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"I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!" — The first English Pokemon Theme
I'm going to be Hokage!
To Be A Master is the Series Goal behind 70% of shonen manga and anime. Sure, Humongous Mecha, Unwanted Harem, Super Sentai and the odd detective story are all okay, but if you really want to strike a winning formula, To Be A Master is the way to go.
The setup is simple: In A World where everything revolves around one thing — Children's Card Games, pirates, ninjas, anything — a young lad in his teens, usually The Messiah, will set out on a quest to, well, To Be A Master of whatever his world deems important.
The Myth Arc will invariably involve meeting one or more Nakama and Rivals, defeating Villains and Worthy Opponents, and having a go at getting a girl.
The catch? He'll be lucky if he achieves his goal in the next fifteen years. To Be a Master is such a successful format that these series tend to drag on for years in an effort to exploit as much as possible out of the franchise. We're all suckers for starry-eyed youths who fight to accomplish their dreams, so expect Loads And Loads Of Characters and a strict Sorting Algorithm Of Evil to keep feeding new challenges to our hero. Throw in the inevitable Tournament Arc and powerups and we're ready to go.
Apart from sports manga, where the ultimate goal is to win some sort of trophy, the usual reward in To Be a Master consists of a title, something along the lines of "Worldtheme King" or "Worldtheme Master," that is acknowledged by everyone in that world and brings a set of privileges with it, hopefully the power to Make Your Dream Come True. If there is a title, important plot points will be who held the title before and the fact that it can only be gained under special circumstances, such as being a designated candidate to take part in a worldwide tournament.
Named after the Pokemon song used in the Pikachu's Jukebox segments of the dubbed versions of the Pokemon anime, called "2BA Master". Also the name of the album that the English theme song itself was released on.
Examples
Professional Wrestling
- The underlying goal of almost every wrestler ever. As Triple H once put it, "If you're not here to be champion, you're in the wrong place." That said, there are more than a few wrestlers who don't seem to be in the right place, by Trips' standards.
Shonen
- In One Piece, Luffy wants to become King of the Pirates
- Also, Zoro strives to become The World's Greatest Swordsman
- The Hokage ("Fire Shadow", in other words, the head ninja of the main character's village) in Naruto.
- Though recent chapters of the manga have the title character possessing a slightly more realistic idea of the position (he largely wanted to be Hokage because he wanted respect and thought it would easily solve all his problems) and becoming Hokage has instead become simply one (probable) step towards his new goal: world peace. Good luck with that, kid.
- This Troper felt that Naruto is a Deconstruction of this trope: he wants To Be A Master specifically because he wants the respect of being the best and (initially) nothing else.
- The King of Shamans in Shaman King. Yoh wants to become Shaman King so that he can lead a life of luxury and relaxation. His arranged fiance also wants the same things. Oddly enough, they work HARD (Though Anna frequently has to bully Yoh to do so) for the ability to lie around all day.
- The King of Games in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Note that in the original series, it usually wasn't Yugi who sought the title of the best player as his primary goal (though he got it anyway, and pretty quickly), but a lot of the other characters did. Yu-Gi-Oh GX, however, has a hero whose explicit goal is to become the next King of Games.
- The King of Mamodos in Konjiki No Gash Bell.
- The title of "Pokémon Master" in Pokemon. In practice, Ash's usual goal throughout the anime is to be the champion of the current region's Pokémon League. Succeeding in this might cause Ash to consider himself a Master, but who knows?
- Especially considering that Scott offers him Frontier Brain status when he beats the seventh (and last) Frontier Brain of the Kanto Battle Frontier, making him a de facto Pokemon Master, but Ash turns it down to continue his journey in Sinnoh instead.
- The eleventh season mentions that there is a special league reserved for those who have won regional tournaments, so it's possible Ash might actually win in Sinnoh. On the other hand, Word Of God has stated that the series formula is unlikely ever to change.
- The special league is the fight against the Elite Four and Champion that takes place in the games, and most champions are considered Pokemon Masters, So Yeah...
- For some reason in the first Pokemon movie, Mewtwo just claims to be the "World's Greatest Pokemon Master" (so there's mor e than one now?). The problem is that he doesn't have to prove himself, all he has to do is send people a letter and they automatically believe him and set out to battle him. You'd think people would bother to check for a name or something considering that the entire Trainerdom is based off of this stuff.
- To be fair, they know at least that he owns his own island and has a Dragonite trained to deliver mail, which is worth something in the Anime Pokeverse. That, and the prevalent compulsion of all Pokemon "Masters" to accept any and all challenges thrown their way.
- Pokemon Mastery isn't a League-granted title, though. Being a Champion, Elite, or Gym Leader is something that you have to be qualified for, but after looking at the various branches of canon, most of the fandom has conceded that Pokemon Mastery is something informally acknowledged. A Master may not necessarily have any kind of official qualification, he/she just needs to be popularly known as a Master, so it's really a personal goal, and Ash is considered a Master whenever he persuades the general public that his skill merits it.
- Besides, he already won the Orange League, whether it "counts" or not for being a non-game-based league.
- In some interpretations of the term, one becomes a Pokemon Master by capturing at least one member of each of the species of Pokemon (hence the "gotta catch 'em all" slogan). However it seems that nobody in the anime actually wants to "catch em all" any more.
- Not true. They dropped that slogan because that's a logically impractical goal. In fact, one of the manga defines a Pokémon Master as an elite Trainer who is considered a professional and regularly takes part in League competitions. By that definition, Ash already is one.
- Though except for the Orange League and Battle Frontier, he's never won a single competition, and catching every Pokémon in the world would be a long and arduous task, considering over a hundred MORE are introduced every new season. And that Ash hasn't caught all that many Pokemon, just enough to fill to the limit of 6, with him releasing the odd one when the Pokemon in question is Put On A Bus.
- In Pokemon Special, this is the goal of most of the protagonists. Parodied with Dia and Pearl, whose goal is To Be A Master of the Boke And Tsukkomi Routine.
- Not really. They all have different goals. I'd say Red, Green, and Sapphire are the only ones who actually like active battling and training. Hell, Gold never really had one at all. He just wanted to kick Silver's ass (and never got around to it either).
- Pretty much every sports series out there will have victory in one or more Tournament Arcs as the goal:
- Negi in Mahou Sensei Negima wants to be a world-class mage like his father.
- He's pretty damn close.
- Pretty close? He's already world-class!
- Bitch, please. He beat Jack fucking Rakan!
- Well, fought to a draw, but considering that Rakan was more or less invincible...
- Several of the duelists in Duel Masters want to become Kaijudo masters.
- 666 Satan has an unusual one for the main character Jio Freed. He wants to gain respect...by Taking Over The World!
- The dolls in Rozen Maiden all wish to become the new Alice.
- Many weapons of Soul Eater attempt to become a Death Scythe, the weapon used by the series' god of death.
- Subverted as of Chapter 63 when Soul Eater finally eats a witch's soul and becomes a death scythe.
- And then has several characters point out that attaining the rank actually leads to more responsibility and more challenges, rather leaving the impression that in the wider scheme of things not much has changed. A curious take on something that was presented as the series' goal, to see Soul appear to be one of many in the same position (there are, after all, Weapon students around the world).
- Spoofed in Rune Soldier: Louie is a magic-user who trains to be a consummate master...of hand-to-hand combat.
- G Gundam, everyone's fighting to put their colony in control of the Earth by Gundam gladiatoral conflict.
- Oban Star Racers: The winner of the titular races gets to be the Avatar. The thing is, everyone in the races believes that the prize is the granting of whatever they wish.
- The Letter Bees in Tegami Bachi (which means Letter Bee), are trying to become Head Bee, the most skilled of the Bees who often works in the capital(living in the capital in and of itself is a great privilege). Gauche Suede in particular wants to become Head Bee in order to get money to heal his younger sister Sylvette's legs.
- Yakitate Japan: All about being the very best at baking bread.
- Hikaru No Go actually averts this; Hikaru gets into the game of Go just for the fun of it, and just happens to be in the running for the best player of his generation.
Shojo
Video Games
- The Maiden of Light in La Pucelle Tactics.
- This is subverted rather nastily as it turns out that, despite what Prier thinks, "Maiden of Light" is the Chosen One instead of a title to be earned. And the only "perk" is that you have to end up making a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Probably explains her later career shift to Overlord. Quite possible as polar opposite a job as you can get without becoming the Dark Prince.
- Blatantly done in the Pokemon games. Sure, you prevented the destruction of the entire world. But you haven't beaten the game until you've become the League Champion.
- And won the Master rank Super Contest in all five categories. And Caught Em All.
- Even then no one recognizes your achievement,and the last champion still has to fight you. Though this is subverted slightly in Red/Blue and their remakes (Firered and Leafgreen), where you are proven to be the champion,but you still fight your rival.
- The Championship uses a nonlethal form of Klingon Promotion. You become Champion by defeating the incumbent champion (your rival in Red/Blue and its remakes, Lance in Gold/Silver, Steven in Ruby/Sapphire, and Cynthia in Diamond/Pearl). The Elite Four just test if you're qualified to fight the Champion at all (or in pure gameplay terms they serve to sap your Pokémon's strength and make the final battle harder). Even after the Elite Four you're still a challenger until you knock off the current Champion. And even after you beat the Champion, most people act like you didn't.
- As a Blood Knight, this is Ryu's goal in the Street Fighter series. Others have more pragmatic goals, like revenge, money, fame, conquest, finding someone to kill them...
- In Growlanser 2, Wein's goal is to become an Imperial Knight. Whether he accomplishes this depends on what branches of the story you take. And even if he gets the title, the plot has long since moved on to more important matters, like the fate of the world.
- The Kid goes on quite possibly the most insane To Be A Master quest of all time for one reason: "I Wanna Be The Guy!"
- Laharl's quest to become an Overlord in the first half of Disgaea.
- It's a partial subversion in that it happens about halfway through the game, and then the real plot kicks in.
- Travis Touchdown's quest in No More Heroes is to be the greatest asssassin. Of course, the whole thing is quite thoroughly deconstructed. For starters, Travis is a deluded Otaku Blood Knight who may qualify as a Villain Protagonist, and the entire thing is a con set up by Sylvia.
- Every game of Punch Out. Become the best boxer.
- Homeworld 2 has an ancient prophecy about the three Great Hyperspace Cores awakening Sajuuk, the god of destiny and creation (actually, a big-ass ancient starship hidden in a black hole cluster). Supposedly, the one who unites the Three will get to be the Sajuuk-khar, Manipulator of the Great Maker. When Karan Sjet first hears about it while running from the Vaygr, she deduces that Makaan must also know about it and seek to aquire both the Bentusi and the Hiigaran core. Naturally, the world is doomed if he succeeds so she decides to beat him to it. The thing is, by doing that she accidentally fulfilled the prophecy herself and became the Sajuuk-khar - which proved really useful when Hiigara was attacked by Planet Killers whose armor was impeneterable to every weapon except Sajuuk's Wave Motion Cannon. With the ship also activating an ancient hypergate network spanning the galaxy and having the most powerful weapons & hyperdrives of the known universe, she was practically worshipped as a living goddess (her people never became atheists during their troubled history).
Western Animation
- Avatar The Last Airbender. Justified - Aang's the latest incarnation of the Avatar, whose job it is to master all four Bending disciplines so s/he can keep balance in the world.
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