I’m not faulting the mangaka for having very obvious influences. We all (well, majority of us) love Akira Toriyama-sensei’s works. And while I’m also not faulting the mangaka for the cliches (oh boy) I might list a few of them anyway, cause... oh boy, the cliches.
(Please note I’ve only gotten through the first arc, and/or season 1).
Cliched to the max. And while some manga build upon the cliches, and others subvert them, this series is quite predictable because of the cliches. Literally go down the list and this hits every shounen cliche possible. Some of the more interesting characters REALLY made the series what it is - I can tell you now, those characters are NOT Meliodas or Elizabeth.
King was interesting, for his character development and his emotion. He was a very interesting character from the moment he entered the series, and that only builds. What was cool too is seeing an non-human species, the only non-human species to get some type of world building. None of the others get this yet, unfortunately. Hopefully later!
Ban is my favorite, and I can tell he’s easily a fan favorite. Easily more personality and drive than our MC, Meliodas. Funny lines, great fan service, love his love story, coolest fighter - I want him to win, no matter his opponent.
I’m looking at you, episode 11
.
But there’s always the annoying crap.
Hawk. I liked the occasional sassy line, but I’m not a fan. Hawk makes me not want to watch. Maybe I’ve out grown shounen, but I can’t with the talking animal mascot with the shrill, annoying voice that adds nothing but bad comedic relief.
Diane is the typical shounen female “badass” that is hyped up but never seems to really deliver? She doesn’t have much of a personality outside of her crushes, and
I can’t recall a (critical) fight from the first season that she won on her own merits.
Meliodas. He’s very... horny. He should’ve been lust, not wrath. He didn’t get much character development in the first season. Which is disappointing when he’s the MC and leader of the whole group. Throw in every typical shounen protag saying and add same horniness to it but give him a blank expression or a smile pretty much the entire time and you have Meliodas.
Did the mangaka think that made him more cool? He seems distant, dull, and lost. I never once got excited for his fights. I never rooted for him. I was indifferent the entire time. King got the deepest story and the emotion. Ban got the funny lines, the personality, and the drive. Meliodas... wants to get into Elizabeth’s pants.
His backstory is he misses a woman who looks and has the same name as the woman he’s currently into... so knowing how cliched this story is, Elizabeth IS Liz, reincarnation or something. I’d bet money on that.
There’s a character how I think will be my favorite.
Merlin. I have high hopes for her! She seems like a badass, but... all female characters in this series are damsels in distress at some point or another. Diane needing to be saved constantly. Fucking Elizabeth. Guila, who I loved, but was a screaming woman who had to be saved by a man. Jericho needing to be saved. Margaret.
Why are all of these women reduced to damsels in distress constantly? Oh, shounen cliches.
! But I’m hopeful for Merlin! We’ll see. She seems promising.
Elizabeth. Damn... her cliches. Bruh. Miss Mary-Motha-F**king-Sue. I skipped her scenes. Her whining about giving her life for stranger peasants. Whining about wanting to go to next fight when she can’t even move. You’re selfish. You want to be there for the fight when all you do is get in the way, scream, cry, and give the bad guys a weak point for the good. Her speeches? Her goodness? Her purity? She made me want to barf with how pure and innocent she was. (But couldn’t tell when Meliodas was violating her. Clueless!)
I nearly drop it several times because of her. Cliched trash cheerleader who is oh-so-important for no damn reason. Her have zero flaws made her horribly flawed, her innocence and “self-sacrificing” was piteous.
Don’t get me started on her Mary Sue powers in the last episode that healed everyone and brought the dead back to life. (Not to mention bitch cried harder for a pig she’s known a few weeks than she did for her own sister.) I realized I might be way too old for shounen when I felt nauseous at such a horribly cliched scene for the egregiously Mary Sue heroine.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate ALL Mary Sue characters, I STILL read the Anita Blake book series, but damn.
So... yeah.
But I didn’t hate it? Some of the over used shounen tropes DO still work on a die hard fanboy such as myself. (I loved Demon Slayer). The DBZ reminiscent fights were fun. Ban and King were cool, I did enjoy Guila, Gilthunder, and Gowther as well. I do want to see more of the characters fleshed out. Maybe the rest of the series gets better with the cliches and such?
I’m in it for Ban, at least.
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