How The Dark Trio Is Different From The Big Three And What Makes Them Better

Shonen Jump's Big Three walked so that the Dark Trio could run, and they look to continue running the modern anime scene for the foreseeable future.

Anime, like any artistic medium, is no stranger to being separated into easy-to-identify groups. The very concept of "shonen" as pertaining to a young male audience is useful for publications like Shonen Jump, but such groups are rarely ever easy to define, and can often be even harder to distinguish. There is a fine line between shonen and seinen which becomes even blurrier the closer it's examined, and which is only truly recognizable at its absolute extremes. The Dark Trio (consisting of Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Hell's Paradise) is a great example of the blurriness between shonen and seinen, as each of those series tread that fine line as though it were a tight rope which they sway back and forth on—often violently.

The "shonen" example that the Dark Trio directly contends with is really one that has largely become associated with Shonen Jump's Big Three: Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. The idea of settling upon three series that define shonen may seem trivial when considering that there are other great anime series that could easily make up a Dark Trio or Big Three of their own. However, the titles of Dark Trio and Big Three are used purely to point out trends in popularity within the greater anime and manga landscape, with the chosen three merely serving as stand-out examples of the styles of that point in time. In using the Big Three and Dark Trio as a gauge for the popular trends of their time, further trends that highlight how anime as a medium has improved over time become clear. While proving that either the Dark Trio or Big Three is objectively better than the other is impossible because each series stands on its own merits, it is possible to point out how the new improves on the old, and how anime as a medium has evolved over the past two decades thanks to the influence of the Big Three.

The Dark Trio Has No Time For Nonsense

One of the common threads that separates the series in the Dark Trio from those of the Big Three is their superior pacing. Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece are all notorious for having copious amounts of filler that cause the series to drag on unnecessarily. On the other hand, Hell's Paradise, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man are all much more streamlined with each event in the anime directly corresponding to a substantial part of the series' plot. Their plots often define a fairly clear problem at the outset and then proceed to detail the protagonist’s journey toward finding the solution without the extra fluff of side quests that do little to develop the characters or build upon their world. That's a critique that's not just directed at the Big Three though; it's more a reflection of the landscape of shonen manga and anime as a whole during their heyday. The days of long, drawn-out manga series are well in the past, and some of the biggest anime being adapted right now are working off source material that is already entirely completed, such as Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, and Hell's Paradise.

Another big consequence of the greater focus on plot in the Dark Trio is that its side characters are often more fleshed out. Bleach and Naruto have some incredible characters with solid backstories, but they're usually just not as thoroughly explored as those in Hell's Paradise or Jujutsu Kaisen. This combination of factors helps the Dark Trio to appeal more to older audiences by allowing them to be taken more seriously as nuanced pieces of art. That's not to say that the Big Three don't touch on thought-provoking concepts or feature emotionally impactful moments (they contain some of the best that anime has to offer), but those moments are unfortunately surrounded by filler which could have been better utilized in developing characters or plot points further.

The Dark Trio Have More Nuanced Power Systems Than The Big Three

The Dark Trio and other modern shone anime have learned a lot from the Big Three and its contemporaries. One of the biggest lessons modern series have learned is how to avoid power creep at all costs while still allowing their characters to grow in strength. Part of how they do this is by making the power increase more gradual, more dramatic, and more well-planned-out ahead of time. Bleach's Bankai and One Piece's Devil Fruits have led to some awesome and interesting power systems, but they don't seem to have the same nuance and complexity that Hell's Paradise's Tao has.

One of the coolest aspects of Naruto is definitely its appropriation of ninjutsu into a power system that's both simple enough for the casual anime viewer to understand and complex enough for hardcore fans to continue debating about to this day. However, part of what causes that debate is how inconsistent the power scaling is, as it isn't noticeable enough to take away from the enjoyment of the series. Still, the power scaling becomes more apparent when fans dive deeper into the abilities of specific characters and how they match up throughout the series. A series like Jujutsu Kaisen won't have as much of this problem because the specifics of characters' abilities—like Gojo and Geto—are spelled out early on, thereby defining their boundaries ahead of time. Of course, concepts like the Devils in Chainsaw Man and Curses in Jujutsu Kaisen were at the very least subconsciously influenced by Bleach's idea of the Shinigami and Arrancar. That being the case, they have had the benefit of being able to build off what older series' did well while also learning from their mistakes.

The Dark Trio Learned From the Best

All the tropes that the Dark Trio tries to break away from tend to come directly from the Big Three and the other series that served as the Big Three's contemporaries. Therefore, The Dark Trio ultimately owe their very existence to those shonen series that came before them. Without Naruto setting up the foundation to build upon, Hell's Paradise's Gabimaru likely wouldn't be the awesome shinobi assassin that he is. Similarly, without the success of Ichigo's blend of Hollow-human in Bleach, Denji's blend of Devil-human in Chainsaw Man may have never even been ideated to begin with.

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the Dark Trio and the Big Three is their tones and themes. The Dark Trio often contains more intense and violent imagery, nihilist themes, and an overall darker tone which contrast with the mostly positively affirming themes of friendship and cut-and-dry heroism that the big three mainly embody. That change didn't arrive in a vacuum, though. Now that the younger audience that grew up with publications like Shonen Jump has grown up along with the Big Three, the fan base of shonen anime naturally consists of more mature audiences that are attracted to more adult themes and concepts. The Dark Trio represents a new generation of shonen anime that has learned from and perfected the formula that its predecessors popularized and is willing to unapologetically tear the heart out of that formula in the most violent way possible. If anything, what the Dark Trio does best is actively break down the trivial boundaries that attempt to separate popular works of fiction into groups, in turn showing why categorizations are often insufficient in defining great works of art.