Otaku, No Video

This page lists all active anime crowdfunding projects, that I know of. This list is limited to projects involving Japanese creators, and was last updated on 13 June 2013. All prices are in U.S. dollars ($) or Japanese yen (¥).

Title	Info	Genre	Site	Pledged	Goal	Deadline
24 Hour TV Specials	Various TV specials, bundled together	(Various)	Anime Sols	$1,630	$18,000	22 July 2013
ABC of Akari	Staff: AnigoAnimation	SF, action	Anipipo	¥51,000	¥3,660,000	22 July 2013
Black Jack TV set 1	Creator: Osamu Tezuka Staff: Tezuka Productions ANN entry Wikipedia entry	Drama	Anime Sols	$3,520	$22,000	22 July 2013
Blue Blink [Aoi Blink] set 1	Creator: Osamu Tezuka Staff: Tezuka Productions ANN entry Wikipedia entry	Children	Anime Sols	$1,305	$16,000	22 July 2013
Creamy Mami set 1	Staff: Studio Pierrot ANN entry Wikipedia entry	Magical girl	Anime Sols	$6,115	$19,000	22 July 2013
New Yatterman set 1	ANN entry Wikipedia entry	SF, action	Anime Sols	$1,450	$19,000	22 July 2013
PONPON PIPOPO		Children	Anipipo	¥11,500	¥250,000	22 June 2013
Santa Company	Creator: Kenji Itoso	Comedy	Anipipo	¥534,001	¥1,000,000	22 July 2013
Tekkaman set 1	ANN entry Wikipedia entry	SF, action	Anime Sols	$1,275	$16,000	22 July 2013
Time of EVE (movie)	Creator: Yasuhiro Yoshiura Staff: Studio Rikka Rewards: Blu-Ray at $55, plus fan book at $80, plus art at $150-$500 ANN entry Wikipedia entry	SF, drama	Kickstarter	$132,152	$18,000	22 June 2013
Tobikage set 1	ANN entry Wikipedia entry	SF, action, mecha	Anime Sols	$1,890	$19,500	22 July 2013

Have an update to this list? Email me.

Past projects:

Title	Creator/Staff	Genre	Site	Pledged	Goal	Deadline
Kick Heart	Masaaki Yuasa/Production I.G.	Action	Kickstarter	$201,164	$150,000	31 October 2012

Time of Eve [EVE no Jikan] was a 6-episode internet-only OVA released in 2008–2009. It was then re-edited into a movie in 2010, with additional scenes to provide more context. It did surprisingly well, nominated for several awards.

The studio then released that on DVD/Blu-Ray in Japan, and even plopped it on the US iTunes store in late 2011. As the studio puts it:

“We thought the iTunes Store release of the movie would suffice…But, we keep getting requests from fans around the world asking for the movie on Blu-ray. Folks, this is an indie film, we’re not a big Hollywood blockbuster production. Is there really support out for the movie on Blu-ray outside of Japan…?”

So they’ve launched a Kickstarter. Back it at the US$55 level, and you get the Blu-Ray plus extras.

Here’s the impressive thing: they’ve raised $13,000 in one day.

This is a perfect case for soliciting money from anime fans: Time of Eve has a small, dedicated fanbase of thoughtful fans. These are the people willing to spend money, not 14-year-old fans of Naruto. Risks are low–the movie already exists–and nobody needs to fear that the cash will go purely to line anyone’s pockets.

More like this, please.

Mobile Suit Gundam: A revolution, cheaply animated.

Zeta Gundam: Beautiful and depressing.

ZZ Gundam: Not as funny as you might think.

Victory Gundam: Tomino proving he can write female characters by killing one every episode.

Char’s Counterattack: For the fans, because Char’s awesome.

Gundam 0080: Kids and war do not mix.

Gundam 0083: Every Gundam cliché.

Gundam F91: Too much at once.

Gundam 08th MS Team: A complete Gundam series in one OVA.

G Gundam: 70′s cheese, perfectly executed.

Gundam Wing: Pretty boys and politics.

Gundam X: A Saturday afternoon adventure.

Turn-A Gundam: Tomino proving that Gundam is anti-war by making a Gundam series with no war.

Gundam Seed: Gundam, modernized and distilled.

Gundam Seed Destiny: Seed times 2

Gundam 00: Oh, you’re all grown up now.

Gundam Unicorn: For the fans, who’ve waited so long.

This is a brief introduction to the world of South Korean animation (and yes, there is North Korean animation, and boy is it weird). South Koreans have been producing animation for decades, but only in the past decade or so have their works blossomed on the world stage.

A Quick History

This section is based on A Brief History of Korean Animation at KoreanFilm.org.

For various reasons–most of them monetary–Korean animation was limited to a few TV commercials for the entire first half of the 20^th century. A few film projects were attempted but fizzled before the films could be completed. Because of Korean wariness about Japanese culture, little anime was imported, and the most successful animated films were made by Disney.

The first Korean feature-length animated film, Hong Gil-dong, wasn’t released until 1967…and moviegoers bought 100,000 tickets in four days. Unfortunately, subsequent animated films–all of them children’s adventure stories–had so much competition from TV that the market collapsed, and from 1972 to 1976 no Korean animated films were released.

(Nobody seems to want to admit it, but: Korea was desperately poor for the early 20th century, so most animators couldn’t get money or afford cels. One short was produced by buying 240 cels and washing the paint off after each use!)

Then came Robot Taekwon V, an homage to Mazinger Z, which was not popular and a violent shonen mecha story, opening the door to (slightly) more mature stories.

And here’s where the trail gets fuzzy. Korean animated TV series seems to have picked up around this time, but mostly with knock-offs like Space Gundam V that re-used designs from Japanese anime. If you’ve seen Otaku no Video, you may remember a scene in which an interviewee talks about stealing character design sheets from Japanese anime studios; this must be the practice it’s referring to.

The trail picks up again around the turn of the millenium, with numerous high-quality animation films and TV series.

TV Animation

1983′s Space Gundam V is the earliest Korean anime TV series that I’ve found so far. It re-used character and mecha designs from Gundam and Macross, so if you’ve ever wanted to see Char Aznable pilot a VF-1J Valkyrie from Macross, this is your chance.

Other Korean animated TV series were, frankly, cheap knock-offs. They couldn’t afford anything else. So it wasn’t until the 2000′s that Korean TV anime came into its own.  A few examples:

• Restol, The Special Rescue Squad (1999), about a group of teenagers who pilot giant robots to rescue people from natural disasters in a corporate-controlled future. Haven’t seen this one, but sounds interesting.
• Bastof Syndrome (2001), the story of a couple of tweens who get sucked into an MMORPG. The animation is laughably inexpensive, but the character designs work, and it’s a strong concept.
• Michel (2003), about a kid following the Black Hammer Gang, who all fall on an island inhabited by fairies and a tree of life. Haven’t seen this one either.

Animated Films

1967′s Hong Gil-Dong was based off a comic strip, and the next few Korean animated films released were based on the same strip. Then kids started watching TV, and the animated film industry died until 1976′s Robot Taekwon V. Yes, Robot Taekwon looks exactly like Mazinger Z, mainly because Mazinger had recently arrived in South Korea and was hugely popular.  Robot Taekwon‘s creator freely admitted that Robot Taekwon V was inspired by Mazinger and was an attempt to create a similar but essentially Korean mecha story.

But as with Korean TV anime, animated films in South Korea really blossomed in the 2000′s. A few major works:

• My Beautiful Girl Mari (2002), a slice-of-life story about a man reminiscing about his childhood, friends, and a mysterious girl.
• Oseam (2003), a Buddhist family tearjerker about two orphaned children taken in by Buddhist monks. A bit like Grave of the Fireflies.
• Sky Blue (2003), also known as Wonderful Days, a dystopian sci-fi film in the mold of the first Ghost in the Shell movie. Beautiful, lush animation.
• Aachi & Ssipak (2006), an over-the-top, somewhat avant garde film. Think Ren & Stimpy. I couldn’t stand to watch it, but the animation’s impressive.

For more, see Wikipedia’s article on Korean animation.

There’s interesting anime. There’s thoughtful anime. There’s deep anime.

And then there’s anime that can change you as a person. That can literally turn your mind’s eye to a new perspective.

Approaching this alphabetically:

Barefoot Gen

Barefoot Gen is an autobiographical story of a kid who lived in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb hit. Surprisingly, the film maintains a hopeful, upbeat tone. It’s divided into three parts: the boy’s life before the bomb drops, the hell of Hiroshima just after the bomb hits, and putting one’s life back together afterward.

Barefoot Gen graphically and dramatically shows the effects of the bomb. If this were live-action, it would be unbearable to watch. It’s still heart-wrenching. But the story is fundamentally a shonen tale of a boy pushing through, surviving, and even thriving. This makes it easier to watch and in some ways more powerful than Grave of the Fireflies.

Boogiepop Phantom

This is a low-budget anime series from about a decade ago, about teens who develop weird powers.

Don’t let that fool you. Boogiepop Phantom is about the teenage years, and the philosophies that we develop to cope. We form some strange outlooks on life during this time, and Boogiepop Phantom holds each philosophy up to the light, turning it slowly so we can see it and think about it. Some are noble; some are twisted. And they’re all very familiar and human.

Haibane Renmei

A thoughtful story inspired by a novel by Haruki Murakami, Haibane is set in a walled-off town, focusing on a group of people who mysteriously appear there. The haibane appear to be normal people who hatch out of large eggs, then sprout small wings and get halos. They lack all memory, but they know they came from somewhere else.

As becomes clear after the first few episodes (moderate spoiler alert): this is a sort of purgatory, a place for troubled souls to come, rest, and re-align themselves before moving on. There are all sorts of implications here, both religious and psychological, and the series explores them.

Haibane Renmei is a story of sin and redemption.

Princess Mononoke

If Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind was Hayao Miyazaki’s first full environmental fable, Princess Mononoke is the matured version. As Miyazaki once said (I paraphrase), one cannot have a complete view of environmentalism without starting from the position that humans consume resources to survive.

Princess Mononoke rejects the false idea of ”the balance of nature.” Nature is mysterious and chaotic. The protagonist is thrust into the story when his village is attacked, unprovoked, by a raging forest spirit. (Yes, the spirit rages because of a bullet fired by humans. Nevertheless, Ashitaka is not attacked by a human, but by a creature with a weak mind.)

The film also refuses to establish its characters into simple moral categories; it almost revels in grey areas. The woman tearing down the forests and hunting the old gods rescues girls from brothels. The gentle apes attempting to re-plant the forest threaten to eat the protagonist to gain his strength. Even the ending (which I won’t spoil here) remains profoundly ambiguous.

The film’s strength lies in the issues it raises during the course of its story. This is a work attempting to present every side of an issue, and leaves us with a greater appreciation for its complexity and its importance.

Rurouni Kenshin OVA

The Kenshin OVA begins as a gory action story, and its first half left little impression on me other than deep respect for its dramatic pace and visuals.

It’s the second half that reveals the depths that the story plumbs. The Rurouni Kenshin OVA is a meditation on personal violence, on the corruption that personal violence wreaks on the soul. That sounds poetic, but it’s accurate: Kenshin finds that his violent behavior affects his personality, shutting him down. The longer he is away from killing, the more his humanity returns.

I’ve never seen this issue dealt with this directly and this powerfully. What appears to be little more than a bloody thriller very deliberately establishes its arguments through Kenshin’s actions, and demonstrates the results thereof, dramatically and horrifically, in its second half.

serial experiments lain

lain begins with a simple premise: a shy girl receives an email from a classmate who committed suicide. This expands into a story that covers a breathtaking range of topics, including identity, responsibility, relationship to technology, the modern human condition, and human relationship.

It doesn’t simply touch on these topics (and many more); its characters philosophize about them, and their behavior illustrates these ideas. Each topic is addressed in some depth.

Then the next-to-last episode comes along and tips the apple cart, reversing the philosophy built throughout the story and revealing deeper human truth.

I can’t even do this series justice without writing a small paper on it; there are just too many themes within it.

lain completely changed my views on technology and human relationship.

What are the classics of manga, those titles that have been read by so many fans that new fans are quickly pointed towards them?

I’ve asked around, and here’s the list I’ve come up with. In other words, if you want to get into manga, this should be a solid place to start.

Disclaimer: This list is incomplete, and I welcome suggested additions in the comments. Be aware that I’m looking for widely-accepted classics (that are available in English), as opposed to the merely popular.

	20th Century Boys (Naoki Urasawa) Genre: Seinen A super-popular recent series, 20th Century Boys was adapted into several live-action works. The manga operates on a stunning scale, spanning nearly a century within the story and 22 volumes.
	A Distant Neighborhood (Jiro Taniguchi) Genre: Seinen The protagonist, a 48-year-old salaryman, takes a wrong turn and finds himself back in his 14-year-old self’s life, but with full knowledge of his future. This title got a lot of buzz when it was released in the States a year ago.
	A Drifting Life (Yoshihiro Tatsumi) Genre: Seinen biography Tatsumi documents his life as a manga-ka throughout the 1970′s and 1980′s, including his role in the formation of the gekiga movement.
	A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (Moto Hagio) Genre: Shoujo A set of short stories by one of the pioneers of shoujo manga.
	Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo) Genre: Shonen/seinen Otomo’s masterpiece, and the foundation of the animated film. The film only covers a small fraction of the manga’s story.
	Antique Bakery (Fumi Yoshinaga) Genre: Shonen-ai Four men struggle to run a bakery, and homosexual tensions grow.
	Astro Boy (Osamu Tezuka) Genre: Shonen A super-popular manga of the 1950′s, this spawned the first anime TV series. And Astro Boy reveals Tezuka’s genius; the stories cover a wide range of political and philosophical viewpoints.
	Azumanga Daioh (Kiyohiko Azuma) Genre: Gag This is a classic 4-koma gag manga, perfectly demonstrating the form. Every character is something of an idiot.
	Barefoot Gen (Keiji Nakazawa) Genre: Seinen biography Nakazawa works through his trauma as a boyhood survivor of the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima, this semi-autobiographical tale reveals what it was actually like to live in Hiroshima before, during and after the bomb.
	Battle Angel Alita (Yukito Kishiro) Genre: Shonen A gritty SF manga that saw an early release in the U.S., Alita proved that manga could provide an action-oriented story, interesting characters, and a philosophical thread.
	Black Jack (Osamu Tezuka) Genre: Shonen Tezuka wrote and drew Black Jack while warring with the gekiga movement of the time. Tezuka used Black Jack to explore serious modern themes, evolving his style and his storytelling to tackle deep issues.
	Blade of the Immortal (Hiroaki Samura) Genre: Shonen A heavy-lined, action-oriented story of samurai during the long years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Blade of the Immortal tackles issues of death and purpose.
	Bleach (Tite Kubo) Genre: Shonen A perfectly stereotypical Shonen Jump-style shonen series, and a good example of the often significant differences between the manga and the anime adaptation.
	Buddha (Osamu Tezuka) Genre: Seinen Tezuka tackles the life of Buddha–as in, the founder of Buddhism–with his trademark wit and humor. And that’s the odd thing about this biography: it can be light and funny, or dark and troubling. It also focuses on Buddha’s life experiences, as well as the moments that clarified his thinking on Buddhism, rather than his weirder claims.
	Cardcaptor Sakura (CLAMP) Genre: Shoujo One of the most popular shoujo manga of all time, and a classic magical girl story, Sakura is lovely and fun while it keeps the story moving along at a brisk pace.
	Death Note (Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata) Genre: Shonen Hugely popular, beautifully drawn, and intricately written, Death Note appeals to fans for its intense, brooding atmosphere and unusual premise: both the hero and the villain are geniuses.
	Dr. Slump (Akira Toriyama) Genre: Shonen Toriyama’s first broadly popular manga, Dr. Slump established the slapstick humor that he would later employ in Dragon Ball.
	Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z (Akira Toriyama) Genre: Shonen This is probably the most popular shonen title of all time. It’s sold over 200 million copies worldwide. And, reading it, you can see why: distinctive characters that are easy to form opinions of, ever-increasing powers, a steady parade of different villains, and easy-to-parse artwork.
	The Drifting Classroom (Kazuo Umezu) Genre: Shonen horror A classic from the 1970′s horror movement, this manga takes a fantastic premise–an elementary school ripped into an unforgiving wasteland–and treats it with absolute realism. It shocked readers with its gore and brutality, proving that manga was no longer just about sports and robots.
	Fruits Basket (Natsuki Takaya) Genre: Shoujo Very popular in the States, this is a title I haven’t read.
	Fushigi Yuugi (Yuu Watase) Genre: Shoujo A girl is transported into an alternate world, where she’s surrounded by hot guys. But this is the classic take on the concept.
	Genshiken (Kio Shimoku) Genre: Seinen? The story of a college otaku club. Accurate and heartwarming, Genshiken explores the good side of geekdom.
	Ghost in the Shell (Masamune Shirow) Genre: Seinen A serious sci-fi tale of espionage and high-grade weaponry told in a single volume, Ghost in the Shell remains realistic and level-headed while telling adventurous stories of an elite anti-terrorist squad. If you’ve seen the animated adaptations, you should know that Stand Alone Complex is overall more faithful to the tone of the manga. The first half of the manga tells stand-alone stories about Section 9, while the puppetmaster plot (adapted in the first film) consumes the second half.
	Hellsing (Kohta Hirano) Genre: Shonen A horror/adventure manga which sadly I haven’t read yet, so can’t comment on. But judging by the number of spin-offs, it’s garnered a huge following.
	InuYasha (Rumiko Takahashi) Genre: Shonen/Shoujo It’s hard to compare the popularity of Takahashi’s works, since they span such different eras of anime fandom, but InuYasha is undoubtedly her biggest modern success. It also marks a departure from her typical episodic storytelling into a large-scale fantasy epic, with her trademark threads of comedy and romance woven in.
	Lone Wolf and Cub (Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima) Genre: Shonen/seinen A disgraced assassin is forced to wander Japan with his three-year-old son and seek revenge against those who’ve wronged him. Highly influential.
	Love Hina (Ken Akamatsu) Genre: Shonen harem One of the great classic harem series, Love Hina popularized the ”focused harem,” in which the protagonist is really destined for one girl all along.
	Monster (Naoki Urasawa) Genre: Seinen A doctor saves the life of a murderer, then begins investigating the murders in this gripping–and very, very long–story.
	Mushi-shi (Yuki Urushibara) Genre: Seinen A serious, mature series of disconnected stories, in which a man wanders the back country of old Japan, dealing with the microscopic creatures who have invaded peoples’ lives.
	Nana (Ai Yazawa) Genre: Shoujo The story of two very different girls with the same name who decide to room together. A classic shoujo tale with very popular spin-offs, impressive for its refusal to devolve into over-the-top melodrama. This is the story of modern young women and their everyday problems.
	Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (Hayao Miyazaki) Genre: Seinen A truly epic tale that touches on environmentalism, responsibility, and war. This is mature, sophisticated storytelling on par with Maus and A Contract with God.
	Ooku (Fumi Yoshinaga) Genre: Experimental From Wikipedia: The plot follows an alternate history of medieval Japan in which an unknown disease kills most of the male population, leading to a matriarchal society in which the ÅŒoku becomes a harem of men serving the now female shogun. In addition to winning an Excellence Prize at the 2006 Japan Media Arts Festival and a special prize at The Japanese Association of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy’s fifth annual Sense of Gender Awards in 2005, the manga was nominated for the first annual Manga Taishō in 2008 and three times for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize before winning the Grand Prize in April 2009.
	One Piece (Eiichiro Oda) Genre: Shonen Certainly the most popular manga of modern times, One Piece has gained a huge fan following; over 200 million volumes have been sold worldwide thus far.
	Peach Girl (Miwa Ueda) Genre: Shoujo From what folks have told me, this is a pitch-perfect shoujo story.
	Phoenix (Osamu Tezuka) Genre: Seinen Widely considered to be Osamu Tezuka’s masterpiece, Phoenix directly addresses a wide range of serious topics.
	Please Save My Earth! (Saki Hiwatari) Genre: Shoujo Hiwatari tells a complex story of intertwining fates, using high school students who don’t fall into the cliches of shoujo romance.
	Princess Knight (Osamu Tezuka) Genre: Shoujo This manga invented the magical girl genre. Enough said.
	Ranma 1/2 (Rumiko Takahashi) Genre: Shoujo Romantic comedy at its best, this was one of the most popular anime and manga franchises of the 1990′s. Takahashi manages to juggle a large cast of characters, who are often more of a focus than the main characters.
	Rurouni Kenshin (Nobihiro Watsuki) Genre: Shonen A classic shonen story, excellently plotted and with a very complete ending, which also manages to fully explores its themes to an extent rarely seen in manga.
	Sailor Moon (Naoko Takeuchi) Genre: Shoujo Arguably the most popular magical girl franchise of all time.
	Tramps Like Us (Yayoi Ogawa) Genre: Josei The story of a young woman who takes home a young man as a ”pet” (don’t worry; it’s not that creepy). This is another one I haven’t read yet. So much manga to read!

Update: Thanks to the Manga Critic for the suggestion and addition of Inu Yasha. Of course!

Americna anime cons have been solidering on using the exact same format for about two decades now. I submit that it’s time for some changes.

Problems:

• There aren’t enough opportunities to meet people.
• Video rooms are boring. They’re usually half-empty. A lot of time is spent showing anime that many people have seen.
• There are too many goofy panels.
• Artist’s Alley is a ghetto.

Solutions:

• Assign attendees to randomly-named groups of no more than 20 people each (using a slip of paper included in their bag). Offer discounts on food if bought for the entire group at once.
• Reward each attendee with a goodie if their entire group shows up at con ops at an appointed time and sings a song of their choice.
• Publish a formal request for panels. Post on the Anime and Manga Research Circle. Come up with a theme for the con. Ask academics and bloggers to present on specific topics (while accepting panels on other topics).
• Only show obscure anime.
• Pick one anime film that everyone should see. Cancel everything else during its time slot.
• Move karaoke into a public space.
• Give colored tickets to random artists in Artist’s Alley. Give each attendee a free goodie if they bring in one of each colored ticket.
• Organize discussion panels. Not just between experts; also with the audience. Address hot-button controversial issues: lolicon, the Tokyo Youth Ordinance Bill, the ethics of fansubs, etc. Record them and post them online.

Dragon Ball Z © Akira Toriyama

In reading Toriko, I was struck by how perfectly the art, tone, and plot captured the essence of shōnen. And yet, the art didn’t mimic Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece. Indeed, the art and plot of all those titles are remarkably different.

It got me thinking: What sets Shonen Jump-style shōnen titles apart from other genres?

Wikipedia’s article about shōnen manga states:

Shōnen (å°‘å¹´) manga (漫画) is typically characterized by high-action, often humorous plots featuring male protagonists. The camaraderie between boys or men…is often emphasized. Attractive female characters with exaggerated features are also common, but are not a requirement….After the case of Tsutomu Miyazaki, depictions of violence and sexual matters became more highly regulated in manga in general, but especially in shonen manga. The art style of shōnen is generally less flowery than that of shōjo manga.

The article on shōnen itself states:

Shōnen manga is a popular genre of Japanese comics, generally about action/fighting but often contains a sense of humor and strong growing friendship-bonds between the characters.

(Yes, yes; don’t use Wikipedia as a primary source. But that’s a good synthesis of several definitions, such as ANN’s.)

So, we have five standard traits:

1. High action
2. Frequent humor
3. Male protagonists
4. Camaraderie and growing bonds of friendship
5. Mild to moderate explicit violence or sexuality

Each of those traits have interesting elements to them.

What exactly is high action? I suppose it means action sequences beyond the bounds of everyday action. In shōnen, characters don’t just get into a shootout; they throw fireballs at planetary evils, run up sheer cliffs, and evade giant robots.

Interestingly, this usually necessitates another world. Of the half-dozen big shonen titles I can think of from the past decade or so, almost all are set in fantasy worlds (Naruto, One Piece, Toriko) or alternate realities (Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragon Ball Z).

We do see frequent humor in shōnen titles. Why has that become a staple?

Part of that trend can be laid at the feet of Osamu Tezuka. He loved to spice up even his most serious stories with humor. Tezuka’s so influential that everyone followed suit, especially for kid-oriented manga.

It’s also just not much fun to read an action story that stays serious for hundreds of pages. If the tension is never alleviated, it can’t build effectively.

The male protagonist is an obvious element: shonen is aimed at boys, particularly pre-teen boys, for whom Girls Are Icky. (Indeed, girls are Bulma; mercurial and bizarre).

I find the element of camaraderie most intriguing. Any shonen title involves a long-running action story. An ongoing theme of shōnen is the education of combat: what you learn about somebody by fighting with or against them. I could write quite a bit about this–it makes sense, but it’s dangerous–but suffice to say that it’s about the only way to justify the story: it’s not just about super-powerful people pounding on each other; it’s about what they learn by doing so.

Finally, there’s the violence and sexuality. Manga exhibits both, but they’re not explicit. You won’t see internal organs in a typical shōnenmanga release, and death is often impermanent. Sexuality is limited to adolescent attempts to see girls naked or rapture over the feelings of a woman’s breasts. It’s actually quite rare for shonen to deal seriously with the consequences of violence or sexuality.

So, those are the five core traits of shōnen. Anything I’ve missed?