Shounen Manga

With Japanese manga, they are generally categorized by who their target market is. Shounen manga, for example, is targeted at young teenaged boys and tends to involve coming-of-age stories with a lot of action. Shoujo manga is targeted at teenage girls, and tends to have a lot of high school drama, particularly romance.

I find it interesting that I'm mostly drawn to shounen stories (Naruto, Bleach, My Hero Academia, Hunter x Hunter, One Punch Man ) and only occasionally stray into shoujo (Ouran High School Host Club, Fruits Basket).

I like the character development in shounen stories, I like the typical blend of action and comedy, and I like that there are often deeper underlying themes (Naruto has a number of them, though not all were developed as well as others - hard work vs. genius, how to make peace when all everyone knows is fighting, etc. My Hero Academia gets into what it takes to be a hero, as well as some interesting insurgency/counterinsurgency plots, and so on and a so forth.) I could do without most of the fanservice, and too much of it actually turns me off of the story... I couldn't really get into Seven Deadly Sins because I kept wondering why the girl put up with so much inappropriate behavior, but whatever.

But I also have some questions about the underlying messages conveyed to the target audience of young, teenage boys. Like, on the one hand I appreciate messages like 'work hard and keep trying'. I mostly think those are good messages. I sort of like how My Hero Academia shows the sort of dedication it takes to be the top hero, and also shows some of the darker sides of that sort of competition (the Number Two Hero's character, and how his pursuit of the top rank affected his relationship with his family is particularly interesting in this regard).

But there are times, as well, when I appreciate these stories make me really appreciate the fact that I'm a girl. Currently I've been watching/reading Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, which has some cool martial arts stuff. There's a lot to unpack in the story, though it's weak in some parts and has some messaging I don't actually agree with.

The one that got me writing today has to do with power, and strength, and what people do with that. That is, the main character in Kenichi was getting bullied at school and decided to stop accepting it, so he's training in martial arts. But winning a fight against one bully made others take notice of him, so that he kept getting sucked into fights against more and more skilled opponents. He wants to get stronger in part because he's realized that bullies aren't going to stop bullying unless you're strong enough to stand up to them, that you can tell them it's wrong all you want... but without the strength to back it up nothing will change.

It reminds me of international relations and realism, tbh.

There is some truth to that sentiment, I think. Hans Morgenthau's classical realism makes sense to me, in a way.

But there's more to it than that. (Again, I have a lot to unpack and I'm not really sure how much I'll be able to cover everything here).

First - organized cooperation beats any one person's strength. Sure, one good martial artist can take on multiple opponents, but there really is a time where even the most magnificently skilled individual will lose. This is especially true when you put in guns and modern weaposn.

This is the way armies work, after all. This is why discipline is so prized in the military. It's kind of boring, it's not nearly as dramatic as individual heroes, but a phalanx in formation can defeat a lone swordsman, and so on and so forth. (I can get into some interesting topics on that some other time, as it also relates to the growth of bureaucracy, that dreaded red tape, and some other things.)

I enjoy shounen stories, but I'm also glad I live in a world where I, personally, don't have to get into those sorts of fights. Really, the vast majority of us don't.  The fact that so many people are able to peacefully get fat and out of shape is a sign of strength, it shows that we don't live in a society where you have to be physically strong in order to feel safe and secure. (I can unpack that a lot more too, but I don't feel like going on that tangent right now.)

Shifting gears to apocalyptic movies for a moment - the fantasy is that disaster strikes and you can become the hero of the day, kicking ass and taking names. Civilization dies, it becomes a wild world of open competition, and you're able to compete in a way modern society frowns upon... and the fantasy is that you will win. Tbh, if any of those events happened for real I know where I would most likely be - dead. Like trips to a Holocaust museum as a kid, where they hand out the piece of paper showing your likely fate... statistically making it match what happened. The vast majority die, and you only hear/read about the ones who don't because they survived.

I can enjoy those sorts of stories while fully acknowledging that I don't really want to live in such a world, because I'm probably not going to be the 'Number One Hero', or 'Hokage', or whatever.

So many of the villains seem motivated to show how 'fragile' concepts like justice or peace is, and yet I find that a boring motivation because peace has always been fragile. I mean, Edgar Rice Burroughs touches on this with his Tarzan books, racist though they were. He's basically pointing out that when you strip away civilization Tarzan (and others) easily become the animals we are underneath. Hell, you see that when you deploy with the military... how fragile social norms truly are.

Kenichi has this great little bit where his opponent wants him to join his organization, and Kenichi asks what the point of doing so is. Okay, so you get stronger... then what? Okay, you're strongest... what are you going to do with that power?  What world will you create with the strength that you have?

In the back of my head, I recall a random tidbit from somewhere, where it described a young schoolkid who was impressive mostly because of the maturity he showed when it came to wielding his power/influence among his peers. So much of that middle school/high school drama is, in part, from people not knowing how to do that well.

'Well', I suppose, depends on your personal take on that, though.

Do you want to grow strong, do you want power and influence, so that you can lord it over everyone else? Got sick of being lorded over, so you're going to do what it takes to make sure you're on top... and then do the very things to everyone else that motivated you to get stronger in the first place? (I can sort of follow that logic, though I don't really agree with it. Just perpetuates the cycle pointlessly, to my mind. But I get that, if you buy into that way of thinking, then you start feeling like it's okay to oppress anyone weaker than you because might = right.)

We frown on the concept of warlords, consider past history brutal whenever we entered an era where physical force decided who was right, looked badly on Saddam Hussein and all the other wannabe dictators... and so it's worth asking how we got away from that. What parts of society allow us to live in a world where might doesn't equal right? And why do we value that so much, in the first place?

I don't have a solid answer, though I've got some initial thoughts. Why we value it, well... we all are weak sometimes. Whether it's because we're young, or old, or sick... every single person will be weak at some point in their life. The whole 'might = right, strength and power allow you to lord it over everyone else' mindset creates a world where the majority of people are constantly miserable. Even if you are lucky enough to make it to the top for a time, it won't last. Putting in social conventions that mitigate such a brutal world make everyone happier, ultimately. (But it doesn't satisfy that desire to prove yourself and compete, which is probably part of why we sometimes resent it.)

Which is why there are always at least a few people who grow strong in order to change that mentality. The 'heroes' in most shounen. The ones who fight to protect, or save. The ones who try to stop villains so that ordinary, every day (weak, sometimes stupid) people can live their lives without having to worry about such threats.

Spiderman's notion that 'with great power comes great responsibility.'

Of course, such strength isn't always physical. Often times isn't, actually. Since groups can beat individuals, leaders that can organize a group can often beat a single physically strong opponent. (Kenichi sort of gets into this, since his 'very bad friend' is horribly weak and somehow manages to lead an organization... in an unethical way.)

But... leadership is a two way street. People choose who they follow, and who they choose gives strength to that leader's worldview, allowing them to shape the every day world we live in. (Samurai Champloo had an interesting episode that sort of covered this. A 'good' yakuzu leader in a town was being challenged by a more malicious one, and the 'good' leader lost supporters who went over to the more apparently strong one. The 'good' leader never really changed his way of thinking, and ultimately didn't win on a personal level, but his way of leading inspired one of his former subordinates to change sides, so in a way it ultimately led to a 'win'.)

We are often easily taken by the notion that 'strength' is someone like Putin or Trump, and people who want to be on the winning side will follow that sort of 'strength'. But I think it's more important to ask yourself what sort of world that person is creating, and to follow the leaders who create the kind of world you want to live in.

I suppose that's my true grief with Trump, tbh. I don't like the world he's creating. I don't like the way he uses his power and influence. So I would rather do my part by supporting another type of leader.

Anyways. In a somewhat similar vein, the grief I have with the ultra-rich is that they are in positions of power and influence, they have resources to do things I can only dream of doing - and yet most of them are, well... to be fair just ordinary human beings trying to live their lives the best they can... but the result is that far too many of them don't use that power/influence in a knowledgeable way to consciously shape the world for the better. (Ugh, that sentence doesn't capture what I mean very well, but it's the best I can do without writing a whole other page... and this has gone on long enough already.)

All that potential to shape the world, and so few with any real idea of how to use it.

What a waste.

(Sucks to add more after what seems like a good stopping point, but I felt the need for this: I don't actually know enough wealthy people to say that they have no real idea how to use their power, and many do try to influence the world. It just seems to me that most of their attempts are in... let's just say conventional ways. It's part of why we seem to live in a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Like a martial artist who gets strong in order to do what they want without repercussion.

Some do appear to be using their resources to make a difference, and I don't really want to dismiss things like Bill Gates and his efforts against malaria. I've always thought, though, that if I had the resources I'd try to test out a few specific ideas - one, finding 'tipping points' where the right resources can really help a community save itself, i.e. empowering people to find their own solutions, using  results-based techniques to adjust as needed for success - and two, see how long term engagement on a local level can lead to larger changes on a national level.  I dunno, when you've got people like Harris Rosen showing how much of a difference one wealthy individual can make to a particular community the idea that some wealthy person feels like writing a large check to their charity-of-choice is enough feels somehow... uncreative. Especially since so much philanthropy is used either to - perhaps not knowingly - support your own self-interest like the Koch brothers or to virtue-signal. It's just something to help you feel good about yourself without necessarily being involved enough to make a difference. And whew, there's a lot to unpack with that statement, too. But I'm tired of writing this post, so maybe another time.)

Art of the Impossible, Cont.

I said I wanted to discuss the impossible, and immediately I feel compelled to write about just why and how this is not easily done.  Mostly, I think, people in our day and age have come to appreciate just how difficult it is to create lasting change.  Whether it's the legacy of our Civil Rights Movement, or criticisms for how foreign aid has actually hurt Africa, or the shrinking of the middle class, or the difficulty in coordinating international efforts to stop environmental destruction, we seem to live in a time where we are forcibly reminded of our limits.

I think that's part of why dystopia appeals.  That, and we have a really hard time imagining any 'perfect' world that doesn't sound boring.  Like in the movie The Matrix, when Agent Smith says the attempt to create a happy matrix was a disaster...people didn't accept it.  Or the old joke about how when someone dies they want to go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. 

Besides which, there's a long historical legacy of failed attempts to create a utopia - like New Harmony, Indiana (an economic failure after two years), or the Oneida Community (not sure it counts as an attempt at utopia, the wikipedia site says it was a Perfectionist religious communal society) that eventually turned into a silverware company.

There seems something intrinsic to the human condition that defies attempts to build a lasting utopia.  To create perfection.

So why bother?  Well, here's the thing.  We can't always predict the consequences of change, and we're terrible at predicting what changes will make us happy...but change IS inevitable.  And the people who shape that change, who help direct that change in certain directions, are the ones who help dictate what the future holds.

Mistaken at times, sometimes idealistic, all too often wrong - the future is shaped by those who dream of something better.  Different, at least.  Since some dreams are only 'better' for that particular person.

And the ideas that spur development can pay off in ways you don't predict.  I'm not talking about big utopian goals here, more the fascinating interplay between science fiction and technological development.  Like the classic example of Star Trek's medical tricorder, which is coming closer and closer to an actual reality.

Change is inevitable, and envisioning the possibilities can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How to Change the World - A Theory

Lunch-time edition:


I sometimes ponder the connection between the micro and macro levels.





That's a broad statement, but true.  What's the connection, for example, between your economic activity as on a small scale (microeconomics) and economic activity on a large scale (macroeconomics).  Or between physics at a size smaller than Planck's constant, versus Newtonian physics at the level we see every day?  The macro, after all, is made up of the micro (again...tiny grains of sand that add up to one big sand dune).






And I think of that, sometimes, as applied to changing the world.  You can try to change in broad brushstrokes.  Focus on getting mosquito nets, for example, to reduce the impact of malaria in Africa.  Or focus on a more micro level, like volunteering as a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters.






Why choose one over the other?  I can't help thinking that a mentorship program like BBBS is more...in depth.  When I think of how people change, its normally because of long term and daily interactions.  There's no silver bullet, no shortcuts.  True change comes from the type of involvement you have with your family and friends.  I believe that's one of the underlying reasons why research repeatedly shows that economic segregation is bad.  Bad for rich, bad for poor...bad in part because there are few role models of success for the poor when all they know is other poor people.  And there's a lack of understanding on the part of the rich, when their only experience with poverty is to come sweeping in with charity.






Having that level of interaction, that type of involvement, is slow.  Time consuming.  You can only help one person or one family at a time, because who has the energy (or capability) to have that kind of relationship with hundreds?  Big Brothers Big Sisters is a great program, yet they struggle to find enough mentors. 


Funny enough, it's also some of the most rewarding experiences available.  Being a Big Sister is a bit like being an aunt, or other caring relative.  All those studies on happiness discuss the importance of having a caring connection with the people around us.  Family.  Friends.  Mentors and mentees.  This is what makes life worth living...and yet so many people are too busy to support it, and would rather just give a donation. 






I do see the appeal of working on a large scale.  It can seem more satisfying, in that you can help so many more people all at once.  But there are dangers to that, as well.  It can be more impersonal.  De-humanizing.  I think some of the criticisms about foreign aid are, in part, because it's so bureaucratic.  Disempowering.  You don't get the sense that they care about you, as an individual.  Or that they are giving you a choice, a say in your own life.  It can come across as patronizing, an "I know better than you what will fix you (and boy, do you need fixing.)"


In my own life, I've travelled so much that I feel more connected to the macro (i.e. national politics, world events) than I do to my own personal micro (i.e. the events affecting the town I live in.  Or even my state.)  Yet all those national events - like our upcoming presidential election - are made up of any number of micro events.  The local political structure that tries to get out the vote.  The local politics and history that determine our voting districts.  I'm more likely to know the presidential candidates than the candidates running for my state representative, or mayor.


But I digress.  The point I was getting at is that in-depth, micro activities (if they have enough support) can lead to some truly amazing macro changes.  And that maybe, just maybe, it's better to focus on growing and nurturing those small changes instead of trying to make a sweeping big change.


Stay tuned for part II.