The tale of
Naruto becoming
Hokage is great, don’t get me wrong; but are you like me and wonder where the hell the other cool cats are?
Neji,
Rock Lee, Mother flipping
Choji are almost all but gone, only to make their appearances in boring fillers. This gets me thinking, why not just make a Rock Lee anime then? Why does it always seem like the side characters in most anime/manga are more interesting than the main protagonist?
I have a feeling when I ask myself this question that perhaps it has something to do with the well known phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”. This is especially true when watching long anime (mostly
Shonen Jump), because I almost feel like I’m married to the main character; an arranged marriage I had no part in.
At first it’s cool, thinking “My husband is so strong, and overcomes any problem that comes his way. Wow look at his special move, did he just go Berserk? Awesome!” But soon the puppy love dries up when more and more of the side characters are revealed. “My hubbie is cool and everything, but did you see what that Neji guy did? He just poked him a million times and the enemy just died!” And then the last nail is nailed into the coffin when the side characters begin to get their own flashbacks, fully flushing them out. “Neji has such a dark and interesting past. If only my husband suffered through that instead of enduring the brutal taunts from ninja children.”
What makes a character great? Fully fleshed out characters with likable personalities would be my best guess; but when it comes to anime that is not all. We also like interesting super powers, unusual abilities, or normal people stuck in unusual situations. I sometimes feel that mangaka are forced to make their mains a certain character archetype, so that the audience can easily relate themselves to them. Yet for side characters they don’t have to follow any of these “rules”, so they go all out.
Deep down you wished this happened instead.
Also, a main’s special move or power is well thought out before the manga is created, but later in the series when more side characters are introduced, the mangaka already has time to think about better powers and can assimilate them better into the story. For example, look at any
Shinigami Captain’s
bankai and compare it to Ichigo’s, do you see how badly he was shafted? I guess that’s why
Kubo threw in all the crazy transformations for him.
This is only a problem when side characters are forgotten from the story; but usually this isn’t as big of a deal as I made it out to be. As long as anime and manga exists, this will always be a problem. So the only way to fix it is to not make it a problem at all. Enjoy it for what it is, and not for what we want it to be. Who really wants to watch a
Kamina anime anyways?
You know, I kinda find myself agreeing with you on this one, GodLen, my friend. For some reason, I've always found the side-characters to be just as interesting as the main characters, maybe even moreso! Take Kisuke Urahara and Yoruichi Shihouin for example, both of them are major players in the saga of Bleach, and both have a deep, integrated history with the overall plot, so much so that when Kisuke got his chance to shine during the "Turn Back The Pendulum" Arc, it was probably one of the better flashbacks we could've ever had for that show! Why we didn't explore more of Yoruichi's past there is beyond me, but they did a good job with revealing what she was like back then too. On the flipside, we know so little about Rangiku's past with Gin, its kinda annoying (though I get the feeling that this little tidbit might be fixed soon enough).
On a similar note, the back story of Jiraiya and Tsunade in their younger years would've made an interesting story for Naruto as well. Sure, we see enough of Jiraiya's teen/young-adult years during the flashbacks that Pein has, but it would've been cool to see how things turned out for him, Tsunade, and Orochimaru growing up, sort of showing how much of them is mirrored by Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke's relationship in the present.
All in all, I see your point. Side characters can be a heck of a lot better than the main characters in the long run.
(Also, yeah, I may not have gotten that far into Gurren Lagann just yet, but already Kamina has started to grow one me. Such a shame he's not long for this world...)
Another factor is that the main character gets a lot more screen time and is therefore more explained and obvious. When you have a mysterious character about whom not much is known, they're almost never the main character. Examples include Hiei and Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho, Seto Kaiba and Thief King Bakura in Yu Gi Oh!, and just about every character in Baccano!. If you can write rich characters but then resist the urge to put them all front and center all the time, you create an air of novelty and adventure around them that some fans find more attractive than the ease of getting to know a main character.
But for anime as well: rarely will writers just let characters "be", just let them follow their initial set of motivations and definitions.
This is worse in long-running shonen series, because at least 26 episode series are *relatively* pre-planned, and can't be affected that much by fan feedback or whimsical writer decisions as the years go on.
Ah! Can't believe I forgot about Baccano!, how forgetfull of me!! Still, now that you mention it, FekketCantenel, Durarara!! uses similar methods as well, something I've found to be quite a charming aspect of Ryohgo Narita's work.
ND
for example no matter how I would like a show about Urahara Kisuke as the protagonist it wouldn't come. he's a support character and designed to be like that. Giving him more spotlight would obviously reveal that. Well, in the Pendulum mini-arc he was kind of like the protagonist but the emphasis on the kind of. We never had the chance to peek inside his mind, neither see his real work. with slight alterations it's possible to make Urahara more like a main character but his story wouldn't be a shonen manga...for sure.
Side characters take your story to the NEXT level. This is the difference between a Naruto and DBZ. The fact that the hero isn’t the end all and begin all of the entire series makes it feel like more of a story of a universe than a story of a singular character.
Rock Lee >>>>>Naruto. Naruto is just a whiinny ass blond bitch.