Speaking as someone who hasn't really seen any of these shows until a few months ago, I think the big difference between something like HxH and Unicorn is that Unicorn assums I have this deep rooted and large understanding of Gundam's lore, while HxH doesn't.
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I'm fairly certain I've said so in a previous post as well.
Yeah, I definitely think Gundam assumes that. I wonder if it's not just Gundam, but I think it might be a big reason why Giant Robot shows fail in the US on TV. I think it's completely fair to assume that for a massive amount of the Japanese watching audience. But in the west...
The way One Piece acts like "EVERY BOY LOVES ROBOT!" states their thoughts and position very clearly. Basic Gundam / Real Robot knowledge is to Japan as knowing Superman and Spider-Man is to the west.
One of the reasons a friend of mine remembers Video Girl Ai was because Katsura decided he'd place his expected fandom that permeates his work.. towards Batman. It's not a localization, the mangaka just loves Batman! And that didn't take any huge knowledge of older, or even nearly ancient anime to relate to.
I never personally feel like HxH is as straightforward as many see it, though. Nen-School and training 101 seem just as esoteric and wordy to me. When put right by JoJo's as it was for weeks, I find JoJo's to be much better at crazy powers with creative possibilities. The way HxH made a habit of having extremely simple stuff explained by Smart characters in order to try to make them seem smarter than those around them, felt lacking in audience awareness to me, as well.
I feel like it's partially due to one being about politics and family heritages, and the other is just... fighting related. Gundam uses combat as an accessory to further it's crazy wordiness and character relations, and to give people reasons to like the characters riding their marketable model kits.
HxH stuff just fuels the combat, and the new cool tech of the hour. Everything branches off the eventual violent conflict... and even when it doesn't, the fight scenes are so aggressively violent as-of-late, that it still probably feels like it was worth it, when the fight eventually happens.
Yeah I get where it comes from, and it's fine if a series embraces it wholeheartedly, like Jojo.
But shounen also have a message of hard work and getting better by your own power. Destiny and fate directly contradict that, and series who try to have both undermine their own message, like Naruto. And I personally don't like it when a series introduces destiny without hinting that it had it before, like One Piece. And it's not like the concept of fighting destiny is weird in Japan.
I get the feeling they don't even see, or care about, the initial contradiction. Surely, after a while, there's an acknowledgement that the themes clash, but at first, it's introduced in a "Of course this is here! Didn't you see! He's part of a family!" way. Kinda like how otaku works put characters in multiple, incredibly uncomfortable, relationship-destroying invasions of privacy, and then act like the characters STILL can become normal friends.
Noticing an unchecked overuse of a certain element will always feel like bad writing. It shrinks ones impression of the creators ability to keep the story fresh; you begin to expect the same thing over and over. It brings down good characters, and makes ones a person dislikes even worse. Naruto has all the blocks that seems like it could make the story awesome, but there's so much misuse, even more overuse, and rampant under-utilization.
I have no pre-conceptions of MHA, but I'm hoping I feel as hype for it as I was for the whole run of WON PUNCH, MAN! I don't wanna feel like it's overhyped by months of positive post here. A big reason I got into the OPM manga was due to how much people here seemed to like the series. Hoping for MHA to make it to Toonami as predicted.