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Shonen manga and anime have many stale cliches. Since Dragon Ball, the cliches have spread.
Some of them aren't horrible, but they're an overabundance! Fanservice shots everywhere, purely filler story arcs, and most jarringly, numerous protagonist vs god fights that audiences need don't to see.
Whilst these are subjective, most appear on one list or another of annoying and dreaded shonen cliches.
Note: The entire article is the opinion of the author. Spoilers for all anime discussed.
Ten cliches in shonen anime that tick everyone off
1) Failing female characters
For as long as storytelling itself has existed, humanity has had a plethora of stories involving men and women. So, it's really annoying that women get sidelined in shonen anime and manga despite supposedly having the same importance!
A perfect example: Sakura Haruno from Naruto. She was billed as one of Team 7 and therefore one of the leads of the show. However, the narrative focused more on Naruto and Sasuke, with Sakura being left out. It wasn't until later in Shippuden and Boruto that she would get a better shake.
There are others like Dragon Ball where there weren't many mainstay women fighters until Android 18 in Z or Kale and Caulifla and/or Vados in Super, if one doesn't count Launch from the original Dragon Ball.
Naruto does have women and girls fighting, but unless they're Tsunade or Hinata later on in the series, the spotlight is mostly on the men.
To be fair, this one is changing. Women in Bleach were capable fighters and got upgraded, Demon Slayer has quite a few who remain relevant, and My Hero Academia gives both its heroines and villainesses important and impactful storylines.
There are even quite a few good fighters and well-written characters in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, with Stone Ocean having a mostly female cast who are all integral to the plot! Other examples are RWBY, Sailor Moon, Kill la Kill, Little Witch Academia, among many others!
The point being that this is an old cliche that's headed out the door.
2) Fanservice
Going hand in hand with the previous entry, Fanservice is a term to describe the material in a work of fiction or in a fictional series that is intentionally added to please the audience, often sexual, such as nudity, according to Wikipedia.
Meaning, panty shots with an exclusive focus on the female chest and behind. This normally wouldn't be so awful if it wasn't everywhere in anime but especially shonen anime.
In shonen, this usually refers to a semi-nude shot or a beach day episode designed purely to induce nosebleeds and/or excitement in a presumed male audience. Examples include Fairy Tail, Keijo!!!, Queen's Blade, Negima!, High School of the Dead, High School DxD, Gintama, and especially To LOVE-Ru.
The above list isn't exhaustive. If there are ever shots designed to induce excitement in a female audience, there are usually riots on social media (the reaction to Free!, for example.)
3) Perverted characters
This is one cliche people want gone. Now.
Master Roshi from Dragon Ball was one thing as he had some other dimensions to his character (he trained Goku and Krillin and could still fight!), and in Super, he trains himself to resist those perverted impulses of his. Roshi's training pays off in the Tournament of Power, where he lasts until his body gives out against fighters that even gave Goku a hard time.
Jiraya from Naruto worked on the Make-Out Paradise book series Kakashi Hatake is obsessed with, but he's best remembered for his final stand against Pain, the Rasengan training, and giant toad summons.
In shonen, the perverted character is usually a man, but women aren't exempt either (the titular Haruhi Suzumiya, Kajou Ayame from Shimoneta, among others.) The point being, it's a cliche that's long since overstayed its welcome! Mineta from My Hero Academia isn't disliked for no reason, after all!
The reason why it's despised is simple: it's a wasteful and tiring trope and gets characters usually smacked in the face for their troubles (whether they do it on purpose or not). It's not funny or flattering; it's just stupid.
4) Filler
The most dreaded of shonen cliches! The bane of all long-running anime like Dragon Ball, Boruto, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and many others! It’s a waste of effort and skill to artificially lengthen the story on developments that amount to nothing in the end!
The above may be hyperbolic, but when filler arcs exist in shonen anime like Naruto and Bleach, people tend to drop the shows.
Filler can serve a purpose: a breather from the action, better world-building, backstory reveals, and personalities being fleshed out.
Great examples of filler arcs are the Kakashi Anbu arc and the Itachi Light and Darkness arc from Naruto (for backstories), the Zanpakuto Rebellion from Bleach (showcasing each Shinagami's relationship with their wielder), and the Zoldyck Family Arc from Hunter x Hunter (for fleshing out Killua as a character).
The reason why people tend to loathe filler with passion is when it doesn't contribute to any of the above.
5) Tragic backstories
Everyone obviously has their own story, and not all are happy ones. But the overabundance of tragedy in the shonen genre is cliched and lazy.
Maybe a character has a parent that's in the hospital or otherwise needs aid. Maybe they witnessed something horrid and are on the run, or maybe they just had a normal life.
The point is, fans are just asking for some creativity in backstory creation!
6) Flashbacks in inappropriate places
Character origin stories don't need to be explained to the audience from the word go. Likewise, not every character needs to have everything put out for the audience to see in the beginning.
Flashback episodes or flashback moments can help understand where a character is coming from.
Of course, it would help if the flashback didn't happen in the middle of a fight. This cliche is self-explanatory. Is a flashback is going to happen? Have it somewhere appropriate, like an episode focusing on the person in question.
7) Stretched out fights
Feeding off the previous entry, the cliche of fights going for longer than needed in shonen anime. The infamous "Longest Five Minutes" in Dragon Ball Z during the Frieza Saga is the most egregious example, but there's more in the shonen genre.
The Tournament of Power in Super seemed to take an age to complete, alongside other tournaments and one-on-one fights being stretched out far too long like in the original Chunin Exams in Naruto.
A whole host of cliches fit in here: monologuing during fight scenes (internal and external), sudden and inexplicable power-ups, flashbacks, etc.
At some point, you just want the fight to end. It's one thing if it's a final showdown with the main villain, that's just a shonen staple. It's another if it's just a random goon!
8) Tournament arcs
This slot is dedicated to all the shonen featuring tournament arcs. They grind the story to a halt and introduce characters that are quickly forgotten, their stakes either lower or meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Lastly, tournaments tend to be overlong (flashbacks and fillers included) or interrupted by something significant (a villain attack being the most used).
9) Escalation/power creeping
An often used shonen cliche, and one getting really old, is power creeping/escalation. There's always a transformation state, always a newer baddie, and always a new ceiling to bust through.
The start of the series usually has the lead(s) being so weak a light breeze could kill them, then by the end, nothing short of Godly power can kill them. This is why Mob Psycho 100 and One Punch Man are considered subversions of this, the leads start at that godly level.
It results in extremely predictable stories and combines almost all the cliches discussed thus far into one.
10) Death meaning nothing/death, death everywhere!
This is mostly a Dragon Ball cliche, but it bears repeating for other shonen anime as well. Death is a tricky subject to parse in anime and storytelling. It needs to be handled with care, otherwise, it feels very cheap.
The first part of the death cliche is when the characters die but are miraculously brought back to keep dying and being brought back to life. As Dragon Ball fans can attest, the show has planets explode or characters die so often and so much that they can be revived in an instant. It cheapens the very act of killing a character if you know they'll be revived.
Then there's the other cliche where death is thrown about randomly.
Characters we barely get introduced to (Rengoku in Demon Slayer)? Dead in seconds. Characters that should be more important to the story (Sienna Khan in RWBY)? Dead.
This raises a really big question: Why even have these characters if all they exist to do is die?! Attack on Titan is probably one of the most ominous examples, as death is handed to mostly everyone there!
Basically, don't make death a revolving door, but don't throw death around like candy! Death should mean something!
Conclusion
There they are, ten shonen anime cliches that everyone wants gone as soon as possible. Truly, they are a scrouge. But, as stated prior, only because they're in abundance. None of these on their own are bad, but too much of it has people dropping series.
