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The huge casts allow for a wider net to be cast when pulling in an audience. The problem with shounens isn't that they often have large casts, but that the authors don't know how to handle a large cast properly. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a lot of characters, especially when your manga is (hopefully) running for many, many years.
Also, shounen characters aren't the deepest bunch of the lot. They generally only have three or four different characteristics to their personality. Their usual one that we see more often than not, their fighting mood that might have a more serious undertone to it, their comic relief mood that's generally markedly out of character, and their serious mood for when the story decides to be a little dramatic. And that's about it. For some characters, these even tend to overlap, like Luffy's usual and comic relief mood are more or less the same. <_<
Anyway, I think the large cast is a good thing, especially as the story is moving in more exciting directions.
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