Shonen to me lacks in a lot, Bleach being a perfect example. I always see the constant irresponsibility of parents being treated as humorous, the treatment of certain characters tends to be horrible, especially female characters. Do you think shonen will ever advance? Or stay fairly the same? We see a few positives, but a lot of it is short lived..
Probably not any time soon unless more shounen starts being written by women. As far as I’m concerned, the simple fact of the matter is that most male writers haven’t shown an awareness of how important interpersonal relationships are to making a series work, let alone an ability to consistently write them. Male writers also seem focused on plot (”genre” works) over characterization (”literary” works). And the world remains tremendously biased against women and likely will remain as such for at least another century.
Given the relatively abysmal mainstream performance of media that has worn its position on its sleeve lately, I think the way forward is through just writing good stories rather than trying to overtly push an agenda. It’s not like the approach is new: Alien sure as hell managed it, and that came out in 1979. I think Fullmetal Alchemist did a good job of it recently. And you routinely see exactly these attributes in other works. Horimiya is published in a shounen magazine and is officially considered a “romcom shounen” but it’s like 100% a shoujo.
So, really, what apparently needs to be done is to infiltrate shounen with stealthed shoujo works, ideally written by women. Unfortunately, it is likely to be an effort that requires generations to bear fruit, no matter how skillfully it’s done.
