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Anime & manga

The Japanese characters with the biggest followings worldwide.

Ash Ketchum spent twenty-five years being ten years old and losing.

Osamu Tezuka is called the god of manga for reasons this character demonstrates.

Fullmetal Alchemist opens with two children attempting to resurrect their dead mother and being maimed for it.

Eren begins as the most conventional shōnen protagonist imaginable.

Ichigo Kurosaki

Bleach is the most style-driven of the big shōnen series.

Death Note is a thriller in which almost nothing physical happens.

Levi is the most popular character in Attack on Titan by a wide margin.

Monkey D. Luffy

One Piece is the best-selling comic series in history by a wide margin.

Naruto is built on a specific and unusually well-executed premise.

Nezuko is the reason her brother's story exists.

No-Face is a spirit with no identity of his own who takes on the characteristics of whatever he consumes.

Pikachu was not designed to be the face of anything.

Sailor Moon fused two established Japanese genres.

One-Punch Man began as a crudely drawn webcomic that its author, working under the name ONE, posted for free.

Gojo is the most merchandised anime character of recent years, and the reason is largely design.

Goku is the character who set the shape of modern action manga.

Cowboy Bebop is the series most often credited with bringing adult anime to a Western audience.

Tanjiro is a shōnen protagonist defined by empathy rather than ambition, and the series is rigorous about it.

Totoro is a forest spirit in a film with almost no plot, and that is the achievement.

Vegeta is the archetype every shōnen rival since has been built from.

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