Harry potter vs. Shonen Jump

I just finished re-reading Harry Potter and the deathly hallows and I had a thought. Ok, so this may seem pretty random but dont the harry potter books have a lot of traits shared by shonen jump anime/manga - i mean shows like naruto, bleach etc.

Storytelling medium aside I'd say there is a lot. To start with the protagonist is a young male who gets progressively stronger throughout the series. He may not be the cleverist or most powerful, but he has unique abilities - and at the right moment in the story, can develop tremendous might or intelligence. He has a circle of close friends, all in their teens who go on to save the world, despite the eminantly more capable adults who abound. There are extensive flashbacks, awkward romance scenes, and long speeches about personal philosophies or how awesome some new character is. Then there are the long filler sections where not a lot happens - the characters appear weaker, and generally just argue amongst themselves (Im thinking a fair bit of books 5 and 6 really, and any number of filler arcs in any of the series mentioned above - ex the bount in bleach). The enemies get progressively stronger throughout the series. Finally important fights begin with staring contests almost as long as the fights themselves - (especially at the end of book 7)

I think, apart from the stuff in brackets, I just described both harry potter and all the series I listed at the start. So - am I talking bollocks? Are there any similarities? If so, which series is closest?

Of course there's similarities. Shounen manga is just manga targetted toward young boys, which more often than not means it is adventure manga, and probably has some form of magic powers or abilities.. Harry Potter is also also an adventure story about people with magic abilities and targetted toward young children and teenagers, so it makes sense that they would share a lot of characteristics.

Well, I also agree that there are a lot of similarities in the basic outline of the stories, which is protagonist slowly progressing as you've mentioned with many difficulties in their paths and finally achieving victory over antagonist. Like Xero XIII have mentioned, it is targeted toward young children and teenagers after all, so you can find many elements (fantasy) that are appealing to them. That's the basic similarities.

But, I can't say which series has the closest similarities. It's just that, they have their own original plot (mostly) and approach of thrilling the readers and viewers, and each of their morals can somehow be different to maintain the originality of one's seires.

The Harry Potter franchise is extremely popular in Japan, so it is not a great wonder as to why they seem to reference eachother some of the time.

Alas I could not imagine that J.K Rowling reads the odd volume of D.Gray-Man or what have you.