Welcome back. i don’t agree with you about the Shonen that I’ve read but also respect your opinion.
Yo. I get it. Likewise, I respect your opinion, but I disagree with it.
fma- overall as a story it’s very well put together, but it’s much shorter and less complex altogether than op. Almost to the point where it isn’t a fair comparison.
Length shouldn't be equated to complexity imo. What makes FMA good is precisely the tight narrative structure, thematic depth and character development, which it garners from its concise storytelling. Whilst it can be argued that due to its length it's not an apt comparison, I think that should be cast aside when talking about the best shonen.
hxh - I’m totally over it personally. Yes, it’s very well written, at times. But it takes itself too seriously and the hiatuses are absurd, leading to the body of work being way too small to compare to op. It has lots of flaws which are almost verboten to point out, it’s not this pristine piece of literature.
Well, I obviously disagree. Hiatuses are due to Togashi's health, not any other reason.
I've talked about it more in these posts
https://worstgen.alwaysdata.net/for...unter-vs-one-piece.27378/page-13#post-6089950
https://worstgen.alwaysdata.net/for...unter-vs-one-piece.27378/page-13#post-6090000
Naruto - not even close imho. Pre ts maybe was somewhat comparable in quality. Afterwards was a train wreck in slow mo leading to a disaster of an ending. The plot was being invented as it went, blatant retcon after retcon.
While it's true there are retcons in Naruto, especially in the latter stages, same can be said about One Piece as well. The whole Nika thing is blatantly retconning the entire story and the main character. From a boy that was supposed to have a weak devil fruit and using it intelligently to become stronger to being a God with the most dangerous/strongest devil fruit in existence. It makes the entire WG look like complete and utter idiots by allowing him to roam freely with it. And how do you allow a dude like Who's Who to transport the most important devil fruit to you, instead of some HK, Admiral, Gorosei, etc. One Piece is allowed to escape criticism its fans have done to different manga all the time lol.
death note- tough one but it’s simply too short and too narrowly focused on a small cast of characters to be comparable. Like apples and oranges. It also lost the plot after l’s death iirc but it’s been a long time since I read and watched it. One of my personal issues with it was I found both light and l extremely unlikeable. Great characters, but it was a factor that made it tiring.
Again, I think the length should be cast aside when talking about the best shonen. I myself have said that I would exclude them if were talking about purely fighting shonen for example, but once we delve into the topic we must look at those as well. While it's true and I agree that after L's demise, the story fell off a bit, it fell off from the DN standard, still better than majority of the manga out there. I like both Light and L for instance, and they just enhance my enjoyment of DN. DN revolutionized shonen with the introduction of the psychological thriller format.
I started aot a few years ago when it was all the buzz but life got in the way so I can’t comment. The first 100 or so chapters seemed pretty good but not enough to compel me.
Well its ending knocks it down a peg or two. For the vast part of its run it's superb, but the ending can destroy all of that.
i have lots of issues with op and with oda. He’s not a god and frankly not even that great of a writer. And worse, he can’t help letting his degeneracy spill onto the pages. But he’s mastered the serialized manga format better than anyone else. Despite all the breaks of late, his delivery is the most consistent over a time horizon of over 25 years. Most, not all, of the toughest critics keep coming back. He retcons and pulls stuff out of his ass all the time but does both much more cleverly than any other mangaka. All of his cheesy techniques of silouhetting and stalling for big reveals work in terms of retaining and growing readership. I have no idea how he got so many fans so emotionally invested in characters like zoro, luffy and shanks, but there’s that too.
The one thing I can give Oda is definitely consistency, in terms of pushing out chapters on a weekly basis for decades. But he has clear pacing issues, overreliance on exposition dumps, underdeveloped female characters, too formulaic approach.
I don't rate OP as high as a big chunk of the fanbase does. Most probably do so due to sunk cost fallacy tho ngl. Overall, like I said I respect your opinion but I disagree. Good convo tho.