Shounen Arcs

[SilvCrimBlac]

Always wondered, how do people who work on shounen-esque stories create so many different arcs? And then still have the creative capacity to develop filler arcs? I mean, like Bleach, One Piece, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Inuyasha, Fairy Tail, or Gintama....how? Quite often, few of the arcs have any real similarities other than they just having similar characters... (Edit: Have only watched Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Inuyasha, and the first couple of arcs of Fairy Tail....wanted to get into Gintama but just never seemed to find the time to get started with it. Would probably just read the manga if it has one since I prefer to read rather than watch anyway. Naruto anime was crap. Power of friendship bullshit ruined me of shounen and made Fairy Tail intolerable because it was even more blatant with it than Naruto.)

But anyway, how? And I don't want any sarcastic answers please. I mean genuinely....HOW? These stories, often times it's almost like a single separate book series in each arc, or at least they have the potential to be. I mean the arcs themselves usually end up disappointing despite how great they initially looked or started due to most Shounen's ruining everything because they are well.....shounen's. Still, the potential they show with so many unique and individual arcs...

How does one do this? Besides taking cues from my massive library of history books....any other ideas? There has to be some other kinds of techniques involved in developing so many varied story arcs. History isn't exactly a widely loved academic subject and so I doubt many writers immediately leap to find a history book to find inspiration like I tend to do.

So how do you or others do it? How do you think shounen artists or writers do it?

 

[SailusGebel]

They are the same arcs, and this is not a sarcastic answer btw. It's the same arc over and over again in every long shounen.

 

[SilvCrimBlac]

They are the same arcs, and this is not a sarcastic answer btw. It's the same arc over and over again in every long shounen.

Well thats not helpful. Guess this thread is going to be a waste of time if everyone drops similar answers. Thanks anyway then.

 

[SailusGebel]

Well thats not helpful. Guess this thread is going to be a waste of time if everyone drops similar answers. Thanks anyway then.

I mean, I've read maybe 20 shounen mangas, dropped a few of them, though. It's the reality that every arc is the same shit, rinse and repeat. It's just that the author tries to decorate it a bit so that it won't look the same.

Okay, I'm obviously exaggerating. There are like 2-3 arcs that you mix up in random order and create an illusion that the story is very diverse. It's easier to understand how this works if you look at low-quality Chinese cultivation novels where authors don't bother to hide the repetitiveness of arcs.

In shounen, you have a character arc for every friend(harem member), you have your training arc for every villain, and you have the climax of every arc where MC with a power of friendships wins. Something along this lines. You might as well repeat the friends' arcs towards the end. Between the mentioned arcs, you might insert a few chapters of a slice of life content, and that's it.

 

[Mr.Grey-Cat]

Well thats not helpful. Guess this thread is going to be a waste of time if everyone drops similar answers. Thanks anyway then.

No, what he meant was probably that most shounen follows a pretty simple and standard plot. An mc gaining power(insert twist here), getting into a conflict(insert the theme here), getting friends and comrades, using his everything to then defeat some random dude(insert rival or bad guy).

it's as simple as that, with the only difference between arcs being: the new techniques, the new friends, the filler arc, the low-quality romance, the fan service, the motivation, and the background. otherwise most arcs about mc and friends meeting a new challenge and coming up with a way to defeat them, mc and friend meeting a new challenge but easily winning, mc and friend meeting a challenge and befriending it. BAM, that's now my friend is what they call shounen... just fist fighting with new techniques, new fan service, and new backgrounds in every new arc.(there also is new plot armor moments but you can ignore those)

 

[EternalSunset0]

Bleach in particular is notorious for the two major arcs ealry on being reskins essentially. Just wanna put it out there.

I think to make the arcs seem different would depend on the hand the author is dealt (ie the potential of the world he has created) so I feel there's no concrete answer to your question.

There are so many ways to explore the world and the powers, and most arcs serve to function that way. So the question of how shounen authors do it is, for me, largely dependent on how many aspects they can (or want to) explore with their characters, how much they want to elaborate on the power system (and how fast they want to power creep it and do the same arc but with a new skin), how many powers they want to show off (often done in tourney arcs), how many kingdoms they want to set up and elaborate on. Then use each of those points to build a story with a beginning and an end.

As for how they seem to be a single book, I think it just has to do with how arcs usually have one unifying theme that gets opened and wrapped up by the end, as I said. Each arc has the introduction phase, the conflict build up, and the finish, which makes it feel like a single, completed book each time.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Carefully

 

[Zirrboy]

Shounens are minmaxed.

As a normal author you might be tempted to add branching narratives, gradual side character development and multiple layers, but that's just wasted effort.

The art is putting just barely enough into an arc for it to be engaging.
Which means you have more material to work with, since the ideas drain slower.

Now you need a solid core to build that one, but that's a one time investment.

For the rest you go by doing less, therefore repeating less.
And in the best case, you can run the story with one idea per arc.

 

[EternalSunset0]

Also, I feel that filler arcs are the result of the author wanting to do something more with insert character but the story setup not allowing him to do so. I know they happen often in anime because of the show catching up to the manga, but what actually becomes the content allows authors to give hidden depths to their side characters.

 

[Katsuya]

I mean, if your question is, 'how do shounen writers make their arcs so long' or something like 'how do they make so many arcs, or something like that, then, its probably because when it comes to arcs you can divide them and really think about how you want do things. for example, a training arc, you may have some enemies come out of nowhere to attack the mc or something, even though its supposed to be training. since its not all together, you add different elements and stuff like that.

Because of all the things they could add, it adds more to the arc. like, you can use the setting of the arc to add stuff, like if your in a mountain, idk, a boulder or something could fall.

'How can they be so unique?' (if you were asking or thinking that), well, the author can think of things they like for example, if they really like... idk, like dark magic or something or like a shape shifter, they can add a person that has that kind of power. the author dosen't even need to 'like' the power or whatever. they can even find an interest in a setting, like for demon slayer, a train, or a red light district.

Well, thats my opinon.

 

[LunaSoltaer]

So, similarities or such aside, there are ways to induce creativity in your shounen arcs. How I would go about it is roughly as follows:

One: KNOW YOUR ENDGAME. Okay a lot of animes didn't do this (Bleach I think was supposed to end at the SS arc), but a lot of long-running series benefit greatly from knowing where your ending is (For another Shounen example, One Piece I think Eiichiro Oda has known for decades how he wants to end the manga. It's just there's a lot of room between East Blue and the end goal, Laugh Tale. I'll get to that a little later). This also has the benefit of forcing you to figure out your power curve early. (In One Piece, again, it was shown very early on that high level sword wielders can just Alt-F4 your warship with a half-assed swing.) Even out of shounen, you will see this (In Harry Potter for instance, That ending to book 7? One of the first things JKR wrote, if I recall). This bit of advice is one I'm actually using in one of my works for once: I know what the final stages of Solstice are going to look like. I just have to get there.

Two: Now that you know your Endgame, you probably have an idea of what your system looks like. If you want to, make your system versatile. Your power system should have room to adapt and improvise. You can provide the illusion of expansion by not showing the entire power system at once, or by showing all the powers stacking in a nonobvious way (Imagine Metroid Fusion where you see the SA-X with a Charge/Wide/Ice/Wave/Plasma Beam. Really scary! You only have a peashooter Power Beam! But then you get the Charge Beam, then the Wide Beam, but for the longest time you could only use the Charge Beam or the Wide Beam, never both, until you have a boss fight somewhere in the middle where you learn... HOW TO STACK BEAMS!!!). By setting this up, you open yourself to the possibility of being able to include new awesome ideas as you think of them, and then explore through them. And also take the time to think through your power system - its limitations and how to get around them. For example, in Solstice, women are largely locked out of the Spell Circle system - If they draw a Spell Circle, it locks into their soul and every spell they cast from then on has to be expressible via that Circle. If they use a pre-drawn Spell Circle, they will keep supplying energy into the Spell Circle until they run out of reserves and pass out (Men can cut off the input supply at whim). To get around that, I can include a system for women to bypass those limits (I'm writing in First Person from the POV of a complete noob, I can do that), or I could use the Spell Circle system itself: there is a Rune whose job is essentially "ask caster for input". Naturally, Spell Circles would be written for women, using this rune in a loop to have the Circle power down on request.

Three: As long as there is distance between your plot and the endgame, you can inject subplots. This is one of the few benefits of that hell in the middle (writers have excellent ideas of their beginnings and endings - it's the middle that sucks). Ideally your new plot bunny fits into your central narrative. If it doesn't - welp! Filler Arc time! But if you're thinking about your system and you're like "Okay that's amazing I need to include it somewhere" - boom add an encounter somewhere that showcases it. Hunter X Hunter has this cool power called Hatsu that is essentially "whatever you want, but within limits and you have to mind all these other rules to do it". This manifests for me a lot in "Okay I want to write this chapter to get to here, but aww here's this adorable scene I wanna write and oops I hit 3000+ words already." This... is probably less than okay, but nyeh.

Four: Always leave a Schrödinger's Hook - that is, you have a plot point, but it's possible to resolve it in a way that feels like a full resolution, and is, but later on you can change the overarching story to make it suddenly not a full closure - this lets you tie back into previous arcs/chapters/whatever and helps you connect your pieces together for a more cohesive setting.

Uniqueness I'll leave up to you, but I hope any of this helps :)

 

[KiraMinoru]

By copying and ripping off their predecessors. All they have to do is change the names of things and what the events are called and you effectively end up with a new arc in a story that’s just a rip off of something else someone’s already done before with a different setting.

I like to think of every shounen series as just being a rip off of the dragon ball series which probably ripped off its predecessors before it too.

It’s kind of like how every move in Pokémon is just a different version of Dig.