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So I just read [The Promised
Neverland](http://myanimelist.net/manga/100128/Yakusoku_no_Neverland) and the
goriness is kinda jarring for me (and it's in Weekly Shonen Jump). It's a not
alone there, actually. HxH has its own share of goriness. Shingeki no Kyojin
is also formally a shonen title even though I personally treat it as a seinen.
And there are other similar titles too many to mention here.

So what's the matter with the Japanese audience? Do they tolerate such level
of violence (even though it's only fictional) especially for the kids? Isn't
it kinda messed up to prematurely expose them to such vulgar things?


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question
manga-history shonen-jump
Why is shonen manga's goriness these days abundant?


I haven't seen firsthand proof that shounen manga are getting more violent,
but let's say it's true. It does happen; popular media seem to follow weird
cycles where the average level of violence rises steadily for a while, until
you get to peak violence, and then there's a violence recession and things
calm down for a while. In American film, the major peak was in the 1960s-1980s
with movies like [_Night of the Living
Dead_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead#Controversy) and
[_Cannibal
Holocaust_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibal_Holocaust#Controversy). In
anime, peak violence was achieved in the 1970s and 1980s with titles like [_MD
Geist_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD_Geist), [_Violence
Jack_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Jack), [_Wicked
City_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_City_\(1987_film\)), and
[_Urotsukidouji_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urotsukid%C5%8Dji). It's
entirely possible that anime is headed for another violence apex. It does seem
like Western media might be heading that way too; the most popular Western
works are violent stories like _Game of Thrones_ and _Breaking Bad_.

These violence apexes have complex cultural and production causes at their
roots. For instance, OVAs were an extremely common format for anime in the
1980s. Since OVAs are direct to video, they catch a lot less heat from censors
than stuff that broadcasts on TV where anyone can see it, and it's probably no
coincidence that many of the extremely violent anime of the 1980s were OVAs.
In the West, cable TV and streaming have made it easier to get violent shows
out there.

You could write whole books about the cultural side of this (and I'm sure
someone has), but I lack the expertise to go into it too deeply. But there are
a few social trends that seem to correlate with increasing violence in popular
media:

  * Widespread societal cynicism. This was true of America after 9/11; _Saw_ came out in 2003, and _Hostel_ came out in 2005. This was also true of America in the later years of the Cold War; _Cannibal Holocaust_ came out in 1980.
  * Widespread influence of militaristic groups. This was also true of America after 9/11, and in the 1970s and 1980s. In modern Japan, there [has been a rising trend towards militarism](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/23/the-rise-of-japanese-militarism/); you can see the effect of this in anime like _GATE_ , which glorifies the JSDF. The JSDF even [tried to use moe as a recruiting tool](https://news.vice.com/article/the-japanese-military-is-getting-offensively-cute) in the same way that [the US military uses first-person shooters](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-02-02-the-military-recruitment-of-gamers).
  * Fear of military, cultural, or economic invasion by enemies. True of America in the late Cold War and after 9/11, and also true of modern Japan, which [fears the rise of China](http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/japan-fears-chinas-growing-power-here-what-do-about-it-12735) as an economic and military power.

So it does seem plausible to me that newer shounen manga is more violent than
older material. But let's keep in mind that older shounen manga isn't
necessarily as clean and wholesome as we remember. I haven't read _The
Promised Wonderland_ or _Hunter x Hunter_ , but even the older stuff that I
have read got pretty violent at times. _Yu Yu Hakusho_ in particular had some
pretty graphic sequences (and it's probably no coincidence that _Hunter x
Hunter_ is also violent, since they share an author). _Rurouni Kenshin_
started out bloodless but got pretty graphic towards the middle of the Kyouto
arc. _Naruto_ and _One Piece_ both have their moments. Even _Dragon Ball Z_
featured Frieza getting cut straight in half during his final battle with
Goku. I recall some fairly bloody scenes from what little I read of _Saint
Seiya_. Even _Yugioh_ , which definitely aims for the younger side of the 8-18
age group, had some scenes that were at least brutal if not actually gory. For
that matter, shoujo has also historically been pretty violent— _X_ and _Ayashi
no Ceres_ are hardly sugar, spice, and everything nice.

As to the last point, the audience for shounen manga is not uniformly young
children. The most common audience is [boys from eight to eighteen years
old](https://www.jappleng.com/culture/articles/anime-manga/155/shounen-genre),
though shounen manga is also often enjoyed by men, and women and girls as
well. But even if we restrict ourselves to ages 8 to 18, it's not that
shocking for boys ages 15 to 18 to be watching or reading extremely violent
material. In the US, movies rated R are recommended for people 17 and older,
but growing up, I didn't know a single person who waited until 17 to see an
R-rated movie. I saw violent R-rated movies like _Blade Runner_ and _Aliens_
when I was 9 and 10. I've known kids who saw gore porn garbage like
[_Saw_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_\(franchise\)) and
[_Hostel_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel_\(2005_film\)) when they were
7 and 8 years old. I found that excessively young for such violent material,
but I don't find anything particularly shocking about a fourteen-year-old
potentially reading or watching _Attack on Titan_ , at least as far as the
violence is concerned. Also, keep in mind that _Attack on Titan_ is a bit of
an anomaly: Isayama pitched it to _Shounen Jump_ , who passed on it because
they felt it was too mature. It was snapped up by _Shounen Magazine_.
Anecdotally, I've always found that _Shounen Magazine_ manga of all genres
have more sophisticated writing than _Shounen Jump_ manga, so they probably
lean to an older audience anyway.


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