Otaku Helping Others! Part Six

Today's Otaku Helping Others Post is called:

Shounen Challenges: A Metaphor for the Odds

What can shounen anime teach us? You might say.

It can teach us alot of things but one thing in particular is that we can overcome the odds.

Naruto as a kid, during his ninja qualifying exams.

Yesh the characters in shounen anime have to overcome odds... But it's even more than that. The challenges in shounen anime are a metaphor for the odds we face in true to real life.

Successful people of any culture overcome odds with the same prowess, skill, effort, and raw determination that the main characters in shounen anime show in their adventures.

Being an otaku who loves to watch shounen anime, I've compiled a summarized list of qualities and events that we can and do apply in our lives to overcome the odds.

1. Training

Training can take many forms. In shounen anime it's usually a long arduous and practically impossible feat of practicing.
Example:

Master Roshi trained Goku and Krillin by having them move boulders the size of houses, trek hundreds of miles, plow fields with their hands, and find things in a forest below a cliff (which they had to climb or jump down).







In our lives we train by studying for hours on end, or lifting weights until we can't lift anymore, or making daily commutes to work, or keeping a simple routine. Though not as arduous, being able to TRAIN can make the difference between SUCCESS and FAILURE.

2. Doing an impossible feat to change a bleak situation.

Somewhere along the line our shounen heroes have to do something that is physically impossible to change a bleak situation.

Luffy climbed a very jagged vertical mountain to get his crewmate, Nami, to a doctor or she would have died. There were times when he almost fell but he kept going on the thought that they were his friends and crewmates. He was also carrying Sanji, I think. ...Carrying two people up a very jagged mountain face.





We might not carry our friends and family up jagged mountains but sometimes the challenges we face for them and to change bleak situations can be percieved to be just as hard as Luffy's.

3. Defeating enemies who are much stronger

In this picture Naruto is shown beating one of the six living corpses of Akatsuki leader, Pain. Read that sentence back to me and tell me that doesn't exemplify defeating an enemy who is much stronger. It's with this win that Naruto finally won the favor of his entire village, who used to treat him as an outcast.

You don't have to beat one of the six bodies of Pain to defeat a strong enemy. If you so much as go out, to something like work or school you are bound to encounter someone who doesn't like you or will treat you without kindness. It's knowing how to keep our head held high, (not always fighting) that can defeat these strong enemies!
And there you have it, three aspects of shounen anime, outlined to show you that YOU can overcome the odds!
And this is RPGHero, with the first Otaku Helping Others Post of 2011.