@pyromonki:
No, no, it's not just the suspense, it's the way the story is presented. A bomb meant to kill everyone in a war zone is taken point blank by a guy carrying a bomb. We get this nice little final message from him and then boom. His sacrifice was noble, and respectable, I loved it… until "my grave?"
Same with Skypeia, Enel is using lighting and frying people directly through the brain, only for them to be okay moments later.
No, I'm not saying someone needs to die for the story to be deep or great, but if your gonna present a situation where the person is giving their life as a sacrifice, shouldn't they die?
If Oda didn't want that character to die, he shouldn't put them in that situation in the first place. That's just silly.
I think this criticism is valid, but I also think that you're talking about a difference in genre. In other words, you're arguing that the conventions of seinen (realism, darker themes) make for better storytelling than the conventions of shonen (idealism, happy endings). HxH and HnK are both Weekly JUMP series, but I'd argue that both are closer in nature to seinen, due to the amount of violence and darker themes. (Haven't read JoJo yet.) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it's okay to like seinen better then shounen, and vice versa, as it's a matter of opinion. Some people like fairy tales, some people like pulp fiction; to each his own. But also, I think that someone shouldn't read shounen, for example, and expect that characters are going to die and stay dead, because that just doesn't happen very often. It's not just OP, it's the genre.
Personally, I think that consistency really matters in shounen. For example, Oda has acknowledged that he doesn't kill characters because he thinks it kills the mood, and I think it's tolerable because he really doesn't try to make OP out to be anything other than a feel-good adventure story. Kishimoto, on the other hand, tries to be "deep" and explore themes like revenge and loss, but often doesn't follow through. (Why was Shikamaru's brand of revenge okay? Why kill off characters and talk about the pain of loss only to bring an entire village of people back from the dead?)
Speaking of Naruto, I skipped some of the timejump chapters and I've been wondering: was anyone Naruto's age surprised that he was the vessel for the Nine-Tailed Fox? No one his age knew about his secret, right? Were they ever surprised? I've looked for a moment like this but couldn't find it…I feel like I missed something.
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