This has gone on for too long

there's admittedly something really funny about how chainsaw man almost got the western dungeon meshi fandom treatment, down to some vestiges still existing to this day, and narrowly escaped into having a standard manga fandom by feeding every single character necessary for a cozy slice of life AU into the woodchipper

not that this is remotely a good idea for 90% of manga, but it evidently does work for trapping all of that in a niche time bubble

Kind of hilarious to me how poorly the title "Mob Psycho 100" localized to English-speaking areas. To someone whose first language is English, it scans as:

But in Japanese it scans as:

"Psycho" to mean "someone with psychokinesis" has been an anime thing since the 70s so I knew that one but the meaning of "Mob" really never crossed my mind. I thought it was just his name for no reason at all.

Japanese read: ESP NPC

English read: MAXIMUM MURDER

I was today years old when I found out Yusuke Murata uses BL as a reference to draw male characters in One Punch Man

Now everything makes sense

Some1 explain this please I'm scrolling thru the notes but haven't found something yet

how can i help you bud

how did kishimoto change the core values of the narrative. i felt that something was different about the manga but I can't articulate it

up until the chunin exams the message is anti-military industrial complex - the series literally opens with the revelation that the military entity of konoha has implanted a weapon into a child and ostracized him for it then continues on to the land of waves arc to show the destabilization of a small nation for the sake of capital by corporate interests spearheaded by two more trained child soldiers (zabuza now being an adult and being unable to live any other way that so even when he adopts a kid who he cares for, he is unable to do anything but bring them into a life of killing). kakashi even has sakura explain how conflict between large military nations is necessary for economic prosperity in the shinobi village system and how it leads to strife and exploitation in bystander countries like the land of waves, then when the kids question his faith in such an unjust system he follows it up with the whole thing (which he started with the bell test) about how blindly following orders and the status quo is actually bad. blah blah blah

and then! suddenly kishimoto goes pro-state, dude's on the LDP party line, we jump to the arrival of itachi + jiraiya at the chuunin exams and the reveal of the uchiha massacre and how suddenly naruto's correct path is Not being anti-konoha, in fact, because going against konoha is Evil and the Dark Path, and jiraiya's the big noble hero for being a spy and soldier for konoha, yippee, will of fire! then you get shit like the waterfall of truth (naruto is aware that the system has been unjustly cruel to him but winning konoha's approval is depicted as logical and taking moral and narrative precedence), the creation of the akatsuki as an anti-imperialist movement initially just looking to protect and feed civilians in a wartorn region and eventually escalating to dismantle the system itself but when push comes to shove kishimoto makes it so talk no jutsu works on pein, the entire framing of sasuke being a bad person for deserting and itachi being a hero for massacring a marginalized and resistant ethnic group, kishimoto's interview where he says the narrative is based on his grandparents saying ww2 was based on "lingering grudges", the fact that kishimoto put the rising sun flag behind the sage of six paths when we get dojutsu origin backstory.... then after all the setup about obito and madara creating the crux of the struggle in shippuden as a concerted effort to destroy the shinobi system then suddenly kishimoto introduces kaguya as the ultimate seed of narrative conflict because haha hey it turns out that the massacred ethnic group is inherently genetically eeeevil haha isn't that a normal thing to write with no real world parallels

anyway most of this is introduced right after the 2005 anti japan protests across east asia, which as we know sparked an enormous reactionary right wing movement in japan. shippuden starts right in the midst of those actually fjskjfkd

To add to this, one of the major themes of Naruto, initially, was that of hard work vs inherent talent, and of chosen path vs imposed genetic fate. Naruto --poor, stupid, ward of the state, was representative of the former two, respectively; Sasuke --rich, genius, heir to a famous and powerful family, was representative of the latter two, respectively. (Incidentally, Sasuke, pardon my French, got his shit rocked by Rock Lee, a character who is explicitly stated to have no innate talents in the context of this world, upon which, in an oft forgotten, but pivotal scene, Naruto remarks something like: "look at his hands" emphasizing how torn and bandaged they are from untold hours of individual training up until this point)

This resonated with a lot of fans, minority groups, and even other artists, as can be seen by the use of very similar character types to create the same juxtaposition in other works, such as Black Star, who is a very naruto-like character in Soul Eater, or Hinata, who is a naruto-like character in Haikyuu.

We watch Naruto, through hard work, dedication, and the continued support of a few good people who love him, become an instrumental figure of inspiration in the lives of the people he interacts with. Through his refusal to give up in the face of hardship, much of which has been forced upon him (aside from the cruelty of being ostracized, the demon fox interferes with his chakra control, which is why he did so poorly in school), he masters arts that most people in this world could only dream of. It is implied that he accomplishes these things because his personality and force of will is similar to that of the people who were successful before him, and that, with the support he consistently wins from others, he can succeed where they failed.

... And then Kishimoto throws all of that in the garbage by not only explicitly stating, over and over, that the reason for Naruto's abilities is a direct result of his genetics (explicitly making him the biological son of the former ninja president, and another extremely powerful person), he actually undid everything by explicitly making Naruto and Sasuke the fucking, reincarnations of the founding deities of the ninja world.

(he also reduced Rock Lee to a minor side character and gave all the plot points that should have been his to his teacher, even though it had been heavily implied that the jonin of the former generation had more or less reached the peak of their abilities and that it wasn't enough to combat the stronger enemies they face at the non-filler end of the first series and Shippuden fiaAND a third major theme in the original series was the concept of handing down ideals from the older to younger generations with the hope that they would succeed where the former had failed.

AlsoresurectionjutsuwentfrombeinganinterestingshowcaseinhowunethicalOrochimaruhadbecomeasaresultofthemilitaryindustrialcomplexfailingasittaughthimtoseizepowerattheexpenseofallelsetobeingahackneyedplotdevicetomakedeathmeaninglesssinceallthecharacterswhodiedwithunfinishedbusinessandsomanywordsunspokenjustcamebackandwereabletosayallthosewordsandfinishthatbusinessitSSUCHSLOPPYWRITING. but that's a whole other can of worms.)

And yeah, most of those changes happened after 2005. Like, gee, I wonder what could have influenced the introduction of a "blood and genetics are super important, actually" theme during this time.

You gotta understand man, literally half of modern pop culture doesn’t exist without Toriyama

I am not exaggerating

holy shit you're right

It's wild to think without Toriyama there would be no Dragonball and no Dragon Quest, and without them half of shounen and JRPGs as we know them today.

without Toriyama, we don't get Dragon Quest. without Dragon Quest, we don't get the creation of the "western fantasy" aesthetic in Japanese media. without that, all of modern Japanese fantasy disappears. isekai anime? traditional fantasy? other JRPGs? Dragon Quest is such a basic building block for all of these that it can be easy to take it for granted, but without that, and in particular without the life he breathed into the series through his art and designs, modern Japanese fantasy simply would not exist as we know it

The level of influence Dragon Quest had is so mind-boggling it's truly wild that it's not even his most well-known work internationally.

The cultural impact of Goku alone could become its own full wiki page

sometimes the jokes in this manga land right in your solar plexus

The line "Without constant reassurance, it will die. It's sexually attracted to fire," applies to both the Simpsons' Screamapillar and Berserk's Farnese

this comic she made abt him…..

Ballout…..

Ballout New Vegas….

This seems to be what I've learned.

chainsaw man is the greatest manga of all time, had to draw my favorite moment so far