Anime seems to run on RPG logic

[Greywander]

I've been binging One Piece, and the amount of punishment a character can take really makes me thing they're using some kind of HP system. Somehow, a sword will only knock a character backwards, even though the same strike also cut a huge boulder in half that was behind the character. And I swear every character seems to get at least a short rest between episodes. Beat to within an inch of your life? Don't worry, you'll be strong enough to fight two episodes later, despite not having had any time to rest or receive medical treatment.

It's not just One Piece, either. I think most shonen anime tends to have these kind of traits. It just seems so strange how much crossover there seems to be between anime logic and RPG logic. Are they somehow connected, or do they just both tap into something that already existed in Japanese culture?

[Sparky McDibben]

No, but they do run on pulp action logic. Seriously, check out Conan. Original Conan, not the movie.

[Warder]

I don't enjoy anime much so I'm hardly an expert, but what I do know is that JRPGs and anime do have a fair amount of crossover, and the JRPG formula was kickstarted by Dragon Quest, which took its inspiration from the western Ultima and Wizardry CRPG series, which were in turn inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. So, maybe?

[Waterdeep Merch]

Ever notice how there's a shocking amount of D&D-esque material across video games and anime? That's due to early adopters of 1e D&D in Japan. They made absurdly popular "replays", written records of games. Imagine Critical Role decades before Critical Role. Among the most famous of these led to Record of Lodoss War, which in turn coalesced into the most popular Japanese TTRPG to this day- Sworld World RPG.

Check it out if you like OSR. Sword World proudly wears it's D&D lineage on it's sleeve.

[Unoriginal]

I've been binging One Piece, and the amount of punishment a character can take really makes me thing they're using some kind of HP system. Somehow, a sword will only knock a character backwards, even though the same strike also cut a huge boulder in half that was behind the character. And I swear every character seems to get at least a short rest between episodes. Beat to within an inch of your life? Don't worry, you'll be strong enough to fight two episodes later, despite not having had any time to rest or receive medical treatment.

It's not just One Piece, either. I think most shonen anime tends to have these kind of traits. It just seems so strange how much crossover there seems to be between anime logic and RPG logic. Are they somehow connected, or do they just both tap into something that already existed in Japanese culture?

That specific thing doesn't come from RPGs. It's a mix of many things: pulp logic (which also influenced superheroes where even normal humans can survive being punched into a crater, the concept that you can make your body supernaturally tough and fast-healing via mastery of life energy, the needs of the story, and also national beliefs about how to endure hardship and face overwhelming power.


I don't enjoy anime much so I'm hardly an expert, but what I do know is that JRPGs and anime do have a fair amount of crossover, and the JRPG formula was kickstarted by Dragon Quest, which took its inspiration from the western Ultima and Wizardry CRPG series, which were in turn inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. So, maybe?

More direct than that. Japanese Fantasy came from Dungeons & Dragons (with works such as Records of Lodoss War).

[Eldariel]

Ever notice how there's a shocking amount of D&D-esque material across video games and anime? That's due to early adopters of 1e D&D in Japan. They made absurdly popular "replays", written records of games. Imagine Critical Role decades before Critical Role. Among the most famous of these led to Record of Lodoss War, which in turn coalesced into the most popular Japanese TTRPG to this day- Sworld World RPG.

Check it out if you like OSR. Sword World proudly wears it's D&D lineage on it's sleeve.

The whole Final Fantasy franchise isn't far off either. The first game of the series had Fighter/Mage/Bard/Thief/Monk/Totally Not Cleric as classes, almost all the enemies were direct lifts from D&D, it used D&D spell slot system, etc. It's gotten a bit more identity since then but it's surprisingly loyal when you look beneath the surface.

[Rukelnikov]

I agree with all of the above, but I think there's one thing missing here. The times have gone full circle, and while Anime and JRPGs originally took inspiration from DnD, I think modern iterations of DnD have actually taken inspiration from Anime and video games, at least since around the time Paizo started working in 3e, artstyle being a clear hint of that.

[Chronos]

Don't forget that anime, RPGs, and pulps also all took inspiration from real life. Real life runs on a system where highly experienced warriors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4) are able to take a sniper rifle headshot and still survive.

[Jerrykhor]

Not surprising, both Anime and D&D draw their inspiration from standard story-telling tropes. They are also products of imagination, and their purpose is for entertainment. It wouldn't be much fun if your favourite character had to retire from doing his cool ass thing because of a busted knee that caused lasting damage before he could get through 2 episodes, 1 of which he spent explaining his super special moves and powering up.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I agree with all of the above, but I think there's one thing missing here. The times have gone full circle, and while Anime and JRPGs originally took inspiration from DnD, I think modern iterations of DnD have actually taken inspiration from Anime and video games, at least since around the time Paizo started working in 3e, artstyle being a clear hint of that.

5e explicitly so. It's a circle; effect is cause is effect. Monks, for instance, are entirely pop culture/anime, not anything based on real historical roots.

It's one reason I don't agree with appeals to reality. D&D 5e isn't trying to be realistic in any way. It's built on stories, most of which are built originally at least partially on D&D. It's tropes and archetypes and such all the way down. Any resemblance to reality or real history is incidental, because the tropes and media have a "fun house mirror" relationship to reality.

[Chronos]

And the modern conception of ninjas is largely based on a form of Japanese plays. More specifically, not on the characters in those plays, but on the stagehands. The stagehands wore the black-pajamas outfits that we associate with ninjas, and were visible on stage, but it was the convention of the genre that they weren't visible, just like it's the convention that a painted piece of canvass on a wooden frame is a building or whatever. There was one playwright who was writing a play about ninjas, and wanted them to appear out of nowhere, which he accomplished by having the ninja dressed as a stagehand, and only taking off his mask at the dramatic moment. Poof, the image stuck, and now that's what all ninjas look like in pop culture.

(actual historical ninjas, to the extent that they had any typical costume at all, most often dressed as beggars, for the purpose of being inconspicuous)

[dafrca]

I agree with all of the above, but I think there's one thing missing here. The times have gone full circle, and while Anime and JRPGs originally took inspiration from DnD, I think modern iterations of DnD have actually taken inspiration from Anime and video games, at least since around the time Paizo started working in 3e, artstyle being a clear hint of that.

I think the back and forth circle of TTPRGs, computer games, books, and anime borrowing and influencing each other has been going for a while and I happen to like it. I think at times they push each other into new and fun ways to approach their crafts. Styles, visuals, stories, and other aspects all seem to flow back and forth seeding each other. :smallbiggrin:

[kingcheesepants]

I think your example of One Piece and characters in the show having superhuman toughness isn't a particularly DnD inspired thing. There have been superhumanly tough heroes in stories from the earliest records of humanity. The epic of Gilgamesh which is the oldest extant piece of literature in the world includes characters with superhuman toughness. Later on in western traditions you've got heroes like Hercules and Achilles and in eastern traditions there are people like Son Goku, Benkei and Kintaro. Then more specifically thousands of years later (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) there are pulp comics and novels with superhuman characters and lots of action which many classic Japanese manga and anime were inspired by (again well before DnD was a thing).

However there are plenty of manga and anime in Japan which are directly or indirectly inspired by DnD. Honestly the whole fantasy genre takes some notes from earlier versions of DnD as do many of the most influential early games such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. So definitely there's a link but I don't think that superhuman abilities and toughness in general are DnD inspired but rather both DnD and anime are drawing upon the same much earlier tropes many of which date back thousands of years.

[Phhase]

Jojo is pretty much exactly this. While taking damage is usually crunchy and has consequences in the immediate, there is critical existance failiure at work and long rest = all wounds recovered is usually a hard rule, with some exceptions like severance.

[Greywander]

The thing with HP specifically is how it originated and then the end result when it gets translated into video games. I believe HP as a concept originated in wargaming, where it was the number of hits a particular unit needed to take in order to be destroyed. There was always some ambiguity in what that represented (could be vehicle armor, could be the number of men left alive), and different wargames may have used different systems for handling HP. D&D was adapted from wargaming, and brought the HP concept along for the ride. In its earliest form, D&D was essentially a wargame where you controlled a single hero unit instead of entire armies. HP became even more ambiguous because it wasn't really clear how a single person could survive multiple lethal blows, whereas before you could explain it as only some of the soldiers in a unit taking the blow and dying, while the rest remained capable of fighting. HP as a convention stuck, and eventually made it's way to video games, and that's how we ended up with Skyrim-style "two dudes hitting each other with axes until one of them falls over".

Now, in TTRPGs, you can sort of handwave HP. Maybe it's not literal meat, but a measure of luck, stamina, and the will to keep fighting. So any time you get hit, you're not actually taking physical damage, you are instead getting tired out and having your willpower eroded. The only blow that actually hits you is the one that drops you to 0. There are some problems with modeling HP this way (e.g. fall damage, lava, etc.), but it at least seems plausible. But this doesn't really work with video games, specifically action RPGs like Skyrim or Kingdom Come or Dark Souls; for a hit to register, you must make physical contact with a weapon. So somehow you can literally get hit in the face with an axe and shrug it off like it's nothing. You can get shot full of arrows and impaled, and it doesn't even slow you down. Take a quick nap and you're all better. This is a necessity for how these games are handled, there isn't really another way for them to do it (except to increase the lethality so that one hit will usually kill).

And then there's anime. And, to be fair, a lot of super hero stuff as well. But super hero stuff is a bit more plausible due to most heroes and villains fighting with their fists, or using blunt weapons (they use guns, too, but how often do you actually see Batman get shot?). But in anime, swords and other weapons are common. If someone gets hit with a club and just gets knocked back with some scuff marks on them, that's plausible. But when someone gets hit with a sword and the exact same thing happens, it just... doesn't make sense.

Like literally a character in One Piece got shot half a dozen times (somehow, even though flintlock pistols are single-shot) and was covered in blood, but a few episodes later and he looks fine, no blood and barely any scuff marks, good as new. And this character doesn't have any kind of super toughness power or regeneration or anything, nor have they received any medical treatment, though maybe they've been able to rest for, I don't know, 30 minutes or more (it's almost never clear how much time has actually passed). It was actually watching this character go from "he might be actually dead" to "not dead, just heavily injured" to "he's ready to fight again" that made me post this thread. I also remember seeing shades of this in Kill la Kill, where Ryuko takes on the elite four one after the other, with no time to recover between fighting them, despite taking a pretty severe beating in each fight.

Like, it's not just that a character tanks what should be a lethal blow like it was nothing, it's also that a character does get beat near to death, then magically recovers before the next fight, without rest or medical treatment. These are probably narrative tropes that predate RPGs, but it just looks a lot like HP and short rests.

For One Piece specifically, it's obvious that swords and guns are part of the pirate aesthetic, but they also want to keep it somewhat family friendly, and that's probably the real reason why things are like that. The high lethality of shows like Death Note or Attack on Titan has a completely different tone than what they were going for with One Piece, so very, very few people actually ever definitively die. Given that the entire premise of the show is a long journey across the Grand Line (so most characters would be left behind), they get surprisingly high mileage out of recurring characters. I always get taken off-guard whenever Buggy pops up again, for example. And obviously you can't bring a dead character back (though that doesn't stop some people), so best not to kill them in case you want to bring them back later.

[Imbalance]

The thing with HP specifically is how it originated and then the end result when it gets translated into video games. I believe HP as a concept originated in wargaming, where it was the number of hits a particular unit needed to take in order to be destroyed. There was always some ambiguity in what that represented (could be vehicle armor, could be the number of men left alive), and different wargames may have used different systems for handling HP. D&D was adapted from wargaming, and brought the HP concept along for the ride. In its earliest form, D&D was essentially a wargame where you controlled a single hero unit instead of entire armies. HP became even more ambiguous because it wasn't really clear how a single person could survive multiple lethal blows, whereas before you could explain it as only some of the soldiers in a unit taking the blow and dying, while the rest remained capable of fighting. HP as a convention stuck, and eventually made it's way to video games, and that's how we ended up with Skyrim-style "two dudes hitting each other with axes until one of them falls over".

Now, in TTRPGs, you can sort of handwave HP. Maybe it's not literal meat, but a measure of luck, stamina, and the will to keep fighting. So any time you get hit, you're not actually taking physical damage, you are instead getting tired out and having your willpower eroded. The only blow that actually hits you is the one that drops you to 0. There are some problems with modeling HP this way (e.g. fall damage, lava, etc.), but it at least seems plausible. But this doesn't really work with video games, specifically action RPGs like Skyrim or Kingdom Come or Dark Souls; for a hit to register, you must make physical contact with a weapon. So somehow you can literally get hit in the face with an axe and shrug it off like it's nothing. You can get shot full of arrows and impaled, and it doesn't even slow you down. Take a quick nap and you're all better. This is a necessity for how these games are handled, there isn't really another way for them to do it (except to increase the lethality so that one hit will usually kill).

And then there's anime. And, to be fair, a lot of super hero stuff as well. But super hero stuff is a bit more plausible due to most heroes and villains fighting with their fists, or using blunt weapons (they use guns, too, but how often do you actually see Batman get shot?).

I fondly look back on the original Legend of Zelda and the challenge of losing one of your most powerful projectile attacks if you had taken a single hit. At least Elder Scrolls games have built in limiters based on exertion - you're less accurate when your fatigue meter is low, and swinging like a madman lowers your meter. My favorite thing about the combat dial system from HeroClix (and predecessor, Mage Knight) is that damage is applied in a way that immediately impacts the character and dynamics of the fight. Batman does get shot, and you can tell.

HP is so weird to me - a character is just as effective near death as they were at full health? I get survival tropes, the rebound and rally, but never being any less effective often inhibits my immersion at the table. I suppose I like critical hit/miss effects tables for this reason.

[JackPhoenix]

At least Elder Scrolls games have built in limiters based on exertion - you're less accurate when your fatigue meter is low, and swinging like a madman lowers your meter.

That ended with Morrowind, which was the last in the series that used RPG mechanics with hit rolls in the background. In Oblivion and Skyrim, a hit is a hit when you actually physically connect, the only variable is how much damage it does.

[Chronos]

Quoth Greywander:

HP became even more ambiguous because it wasn't really clear how a single person could survive multiple lethal blows, whereas before you could explain it as only some of the soldiers in a unit taking the blow and dying, while the rest remained capable of fighting.
And yet, it happens. It's not the storyteller's task to explain that; it's a doctor's. In real life, real badasses really do survive wounds that would kill ordinary people, multiple times over.

[Imbalance]

That ended with Morrowind, which was the last in the series that used RPG mechanics with hit rolls in the background. In Oblivion and Skyrim, a hit is a hit when you actually physically connect, the only variable is how much damage it does.

True, but it also effected other activities, too. They call it Stamina in Skyrim, but they've recently added something specifically called Fatigue with the new survival mode, and yeah, it's in hand with what I've described. Exhaustion would be the nearest D&D equivalent.

[PhoenixPhyre]

And yet, it happens. It's not the storyteller's task to explain that; it's a doctor's. In real life, real badasses really do survive wounds that would kill ordinary people, multiple times over.

Reality is notable for being highly unrealistic. Low-probability events happen with distressing regularity. If you tried to pass it off as fiction, you'd get panned for postulating preposterous, logic-defying events. That's because our (humanity's, especially modern western "rational" people's) conception of what is realistic is highly constrained and cramped.

Tropes work precisely because they're drawn from reality, often at the "cultural subconsciousness" level. And in many cases, these tropes transcend culture.

[Tanarii]

And the modern conception of ninjas is largely based on a form of Japanese plays. More specifically, not on the characters in those plays, but on the stagehands.
I recall reading somewhere that the ninjas = stagehands thing is an urban legend that originates with one historian, but having problems locating the source. Poor google fu for the loss. :smallyuk:

[Devils_Advocate]

Doesn't shonen anime also frequently do the "zero to superhero" thing where someone who starts off running from ordinary bandits just keeps getting stronger and stronger until capable of slaughtering demon lords and cleaving entire planets in twain?

I'm not aware of that otherwise being a common character arc outside of RPGs.

[Joe the Rat]

Doesn't shonen anime also frequently do the "zero to superhero" thing where someone who starts off running from ordinary bandits just keeps getting stronger and stronger until capable of slaughtering demon lords and cleaving entire planets in twain?

I'm not aware of that otherwise being a common character arc outside of RPGs.
Funnily enough I've been poking around this arena. Ignoring Joe Campbell (since the metamyth isn't big on Power Levels), what you are looking for is more classically Cultivation (or Xianxia) stories. Starting as some schmo, you build up some form of Hero Mojo and breakthrough levels and achieve ever-greater levels of power. You can transcend mortal limits by channeling inner power, breaking limits, and eventually gain higher levels of existence - literally punching your way into godhood.

Sound familiar?

It's more a common cultural element behind the manga and manhwa stories, and why the game-y isekai catches on more readily, while western LitRPG genre fights to be not "weird niche."

If you want to go here, Tiers sort of work, but you really need that open-ended advancement. 3rd & 4th (And Pathfinder) will do this better- not only does your advancement make monsters and enemies obsolete, but the mechanics really lean into the "weird specializations and tricks to make you unstoppable " that typifies many shonen characters.

[Chronos]

*Cough*Luke Skywalker*Cough*

Starts off as a farmer whose idea of excitement is shopping for power converters, but by the time you get to some of the Expanded Universe stuff, he's deflecting Death Star beams with his lightsabre.

[Sigreid]

That specific thing doesn't come from RPGs. It's a mix of many things: pulp logic (which also influenced superheroes where even normal humans can survive being punched into a crater, the concept that you can make your body supernaturally tough and fast-healing via mastery of life energy, the needs of the story, and also national beliefs about how to endure hardship and face overwhelming power.

I think it's more this than anything. Anime characters are basically superheroes and villains or mythic heroes and villains set in the anime setting. By showing the boulder splitting they are showing you the awesome, inhuman power of both the attacker and defender in one sequence. The attacker attacked with such power that the massive boulder is split in 2 and the defender is so powerful he can withstand such a mighty blow. Which, yeah, is basically in line with how hit points and health bars work.