Summary
- Shonen final arcs often struggle to meet high fan expectations, leading to mixed reviews and underwhelming conclusions.
- Constant escalation and tight publication schedules present challenges for manga artists in crafting satisfying endings.
- Social media backlash and fan pressure can impact the evaluation of story arcs, affecting the creative process.
Battle shonen series have been a dominant force in the manga industry over the past few decades, in terms of volume sales, as well as serialization in widely circulated manga anthology magazines. From the days of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, to the era of Weekly Shonen Jump's "Big Three," until the current generation, which has spawned massive media franchises that have made impressions across the world, shonen action series have come to define the landscape of the medium for better or for worse.
When it comes to many long-running series within this category of manga, there have been recurring issues with regard to how they handle the transition from climax to conclusion. Many shonen manga have stumbled and faltered well short of the standards built up by the narrative peaks of their heyday, just prior to reaching the finish line — with notable examples such as Naruto, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, Claymore, and Jujutsu Kaisen, among others. But why has this been the case on so many occasions?
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Expectations Versus Outcome
Expectations are always high when it comes to the decisive final act of a story that has been in motion for years on end, but there has regularly been a gulf between the standard of conclusion anticipated by a fan base, and the eventual end product. This is not to declare that all final arcs in shonen manga are underwhelming. In fact, series such as Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist or Yusei Matsui's Assassination Classroom have been occasionally cited as examples of what a final arc in shonen manga should hope to achieve.
However, the gap between expectations and outcome has afflicted some of the most successful, acclaimed, and well-known titles in the landscape of battle shonen manga. This extends to landmark series from past eras such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Death Note, or Bleach, as well as more recent titles such as My Hero Academia, Fairy Tail, or Jujutsu Kaisen. Although the final arcs in these series were by no means terrible, there was an observable dip in quality when pitted against earlier standout moments.
For the most part, final arcs in shonen manga can be categorized based on the structure and premise they carry. War arcs are one of the most common archetypes, with series such as Naruto, Bleach, Attack on Titan, and My Hero Academia, having featured massive-scale conflicts involving huge casts of characters embroiled in epic struggles to decide the fates of their fictional worlds. Alternatively, stories that gradually make their way towards a climactic confrontation with an overarching antagonist, or the fulfillment of a certain objective, use these plot elements as an anchor to tie up all their loose threads.
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Unfortunately, the task of making a war arc sufficiently large in its scope while still allotting enough time to give the main cast an adequate amount of character development is something that is hard to get right. More often than not, war arcs have a tendency to either feel too long and vast in scale — to the point where side characters become neglected — or too brief and confined, where the conflict feels rushed and forced.
Conversely, there is one huge challenge in ending a series with a showdown against a main antagonist or the achievement of a long-running purpose. This, of course, pertains to the fact that success or failure hinges on how compelling the villain and end goal are, alongside the sense of emotional catharsis that is felt once everything has been wrapped up and the cast goes their separate ways.
In the end, these issues can be attributed to insufficient narrative coherence, an over-reliance on convenient deus ex machina plot devices, insufficiently explored lore, undeveloped characters, an abundance of loose threads, or an unconvincing sense of resolution. There are a lot of factors that define why a series fails on any one of these parameters, let alone several of them at once, but it might help to look at one common thing they are all forced to adhere to: publishing schedules.
The Challenges Of Constant Escalation
It is no stretch to say that conventional publication schedules followed by manga anthologies provide an ideal mechanism to generate hype and suspense. Weekly or monthly serialization has contributed to the rise and fall of many great manga, due to the convention of ending most chapters on tense cliffhangers, and how this format demands that each new release functions as a self-contained piece of a larger story.
This effectively entails thinking concurrently on both a micro scale within the chapter itself, and on a macro level in building a larger narrative, bit by bit. Eventually, this approach runs into problems due to the perpetual need for escalation and progression in the characters, stakes, and scale of the narrative, forcing manga artists to juggle too many things at once in handling finer details and big picture decisions at the same time.
Underwhelming Final Arcs In Shonen Manga
Ultimately, the pressures of constant escalation, paired with the grueling work schedules that most manga artists have to contend with in order to meet their deadlines, culminate in a situation where there is always too much left to do, and far too little time to do it. For instance, the Fourth Shinobi World War Arc of Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto, was lambasted for its excessive length, many plot contrivances, and a mediocre final villain in Kaguya Otsutsuki, despite all the standout moments littered across its 300 chapters alongside the relatively satisfying final battle between eternal rivals and the epilogue that followed.
Even a title as successful and influential as Dragon Ball also seemed to sputter and lose steam at certain points during the Majin Buu Saga, which was also criticized for its treatment of certain characters, a bloated middle section, a lackluster antagonist, and other reasons, even though it had many merits to its credit. Similarly, the Thousand-Year Blood War Arc of Bleach suffered from an ending that felt almost abrupt when looking at all the dropped plot lines, unexplained lore, and character payoffs that were later expanded upon in the light novels published after the manga finished serialization.
The latter two examples single out series where there was no definitive end goal in sight, making the notion of an "ending" something vague that had to be defined by the manga artists themselves. Moreover, both series had satisfyingly concluded significant plot threads from earlier arcs in a fairly holistic manner prior to the final arc — making it necessary to introduce entirely new elements in order to keep the story going. By contrast, Naruto was a story that was always going to end with its titular protagonist achieving his lifelong dream — that of surpassing all the Hokage — but the road towards this goal kept getting longer and more convoluted until a series of quick fixes cleared up the final conflict.
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In these cases, the issues can be attributed to the pitfalls of working on a single manga for well over a decade, the problems posed by tight schedules, the limitations of the medium's format, creative burnout, ever-expanding world building, and the need to resolve every possible plot thread coming back to haunt artists when it becomes time to wrap things up for good. When these are the struggles faced by artists working on stories with over 500 chapters, it is terrifying to think of the kind of challenges that Eiichiro Oda might run into for a story like One Piece, which is now well past 1100 chapters and counting. But fear not, Oda's boundless capacity to keep his readers hooked does not seem to show signs of diminishing anytime soon.
The Other Side Of The Problem
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On looking at more recent examples, Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan ended in controversial fashion back in 2021, with its creator even extending parts of the original ending and later issuing a public apology for the way the final chapter turned out. Here, the ending polarized readers due to how it featured some contentious statements and felt rushed, leaving too much for the last chapter to wrap up. This illustrates another phenomenon where social media-fueled backlash led a creator to rework small parts of what he had first committed to paper.
In the past couple of years, public perception through social media has exerted an increasing degree of influence on how certain story arcs are evaluated by a series' fan base, leading to dramatic oscillations between praise and derision directed towards manga artists. Gege Akutami's Jujutsu Kaisen went from a soaring narrative peak in a long-awaited clash at the start of the Shinjuku Showdown Arc, to a point where it became the target of intense criticism due to a single repetitive section in the ensuing segment of the story.
Needless to say, there will be many who dispute any opinion on any series, and there is usually some merit to their opposition. As more and more manga head towards less than satisfactory endings, it is also worth noting the rising prevalence of online death threats being issued by fanatical readers, when they feel hard done by. Given the heated nature of online discourse on manga, and the swarms of fans who vociferously voice their praise and criticism, is it not worth considering how all this affects the manga artists who have toiled away for years to please the readers who have supported them?
Is There Really An Answer Here?
Long story short, it is all very complicated. Whether the blame should be directed towards publishing schedules, fan bases, or the artists themselves, the act of producing high-quality manga consistently for long periods of time is sure to take a toll on anyone. Of the limited number of artists that have their creations successfully picked up by publishing houses, even fewer get to work on their stories for many years on end. Until significant reforms are introduced into the timelines behind how manga is produced, all that can be done is to appreciate how the individuals behind the stories that have changed so many lives, have given up so much to realize their own dreams and do justice to their craft.
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