I also happened to be one of the people who didn't like Rin's crush on Shiemi. He had previously stated he liked the type of women who... have a strong character, then he falls for the meekest and most childish one ever!???
Shiemi is by no means a weak character. In contrast I would argue that pre- character development Izumo was the woman with the weaker character. In her first chapter she couldnt save Paku and was then crying in a corner not wanting to be seen in her state by others. That is what a character with a weak core is like. Izumo is afraid to look weak and is scared of connecting with others. She sed to think of her feminine traits as a weakness and childish and that's what made her a weak female character. Shiemi while initially being timid due to her social inexperience later grows out of it but still openly displays her emotions, openly acknowledges her weakness and mistakes and isnt ashamed of having them. That is what i believe to be maturity and that makes Shiemi a stronger character. Hell, even in her introduction chapter she out of guilt commits herself to taking care of her grandmother's garden forever. She was childish in the beginning because of her background but by the illuminati arc she is a far more stronger character than Izumo was which is why it annoys me that she refuses to see herself as strong. I am amazed how people think of Tsunderes as strong female characters while i see them as exactly the opposite of that and more as extremely weak hearted and immature characters which is why they tend to the most visible character development when they mature. Tsundere characters like Izumo have a little kid's definition of what it means to have a strong personality which is probably why their tsundere moments come of as cute similar to how when a little kid tries to act like an adult.
Also that is the reason why Yukio thinks of himself as weaker than Rin. Yukio constantly tries to live up to other's expectations of him while Rin openly acts like himself and isnt remotely affected by what other think of him (atleast that's probably what Yukio thinks of Rin as).
This was the one thing I feel was done better in Mob psycho 100. Mob's brother was shown to envy his brother's powers (and on some level fear him) and was willing to go to any lengths to get that power, but that wasnt dragged too long and when Mob was getting beaten up he was tearfully begging the claw member to stop it and just take him which for me was the point that heavily emphasised that despite all his envy and fear he deeply loves and cares for his brother. Yukio never has such a moment and I feel it really is taking too long for that moment to come. All we see is Yukio fearing and envying Rin so how do you expect one to believe that Yukio loves his brother.
They're wasn't a great debate on that matter in forums since I'm pretty much alone on this, at least on forums. But even at the time I remember defending Yukio on a few things. Like when he punched Rin at the end of the IK arc, most people seemed to react like "wtf Yukio?", but that to me shows he cares. I think he's misunderstood.
Yeah, that's not really what i would call a positive way of showing your concern for your brother. Atleast he could have hugged and said that he was glad that he is okay before proceeding to punch him and reprimand him for using his powers. Not to mention when Rin was sentenced to death and Yukio just gave up. I dont expect him to break him out of prison but atleast he could tried to use more legal routes to save his brother like trying to convince the heads against Rin's execution.
Naruto is similar in that regard with having a tragic childhood and using his funny nature to deal with his own psychological problems. But there was decent exposure to both sides of Naruto from time to time depicting the tragic and psychologically messed up side of him as well as highlighting the goofy side of him.
in case of Naruto, it also deals with a lot of psychological themes of different characters like loneliness, lack of purpose and other problems you expect from child soldiers and people affected from war to have as well as various ideologies and views of peace, teacher-student bond, bonds between comrades and so on despite being a weekly shonen jump manga and having "stupid" fights.
Although I agree that in Naruto, the development of Naruto himself is very complete, I think all other characters are underdeveloped, including Sakura and Sasuke. I guess the trade-off is inevitable, if you have to put more fight in the series, you won't have screen time to develop many characters.
There is also Choji, Shikamaru, Neji, Gaara, Hinata, Kakashi, Sasori, Kankuro, Tsunade, Kurama and so on. I agree Sasuke's development was horrible and as i said the increasing focus on him and the uchiha in the second half was part of what damaged the series. Apart from that, I also agree that Sakura and other minor character were also not given much character development.
in case of Suguro, the problem is that he is getting too much development and the lion's share of screen time while his two friends are still as useless and unimportant as ever.
In my opinion, he almost doesn't have any development in this arc. In fact it is (surprisingly) Lightning seems to have development during the investigation.
Yeah, in this arc he was more of an audience surrogate which is probably why i wasnt much irritated this time around, but even then he still gets way too much screentime when there are other characters who i really wish would get some. So i'm guessing Takara is going to forever be a background character with his whole past forever being a mystery. Anyways, even if Suguro isnt the focus the arc is clearly building up to a future character development arc for him with him being forced to bear the guilt and hide the truth, something that he constantly lectured and scolded others for doing. I swear Suguro feels more like one of the actual protagonists of the series than Rin and Shiemi, with having lots of focus and a character development that is more evenly spread throughout the series from start to end. I wont be surprised ( but extremely disappointed) if it turns out that Rin is a decoy protagonist and Suguro is the actual protagonist of the story.
The problem with that is that Rin's backstory is by no means light hearted.
Not disputing that. I also agree that Rin needs much more screen time. But why does a dark backstory mean that a character has to fixate on it? IMO Rin is a breath of fresh air from the other moping shounen heroes who have BSODs upon discovering their dark histories. He knows that the story of their birth will be unpleasant and what is there to know? Yukio's more classic response provides a foil.
Rin doesn't need to brood to convey emotional depth. Simply seeing him interact more with characters that challenge his status quo (Lucifer, Mephisto, Yukio, and sometimes Shura) brings out more of what he thinks. That's what I want.
Rin is by no means a unique case. Both Luffy from one piece and Gon from Hunter x Hunter show no interest in their origins and in luffy's case, he is never shown to dwell on the one dark part of his backstory. I dont remember Ichigo making a big deal about his dark history either (although in this case i dont remember correctly so i could be wrong), Midoriya from Boku no hero academia doesnt really have a dark backstory and even then he never let it stop from trying to pursue his dream, Aladdin from Magi isnt shown to be affected by the circumstances of his birth either (although again in this case i am probably not remebering clearly) and even in case of naruto, he learns about it in the first chapter and his reaction isnt that different from how Rin reacted when he learned he was Satan's son (by the way doesn't Rin's reaction to learning his heritage count as brooding then). Naruto's thoughts also were far more focused on his mistreatment by the villages and most of the times he did so because most of the villians he fought had extremely strong parallels to his own past with gaara being the closest. The only example I probably know of where the hero starts brooding over his dark origin was Eren from Shingeki no Kyoujin but that is an extremely dark series.
In fact I am pretty sure it is mostly the rival character's role to be brooding and obsessing about his dark past and this series is following that tradition perfectly. Also uptil now the only inner thoughts I got from Rin is that he is having survivor's guilt and is possibly really conflicted about his place in the world (and the latter is just speculation), what else did we learn about his state of mind.
Naruto is similar in that regard with having a tragic childhood and using his funny nature to deal with his own psychological problems. But there was decent exposure to both sides of Naruto from time to time depicting the tragic and psychologically messed up side of him as well as highlihting the goofy side of him.
Did we read the same manga? The first half of Naruto focused much more on Sasuke's problems to the exclusion of all others. That only changed in the second half.
Out of curiosity, when did you start reading Naruto? In my experience, series always look well-written and paced when they're binge-read or watched. It's the waiting around that changes that. I started following it near the Pain arc. IMO pacing went to crap in the World War arc, but the writing was on the wall because Kishimoto couldn't stop creating new characters. He'd remember to develop Naruto and Sasuke, but every other supporting character from the first half completely stopped. Sakura, Gaara, Rock Lee, etc all became flat side characters so characters like Buzz B could be developed and then ignored. Also: all of Naruto is unnecessarily Uchiha focused. That was a complaint from Day 1.
The Tsunade arc both introduced and gave character development to Tsunade and showed the growing bond between naruto and jiraiya, the chuunin exams had character depth and starting character development for a lot of the genin including neji, hinata, sakura and gaara. Yes Sasuke has a lot of development but it was clearly building up to the first clash between sasuke and naruto which is one of the better fights in the series and the sasuke retrieval arc also had character development for choji, neji, shikamaru and naruto himself. Besides then Sasuke's revenge arc hadnt exactly started and it is only after killing itachi and deciding to destroy the entire leaf village did his character arc really start to drag like hell and then started zigzagging and going all over the place. Not to mention naruto's over obsession with bringing back sasuke only took root in the second half (after the rescue gaara mission) where bringing back sasuke was all he could think of. And not to mention the naruto is the chosen one plotline that completely contradicted the theme in his fight with neji.
I dont believe the uchihas were unnecessarily important from day 1. Ofcourse Sasuke's entire arc was going to revolve around that since they were his family and they were all massacred and sasuke is one of the 4 main characters. It is similar to how Kurapika's entire arc in Hunter x Hunter revolves around the scarlet eyes and the phantom troupe. But in the beginning the Uchihas werent given that level of importance in the series. Hell in the chunin exams Kakashi stated that the sharingan actually came from the byakugan and sharingan's basic ability was simply to copy other techniques and even then it could not copy other blood limits. It was only much later that the uchiha clan became one of the 2 major clans that formed the village and then much later the senju and uchiha were founded by the sons of the sage of the six paths and so on and so forth.
AoEx would definitely NOT be better as a weekly manga. It's because AoEx is monthly that they can cover psychological themes and not be pressured to show stupid fights every week like in WSJ series (Bleach, Beelzebub, Naruto, etc). Even though the pacing sucks, at least the story is consistent. It's a trade-off.
Okay, atleast in case of Naruto, it also deals with a lot of psychological themes of different characters like lonliness, lack of purpose and other problems you expect from child soldiers and people affected from war to have as well as various ideologies and views of peace, teacher-student bond, bonds between comrades and so on despite being a weekly shonen jump manga and having "stupid" fights. The first half and a good portion of the second half was very well written, and it was only after there was unnecessarily excessive focus on uchiha and the horrible final arc that really damaged the series, but for the most part Naruto was well written.
I'm not blaming the manga in WSJ for showing stupid fights. I'm bringing up that WSJ pressures all of its' series to have fights and simplistic storylines. It's like editorial mandates in Western comics. Monthly series are targeted towards an older demographic and are thus given considerably more creative freedom.
When it comes to fights, I feel atleast Rin's fights in the series are the weaker part of the story. Most of Rin's difficulties in battles are due to Rin's own psychological issues or his own idiocy (getting knocked out by Hachirou twice). His fight with Amaimon was the only real challenging fight and after that the arc villian in each successive arc became less and less challenging with Gedouin probably being the series low point in terms of arc villian. Thank goodness you cant really go lower than that incompetent waste of so many months of chapters.In contrast to Rin's fight Yukio's fight with Toudou was a great mix of strategy and psychological trauma. Why cant we have more fights like Toudou and Yukio's battle? I prefer that kind of fight to the constant large monstrosities that can get one shotted by Rin if he actually put his act together.
Yor can say what you want, Naruto's (and for that matter, even one piece and boku no hero academia) fights in the first half and some portion of the second half were actually pretty good with all character especially being pretty strategic in their fights and not just one shotting their opponents with overwhelming power.
As for why Shiemi is less interesting? The bigger and harder the obstacles a character has to overcome, the more interesting it is to see that character overcome them.
I dispute this. The difficulty of obstacles are relative to the character. Shiemi went from hiding from the world, to actively wanting to be a part of it. That's character development. IMO, Bon actually shows the best character development of anyone in the manga. Compare his introductory chapter to the latest chapter -- he's changed from a narrow-minded stubborn asshole to a more rounded thoughtful fellow. Everyone else has had more punctuated character growth. Izumo's probably the greatest offender, but she was so traumatized that it took everything going to shit to get her to grow.
I did say that for Shiemi her obstacles are big but relative to other characters her problems dont seem that big and comparisions are inevitable in a series especially one where the series itself loves to draw parallels and comparisions between character struggles.
As for Suguro, I would have been far happier if everybody actually treated him like a narrow minded stubborn asshole that he was in the beginning instead of idolizing him and being super understanding of his behaviour because he means well (as if that justified his behaviour). Ofcourse he would have the best character development in the series, he has the most screentime and focus in the series, it would be a shame if his character development wasnt good after that much focus, and i am pretty sure he is going to continue this much focus. Izumo's entire character development seems to have happened in just one arc while Suguro is getting multiple arcs to properly develop him.
Regarding Renzo, are we certain he is loyal to the illuminati. Didnt the series establish that he greatly cares about his friends. Then I doubt he would come into conflict with Suguro.
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