- #74
@ Frostmourn & Metsujin
I think we agree that a good story has to establish its point quickly, because its important for the reader to know where we are going. It works like this in One Piece, Naruto, Kingdom, HxH somehow, Toriko, FullMetal Alchemist, Bakuman ...
Mangas that don't follow this rule but want to succeed try to emphasize character development through the story and introduce long term foes since the first volumes of the manga. Magi for example works like this, we don't know where we are exactly going but the story is still about Alibaba and Sinbad. Gintama on another hand is surviving a lot through comedy.
Then there are mangas which fail at establishing a goal and kill off the main vilains too soon : Bleach is the perfect example. Who reads Bleach today?
So now back to what you said. you tell me that the point of Fairy Tail is the story of the guild and I think that you're right it's the goal of Hiro Mashima. But is accomplishing tasks that the master gives you that entertaining?
Wouldn't it have been more entertaining to have a main hero chasing after dragons even if the 3 or 4 other main characters were following their own agenda?
Plus if it's the story of the guild then I expect character development. Now if we look at the guild, its a lot of people. Is it really possible to care about so many people? Plus most of them are NPC with random face, we don't even know their names they are just here to say "there are people in the guild", others have a name but they have been spending their time in the building since the first arc : Droy, Jet, that telepathy guy, the two hunters ... And then there is the inner circle : Makarov, Levy, Mirajane, Gajeel, ... but all in all, all these characters get no development at all except for a few shipping. How should I care really? They could all die for it doesn't matter at all.
All in all having a story about something as big as a guild but chosing to develop only 4 of them is perfectly stupid. Imagine the adventures of Luffy, Zoro Nami and ... their 60 buddies : John 1, John 2, John 3 ... John 60. Just get rid of the 60 and keep the three main chars.
And yeah Makarov should have died on Tenrou, that would have been far more meaningfull.
The concept you describe. The immediate establishment of the final goal, of the teenage main character, after the introduction of the story, ,was only made popular within the medium of Battle Shounen Manga since One Piece and Naruto.
At least according to the knowledge I have on the subject. Goku introduced the archetype of the young, immature, airhead main character. Most popular Shounen follow it nowadays and this includes Togashi´s works, which apparently are the only ones people don´t moan about because unoriginal and repetetive. But the story of Dragon Ball started without any final goal or direction. Similar to HxH the story introduced new concepts and ideas as it was being written, which it has in common with older Battle Shounen like Jojo´s.
I don´t read Magi and from your describtion I cannot judge if is compareable to the writing of Dragon Bal, From what I understood it utilizes it, but has more direction?
Gintama is a Gag Manga, they break consistenly the rules and personally I consider it insulting that the author tries to fool the readers into thinking that there could be any danger for the Main cast, when there is no continuity to begin with.
Bleach is read by many people, although the haters are vocal, it sold only 1600 volumes less than Magi last year, This half year it´s only 100k volumes behind Magi and it can still rise, so whats your point?
It would have been one interesting possibility for the story, yet many people appreciated Zeref. Honestly I think he´s among the few good things that came out of this Manga. The concept of his curse is original,although the solution is cheesy.
Gotta give you the point with the overabundance of people. It´s the same problem Bleach has and One Piece also did suffer from it, during the Dressrosa arc. The authors force too many characters into the story and by giving them all a portion of screentime they don´t develop any of them. Did you care for any of the colloseum fighters during Dressrosa? Do you care for the Captains of the Gotei 13? I care for a few but I don´t care about most of them. It´s a popular trap among Mangaka, MHA, will most likely suffer from it too. I doubt Kouhei can pull it off to develop 2 classes and their teachers, while juggling his villains.
Everyone agrees on that last point and everyone called bullshit on it, besides the few people who appreciate faggotry (not in a gay way).
