CHADhan Player.
Well keep in mind, Shonen is generally aimed at children and teens so some values are going to be simplified. It really depends on the medium to which this issue is addressed.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
"That's not quite the same because the main character of One Punch Man only became stronger for shits and giggles, not really to protect anyone or anything."
Well I kind of viewed that as PART of the whole idea of playing with the trope. Most are as the title mentions, 'I must get stronger so that I can protect those I care about', but Saitama completely inverts it, 'I'm already the strongest and I'm only doing this for fun'.
In a way, kind of implying that those who are doing it to protect someone are going about it all wrong.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, Tokyo Ghoul pretty brutally deconstructs this adage.
Well, obviously you want to protect those you care about, it's practically a tautology. And of course you need strength to protect something. It's really not hard to understand this train of though.
This is a bit disingenious and you know it.
Most heroes are always striving to get better to protect others, no matter the medium or country. The difference is Shounen addresses the issue in a much more stock, formulaic manner with a virtual repeat of the same reasoning lines from one series to another. That's what I understand we are discussing here. That, and how 'the protected ones' eventually tend to lose any agency and saying in their own protection, because the hero just has to be better and stronger than everybody else in their own side.