Missiles danced through the black of space.

Drawing arcs through the void, they veered and tipped drunkenly in violent arcs, nearing but never touching the giant robot pirouetting like a ballerina. The robot spun through space until it ended the dance with gunfire, causing a chain reaction of exploding missiles.

I had just turned the channel to this scene early on Saturday and stood there with my jaw wide open. It was my first encounter with Macross.

I’ve been hooked on shounen anime ever since.

As I get older, I appreciate the craft of animation and art, but I have an even deeper appreciation for the format of the stories told. Behind the formulaic elements is a powerful and unique engine for conveying emotions and characters.

That engine is hyperemotion, and I'll break it down so we talk about using it in TTRPG stories in another post.

A Cry Becomes A Punch: Creating Action from Emotion

Hyperemotion describes a story process where a protagonist (and friends, very important!) transforms the accumulation of emotional story beats into transformative action.

It’s the moment when our main protagonist, no longer able to contain all of the scenes of sadness in the village they’ve come to love, channels that sadness and grief into a massive punch or blast of power that overwhelms the villain. The villain may have more physical might, but they can never stand against the hero who allows the emotions of others to channel through him.

At first the language of shounen hyperemotion and the language of western action genre seem very similar, but what’s distinct in shounen is inclusion and necessity of community. A western action hero may have friends, may have assistance, but they act through their own power and their own emotions. In shounen, the hero trades their emotional flexibility for the power to act at a powerful, magical level. The shounen hero is the edge-facing node of an emotional power grid that amplifies their capabilities.

Actors and Feelers

Within these emotional grids are two types of characters.

Feelers experience the world as it is, adapting and living within the status quo. They are the audience’s true lens into the world, showing us how the world is experienced.

Feelers cannot change the world. This creates deep emotional energy when the character does not fit into the world in its current state.

Actors can can change the world through their actions. That power comes with a considerable trade-off: actors cannot experience the world fully. The power to change the world isolates the actor from experiencing the world.

The agency of actors makes them seem to be the only important characters in a shounen story, but actors without a network of feelers are powerless: feelers are th characters who make life worth living for actors, and are what give actors purpose.

An actor in a shounen story without a community of feelers is at best rudderless; at worse, they are a villain.

The truly great shounen arcs are built around hyperemotion, and hyperemotion is built around these communities.

Finer Details

I’ve split things neatly into actors and feelers to illustrate the point, but in most shounen stories characters will have a ratio of actor to feeler. The ratio of actor to feeler define certain character archetypes, and in different story arcs a character’s ratio might change (a classic arc is when a grievously wounded actor must now be mostly a feeler and rely on their friends to be actors and change things).

The Krillin Effect

Have you ever watch Dragon Ball Z and asked yourself: “Why the fuck is Krillin here?”

In terms of ability and power, we can ask this of most of the cast past a certain point in the story. But let’s focus on Krillin, who quickly falls out of the power ranking and becomes the B plot of “Save Krillin!” in many Dragon Ball Z stories. To discuss the ratios, Krillin is about 99/1 feeler/actor for most of the series.

“The Krillin Effect” is what led me to hyperemotion in the first place. Trying to understand why Krillin is hanging out with martial art gods helped me understand a deeper truth about shounen manga.

Let’s look at Goku.

Goku is the opposite of Krillin (1/99 Feeler/Actor). Goku can destroy planets and kill gods. So…how can he relate to those who lack his incredible power?

He’s married but… well, let’s not talk about their marriage for the moment.

He’s a terrible dad.

Goku isn’t evil; the problem is he only wants to train and fight! But also… I think we’d all want Earth’s protector to be a little more, uhm, connected?

Enter Krillin.

Krillin has known Goku forever. He understands him and has Goku’s love and respect. Krillin for many fights remains nearby (even if he is just hiding), ready to help and cheer Goku on. Krillin is humanity’s proxy in DBZ, our champion, and our voice. Rest assured when Krillin is frightened, we are also going to be frightened.

When Krillin is frightened and threatened, Goku takes action, often breaking through his limits.

Looking beyond Krillin, there’s a community of high-powered martial artists around Goku. They are fighting to protect the Earth and their universe, but they also support each other through their actions and their feelings, to make each other stronger than they’d be individually.

The Power of Community

Great shounen storytelling isn’t about bigger and bigger fight scenes; it is about building a community’s hyperemotive loops, turning their desires and feelings into inspiring transformation.

It’s why I keep coming back.