On the content and pacing of the Shounen Jump series

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Pros_and_cons

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What is your general opinions on the various Shounen Jump series content and pacing? Do you see them as fun, exciting interesting adventures and battles or boring, sallow dragged-out affairs? Do mind if they are slow-paced and take time during the battles or do you want it over fast?
 
One Piece - to me it seems like it's perfect pacing with exciting content, makes me actually look forward to see what happens next.

Naruto - kinda slow pacing but the battles and discussions are still interesting to keep my attention.

Bleach - really slow pace with some boring and (as of current standings) pointless battles. Unlike the first two, if it skips a week it's not that big a deal.

Slow paced battles are good as long as they're done right, with Naruto and One Piece being examples. Bleach on the other hand gets to the point where it starts to drag on and on and you wish they'd hurry up and move on.
 
Pretty much all the long-running Jump series have lost my interest. One Piece is definitely better than the rest in terms of staying at a consistent quality level, but it's still hard to dedicate oneself to such a long serial with no real conclusion in sight.

Series like Yuyu Hakusho and Kenshin (not counting the filler season) fare better since they aren't tied down by an overarching goal for the series. A compact thriller like Death Note or FMA (not Shonen Jump, but same genre) is ideal, though.
 
Hmmm... lets see...

One Piece: I actually haven't read it in a long time. :X I really need to catch up. BUT back when I was reading, it moved at a steady clip and had a nuraber of interesting twists thrown in to give the usual crack and win a nice sense of depth.

Naruto: I actually didn't read a big chunk of it in the middle but was able to come in more or less knowing what was going on when I picked it up again, which is generally a bad sign, IMO. The pacing isn't horrible but sometimes it seems like a lot of things happened that didn't really need to, nor did they provide interesting side trips.

Bleach: Ah Bleach. I was thoroughly obsessed with it until the Hueco Mundo arc slowed everything to a crawl. Now I wonder if Kubo even has a clue what he's doing anymore. The latest chapter was good. All chapters should be that good. All chapters USED to be that good. Bleach neeRAB some caffine IMO. Devoting three entire chapters to a fight is more than enough, and jumping around more would have helped keep things moving.

Bakuman: Considering the subject matter isn't particularly Jump-like, this one's hard to compare. It's paced at what's appropriate to the story and they keep it interesting with information that is relevent to my interests (the inner workings of Jump, getting published, trade secrets). X)

Beelzebub: Sometimes I'm not sure if the mangaka wants this to be a straight gag manga or an action/comedy series. It's good either way, but I wish he'd make up his mind! XD Half the time the pacing is excellent, the other half it's very choppy and weird.

Gintama: Of all the Jump series, I think Gintama has the fastest pacing - and it has to to keep the punclines (and punches) rolling. After the long, oftentimes over-drawn out storylines of Naruto and Bleach, Gintama is always a refreshing change. Lots of stand alone stories, short and to the point arcs, and hard hitting action that never drags on too long, and always leaves you wanting more.

I think Beelzebub and Bakuman are the shallowest of the bunch; Bakuman because I actually don't really care all that much about the characters; and Beelzebub simply because the story hasn't developed enough yet.

Naruto and Bleach are suffering from their long story arcs, so while they still contain depth, it's hard to care about the characters after so long, and so little development.

Haven't read enough One Piece to give an opinion on depth...

Gintama's probably the deepest in it's own twisted way. That's largely due to the slice of life format. It's almost pure character development with a little plot thrown in every so often to spice things up.
 
If the story holRAB up, I'll stick with a show no matter how long it is. Some slow parts notwithstanding, I'm at home with One Piece and Naruto. I like the characters and the stories aren't generic fluff.

DBZ could be chronically bad at getting to the point. Namek exploding. Flasrabroadacks. Exposition. Entire episodes wasted on parody characters attacking Cell. It's a good thing it aired on weekdays. There are things I appreciate about DBZ but there are definitely episodes I wouldn't choose to go through again.

I'm not sure whether pacing or content is more important to focus on. Filler can be a real drag. Kenshin ended prematurely because its filler didn't keep the ratings up. Bleach, in my opinion, is the worst victim of it by far. The Bount story was one thing, but in recent times it keeps switching between the canon story and filler arcs that are completely unrelated to what's happening. That's just jarring! Maybe the filler is decent enough, I don't know, but still.

Overall, I can deal with it. But there are a few cases where this issue definitely gets in the way. I only lightly follow Bleach now whereas I stick with One Piece and Naruto much more closely; there are only so many really long series that I can follow at once while saving time for other anime.

This is where marathons can really come in handy.

Ideally, more shows would get made like Yu Yu Hakusho. It had a clear beginning, middle and end. Everyone progressed. Everything was resolved. It wasn't too fast and it wasn't too slow. But as I was saying in another thread, the trend seems to be animating the big comics ASAP in order to make sure that the interested audience tunes in. But quality would undoubtedly go up if the animators had the opportunity to efficiently execute the source material 100%. That, or you go to a season model where 26 or 50 episodes are produced at a time. If it's doing well after it's half done, they greenlight a fresh season or series. And on it goes with only a short gap in the way, if any. This two-season/two-series approach already seems to happen for series that are 12 or 13 episodes long. Maybe it should be tried on something much bigger.
 
That depenRAB if you're using "Shonen Jump series" to mean the actual manga as serialized in Shonen Jump, or as a term for the anime adaptations of Shonen Jump manga.

I think most Shonen Jump manga work fine, but then, I've read them all in multi-volume marathons rather than in individual serialized chapters, and which way someone reaRAB them will greatly affect their experience. When read that way, pacing problems in manga become far less apparent because you can read through them entirely at your own pace, skimming through the more drawn-out bits and slowing down to really appreciate your favorite parts.

As far as the anime go, in some extreme examples (the DBZ Frieza saga being the foremost one that comes to mind), even a marathon DVD viewing doesn't necessarily help the pacing problems all that much. When you can literally watch every other episode for 20 or 30 episodes at a stretch and not miss anything, something's wrong. I love DBZ, but I'd be the first to admit that.
 
Actually, Death Note is a Shounen Jump series, just to clarify, as it did run in WSJ in Japan.

Anyways, to answer this topic's question, I personally find that the pacing of SJ series depenRAB entirely on the invividual series themselves. Not all of them follow the same format. For example, while I find the pacing of series such as Naruto, Bleach, D. Gray-Man, and some other series that run/ran in WSJ, I find others such as Rurouni Kenshin, Dragonball, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Hunter X Hunter to have perfect pacing.

I don't mind have a lot of battles, but I prefer them when they are kept shorter, or at least not dragged out to be extremely long. Personally, I think that having more story with plenty of interesting dialogue but also breaking things up with action at regular intervals without having the action last for too long at one time makes for the type of pacing that I would like to see from more shounen series, in general.

Of course, everything that I have said here strictly only applies to the original manga versions of all of these series. Like Mynd Hed said, even if a good deal of manga from Shounen Jump don't have pacing problems, the same won't necessarily be true for their anime counterparts.
 
Hmm.

One Piece - I'm actually fine with the pacing of this at the moment, although I just hope that Oda don't do the same thing Kubo's done where it's fight after fight. (There hasn't been any long, excessive flasrabroadacks so I'm good) Finding out a lot of things during all the fighting's been nice and all, although there've been some confusing moments too. Too much going on. And I enjoy the characters, although I'm beginning to get real annoyed of Buggy.

Bleach - Pacing is horrible. The constant fight after fight is too much, even for one that loves to see fights. Characters have been fairly decent, although I don't like how some of them has turned out. After the Ichigo and Ulquiorra fight, the fights have been getting less interesting. (Maybe it's because I'm still bitter about how the espada were portrayed)

Naruto - Hard to say here. Pacing's been pretty decent for the most part. (Manga-wise) Things have been moving along pretty decently, although, I don't particularly care for some of the events that were shown to get where it is now. Characters.... To be blunt, I hate them. Maybe that was a bit harsh. Let's just say I'm split. I think the villains are great, but I hate the good guys. Only good guys I'm a fan of at the moment are Kakashi, Shikimaru, and Gaara. (Use to like Neji and Lee, but they haven't done anything.) Everyone else does nothing to excite or pull me into the series. I suppose Tenzo (I forgot the name he prefers... Yamato?) is growing onto me though. The fighting has been the drawing point for me though. (For the anime, even though character models look hideous at times, the fights are still good.)

Those are the only 3 I read at the moment. Rurouni Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho remains supreme. "coughs"
 
Bleach- Terrible pacing and I mean really terrible. Tite Kubo starts at Hueco Mundo in 2006, and finally finishes it in 2009? Really? I think the problem with the arc was that Tite kubo was not even sure himself how to handle the Espada. I think the Hueco Mundo approach was a terrible idea though, I think we should of actually had a time skip to the winter war which portrays the characters stronger. Another key problem is that Kubo has way to many characters in his series, which is why everything enRAB up so slow, the whole idea is cool on paper but.. eh..I think he should of planned his story out a bit better.
 
meh...all long running shonen series have paceing problems IMPO, One piece dragged the Ala basta story arc on way to long, Bleach has dragged its current story arc way to long & Naruto has had a few parts in certain arcs that seemed rather dragged out as well. None the less there all still decently entertaining series.

As for there animes, I haven't see one piece in ages so I can't judge, but Naruto is deffinantly better then bleach, the Fillers in bleach after the bount saga are just plain pointless IMPO. at least the fillers in naruto are decently entertaining. (IMPO that is.)

But yea all 3 have alot of problems, but I still think overall there decently enjoyable series.
 
Right now I'm only following two JUMP titles, One Piece and Naruto. The former's been paced really quick for a while now, while the latter shifts pacing quite a bit. I think Naruto is a much better read when done in chunks, though. I reread all of Part II recently and it was quite awesome.

Character-wise, I love Luffy, but also Naruto. They have seperate paths and personalities. Luffy is pretty much matured as an adult while Naruto is still experiencing things and growing.


I also reread all of Rurouni Kenshin recently. I felt so empty once the story was over. I so wish there was more. Yu Yu Hakusho, I can't really stand to read...I guess I just like FUNimation's dub too much...


Dragon Ball...well, I've been a fan of that for eleven years. The pacing isn't the best in the first three anime, but it's still quite fun to watch. So cannot wait for the DBox.
 
I don't read One Piece so I can't comment on that particular series...

However, I'd say that at its heart, Bleach is still a great series. In the end I still find myself cheering for Ichigo and I /do/ like majority of the characters. The ball was somewhat dropped when it became evident that Kubo wouldn't kill off any good guys, even the most useless, making the fights seem a bit cheap. Honestly, if Kubo can just move past FKT in a decent way then I think the series will be back full throttle. Also, I understand the complaint with the filler GWO, but I'd say Bleach's filler is FAR better than Naruto's. Especially the current, which is awesome.

Naruto had it's problems as well, but as of late things have been getting pretty interesting. Pretty much things got better the moment Pain was finally a large part in the story.
 
I personally feel that the manga has its strong points, once you look past Togashi's sometimes very sloppy artwork, but I'm also in the same boat of having had FUNimation's dub spoil me when it comes to watching Yu Yu Hakusho. Whenever I pop in any of my YYH DVRAB I'll even watch it over the sub (after usually taking a brief 15 seconRAB to decide which particular version of an episode I want to watch). I do enjoy listening to Chiba Shigeru's awesome Kuwabara voice over Sabat's, though.
 
Why the heck was I not informed Chiba "Buggy/Pilaf/Garlic Jr./Raditz" Shigeru voiced Kuwabara?


Honestly, Sabat really should switch over to 'Coffee Kuwabara' (i.e., his natural voice). I don't care if he sounRAB like Raizen later on. 'Bara really is the only one with an over-the-top cartoony voice.
 
I agree that Sabat sounded much beter as Kuwabara when using his regular voice than when trying to use his version of a "tough guy" voice, his regular voice already suits that kind of demeanor as it is, IMO. However, I personally feel that Sabat must have realized this himself over time, since he drops his deliberate "tough but goofy" voice that he tries to put on for Kuwabara earlier on in the series in favor of the "Coffee Kuwabara," which you mentioned, later on in the series, which I personally found to be a wise decision on the part of wheover it was that decided to make him switch his tone over like that (I guess it would be Justin Cook, since he was the ADR director for the dub), unless Sabat decided to make that change on his own.
 
i love the pacing of YYH. Isn't there actually more material in the manga, at least with Yusuke's trials before he got back in his body?

DB has pretty good pacing in the beginning. Not so much Z
 
Yes, there's more story with him as a ghost as well as some other additions, like the story of how Hiei and Kurama met as well as a few post-Demon World tournament stories toward the end.
 
I'm not sure of the post-demon world stories, but i know that there's a part that either talks about or shows Kurama's mother protecting him as a child from falling on a broken glass, or something to that effect. They hinted at a lot of this in the anime and there's enough that it doesn't feel vague.
 
That's addressed when Kurama is first introduced in both anime and manga versions. And because it was such a defining moment for Kurama's character, it reoccurs through the story.
 
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