Shonen anime are paradoxically some of the most popular stories anime has to offer and some of the most derided. This stems from how familiar the shonen formula has become. To newcomers and veterans alike, clichés are only worth revisiting if they're spoofed or deconstructed by the likes of Gintama or Neon Genesis Evangelion.
As easy as they are to predict, tropes and conventions aren't inherently bad. These shonen anime, for example, not only deploy their respective genre clichés but embrace them. Although they may go down a familiar narrative and thematic route, these anime show how following a formula isn't necessarily a bad thing.
10 Hajime No Ippo Is A Heartfelt Ode To Determination & Hard Work
There's arguably no shonen anime as clichéd as the sports anime. Whether it stars a lone athlete or a team, a sporting story doesn't really lend itself much to change, and these kinds of anime ride or die on how well they follow the formula. This is where the boxing classic Hajime no Ippo comes in.
Anyone who's seen a Rocky movie will know how Ippo Makunouchi and his fellow boxers' stories will go, but that's the appeal of their anime. Hajime no Ippo is a celebration of hard work and sportsmanship, where fair play is rewarded and foul play is punished. Ippo and friends work tirelessly to succeed, and that's where their anime's fun is found.
9 Toradora! Is A Classic Shonen Rom-Com For A Reason
Shonen anime is a lot more diverse than even the most experienced anime veterans may realize, and this is proven by the fact that almost all romantic comedies are mistaken for shojo anime. Toradora! is a great example of this misconception, especially because of how much of a watershed rom-com and shonen anime it is.
Toradora! followed many of the most tried and tested rom-com archetypes and clichés around, and it did its job so well that it became one of the defining love stories of the late 2000s. Alongside other shonen anime mistaken for shojo anime like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Toradora! became a cornerstone of the shonen high school experience.
8 Record Of Lodoss War Is The Definitive High Fantasy Anime
Before its resurgence in the late 2010s, the high fantasy enjoyed some of its best years in the late '80s. In fact, high fantasies like the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons was such a global hit that author Ryo Mizuno adapted transcripts of D&D campaigns he enjoyed and turned them into what would become Record of Lodoss War.
Record of Lodoss War is as clichéd and straightforward as a fantasy and/or D&D campaign could get, and this earnest dedication to high fantasy's conventions and rules turned it into a watershed anime. Record of Lodoss War all but started the wave of high fantasy shonen anime, and its lasting influence has yet to die down.
7 Super Dimension Fortress Macross Really Believed In The Power Of Love
The mecha genre, especially the real robot subgenre, is one of shonen anime's most important founding pillars, but the original Macross is clichéd for reasons that go beyond cool transforming robots and galactic war. Macross is a romantic melodrama at its heart, and this is the first anime's and the entire franchise's strongest asset.
Macross is best known for its achingly sincere love triangle and unapologetic cry for peace, and it's recognized as one of the best and most humanistic anime to ever tackle the heavy subject of war. The power of love and peace are almost always mocked for being saccharine, but Macross showed how emotional sincerity really is a force to reckon with.
6 Ranma ½ Arguably Created The Shonen Romantic-Comedy
Ranma ½ is far from the first shonen martial arts or rom-com anime, but it's one of the first to combine the two and succeed. Ranma ½ follows a very familiar martial arts quest and love triangle, but it spiced things up so much with non-stop action and gender-flipping that it arguably created an entirely new genre along the way.
A strong case could be made for Ranma ½ being one of the first harem anime, and it created this new form of rom-com hijinks by pushing established shonen clichés and conventions to their most hilarious extremes. Ranma ½ aged well and continues to attract newcomers even today, solidifying its legacy as a shonen trendsetter.
5 Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Modernized The Super Robot Genre
There's nothing more shonen than the super robot genre, but this old-school trend faded into the background after it peaked in the late '80s. For the longest time, super robot stories were dismissed as corny and boyish drivel, but then, Gurren Lagann revived respect and admiration in the genre by pushing the formula to the extreme.
Team Dai-Gurren didn't reinvent the wheel, but they didn't need to. Instead, all their anime did was super-charge shonen mainstays like immovable optimism, unbreakable friendship and teamwork, and epic fights while animating them in the coolest ways possible. Needless to say, Gurren Lagann excelled in every way a shonen anime should.
4 My Hero Academia Reinforced Everything Great About Superheroes
It could be argued that the superhero genre is one of the oldest forms of shonen storytelling in existence, and My Hero Academia knows this well. Rather than deconstruct or reinvent the overly familiar genre, My Hero Academia just tells Izuku Midoriya's origin story as straightforwardly as it can. Unsurprisingly, this worked perfectly.
My Hero Academia is a Western superhero story retold as a shonen anime, and it's a wonder that this specific combination hasn't been done before. Not only did My Hero Academia skyrocket to the top thanks to the ongoing superhero boom, but it also reaffirmed how inspiring the best superhero and shonen stories are.
3 One Piece Is All About Family & Friendship
All three of Shonen Jump's iconic Big Three adhered to shonen clichés, but One Piece was the most dedicated of the bunch. From the start, all Luffy wanted to do was make lifelong friends and become the best pirate there ever was. Little did anyone know that this simple dream was the start of Luffy's legend and One Piece's dominance.
One Piece unapologetically stuck to shonen clichés like the power of friendship, found family, and the unquestionable fight for good, and it excelled at executing these tropes so much that it became one of the biggest anime in history. It could even be said that the Straw Hats are empowered and strengthened by shonen conventions.
2 Fist Of The North Star Is The Manliest Shonen Anime Ever Created
Shonen anime are made with a generally young, male audience in mind. As such, many of them are the kind of overly macho power fantasy that young boys and teenagers love. If not for Fist of the North Star, none of these power fantasies would exist, or they would be incredibly different than they are now.
Fist of the North Star took every martial arts and post-apocalyptic cliché out there and combined them into one of the most badass anime ever made. Kenshiro's quest to punch people so hard until they explode didn't need to find a way to retell or avert action-oriented shonen clichés because it defined and even created them.
1 The Dragon Ball Franchise Codified The Modern Shonen Anime
There's no anime franchise as synonymous with the shonen demographic as Dragon Ball, especially its beloved second installment, Dragon Ball Z. Besides being so popular that it helped cement anime's global presence, Dragon Ball could also be credited for not only establishing famous shonen clichés but for modernizing the genre as well.
Goku and his friends diligently obeyed the typical mythic hero's journey and shonen clichés while also inventing new ones, and they became legends for doing so. It's no exaggeration to say that Dragon Ball is the most influential shonen anime in existence, since almost all anime, regardless of genre and demographic, follow in its footsteps.