Thoughts on Araki’s thoughts about manga writing from his book?

Not really. I suppose he wants to provide fun experience to readers similar to a player playing a game without the grinding and NG+ parts.
But in retrospect, people always learn more from failures than from winning. A hero not learning humility/self-awareness isnt my cup of tea.

>But in retrospect, people always learn more from failures than from winning.
Sure, but that's not really what he's talking about here. He's talking about a step-back in character development. A failure is one thing, but to have the character reset character traits, or to consistently fail at the same spot with no real improvement other than empty platitudes is just going to leave negative emotions, and on top of that, there's no reward to the reader for watching them evolve past the trial because they've already tackled it.

I think in so many words he's saying that, in order to be interesting, a protagonist has to have some principles they stick to. If he wants to be the best, he has to continue to want to be the best. The moment he gives up is the moment he ceases to be a viable protagonist.

Spider-man flipflops all the time about his superhero persona.
The reason for this is to show that even if things are hard and quit, at the end the character knows and re-affirms what made him start in the first place. It's a step back so they can make a leap further.
And if not the case, to explore why someone would take that step back and the consequences of that.
Anyway, Araki is a shit writer that always does the same thing and writes everyone like a cartoonish asshole, as creative as entertaining that he can be.

So .. spiderman never learn anything at all ?

>Spider-man flipflops all the time about his superhero persona.
It only happened the one time in the original run (and who cares about later fanfic shit), it was honestly a pretty well crafted straight line of growth the whole way through.

further discussion of this topic

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And do you prefer reading Peter Parker whining about his tough life and his struggles, or about Spiderman *being Spiderman*?

He's full of shit.

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>from the point of the audience, they are simply unwanted and depressing
well yeah, that's kind of the point
it's a tragedy

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I love both because they're interconnected. Which is why the character has been so popular over decades. Hell, this is the entire tone of Marvel since the 60s.

Garbage route.

???
Araki is on the spectrum, right?

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How do One More Day and Superior Spider-Man make you feel?

This is youtube critic tier commentary.

The Godfather 2 is literally considered one of the best sequels of all time. Is Araki stupid?

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>t. UBWfag

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so youtuber critics were right all along, huh

did you even read it? He says those creators knew what they were doing.

He cites Part II as an example of the intentional negative arc, as opposed to one that doesn’t try to give meaning to the negativity. The contrast between Michael and his father gives the negative aspects meaning as opposed to a story where bad things happen suddenly.

didn't read the one above that until now
point remains, his argument is bad
"these arcs are so negative that they becomes a positive arc"

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Doesn't this directly contradict Evangelion, specifically Shinji?

No, you just lack basic reading comprehension, retard. Read a fucking book once in a while.

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Shinji has a positive character arc through the series in the end, but yes. He quits being a pilot like 3 times, and every time he does, we explore why.

He hates Eva and Gundam.

I literally read the pages backwards because I started at the bottom of the thread and commented just before the relevant page. Stop being retarded and projecting.

What he's saying about the zombie movie genre is that you expect it to start negative and accelerate the power of the tragedies. It's when it tries to go upward (meanings like "good things still happen there") that it begins to lose your attention.

The zombie movie aspect involves negativity that is relentlessly negative and does not offer much in terms of hope spots. Stories that do have negativity but attempt to create bits of positivity while still maintaining the extreme negativity just leads to a worse feeling, such as a romance that is always ending in a tragedy when you know that it can never be anything but. It just becomes meandering until you see the inevitable death.

That's not true. Shinzo always reverts back to his original self. EoE comes after the finale of the tv series and at the end, Shinji is just as shitty ergo "so what?"

Source?

web.archive.org/web/20090831163654/http://geocities.com/jojo2ch2000/araki1.html

>Araki: Those anime, like Evangelion or Gundam... I don't understand the point that "MCs with the mental states of I don't actually want to fight". (laugh)

>Taku: I'd like to go clean and clear! I don't know (the point of) anime sorta NGE. It gives me headache. So, our NGE synchro rate is negative 500!

>Araki: That anime, it's crap...

>Taku: On NGE's MC, I feel like saying "You are being bullied because your such personality!" (laugh). I have strong feeling that I don't want to see something warped. On that super famous female character, Ayanami Rei, let me just say she's gloomy and looks like vicious (laugh).

>Araki: But, it make me wonder why that character has such vast range of approval and support.

>That's not true. Shinzo always reverts back to his original self.
Someone didn't pay attention at all.
In both endings, Shinji understands how interacting with others is a pain, but it's better than being alone and not being true to oneself. And accepts the human experience.

In the opening pages of the book, he states that these are the things he picked up along the way on how to wirte a story. They're not meant to be a universal truth, it's just his take on the subject of writing enjoyable stories, specifically manga.

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I couldn't believe someone was this retarded but jesus Araki is that retarded.

>Liking RIn

Yeah Shinji sure grows by refusing to get in the Eva and choking Asuka as soon as he wakes up on a post-apocalyptic beach. Brilliant.

And it comes from one of the most successful mangaka in the world. Let that sink in

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He's definitely right in that passage imo, manga relies on characters and setting more than plot.

Spider-man flipflopping about his supehero life once is fine. Overcoming that issue can be seen as a form of growth. It is only Spider-man trying to quit being Spider-man every movie that makes it seem like you are watching the same shit over and over.

Being a successful mangaka doesn’t make him qualified to create rules that all other mangakas should follow.

The caveat at the end is important. As long as the hero ends higher than step one it's ok. Having the moral of your story be status quo is undesirable

Araki is 100% right.

I mean he's right about most of the shit he's saying, but he's also a hypocrite since his own fucking work is guilty of what he's saying he doesn't like.

They aren't rules, they're tips,he's sharing the method he's been using to write his stories. And frankly, when it comes to writing average shonenshit, it's spot on.

Even if he doesn’t expect everyone to follow his guidelines, he still believes in them.

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What a hack. If a hero never has any set-backs, how is he supposed to grow?

By walking over the corpses of his enemies and blowing his load in their women.

It's specifically talking about setbacks that could only give a net zero outcome. If there's anything unique to gain from that setback, that's fine.

>The opposite of that, where the characters change to suit a story, must be avoided.
So, he admits that part 5 was crap?

I don't think Araki is right about any of this stuff. It may be a valid way to create a story, but for every rule he makes, I can think of successful stories which ignore or break those rules. Ultimately, all he accomplishes is seeming pretentious while pigeon holing the potential of narrative. But to be fair, that's what every "literary expert" ends up doing with their narrow perspective.

Seems like the talk of someone who never wants to see really bad things happen
i.e. someone depressed, so it makes sense.
first thing i thought of to counter was TF comics, but with how he nuances it, I wonder if it counts.

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He's completely right.
This cringey ironic/self-aware shit and "muh humanization of superheroes" ruined comics.

>Of course he'd hate a superhero character deciding to settle down
Because it quite simply doesn't make sense.
It's in the word itself "Superhero" "Super" "Hero" HERO
Superheroes have a duty to use their powers for good. Humanization of superheroes is fucking dumb and the fact that they just decide to settle down without ever thinking how selfish they're being is even dumber.

>It's also painful to watch in any show when the hero curls back up into a ball only to reaffirm things we already knew.
Bleach in a nutshell.

He never addressed why Jojo is fucking gay. And in this context gay is bad. Because we should go back to killing those who promote homosexuality

There is only so many times you can pull that shit though.
I think that's what Araki means.

Once or twice during the whole story...that could be done well. But if you're doing it every fucking time it loses its meaning.

>people always learn more from failures than from winning
This is evidently not the case with most fiction.

But what does "ufu" means?

And this is why Spider-man is the most basedboy superhero ever.
Read good shit like The Shadow.

It's the same problem Batman has with "MUH DEAD PARENTS"
Just fuck off with that shit you fucking hacks.

This is why Batman TAS is the best, because they actually were creative with the stories and not re-using the same bullshit sob story over and over.

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I’ve been reading this too, it seems like basic stuff but SOOO many manga and film fall into the traps he warns about. It’s a good read

The idea is that the character fails, gets discouraged and abandons his path, and rather than gaining any actual new insight that changes him significantly, all his hiatus teaches him is that he should be doing what he was doing before. So he goes back to square one, the character didn't develop at all, and we already knew this was going to happen so there's no surprise either.

Seething.

Araki hates Spiderman 2 then?

>That first sentence
SPOT FUCKING ON
I hate it when that happens

So according to Araki, isekai and other wish fulfillment power fantasies must be the best.

But aren’t the characters in The Walking Dead succeeding in rebuilding society?

Stick to Bleach nigger.

Not just succeeding, succeeded. The comic ended.

This is Yea Forums tier argument.

fuck i read this whole thing thinking it was fucking Anno talking for some reason
so I can change here 'depression' to 'someone who's just way too nice for their own good"

Is there a full TL posted anywhere?
All I can find is of the first part.

I don't think stories need to follow reality, and I don't think characters need to grow either. I mean, it's fine if they do, as long as you keep your story true to itself and keep things entertaining. It's fine if a character has setbacks, but it's also fine if they don't have setbacks. It can be just as entertaining to watch an invincible god slaughter millions as it is to watch an underdog kill a god.

Either your writing is good, or it isn't. If your writing sucks, it doesn't matter how well structured it is or how many best practice guidelines you follow.

Literally too dumb to understand the bluntest "WAR IS BAD" message ever written. Impressive.

I sure wish he took his own goddamn advice with these tips...

he learned from experience, clearly.

You know, the only thing that would ever redeem Shinji is if he told Asuka, Misato and his asshole father to fuck off.

>Shinji understands how interacting with others is a pain, but it's better than being alone and not being true to oneself. And accepts the human experience.
And that's what makes it shit.
Shinji accepts defeat.

>That anime, it's crap...
holy based
anno btfo

>hxh not even on there

OH NO NO NO NONONO

Soma's Blue arc in a nutshell.

The phrasing is closer to, "I don't like it", or "Its not for me".
"It's crap" gives the wrong tone.

Few are intelligent enough to enjoy it.

Retarded zoomer detected.

Fucking based

>but for every rule he makes, I can think of successful stories which ignore or break those rules
No you can't.

>I don't understand the point that "MCs with the mental states of I don't actually want to fight". (laugh)
I don't agree with the shit in the OP, but here he is 100% right.

t. brainlet with reading comprehension issues

But wait, wouldn't Johnny Joestar's arc in Part 7 be an example of "going back to zero"? In fact, Johny even says that verbatim at times. He was a talented horse jockey, got paralyzed. and then he regains his leg movement and his father loves him again. Isn't that hypocritical?

>war is bad, and we'll show it to you through the cool exploits of these badass war robots
Genius.

understandable, Shinji is the complete opposite of what Araki considers a hero

He's so right in the second one it's not even funny.
That shit is fucking annoying because you can tell the writer ran out of ideas for a good story.

He kinda does in his own way, though?

>I don't think characters need to grow either
Character development is literally the scam of the century.
Retards thing that every story needs it because they heard it as a buzzword.

If your character is strong/creative to begin with you don't need that fucking shit.

King of funny, all of these things Araki is saying are the sorts of things a professor in a Creative Writing 101 class would offer as suggestions to people who want to learn how to be better writers.

He is introduced from zero though. It's not like you see him losing everything in the story.

That what he said really clashes with how he handled Joseph in later parts.

>shinji accepting interaction despite the pain instead of taking the easy way out by running away again is accepting defeat

He literally doesn't. He surrenders to them in the end.

cope

how?

Johnny is not going back to 'Zero' to the viewer. We don't know Johnny pre-injury and depression, so anything that gets him back to normal from being a depressive cripple is to the viewer, moving forward.

While the character is trying to just go back to an earlier state, the viewers see him as improving.

Nah he definitely accepted defeat by letting Asuka, Misato and his asshole dad get what they want.

Speak like a human, not a bot.
Why even waste your time typing something as retarded as this? Take some pride in yourself.

He never tells them to fuck off.
He basically indicates that he was wrong and they were right.

Joseph wasn't the hero anymore, it was Jotaro and then Josuke.

cope

Even then Johnny becomes better and more fulfilled as a person through his friendship with Gyro, though he's still enough of a scumbag to kill innocent bystanders by the end.

Ahh, Asuka, you're so right, allow me to reaffirm my belief in you by squeezing your scrawny chicken neck until your eyes pop out of your skull

There's a point where you should honestly stop your obsession with the protagonist incessantly winning and it's when the oneupmanship of your narrative has become patently absurd.
The example I always give in Initial D.

Yeah, I was honestly iffy about Johnny just regaining his leg movement in the end, instead of growing as a character throughout the journey but still retaining consequences. Kind of like the point of the story not being Johnny or Gyro winning the race.

Asuka got what she wanted her own self, the angels had to be destroyed anyway, and Shinji took Rei away from Gendo

>reading comprehension
He's merely lampshading an obvious counterexample to his drivel.

losing something more important than being a hero. Similarly, the " balance" of positives/negatives only matters if the story amounts to a single objective and all of these events are framed exclusively to that objective.

Still, I can see what Araki means, from a mangaka perspective. It is really hard to make complex plots on a serialized series because you can't just go back and remove/add a bit of information like you need later in the story, like you could do in a book, so most manga tend to be fairly simple plotwise. And that means that what Araki is talking about is true in most manga.

Araki is a weirdo with weird philosophies that are half right. This makes his storytelling very unique, but it’s even more obvious that Araki is an in the moment writer/reader.

Considering he wrote weekly for much of his life it makes sense.

Lost the first half of the post:

Araki is talking an important truth: "readers don't like to feel that an ongoing story is pointless". But he is twisting that truth to create more explicit rules that are closer to his experiences and tastes than to truth.

You can make a story where the hero quitting halfway through is fine. You just have to point out that being a hero isn't that great or show that they are losing something more important than being a hero. Similarly, the " balance" of positives/negatives only matters if the story amounts to a single objective and all of these events are framed exclusively to that objective. If you do something as simple as having multiple main characters with multiple, clashing objectives, thay notion is broken.

Still, I can see what Araki means, from a mangaka perspective. It is really hard to make complex plots on a serialized series because you can't just go back and remove/add a bit of information like you need later in the story, like you could do in a book, so most manga tend to be fairly simple plotwise. And that means that what Araki is talking about is true in most manga.

Has he ever publicly reflected upon his previous works? Like, saying he'd handle stuff differently etc?

He wanted to give Jonathan more depth iirc

This makes sense, I forgot that the viewpoint of the characters and the viewpoint of the audience are not the same. Part 7 is one of my favorite parts because of the catharsis I felt of Johnny finally not feeling like a failure despite not completing his original objective of winning the SBR. That being said, I say shaggy dog stories still have their place in storytelling, sometimes it's okay to not have a point to a story.
He did grow as a character throughout the story, but yeah I also feel him getting de-paralyzed was a bit of a cop-out. Him jumping on the opportunity to learn Spin in the beginning was just him grasping at straws to fix himself, but then it actually does so it feels a bit cheap

His point seems to be that fiction should be overwhelmingly, uncompromising, dogmatic marches to either perdition or utopia. That something that resembles real life a little more with its peaks and valleys can't make for compelling storytelling
This is of course, untrue at even the most wide market pieces of fiction.
The Godfather part 2 is exactly the sort of film he says he doesn't like. It is not one overarching arc of classical tragedy. It's a composite of the ups and downs in Michael's life, so much so it isn't even told linearly. He should hate it.

And then she caresses him and he lets go.
Fucking pussy.

Who gives a shit about any of that?
The whole thing about Eva was that Shinji wanted his father's approval.
And in the end he still wants it.

>literally black and white
Thank's bro, it's almost as if you were afraid that your entire philosophy would somehow be lost on us plebs.

easy there, tough guy.

>This is of course, untrue at even the most wide market pieces of fiction.
It's true if you want to play it safe and just make simple entertainment.

You do realize that JoJo started out as a shonen manga for pre-teen boys right?

>It's true if you want to play it safe and just make simple entertainment.
This is much harder done than said.

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We already know that spin can heal him from the beginning.

Man, Dragon Ball is so well done. Maybe simpler than a lot of what came after, but that's because it inspired a lot. That said, it's just very solid, still holds up well. Still should have ended after Cell though.

Those ups and downs exist in order to draw a connection to Vito, as Araki himself said. Even then The Godfather part II (and the first I suppose) are tragedies that are more beautiful and deserving of respect than they are actually fun and interesting - they are fantastic films, but no one puts The Godfather to have a good time with friends, its designed to be experienced differently.

When reading a story it should never feel like it is dragging on. You can have a character go down, but then they have to rise up higher than before - see Part 7 for this occurring several times. Dropping a character and then raising them only to the status quo again is infuriating to the reader, it makes them feel like they are wasting their time. If a character ever feels like they are 'spinning their wheels' then they are not being properly utilized. Think about those Amnesia plots or when a character either loses or decides to stop using their powers, those plotlines are notorious for ending basically back where they started - making the entire thing essentially pointless.
Dropping and then raising them too often is annoying to the reader as well. It makes you feel like the story is getting formulaic.

As fun as Recoome was, he was too similar to Nappa in my opinion. Goku also didn't really fit in the Namek Arc either. I don't know how else to do it, but his inclusion felt clumsy at best.

I honestly took it more as his wishful thinking. That being his initial motivation is completely valid but I still don't like the fact it actually ended up healing him.

It looks simple on the surface but it's really not.
What I mean by that is that it's hard to do something that seems so simplistic and have it be so enjoyable to begin with.

And this is Toriyama basically being too tired of working on manga and pretty much handing the manuscript of most chapters in the last day of the deadline and fucking around building toy models or watching Jackie Chan movies or whatever the fuck during the rest of the week.

>Still should have ended after Cell though.
Nah.
Android/Cell saga was trash and ruined the series.
Toriyama completely lost it after Freeza.

We see that touching the ball while it was spinning caused his legs to temporarily move again.

Not manga Shinji though

I wasn't referring to Recoome in particular.
Although Recoome is definitely not similar to Nappa. He's way too much of a clown compared to Nappa who is played much more straight and is killed by his own leader.

I don't see how Goku didn't fit Namek saga. What was Goku supposed to do? Stay on Earth while his son and his friends get killed?
Don't be ridiculous.

Appropriate that it fits Araki's rules considering Sadamoto's Evangelion is brainless shonen shit.

Didn't the ending to that go back to zero because "lol muh amnesia"?

I agree that it was all downhill after Freeza, really the climax of the Freeza saga itself wasn't as good as the Saiyan's arc final fight between Goku and Freeza. Cell just had a really fitting conclusion, one that prefer to the end of the Freeza arc. Vegeta, Gohan, and Piccolo all got nice endings. All it really needed was an epilogue to show the lives the characters had at the beginning of Buu, that's how I would end Dragon Ball ideally, the actual quality of the story getting there notwithstanding.

>Cell just had a really fitting conclusion
Literally no. Goku dying and Gohan undeservedly taking his place is only satisfying for retarded toonamifags.
Gohan doesn't even train that much and gets these undeserved transformations and then he acts like a little arrogant shit vs Cell. It's so annoying.
Gohan peaked in Freeza saga.

That whole saga was made to pretty much shit on DB fans. Especially the way they shat on Yamcha and Krillin by pretty much murdering their characters(especially Krillin).

I don't think a conclusive ending fits Dragon Ball or Toriyama's style in general.
DB at its deepest core still has the spirit of a gag manga.

Problem with Cell saga is that it shat on many characters(Krillin, Bulma, Yamcha etc.).
Vegeta turning from a Villain/Anti-Hero to this loser obsessing with surpassing Goku sucked(he should have stayed dead)
Kami gets sacrificed to increase Piccolo's power level. Goku turns into a douche which is in direct contradiction to his character in Saiyan saga and Namek saga etc.
But the most egregious sin of it all is that the series stops being Dragon Ball. The Dragon Balls are no longer the main focus which is what kills the series imo.

Still more entertaining and respectful to the charaters than the entirety of the anime
Storywise yes, but character wise Shinji actually learns sonething from his losses instead of just reverting to "le depressed young boy" again and again

The ups and downs are the very antithesis to what he describes as not just entertaining but the sine qua non for empathizing with a protagonist. They have little to do with Vito besides contrast.
I'd also like to point out that his argument is factually wrong and patently insane.
If your argument for succesful composition can be replied to with "what about Star Wars" maybe it's time to take a little harder look outside of your bubble. Shut your mouth and write a book about your own composition without making sweeping nonsensical proclamations about the whole of popular fiction.

>the actual quality of the story getting there notwithstanding
That doesn't address your issues with the direction of Vegeta's character, things like that, but the idea of Gohan getting the torch passed to him, Vegeta becoming less of a cunt as he actually learns to care about his son and is able to help Gohan in the end, Piccolo and Kami finally becoming whole (even if the Namekian they combined to form again still went by Piccolo, the change in personality is pretty noticeable), the ideas are appealing to me even if the execution was not.

Holy fuck, Araki is absolutely based.

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Recoome has the role of being the 'big, tough, idiot that the party has to fight until Goku arrives' that Nappa did. Its very similar to the Nappa fight in how its laid out, except it doesn't kill off most of the main cast, including my boy Tien.

Goku doesn't fit because he doesn't have a connection to the struggle that the entire arc up until that point, as well as a good bit after, was built around.
Gohan and Krillen have a connection to Freeza and Vegeta in that they are trying to stop them both. They want the Dragon Balls to revive their allies, who were killed by Vegeta directly and indirectly by Freeza's influence.
Vegeta is connected to Freeza in that he wants to take him out for revenge, Vegeta is connected to Gohan and Krillen because both are fighting for control of the Dragon Balls. He wants the Dragon Balls to become immortal and kill Freea
Freeza knows about Vegeta and may know about the Earthlings (its been a while since I last read that arc) and is connected to both in that he is the obstacle they are all working around. He wants the Dragon Balls to become immortal.
All of these characters interact with each other directly and indirectly and form relationships. The Arc is about this struggle.

Then Goku arrives and he has no connection to Freeza beyond being a bodyguard to protect Gohan and Krillen from him. And his connection to Vegeta is still weak at this point, Goku might want to fight him but it doesn't go much deeper than that. Goku has no connection to anything that the arc has been about up until that point, he knows nothing about the alliance making and bargaining that went on behind the scenes, the sneaking around and theft that characters had to preform, everything that happened is irrelevant to Goku's inclusion.
Freeza and Goku don't even know each other when they fight. Thats how little connection they have.

based

Based as fuck.

This is the dumbest possible example he could've came up with because the act of moving from one city to another is so completely normal I can't imagine anyone being left confused as to why someone would be in a different city unless they were literally teleporting.

Doesn't Goku have a connection with freeza because he's a saiyan? Goku wouldn't be on earth if freeza didn't genocide his people.
Freeza is integral to the ethos of the entire saiyan race.

>t. Retard
If he lives in and completely loves city A, but the events are happening in city B, you now have to establish a lot of shit with his character to get him involved in city B's story. "Why is he there?" is the easiest part. You're failling to answer "Why should he care if he loves city B?" and "Why should he get involved as an outsider as opposed to someone more connected?". Of course, you can answer these questions, but you're spending a shit ton of time and effort on this portion instead of just starting the story in City A to begin with and having the character's motives already set up for you.

>Doesn't Goku have a connection with freeza because he's a saiyan?
Since when has that ever mattered to Goku? Guy doesn't even care about his wife or the fact that his tail was surgically removed, let alone the fact that he's a Saiyan.

Goku doesn't really care about being Saiyan. Its a factor to the fight, but if Freeza was minding his own business and not being a Genocidal Tyrant then Goku wouldn't have gone after him.
Even then Freeza being a Genocidal Tyrant didn't really matter to Goku until the very end of the fight with that out-of-character speech.

Lmao

He's right. Viewers don't know what they want. They claim they want status quo, but reality is people love surprises and status quos are boring/stagnant.

>"Why should he care if he loves city B?"
Is his entire motivation that he wants to protect city B and the people of City B only? Because that in itself requires just as much explanation and setup because of how oddly specific it is.

Showing how a character handles real and normal situations goes quite a long way to making something feel much more authentic and not like it was designed by a committee. Traveling is normal, showing what your character does when they travel, how they react to being in a new place, etc etc can give new insights to a character or reinforce things about the character. Spider-Man usually protects New York City but in Far From Home he goes on vacation (again, something completely normal that people do) and in this new setting he finds people in danger and helps them out. This reinforces that Spider-Man lives to help people but they also could've had him completely ignore the situation and show that maybe he doesn't care. Both of those are preferable to just announcing

>He only likes this city and its people

Araki is trying to write character archetype and not necessarily actual people so anything that might threaten that archetype has to go, even if it's something completely reasonable like taking a train to another city.

Trying to think up reasons as to why your character doesn't engage in normal human behavior can be just as awkward and intrusive as thinking up reasons for why they would go to space.

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>it's crap
So blunt and simple, yet effective. NGE should be treated the same way naruto was a while back.

>Is his entire motivation that he wants to protect city B and the people of City B only?
The premise to begin with is that city B is under attack. Where did you get the assumption that we're saving the world, exactly?

>Traveling is normal
It's actually not. People will go on business trips all the time, but ripping out your roots and moving to a completely different city is actually very abnormal. Most people will never move further than 10 miles from where they were born or raised in their entire life. Especially MORESO when the only character trait you've established for the hero is he loves City A, which now requires the explanation of "Why the fuck is he even in City B then?"

>Spider-Man usually protects New York City but in Far From Home
False equivalency. Spider-man's distinguishing trait isn't that he loves New York City, he just happens to live there and what he LIKES is saving people.

>Both of those are preferable to just announcing
>>He only likes this city and its people
And this is why you're a complete and utter retard. Araki is stating that if you have this trait and then move the action somewhere else, you now have to establish several other things about the character, which is 100% true. Even in your ham-handed Spider-Man example, the story had to give an explanation for "Wait, if Spider-Man lives in New York, why is he saving people in a completely different country now?" so they can set up the plot.

I can feel my IQ dropping as I read this thread.

>It's actually not. People will go on business trips all the time
And go to school
And go on vacation
And visit family
And go to events
Like whoowee buddy you're really not doing the bare minimum of thinking if you think the above things are abnormal.

> Spider-man's distinguishing trait isn't that he loves New York City, he just happens to live there and what he LIKES is saving people.

Yeah because "liking a city" is by itself a completely meaningless statement in the first place and isn't a distingushing trait. There has to be specifications, things about the city, aspects of it. Not just literally "I like the city". That means nothing and doesn't distinguish anything.

> Araki is stating that if you have this trait and then move the action somewhere else, you now have to establish several other things about the character, which is 100% true

Not really because moving around isn't a weird thing. You don't have to establish anything out of the ordinary or convoluted to explain that. Why is Spider-Man in a completely different country now? Cause he's on vacation. Done. Takes what 4 minutes? Hell it's even done in a basic plot premise. There's nothing convoluted or invasive about that.

Convoluted is making up a bunch of logical gymnastics as to why a character is constantly engaging in a rigid status quo despite it being abnormal.

>this thread
now I understand why anime writers just do the bare minimum most times

Araki is basically an american boomer who enjoys his beer and rock cds. Of course he won't like nerd anime like eva and gundam.

>Like whoowee buddy you're really not doing the bare minimum of thinking if you think the above things are abnormal.
I was actually giving you the benefit of the argument and assuming you weren't retarded enough to ALSO add the question of "Why the fuck is this guy saving City B if he doesn't even live here", but fine. If you want to talk about it, then transient trips bring up more questions about the character's involvement than before.

>Yeah because "liking a city" is by itself a completely meaningless statement in the first place and isn't a distingushing trait.
Irrelevant to the topic of discussion. "If character's distinguishing trait is he likes City A, then if you make the action in City B, you have to start adding unnecessary story elements to explain why this character is here". That's the only statement we should be addressing.

>Not really because moving around isn't a weird thing.
The act of the character following the trail of his adventure isn't the weird thing. The weird thing is that saving City B should, by all necessary means, be someone other than City-A-San's adventure. Therefore, the question becomes "Why is it now his adventure".

Honestly, you're really just getting hung up on the metaphor at this point. If I were you, I'd refrain from posting in higher intellectual conversations again. You're not really cut out for it.

>Kindaichi is top 20 of best selling manga of all time
Huh? I thought it was niche.

Trying to apply rigid rules to storytelling will always be retarded

This all reads more like how to write a successful manga on a weekly time constraint aimed towards literal children then how to write something of substance.

Not to mention he complains about things returning to the status quo but this is like the norm for almost the entirety of Part 4.

Based Araki shitting on capetrash

>People who make mistakes aren't allowed to share their wisdom to help others avoid making the same mistake
This is why you're garbage and will never succeed in life.

that's hitting the lowest bar possible for difficulty

araki is absolutely based

Nobody said any of that. Don't get so personally offended by nothing.

I agree that it can be depressing to see the protagonist just losing and losing continuously, but if the story has other things to keep the reader interested, it can be nice to keep beating the MC, and make him a badass latter.
SNK is like this. For most of the manga Eren kept being kidnapped, beaten up, humiliated, despite always doing his best, and actually doing quite well for a kid, but it didn't matter because he was against people much stronger and more prepared than him.
But now that the manga is getting near its end, Eren is the most interesting character of SNK, and one of the strongest too.
But it worked with SNK because there were other characters that could carry the story while Eren was helpless.

Based

>t. dumb kid who can't post any examples because he's wrong

Meanwhile Bleach & Ippo both tanked due to this. So did Berserk go on a massive decline in quality. You can't name 3 examples cause you're wrong.

I bet Araki likes Berserk.

Well he predicted their immense success, in a way.

Araki still did that though

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Steel Ball Run has Johnny and Gyro getting better. Negative doesn’t necessarily mean being at a disadvantage, it can also mean emotional decline. While their journey does have its ups and downs, Johnny eventually comes out on top as a mature individual, with the declines on his journey being more physical than mental. The downswing would be more like if he became selfish and uncaring randomly to Gyro, then they suddenly make up and go onward and make the ordeal moot.

maybe the reason why he's speaking out against it is because he made that mistake and learnt from it

But a story written without character development is probably better off with it. Look at a character like rock lee. His best moments were when he was in shambles after being told he couldn't be a ninja anymore.
>What happens after that?
He just goes back to being a ninja and learns nothing from it. While I like rock lee as a character, there is a lot of waste potential with him. It's probably for the better that he gets shoved to the side in shippuden, because his eternal youth shit got annoying by then. Now take kakashi. A character that was well loved from the start. But showing how he had changed from how he was a kid made him that much better of a character. Did you know that he could've dodged that eraser falling on his head when he first met team 7? He didn't, because he wanted to use himself as a means for his team to bond over. From the very start you think he's just some skilled retard but it's only later on that you realise it's all just an evolving act of his.
Now for an example of bad character development, i'd have to use Gaara. After he gets btfo'd by naruto he basically does a 180 and becomes nothing like he was originally was.

I don’t know if he believes this himself. Like, he says all this and then adds, “Oh, by the way, Jonathan dies for nothing on his honeymoon and Johnny stole the Saint’s corpse, cursed his bloodline with an incurable disease and died young from having his skull crushed by a rock.”

Araki makes mistakes and learns from them, the book is about him talking about the things he learned.

If you couldn't comprehend that on your own without me explaining it, then you have an underdeveloped brain.

He went Negative, but then moved that to a big high after. Having a Negative Shift and then not having a proper Positive Shift is what he is talking about.
If after that section the story stayed Negative for an extended period of time, that would have the chance of reducing the reader's enjoyment - no one likes negativity that much.
But going down then going up a great amount is a great experience for the reader.

Araki is talking about those stories that 'pad out' the plot with small dips and rises, that while realistic, are not engrossing.

Is it really learning if he did it twice?

He doesn’t practice what he preaches. Like, Johnny basically falls into despair after Sugar Mountain Spring.

Ezra Pound was the same way. His poetry is mostly great but his attempts at criticism like the ABC of Reading is mostly garbage with the occasional gold nugget of wisdom.

Mangaka aren't perfect people, don't be dumb. Jojo early parts are fucking garbage compared to the later ones. He is learning

Why Araki? Why you gotta make lose respect for you?

Never meet your heroes.

I agree, but most people don't realize that development doesn't have to be a HUGE change. It can be nuanced like a character not liking a type of cereal because it reminds him of home, to enjoying it.

cool thread don't die!

>NOOOO THE PROTAGONIST CAN'T LOSE EVER

Kek what a pathetic faggot, no wonder he writes sh*nen

Geez, so many people in this thread missing the point entirely.

>There has to be specifications, things about the city, aspects of it
If you've watched any Raimi Spidey or Homecoming you can see why. The city is a character in Spider-Man. It's New York. It's passerbys asking for selfies, Spidey frequenting street vendors, helping out the neighborhood. There's a lot to it.

As far as location goes, Far From Home actually uses it metaphorically. Peter just wants to take a vacation because the pressure after Stark's death has been getting to him and he just wants to relax and ask the girl he likes out. Fury and Mysterio keep interfering with his situation and changing his destination as a point that Spidey is not in control of his own destiny, and is even manipulated to shut down his future possibilities by signing Edith over. When he realizes what he needs to do, he's in an auto-piloting jet and customizing his own Spidey suit will all options available to him and reclaims the future he's been entrusted with on his own power.
Then again this is superfluous as Spidey is not ultimately defined by being a NY hero to the end of days. It's his origin and in his identity, but it's not something that's in every single facet of himself.

if jotaro was the protagonist of eva it would've been so much beter

What Araki says here isn't really all that drastically different from writers and screenwriters like Robert McKee, John Gardner, Syd Fields, etc. At least from this thread. I'm rather interested in picking up a copy of this book now and adding it to my collection of writing guides, but that's besides the point.

Every writer has their own theories of writing - and that's okay, that's great, but in this case Araki's scope is rather specific. That's to say, a lot of Araki's stipulations seem to be based on his personal preferences, and what he prefers to read is what he prefers to write. This is fine as a person, but a little misleading as a teacher or a theorist. Because he's not acknowledging manga aimed at, say, audiences of women or older readers.

I would take everything he says with a grain of salt, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable advice. It seems to be good guidelines for writing SHONEN manga specifically, but doesn't apply to everything. Robert McKee, in his work, lays out an idea of three kinds of plot. An Arch-plot, stories aimed at general audiences with mass appeal in mind, Mini-plots, stories aimed at older audiences with more subtlety, nuance, and emotional undertones, and Anti-plots, stories that subvert traditional notions to appeal to the arthouse crowd. Araki's ideas on Manga writing seem to correlate to writing a successful Archplot, but Mini-Plots and Anti-Plots exist too. I mean, Oyasumi Punpun was massively successful and popular, and is exactly what Araki warns against in the book as a "bad" story. You probably shouldn't publish Punpun in Jump, sure, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its audience.

never meet your heroes

But it's 124 manga volumes to reach 100 millions of copies. And the last volumes are selling less and less.

>Robert McKee, John Gardner, Syd Fields
You're damning your own argument. None of those guys have ever produced any significant works of art. They attempt to dissect the essence of good literature because they are incapable of creating it.

For one thing, the greatest teachers aren't always the best in their field, the best coaches aren't always the best athletes, etc. Having successful movies tied to your name is a plus, for sure, but there are other credentials for teachers. McKee, for example, has never had anything of his made into a movie, but has mentored literally hundreds of award-winning screenwriters. Same goes for Alexander Mackendrick and Kenneth Thorpe Rowe, great professors are not always great writers. Although it helps to be both. You can look at writers turned teachers like Blake Snyder and William Goldman for similar opinions.

And John Gardner wrote Grendel, anyways, that's a rather famous novel.

I don't generally like Jojo before parts 7 and 8 but he is absolutely right about shitty pacifist MCs.

ok so what i collected from all of u is first off the main goal is entertainment. Simple thing Plot and Overcomming plot. Arabasedki says for it to be entertaining and positive is to have the protagonist always overcome and not lose, but dosnt that lead to asspulls.

Its ok to have a loss once in a while but not make it depressing for the viewer example one punch man but also to not be predictable you would have to lose once in a while

Jojo part 2 is gold though. It's only the middle part of 1 and the monster of the week format in 3 and 5 that are flawed.

>It seems to be good guidelines for writing SHONEN manga specifically, but doesn't apply to everything

The book's title specifically says manga. While it has some key general advice, it primarily applies to manga writing.

Part 2 is the weakest part in plot and concept, but stronger in character writing than either 1 or 3.

While I don't agree entirely on its plot being weaker I can see where you're coming from and respect your opinion.

Part 2's my favorite for how goddamn crazy it is and the fun characters.

I hate you user. Now I’ll never be able to read JoJo again without the thought that it was created by a man with such a shallow vision as an artist. It would be one thing if he said, this is my subjective opinion, but he’s basically on the same level as the most priggish of Yea Forumsnons in terms of thinking his own taste is objectively correct.

I always thought Rohan was an exaggeration, but I was wrong wasn’t I? Araki is probably an asshole in his daily life who bullies his assistants and is mean to children and small animals. I think I’m gonna be sick.

>Part 2 is the weakest part in plot and concept
Ancient race of vampire bodybuilders is far, FAR more fun than endless Dio dicksucking.

As Also how he was disappointed with how William Zeppeli felt like a father/mentor figure instead of a friend and wanted to give more depth to Dio and Jonathon’s relationship.

He also wanted Caesar and Joseph to have more screentime as friends.

Though he also talked about scrapped ideas like:

>Hol Horse being in the Crusaders but scrapped due to his character being similar to Polnareff
>Fugo being a traitor to Bucciarati’s gang but got scrapped due to Araki having depression

you dont know boomers then

I don't think there's anyone who didn't think of Ippo when they read that bit.

You know, he has a point in the sense that the classical tragedy doesn't pretend to not be a tragedy at any point in the story. It maintains a consistent tone and narrative arc throughout. Overly long serialised manga that can't decide whether they're upbeat or depressing or leading to a success or to a failure are poorly written because of this. They don't have a point anymore, they're changing week to week to avoid cancellation.

By contrast, Goku and Vegeta are directly responsible for Buu's hatching.

This is not the case in real world. Most people are either in position where they can keep on failing and nothing bad ever happens,or end up on the streets, go crazy and kill themselves.

This is retarded, Araki himself doesn't even follow any of the stuff that's been posted in this thread.

I wonder if he also molests little boys like Rohan does.

The whole Kick-Ass heroes rooster are definitely not superhumans. They are illustrated as people with something wrong in their heads.

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MOTW was only flawed in 3/4 imo.

based

fuck rohan

>anons itt getting buttmad to one of the most succesful mangaka with decades of experience.

Holy shit, I was thinking the same thing about Kick-Ass 2

They are so right about Rei, Anno would actually agree with them on that one