his desire to save. Likewise, there was another person who thought that trying to force Overhaul to change his feelings before letting him see his Pops was unlikely to work, and therefore just impractical. So, you know, it’s not just about saving the “villain trio” and calling it a day–even when the villain Deku’s facing is someone as loathsome to his sensibilities as Overhaul.

(4) I’m not immune to this, I’m sure–indeed, I hope I can look back on the series and see that some of my more extreme fears are/were unfounded and that my rants about Overhaul and the PLF mass arrests were premature. Still, I like to think I’m at least doing better than e.g. the people who think My Hero Academia demonizes the mentally ill because it portrays Twice as a criminal, without ever stopping to think about the likelihood that the circumstances of Jin’s turn to villainy are an intentionally portrayed flaw of Hero Society.

[marunalu]

Izuku wins the french popularity pool for the third time in a row and for a huge number of votes. i'm so happy right now.

Well unlike the japanese mha fandom, the french have taste and dont see a reason to cheat for their favorite character. You cant trust the shonen jump poll because people can buy multible votes and japanese fans even proudly showed online their multible votes for a certain charater, while the french poll is an online one if Im correct and by that way more accurate. Izuku also won the 2018 poll on crunchyroll by miles and till this day that was the most accurate poll ever done!