"The basics of shonen manga are smiles and a happy ending," said Nobuhiro Watsuki, the creator of
Rurouni Kenshin. To this I would add, "and terrible suffering." Japanese
shonen (boys') manga permits violence way beyond anything found in American comics or animation, and seinen (adult) manga is even more explicit.
My mother used to complain that whenever my brother and I watched
Ultraman in the '80s, after the show ended, we would instantly jump on each other and fight for hours. But concerned parents, never fear—while violence in some manga (including those in this article) is purely for ick factor, violence in
shonen manga (and more action-oriented girls' manga, such as the works of Yuu Watase) generally serves an emotional and story purpose. People talking out their problems makes for slow comics; people fighting out their problems (often in a fairly ritualistic fashion, like the swordfights in
Revolutionary Girl Utena and
Hayate x Blade) is exciting.
Fights equal friendship, challenge, sacrifice. In Gerard Jones' book on media violence,
Killing Monsters, he recounts a meeting with a superhero fangirl at a comic convention when Jones was a young comics writer. Jones asked her what parts of the stories she liked the most (paraphrase: "The talking scenes, the relationship stuff, right?"). "No! I like the fight scenes!" she replied. "That's when you can really see how much the characters care about one another!"
Strangely enough, the people who take the most abuse in
shonen manga are the heroes. Sure, there are hapless victims whose role is to show how bad the bad guys are, and there are often nasty fates for the bad guys, such as the infamous head-exploding scenes in
Fist of the North Star. But unlike the villains, who are usually out of the picture once they're defeated, the heroes must be injured, recover from their injuries, and keep going.
It sounds sadomasochistic, but perhaps it's healthier, in a way, than the Western model in which a hero's worth is determined more by victory itself than by the hardship they endure in the process. Even Osamu Tezuka's heroic doctor
Black Jack, the glowing example of a (more or less) pacifistic manga character, had to operate on himself in a tent in the Australian Outback while being attacked by hungry dingoes.
Here are the rules of violence in
shonen manga:
(1) The Human Body Contains an Infinite Supply of Blood. In real life, the human body contains about 5 liters (1.3 gallons) of blood), but in manga, blood loss is like sweat and tears: it's dramatic but harmless. The characters bleed all over the scenery in children's manga like
Zatch Bell and
One Piece, but they're always fine afterwards.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has perhaps the most stylized blood imaginable, often drawn
standing out of the body, sticking like spikes suspended in midair. It's clear that this bloodiness is a side effect of manga being in black and white; it would be much more gruesome if it were in color. In fact, the TV anime adaptation of
Fist of the North Star aired in Japan with white "blood" in order to downplay the show's ridiculous violence.
(2) Coughing up Blood is Like Sneezing. In reality, hemoptysis (spitting up blood) is a sign of a lung or gastrointestinal condition, a rib puncturing your lung, or another serious injury which requires immediate medical attention. In manga, on the other hand, it's harmless. This willingness to show spurting blood extends even to comedy, such as the classic nosebleed used as a sign of sexual arousal. Maybe coughing up blood is a sign of some other emotion, like running out of ideas as a result of drawing manga constantly.
(3) Internal Organs Will Dodge Out of Harm's Way. A spear, bullet or tree trunk piercing a hero's torso never causes any lasting damage.
(4) Heroes Are Also Immune to Crushing Damage. The heroes are made of a harder substance than anything else in the universe, so nothing can break their bones. Manga are basically cartoons, so the laws of physics which let
One Piece characters avoid hemorrhages and concussions are not so different from the laws of physics in, say,
Tom and Jerry. The only difference is that there's more blood (see #1) and that, rather than laughing at the poor cats getting beaten up, we're encouraged to sympathize with them.
(5) If There's a Tiny Shred of Flesh Attached, It's Not Severed. Maybe I could have put this less disgustingly? But that wouldn't be in the spirit of manga that show heroes' nearly-severed limbs dangling on thin cords of flesh, and then they're fine a few panels later. Since stabbing and crushing them won't work, chopping things off is really the only permanent way to injure manga characters. But watch out for artists sneakily reattaching limbs a few pages later! In
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, the heroine uses her thread powers to reattach her arm in a tourniquet after it is blasted off by a micrometeorite. But you really don't need any excuse; in the same manga, the flamboyant-haired Polnareff
loses a bunch of fingers and toes, not to mention
his entire thigh muscle, to the Sphere of Annihilation-like powers of the evil Vanilla Ice (yes, that's the villain's name), only for the missing bodyparts to sort of sneak back onto his person.
(6) If Hurting the Villain Isn't The Solution, Hurting Yourself Is. Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac), the Greco-Roman-themed fantasy fighting manga. One of our heroes, Dragon Shiryu, is facing off against Perseus Algol, who has the Medusa power to turn people into stone. To protect himself, Shiryu pokes his own eyes out! Luckily, they too grow back later. Since
Saint Seiya also features heroes coming back to life (like in
Dragon Ball), a few missing eyes are no problem. In a scene in
City Hunter, the badass gunman Ryo confronts a bad guy in a crowd of people. "How are you going to shoot me? The bullet will go right through me and hit an innocent bystander!" the villain sneers. Ryo calmly places his hand over the gun barrel, blowing a hole in his own hand and slowing down the bullet enough for it to lodge safely in the villains body! Less masochistically, a wimpy character who can't possibly beat the bad guys, like Manta in
Shaman King, can still show his worth by enduring a serious beatdown until the bad guys get freaked out by his sheer endurance ("What is this kid made of?").
(7) If All Else Fails, There's Always Regeneration. Just as robot characters are a great way to show people getting dismembered (think Robotman in
Doom Patrol), characters with healing powers are a great excuse to show zipless gore. In
Bastard!! the hero is reduced to a limbless torso, and later to a severed head, but thanks to his magic it all grows back. (He's most sad about losing his penis.) In
Fullmetal Alchemist the evil Homunculi, alchemical creations who can regenerate any sort of damage, are repeatedly burned, impaled, shot up, and otherwise mutilated.
"In the West, honor is just a word. But in Japan, you can see our honor, because it's in our guts," Yukio Mishima once said, explaining the practice of
seppuku. Another relevant quote, regarding manga artists and human anatomy, is "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." In
Grappler Baki, Baki fights the "cord cutter," an enemy whose strategy is to reach into his opponents' bodies, pull out their nerves, and snap them. Ultraviolence fan Daryl Surat (
http://animeworldorder.blogspot.com/) who helpfully provided these images, pointed out that the cord cutter is apparently cutting a nerve in Baki's neck, yet the effect in the manga is to make Baki go temporarily blind—does the optic nerve run out the eye, down the neck, and then back into the brain? Really?
And remember, this is a comic for 14-year-olds. In a
real adult manga, like the infamous
Riki-Oh ("Strength King" or "Violence King"), things are much more explicit. When
Riki-Oh's tendons are slashed by a knife, he reaches into his body, grabs his own tendons and
heals the damage by tying them together! The defeated villain slits his belly and commits seppuku—only to make one last attempt to take down Riki-Oh by strangling him with his own intestines! That guy dies, but how Riki-Oh survives is anyone's question. Personally, I think my long years of D&D playing have provided the only explanation for the miraculous powers of manga characters to resist damage: they just have lots of hit points.
Jason Thompson is one of the best-known manga critics in the US. He currently writes for Otaku USA and is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide. His website is www.mockman.com.
Manga Salad is © Jason Thompson, 2009
My mother used to complain that whenever my brother and I watched Ultraman in the '80s, after the show ended, we would instantly jump on each other and fight for hours. But concerned parents, never fear—while violence in some manga (including those in this article) is purely for ick factor, violence in shonen manga (and more action-oriented girls' manga, such as the works of Yuu Watase) generally serves an emotional and story purpose. People talking out their problems makes for slow comics; people fighting out their problems (often in a fairly ritualistic fashion, like the swordfights in Revolutionary Girl Utena and Hayate x Blade) is exciting. 
(1) The Human Body Contains an Infinite Supply of Blood. In real life, the human body contains about 5 liters (1.3 gallons) of blood), but in manga, blood loss is like sweat and tears: it's dramatic but harmless. The characters bleed all over the scenery in children's manga like Zatch Bell and One Piece, but they're always fine afterwards. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has perhaps the most stylized blood imaginable, often drawn standing out of the body, sticking like spikes suspended in midair. It's clear that this bloodiness is a side effect of manga being in black and white; it would be much more gruesome if it were in color. In fact, the TV anime adaptation of Fist of the North Star aired in Japan with white "blood" in order to downplay the show's ridiculous violence.
(4) Heroes Are Also Immune to Crushing Damage. The heroes are made of a harder substance than anything else in the universe, so nothing can break their bones. Manga are basically cartoons, so the laws of physics which let One Piece characters avoid hemorrhages and concussions are not so different from the laws of physics in, say, Tom and Jerry. The only difference is that there's more blood (see #1) and that, rather than laughing at the poor cats getting beaten up, we're encouraged to sympathize with them.
(7) If All Else Fails, There's Always Regeneration. Just as robot characters are a great way to show people getting dismembered (think Robotman in Doom Patrol), characters with healing powers are a great excuse to show zipless gore. In Bastard!! the hero is reduced to a limbless torso, and later to a severed head, but thanks to his magic it all grows back. (He's most sad about losing his penis.) In Fullmetal Alchemist the evil Homunculi, alchemical creations who can regenerate any sort of damage, are repeatedly burned, impaled, shot up, and otherwise mutilated.
And remember, this is a comic for 14-year-olds. In a real adult manga, like the infamous Riki-Oh ("Strength King" or "Violence King"), things are much more explicit. When Riki-Oh's tendons are slashed by a knife, he reaches into his body, grabs his own tendons and heals the damage by tying them together! The defeated villain slits his belly and commits seppuku—only to make one last attempt to take down Riki-Oh by strangling him with his own intestines! That guy dies, but how Riki-Oh survives is anyone's question. Personally, I think my long years of D&D playing have provided the only explanation for the miraculous powers of manga characters to resist damage: they just have lots of hit points.
