Anime/Manga - Discuss Japanese cartoons and comics here; NO CULTURE WAR DOOMPOSTING!

[Retarded Weeb]

Sounds like Bleach. Or Naruto. Or Dragon Ball... All secondaries in a shonen quickly become part of the background. Only the main character/s can do shit.

As soon as SSJ was unlocked it was pretty much a wrap. Last good fight someone like Piccolo had in DBZ where he unquestioningly dominated and stole the scene was probably in Cooler (and that was a movie), Krillin lost his spot even earlier than that.

If you go back and read Dragon Ball from start to finish, it's pretty clear Toriyama always considered it the Goku show and every other character was just there to support him in some way. Either a rival for Goku to surpass, or a jobber to make Goku look even stronger when he comes in afterwords and beats the villain. The fact that some other characters occasionally got to do something cool is a happy accident.

Naruto from what I remember of it seemed like Kishimoto was actually trying to give a lot of characters relevance and cool stuff to do, although how successful he was varied by character. I never watched/read Naruto past some early stuff I happened see on TV though, so I don't know how quickly it got to the point where Naruto and Sasuke were gods and everyone else didn't matter.

Bleach had a totally different and unique problem, where the secondary character who were Ichigo's circle of friends quickly became close to irreverent and barely did anything, while all the screen time and villain kills got stolen by the tertiary cast of shinigami captains and sub-captains. Even Ichigo himself seemed to get sidelined at some point in every arc only to get some bullshit power-up and beat the main villain at the end. It's like Kubo lost interest in his original cast and wanted to actually make it all about these newer characters he came up with, but was obligated to keep dragging the original cast around and have Ichigo ass-pull a win at the end because he's the main character.

 

[Grog]

The secondaries in Jojo do get a lot of screentime, to the point sometimes you could say they're coprotagonists (Bucciarati, Gyro in SBR).

 

[vern]

Is it the japeneese going after the piracy sites by pressuring the west? Or is it mainly western companies trying to nuke them of their own accord?

They always have but previously they would only go after people in the country who would upload manga/anime raws online to try and cut it off and the root and because the people uploading raws use to make a hell of a lot of money for even really low quality images (which is why cleaners used to be a major role in scanlations) and it was a lot easier to rake someone over the coals when if they can present said money in court.
Today its piss easy to get raws for anime and manga because everything its digital or streamed so they started going after aggregate sites beginning with Onemanga and kissanime instead since those sites used to be crawling with ads and where making a lot of money (iirc the people who ran kiss where constantly trying to updated their scrips so adblockers didn't work), and while a dozen different splinter sites would pop up, it was figured that the amount of traffic said sites would get combined would still be less overall, and if one started to rise they would repeat the process..
The reason why mangadex survived so long is because they market themselves as being ad free and seen as the lesser fish to fry. But I've heard rumors that the recent mass DMCA takedown was because of them reopening donations again and being the biggest fish now because several manhwa aggregaters got taken down prior

I've also heard of specific scanlator groups being targeted, but it seems to be ones specifically who advertise a patreon or other such e begging sites to suggest new series to scan/read ongoing series early (even then it seems to be the case of them being kicked off then either creating alts or finding other sites).

 

[Thiletonomics]

They always have but previously they would only go after people in the country who would upload manga/anime raws online to try and cut it off and the root and because the people uploading raws use to make a hell of a lot of money for even really low quality images (which is why cleaners used to be a major role in scanlations) and it was a lot easier to rake someone over the coals when if they can present said money in court.
Today its piss easy to get raws for anime and manga because everything its digital or streamed so they started going after aggregate sites beginning with Onemanga and kissanime instead since those sites used to be crawling with ads and where making a lot of money (iirc the people who ran kiss where constantly trying to updated their scrips so adblockers didn't work), and while a dozen different splinter sites would pop up, it was figured that the amount of traffic said sites would get combined would still be less overall, and if one started to rise they would repeat the process..
The reason why mangadex survived so long is because they market themselves as being ad free and seen as the lesser fish to fry. But I've heard rumors that the recent mass DMCA takedown was because of them reopening donations again and being the biggest fish now because several manhwa aggregaters got taken down prior

I've also heard of specific scanlator groups being targeted, but it seems to be ones specifically who advertise a patreon or other such e begging sites to suggest new series to scan/read ongoing series early (even then it seems to be the case of them being kicked off then either creating alts or finding other sites).

Someone claiming to work for Kakao made this post taking credit for comick.io's takedown:



Kakao is one of South Korea's chaebol companies, which has things such as Kakao Talk, a popular communication app in Korea. They are still small compared to the likes of Samsung, LG, and Hyundai. Kakao also spearheaded the MangaDex Great Purge and takedowns of other Manhwa sites that happened earlier too.

One other thing of note was that during Sony's talks to purchase Kadokawa, Kakao was also interested in purchasing Kadokawa, and Chinese tech giant Tencent was also interested. Was it a dodge of a bullet that Sony only increase their shares in Kadokawa, compared to either Kakao or Tencent acquiring them?

 

[vern]

One other thing of note was that during Sony's talks to purchase Kadokawa, Kakao was also interested in purchasing Kadokawa, and Chinese tech giant Tencent was also interested. Was it a dodge of a bullet that Sony only increase their shares in Kadokawa, compared to either Kakao or Tencent acquiring them?

imo as much as I hate to say this, sony's the lesser evil, probably, since:

• the reason why gooks are a bit more anal about manhwa sites is because they don't really have a physical print industry to act as a cushion and have to survive solely on web distributions. Only the most popular webtoons will get a print but ironically if you go into a korean book store most of it is filled with localized manga. Yes physical sales of manga are dying, but not nearly as bad or the way most people assume (tldr, magazine sales have fallen off the cliff with the rise of digital manga, volume sales have gone down but not as drastically)
• Japs will allow some grey area copyright infringement with shit like comiket and doujins where they'll usually just turn a blind eye too save the rare exceptions like when cygames made a no r18 doujin statement for uma musume (iirc some people speculated since they need permission from every current/former owner of each horse to be in the game, a few probably have threatened to have them removed from the game if they see something they don't like)

 

[Registration]

I did finish reading Saint Seiya Next Dimension.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Sounds like Bleach. Or Naruto. Or Dragon Ball... All secondaries in a shonen quickly become part of the background. Only the main character/s can do shit.

Like @Retarded Weeb said, it's not as bad due to having a core of characters that are cycled in and out, with Bleach being surprisingly better than most because every arc will introduce a full team of villains to fight against, like the Arrancars.

Demon Slayer had the potential for it with the 12 moons, but they fucked it up. Half of them get killed off by the villain for being weak. Then 3 of those get killed off in the following arcs, so there's 3, except Tanjiro has personal beef with 2 of those, so only one villain to be shared by the 8 remaining Hashiras. Maybe they'll fart out 2 more villains like they did for thunder guy, that had a really underwhelming arc.

 

[God of Nothing]

Bleach being surprisingly better than most because every arc will introduce a full team of villains to fight against, like the Arrancars.

you didn't type this with a straight face

especially when those villains are so underdeveloped Aizen unironically killed one of them for little better reason than the plot needing to advance and no one ever complained while she was, what, the third strongest?

oh wait, fourth because the giga nigger is apparently espada 0 and the fourth is actually the first because the hero always needs to face the strongest, making the first the third

god, that was all so damn stupid

Demon Slayer had the potential for it with the 12 moons, but they fucked it up. Half of them get killed off by the villain for being weak. Then 3 of those get killed off in the following arcs, so there's 3, except Tanjiro has personal beef with 2 of those, so only one villain to be shared by the 8 remaining Hashiras. Maybe they'll fart out 2 more villains like they did for thunder guy, that had a really underwhelming arc.

The writer made them too strong and then made them too weak.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

you didn't type this with a straight face

especially when those villains are so underdeveloped Aizen unironically killed one of them for little better reason than the plot needing to advance and no one ever complained while she was, what, the third strongest?

oh wait, fourth because the giga nigger is apparently espada 0 and the fourth is actually the first because the hero always needs to face the strongest, making the first the third

god, that was all so damn stupid

The writer made them too strong and then made them too weak.

The Arrancar had a lot of retarded things with them, but the point still stand that the writer made jobbers so the rest of the cast would have something to do. In the better case those enemies will have Jojo esque twist so at least the fight is interesting rather than the BS Demon Slayer devolved into.

 

[God of Nothing]

The Arrancar had a lot of retarded things with them, but the point still stand that the writer made jobbers so the rest of the cast would have something to do. In the better case those enemies will have Jojo esque twist so at least the fight is interesting rather than the BS Demon Slayer devolved into.

here's a better idea
don't have such a massive cast in the first place that you have to make more irrelevant characters to try and act like they're relevant

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Is anyone following Dandandan? Last episode I watched was the one with the rock band exorcists and I felt the show jump over the shark with how retarded it became.

here's a better idea
don't have such a massive cast in the first place that you have to make more irrelevant characters to try and act like they're relevant

Shonen writers seem to be contractually obligated to multiply the cast every major arc.

 

[The Lаughing Man]

Is anyone following Dandandan?

I watched that anime 5 years ago, then again in 2022. Is it really worth watching it again?

 

[vern]

I think a large cast could work if more authors use a "A plot B plot" storyline more but I can't think of many anime or manga that use this, at most it'll be a case of "splitting up the main group when the get to an enemy base to have their own mini fights" a la Bleach with soul society and hueco mundo arc and literally every One Piece arc save long ring.
I noticed this with rereading WoT on the side and even with the early books there are at least two or three different plotlines going on at once (iirc the later books have almost 4-5 at once because the cast bloat in that series is a bit ridicules)
The only two that spring to mind is Naruto with sasuke's groupies for a bit (can't remember what any of them did and only remember the existed because cause a lot of people where joking that Sarada was that one chicks daughter when bourto came out) and One Piece with the small interlude chapters of what's currently happening on other islands like with the hachinosu bit in egghead.

 

[Red Dragon]

You guys are forgeting Saint Seiya. During the Sanctuary arc, the secondary characters not only put up cool fights, some of them even stole the spotlight for a moment. Yes, the protag will always be the one to defeat the big bad, but that is no reason to squander the secondary cast. Just create enough interesting villains; but I guess that's asking too much for shonen authors...

 

[Super Malario]

Is anyone following Dandandan? Last episode I watched was the one with the rock band exorcists and I felt the show jump over the shark with how retarded it became.

The manga is like that, weird shit left and right, the current arc has crammed a lot of old and new characters and the pacing has been all over the place.
You dropped it just before the globalist arc, which is the high point of the whole manga.

 

[vern]

Did anyone watch Orb/Chi when it aired last year? I heard a few people praise it for being "like vinland saga but in 15th Europe", which I'll admit made me avoid it like the plague since this was around when Vinland was at its lowest point.

 

[Caligura]

Comick is apparently going to become a tracking site. I don't know what niche it'll have over Mangaupdates aside from a more modern UI, but I guess better than nothing?

Comick going under sucks but it's always a game of whack-and-mole with these sites. All the series I read are already completed like 2 to 10+ years ago and I bulk download them a bunch, so not an issue for me lol. But it scares me a little at the speed of it. MangaDex went under back in Spring and then now Comick only after a few months.

Anyways; new best friend is MangaPark+Weeb Central as my new sources on my Mihon app.

Such is life.

btw anyone else here uses Mihon or TachiyomiSY?

 

[numetalborder]

Comick is apparently going to become a tracking site. I don't know what niche it'll have over Mangaupdates aside from a more modern UI, but I guess better than nothing?

Anyways; new best friend is MangaPark+Weeb Central as my new sources on my Mihon app.

Such is life.

btw anyone else here uses Mihon or TachiyomiSY?

Meh. A better thing to do is give ownership to someone else, host it at another domain, and lie low for a few weeks or months until the heat dies down.

 

[FatMebius]

Is anyone following Dandandan? Last episode I watched was the one with the rock band exorcists and I felt the show jump over the shark with how retarded it became.

Shonen writers seem to be contractually obligated to multiply the cast every major arc.

Then you will probably not like the giant robot fight where the fat otaku hums Mazinger Z's theme, yells (mistranslated in the official release)Combatter V attacks and other mecha references. Going too hard on "Do you get this reference?" really took me out of it.

Clevatess is the best shonenslop of the season.

 

[Soupalognon Y Crouton]

Ah, the Arrancars. When the author had a spanish phase. Can't take Bleach seriously