Originally Posted by
Powertool
I don't understand the first part of your reply. I was talking about the distinction between Shonen, a demographic (boys between 8 and 18), and Battle Shonen, the genre I suppose people in this thread have been referring to. Battle Shonen has been existing in the currently recognizable form since the Eighties and Kenshiro is to the Battle Shonen MC what Superman is to all superheroes. That's all.
Anyway, I'm more than a little perplexed about the supposed "similarities" you list. In fact, the only thing that strikes me while reading those sequences of concepts one after another is how DISSIMILAR the two lists are at any level which is not the most superficial. In fact, some of them are exposed in a way which could easily be used by somebody presenting a completely opposite argument: that Jon Kent is the anti-Battle Shone MC.
The most glaring one is the equivalence of being the host of the Nine Tails with the power set of Superman, which I really hope I don't need to refute in this seat, since anyone who tries to draw equivalences between the effects of having a self-conscious demonic entity which devastated your hometown inhabiting your body and the laughable trifles Jon went through while trying to master his own powers could be interpreted as a sign of bad faith. The amount of sympathy we feel for a kid who is presented from chapter 1 as having been treated as a pariah for all of his childhood while having nobody at his side and a kid who has been living an uneventful, comfortable life in the countryside surrounded by the love and affection of his parents is just... not even in the same order of magnitude.
This
And about both of them finding purpose... no. Just no. Jon goes around with a S-shield on his chest, a mark of freaking superhero royalty in the DC Universe. His purpose is to honor the Superman legacy? Well, duh! A pariah deciding that his destiny is to become village leader so that everyone can see how wrong they were about him and an 11-year-old who always lived a life free of want also finding out that he's the mightiest kid in the world while a radiant mother proudly asserts that he had always been 'her Superboy'... absolutely the same thing, how could anybody not see that? I'm sure that millions of adolescents and pre-adolescents who watched or read Naruto will find both stories equally uplifting and inspiring. Setting a seemingly unachievable target and going balls to the wall to beat the odds and achieve it VS being handed everybody on a silver platter and going with the most obvious route forward. Same thing, really.
And keep in mind that 99% of what spelt the success of the Battle Shonen formula is condensed in the image of a proactive teenager taking the situation in his hands and showing to the world that he can make the impossible possible. All of this is simply absent in Jon's story, who is the prototype of the PASSIVE hero. He keeps meeting people who have expectations of him and it's those expectations which drive his actions. And by the way, I feel that any Battle Shonen protagonist worth his salt would have found a way out of that volcano on anti-matter Earth ages before Jon did, even those from Battle Shonens focused on cooking or high fashion.
The only thing I admit Jon and Naruto have in common is that they both seemingly gravitate towards annoying b*tches, respectively Demian and Sasuke, way more than it would be healthy for them. Of course I'm biased, since I've been a detractor of Demian Wayne since day one and the Supersons concept is pure, concentrated boredom and death of creativity for me. But hey, I recognize that I'm in the minority on this particular issue, at least among the comic-reading fandom.