Can Action Anime Please Get Back To Using Tournament Arcs?
There was a time that shōnen anime were nearly synonymous with tournament arcs. They were used to great effect, showcasing what characters from every corner of the world could do in one of the most fun ways possible. They were often a focal point of any narrative that got people excited to see what was coming next, and left viewers on the edge of their seat while looking forward to the next episode.
Somewhere along the way in the last ten or fifteen years, it seems like something changed. Tournament arcs haven’t exactly gone away, but something fundamental about them has been changed. It seems like authors aren’t content any longer letting a tournament arc just be a tournament arc; there needs to be something that goes wrong and interrupts the whole event, or the entire arc gets subverted somehow. At some point, tournament arcs went from being the centerpiece of a huge story arc to the background event that gets left behind in the middle.
Tournaments Are a Perfect Showcase Of an Anime’s Best Powers
The immediate draw of a good tournament arc should be clear as day. It gives the author the opportunity to pull together however many characters they want, throw them all in a ring, and let them show off what they can do. While there can certainly be more than that going on at the same time, one of the draws of making a wide-reaching tournament is the ability for the author to simply go a little overboard with designing characters and powers within the world’s rules.
Character designs, especially in anime, are usually made full of intent. Each piece of a character is designed to give off some kind of feeling or message, whether it be that the character is good, evil, mean, silly or anywhere in between. Putting aside joke characters, most normal storylines make it very difficult for an author to truly let loose with fun character designs, because they need to make sense. Yoshihiro Togashi, author of Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho, isn’t going to just throw a character that is missing the lower half of his body replaced with a single peg leg, that fights with energy-infused tops, in the middle of a serious arc like the Chimera Ant arc. It simply doesn’t fit.
That sort of design limitation holds true for the vast majority of plotlines, but a tournament arc allows for all sorts of nonsense, especially when it is played entirely straight. It gives the author a chance to showcase strange people from every corner of their world with cool powers without them needing to have a direct impact on the story in some meaningful way. Instead, it gives the author a chance to breathe, think of some cool world-building details, and bring it to life without needing to sacrifice pacing or storylines to do it.
In Yu Yu Hakusho’s Dark Tournament, for example, viewers get to see Team Uraotogi, a team made up of twisted versions of characters from classic Japanese folk tales that would make no sense to include outside the arc. They have little bearing on anything in the story before or after their appearance, but are memorable character designs with neat powers and abilities that are memorable basically just for showing up and getting their butts kicked by Team Urameshi. The same is true for most of the teams that participate in the Dark Tournament, even those whose characters stick around for later arcs.
Trope Subversion Has Become Too Common
In the last ten or fifteen years, it seems like every author has been trying to find ways to buck trends or subvert expectations. With the rise of subversion and genre deconstructions becoming more popular in the 2000s, making straightforward arcs like tournaments became far less common. Instead, authors became focused on how to play around with the format of a tournament arc and bend it into something different. Whether that involved the main plot happening in the background around the tournament, or the tournament getting interrupted midway through, letting the tournament itself breathe was no longer an option.
These sorts of set-ups have only become increasingly more common in the last fifteen years. One Punch Man sets up a tournament without stakes because everyone knows that Saitama is going to win anyway, but doesn’t even bother to show the audience any cool weirdos taking part in it, only the couple main characters that had already been introduced beforehand. My Hero Academia holds a school-based tournament, but does it so fast that only four characters get any time to show what they can do. Sword Art Online II set up a huge PvP event in the Bullet of Bullets arc, then made the entire arc hinge on a single villain.
While having a tournament arc interrupted or being the backdrop for other events can work, when those plots happen, it often feels like the tournament set up was included only because it was expected due to the genre, and viewers can usually spot the difference. Great tournament arcs are generally noted for following through on all the promises that they make; great fights, new and interesting powers and characters, new worldbuilding and a genuine resolution.
People often seem to view tournament arcs as frivolous, focusing only on the sheer number of fights and the number of new characters that will show up only to be tossed away after they lose, but there is no reason for a tournament arc to skimp on plot and development. The best tournament arcs feature lots of fighting, but they also go all in on character growth and developing the story like any good storyline would. Yu Yu Hakusho, for example, has so much training and growth throughout the Dark Tournament that it is often touted as the best arc in the series, and easily one of the best tournament arcs in anime, period.
A Tournament Arc’s Greatest Strength Is The Fun Factor
In addition to the frivolity concern, people often point to tournament arcs as being a waste of time; they often stretch on for many episodes while utilizing a lot of characters and events that will make little impact on the greater plot. While that can be true, the argument also ignores one of the greatest strengths of having a tournament arc: fun.
Tournament arcs, while they can absolutely be central to character development, especially in place of a training arc, or setting up grander stakes for the main plot, are often found lacking in those same areas because it’s not where the tournament naturally excels. When a tournament isn’t utilized well, it leaves the entire section of story centered around it feeling weak and lifeless, because there’s usually a lot of action, but not much forward momentum. However, it is important to keep in mind that forward story momentum isn’t always the most important thing.
With so many extra rounds before the finals and presumably the central conflict, something needs to fill that time. For the most part, there are two things that fill that void incredibly well; character growth, in both characterization and power, and raw entertainment. Especially when it comes to a traditional battle shōnen-type series, there are going to be a lot of fans that are happy to read or watch every week just to see something cool happen or get excited for hype moments. Not every round has to be some major turning point in the story, and that’s important.
The best tournaments are going to have bits that are just in there for fun, because the author thought of something cool. There’s no reason for Hiei to use his Dragon of the Darkness Flame in literally the very first round of the Dark Tournament, but it’s awesome and leaves a huge impression on the viewer. Or the Chuunin Exams in Naruto giving fans one of the most jaw-dropping moments in the entire series in Episode 48, when Rock Lee drops his weights to fight Gaara. Moments like those may echo later in the series as important, but at the time, they are only there to get the viewer excited to see more.
That’s the true power of a tournament arc. There are few situations in most stories, especially serious ones, when characters are given the chance to just let loose in a semi-friendly setting. Yes, their lives may still be on the line, but the atmosphere of a tournament brings out the fun in the intense battles that a regular battle to the death just can’t capture.
It is equally unfortunate, then, that those strengths are also often the first thing tossed out when a tournament gets reworked as a backdrop or a subversion. When a tournament gets halted midway through because of a huge interruption, for example, it’s likely viewers never got to see the fights they actually were waiting for. Or when matches not directly tied to the plot get completely skipped, viewers sit there asking why there was a tournament at all, if only the finals mattered. Tournament arcs live and die by the matches that aren’t plot-essential being memorable and exciting anyway.
Subversions Aren’t Subversions When They’re Expected
At this point, anime fans are more used to seeing examples of tournament arcs done wrong than they are done right. There’s a reason that all the anime tournaments that get recognized as the best, like the Dark Tournament, Battle City or the Chuunin Exams are all from the early 2000s or before; because it’s been almost that long since any series has shown a straightforward fighting tournament that plays to its strengths. Instead, many anime fans roll their eyes when they see a tournament coming in contemporary series because they don’t expect it to be a real tournament.
Subverting a tournament arc has become so common that it could easily end up on a list of hated tropes among the anime community in the 2020s. However, with so much focus being put on stories being subversive, unexpected or morally ambiguous, it becomes equally difficult for authors to just write a traditional tournament arc that proceeds full steam ahead because they expect to get lambasted for not making it more convoluted in some way.
Instead, this seems like the opportune time to bring back straightforward, bombastic and fun tournament arcs. Several of the most popular shōnen anime and manga in the last several years have been all about boiling it down and condensing the series to a story that trims all the fat of the genre, leaving nothing but the meat. In this current landscape, an honest and sincere, straightforward tournament arc with all the bells and whistles running down the track at full speed could be exactly what fans are waiting for.
