If I was to ask you about your favorite team in Shonen, what team would that be?
Talking about protagonist teams, since villain teams are an amazing thing of their own.
If I was to choose I had to pick between the main team in Hunter or the main members of
Passione in Vento Aureo.
Though JoJo is a Shonen and seinen hybrid, so in terms of pure Shonen I’d give it to
Hunter.
I never understood why I liked them so much, but I related it to their character.
Yet, that wasn’t what pulled me to it.
Let’s take three teams and look at the form.
We’re going to have the Hunter team, the dragon team, and the Stardust Crusaders.
Well now, what do these groups have in common, but what they have in common makes them so
different from each other.
The Hunter group consists of 4 members that all come from different backgrounds, and separate
when its time to achieve their goals.
The Dragon team consisted of those wanting to try their hand at the world, or become
the strongest fighter ever.
Now all of them follow behind Goku and help with saving the earth and universe.
The Stardust Crusaders is a team created to stop one common enemy, once that is done,
they split up until someone in the group needs some help from the other members.
What do these groups have in common?
And how is that common thing different in all groups?
Is it the characters and their positioning in the group?
You know, there must be a leader, the comic relief, the muscle, and the brains?
No, because you can have a good amount of characters in a team that share personalities,
so there wouldn’t be a definitive role in some cases.
Is it because they’re all on a fight against evil, but the evil differs?
No, but that can connect.
Notice what I mentioned when talking about the groups.
How the group was created is one thing, but the end goal of each character is what makes
a team, a team.
Taking the Hunter group for example.
I believe that this is one of the most relatable teams when it comes to how it works.
This isn’t the first time that Yoshihiro Togashi had done this either.
If you have a group of friends, are you all going to work on your goals together, or will
you take some time to work on your own things.
I love my group of friends, but when it comes to work, we all have to take our time to work,
or else it won’t get done.
Like in Leorio’s case, he wants to become a doctor, but he’s not going to have Gon
sitting in class with him since that’s not Gon’s goal.
I’m not going to grab my friends and make them sit in the sand while I practice my water
bending.
I also don’t want to make them jealous of my immense strength and water bending skills.
As a team, you want to identify everyone’s goals.
Once everyone is well adjusted with everyone, they can do what they can until it gets to
a point where a member must leave the group temporarily.
It’s a great thing to achieve your goals, but helping your friends achieve theirs is
a feeling on its own.
Adding on the that, imagine what it looks like when all the members in your group are
successful in everything they wanted to do.
The only thing left is to enjoy the time with your friends.
But, what do you do when all of you share the same goal.
It’s possible for everyone to achieve the same goal, that makes the journey all the
better, but when the goal is position, what do you do?
Say that you want to be the strongest there is, when it comes to the Dragon Ball franchise,
it’s a difficult thing.
When you think that Goku is the strongest, there’s always a villain to come forward
that shows a gap between the two, but what about when it’s only the group.
The other members of the team want to be the strongest there is, but it doesn’t work
like that anymore.
While they can be the strongest group there is, you’re going to have Goku be the strongest
in the group.
Now, of course he’s going to be, he’s the protagonist.
But, what about the goals of the other fighters.
They’re now defenders of the universe, and share a goal of protecting their home, but
their original individual goals can’t exist or ever come to be.
Not focusing this on strength, it’s focusing on that Goku is meant to be the strongest
out of all of them, and them setting their goals on that is difficult thing.
But, with them having that as a goal, it made them into stronger fighters since they all
aspire to be stronger.
The group had developed unbreakable bonds over the series and when there’s no danger
towards them, they all live a decent life with training on top of it all.
Now, what if there’s a goal between all the members, but they can all achieve that
goal.
Going into Stardust Crusaders.
The group coming together the way it did was because of Dio, and now they have a common
goal to stop him.
On the journey of stopping him, the team comes across many enemies with individual fights
of their own, and some being group based.
The group hurts when losing a member be temporarily, but if that member was to be completely removed
from the part, it would work.
By having multiple members that cover an area of strategy, ability, feeling, guidance, and
strength, the group functions as good as it can.
Removing a member can leave you open to a certain type of enemy or situation, and the
group wouldn’t want to break that synergy.
The members could’ve all went individual on their own journey of defeating Dio, but
they would probably never reach their goal.
If you’re on the path to something where you see others also coming for that, it wouldn’t
hurt to have those people.
Especially if it can benefit everyone coming on the ride.
It’s like having a study group, or a team to queue with.
You can do a lot better when everyone has something that they can cover, then you all
become a Voltron to tackle your common target.
There are multiple ways on how a group can work.
You can be a group that comes together just to hang out, but splits when it’s time to
work.
You can be a group of people striving to be something, you can be a group that’s work-only
and only comes together when it’s grind time, you can be a group that’s led one
person and only comes together when it’s time to work, or you can be a group of successful
individuals that hang out and don’t do anything serious since you’re all were you want to
be.
There are many group formats, but a group must understand goals.
If you have a group where there’s a definitive leader, you’d want members that want the
same goal as the leader.
If you don’t then that group won’t work, because it’s work at that point and not
a group made for the members.
When it comes to supporting characters, they aren’t there to be used for nothing.
Supporting characters have lives and goals too, and they’re usually shown when the
group format is done correctly.
If you’re ever to feel like a character is just there to be there and has no impact
on the group or moments in the Shonen, then it’s possible that there’s somethhoing
wrong with the character and the group.
Either that or you’re wrong, so then that means that you’d need to look over that
again.
If you guys have any thoughts, leave them in the comments, but I also want you to comment
your favorite groups in anime.
Excluding duos because I believe that those work completely different.
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Thank you so much for watching, I’ll see you guys in the next one, until then, peace
out, and god speed.