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fairytail-whathesays · 7 years

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After a number of big shonen suffered from a bad war arc, what do you think is the key to a good final war arc?

I will, for this set of points, be using the examples of Mashima (Fairy Tail), Kubo (Bleach), and Isayama (Attack on Titan). There are seven points I’d like to make.

1. Don’t build up hype if you can’t keep it going.

I’m talking more to Mashima than to Kubo, because from what I understand hype failure is not one of the Thousand Year Blood War arc’s failings. Because Mashima gave not a single shit as to how the Spriggans were actually going to get defeated with the exceptions of Ajeel, DiMaria and Jacob, it does a disservice to the hype the Spriggans were dealt. Rather than thinking Fairy Tail has gotten so much stronger or has scraped a win, it just looks like the Spriggans weren’t as powerful as we were led to believe. Sabertooth similarly suffered that same thing.

2. Use less, not more.

Both Kubo and Mashima need to hear this. Mashima suffered a bad escalation when it comes to powerful villains: he started with six, moved up to seven, then moved up to nine, settled down to five for a bit, and then jumped back up to twelve. And of those twelve, Bloodman’s gimmick literally was just having Tartaros’ powers, Invel was Yet Another Ice Dude, God Serena was Yet Another Fucking Dragonslayer, Neinhart’s power was exposing people to enemies they’d already fought–and won against–August had Power Copying, the most unoriginal power ever, and Irene Belserion’s powers were so nebulously defined it was stupid. Ajeel doesn’t get points either. Kubo was even worse, introducing a new villain and power for every letter of the Latin alphabet, but somehow he managed to make them all interesting, so he gets to slide on this one.

3. If you’re going to have a war arc at all, you need to have knowledge of strategy.

This isn’t optional. Wars that are won by a single overwhelming strike by the hero aren’t wars. In a war arc, I expect to see heroes and villains alike flexing more than their muscles, they need to be flexing their brainpower, too. Instead of going with incredibly overpowered powers, try going with creative uses of more mundane powers.

For example: In Attack on Titan (whose big war arc suffers for entirely different reasons, as Isayama has a moderately good grasp on strategy), Zeke has a very powerful 17-meter Titan that could crush a typical human flat. However, instead of just charging over, he instead throws rocks. It’s mundane, but it’s used to deadly effect: he grinds enormous boulders into smaller pieces and throws them hard enough to break the sound barrier, annihilating entire troops with one throw and reducing the human army to a mass of blood and bones vaguely resembling corpses in seconds. He takes out Erwin this way. This all was part of a much larger strategy on the part of the Titans in which, had Isayama actually played by his own rules and allowed any semblance of realism in, would’ve resulted in a complete loss on the part of the heroes.

4. No “hidden potential” or “unlocks”.

Kubo had this problem–mostly because bankai was his usual “big reveal” for heroic powers, but he revealed Renji’s and Ichigo’s too early, resulting in them not being enough to handle later threats the way unrevealed bankai could. So he basically had to “re-unlock” them and give them new bankai by explaining that no, this wasn’t their real bankai, their zanpakuto had kept their real bankai hidden from them because they weren’t ready”. No. You undermine your threat that way. In doing that, you make it look like your heroes always had the power to beat their opponents, they were just being held back. That doesn’t do your plot or threat any favors. Isayama had this problem with “the Coordinate”.

This tends to be the go-to of authors who write themselves into a corner, unless you’re Mashima, in which case you just plow through the corners by literally making shit up on the spot.

5. Deaths need to mean something

In a war arc, people are expected to die. That means that people on both sides need to die, including the heroes. Mashima, Kubo, and Isayama have all failed at this for different reasons, and completely ruined the impact or meaning of the deaths they gave their characters,

Mashima, quite obviously, pulled fakeout after fakeout after fakeout and has yet to kill off a single character we care about. He can quit trying now, because we know he doesn’t have the balls to actually kill off characters. We’ll never trust a “death” again.

Kubo gave us the completely meaningless and pointless death of Retsu Unohana. Unohana is put into a life-or-death fight with Kenpachi Zaraki in order to train him properly (aka hype him up, as if Kenpachi needed any more of that bullshit), because as it turns out, she’s the original Kenpachi and skilled enough with a sword to slaughter him easily multiple times over. Each time she deals him fatal damage, she quickly heals him so that the training can continue. So, if this was happening, why was she not allowed to heal herself when Kenpachi finally struck her down? Retsu was the superior warrior, meaning she was a valuable asset on the battlefield, more valuable than Kenpachi by a long shot because in addition to having sword skills to put him to shame, she’s a master at kido of all kinds and is the most accomplished healer in Soul Society history. Getting rid of her is the stupidest thing Kyoraku could’ve done–he basically fucked over his whole side. And why was this done? Because Kubo loved Kenpachi Zaraki too damn much. More on that later. Unohana died for manpain at best.

Isayama gave us the tragic, heart-wrenching sacrifice of Armin Arlert. After two chapters (meaning two months irl) of dangerous buildup, Armin finally sacrifices himself in a fatal ploy to distract the Colossal Titan so that Eren can cut its controller out of it. He’s giving up his lifelong dream–seeing the ocean, a dream that he fueled all of his ambitions and his participation in the war on–and entrusting it to Eren. Armin knows his death is necessary for humanity’s win, and he understands that sacrifices are necessary, and he’s no exception. If his dream and his life have to be sacrificed, so be it. Armin launches himself at the Colossal Titan, latching on and refusing to let go even as he’s steam-blasted with enough heat to sear the skin off his flesh and melt his eyes out. It’s not pretty at all. And you know what? It works. Thanks to Armin’s plan and his death, the Colossal Titan goes down. Just kidding. This was all a pointless ploy to give the heroes yet another power on their side they didn’t need. That’s what the entire war arc was, really. You see, Armin survives not only getting his flesh melted off, but falling 50 meters with no working gear to stop his fall, and remains alive long enough for the heroes to have an extended argument and fight over whether he should get the serum or Erwin, and he gets it, and chows down on Bertholdt, saving his own life at the expense of the biggest icon of the series and the one described as the God of the SNK world by its author. In doing so, not only did he alienate me and prove he ultimately cared only for the heroes of his story’s success, but he made the sacrifice Armin was doing–which was far more meaningful and powerful than the one performed by Erwin (and a lot less survivable than the hole in Erwin’s stomch) completely and utterly meaningless. We were led on and lied to, and it did a disservice to the war arc as a whole.

6. Destroy or put aside whatever love you have for your favorite characters.

Having not quite gotten to the war arc, I don’t have a big rant already written for this part of Bleach. But I will say quite plainly that I know it applies to Bleach, and I know exactly how it applies as well.

With Fairy Tail, you have Erza. With Attack on Titan, you have Levi. With Bleach, you have Kenpachi Zaraki. That is to say, each of these manga has an extremely overhyped, overpowered person on the heroes’ side whose prowess (with a blade, especially) is legendary and whose power and skill is not realistic at all by any standard within the ramifications of the story, whose combat record far surpasses any actual ability they should have. These characters are the ones the story (meaning, the author) goes out of their way to hype up because they’re just so badass, when the actual abilities they are gifted with should not be nearly enough to keep them from getting crushed. What I’m saying is, it’s author favoritism and it’s annoying as fuck.

Erza Scarlet is a woman with hundreds of magical armors with different effects who is very good with a sword. What does this mean against an opponent who is exponentially stronger than she is, enough to rearrange the entire continent in minutes, who can transfigure and transform whatever she wants? It means her opponent commits suicide, but not before some plagiarism takes place and Erza shatters a meteor with all her bones broken.

Levi Ackerman is a man with a unique gene that makes him a beast in combat, but does not turn him into a superhuman, and he flies around in wire-cable gear propelled by gas tanks. What does this mean against someone who does have superhuman powers, and is currently in the form of a 17-meter Titan described as insurmountable by someone who knows both his skills and Levi’s? Who has been built up as his counterpart? It means Levi thrashes him in the space of a few panels before he can even fight back.

Kenpachi Zaraki is a man with potent skill with a sword and a huge amount of spiritual pressure. And literally nothing but that. While all the other captains have speed, magic, deadly shikai and bankai abilities, and skill with a sword and monstrous spiritual pressure, Kenpachi has nothing but his presence and his sword. In other words, he’s the weakest captain–and the battle data backs that up. His shikai and bankai, when he finally gets them, just give his cutting abilities massive upgrades. What does this mean against an opponent whose power is imagination and can create literally anything, including other living beings, multiplying himself, and altering reality on a level Rustyrose could only dream of? It means his opponent has a pretty shitty imagination, really, considering what beats him is that he “cannot imagine something that [I] cannot cut”. I thought of three things Kenpachi Zaraki couldn’t cut in less than as many seconds. Yes, Kenpachi beats what is basically God Himself because said God couldn’t think “I should drown him or roast him alive”.

And all this, because Mashima, Isayama, and Kubo couldn’t control their damn boners for characters that were essentially creator’s pets when it came down to it. And it makes it fucking suck. The realistic stack of abilities is what makes wars so interesting, and violating it all in order to hype up your favorite characters ruins the entire thing. I cannot tell you how many stories–not even just war arcs, manga in general–have been utterly ruined because seemingly accomplished authors loved one or two characters too fucking much and shoved them to the fore in every arc.

7. Don’t rip off your entire arc from another author.

Talking directly to Hiro Mashima, here. Everything of substance from the Alvarez Empire arc has basically been ripped from Kubo’s Thousand Year Blood War arc, but on top of being plagiarized, it was plagiarized by a shitty author who wouldn’t know good writing if it hit him in the ass. I can see everything you did, Mashima.

I’m currently compiling an entire post listing everything Mashima blatantly ripped off from Kubo. While Kubo isn’t perfect, his work deserves better admirers than the likes of this shitty thieving unoriginal hack.

#Asks #lzzyhatter #discussion #Alvarez Empire Arc #writing criticism

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