Szwagier
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Road to Cliche
16 NOV
2009
Some time ago I've written in my High School debut review, that it's original partially due to strong female lead. I've read a bit more shoujo manga since then, and read some reviews of the said genre and it made me think - is the strong female lead in shoujo manga really such an uncommon concept? I know there are many mangas with weak and annoying girl playing the role of main heroine, but lately the reverse scenario has been equally, if not more popular. So what at first was an alternative to overused pattern, already become just another pattern. And that made me ask myself a question - at what point does original becomes overused cliche?
For example - at first shounen heroes sticked to the "power of the light side". Than came Naruto and later Bleach, with heroes having some sort of demon inside, and using it's power to fight. That was a novelty, a fresh, interesting idea. Nowadays power that comes from the evil source and can go berserk any-time is a common concept. Kekkaishi, Soul Eater, Busou Renkin... Does it mean that it's taken over the cliche position from "pure breed" concept? Or both of them are overused now, and in order to be original you need to think of a third way?
I came to a conclusion, that it's not as much the matter of how often the concept is used, rather than how popular are the titles in which it's used. Naruto and Bleach are insanely popular, so the concept of "using power of a demon to fight" got already attached to them as sort of a trademark. Every time a title that uses similar idea appears it gets compared to the "giants", and labeled as cliche. On the other hand strong female lead in shoujo didn't have such a strong representative, so it seemed fresh (unless of course you read a lot). Considering the popularity of Skip Beat, the situation might change, and now every girl that isn't weak and indecisive will be compared to Kyoko.
Those are some interesting points. (Oh, hi I just came across this blog by coincidence.) I respect your views, but I don't think it works exactly like that.
If you were to create a manga, you'd most probably try to create a protagonist you could empathize with, right? Next is a tiny tad of fantasy and your manga's done!
So if you're weak, your protagonist would probably be weak too. However if you secretly dream of having dormant evil powers, why not insert that into the manga. It could be that your just weak, but dream of being 'plain' strong, resulting in your main character being strong without needing demonic powers.
My guess is that alot of people fantasize about the same things and therefore empathize with the same things. Thus resulting in the mass production of characters with the same characteristics and tons of fans who can empathize. Of course success and popularity is important, but I think it is unintendedly achieved by empathy and similar fantasies. I don't think that mangaka hold on to formulas for success.