Eshi and I have been talking recently about something that we have dubbed "the shonen problem". For those of you who do not know, shonen is a brand of manga/anime that focuses on audiences of boys in their early teens and up. Some of the most popular anime falls into this classification: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and the like. Now, "the shonen problem" doesn't necessarily only happen in shonen, but is something that is very apparent in them. Basically it is a problem that centers on escalation. Basically the story lines always follow this rough pattern with very minimal changes: hero fights bad guy, bad guy beats hero, hero trains to become more powerful, good guy fights the bad guy and wins. This, as a generic story arc, isn't terrible. The problem arises when this pattern is continued ad nauseam.
Every new villain has to be more powerful, every new case has to be more dramatic and convoluted, every new disease has to be more obscure or obfuscated, otherwise the difficulty of manufacturing a satisfying climax is likely to outstrip the skill of the writers. Its way easier to write the same essential story over and over, changing faces and increasing disparities, than to inject novel character development. This means that the longer a series runs the more outlandish this escalation gets to the point where the audience can't help but become desensitized. Dragon Ball Z was 291 episodes of people getting more and more powerful in a way that shows that all of their previous training wasn't good enough. This is a problem that happens when you try to extend the length of a series artificially. A good story will have a message or point, but this type of "development" removes from that message in favor of perpetuating a brand.
Character death is the most poignant version of this. Character death ought to be terminal for a storyline, even if it isn't permanent for the character. Death is something that needs to carry a lot of emotional weight, when you take that weight away from a character to justify continuing a story you diminish the character, the story, and what death means. The main character from DBZ, Goku, sacrifices himself on multiple occasions to save the universe and defeat the bad guy, but each and every time is resurrected. This removes the value behind the sacrifice. The impact of a main character who dies is huge, something that people shouldn't see coming, and all of that impact goes away if you bring that hero back. If you know that you will come back to life when you die there is no reason to not sacrifice yourself and the sacrifice is less a price one must pay and more a minor inconvenience.
American comics do this too, there is no end to escalation in story lines for most Marvel and DC comics. Superman is the worst offender in my opinion, and not just because he has been around since the 1930s but because of a trend he started in American comics. Superman getting resurrected was great for the writers in terms of continuing what is essentially a brand name, but it removed the value from his death at the hands of Doomsday. Superman is essentially a deity in the DC universe, and the death of someone who held that much sway would have changed the way comics where written if it wasn't for the cop out, which changed the way comics are written as well, just in a much worse direction. It was both lazy and manipulative and set up a precedent for other writers to follow. Comic writers didn't need to make up a new character to replace the dead hero after their emotionally charged death nor write any story lines which dealt with the long term effect of a dead superhero on their friends, family, or civilians who relied on the protection of the hero.
Really this is a problem that happens with non-episodic series in general. The X Files started strong from a creative standpoint, but the less episodic it became the more it grew to rely on threat escalation and left-field "plot twists". Movies, TV, comics, and anime are all industries that have multiple goals, one of which seems to be disproportionately prioritized above artistic integrity: profit. I have talked about this in similar terms before, but I just keep seeing how pervasive this problem really is in popular culture and it always depresses me. These things are modern myths, and as Eshi, and countless others, have pointed out, myths are how we establish social values; trading out the core of our cultural values in order to pander to consumerism is pretty fucking disappointing.
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