Originally Posted by felix
This is the problem when you build a story towards a placeholder "awesome shit goes here" point. Far too often this point is somewhere at the edge of infinity. Yeah it might happen, but everything else relevant in the story at that point just screams NOPE; take the whole incident a few chapters back, pretty awesome to see that guy melt, but in the context of the plot at the time that was pretty contrived and random.
Writing wise, it's probably always wiser to have an ending and go for it, but makes starting off everything harder since you have to think where the hell you're going; and moving forward is not easy writing, since given two points, a beginning and an end, you can't simply go too fast or go too slow. On the other hand blind writing is so adequate, especially when manga authors want to keep their jobs for as long as possible.
However blind writing tends to have very severe limitations, mainly what we see most often is we start out with a (very) promising premise and not much else. Korean ones are no exception though they're usually a little more thought out. If we're lucky the premise will last for more then the first chapter, but typically it's spent after the first 24. Longer isn't necessarily better; the more doors you open, the more doors you lock—not that authors seem to be aware of this. "Oh yes, I'm going to have this super martial arts invincible genius in this realistic school setting, and have my story revolve around (believable) politics and intrigue [blah-blah]." As-if you can have all of that in one basket and keep it all together for 300 chapters, tunnel vision is so awesome.
Symptoms that follow after "premise" exhaustion are typically short-story syndrome (got that), then possibly the travel-the-world syndrome (got that), followed by the save-the-universe syndrome (got that too) and eventually, if we're lucky the author will settle on some generic theme like "growing up", "love" or something else (when he gets stuck); in our case all three. Though typically the initial premise will come back from time to time when the author forgets it's not going anywhere (as in these last few chapters). Sometimes you might get some better ideas such as ninja village leader, pirate king, and so on, but if anywhere down the road you get stuck on the "invincible badass" pivot point (ie. Bleach, and The Breaker), it's very likely you'll forget those good ideas (ie. clan leader) and end up with a very wishy washy story spinning in circles where you're side characters are the main focus since the main character will just be sitting on the sidelines 90% of the time waiting for his next powerup (or comic relief moment), or other characters to tell him what to do. Sound familiar? (I won't even go into the whole recycling syndrom, might go over the post limit with that one)
So yes @Ghanw, The Breaker, was a lot better...
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