Today I had a random bit of nostalgia for Naruto Shippuden, in particular the first time Naruto uses Rasen-Shuriken. What a scene.

But beyond that I thought to myself how little we get stuff like that and how it's kinda lame that most shounen MC's just sort of pull stuff out of nowhere.

The Rasengan wasn't Naruto's original technique or anything but watching him learn it and the mechanics of how the technique functions was super interesting to me in Part I, I understand how difficult it would be to do that for every technique and how it might take away a good bit of the magic to over explain absolutely every detail of the power system.

And yet, damn it's so cool watching someone actually develop techniques, techniques that are beyond just "I'm going to punch you really hard, harderer than before even" which I think while cool is spammed WAY too much.

As I said explaining the exact mechanics of everything is a little much but the way we see Rasen-Shuriken develop adds a lot to how we understand Ninjutsu in general in Naruto and how much effort it must take to use your average technique, if I remember right it's an A class Jutsu(possibly gets bumped up once he can throw it) so it gives the audience insight in to just how much talent and power moves of a similar class take to work.

It's also awesome how many drawbacks it has initially, every time he uses it he gets damaged because it's so incredibly dangerous he needs to throw it but for a good while that's just not possible. The technique grows alongside him and we see a ton of variations throughout the series, which in other series could feel totally out of pocket but because we see how he developed Rasen-Shuriken and his gradual mastery of it we can understand how he managed to blend other elements in to it when they were available. I've seen people call that an asspull but it's totally not because of how the Rasengan works, it takes immense control over chakra to perform, if you can do that then you obviously have to be extremely skilled. The whole technique tells its own story which is really damn cool.

For me a big problem with the power systems of a lot of shounen is that most main characters seem to just make things up as they go along, which isn't always bad by any means but it sometimes feels like the author has left it open so they can just "Random bullshit go" the MC's way to success. I find it a crap ton more thrilling when I understand what the MC can do and what limits they might have.

A few examples of what I dislike(all from anime so no manga spoilers please):

1. Midoriya from MHA

Now I think One For All is genuinely a really cool power set overall but...man is it just a fantastic example of this. Half the time our first time seeing one of Midoriya's new Quirks is just when he uses them in the middle of battle and we just have to kind of accept that he can do that now even though he struggled so much with the other parts of OFA for so long. It took him freaking ages just to get Blackwhip working but then he immediately understands the mechanics of the ones he uses to boost himself(I forget their names) and we only learn about any drawbacks at that exact moment. Like in the recent season of the anime when he uses that one involving gears and something is said about his "cells needing to recover"

The hell do you mean, why are we just learning about that weakness now in one of the final big battles...? So yeah I like OFA as a power set but I really don't like the way it's explained to the audience. It feels like he can just do whatever the plot needs at a moments notice rather than a well designed set of skills.

Knowing what Quirks he has ahead of time and being able to imagine if he can combine them would make it ten times more awesome to see him actually do it.

2. Yuji from JJK

Okay calling Yuji's anime moves a power set is obviously a stretch but...it's punching...it's just punching. I kind of don't mind that in concept as lord knows a solid 90% of shounen MC's are just brawlers anyway but I'm not a huge fan of Yuji's development and how he seems kind of shit at using Curse energy for anything other than punching but rapidly becomes so good at punching with Curse energy that it's his whole thing. And then Black Flashes get introduced as a concept, something super skilled fighters can do but rarely at will, which is neat. But that's just like Yuji's entire moveset as far as the anime goes and it's just something he learns in battle.

The concept of learning through experience isn't lost on me or anything but in general I want to see more happen outside of it. We see almost nothing of Yuji actually learning how to use Curse energy he just happens to be stronger every time there's some action and it kinda just feels like he levels up after every battle rather than ever actually training his abilities, which is lame. Megumi is kind of the same but at least with him he's your smarty pants talented but-not-quite-as gifted as the MC character and you can tell he's put a lot of practice in to things.

I suppose you could argue Yuji's moves are a lot less complicated but then that just calls in to question why everyone can't just do the same.

3. Goku from Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball in general

Look, I grew up with Dragon Ball, I love the Kamehameha wave, I'm in my 30's and still regularly pretend to do it. No shame.

But the way Goku learns it and how it becomes a staple of the series is just...boring. For anyone who has forgot after so many years or doesn't know Goku watches Master Roshi perform the Kamehameha wave once and then he just does it first try and...that's it. From then until Toei is ground into dust it will be the one singular move he mains and like half the other characters will use it too even though there's a wealth of other moves out there.

The reverence it's treated with always feels out of place to me, like the characters in universe know how iconic it is, even Gohan who used to use Piccolo's moves eventually just switches to Kamehameha, which kinda feels disrespectful to his master/step-dad. I don't keep up with Super but if Piccolo is still relevant it would not shock me if he just started using Kamehameha, just because.

Given that Goku is such a battle genius and learns the move in one viewing I think it'd have been super cool to see him make a lot more techniques than he does. I know "If it ain't broke don't fix it" but it's only that way because nobody ever has a good answer for it, despite moves like the Tri-Beam being stated to be objectively more powerful. Can you imagine how broken functionally immortal characters like Buu would be if they used that instead, given that using life force isn't an issue for them? They're need a whole new layer of strategy to combat such moves beyond just "Be stronger"

Dragon Ball of course has plenty training arcs but most characters progress is just "How can I do more transformations" or "How can I combine something with Kamehameha" it's not really an interesting exploration of the power system to me, even when they add in new stuff like God Ki, it's still just powering up. Before anyone mentions Ultra Instinct, it shouldn't have taken like just under 40 years of Dragon Ball media for Goku to learn something vaguely complicated.

4. One Piece

One Piece is one of my favourite manga but the breakneck pace of the story progression makes the power progression super wonky to me(reminder the past few arcs since the time skip have taken place over just a few months), it's very much in the "Oh he can just do that now" category, though it's kind of weird because sometimes there is fairly well developed progression with certain characters and certain moves.

Zoro I think is one of the worst for it, in almost every major fight he pulls out some new move that's basically just either a stronger version of an older move or an entirely new thing he's never done before but seemingly already knew, at times it feels like he just does whatever he wants. I can give One Piece some leniency here because I think it has one of the best handled time skips in the business and it was really cool seeing what new things all the characters could do from their training over those two years...but at the same time it feels like we're still seeing them pull out new things they learned rather than seeing them actively develop skills. Funnily enough Gear Fifth is basically the perfect ability to outright ignore everything I've complained about here so it gets a pass since "Random bullshit go!" is basically it's power and that suits Luffy SO well. Everyone else has meh to nothing power development. Stuff like Sanji's Ifrit style just make me think "But what stopped you doing that before though"

Devil Fruits are a little awkward to discuss here since a mechanic of the verse is that they're largely powered by the imagination so some element of Random Bullshit Go is genuinely fair but a little more buildup would be nice.

Truthfully I can't really think of many examples I do like because at least in my experience it feels like there are hardly any that really explore this side of their power system. I want that LORE.

I guess Gon in Hunter x Hunter is a fairly decent one, there's a good build up to what he can do and given the sheer simplicity of Jajanken you don't really need to see Scissors or Paper being created to understand what's coming, a neat layer to that is how it's established that Enhancers are...kinda simple. There's a good general amount of training for just figuring out how to use Nen outside of that though. I mean it's called Exposition x Exposition often for a reason. You could argue HxH goes too far in the opposite direction but generally I like having a solid understanding of what Nen can do, Gon's big thing in the Chimera Ant arc seemed to take a lot of people off guard but I felt like I understood the ramifications right away due to all the previous exposition.

It's early days for the anime(I wrote this wayyy before S2) but I also quite like how Solo Levelling shows us Jin-Woo getting new abilities and theorizing how he could use them as well as practicing them, there's a little bit of an air of pulling crap outta nowhere to him and I know he's supposed to get incredibly broken as it goes on but yeah as far as the anime is he hasn't pulled out anything that seemed out of place or wasn't previously established in some way. Even just the fact we know he's kind of obsessed with becoming stronger and experimenting means that if we skip a few days we can understand how he has something new going on, he literally has to every single day anyway. This is what Tensei Slime could have done with, instead of just "Oh yeah here's 500 new skills Rimuru unlocked I'm not going to tell you what any of them do tho lmao"

Still in my experience Naruto's development of the Rasengan and Rasen-Shuriken are easily the best "modern" shounen has to offer, they kind of have a mix of both worlds here with Naruto figuring out how to perform the moves in training but only really perfecting them on the battlefield. It gives you a good "Son of a bitch he did it" feel versus most series where it's more "Oh he can just do that now, okay" Honestly I actually kind of hate watched Naruto as a diehard DBZ fanboy back in the day but watching him learn the Rasengan really sold it to me, watching Naruto go from a loser who could barely use Ninjutsu and had literally one move to becoming a master shinobi was always awesome...pour one out for Rock Lee not having a similar journey.