#i love the scenery it looks like the scenery from the Levitate visualizer

[cringeyvanillamilk]

☕️ Steph, my good clown, can I get your sexy opinion on your favorite battles in the shonen series (plural) that you have read/watched?

The clown has arrived with her answer! Thank you for such an interesting topic! It was hard picking out my top 3 favorites since a lot of my favorites are great in their own right, but I think I’m satisfied with what I chose.

For anyone who’s interested, here are my other favorite shounen battles that sadly did not make it to the top 3:

Itadori and Nobara vs. Curse brothers (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Maki vs. Mai (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Gon vs. Pitou (Hunter x Hunter)

Deku vs. Muscular (Boku no Hero Academia)

All Might vs. All for One (Boku no Hero Academia)

Luffy vs. Usopp (One Piece)

Gaara vs. Rock Lee (Naruto)

Zenitsu vs. Spider Brother (Kimetsu no Yaiba)

Tanjirou vs. Rui (Kimetsu no Yaiba)

Now let’s get to my top 3 favorite shounen battles! (Under the cut!)

3. Maki vs. Miwa (Jujutsu Kaisen)

For my third favorite shounen battle, I chose the fight between Maki and Miwa during the Kyoto Goodwill Event Arc! What I like most about this fight was the set up, spectacular choreography, and interesting characterization.

Before jumping into the fight, we are introduced to Miwa and Mai talking about Maki’s strength as a Jujutsu sorcerer. Here, Mai is downplaying Maki’s ability to fight which leads Miwa to underestimate Maki as a result. We then cut to Miwa being absolutely overwhelmed by Maki’s attacks. This short setup helped give impact to Maki’s true strength and abilities to not only Miwa, but the audience as well. The fake out was a nice surprise since we haven’t seen Maki fight thus far.

The choreography throughout the entire fight was absolutely marvelous. The use of perspective and slow-motion helped give certain attacks more weight as well as how the attacks look in a first-person perspective. We not only see how overwhelmed Miwa was, but also how focused and ruthless Maki can be. Despite Miwa being an antagonist due to her team’s order to kill Itadori, I find it amusing that we the audience end up sympathizing with Miwa in the end.

I also liked how the environment was used during the fight. The transition from the forest to the small stream down below when Maki literally kicked Miwa off a cliff was a nice change of scenery. The visuals of the water due to the character’s movement and weight was also a nice detail. I won’t be surprised if all the budget went into the water effects.

The fight between Maki and Miwa was incredibly one-sided where Maki seemed to have the upper hand for most of the fight and Miwa had no choice but to be on the defense. We can see how overwhelmed Miwa was due to underestimating Maki from the beginning. If Miwa was warned ahead of time, she may have had a better chance of standing against Maki. However, due to her trust over her teammate’s words, she ended up being blind-sighted. I really enjoyed being inside Miwa’s head for the majority of the fight. We can tell that Miwa is doing the best of her abilities, but just can’t beat Maki’s talent and quick instinct. The fight overall highlight’s Miwa’s weakness of overthinking her next move. We only heard Maki’s thinking process briefly after Miwa activated her simple domain, but she’s very quick to adapt and be unpredictable. The characterization in this small fight was very fun to watch!

Overall, this may be a small-scale fight in comparison to other major ones within the anime and manga, but that doesn’t mean it should be overlooked. Having a grand spectacle of a fight doesn’t make it the “best fight”. Sometimes, a short, but well-choreographed fight that makes good use of the environment can go a long way for me.

2. The Black Bulls vs. Vetto (Black Clover)

For my second favorite battle in shounen, I chose the black bulls vs. Vetto during the Water Temple arc. I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t watch enough shounen anime, but I felt like this was the first battle where a group of characters worked together to defeat an antagonist. I’m just so used to watching 1v1s, or if we’re really stretching it 2v1s, in shounen that seeing an actual group use teamwork was very refreshing for me to watch. Something to note about the difference in the manga and anime was that while the final battle against Vetto within the anime had Gauche, Charmy, and Grey join in, in the manga it was mainly Asta, Finral, and Vanessa. Despite the small difference, the fact that most of the members of the Black Bulls took a chance to fight Vetto and showcased their fighting abilities was a sight to see.

Before we get to the final fight against Vetto, if we don’t count Yami’s finishing blow at the very end, I really enjoyed Luck, Magna, and most especially Noelle’s attack. I liked how we got to see each character use their strongest attack and the unpredictability of who’s going to finish Vetto off throughout the fight. I was hype seeing Luck and Magna’s combo magic for the first time, but was surprised to see how ineffective it was to Vetto. This helped give us an idea of the power difference a normal magic knight may have in opposition to an eye of the midnight sun, which is why when Noelle gained an attack spell, Sea Dragon’s Roar, and did the most damage to Vetto, that basically hinted the potential Noelle has as a strong magic knight. But surprisingly, Noelle’s attack wasn’t the climax of the fight because that’s when Asta, Finral, and Vanessa joined in and worked together against Vetto. Now it was this specific teamwork that really made it for me.

What I love most about this team dynamic was how each of them had a significant role in winning the fight. Asta had the physical strength and most offensive attacks, Vanessa’s string magic helped propel Asta into any direction, and Finral’s spatial magic was utilized to transport Asta in any location. Both Vanessa and Finral helped give Asta the upper hand by making his attacks more unpredictable and adaptive to Vetto’s animalistic magic. It was impressive seeing Asta attack Vetto in different directions and dodging his attacks. But just when we thought they had a chance of defeating Vetto, he became a much bigger threat when he began to read through their attacks and successfully caught and broke Asta’s arms. And just when we think that Asta can’t fight without his arms, Asta reinforces his schtick of not giving up, igniting hope into his teammates. And with their final push and hint towards Asta’s devil powers, Vetto was finally defeated thanks to their determination and teamwork!

This fight had a nice combination of surprise, hope, and despair! But what makes this my second favorite fight was solely because of how each of the members had a moment to shine within the fight. There wasn’t an instance where a character was just watching and that makes me very happy! An overall great fight in Black Clover!

1. Gon vs. Hisoka (Hunter x Hunter)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txl2imn11bM&ab_channel=CrunchyrollCollection

For my ultimate favorite shounen battle, I chose Gon vs Hisoka from the Heavens Arena arc. If there’s one word to describe this fight, it would be “tension”. What I liked most about the beginning of this fight was how no word of dialogue was exchanged between the characters. The background music was ambient with most of the attention given to the sound of movement and grunts, which only makes you feel tense throughout the exchange.

In this particular fight, Gon was very quick and light on his feet while fighting Hisoka. There were even moments where it looked like he was levitating for a few seconds when throwing punches at Hisoka which shows how fast his attacks were. I liked how we see Gon’s thought process through his actions where he’d try multiple strategies to attack Hisoka. At first, he would try and do a barrage of punches towards Hisoka’s face, but then gain some distance when his attacks fail and then face Hisoka head on again. And while Gon is struggling to get the first hit, Hisoka is just observing Gon with a smile on his face and enjoying every bit of it. And it wasn’t until Hisoka surprised Gon with a punch that we finally took a breather. It was an intense fight right off the bat!

But my enjoyment of the fight doesn’t stop there. During the first exchanges within the fight, Gon’s attempts were very straightforward and relied mostly on his strength. But during their second exchange, we can see that Gon learned from his prior attempt and decided to use his wits. Instead of attacking Hisoka head first, he cleverly used his environment to gain the upper hand and finally punched Hisoka in the face! Hisoka may have underestimated Gon from the beginning, but I still thought it was amazing how Gon managed to pull that off! I’m going to be honest, I was not expecting Gon to actually be strategic and pull out the tiles off the floor to block Hisoka’s sight. It was so satisfying to see this type of development from him which makes it a highlight of this fight.

Honestly, this was this part of the fight that makes this my ultimate favorite, but that doesn’t mean what happens afterwards was nothing interesting. Hisoka’s nen abilities were very fun to watch and very unpredictable! I feel like Gon was meant to lose from the start since Hisoka’s fighting style is very adaptive against Gon’s more simple approach. Overall, an amazing fight! I highly recommend watching the fight for yourself!