Why do people pretend the philosophy Shonen covers is pretentious?
A lot of the philosophies that are used are actually used by world leaders today.
For example, Pains philosophy is pretty much the exact same as the President of a Rwanda, who had to deal with his counties two ethnic groups killing each other (1/10 of the population died in the conflict). He believes that pain will only breed vengeance, just like Pain.
Because it is pretentious. It tries to be “deep”, but always boils down to “people should just get along” with nuance.
Because it's a goofy dumb cartoon and people are too jaded and cynical to take that kind of topics seriously coming from it.
Also a lot of the topics shounen touches are clearly being used to give the appearance of depth or purpose behind a character's actions while the author shows very poor grasp of the topics.
Basically a lot of it is poorly done in a way that is a joke, and the parts that are actually well made can't be taken seriously either as a result.
>it's pretentious unless the message is providing an answer to something mankind hasn't found in thousands of years
Guess it's better to not have a message at all isnce there isn't a single film or tvshow that has ever done anything beyond answering questions in a way they had already been answered before.
>looking for philosophical insight on cartoons aimed at preteens
>looking for philosophical insight in audio visual media
Nothing the audio visual medium has ever addressed hadn't already been discussed to death by academia beforehand. Using that logic audio visual media shouldn't have themes are messages in the first place since they don't contribute anything anyway.
>looking for themes and messages in audiovisual media
Imagine being stuck on a pre-modern aesthetic mindset.
It's not that the philosophy is pretentious, it's people saying the inclusion is pretentious since it comes off as the series trying to seem deeper than it actually is by inserting stuff like politics and religion and without it being the main point. Because the main point in Naruto is Naruto and Sasuke's relationships with everybody.
And magic ninja battles.
Having underlying philosophy is not pretentious. It adds much needed depth to a story that would be nothing but fighting between magic ninja wizards.
The way it’s implemented is what’s pretentious. It’s shallowly painted on top of the story instead of being backed in. There’s a huge difference between a story that’s written for the message vs a story where it’s added later.