Why are Western power/magic systems so...uncreative compared to Japan? DnD is so influential in pop culture but if you look closely at its spells and whatnot, its kind basic. Especially since it doesn't even use a mana system. I've read a lot of fantasy books too like Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, Elric Saga, LOTR, some DnD novels and the magic used there are kinda uninspired. Then I watch battle shounen like Hunter x Hunter, Jujutsu Kaisen and Naruto and it amazes me how creative their powers are, some are even so complicated its confusing (Hakoware and Idle Death Gamble).
Naruto is a basic shonen but even its power system (which is pretty close to the classic mana system in Western fantasy) is creative. Bloodline powers like the Byakugan and Sharingan, Clan Jutsu like the shadow possession and the Aburame literally turning themselves into living insect nests to use insect magic. I also like how everyone in Naruto use chakra, no such thing as martials but martial-like characters such as Gai and Lee are very powerful. Then we have Hunter x Hunter which probably has the best power system in fiction. Jujutsu Kaisen is a relatively new shonen and it continues the tradition of shonen having great fights.
And you can really see just how creative Japan's power system is compared to most Western power system in their fights. I read the Drizzt's Dark Elf trilogy and the fight scenes are very basic. Most are just the same flowery text of him using his swords then maybe using telekinesis to get the drop on people with his cat. Which just isn't as good as Shikamaru's high IQ fights or Megumi Fushiguro's clever use of shadows and Ten Shadow summons.
I don't know, man. I think its because there's really no equivalent of battle shonen in the West so most fantasy books don't really care about fights and thus the power system remains rather basic. Even Tabletop RPGs. I read the Naruto 5e and I liked it even better than any edition of DnD or Pathfinder.
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Thought about creating a Hunter x Hunter and Naruto version too but I got lazy.
Nen is Togashi jacking himself off for liking RPG systems, the interplay between Nen types rarely ever comes up after Yorknew and especially the supposed intricacies of using your non-dominant Nen is just never addressed. Its basically just worldbuilding.
Chakra in Naruto is sheer bullshittium writer fiat.
Youtube anime 'analysis' and its obsession with overemphasizing "power systems" has been disastrous for the Shonen industry.
yea what this anon said. you clearly like the shonen trope of 'will is power', which of you have the will and aptitude allows you to do some crazy technique.
western fantasy usually uses a 'studying is power' approach, and crazy powers like being a living insect hive or punching someone with a bomb that eventually kills them with taxes doesn't lend itself to magic nerds collecting strange forgotten lore.
Tolkiens magic was literally singing as an act of creation, and then later creating art was a secondary way of casting magic.
Dnd intentionally has obtuse magic organized into discreet spells.
If your want shounen type shit in western media read Xmem or the avengers, which is much the same fare.
If you want an rpg that can let you do ANYTHING play GURPS or homebrew.
>If you want an rpg that can let you do ANYTHING play GURPS or homebrew.
Add heroquest, the rpg, to the pile. Keywords work well and dice rolls matter.
>Youtube anime 'analysis' and its obsession with overemphasizing "power systems" has been disastrous for the Shonen industry.
This so much. But I'm partial to fuzion-like systems.
>making fun of longstrider
have you not read the declassified CIA briefing on how ninjas "possessed a secret walk" that let them move quicker than normal people?
>yoooooooooo *gong sound* yuo summon the chichhong wa ho ha gon deez nuts speciaru cleatule type Hong Wa Pling Plong tbh
Nen is fricking stupid and the narrator talking out of his ass, so don't bother
In the case of HxH, it's not necessarily the Nen that is cool in itself but the use characters make of it.
Nerds who are into worldbuilding like to jerk off their super granular magic system with tons of rules and concepts, but in the end, if you make nothing of it, your magic system is, at best, an interesting thought experiment that just stops there, and at worst totally pointless.
Now take a super simple magic system with barely any rule or concept behind like Avatar element-bending: "I move my arms in a cool way and I move rocks / water / fire / air, that's about it', and mix it with fun martial arts choregraphy, creative ways to use their environments the characters come out with, and a well thought-out synergy with the setting overall, and boom, you get one of the most memorable magic systems ever seen.
The same goes with HxH or Jojo's.
It's the fights and the powers that make the magic system they're built on memorable, not the other way around.
The funniest thing is that HxH did this whole explanation of their power system and it descended into stand battles + power level in like an arc or two
I mean, yes and no.
You have notions that were introduced very early and have been consistently relevant and frequently brought up throughout the whole story like En and Zetsu.
Then you have notions that are introduced once and then used constantly but it would simply get extremely repetitive and artificial to bring them up all the time.
Like Ryu is the ability to allocate percents of your aura to different parts of your body, which any Nen user do constantly in any fight. Once you got the exlaination once, do you have to have every characters mention Ryu whenever they get into an exchange of punch? Not really. You just know that they're using it and that's it.
Same for Ken, which is basically "an advanced form of nen defense that everybody uses at high level". From that point you know that it's what high level characters use when they block big attacks, but it would be weird to say it all the time.
As for numerical power level, isn't it linked to the nen ability of just a single character in the whole manga, is used only during one arc and is not actually representing your "power level" but simply your quantity of aura and how much you can use before you get exhausted?
Nen power level absolutely exists, the entire netero vs Meruem fight is just netero beating up meruem for a while but unable to break through because meruems power level is too high
I don't know what you're calling power level exactly. The ability to tank physical attacks?
Because you can face a nen user that can no-sell your punches and barely get a scratch when you fire missiles at him but still beat him with a simple Manipulation nen ability that put him to sleep, or paralyze him or something.
Meruem admitted he would have been stomped by Netero if they met earlier in the arc. It wasn’t about power level but the development of his ability to analyze his opponent’s attack patterns.
Not this guy, his posts about power levels are bullshit, but Meruem never said Netero would have won earlier in this arc.
Netero hit Meruem with everything he got and the end result was a few scratches all over his body.
It basically means that Meruem could just sit and receive Netero's attacks for days and days and it still wouldn't be enough to inflict an actual injury, let alone kill him. And Netero doesn't have infinite stamina, far from it.
The difference between the fight we got and a potential Netero vs Meruem earlier in the arc is that earlier in the arc, it would have been a pure battle of attrition where Netero would have exhausted himself after hours of fight, and then Meruem would have killed him, while what we got is a Meruem who managed to outmaneuver Netero in a matter of minutes.
If Meruem had to tank hits Netero was throwing at him he would have died
You sure you read the manga bro?
Meruem took thousands and thousands of hit from Netero and that was barely enough to make him feel a small, dull pain within his body, not even a scratch on his skin.
It took Netero ultimate attack to inflict said scratches.
they explicitly talk about powerlevels and how certain people will simply be so much more powerful than others that you can't ever defeat them even at your best
That's not exactly what is said.
It's said that by fighting the humans, the Royal Guards learned that Nen is complex and that you can be defeated by opponents that appear much weaker than you, because throwing big punches and being very tanky is not enough to survive in a world as esoteric as the world of Nen.
Then you have Meruem turning into a demigod with every single stats maxed out in such an absurd way that he basically plays in a league of his own and everything the Royal Guards learned about Nen do not apply to him, he's too strong in every aspect.
Quite different from what you're saying.
>It's said that by fighting the humans, the Royal Guards learned that Nen is complex and that you can be defeated by opponents that appear much weaker than you, because throwing big punches and being very tanky is not enough to survive in a world as esoteric as the world of Nen.
This is funny because of how moronicly untrue it is. Literally none of the guards get defeated this way, and actually win their respective fights because of it.
The only one who comes even close to being defeated is Youpi, and he could've just ran away at any point. Otherwise, the only guard to actually be defeated is Pitou, who loses because... Gon completely overpowered him and threw a really big punch.
>you get one of the most memorable magic systems ever seen.
If it's the only one you've ever seen, maybe.
Bending sucks because it doesn't stay consistent sense inside the context of the show itself, and just totally falls apart after the original run. It was functionally just used to try and show character growth and animate cool fight scenes with zero meaning behind them, and is probably why there's only two solid fights in the entire series. It's barely useful in its own show, and it's totally useless in any other context or for any other medium.
>It's the fights and the powers that make the magic system they're built on memorable, not the other way around.
It's both, moron.
You need both a coherent and consistent system of rules that can actually grab the audience's attention and engage them in a way that isn't just "wow look at the flashing colors!!!", and you need fights that play with those rules and actually show what the magic does. There's a reason that almost every popular shounen made after DBZ tried to have coherent and consistent magic: Hand waving only worked on the audience once.
>a defense buff
>10 seconds of playing powered by the apocalypse
>1d10 damage + bleed
>turn based combat
>summon gmpc
Seems pretty normal to me.
Okay. First, you aren't comparing "creativity" but power levels in your images.
Secund, those are low-level spells, Archmages in DND can stop time, create pocket realities, influences weather of entire regions and truly powerful were able to pull off stuff like turn themselves into a god on the spot, like Karsus.
Third, there's plenty of interesting stuff in examples you choose. In one of the books, Elrics fights manlet with oversized head who throws grenades that spawn monsters, that Pan-Tagian wizards I forgot name of, summons army of anti-magic dinosaur people to destroy that paradise city in-between all realities, Elric regulary summons Elemental and Beast deities to save his sorry ass and one of the eastern sorcerers kept his soul in a cat.
In DND there's more obscure form of magic, like people who use Truenames to manipulate reality and can straight up erase things and beings from existence or Blood Magus prestige class in 3.5 who can straight up teleport using other people blood.
Also, Channelers in Wheel of Time can throw around retroactive fire that destroys space and time.
You either lying through your teeth or you just glanced at Western works you mentioned and you only made this thread because you are obsessed with Rapeppon media.
sorry but the descriptions of the anime a
shit sound completely autistic
I read projection sorcery and it doesn’t make any sense
>split a second into 24 segments
>plan out what you’ll do those next 24 segments
>carry out those 24 segments into “one second” which appears faster
But how does doing 1 second of action in…1 second look any faster?
it's just generic time speed-up but with a fancy name
But by its own description it technically doesn’t do anything. You break a second into fractions so you can do a second worth of action within a second
I think those 24 segments let you "fit in" more than what you would be able to do in 1/24 of a seconds.
Like "frame 1 I finish my tax declaration, frame 2 I kick the BBEG in the nards, frame 3 I finish the month old backlog of dishes, frame 4 I throw sand in the BBEG's eyes, frame 5..."
I guess, never managed to get into kaisen, I'm too old and the first episode only looked like a bad bootleg remix of Naruto and Bleach, but gayer than both combined.
To seriously answer this bait thread,
You're mostly comparing TTRPG magic to story magic. Sure, you name some stories, but that's obviously not what you're talking about, considering you mentioned LOTR. This is what JTTRPG magic looks like.
In any case, you could describe even bog standard Vancian magic in this autistic fashion but in the end it's still a guy saying a couple words to throw a fireball, because the fluff about him spending hours compressing the super-complex spell into a nearly-finished packet all fricking happened offscreen.
Western magic systems are usually made for games that have to have rules. There's a lot of thought that goes into it comparison to japanese game magic systems ( which amount to FF style FIRE I, FIRE II, ICE I, ICE II )
Japanese only has "creative" magic systems while writing because the author can just make up any limitations or permutations.
See: HxH Rubber AND Gum, Wan Piss rubberman becoming toonforce and haki bullshit
I think that if your trying to compare western power systems eastern ones, I think you should compare comics to manga and not generic fantasy to manga
This. When comparing things, it is important to compare things that are actually comparable. Also, I can't help but feel like there is a degree of cherrypicking going on here as well. It would not be very difficult for me to use Dragonball as an example of eastern media being uncreative, while propping up World of Darkness as something with a much more interesting and creative power system.
Also JJK is shit
Comics are the worst example to use. They are very very soft magic. Very little rules and pull of asspulls. Assuming you're talking about DC and Marvel.
Do you really believe this doesn't apply to manga/anime?
Mostly in Isekai. Battle shounen tend to go for hard magic system. Or medium anyway.
L M A O
name 3 shounens that have a more rigid power system than superhero comics.
>and full of asspulls
homie, I love anime but asspulls is the name of their game.
The only difference is that the character will spend half the episode doing an explanation mid-fight about how it is completely reasonable that his technique can now do completely new shit.
"Ah ah, yes normally by weebball wouldn't penetrate that shield, but actually I spend the last 3 months training into anti-shield techniques offscreen."
"Also now it has laser-guidance, come up with that last night after a seagull 360noscoped my last fries which caused two flashbacks and now I can just do it."
Or worse, some other character from the sidelines is going to do the explanation and brush it off as something everyone in-universe knew was possible.
"Why yes, that character who only ever used fire attacks can now just convert everything into water-attack against that fire-immune enemy, that how fire magic work: you flex your left toe and it turn into water, didn't you listen in magic ninja-robot-pirate school?"
This basically never happens. If you were just a shit eater that ate shit constantly and didn't know any better this post would make sense, but you literally had to make shit up that just doesn't happen.
>This basically never happens.
I just watched Jujutsu Kaisen, one of the things referenced by OP, less than 10 minutes ago while I was eating breakfast, and it happened at least three times in the span of two episodes. It is incredibly common in anime/manga. If you're not picking up on it, you might be moronic and/or autistic.
It literally never happens even once in JJK.
inb4 you mistake personal ignorance for "duhh dats an asspull!"
Really, what were the episodes in question?
Main character in the middle of a losing battle getting a random flashback that allow him to get a insane power up out of nowhere is such a staple of the genre even non-battle anime use it.
>Very little rules and pull of asspulls
Come on, dude lmao
Both X-Men and JJBA have hard magic systems, because we the viewer are able to understand the characters' powers and they are clearly defined in advance. Wolverine can regenerate, has adamantium claws, and can smell real good. The evil baby can frick with you in your dreams. The fact that they come from "X-Genes" or "Stands" has nothing to do with whether a magic system is hard or soft.
Well the reason why those power systems are cooler is because they are battle manga.. so of course they will have cooler shit compared to hairy potter
The only comparasion you can make with these are not with western fantsy vs manga it would be capeshit vs manga
Besides if you wann do uncreative.. one just has to look at all the Iskai that’s out there
This. Fundamentally different mediums that don't even operate in the same way, and aren't even trying to achieve the same goal.
"Present a cool story with exciting characters and visuals" versus "create a quasi-balanced ruleset to help facilitate collaborative storytelling gameplay that aims to simulate and evoke a fantasy adventure"
What a fricking mystery it is that these two things are not directly comparable. They're not even the same fricking genre, so comparing them on a surface level is already doomed to moronic homosexualry.
... why did you dredge out the flavour of the summer '16 shitposting?
Lets not forget the mistake of comparing an RPG system to a story. How many spell slots do you have left? An exact ammount. How much chakra does naruto have left? Always exactly as much as he needs to pull a bullshit win. Remember when kakashi was a top tier jonin doing four entire chidori a day? And chidori went blow for blow with rasengan, which just kinda threw dudes around and blew up water tanks? Then twenty chapters later everyone's stopping time and throwing moons at eachother because a story doesnt even have to commit to real numbers, let alone consistency across an entire magic system.
You are comparing two completely different genres, battle shounen and "RPG fantasy." Battle shounen is all about coming up with exciting fights between different power users, and is better compared to the superhero genre than fantasy, even if magic features heavily in a lot of battle fantasy.
Frankly it's much more creative than the fantasy genre because it requires the author to continuedly come up with ways to surprise and thrill the reader with cool fights and interesting interactions between different power sets, while fantasy, whether Western or Eastern is about reshuffling the same tired cliches in a novel way.
And before this becomes East vs West shit, there is a hell of a lot of Japanese fantasy with incredibly boring magic systems copied straight out of the Dungeon Master's manual. Just try to watch Frieren or any other isekai/rpg fantasy, it's always the same video game "I cast Fireball" garbage. A lot of them, like Goblin Slayer, just take D&D spells name and all.
Yeah but why doesn't the West have a battle shounen equivalent? Are they stupid?
Longer explanations don’t make something better, moron. A character stopping mid-fight to describe a poorly-understood eastern philosophy and how, as a result, he can break a rock with his face doesn’t make the story good. In fact, it usually just ruins the pacing. In comparison, if the story uses a simple magic system- “I cast fireball”, then it gives the author much better tools to build suspense because he doesn’t need to explain in depth why a given fight is going to be easy, moderate, or difficult for the protagonist. The spells can be used, narratively, almost like firearms, and the suspense is built around the heroes being able to use strategies which the reader can intuitively evaluate to be good or bad. In a Shounen, the suspense has to be built on the author using a character to explicitly say “wow, he is very strong”, because the powers are often so wildly different that they can’t be compared without the author giving the reader what their evaluation should be
Western equivalent is shit like Dresden Files or Brandon Sanderson
>It's a "Harry Dresden brings himself to the absolute brink of death to create a ghost that is basically just a permanently astrally projected clone of himself" episode
>It's a "Harry Dresden kills a Fae God with a small team of Faeries wielding Iron cutlery masked by an outer shell of plastic cutlery" episode
>It's a "Harry Dresden fights vampires with a super soaker full of Holy Water" episode
I have been thinking that magic systems might be more well used in rpgs to have more creative uses. Like man frick "problem solve" spells. How much fun do you think you're adding to a game by putting in "don't need to eat food" or "unlock a door" as spells, you know? Spend a slot, solve a problem.
>Then we have Hunter x Hunter which probably has the best power system in fiction
I never understood this sentiment. Nen is just a bit more specified ki/chi/chakra/life force combined with stands. The power categories are vague enough that you can pigeonhole most bullshit you can come up with (and Togashi comes up with A LOT of random bullshit) into one of them, especially because there's a category that's literally described as "all shit that doesn't fit into other categories".
I haven't watched/read HxH in a while but I'm pretty sure the whole system isn't even always internally consistent. Why does it get so much praise?
It's just jojo. It even loosely tracks the same "earlier parts are about generic ki strength, later parts are about wacky puzzle powers".
It’s never a puzzle thing, even in chimera and it’s just brute strength
>Why does it get so much praise?
Other manga are even worse.
I would say the best part of the nen system is that unlike a lot of power systems were the specific powers are god given gifts or broad techniques, nen powers are something the users themselves create and choose for themselves. And thus fundamentally gives you insight about the user and what they find useful or valuable.
Okay, so what are the best examples of this in your book?
Knuckle is a Beast Hunter that is a big softie at the core and hate hurting people, let alone animals, so his ability revolves around putting his opponents in zetsu without inflicting them actual damage, allowing him to neutralize large furious beasts without actually damaging them in his work.
Mizaistom is a cop so he developed a power that allows him to paralyze any criminal that disobey his orders during an arrest.
Gon is an innocent child at the core which is reflected in his ability being a child game he used to play and is very familiar with.
Chrollo is an empty being with no real personality of his own, so his ability is to steal others' abilities and to use them efficiently, he has to put himself in the mind of his victim and think like them, which his sociopathy makes easy. Plus, the number of difficult requirements associated with stealing an ability reflects that Chrollo has a high intellect and loves mindgames, and has designed his ability around that. On the other hand, Uvoguin is not a genius, so he kept his ability extremely simple and straightforward.
Etc. You can do that with most characters.
Throughout internet and reality, I alone am the flavor of the month...
Shitpost technique: Mid Taste
>Balefire
>Uninspired
Doesn't really track brother. I love my Holy and Graviga and Unlimited Blade Works as much as anyone else but come on.
>/tg/:traditional games
moronation aside, most of the more interesting spells in TTGs are in OSR games. Troika has a ton of wacky spells. You want a more puzzle-solvey dungeon-crawly game for unique spells to shine, because in a storytelling style campaign it'll often seem contrived that a situation for using the spell arose.
The really creative stuff comes in avant garde rpgs like Nobilis and Polaris and Burning Wheel. Any Redditor can churn out kooky unique spell ideas. Frick, an AI can do that. But the conceptual depth of TT comes in gamifying things that are more abstract than combat.
West = bad and fallen.
East = Based and trad.
True fr fr
Its an unfair comparison.
You are comparing a generic fantasy ttrpg to a story
This is like me comparing the powers of Worm or newer superheros to the average ghost horror anime.
Also western stuff is obsessed with consistency, while eastern stuff thinks plot holes are a fashion statement. Therefor you can have cooler abilities without thinking too much about them.
They're not, you just have shit taste.
Western is just old, and the subject of tradition. All those anime you mentioned have something in common; they invent a new thing.
>fundamentally frick up metaphysical concepts and noumenon
>le creative
You're just a pleb impressed by big words that have moving pictures instead of being literate and using your imagination. Its funny you'll never get it.
So his name is Nova and he can access the Nova Force through a gestalt that lives in his mind called Worldmind that is the AI remnant of an organised pangalactic "police" force. Through his access to those he has both incredible knowledge over his foes, and access to incredible gravitational powers leading him to being one of the strongest single beings in the universes.
Oh and he fricked the deadliest woman in the galaxy AND the deadliest woman in the galaxy's boytoy, who's a great general who...
How does anyone enjoy slop like this or the horseshit in the OP? it's so fricking dumb, I got secondhand embarrassment just from reading the Naruto crap
I think it's stupid and fun. Art is pretty too.
Liking it for being cheesy and taking it on those terms I get, now that I think about it. But what still seems completely alien is taking is seriously and thinking it's serious and badass like op does.
Oh yeah nah it's super cringe, my msg above was deliberately poking fun at those people, but the Nova comics (and all Annihilation, which is written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning for 40k nerds) are amazing pulp space opera that's only tangentially capeshit. And before that you have wonderful Kirby art which is always an inspiration.
There are also some actual great stories but you have to go a bit further than the most popular capeshit ofc, and they're few and far between ngl lol
The left hand stuff is for a game system
The right hand stuff is for a childrens cartoon.
This is apples and oranges. As for the question JRPGs use traditional skills and spells all the time and hell, half the time when the JRPGs do it, they even use OOC meta-terminology like "Mana, Hit Points and Spell Levels" in universe. You're just another no-game gayget.
Even in books, the magic is boring. The fight scenes are terrible, nobooks.
Dishonest. As expected from colonizers.
The conclusion to the battle with gojo was offscreen. Having wacky powers is cool insofar the use of them is cool, most Japanese authors really can’t stick a landing. There’s a reason jojo fights are always a 2v1 at most
Not sure why you would insult me then throw a compliment?
Colonials are weird.
>Western barrier spells be like: some gayass barriers to protect their virginity idk
>Domain Expansions: You bring forth your innate domain into reality, constructing a barrier and imbuing it with your own cursed technique and creating a guaranteed hit on enemies trapped inside. It is the pinnacle of Sorcery.
>infinite infinity to reality itself. Illusion of sheer willpower alone. Swirling ki-focus of concepts in manifest essence.
>Eastern writing
Everyone has a unique ability but every fight comes down to just boxing
>Western writing
Everyone has a wide toolset of abilities and techniques that must be used in tandem with each other to produce battles of thrilling variety and explosive finales (easterners tend to resolve fights off screen)
What are the works of fiction / fictional settings with the best and most thought-out magic systems?
Is the 'infinity' power just someone that does not understand Zeno's paradox? Because it feels like that is the case.
Several techniques in JJK are just neat factoids that the author didn't understand.
He admitted not knowing how power functions work.
And you DO understand those factoids? Please explain them then.
His editor had to remind him that 1 raised to no matter how high power stays 1.
>Western power magic
Creates a system backed with logic made by the race who created the modern civilization
>japanese power magic
Straight up stealing from Taoism (China) like the cultureless dogs they are
So...what I'm getting is you wanna play Mage the Ascension
>I think its because there's really no equivalent of battle shonen in the West
It is more that superhero comics stopped being battles between those with creative powers and have shifted to being more about making stories melodramatic with constant reuse of popular characters.
>I've read a lot
I doubt it
Ok. How do you mechanize that.
>left: game
>right: anime
Geez OP, I wonder why they are so different!
have a nice day homosexual
I don't really see the point of comparing DnD Spells specifically written for a game compared to random ass anime powers
Classic westoid not realising the western mythos is so deeply engrained in our society that it seems "boring" to you. Meanwhile the Chinese versiok of you is sitting and home bawwing at yet ANOTHER goddamned panda warrior that fights with chi.
Nice bait, moron.
You seem to be caught up in the superficial trappings of those abilities. In effect, they do the same things as their "plain" counterparts with just a fancy coat of paint. You care more about weird details that aren't really terribly conducive to actual play that might as well just be flavor.
If you boil them down it's still just
>magical defense field
>saying "nuh uh" to an attack
>a slicing energy disc
You're confusing lore/flavor with actual effect. If you wanted to, you could systematically and as flavorfully as you want detail how bark skin, fear, or fireball have some intricate mechanics as to how they work, and usually that's implied anyway but left vague enough so that players can flavor their version how they want.
>Infinity
what?
how would you apply this to a game viably?
seems like nonsensical jap shit to me.
Asians have higher IQ.
Western nations have a culture that celebrates ugliness and stupidity.
That’s possibly the worst explanation possible. Eastern stories emphasize being “the strongest” and having “the strongest will”, while western stories almost always emphasize clever use of what the hero has. How many anime are there where the premise is that the hero is the strongest at whatever the fighting is based on, and he wins a bunch of fights until he is faced by someone stronger, so he loses a fight, trains, then comes back and proves that he is once again the strongest? Meanwhile a common premise in western media is a character killing a stronger villain through some other means which allow him to win without necessarily exceeding the villain in strength. See LOTR/the Hobbit, Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, even fricking Die Hard. Being “the strongest” in western media is usually a red flag that the character is about to go downhill, it’s never a good thing for the character
>can't refute what they said.
>starts foaming at the mouth, ranting about harry potter and anime.
Like pottery.
>they
There's a pretty small number of stories that follow the pattern you named (The only one that's really popular is Dragon Ball), and they're meant for extremely young children. The moral they teach is that diligence will pay off, and that you have to be prepared to face hardship.
>Meanwhile a common premise in western media is a character killing a stronger villain through some other means
No. You should actually read Tolkien's literature, because he explains what the most common premise in western media actually is, the "Eucatastrophe": That when everything seems lost, a sudden and improbable turn of fate saves the day.
So essentially, Eastern Media generally says the hero has to be better (Stronger, smarter, whatever) if he wants to win.
Western Media generally says the hero will win anyways because he's just destined for it, no matter how ill-prepared or shitty his odds might be. Which explains literally all government policies and voting habits over in the west, too.
>You should actually read Tolkien's literature
why it doesn't have anything to do with the topic
also we aren't talking about shit asspulls but about how powers/abilities are used and what is focused on
>Western Media generally says the hero will win anyways because he's just destined for it, no matter how ill-prepared or shitty his odds might be. Which explains literally all government policies and voting habits over in the west, too.
homie what?
Because most mass-consumed western stories written in English come out of the soulless culture less hellhole called the USA. Americans have to fantasize about the idea of universal health care and basic human rights, do you think they have the capacity to fantasize about anything beyond that?
Eastern magic is flashy but always breaks their own rules to make them work. Gojo shouldn't be able to attack inside his own domain expansion since he isn't greater than infinity but the rules of domain expansion say the user hits automatically, this negates infinity and breaks the rules. We call this handwaving.
Illusions aren't real so using illusions to alter reality shouldn't be possible unless it isn't an illusion. Breaks its own rules.
that's is working from the notion that reality itself is already an illusion that you found in some eastern religions
The Japanese column is both tryhard and completely boring unless you're a moron
>simple and straightforward bad
unironically, i would rather have the left side over the right side because i dont want to have fist of the northstar style commentary over every new move
Schizo thread detected.
Take your meds.
>“An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity, a physicist tries to make it simple, for an idiot anything the more complicated it is the more he will admire it, if you make something so clusterfricked he can't understand it he's gonna think you're a god cause you made it so complicated nobody can understand it."
Nice B& m&.
IYKYK
>Western
I summon a cloud of magic knives
>Japanese
Erm, I summon (magicbabble) wind shuriken
Because you're an insufferable fricking weeb
>west
Illusions are ultimately not real, to make them effective the user has to be not just skilled at creating them but also know their innate limitations and be creative and convincing enough their opponents treat them as real
>East
Calls it illusions, is actually omnipotence but used by an idiot, no creativity needed
> ultimately
Well, ultimately illusions are real. otherwise they wouldnt exist. its PRACTICALLY where they dont exist, that's what separates them from normal objectively assumed reality.
The rose tinted glasses you wear definitely exist, so too does the fact that everything seems pink, but the assumption that the world objectively is pink because of that is misleading. No one would be sussptable to illusions if they didnt exist. illusions are what we call pieces of reality that lead us to make leaps of logic that might not be true.
I've never really gotten into Black Clover or Fairy Tail very much because the different types of magic the characters use seem more like superpowers, with pretty much everyone using only one type of magic with very little in the way of underlying rules. At least with My Hero Academia's Quirks they're honest about them being superpowers with their own internal logic and rules, typically involving limitations on how much the user can handle. Are there any Western systems like that, or am I missing something on this?
Even MHA is woefully inconsistent and it usually comes down to there being some kind of physical limit for dramatic tension reasons, and then with the power of *Wanting To Win Really Hard* they go beyond and somehow don't horribly maim and cripple themselves and all that time spent talking about how their bodies couldn't withstand that level of strain or constant use of their quirk was just killing time.
Lot of shounen series these days end up narrowing their characters down to what is effectively a Jojo Stand, in terms of powers, where their type of magic is a mini-ruleset unto itself, but they never go that extra step and explain why someone in Fairy Tail, for instance, can only learn one or two "types" of magic, or how magic is split up or what goes into learning magic at all. It's more like a thing that someone else just gave to that character, which fortunately happens to suit their personality perfectly, making it exactly like a Stand, but without the direct explanation that their powers are specifically a manifestation of their personalities.
What about Devil Fruits in One Piece, how do they rate in your opinion OP?
Surely there’s some Western magic systems that are worth noting. I’ve always loved the creations of Brandon Sanderson myself, like Surgebinding or Allomancy. The workings and limitations of the systems, and the overarching rules of Investiture, gives it a different vibe than most magic systems, and when something new is discovered about a system, like the new metals in Mistborn, it’s because the people in-setting were missing something, not something new getting pulled out of nowhere by the writer like some systems I could name.
Mana systems are gay. Vancian casting is the single greatest magic system to this day.
I can do that too!
Japan magic is so creatively bankrupt that it is not funny. Look at these perfect examples that encompase all of japanese magic!
>Fire - Hit with fire
>Fira - Hit with fire more
>Firaga - Hit with fire even more
>Aero - Air hit
>Aerora - Air hit but harder
>Aeroga - Even harder air hit
>Blizzard -
You get the idea already the japanese suck at all magic always and have never come up with anything original or unique if you ignore all the example that are original and unique!
That's (You)! that's how moronic you sound.
>"I can do that too!"
>>He can't actually do it
Psst, moron, you forgot the western half.
Yeah, nah. Can't be fricked to contribute an actual post in this shit thread. OP is a huge homosexual and always will be.
Your point of saying eastern fantasy CAN be just as creatively bankrupt is true but there is a severe lack of anything in western fantasy to be compared to eastern fantasy magic systems that aren't creatively bankrupt. You'd have to cherry pick to do it.
Death to the west, Japan never put blacks in all of my entertainment.
jews did, though, you shouldn't blame some vague concept of "the west" or "rich white people" when we know the names of the people responsible and they're all israeli
Jews are only as strong as their strongest golems. And they have the most powerful golems of all.
They rule the boomers and still occupy the institutions but everyone of sound mind under 40 have very opinions on the heebs. Even if they killed all white people today, they'd still be facing global pogroms for their heinous actions.
If they killed all white people today, the israelites would lose all of their power and the world would begin healing.
Bereft of white people the world would descend into an orgy of death and chaos that has never been rivaled in human history, as our charity, compassion, and dedication to an ideal of international peace are the only things preventing the genocidal wars of extermination and enslavement against weaker polities and peoples which would be the first order of business for most regimes outside of Europe. The complex technological-industrial global market society would cease to be sustainable and, lacking the need to protect against white advances in production and warfare, it's likely most states would see this as a positive improvement and willingly exacerbate stagnation and decline via obscurantist and revisionist education/propaganda. Moreover, it's likely that in a world without whites, the few people of good intention, who retain racial consciousness and a desire for prosperity and progress, will be unable to retain effective control of the dysgenic mulatto slaves who make up the bulk of the human population, as the most productive and stabilizing element of the global economy disappears and then the people who take over for them are the mystery meat 70 IQ lumpenproles which had only survived in the first place by leeching on white taxes and social services. They'll be lucky to avoid mass starvation and extinction.
I suppose if you're some Linkola-type deep green fanatic or you really hate humanity you might want that but I anticipate from your malingering tone you're a troon or darkie.
tl;dr
>they'd still be facing global pogroms for their heinous actions.
"Say increasingly nervous goyim for the 6 millionth time in 2500 years"
They get fully exposed and fully hated every other years, always have been.
Goyim are just too naive and think that roughing up a few of them and kicking the others will make them regret anything and is "enough" punishment.
Literally the only time in history were they got more than a tenth of the punishment they need to make the lesson stick was Hadrian, and even he got soft before finishing the lesson.
Jews will always survive to ruin thing for the next generations, simply because humans are too... well, humans ... to actually do what need to be done.
They won. Forever and ever, as long as humans are humans.
So the Avatar "magic" system is based or cringe
AtLA - Based. It is a combination of skill, philosophy, wisdom, and spirituality.
Korra - Cringe. It's a mutant gene that let's some people be born with super great powers for no reason and also some people are just born with freakishly strong powers that take no extra skill or effort to use, while being conceptually insane in terms of what they are actually doing, like pulling lava up from deep in the Earth.
Outside of its original use, cringe.
>outside its original use
What? No no, you could absolutely get other stories out of it that are good besides the original ATLA. It's just that when you strip it bare into generic capeshit slop with bland kick boxing and steam power you've removed everything hood about it. But a xuanhuan type show about martial arts show about a bunch of bandits (again, no later in tech level than ATLA, and preserving the mysticism surrounding bending) would still be great.
Western fantasy tends to be less focused on systems and more on telling a story, eastern fantasy and eastern fiction in general often cannot finish a story if their life depended on it but are very good at creating detailed systems within their story and having interesting moment to moment story arcs. I agree though, detailed magic systems and internal consistency are immersive and lend themselves to a good tabletop experience.
>thread so bad it got coopted by /misc/Black folk
Is OP a moronic homosexual or something? All anime magic comes across as the same shit. It’s all muscles and kung fu crap. That’s lame and gay as frick.
See, eastern alchemical traditions were -obsessed- with perfecting the self, to the point where the body became superhuman. Western alchemical traditions, in comparison, also believed in the perfection of the self, but did not aspire to do crazy martial shit—no, they wanted to uplift the soul/spirit, not the body/form.
Asians have always wanted to be superhuman, while white people were content with contacting the divine.
Gojo is also a shit character by the way. If your most powerful wizard is a bishounen twink, you’re doing it wrong. Magic has more to do with wisdom and experience. Age is revered. Humans go fricking apeshit over fricking clams that were alive/around for the civil war.
Even in history, people were trying to emulate the old bearded sages of the past constantly with pseudonyms. You see this in Japanese games like Elden Ring, with the academics all wearing stone faces of old bearded men.
I am fricking tired of cringe magic teenagers. They keep attracting moronic webtoon zoomer women, or just actual gays, because Jujutsu Kaisen is literally fujo bait.
Jujutsu Kaisen was practically made for cringe fujoshi-type women, and yet it attracts weebs(male), proving just how effeminate and homosexual the current generation of people under the age of 30 has become.
That's always been a sub-genre.
This entire fricking post. Japan often makes cool settings and cool power systems, but the execution is always awful, and the characters are always awful. I really do think the Japanese struggle with character and face. You see it in their higher quality anime, what with all the absolutely gorgeous backgrounds, and then…some plain blank faced big eyed slab of a “face”. Usually a girl.
>some plain blank faced big eyed slab of a “face”
They make up for it with the absolutely moronic hair
Yeah it's called cartooning. Bugs bunny also doesn't look like he's from watership down either. The wests obsession with hyperrealistic animation gave us the entire era summed up with the polar express.
>, they wanted to uplift the soul/spirit, not the body/form.
that is a 18th century cope popularized by Jung, during the whole medieval period and renascence alchemy was focused in creating gold from base metals, the panacea/universal medicine and the elixir of long live
nothing to do with perfecting the self or uplift the soul
Surprise surprise, no matter where they are from, the truth is that people's intentions often default to
>man I sure wish I had more money
>oh god I don't want to die
>i hate getting sick it sucks
>that is a 18th century cope popularized by Jung
No it wasn’t you fricking moron. Hermetic theory and Gnostics and other concepts like Henosis were around for a long fricking time. Cultures around the globe came to similar conclusions. It’s why Hermetics and Taoists share suspicious similarities. Same with Indian alchemy. Everyone had their own ‘philosopher’s stone’ equivalent.
Jungians everybody
Oh no, the Jungians actually know what they're talking about? The horror!
Hermeticism placed alchemy as the ‘key’ to contacting, or petitioning the divine hierarchies. You had to first perfect the self to gain an audience using theurgical rites.
Read more here for more comparisons amongst Western, Indian and Chinese alchemical traditions.
> https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2002/crabb/spirit.html
It's not that Jungian analysis of alchemy is cope, Jung is just analyzing a narrow band of "true" or "initiated" alchemists who were working with 'revealed' mystery knowledge, and setting them apart from the masses of "false" or what he considered uninitiated alchemists that were repeating pseudoscientific metallurgic experiments copied from texts falsely attributed to those "true" alchemists.
There's no doubt that some medieval alchemists were trying to attain metaphysical or spiritual enlightenment, though it is wrong to divorce that completely from the metallurgy and chemical experimentation (which Jung only does insofar as he examines symbology).
This is even more apparent when you compare Western to Eastern Alchemy, where the theological divide between material and spiritual is less absolute.
>Blah blah blah japan bad old good
You have a geriatric running your country.
>Tfw Japan's leader is almost 20 years younger than the last two we've had
Elden Ring’s magic is so good. I wonder how much involvement George had in it.
A lot of it is evidently “fire n’ blood”
It's mostly the same shit from the other Souls games.
They hated him because he told the truth
haha jung
what a funny word
>Jujutsu Kaisen
opinion disregard, shut the frick up
Comparing DnD magic to anime is pretty unfair. DnD casters are based around being able to manifest many different spells from one of a few sources (bloodline, god, knowledge, etc), so their effects are simpler, whereas anime magic systems usually focus on each character having one powerful core ability with a few different applications, with each character's power coming from the same source.
Not to mention that anime, unlike TTRPGs, don't need hard-coded rules governing their magic, so they can do much crazier shit. They're very different mediums with very different goals, so even a surface-level comparison is basically worthless.
And let's not pretend there isn't boring Jap magic (like the Dragon Quest/DnD hybrid every isekai uses) or interesting western magic (like Practitioning in Pact).
Domain Expansions are fricking cool though.
Infinity is a stupid power since spontaneous anything can bypass it
It doesn’t defend against a spontaneous a heart attack
OH NO NO NO NO JAPANBROS WE GOT TOO wienerY
Wouldn’t the table preventing the European-style sword from moving affect the results? Also, sword magic sounds pretty based. Hm…
No. It's a strength test to see which steel is stronger.
I'm surprised that Bleach doesn't have more a presence here, especially with Kido spells and those weird chants.
Bleach peaked really high but crashed really fast, so anyone who wasn't an active weeaboo during the thin slime of time were it was good won't care about/remember it.
And yeah Kido was cool but then the series turned into edgy DBZ and barely no one used it.
they have no vision, are creative as frick and in general just do the bare minimum to sell product
but part of it is also survivor bias because you wont really hear about the trashy japanese stuff while you are fully exposed to garbage in the west
The funniest thing about this thread is that you can pick any complaint that was directed at western/eastern media and it would apply to the opposing side just as much, but dumb Black folk in this thread are too caught up in dick measuring over cherrypicked examples to have an ounce of self-awareness.
The fact is that both west and east have a crapton of uncreative and bland shit and a smaller amount of actually creative and imaginative systems. Console war homosexuals need to rope themselves.
Glorantha beckons anony...
Okay, and what makes its take on magic worth checking out?
It's autistically complex. Reality is governed by Runes, these runes represent concepts like Death, Sky, Fire, Man etc. and have gods that govern them and they are also present in the world as spirits, shamans can negotiate with spirits to get their boons or use totems to channel the powers of the animal spirits, people can sacrifice and worship to the gods to get their blessings, people can perform rituals where they enter the timeless world of the gods and re-enact mythological stories and if they succeed they can ask for a number of boons, there are also sorcerers that can call on the powers of the runes directly through fetishes or tattoo magic or by dreaming. You can also manifest enlightened magic through meditation and opening your third eye.
>magic is like king fu right?
Shit like Bleach and Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen have absolutely rotted the average person’s perceptions on magic.
Look, sometimes less is more. These magic systems from japanese manga and anime are all hyper contrived and frankly Full of bullshit.
Sincerely explain to be Satoru goto Power qnd make It makes some real Sense. Its all a contrived explanation for what could be a Magic of not being able to be touched whatever.
Magic should be simple in the Sense of effect, especially when It comes to a game setting, as It must be understantable and reproduceable by ALL players who detain It.
Gay and moronic, next
Why do people pretend this is an eastern asian thing? It's just a japanese battle manga thing. Korean and Chinese power systems are transcendentally stupid and short sighted.
Do you not like the Thousand Year Red Ginseng that will cleanse your meridians and give you the perfect martial body?
>a spell that summons a sphere projectile that hurts
Western: alright, make it a ball of fire so it's cool. Besides, it would also burn and maybe explode, so it's better
Eastern: a ball that hurts? well I've hurt myself today with blades when shaving, so make it a ball of blades lmao