HXH and Jojo
PostPosted:Tue Oct 06, 2020 1:04 am
These two series always have a fascinating fanbase to me, since they're far more toxic and combative than can be explained by the usual Internet community standards. So I looked up some sales numbers and found that HXH sold a bit more than half of Bleach, and Jojo is about 80% of Bleach. That actually explains a lot, as this means they sold enough to be considered mainstream (anything that's a meaningful fraction of Bleach is not a small thing), but for all their vaunted genius, it also loses fairly badly to what is likely the punching bag of the current generation of manga/anime. That's like if you're big enough to get beat up by Sega in the console wars. If you go any smaller, you might be looking at say Eyeshield 21 which is about 1/4 of HXH, and that's viewed as a promising upstart since it's not big enough to be made fun of like Bleach but certainly more than respectable to a niche, and in fact it's a pretty big niche genre.
Perhaps the biggest thing about the utter irrelevance of these two series is that people used to troll HXH boards with news of its return, and they stopped doing that because it's so dead nobody falls for that anymore. For Jojo, I honestly thought it ended like 10 years ago until I looked it up today and found that it's still in serialization, since I haven't even seen pirated anything of Jojo in about that long and it sure isn't because people have more respect for the copyright of Jojo compared to anything else that people pirate. Yes technically Jojo has great numbers, and Golgo 13 sold numbers close to Dragonball and I'm sure most people outside of Japan has never heard of it (I just know it exists). About the biggest thing I've heard of Jojo is that the author drew some stuff in Le Louvre, either because Akira Toriyama isn't around or maybe they needed someone to draw the 'art on crack' style to show the progression of modern arts. On a detour for Dragonball, I'm not sure why there is this general insecurity from other anime/manga that feels like bashing Dragonball as if anyone will actually believe whatever cool anime of the year is ever going to challenge Dragonball that has lasted decades without even any further input from the user. Only OP can possibly challenge Dragonball in terms of numbers, but I don't see it possibly have the longevity since OP strikes me as something that will quickly be forgotten whenever the author is done with it unless he comes out with One Piece 2, while Dragonball somehow went on for decades while the Akira Toriyama has long ceased meaningful involvement, and even cheap knockoffs like Dragonball Super are still doing pretty good. It's not a shame to admit that whatever you like probably can't match Dragonball in its strong points. Dragonball Super: Broly was like one of the highest grossing Anime movies in America, and it's literally something anybody can make using the Dragonball name. I don't think they even show most Anime movie anything in America period since they correctly figure it'd just be a total waste of money.
Anyway, back to HXH. There's a pretty good quote I saw a long time that says, "HXH has no flaws, but the author is worthless." which pretty much sums up the whole problem. Well, of course HXH isn't close to flawless, but if you have the starting fanbase you got from Yu Yu Hakusho and just ask any mid-tier manga guy to take over after the Yorknew arc, you'd be able to easily come up with something that ought to comfortably beat Bleach. After all, Naruto, solidly #2 in recent generations, originally stole a bunch of random ideas from HXH look at how well that turned out, so it's clearly a very safe and stable base to make a living. After Yorknew, you start seeing stuff like "Why GI is a good arc" or "Why Chimaera Ants is a good arc" or "Why (anything after Yorknew) is a good arc". Of course, anytime you hear 'why XYZ is actually good' you should be pretty suspicious. Nobody says 'Why Frieza Saga is a good arc" or "Why most of early OP arcs are good" or "Why Aizen is the only redeeming highlight of Bleach", and in particular, you'll never hear anyone say 'Why Yorknew is a good arc", because people usually don't need to explain things that are considered facts. Maybe most of the arcs could have been good, but when you combine with Togashi's legendary lack of work ethic, it's pretty hard to not have everything suck. Even OP fans seem to be somewhat tired of Oda taking more frequent breaks, despite the fact that his story is clearly something that can be ad-libed so we shouldn't expect any actual impact to the quality of the story other than the pacing. It's just not a pleasant experience to read something that's stop and go, and in case of HXH you can clearly tell Togashi is winging some stuff to fill the 10 chapter quota he needs to get to not get kicked off Shonen Jump so he's often doing random fillers to buy another year of time.
I don't know much about Jojo to comment other than the art looks like something out of a freak show, and that Jojo fans seem to be very mad when you point out this obvious fact. It's one thing to buy something because it's got fan service, but just because you prefer something that's not ultra fan service-y doesn't mean you want art that looks like a bunch of guys that escaped from a horror show. I always thought that if Final Fantasy characters actually looked like Amano's drawings there would probably be very few people playing the game. It's fine to have some whacked up design that serves as the basis but you shouldn't feel slighted when your 'art' looks like it's drawn when you're on a high and the general population reacts the normal way to such art.
At some level, it's understandable why both series have fans that are full of rage since being big enough to lose to Bleach is a pretty sad state. Of course, Bleach is probably a genius in terms of marketing/sales given Bleach turned something that has one redeeming character (Aizen) and made a zillion dollars on a plot that is so dumb that it's often considered a great comedy. Bleach may have burned a lot of bridges since I think it started the 'final arc' about 5 years ago and not even Shonen Jump realized that Bleach could easily do a volume for each letter of the alphabet and still have plenty left in the tank in terms of its ability to drag on, and I suspect it was actually axed when SJ figured out that the final arc of Bleach wasn't ending for another 20 years at its current pace. I'm guessing Bleach did that because the money was still rolling in while it was dragging on literally forever, and the author likely figured that once he stopped Bleach he wouldn't have a second shot at making this kind of money anymore so obviously should grab as much money as he can. In the end Bleach racked up a lot of ill-will with its ending, but I assume it paid off well for the author, and it might even helped cement its relevance due to how bad it was dragging on at the end as opposed to simply whimpering out with a weak ending.
On the other hand, HXH and Jojo are mostly just irrelevant and not even capable of achieving notoriety. I see a lot of Jojo memes and I suspect a lot of people don't even know what the context is other than that it's funny. Prince of Tennis is a meme too, but whenever a new chapter in New Prince of Tennis comes out, you'll see people ask question like 'where is the upgrade to black hole?' 'why didn't Byodoin turn into an undead pirate and stab his opponent this time?' 'Is Tezuka still insisting not killing anybody after causing the extinctions of the dinosaurs?' So while Prince of Tennis also looks like a bunch of memes, it's pretty clear people know where the memes mean. Now that doesn't mean people respect Prince of Tennis or ever contributed anything to its bottom line, but at least people know that Tezuka killed all the dinosaurs and so on, so that's at least notoriety achieved. Despite its waning popularity, I think it's more likely people know some of the common punchlines from Prince of Tennis compared to Jojo or HXH.
Perhaps the biggest thing about the utter irrelevance of these two series is that people used to troll HXH boards with news of its return, and they stopped doing that because it's so dead nobody falls for that anymore. For Jojo, I honestly thought it ended like 10 years ago until I looked it up today and found that it's still in serialization, since I haven't even seen pirated anything of Jojo in about that long and it sure isn't because people have more respect for the copyright of Jojo compared to anything else that people pirate. Yes technically Jojo has great numbers, and Golgo 13 sold numbers close to Dragonball and I'm sure most people outside of Japan has never heard of it (I just know it exists). About the biggest thing I've heard of Jojo is that the author drew some stuff in Le Louvre, either because Akira Toriyama isn't around or maybe they needed someone to draw the 'art on crack' style to show the progression of modern arts. On a detour for Dragonball, I'm not sure why there is this general insecurity from other anime/manga that feels like bashing Dragonball as if anyone will actually believe whatever cool anime of the year is ever going to challenge Dragonball that has lasted decades without even any further input from the user. Only OP can possibly challenge Dragonball in terms of numbers, but I don't see it possibly have the longevity since OP strikes me as something that will quickly be forgotten whenever the author is done with it unless he comes out with One Piece 2, while Dragonball somehow went on for decades while the Akira Toriyama has long ceased meaningful involvement, and even cheap knockoffs like Dragonball Super are still doing pretty good. It's not a shame to admit that whatever you like probably can't match Dragonball in its strong points. Dragonball Super: Broly was like one of the highest grossing Anime movies in America, and it's literally something anybody can make using the Dragonball name. I don't think they even show most Anime movie anything in America period since they correctly figure it'd just be a total waste of money.
Anyway, back to HXH. There's a pretty good quote I saw a long time that says, "HXH has no flaws, but the author is worthless." which pretty much sums up the whole problem. Well, of course HXH isn't close to flawless, but if you have the starting fanbase you got from Yu Yu Hakusho and just ask any mid-tier manga guy to take over after the Yorknew arc, you'd be able to easily come up with something that ought to comfortably beat Bleach. After all, Naruto, solidly #2 in recent generations, originally stole a bunch of random ideas from HXH look at how well that turned out, so it's clearly a very safe and stable base to make a living. After Yorknew, you start seeing stuff like "Why GI is a good arc" or "Why Chimaera Ants is a good arc" or "Why (anything after Yorknew) is a good arc". Of course, anytime you hear 'why XYZ is actually good' you should be pretty suspicious. Nobody says 'Why Frieza Saga is a good arc" or "Why most of early OP arcs are good" or "Why Aizen is the only redeeming highlight of Bleach", and in particular, you'll never hear anyone say 'Why Yorknew is a good arc", because people usually don't need to explain things that are considered facts. Maybe most of the arcs could have been good, but when you combine with Togashi's legendary lack of work ethic, it's pretty hard to not have everything suck. Even OP fans seem to be somewhat tired of Oda taking more frequent breaks, despite the fact that his story is clearly something that can be ad-libed so we shouldn't expect any actual impact to the quality of the story other than the pacing. It's just not a pleasant experience to read something that's stop and go, and in case of HXH you can clearly tell Togashi is winging some stuff to fill the 10 chapter quota he needs to get to not get kicked off Shonen Jump so he's often doing random fillers to buy another year of time.
I don't know much about Jojo to comment other than the art looks like something out of a freak show, and that Jojo fans seem to be very mad when you point out this obvious fact. It's one thing to buy something because it's got fan service, but just because you prefer something that's not ultra fan service-y doesn't mean you want art that looks like a bunch of guys that escaped from a horror show. I always thought that if Final Fantasy characters actually looked like Amano's drawings there would probably be very few people playing the game. It's fine to have some whacked up design that serves as the basis but you shouldn't feel slighted when your 'art' looks like it's drawn when you're on a high and the general population reacts the normal way to such art.
At some level, it's understandable why both series have fans that are full of rage since being big enough to lose to Bleach is a pretty sad state. Of course, Bleach is probably a genius in terms of marketing/sales given Bleach turned something that has one redeeming character (Aizen) and made a zillion dollars on a plot that is so dumb that it's often considered a great comedy. Bleach may have burned a lot of bridges since I think it started the 'final arc' about 5 years ago and not even Shonen Jump realized that Bleach could easily do a volume for each letter of the alphabet and still have plenty left in the tank in terms of its ability to drag on, and I suspect it was actually axed when SJ figured out that the final arc of Bleach wasn't ending for another 20 years at its current pace. I'm guessing Bleach did that because the money was still rolling in while it was dragging on literally forever, and the author likely figured that once he stopped Bleach he wouldn't have a second shot at making this kind of money anymore so obviously should grab as much money as he can. In the end Bleach racked up a lot of ill-will with its ending, but I assume it paid off well for the author, and it might even helped cement its relevance due to how bad it was dragging on at the end as opposed to simply whimpering out with a weak ending.
On the other hand, HXH and Jojo are mostly just irrelevant and not even capable of achieving notoriety. I see a lot of Jojo memes and I suspect a lot of people don't even know what the context is other than that it's funny. Prince of Tennis is a meme too, but whenever a new chapter in New Prince of Tennis comes out, you'll see people ask question like 'where is the upgrade to black hole?' 'why didn't Byodoin turn into an undead pirate and stab his opponent this time?' 'Is Tezuka still insisting not killing anybody after causing the extinctions of the dinosaurs?' So while Prince of Tennis also looks like a bunch of memes, it's pretty clear people know where the memes mean. Now that doesn't mean people respect Prince of Tennis or ever contributed anything to its bottom line, but at least people know that Tezuka killed all the dinosaurs and so on, so that's at least notoriety achieved. Despite its waning popularity, I think it's more likely people know some of the common punchlines from Prince of Tennis compared to Jojo or HXH.