Hard as it is to believe, I have now been writing Tuesday Rumble for a month, and aside from occasional worries about running out of ideas, it’s been an enjoyable feature. Although there wasn’t room to include it this time, expect a new Tuesday Rumble feature in the near future, documenting harem masters, their conquests, failures and rivals.
How to make a Shounen Jump series
Want to make your fortune pumping out endless chapters for Shounen Jump? Think you’ve got it in you to create the next spiky-haired hero of Friendship and Destiny? Then look no further- this guide to creating a Shounen Jump series is just what you need.
1. Pick a competitive discipline to base your series around. Anything from traditional martial arts to baking bread will do, as long as it can be worked into league, tournament and play-off format.
2. Create a spiky-haired teenage hero. At the beginning of the series, he will be a complete newcomer to the chosen discipline, but through the powers of Friendship, Destiny and Plot Necessity, he will prove easily able to defeat those who wasted years mastering their craft.
3. The hero must have a group of friends of both sexes who cheer him on from the sidelines, and very occasionally participate in matches themselves. The hero’s best friend (male) will always be a hothead who barely scrapes through his matches, whilst his childhood friend (female) will rarely play. The friends will always be weaker than the hero.
4. In the first episode, an anti-hero with dark, straight hair must be established. In their first encounter, the hero will defeat the anti-hero, who will then train intensely in the vain hope of one day getting his revenge. In subsequent encounters, the anti-hero will be defeated nine times out of ten, but he will occasionally use unfair means to win and trigger a hero angst arc. At key points in the plot, the anti-hero will help the hero party, claiming “we aren’t friends- it’s just that I want to be the one to defeat you.” The anti-hero can occasionally have a younger sibling who thinks the world of him, but he will generally be a loner who scorns the power of Friendship.
5. Each arc should contain a villain who is hoping to take over the world using the power of martial arts, gaming or sports. The villain will have numerous underlings who will fall into either an “ugly generic, easily defeated” or “decent character design, becomes ally after being defeated” category. Once the villain himself is eventually defeated, his evil is revealed to have merely been the result of a traumatic past, and he leaves the storyline to reflect on his wrongs.
6. Whenever the hero battles a ‘key antagonist’ (usually the chief lieutenant of the arc’s villain), their first encounter must result in either outright defeat, or be aborted just prior to defeat. At this point, a strong ally will take the hero away for healing and training, and teach them techniques within a week that previous masters of the craft took ten years to learn. Once the training is complete, the hero will easily defeat the key antagonist. There is no limit to the amount of strong mentors that will appear, nor to the amount of ‘ultimate deathblows’ and transformations that can be learned.
7. Each arc must be longer and more drawn out than the last. If arc x is 50 chapters or episodes, x+1 must be 100.
8. The series can only end when it no longer becomes profitable.
9. For an example of how to apply this formula, see Dicemasters season one.
Bus Chronicle
(or if Hinano doesn’t mind me stealing her idea- Tsu-Bus-a Chronicle)
Starting April 2007, Bee Train is proud to present the third season of Tsubasa Chronicle, or as it will now be called, Bus Chronicle! Since it has come to our attention that we have caught up with the manga and basically run out of ideas, we have decided to take Tsubasa in a new direction for its final season. To that end, we will be returning to the popular Bus World of episode 38-9, to fully explore the possibilities of this fascinating country! An extract from the synopsis is included below.
“When Mokona takes Syaoran and the others back to Bus World, s/he tells them that they must stay there to find the 26 feathers s/he didn’t detect on their last visit. With that in mind, our heroes board the bus and begin a wild search that will take them through roadside cafés, gas stations, and other exciting locations! In between their search for the feathers, our heroes sit down with the generic travellers that get on and off the bus to discuss their lives, whilst the nefarious Road Gang is never far from out screens as they plot the ultimate revenge!”
Since the staff here at Bee Train like to consider ourselves innovators, don’t be surprised if what you see on screen is a little different to the average anime. In order to save work for our animators explore bold new avenues, each story will be told entirely through still images, and we will attempt to use the same dull, boring insert song at least once per episode. Look forward to it!
Deconstructed: the ending of DNAngel
“It makes no sense, but plot, please give me wings before we both fall!”
“Dark, you bastard, I’m sick of you hogging all the screen time!”
“Just go to hell! Do you really think the viewers care about someone who has a stupid name like Krad, anyway?”
“This doesn’t really make much sense either, but Mio ex Machina! I will save the day by talking about love and friendship!”
“What, you mean the final villain is always destined to lose? Why must it be so? All I ever wanted was to bring darkness and destruction to the world for no apparent reason- was that too much to ask?”
“Listen to me Hiwatari- it was Dark that chased after all those girls! I was always HARD GAY for you!”
“Yes, Hiwatari, I promise I’ll tell the girls that I’m moving in with you.”
Weekly Awards
Sleep Inducing Episode of the Week: All too often over the past week, I’ve found myself falling asleep at the computer, and now it is time to point the finger at the main culprits. School Rumble 24-5 and NHK 10-11 (or to be honest, NHK 1-11) have all done their part in reducing me to a state of slumber, but surely nothing could be so mind crushingly dull as the treacle pacing and uninspiring animation of xxxHOLiC 22-3.
OST Gem of the Week: Berserk’s next episode preview music, Forces, shares the crown with Fate/Stay Night’s first OP, Disillusion.
New Contender for the Flashback Crown: A few weeks ago, Gundam Seed scooped the prize for most unashamed use of flashbacks, but now a new contender has risen to challenge it for the title. Anyone who’s been reading my parodies might be able to guess that that contender is none other than Harukanaru Toki no Naka De, a series that thinks nothing of starting an episode with three and a half minutes of recap, and which follows the time-honoured tradition of turning every angst scene into an excuse for a qualifying flashback.
‘I want that job’ of the Week: Whilst Morita’s perpetual studenthood in Honey & Clover may seem the easiest contender to achieve, anime offers plenty of other jobs which seem to involve a thankfully minimal amount of real work. Possibilities include mushishi (Mushishi), visual novel creator (NHK) and professional Go player (Hikaru no Go).
In Your Reflection
This week sees a direct head-to-head comparison between Trigun’s Meryl Stryfe and Erementar Gerad’s Cisqua.
-Both spend their time chasing after the main character with at least one underling in tow.
-Both are gun users who hide firearms under their cloaks.
-Both dress in predominantly white clothing.
-Both become more kindly disposed to the hero as the story progresses.
OST Spotlight: Victorian Romance Emma- Silhouette of a Breeze
As befits a series set in Victorian England, the Emma OST opts for a classical style, using simple yet memorable arrangements of piano and strings, as well as some remix recorder versions. Memorable tracks include Silhouette of a Breeze, The Season and Emma.
Amusing Search Terms
The hilariously misdirected: hyper self pleasure jpg, gay mini games, ginga nagareboshi gin the game, fate stay night yuri
The confusing: cut inn Am’s, Your Toube
The terrifying: Haseo pr0n
Rebuttal: Spikey Hair Heroes of Skill
You know… a lot of the spikey haired Shounen Jump heroes aren’t completely newcomers to their respective field, and have actual reasons for kicking ass. For example… Rounin Kenshin, Kenshin spent years learning his sword style, and then proceeded to work as an assassin for sometime before the start of the series. Hikaru no Go’s Hikaru might be a newcomer, that’s true… but he didn’t actually play Go for the first half of the series. The ancient ghost possesing him, who was an imperial teacher of Go, was the one playing for him (so technically he cheated for half a season, but still.) Black Cat’s Train Heartnet also worked as an assassin prior to the start of the series, explaining his l33t skills. Heck, even in Dragonball, the original series featured young Goku training his butt off with Roshi. The generalization that all Shounen Jump protagonists are newcomers who overcome more skilled people through no good reason is flawed.
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Hmm, I thought Hikaru started playing as early as the Haze Go Club and seventh grade tournament, which was quite early on…anyway, Kenshin (who doesn’t have spiky hair anyway), Hikaru and Gon are the three SJ heroes I actually like.
As for Goku, isn’t he the most formulaic of the lot? Goku isn’t strong enough -> Goku trains with the latest master/training partner -> Goku manages to defeat latest enemy in no fewer than 612 episodes, most likely with Genki Dama. Then there’s the big names that do fit the formula- Ichigo Kurosaki, Naruto, Yoh Asakura, Yugi “I have 10 life points left but now I will defeat you using the card I just drew” Mutou, Yusuke Urameshi, Gin and Weed- and if we expand the net to genre series that weren’t published in SJ, then the heroes of the likes of Beyblade, Rave Master, Megaman/Rockman, Tokyo Underground and Zoids Zero are equally guilty.
Anyway, at the end of the day, Tuesday Rumble is not meant to be a serious analysis; as you can gather from the tone of the article, it light-heartedly pokes fun at some easy targets. If you want to discuss SJ heroes in more depth, then Hopeless has recently created a post on that very topic.
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