Death in Battle Shonen: Where Hunter x Hunter Succeeds and Bleach Fails

Death is a concept that we as humans struggle to understand and come to terms with. As such, plenty of forms of media try to tackle this topic and put their spin on it. 

Battle shonen tends to be more lighthearted in nature, so when they do tackle more serious topics, like death, sometimes it is hard to nail the right feeling or they don't fully commit to the idea. 

Spoilers For The Following Series

• Dragon Ball
• One Piece
• Hunter x Hunter
• Bleach
• Naruto
• Jujutsu Kaisen

Dragon Ball - Freeza Saga

When people think about Dragon Ball, they usually don't associate it with the word death, since if you have seen the series pretty much everyone gets resurrected after they die. 

However, I think many people take for granted how Dragon Ball handles death and how it gets it right compared to many other series. I think the important thing Toriyama does is establish the idea that resurrection is possible in his world. 

In the beginning, we are aware of the Dragon Balls and the power they hold, so when a character dies and they're brought back it doesn't feel cheap or like a copout, since we were told in advance this was possible. 

Krillin's death 

Looking at a specific death, let's look at Krilins death in the Freeza Saga. During Goku's fight with Freeza, Krilin ends up getting blown up by Freeza. At the time Goku and the reader know that Krilin cant get revived from the Dragon Balls on Earth and the ones on Namek don't work. So the rage Goku feels allows him to go Super Saiyan. But, through quick thinking, they can revive everyone using both the Earth and Namekian Dragon Balls

So, even though in the end Krilin gets revived, the fact that Freeza murders him right in front of Goku's eyes does not change. It's not about Krilin dying, it's about how it happened and who did it.  

Hunter X Hunter - Chimera Ant Arc

Volume 27 of Hunter x Hunter

One series that I think breaks the mold in many aspects when it comes to battle shonen is Hunter x Hunter. Unlike other series, death is treated as a finality, and yes Kite and Hisoka both come back to life, but they're exceptions that prove the rule. 

Especially when looking at the Chimera Ant arc, where death happens a lot. One of the most impactful scenes in the series is Isaac Netero's death.

Usually, when an older mentor figure dies in a battle shonen, it's used as a metaphor for passing on the torch to the new generation I.E. the main characters, like Kento Nanami in Jujutsu Kaisen or Jiraiya in Naruto. 

Instead, Yoshihiro Togashi uses Netero as an example of the pure malice humans are capable of. Netero doesn't use a superpower to kill Meruem, but a nuke he planted in his heart. A nuke that is called the poor man's rose because they are easily made and very cheap. He isn't passing a torch off, but carrying the burdens of humanity squarely on his back. 

Poor Man's Rose

One Piece - Alabasta and Marineford Arc

It's hard to not talk about One Piece when discussing battle shonen since it has been around so long. Like Dragon Ball, this series has also gotten a reputation for not having characters die. However, in this case, it's even more of an insult since, unlike Dragon Ball, there usually isn't an explanation for these characters living. 

An example of this would be in the Alabasta arc, and the character Pell. Where at the climax of the arc he sacrifices himself by carrying a bomb out of the vicinity of the royal capital. As he is carrying the bomb it explodes and both he and the sky are engulfed in the flames. 

Pell's "death" at Alubarna

This death works if it ends there, but at the end of the arc, we see that he somehow survived the explosion. Again, with Dragon Ball, there was a prebuilt mechanism to bring back characters, but in One Piece there isn't so it just feels like a slap in the face to the audience. 

However, I would be remiss to not bring up Marienford and Whitebeard. This is an interesting example where even though we properly get introduced to him in the same arc he dies, the audience still feels the impact of his death. 

We get to see what people think of him, his crew, the marines, and the citizens of the One Piece world. Especially when the narrator reads out all of the wounds he suffered during the battle and how his back is woundless, we know everything we need to know about him at his death. 

All of Whitebeard's wounds

His death is more about the greater picture of the world, whereas in other series it's more about giving the main character motivation to do something, like revenge.

 Another important thing is that since he is such an important figure in the world, we see the effect his death has on the world, that it has an impact on the story. His death causes a resurgence in the great pirate era, a power vacuum that is desperately trying to be filled, and the end of a great man's life. 

Bleach - Thousand-Year Blood War Arc

Volume 45 of Bleach

Lastly, let's take a look at Bleach and Yamamoto's death. 

Bleach is an interesting case in battle shonen where the whole premise is essentially about the afterlife and the idea of death. So it delves into this topic quite a bit. But in the case of Yamamoto's death, I feel it doesn't work how Tite Kubo intended it to do. 

In the final arc of the series, the main bad guys of the arc are the Quincy, and they decide to attack the HQ of the shinigami, the good guys. Ywach, the leader of the Quincy shows up, so the leader of the Shinigami, Yamamoto, decides to fight him. Yamamoto ends up dying in this encounter and this leaves the shinigami severely at a disadvantage. 

Yamamoto's death

We see the characters distressed because of this, not only because he was a good man, but because he was the strongest person they had. However, the audience doesn't get the same emotions from his death. 

For starters, unlike the characters, the audience does not get the chance to know him or understand him. Throughout the series, we only see snip bits of him, definitely not enough to form an emotional connection to him.  So when he dies it doesn't mean much to the audience. 

If we look at the other examples I looked at, a common factor amongst them all is that we usually spend some time with the character before their death. Krilin is a main character throughout most of Dragon Ball. Netero is introduced early on in the series and we get to see a lot of him during the Chimera Ant arc. Whitebeard gets a whole arc about him and his crew. 

Yamamoto is essentially a really strong background character, that dies in order to show off how strong the antagonist of the arc is. If Kubo had set aside more time for his character, his death could have been one of the most impactful in the series. Instead, we're told to care about this person, rather than given a reason to care about him. 

Take-Aways

• If you're going to kill a character and bring them back, make sure you set it up properly, otherwise, it will look and feel lazy. 
• Think of some ways your character's death impacts the world or characters around them. 
• Make sure that we have a proper amount of time to know a character, otherwise, we will have no reason to care for their death.  
• Does their death have any deeper meanings? 

That's all I have this time, have a great day! 

Arigato