All of my posts so far have been about politics, in one way or another. Which isn't what I had intended, it's just sort of how things have worked out. A sign of the times. But I want to spread things out a bit. I had always intended to talk about books and movies and the like as well, so I want to tell you today about, as the title suggests, the best show on television right now.
I'm willing to bet that most people haven't watched it. Most people, in fact have probably never heard of it, because it isn't American. It's Japanese.
And it's a cartoon.
I am talking about a little show called My Hero Academia. It is a currently-running anime adaptation of a shonen manga of the same name. Shonen translates into something like teenage boy, I think. I don't speak Japanese or do any research on things. (Edit: I do in fact do research, and it means "youth," and is used to describe shows and comics aimed at young males).
I got to the bottom and realized how long this post is, so I want to put my thoughts on the show in brief here, so you don't have to go into the discussion if you don't want to. My Hero Academia is a wonderful show. I can't think of another TV series that has made me both laugh and cry almost every single episode of its run - currently at 48 episodes but hopefully many more to come.
Now bear in mind, I'm fairly emotional when it comes to storytelling. It would probably be easier for me to tell you the stories that haven't made me cry at some point. But this show brings the tears all the time. Tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of pride. It's an emotional roller coaster. But I want to emphasize that the characters and story are intensely accessible, and I strenuously encourage you to watch it.
Now, to a bit of a deeper dive.
SHONEN
Shonen anime are typically characterized by plots as scanty as the clothing female characters wear, held together by huge swathes of run time occupied by fighting. "Action anime" was the term used in the 1990's. Dragon Ball Z would be the father figure of the genre, with his sons Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach (to name a few of the most prominent examples) following in his footsteps.
Your typical shonen anime relies primarily on awesome combat scenes. Cool character design, explosive powers, and gravity defying maneuvers all serve to clutch the attention of the viewer. Most character development isn't really about the growth of the characters as people; instead, it's in the form of learning to fight better.
To fall back on Dragon Ball as an (the?) example, the main character, Goku, really never changes at all. He starts the series as a guy looking to fight the strongest opponents while keeping people safe (but vastly more interested in the former rather than the latter - possibly a side effect of living in a world where you can bring people back to life with relative ease), and he ends the most recent run of the series (500ish episodes and dozens of hours of movies in the rear-view) as effectively the same guy. One of the secondary characters, Vegeta, shows a much more impressive character arc, going from a murderous interstellar despot to reliable father and husband that also likes fighting the shit out of insanely powerful people. But the primary character motivation isn't mysterious. They all just want to be the strongest ever, and then maybe other stuff.
Shonen storytelling typically suffers from being overly reliant on tropes. Using tropes isn't A Bad in itself, as tropes exist as a sort of "shorthand" between creators and consumers. If you see a "that guy" in a show, you instantly have a ready-made backstory for "that guy" and less time has to be devoted to explaining who she is or what her motivations are. That being said, many of the tropes used in shonen anime are so overused that they come across as sloppy.
Some of this stems from the (by necessity) commercial nature of the art. Dragon Ball was wildly popular, and so the author/artist, the legendary Toriyama Akira, was faced with the same dilemma all successful artists face - do I do something new that might be potentially less well-received, or do I find a way to keep doing the same thing? Toriyama-sama did what I know I would do in his shoes - both. But let's look at what he did with DBZ, and how that directed the course of shonen work up to the point where One Punch Man and My Hero Academia tackle those tropes in very different ways.
A DIGRESSION: THE ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING
So I need to talk a little bit about how storytelling works. I'm going to start this off by saying that I AM NOT TRAINED IN THE ART OF FICTIONAL STORYTELLING. I've just been doing it a long time, and I'm pretty good at it. I read a lot, and I write... well, not as much as I should, but well more than most people do. The long and short of it is - I'm not telling you how It Is Done, I'm telling you how I do it.
I break storytelling up into three components - Characters, Plot, and Setting. Now I want you to brace yourself for something wild. Are you ready?
Plot and setting really don't matter at all. Not in broad strokes. Setting really is just window dressing. It's the color you paint your car. It's the flavor of your ice cream. A war story is a war story is a war story, but does it have muskets, tanks, dragons, or giant robots? I prefer dragons and giant robots. But IN BROAD STROKES they are functionally the same thing.
Plot, in the broadest sense, works in a similar fashion. There are only so many stories to tell, because there are only so many ways humans can interact with the universe. Point of fact, some plotlines are so standard that they have titles. Things like The Hero's Journey and The Coming of Age Story. And the aforementioned The War Story.
The art comes in by approaching plot and setting in a novel way, by the nuance and shading and creativity that each person brings to the table. A war story is war story is war story, sure. But Game of Thrones and The Black Company and Red Storm Rising and Arclight and the Honorverse and Star Wars are all very, very different animals.
But in my humble estimation, it is Characters that make stories great. A great set of characters influences the plot in unexpected ways, and can make the setting all but irrelevant. I think of some of the greatest shows and movies I've ever watched, and the ones that stand out most in my mind are the ones that are about people, and oh yeah they are running from homicidal robots in space. Or they are trying to date but their parents hate each other to death. Or they are trying to save people while trying to battle their own darkness. But at the end of the day it is the characters that do all of the heavy lifting in a story. They serve both as the lens through which the story and setting are viewed, and they also work as the touchstone by which readers/viewers ground themselves emotionally in the work.
Okay, end of digression
BACK TO DBZ
So shonen manga and anime almost always do the Hero's Journey. Guy has problems, must struggle, learn, and adapt, and eventually overcomes them. The hero is almost always a teenage boy, and the growth almost always involves getting sweet new powers and leveling up to a point where they can trounce the fuck out of The Bad Guy.
People ate this shit up. The Hero's Journey is compelling, and it's a story that people have always readily engaged with. Shonen stylists were forced to figure out how to deal with telling a essentially the same story with the same characters over again. The way that everyone settled on (and one that has been very successful, let's be clear on that point) has been to introduce ANOTHER, EVEN MORE SCARIER BAD GUY that has been lurking in the wings this whole time. This allows the beloved-by-all hero to undertake the Hero's Journey all over again. And remember what I said up there about plot - as long as folks love the characters they will watch them do the same shit over and over and over again ad infinitum.
This is also not A Bad Thing. It just is. Again, it's all about the nuance because the broad strokes are always going to be the same. In fact, there is a lot of upside to this kind of trope, because using extant characters means that the new arc can devote little to no time talking about their past and can focus on developing the narrative and moving forward.
So here is where shonen storytelling typically starts to get into trouble. Because of the ways in which characters develop, power creep becomes a huge problem. Each successive villain needs to be vastly more powerful in order to make the narrative work, and then the storyteller needs to find a way to make the hero rise to the challenge yet again. This has traditionally involved the introduction of "new, even more powerful abilities" that the hero manages to learn/find/unlock just in time to save the day.
However, some storytellers decided to try to tackle this issue in a different way, by sort of mashing The Hero's Journey together with another classic, the Coming of Age. This allowed significant portions of narrative arcs to be dedicated to characters' exploration of their place in the world, their relationships with one another, and self-discovery. This also allows for some wiggle room as to where Cool New Powers come from ("well, they weren't fully grown!" or "they were still figuring stuff out!").
However, that move created a few new problems. Stories like Bleach and Naruto did the blending very well, but at the same time the viewer is forced to grapple with watching these kids face horrible dangers while adults that are by narrative more powerful at the time sit by and watch. Bleach is definitely the most egregious offender here, but Naruto suffers from it a bit as well. Both partially address the issue by having the teen boy main character be "The Chosen One," but this only carries you so far. However, due to the nature of tropes, this has come to be one of the things that people just accept about shonen storytelling.
All I'm saying is there are a lot of teen protags out their getting beat the fuck up while adults watch. Sometimes they then swoop in to save the day, but - and this is VERY IMPORTANT - only to serve as a benchmark for the protagonist to later outstrip. It becomes yet another way of showing the growth-through-power that serves as character development in shonen anime.
NOW, TO THE POINT (FINALLY)
Well, after all of that exposition, let's finally dive into a discussion of The Best Show on TV, My Hero Academia.
In just a second, because first I want to talk about One Punch Man.
A lot of the discussion today has been about tropes and how to deal with them in storytelling. In genre storytelling, especially, they are impossible to escape. Take the elf, for example. If you read fantasy, I'd be willing to bet that the mere mention of the word brings some very specific stuff to mind. If I say "she was an elf," I'd imagine you picture a willowy, beautiful woman that is ancient in her knowledge, inscrutable in her purpose, and arrogant in her power. She might have a bow. She can probably use magic. And she is from a beautiful forest kingdom. Thanks, Mr. Tolkien.
Again, this isn't bad or wrong. It's just a fact. Some storytellers use that trope because it is already in the popular consciousness, which makes it comfortable and accessible. See, for example, Forgotten Realms, and for that matter almost every D&D setting, the Death's Gate Cycle, and the Inheritance Cycle, to name a few. Other storytellers have chosen to attack that by having feral, cannibalistic elves that are crass, violent, and nomadic (looking at you, Sam Sykes. Also Dark Sun.).
The point is that if a trope exists, you have to deal with it one way or another. Or rather, it is dealt with one way or another, whether you are consciously addressing it or not.
One Punch Man attacks tropes head on. It is a fascinating send-up of shonen tropes that I really don't want to get into, primarily because watching it cold the first time is such a delight. All I will say is in order to really enjoy the show, watch some other shonen stuff first so you have a basis.
My Hero Academia, finally.
Okay, so the show is brilliant in its execution on several levels. It most importantly has relatable characters. The main character is Midoriya Izuku, a young boy born in a world where practically everyone has some form of super power known as a Quirk. Midoriya idolized All Might, the world's greatest hero, from a very young age. He decides that he wants to follow in his hero's footsteps and become the greatest hero ever.
He then finds out he has no powers at all.
The narrative sounds formulaic, and on the surface it is. We are told from the beginning that this will be a Hero's Journey/Coming of Age hybrid. The genius come in the characters, their beliefs, and the way those characters allow for nuance in the plot. Because this isn't a story about how a kid gets powers to beat up bad guys.
It is a story about what it means to be a hero. Each of the main characters represents a slightly different way of looking at the world, and this combination of viewpoints allows for a very rich and robust discussion about how we ought to behave to develop. This spectrum of viewpoints sweeps through the heroes, from straight-laced Iida Tenya to idealistic Midoriya to bombastic and aggressive Bakugo Katsuki, and carries into the series's villains. Each character has their own reasons for chasing their goals.
The show is also not afraid to show failure. Honestly, I think this is why the story resonates so well with me. Because, unlike other shonen anime of this type, the adults do step in. They take action, and it really serves to point out that these are still just kids. This gives weight to the main characters decisions in a way that a lot of other shows don't because the stakes feel a little more real to us.
And this gets to how the show handles the tropes I've nattered on and on about. Is there powering up? Sure, but not to the extent that you see in other shonen work, because this series focuses on actual character development as opposed to gaining abilities as a stand in for growth. The interactions between the characters are varied and do a great job demonstrating that growth. So My Hero becomes less a show about dudes fighting to save the day, and more a show about people trying to get along with one another and find their place in a changing world, with fighting as a backdrop to that.
As for the other trope, the elder-as-power-barometer... man, this show is so clever. I am morally opposed to giving away actual plot points, but I am constantly impressed with the quality of storytelling. This show challenges the typical powerful adult-growing child heroes interaction in a way that satisfies both the need to develop the shonen protags, as well as crafting a narrative reason for why those protagonists need to step up to the plate. This also allows My Hero Academia to discuss issues that face adults as they grow older - questions of relevance, and of engagement with the direction the world is heading.
There is something in this show for everyone. Literally everyone. It is a master class in how to write an engaging ensemble cast and effectively deploy it.
I guess I should mention a few things other than story and narrative, yeah? The art is great-to-fantastic. There is obviously money behind the series, and it shows. The fight scenes are kinetic and creative, the character designs are unique and sometimes absurd, but watching all of these kids figure out their powers is really cool.
I prefer the Japanese audio to the American. This is not normally a thing I care about at all; I generally prefer listening to a language I understand. But there is just something about Bakugo that is conveyed by the Japanese voice actor that is missing from the English dub. In Japanese, he is rage personified. In English, he's just kind of pouty sounding. It may not be bad if you start with the English version, but I didn't so I can't possibly know that.
So, to recap my thoughts from above, this really is the best show on TV right now. At least among the ones I've seen.