Older manga are going to use very different styles that are probably going to feel more cartoony to you. While this doesn’t seem to put off Japanese audiences, it does seem to bother their American counterparts when it comes to everything that’s not Toriyama.

I don’t know if Hokuto no Ken is the really the first of the Shounen Punching Epics, but I often see it cited that way. There were action comics previously but they didn’t use the whole formula approach. You can see predecessors of the formula in boxing comics of the period like Ashita no Joe and Ring ni Kakero– of the two, Ashita no Joe is the better comic.

Saint Seiya is hugely important to determining the genre’s formulas and is in many ways a prototype for Naruto, but it’s drawn in a somewhat crude and frankly unappealing style. It’s a hard read. A more modern foundational series is Yu Yu Hakusho, which introduced a bunch of new tropes and solidified certain character archetypes. Dragonball is also a fairly important read.

Of the ongoing series, the most influential is One Piece by far in terms of spawning imitators. That said, for someone who likes Naruto’s visuals, I’d suggest Fullmetal Alchemist. The art style is similar but the mangaka is quite gifted when it comes to layout and developing startlingly original character types and plot twists. You may also get a kick out of Kekkaishi if you find Naruto’s world-building appealing.

Fair enough; I admit that my knowledge of shonen is limited to more recent stuff. Given what I’ve said I like about Naruto, what would you recommend to me?

I’m also impressed by your ability to make sense of Waq Waq–your review may be the only one whose plot summary didn’t doggedly follow the back cover blurb!

Kenshin is actually a bit more developed than Naruto as iterations of the Shounen Punching Epic go. It’s a story that actually does a few novel things in the genre, dropping some tropes and arguably developing some new ones. I’m not a huge Kenshin fan but I could have a substantial discussion of it. With Naruto, any attempt to discuss it in depth would degenerate into talking about the book’s forebears. (Which I have, in fact, already done!)

The only way you can find Naruto novel is to be getting it as your introduction to certain genre elements of the Shounen Punching Epic, which is fine. It’s just something that needs to be acknowledged when it comes time to recommending the book. Stories that are pretty much all stock elements are much less likely to click with those disinterested in the genre or already very familiar with it.

Similarly, while Naruto started as a stock character, he’s developed a lot. The Time Skip, again, has contributed greatly to this; he’s not trying to become Hokage as a little boy’s dream of power and respect anymore, so much as the fact that the world’s really fucked up and it needs him to get it in a humane direction.

Naruto is likewise a stock character, pretty much off the same peg that gave us Luffy in One Piece. I find Luffy a far more realized and sympathetic take on this type but obviously people’s mileage will vary (based largely on how much they like or dislike the art styles involved). The approach to his villains is stock for Shounen Punching Epics, too, the villains are always guys who are outsiders or pariahs who fail to try hard enough to fit productively into society.

As a result of Naruto being so stock, I’ve correctly predicted outcomes and plot twists just based on hearing descriptions of situations and being passingly familiar with the founding Shounen Punching Epics of the late 70′s and 80′s. This is not really a series that merits in-depth study or has any great artistic potential a quick read doesn’t betray. You like it because it’s a competently executed example of a genre that can be appealing, or you don’t.

Naruto himself is the good example of a kid alienated by ninja society who managed not to give into bitterness; even though he was treated as a pariah because of the demon sealed inside him, he managed to channel his energy into positive goals and make friends in the process. A lot of his enemies tend to be characters who haven’t done that; for example, Haku ( treated as a pariah for his genetic ninjutsu gifts, taken in as a apprentice by the heartless mercenary Zabuza ), Neji ( child of a branch of the Hyuga clan that was literally enslaved by the higher-class members, became bitter and fatalistic almost to the point of sociopathy ), Gaara ( created by his own father as a genetic weapon, had a demon inside him with nobody giving him any incentive to control it ), etc. And as Haku showed us very early in the series, Naruto doesn’t always reform them successfully. But he does have that compassion towards others, something almost none of the adults in the world seem to have.

I should note to Michelle that this is a series with a LOT of material to read, and doesn’t really work if you just pop in, but I personally find following the whole thing very rewarding.

@Josh: And another thoughtful comment! The way you describe it, Gin Tama certainly sounds admirable and I can see from my brief exposure how what you say about it is true. I guess my reaction can be chalked up to the same reason I don’t like shows like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” or half the popular comedies on TV today—I actually feel an almost physical discomfort when a character goes into a bad situation and makes it worse. Perhaps it’s the Southerner in me.

@Travis: That is awesome to hear! Like Okman, I believe the story compensates for the cliché elements, but moving away from angsty backstories can only be an improvement.

@Sijo: Thank you for explaining why Sasuke wants revenge on Konoha! The volume never actually revealed what had happened with his brother. It definitely appears that there’s more to the contrast between Sasuke and Naruto than I was able to appreciate from a single volume.

Gin Tama is obviously a low-brow humor comic, which is actually an appealing to some people. To each his own.

Waqwaq actually sounds pretty typical to me- unusual premise, “mistakenly chosen” protagonist, cute kid heroes. But many mangas start like that. Could go in any direction.

Naruto’s problem is not that it’s hard to understand, it’s that it’s been going on too long (and the individual chapters are frustratingly short.) Still I think it is pretty good. The one big problem I have is with Sasuke’s revenge obsession. First he hated his brother for killing everyone in his villageexcept him, now he feels sorry for him because his brother was forced by the Konoha elders to kill his clan, so that now he wants to destroy the village that raised him and where his friends live? I think this is intentional- as mentioned above, Naruto has actually grown up as a person, while Sasuke, the once more mature kid, is now a fanatic. It’s still annoying, tho. And I just can’t feel sorry for Itachi when he killed even the children of his clan just because the adults were planning on revolting.

1) In earlier volumes, Sorachi was basically drawing a straight shonen comic, and then having viciously hilarious things coming out of the characters’ utterly straight faces. Not at all what I was expecting from something that looked to just be “Rurouni Kenshin w/ Aliens”.

2) The story engines (aliens, odd jobs, and the political powderkeg that is Edo), basically allow Sorachi to tell whatever story he wants, be it funny or (occasionally, and never oppressively) serious, without a huge amount of limits on what makes sense in the context of the world. Opening it up to sci-fi also opens up the stories to take pokes at the whole of pop culture, starting with the deeply rooted themes of shonen comics themselves.

3) It’s the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” of shonen comics, basically. Mean, funny, and based largely on characters getting into situations and doing the worst thing possible in them. I honestly have no idea how it ever got picked up in Jump, but that just makes it even funnier.

Honestly, Gin Tama’s probably my favorite Japanese comic not by Urasawa or Taiyo Matsumoto that I’ve run into in the past few years, but it’s probably not for everyone.

And I still have no interest in Naruto.