Series With Well-Balanced Casts (or not)

M

Master4

New member
This thread was mainly inspired by a recent review on Naruto about having a sizeable yet underused cast (mainly some of the other Teams) and this got me thinking which anime/manga series do you think have used their large casts well?

Here's some examples:

One Piece-Even though the focus is on the main Strawhat Crew, Oda has managed to make the OP cast extremely large. But what amazes me about his work is he seems to know where and when to give all his characters some form of fleshing out and development. Thanks mainly to his Chapter Cover arcs he's able to cover various dealings with other characters and he also brings a lot of characters back even if they haven't been present in the series for quite some time (Buggy, Helmeppo, Coby, etc...). Even the current arc is one huge callback to old frienRAB and foes from the earlier parts of the series while the extended Strawhat Crew is off having their own adventures.

Yu Yu Hakusho- True there are four main characters that are focused upon but starting with the Dark Tournament arc we get not only an extended supporting cast but a fleshing out of the already established characters. Even in the final arc where one of the mains is dropped (mainly because I felt his character's story had peaked in the previous arc) it continues to flesh out and finally give a back story to the remaining three.

Like the other thread give details, also feel free to express why you think certain series may have failed in this category.

O-chan
 
I agree about both of those said here.

Naruto is the worst offender in this case, as bleach only truly faults in charachters, ironically, with the ones who joined him in the beginning. Of everyone who started with Ichigo, only Uryu has managed to keep up barely with him in terms of power ups, while the SS captains have always been at that level, and seem like they don`t really "need" development as much as naruto's teams do, in that each one, save for tenten, seems like they have a backstory and charachter worth going into significantly, while they've all been forgone for the core cast + shikamaru.

Bleach's giga-cast is a slightly more poorly done version of one Piece's, in that Oda develops both the "outside" cast and the "inside cast" well, while Kubo forgoes most of the "inside cast" except for Uryu and Rukia. Chad and especially Orihime have not won many fights, and are not even close to anyone else's level. Orihime, as was mentioned in the bleach thread, may be a deconstruction of the "staff chick", but there's no reason why Chad has to lose so often.
 
I'm going to flesh out the Naruto point a bit. I think that in Part 1 the series did a pretty good job of developing the characters and making sure everyone got a bit of development throughout the story arcs. Then Part 2/Shippuden happened...

Now to me while DBZ made very similar mistakes (Yamcha, Tien, Chiatzou, Piccolo, even Gohan by the end) I felt there was always a point in the story where that character's arc was finshed or came full circle (an example being Gohan at the end of the Cell arc).

Unfortunately Naruto doesn't have this same sense of balance and things either happen too quickly or characters are just forgotten.

I felt Itachi's death was handled a little too underwhelmingly. Hinata...poor Hinata... need I say more?

I think what hurt the series was the focus on Sasuke's arc. While it is VERY important it also is the character making a lot of illogical choices with very loose reasoning. I do like Naruto's recent development but I'm worried what the end result and the fallout will be because of it.

O-chan
 
Back
Top