WHY is Denji 16? It makes zero sense. Shouldn’t he be in school instead of having a job? I figured he was in his early 20s.
It's literally a plot point in a later arc that Denji should be in school. And in the previous episode he can barely read Kanji. One of Fujimoto's big thematic points in Chainsawman and Firepunch IS education and how it changes a person's life.
The fact that the society in Chainsaw man had an orphaned boy and instead of placing them far away from the criminals or relocating them to a family member he ends up working for the yakuza is part of his origin story.
It's really obvious just how little Japan cares about protecting children when this shit is constant but any reference to drinking and all of a sudden it's "whoa we better make sure this kid is old enough to drink". I love anime but goddamn is the nonce shit infuriating.
normally i assume characters in shonen jump stuff are 16 because of editorial mandates from shonen jump, but denji being 16 feels right. at the bar when he announces his age everyone is visibly taken aback by how young he is. this isn't like giorno giovanna where it never comes up and the story makes more sense with an older character. denji is a child who should be in grade school, and the manga is aware of that
and i can tell you right now, the nonce stuff is on purpose creepy. or at least it was in the manga, the animes framing is a little different and a little more straightforwardly horny. even so, the actual plot is very much against the idea that it's cool and good for adults to fuck 16 year olds, unless they make some MAJOR changes for the anime
i don't think it's a hard and fast requirement, but the magazine isn't going to let anything in that they think won't be appealing to their target demographic of young boys. i wouldn't be surprised if it was self selecting to an extent. i read bakuman, a series by the team behind death note about 2 high schoolers who want to be serialized in shonen jump. though i'm sure it's not wholly accurate, all the manga they submit have protagonists who are teenagers at the oldest, and they talk about how they'll probably be more likely to get accepted that way
for a real world example, right now shonen jump is running sakamoto days, but i think that's the only thing in the physical magazine with an adult protagonist. i mean, i guess luffy is 19, but i don't think that really counts. 20 was the age of majority in japan until this year
Yeah. There are other magazines that aim their comics at different demographics and along genre- women, adults and so on, but Weekly Shonen Jump is the one that consistently sells well because it has the longest history and biggest market with the broadest appeal (girls will buy it for, say a sports story like Haikyuu!! with a lot of hot teenage anime guys in it) so it attracts the best authors which reinforces it's market dominance etc.
Capitalism breeds innovation. :deeper-sadness:
The reason we're getting more high quality stories like Demon Slayer, Jujetsu Kaisen, Spy x Family and CSM now is because of 2 things: 1) WSJ expanded into web publishing and the online format has given authors more freedom than maybe some of the more stricter print only stuff allows for- I know SpyxFamily and CSM were beneficiaries of this new format and 2) Editorial has had a change in direction and they aren't trying to chase another Big 3 endless ongoing story like One Piece or Naruto anymore- they're not afraid to just end a series even if it's doing record numbers, for example Demon Slayer ended a while back, which has done wonders for the storytelling.
yeah, i mean on some level you're not going to always have adults as heroes in childrens media. but it definitely has shifted a lot over time. in the 80s, though i'm sure there were plenty of wsj manga about high schoolers and younger, the big ones that i can remember were all about adults.
i mean, jojo's bizarre adventure starts out with jonathan and joseph, who are both 20 iirc before moving to high school protaganists with jotaro before moving back to adult protagonists with part 6 (after which he moved to a seinen magazine). dragon ball started with goku as a child, but he's 25 at the start of z, so the majority of the manga's run is about him as an adult. fist of the north star's kenshiro is like 30. so this used to be more common
![[Discussion] Chainsaw man S1E8: Gunfire](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/r6E9NiqMK8.png){kind=link}
It's literally a plot point in a later arc that Denji should be in school. And in the previous episode he can barely read Kanji. One of Fujimoto's big thematic points in Chainsawman and Firepunch IS education and how it changes a person's life.
The fact that the society in Chainsaw man had an orphaned boy and instead of placing them far away from the criminals or relocating them to a family member he ends up working for the yakuza is part of his origin story.
Yeah, he could be in COLLEGE instead.
It's really obvious just how little Japan cares about protecting children when this shit is constant but any reference to drinking and all of a sudden it's "whoa we better make sure this kid is old enough to drink". I love anime but goddamn is the nonce shit infuriating.
:epsteingelion:
normally i assume characters in shonen jump stuff are 16 because of editorial mandates from shonen jump, but denji being 16 feels right. at the bar when he announces his age everyone is visibly taken aback by how young he is. this isn't like giorno giovanna where it never comes up and the story makes more sense with an older character. denji is a child who should be in grade school, and the manga is aware of that
and i can tell you right now, the nonce stuff is on purpose creepy. or at least it was in the manga, the animes framing is a little different and a little more straightforwardly horny. even so, the actual plot is very much against the idea that it's cool and good for adults to fuck 16 year olds, unless they make some MAJOR changes for the anime
Wait does the magazine REQUIRE that protagonists be underage? That explains many things.
i don't think it's a hard and fast requirement, but the magazine isn't going to let anything in that they think won't be appealing to their target demographic of young boys. i wouldn't be surprised if it was self selecting to an extent. i read bakuman, a series by the team behind death note about 2 high schoolers who want to be serialized in shonen jump. though i'm sure it's not wholly accurate, all the manga they submit have protagonists who are teenagers at the oldest, and they talk about how they'll probably be more likely to get accepted that way
for a real world example, right now shonen jump is running sakamoto days, but i think that's the only thing in the physical magazine with an adult protagonist. i mean, i guess luffy is 19, but i don't think that really counts. 20 was the age of majority in japan until this year
Maybe the real villain is us for reading comics aimed at teens! :stuff:
Yeah. There are other magazines that aim their comics at different demographics and along genre- women, adults and so on, but Weekly Shonen Jump is the one that consistently sells well because it has the longest history and biggest market with the broadest appeal (girls will buy it for, say a sports story like Haikyuu!! with a lot of hot teenage anime guys in it) so it attracts the best authors which reinforces it's market dominance etc.
Capitalism breeds innovation. :deeper-sadness:
The reason we're getting more high quality stories like Demon Slayer, Jujetsu Kaisen, Spy x Family and CSM now is because of 2 things: 1) WSJ expanded into web publishing and the online format has given authors more freedom than maybe some of the more stricter print only stuff allows for- I know SpyxFamily and CSM were beneficiaries of this new format and 2) Editorial has had a change in direction and they aren't trying to chase another Big 3 endless ongoing story like One Piece or Naruto anymore- they're not afraid to just end a series even if it's doing record numbers, for example Demon Slayer ended a while back, which has done wonders for the storytelling.
yeah, i mean on some level you're not going to always have adults as heroes in childrens media. but it definitely has shifted a lot over time. in the 80s, though i'm sure there were plenty of wsj manga about high schoolers and younger, the big ones that i can remember were all about adults.
i mean, jojo's bizarre adventure starts out with jonathan and joseph, who are both 20 iirc before moving to high school protaganists with jotaro before moving back to adult protagonists with part 6 (after which he moved to a seinen magazine). dragon ball started with goku as a child, but he's 25 at the start of z, so the majority of the manga's run is about him as an adult. fist of the north star's kenshiro is like 30. so this used to be more common