>make a battle shonen with a huge cast>the majority of said cast never gets a real fightWhat's the point of having that many characters at that point? Bleach and Naruto did this shit too.
So true, bestie. Every story should only have the bare minimum amount of characters.
>>284092531Goddamn those are some really fucking ugly designs.
>>284092790If you just want to fill up space, that's what background characters and recurring extras are for.There was no reason to give the entire class a name and a power if they weren't going to be relevant, just give the important characters unique designs and powers and make the rest faceless background characters. Or just cut the class size down to only the relevant characters, 20 is way too fucking much
>>284092790When you plaster characters all over volume covers and merchandise, there's an expectation that they're actually relevant. Advertising unimportant characters is false advertisement
Bad writing where you aren’t being economical and introducing shit just to keep people reading, common in anime cos it’s generally a sign of bad narrative and anime is usually badly written
>>284092790Well yeah, that's why Goku and Vegeta work
>>284093224>>284094145I'm glad I never have to worry about reading anything from your hands, since it'll never exist
>>284093153Wait till you see class B
>>284094145You should sue then
>>284092531To attract teenagers. They choose their favorite character. Basically the same with those idol groups. They dont need 10 untalented guys in the same group to make those shitty cashgrab songs, they need them because they are hot and have somewhat different personalities so ugly girls can choose the one they like the most. Also, it makes the story more entertaining to young audiences since new unimportant info is dropped every nanosecond so they dont sleep
>>284098991The audience doesn't care about unimportant info or characters that don't do do anything. A character has to actually do something of worth to gain fans, just existing isn't enough to be someone's favorite
>>284092531All of them have been in fights
>>284100778We're not counting inconsequential fights that don't impact the story or just pad an arc out, or team fights
Even if the author never really does much with a character, merchandise, adaptations, video games, etc can still make use of and expand on them. Tenten is just a filler character made to fill out Team Guy in the manga, but the anime and the Rock Lee spinoff gave her a backstory, a personality, and let her actually do stuff.
>>284092531Making up a new character is an easy way to get around writer's block but you end up with a bloated cast that does mostly nothing.>>284100836Team fights are one of the better things you can do with an overgrown cast because you can treat each character as a tool and have strategy be why they beat stronger characters. Hori used this early on and then forgot.
>>284092531Trust me, you don't want that shit. Look at Bleach in the last arc. Holy fuck it's terrible. Kill the side characters off.
>>284101060Bleach's problem is that the side character's fights don't matter and only drag arcs out. They aren't organic at all, they're just there to pad arcs out or keep them busy so Ichigo can do the fights that actually matter alone.Bleach's problem was poor usage of characters, not how many there are.
>>284100836
>>284101028Team fights suck at making characters look good because of course they win with a numbers advantage, and their individual abilities get overshadowed. All it does is highlight how weak characters are when it takes multiple of them to beat someone that one of the main characters could solo
>>284095819>common in Weekly Shonen Jump*ftfy
>>284096313I already am a professional writer. If I come up with a character, but can't think of anything for them to actually do, I just cut scrap them entirely or shelve them for later. Introducing them before I have any real plan for them wouldn't benefit my stories at all.
>>284092531merchandising and video game character rosters? also legendary villains should be able to fight more than one hero at once. Is there any point to heroes mowing through monster or villains of the week sailor moon style?>>284092790>>284095928This isn't even an accurate description of modern stories with one or two heroes, they still fight a bunch of unique villains.
>>284092531I'm halfway through s3 right now and I noticed that too. The class already has far too many retards no one gives a fuck about (including the author) and then they keep adding more groups with characters that no one gives a fuck about (including the author). 90% of the characters are one trick ponies with gimmicks that you enjoy for 5 minutes and then you ask "ok now what?" but I guess the mangaka just doesnt really know how to progress their characters so he just adds new ones. But everyone acts like its the best show ever made so maybe I'm missing something
>>284092531looking back they were all shit and a actual detriment to the series
Battle shonen is kind of cursed because expectations are naturally higher for characters than in other genres. In other genres, a character's value doesn't come from their physical capabilities, but in how they relate to other characters. It's okay to have characters that just fill out the setting, support the story's themes, or give the protagonist people to interact with. Them being absent doesn't break the story because there's nothing they could do that the characters who are there can't. If they do get further development or screentime, it's a nice bonus, but they just need to be enjoyable when they are on screen.But battle shonen writers blow their loads way too early with characters. They do one cool thing early on and then are irrelevant for the reminder of the story.
>>284103974Of course they suck when the author does nothing with them. Characters become interesting by doing things
>>284092531Because the respective settings of school, military and ninja squads by necessity must have named characters to fill those ranks
>>284106523They don't HAVE to be named characters, just make them generic background characters of recurring extras
>>284092531To make the world feel real. But they never go far enough.Also, having a fuckton of characters is half the appeal of battle shounen. A battle shounen about two dudes would be boring. Battle shounen is all about the power system and seeing that power system put to use by having a ton of wacky characters. Then people can fantasize about what kind of powers they and their friends would have.This is why Dragon Ball is garbage for Mexicans. Power system is a 1/10 and there's like 20 characters in 500 chapters.
>>284107046>A battle shounen about two dudes would be boring.Naruto revolves almost entirely around Naruto and Sasuke and yet it's one of the most iconic battle shonens all of timeAnd Dragon Ball from the late Buu Saga onwards is pretty much the Goku and Vegeta show
>>284107046>>284107072lmao fuck the side characters.
>>284107046>having a fuckton of characters is half the appeal of battle shounen.Not when those characters are literally just a name and a power
>>284107120If they're not going to contribute anything, they have no fucking place in the story to begin with. Having the main characters be the only ones that do anything is wasteful writing. If they're the only characters that matter, then make them the only characters in the story and just have background characters and extras instead of a whole cast of named side characters with their own powers and unique designs
>>284092531Looking at this... lets see who we can cut and lose absolutely nothing. I think its: Ojiro, Kaminari, Kouda, Satou, Sero, Mina, Mineta. Everyone else has at least ONE scene or subplot that hinges on them, even if its brief or weak.
>>284107153Reminder Naruto is arguably the most popular shonen worldwide and it revolves around two characters.
>>284107223That's not really true when you consider that most people's exposure to Naruto is the anime, and if you count all of the "filler", then most of the "side characters" probably have more screentime than Sasuke does.If you only take the manga into account, sure, but like it or not, the anime is what most people know Naruto for.
>>284107223And that is the most commonly criticized aspect of it; creating lots of characters, only to do jackshit with them, or when they do get stuff to do, it's just padding that has no purpose except to drag the arc out
>>284107496>And that is the most commonly criticized aspect of it;on the internet, no regular watcher could give less of a fuck
>>284107264Nowadays most people skip filler and Naruto is more popular than ever. For the manga sales, it didn't significantly drop despite the singular character focus.
>>284107524A person watching Naruto for the first time wouldn't know it's filler, we're talking about when it originally aired, not now, years after it finished
>>284107507I literally dropped Naruto because I was tired of all of the wasted potential, and I'm not the only who did so
>>284107636>and I'm not the only who did soNo you are
>>284107603Anime filler knowledge is now mainstream. Naruto is instantly popular globally and is still growing. Fuck, I'd argue I knew about filler when growing up on naruto.
>>284107223>>284107496>>284107636>>284107507>it revolves around two characters.did you speedwatch/speedread it? There's entire arcs that are about side characters
>>284107683Naruto has been a dead and dormant franchise for over a decade, its popularity is long gone
>>284107714this is bait
>>284107714>its popularity is long gonelollmao even
>>284107685Literally the only arcs about side characters are the Kazekage Rescue Arc (Gaara) and the Hidan/Kakuzu Arc (Shikamaru). And I'd argue that if they're the focus of an arc, then they're not a "side characters".Every other arc is about either Naruto or Sasuke
Just Class 1-A and 1-B have 20 characters each with a name and unique design. Out of those 40 characters the only really relevant ones are Deku, Bakugou, and Shoto, with Kirishima, Iida, Ochako, and Momo occasionally being marketed as though they were important. So only 3 out of 40 characters are main characters that are genuinely important, and the rest range from minor supporting characters to background characters. Mostly background characters. Probably a grand total of 10 students in the two classes have any real impact on anything.That's before covering the teachers, the pro-heroes, the league of villains, the miscellaneous other villains. Dozens and dozens of characters with only a handful truly relevant. And the ones that get fleshed out and developed are mostly among the pro-heroes and villains. Which is rather odd for a series named My Hero Academia that beings with the premise of the main character getting a power and getting admitted to a prestigious hero high school. Most people expect the students to be the ones who get focus and development. So when the series increasingly ignores them, people start questioning the purpose of characters that could be erased by the dozens and change nothing.
>>284108096>the only really relevant ones are Deku, Bakugou, and Shoto,They're the strongest characters in their class but plot wise only Izuku is truly relevant. The others have their own little story like Shoto and his family or Ochako and Himiko, pro-heroes, etc
>>284108318Ochako and Himiko didn’t even have a story connection the whole book. It was entirely forced in in the final war arc because both those bozos were left as pointless extras with no role in the arc’s plot, even though as the love interest and one of the surviving villains they needed to do somethingPair the spares i guess you’d call it
>>284108318But in a manga where several sidecharacters are known for making the best out of crappy quirks, why should having the best and simplest quirk decide whether you’re a main character?You could totally have given Invisible Girl lots to do. We made like, 11 films and books about how badass invisibility would be
>>284092531Merc.
>>284100331Thats not true. Mha fans like characters like ashido or ochako that are shallow as fuck. To be fair, most mha characters are trash
>>284103974Class 1-A and it's members are literally the best part about MHA and the very reason why this series is so popular in the first place. There's a reason why the arcs focusing on the students are some of the more popular ones in the story.
