Should this only apply to certain works and universes: Most Common Super Power

And how often do Superhero stories really focus on the "mundane"?

Negima has quite a few "non-super" characters. Some of whom are much, much more important than the equivalents in most Superhero stories.

How often? At least a third of the time on average. Generally more unless there's a large story arch going on. Superheroes interact with their mundane friends and family. Deal with coming out as gay. Go grocery shopping. Work mundane jobs. It's a big part of the genre.

It humanizes them. It makes them average people in some way even if they have these great powers.

edited 26th Feb '11 8:58:45 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I think the problem here is in the fundamentally different ways in which Western Comics and Manga tell stories.

There are mangas that qualify under my definition. Sailor Moon for instance. She goes to school. Flirts with cute boys at the arcade. She has a mundane life. She just also has superpowers and fights crime. She's a superhero.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

In the class of 31 only 7 or so have any kind of powers without help when the series started so the story revolves around them too.

Anyway a Magister Magi (Master Mage) is a Mage Superhero (the offical translation even called it that) they get mag covers, fan clubs T Shirts ect in the magic world.

Negi is an english teacher he also fights crime and saves the world. Kaede a student helps, Mana also a student works for the arcs Big Bad and then later helps.

edited 26th Feb '11 9:04:37 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

And Negi goes to school, teaches class, goes on field trips. Has a normal life.

Its just for the past 150 chapters they've been trying to save the entire magical world

I don't see how this is different.

He goes on field trips to weird magical places. The focus is almost entirely on the magical side of things. It's on the magical world. Not the mundane.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Those 150 chapters are over Summer break he hasn't missed a day of class.

First school trip was to Kyoto and he stopped a crazy lady from summoning a giant

edited 26th Feb '11 9:08:13 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

They went on a field trip to Kyoto!

Kyoto is not a "weird, magical place"!

And they're the focus of the manga. If there were a western work that had the same focus I'd say it was a fantasy and it didn't count either.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

So since Negi went to a strange world to look for his father it doesn't count but when Cyclops did it it counts?

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I still don't see how the Marvel or DC universes, as a whole, are any less fantastic.

The difference is that they are much bigger, so you get a more varied view of things.

Again, this is a difference between how Western Comics and Manga work.

Shimaspaw, Negima has much more mundane then you seem to believe. It is less then a third, but just because halfaway in the story they moved to a pure fantasy setting. Before that, it was mostly mundane tempered with fantasy. For the first half of the series, a god chunk of the story was focused on the mundane aspects of Negi's life as a professor. This is actually the premise, actually.

It is not like Superheroes comics stay always in the mundane setting, anyway. There is a whole classical arc with the X Men IN SPACE!. And all this Thor comics. Or cosmic Fantastic Four comics. I don't know much of DC, but I believe it is the same.

That being said, I agree with you in your main point. Mahou Sensei Negima is not a superhero comic. Superhero is a genre that is not only about 'super people who fight evil'. Both Negi and Goku fit that definition, but that doesn't mean Negima and [DBZ are superheroes manga. Aside from the 'mix of mundane and fantasy' that Shimaspawn is overly focusing on, there is other elements, like "costumes" and "fighting crime", that Negima lacks on.

Btw, "fighting crime" is not the same as "beating the villain and saving the world". It is more like fighting random, not related, bad guys(preferably during a patrol) who shows up and then, maybe save the world in the end of the arc. Negima's "villains" (as well as most shonen villains) are much more personal problems, with the villains going to the hero, instead of the opposite, that is more common in superheroes comics. I obviously know that Negi is aiming to become what you could call a 'supehero', but he is not one yet and that is not the focus. I believe Negima can be the scenario of a superhero manga, just like DBZ was, for a short time.

Yea, I think I'm jut gonna go with the dictionary on this one.

merriam-webster

"a fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman powers; also : an exceptionally skillful or successful person"

That is not the point. I am not defining 'superhero', but 'superhero genre'. Two things completely different.

Yea, but this trope has to deal with features predominate to superheros (more specifically superheroines). If you guys wanna argue what works are part of the superhero genre that's fine for a different thread but right now I think it's best to worry about what to do with this trope.

edited 27th Feb '11 8:17:27 AM by captainpat

Something more personal is usually more plot orented and Serial vs the Monster of the Week. Most Superhero comics are Monster of the Week but not all of them are that Depending on the Writer. Manga however is rarely Monster of the Week anymore. Also not all super heroes have costumes and uniforms and with pactio cards Negima does have that. Fighting crime is what Magister Magi and their Nakama do and that's what Negi is trying to become and that's what Mana did before her partner was killed. Just cause Negi doesn't flat out go looking for it yet doesn't mean he isn't fighting it Negi and Ala Alba have had many chances to just walk away.

That's what I go by Shounen fighting manga are almost always that. Stopping people from using the dictionary for this would proably be a Wall Banger.

seeing how we define "superhero" all differently we are trying that.

edited 27th Feb '11 9:12:16 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Most Common Superpower, as it was originally written, was essentially a commentary on the state of superheroines in the comic books industry; no matter what sort of powers or personality or backstory they have, they will inevitably be well endowed. The point of the page is not to say that this particular superheroine has large breasts, but that superheriones universally have large breasts.

The non-superhero examples listed on the page and feel like they are attempting to stretch the definition to "any woman who fights and has large breasts", which misses and dilutes the point of the original commentary. Even if you're willing to accept shounen fighting series as some sort of equivalent of superhero comics, it lacks the universality of breast size found in the latter. There are plenty of shonen series where either the breast sizes are uniformally small-to-normal or the females run the whole array of breast sizes.

Again Superheroes are in other places but if you insist on that though I don't see a reason to have this as a trope its a Useful notes page at best kill the examples and wicks and make a new trope for this. Because Superheroes are not just in superhero comics.

"a fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman powers" is exactly what its being used for. (Boobs Of Steel just covers Strong girls not extraordinary or superhuman powers which is what this is being used for.)

edited 27th Feb '11 10:33:48 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I am fine with limiting this trope to superhero comics or suggested getting rid of it and simply have a Useful Notes page. Either options seem better than what we have now.

Wasn't part of what brought Marvel to prominence back in the '60s the fact that their characters did care about stuff like that, whereas superheroes traditionally didn't?

This sort of thing may be fairly common in modern superhero stories (though you don't have to look very hard to find recent superhero works which ignore them), but it's hardly a defining feature of the genre.

After thinking about this trope for a bit:

If we're going to keep this separate from Heroic Build (for some reason), then how about restricting the example list to exceptions, justifications, and exaggerations, like that one?

This is only a trope in aggregate - one woman in a superhero costume with large breasts is not a trope. 99% of all superheroines having large breasts is. As mentioned before, this is also the primary reason anime/manga usually doesn't fall under this trope, even if the characters are superheroes - because not all anime/manga superheroines have large breasts. Some do, but, as I already pointed out, that isn't a trope. The only way I could see an anime example working is if all superheroines within that work had large breasts, or all superheroines by a certain artist, or something of that nature. One or two busty girls in a work isn't this trope.

Google searching for Negima characters shows me that they run the full spectrum of chest sizes, so regardless of whether they are technically superheroes or not, they don't the fit the trope. None of these girls compare to Western superheroine proportions, just as one example image. I don't think large breasts are quite as big a deal to Japanese audiences, so I suspect this trope doesn't apply to most anime/manga, if not all of them.

edited 28th Feb '11 12:54:18 PM by ccoa

Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.

Only one of those in that pic is a magic user and thats Yuna (the one with big breasts) who specifically got a breast upgrade (they dedicated a piece of a chapter to the fact that she was "growing") before she became a fighter (and her direct history to why she is a mage hasn't been directly stated as of yet).

Kaede Yuna Mana''Adult'' Eva The only Girl that did not have super powers without Negi's help that Did Not have big breasts is This one isnt very safe for work Setsuna who is flat out stated to be a Yamato Nadeshiko type and she is a subversion since she bats for the other team. (Ku Fei doesn't count she had no super powers she was just a Badass Normal)

edited 28th Feb '11 1:14:22 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I'm with Ccoa on this one, though I think Most Common Superpower should be a sub-trope of Heroic Build, or they should have at least been merged and soft split a long time ago.

The Blog The Art

Except for the first one, they still don't appear to be as large as a typical Western superheroine. Their breasts are within a normal range for slim human females. Western superheroes... generally not. Just look at the page image for an example.

I just think this may be a Western disturbing fetish, for once.

EDIT: It is a subtrope currently. I did try to get them merged once, but I met a rather amazing level of resistance to the idea.

edited 28th Feb '11 1:13:05 PM by ccoa

Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.