What the fuck even is the point of harem series? Aren't most of them just romance but with an even greater chance of blueballing you?
Yeah, it SEEMS like pure wish fulfillment, but it isn't even good at that because in most shows there's only relentless teasing instead of any actual romance and the MC only ends up with one of the candidates anyway.
The only explanation I can come up with is that it's just a way to increase the appeal (and thus commercial potential) of a standard romance series by cramming it with different archetypes. Either that or anime fans just love getting teased with no real guarantee of a reward, which would explain a lot, actually.
(Also) This thread is for all the harem anime, manga, light novels/virtual novels etc. Post your Favorite Anime, Favorite Scenes, What you like about them, memes, discussion, lewds and anything in between.
It's a (power) fantasy and often an attempt at Slice-of-Life, usually with battle-waifus. Most harems go to shit because they're very same faced and predictable in both the MC and the girls. To repost my old rant.
this thread reminds me why most harem shows, other than DxD are annoying. All this over-sexualization for no reason except anime-gags. At least DxD doesn't try and hide behind the whole 'pure protagonist' bullshit the others do and instead revels in this.
There are very few Harem anime that are good or fun, such as Ranma 1/2 or is Zero no Tsukaima
(though in the end Saito subverts the usual harem stuff by having Saito leave with Louise for his world after marrying her and her alone, though in his case you actually wish they had gone all the way with the harem route)Let's list off the number of SHITTY Harems, starting with the ones I can think off the top my head:
- Testament of Sister Devil (or whatever its called) is DxD if written by an edgy fanfic writer who doesn't understand what DxD is about, (I actually plan on writing a comparison on the two later).
- Unlimited Fafnir, a weird as fuck typical anime similar to Black Bullet except unironically having the main character getting intimate with the 'dragon lolis'. It's less a cohesive story and more a mixed bag of story ideas from other better anime like Evangelion
- Girly Air Force is like Dragonaut but as a (potential) harem and with the reasoning for the protagonist actually being there in the first place as rather weak. It's also a wierd attempt to fetishize planes
- Rosario and Vampire, initially has a cool idea but doesn't think about the long-term and makes the vampire too over-powered and edgy while the protag is bland and weak.
- In another world with my Smartphone: It's OP done wrong, simple as that. It's got no stakes, not even the shitty, SAO-type ones.
A good video got made on this actually; How to (Not) Handle an OP Character - Ft. Isekai Smartphone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz3dBaUh9PUThere are way more but I might get to them later.
TL;DR:
Aside from some exceptions which are A LOT of fun, most Harem anime are either bland, fetish bait, infuriating or a combination of those aspects. This and Isekai stuff are victims to such treatment because Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Slice-of-Life genre are treated by many 'authors' as being trash genres where its okay to be garbage because that's just how the genre is, even if that's not actually true. It's people trying to be edgy or make a quick buck and it fucking sucks. And it attracts creeps and other terrible representatives of anime-communities.
Ranma 1/2 was one of the few manga I've read from start to finish. I digged the martial arts aspect, but ngl I found many of the cliche hijinks pretty entertaining but I'm not even sure why, so I won't even try to defend my allegedly shit taste.
>>5298Most things in the 90s did the current tropes right
>>5324It's not shit taste, partially because of this
>>9678 >>9807sounds like danmachi but without world building (not saying it's good),what made you think it was close to Magi ?
>>9817>think it was close to MagiI was reminded of the whole "dungeon of riches thing that has been done with other contemporary anime like Arifureta and Danmichi, you're right that Danmichi is probably a closer fit than Magi, tho.
And yeah, for all the world building Danmichi really fails to hold up, so I I don't begrudge Hidden Dungeon for not even bothering.
SAO is totally a harem show. Unfortunately it's also become a trash show: SAO the anime is a waste to view after the first two seasons, (even they're mediocre) Seems decent to a casual inattentive viewer, but after comparing the anime to the light novel Alicization I dropped it. It skips key parts and often robs the viewer of the emotion and build up of important scenes, just throwing one into an action with no context and jumping between one action to another by sometimes TELLING us the things that happened in between. Not to mention the sheer Gary Stu character of Kirito.
For a real detailed analysis on why SAO is hated I'm the wrong, guy, couldn't be bothered to care that much. SO here are people who did care enough:
-
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-hate-Sword-Art-Online/answer/Raunak-Sapkota -
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-hate-Sword-Art-Online/answer/Vedant-Vaidya-3 A defense of SAO
-
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-hate-Sword-Art-Online/answer/Ashley-Riedell BTW if you feel like reading the LN, unfortunately, because SAO is finally getting an official english translation, the online fan-translated LN has been deleted, but it does have an archive, (though missing the last 2 volumes):
https://www.reddit.com/r/swordartonline/wiki/ln_archive Also I really recommend SAO Abridged, it's awesome and fixes many of the problems in the anime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6kJKxvbgZ0&list=PLuAOJfsMefuej06Q3n4QrSSC7qYjQ-FlU Someone even made a funny crossover of the abridged and normal SAOs:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13357528/3/Sword-Art-Online-reacts-to-SAO-abridged I also should mention Chapter 16.5 of the Aincrad Arc and the extent of cumbrain writing; SomethingWitty entertainment reading the chapter (I recommend seeing this after the abridged series):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L17OayixcJg>>11205>it's also become a trash show>>>becomeit was always trash
>>11207IMO it had a mediocre to decent start and just dropped through the bottom.
>>11218From what I remember, it went to shit after the second episode.
>>5295 >the point of (most) harem seriesEro fantasies and porn like link related
https://hentaijuggs.com/tag/to-love-ru >>5313>DxD So this kind of light-hearted ecchi harem-fantasy anime appeals to me because I can get invested in more than generic ecchi fanservice, but unfortunately more like it is hard to find.
Finally I located one that tickled that same giddy fun feeling I got from DxD, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs. 12 episodes and 4 OVA, it isn't very complex but the characters appeal to me and the gimmicks are pleasing. Obviously not a work of high culture, but fun for me nonetheless.
>>12948Consider reading Youkai Shoujo – Monsuga, it may be up your alley. The main guy has a sort of harem but one of the girls in the harem kind of has her own harem too, in a way.
I'll warn you, the ending is underwhelming.
>>12953Link? I'm fairly sure you're not talking about Monmusu, but the term Monster Girl is to broad for search
>>12969 Dank you
Tenchi Muyo! was pretty funny. I think it was harem with one man living with a bunch of abhorrent admirers.
>>13035Old or new? the Old is pretty good, the new… my opinion is
>>5343 >>5295>What the fuck even is the point of harem series?Having more girls that watchers can like without the necessity of adding more male characters that won't improve sales.
>>12969I just finished it,and I actually liked the ending ?
Am I an idiot or something ? Is it just because I've grown accustomed to not care about an ending to the romance because it's always shit or open ended ?
>>13061What is this from ?
>>13095NTA but
I think people didn't like the ending because they expected more bang-for-their-buck after the 'buildup'.
>What is this from One of Lewis' essays discussing people projecting their sexual fantasies onto non-erotic fiction as an escapist self-insert, I kinda just had the quote saved from years ago during the time I trolled 4/pol/ about their waifu-fagging for fun.
>>13096So everyone calling you a pol convert was right on the money. Cute.
>>5313>>12948I really hate haremshit but I'll admit you got me interested.
Wish fulfillment and escapism.
Shit sucks.
>>13111hell yeah i want my wishes fulfilled
>>13112The point is its a false fulfilment and at the end you'll be left with nothing but the air and idolatry. Enjoy trashy stuff for fun, but keep that in mind.
>>13113so whats real fulfillment and why is it supposedly more real than the enjoyment i get from fictional media? inb4 you post bible quotes
>>13112I don’t want the author to pander to my wishes. It’s way too easy.
>>13116>inb4 you post bible quotesNobody did that, get off your edgy high horse faggot
>real fulfillment Having an actual relationship with actual people instead of living a fantasy, literally the theme of dozens of literary and cinematic media from the Matrix to Naruto to They Live.
>the enjoyment i get from fictional mediaRead my metaphorical lips you idiot; you can enjoy a fantasy or escape for casual fun but in moderated amounts or risk being an infantile lumpen like nearly every neckbearded 4pol otaku ever.
>>13116NTA, but
It requires the suspension of disbelief to such a degree that the way attachments and relationships function in society are excluded in service of easy fictional attachments that fulfill the viewers desires. Many forms of fiction require a high suspension of disbelief, but there is a difference between asking audiences to suspend their disbelief in the service of a plot device, and suspend their disbelief with the relationships between characters. Even in fantastical fiction, it’s jarring to see characters that divorced from the human experience.
>>13121it really isnt that hard to differentiate fiction from reality while holding them as similar, errr, possibilities (stealing from the text im about to quote), its something seen a lot in otaku
its the same logic behind lolicon and pretty much all fetishes and a lot of disparate logic seen in anime and manga
>Akagi Akira agrees with Saitō that for Japanese growing up since the 1970s, fiction and reality already existed as parallel spaces of possibility (Akagi 1993: 233-234). For example, media and anime characters were very much a real part of everyday life. The private spaces of fantasy began to overlap in fiction such as lolicon, which made them into a “communal fantasy” (kyōdō gensō), both public and commercial. Fiction was real, but also completely separate from reality. Volker Grassmuck, commenting on representations of sex in manga and anime in general, writes: “Maybe they represent pure, abstract sex, the simulation of stimulation” (Grassmuck1990: 9).
>This point was expanded in a personal interview (February 26, 2010), where Saitō went so far as tosuggest that it is the reality of pedophilia in the United States and Europe that makes it impossible to approach asfantasy. Honda made a similar comment (personal interview, September 26, 2009). This remarkable reversal hasit that it is precisely the lack of real child abuse in Japan that allows for fictional representations of sexualized children.
>Lolicon is certainly an example of this. Azuma Hiroki identifies a global trend towards approaching sex and violence as separate, and lolicon as a resistant trend where attention is drawn to, and pleasure drawn from, power differentials (Azuma, Saitō and Kotani 2003: 180). For Azuma, lolicon is treated much the same way as terrorism, because it builds on a fear of violence, only sexual rather than political or religious in nature.
>Though lolicon is not necessarily always pornographic, and in the form of “moe-style” (moe-kei) works today consists mostly of mild eroticism (for example, glimpses of panties rather than explicit sex or vaginal penetration). >>13124Well, yeah, because it operates on the same level as porn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>>13126thats whats magical about 2d porn
>>13819Sounds fun, I'll check this out later.
If you want to watch a good harem anime, I recommend Tenchi Muyou. Tenchi is an actually good person which is very rare for these kinds of anime
>>13819Also a based choice
one thing i hate about harem anime and romance anime in general is the way it creates romantic tension by pointless fighting over who gets to fug the mc. it's even worse if there's a canon best girl the series hints at but i'm supposed to sit there like an idiot and watch the meaningless conflict unfold when i already know who the protag wants. like, just take them all dude. just do polygamy. i despise the idea that everyone has to be in a monogamous relationship when marrying all of the love interests would clearly be the best solution
I only watch them to compare who has the biggest tiddies
>>14348>Tenchi MuyoThe first two seasons anyway.
Hot Take: the name of Dokyuu HxEros and Masō Gakuen HxH are trying to play on the fame of HS DxD using the LetterxLetter nameplay.
>>13819Frankly I'd like more villainess romcoms in anime, they're cute and funny and there's not enough of it to be tiresome.
>>13097>everyone calling you a pol convert who, where, what?
>right on the money<I trolled 4/pol/ about their waifu-fagging for fun <If you shit on the nazis you become the nazisWhat?
>>5295>What the fuck even is the point of harem series? Aren't most of them just romance but with an even greater chance of blueballing you? A plain SoL Harem is usually boring unless you spice it up with something; devils, monsters, aliens, alien-devil monsters, world-ending disasters, magic settings, sci-fi settings etc.
From a clinical and cynical point of view it's a Power Fantasy pure an simple - the guy gets the girls and becomes the hero.
However if written well it becomes an opporutnity for worldbuilding and action along with fan-service and romcom plots, which is a fun bit of escapism as long as you're not being a retard about it.
consumer preference aka money
I think its because its easier. You don't have to try to create interesting characters when its a harem.
>>26846>What has caused the harem to almost become the default relationship in anime?It has not become the default.
>>26851Hence my use of the word "almost."
>>26850I don't agree, the plot is the most important thing, that's why in our childhood we were taught love stories where a prince would proceed to save his princess in spite of monsters and other obstacles. They could be just an another man and woman, but that wouldn't be interesting. Art appeals to aestetics, and familiarity is often uninteresting.
Many yuri, yaoi, cgdct are boring fanservice animes and even they are not usually popularized by how cute their female characters are, like 'Bocchi the Rock', I never watched it but the main premise of it is that Bocchi was not a cute girl, but an introvert first.
Vidrel, see how the church painter responds to crusaders questions of whether people will like to see his art!
>>26854not really. I made the analogy with porn precisely because the plot is not only irrelevant but often even omitted entirely. and it is the other way around, there is no such thing as aesthetics but acquired behavior, that's why every society has had different canons of beauty, thus a degree of familiarity is a prerequisite, not an obstacle
>are boring fanservice animesbecause you don't like anime. you are trying to find what you already know (western stories and cliches) in japanese animation. let me guess, you also think most anime are bad and fanservice mills
>Bocchi>not a cute girlok nvm you are just rattling my cage
>>26858>there is no such thing as aesthetics but acquired behavior, that's why every society has had different canons of beauty, thus a degree of familiarity is a prerequisite, not an obstacleEvery society had its inner discourse where aestetics were not in a particular sense accepted but a whole set of things were present, this is not only in the basis of society but the individual as well, child me and me now do not usually devour same things. See how many monarchies were toppled when the monarch was once the beloved father, how old beautiful piety, the influence of churches were replaced by wisdom of reason and state secularism.
>because you don't like anime. you are trying to find what you already know (western stories and cliches) in japanese animation. let me guess, you also think most anime are bad and fanservice millsI think so with your last claim, but I watch anime. Anime is just a drawing style which is used in reflections of the artist, at the end, I either consume it or not, but pretty sure it is more about how interesting the story is- like, in Fate series, it is the holy grail war and characters of different whims clashing which was interesting to see for me.
>ok nvm you are just rattling my cageThere I meant that her being introverted was more focussed by the audience than she being a girl ( at least from my observations )
>>26850>because you watch anime for the female characters, not the plot or anything elseCringe but perfectly explains why anime has gotten so much worse. Worst of all is that people who think like this genuinely consider themselves the "true fans".
>>26858>because you don't like animelol I should have read the rest of the rest of the thread first, there it is. If you don't like retarded slop you don't REALLY like anime, you stupid westerner!!!! If you expect anime to be anything but trash you're not a true fan!!!!
I wonder if this harem stuff will disolve into polyamory. Like instead of making the MC THE load bearing drywall you could have much more interesting dynamics if the characters were into some of eachother and not others, but were still generally in the same friend-group with benefits.
This would mean making the cast majority bisexual, but that's easy to get away with.
>>26862Fans won't go for poly stuff. The mc has to be male and all the characters have to like him only. Girls frontline had a npc male express gratitude towards a female character and they went ape shit
>>26864>a guy is being nice to a girl>people get pissed offWhat in the actual fuck?
>>26865Yuri idiots and the saddest kind of waifufag who gets jealous of their imaginary girlfriend possibly liking an imaginary boy.
>>26864Honestly I'm surprised by all the stuff that other gachas get in controversy for while Arknights's fandom remains peaceful despite doing basically everything those others were doing and beyond. The game must have made it's rent lowering gunshots early enough to dodge all that.
>>26867because if you are clear from the beginning about the type of content you are producing the audience you gather will be the audience for that content. if you signal that your game is "unicorn friendly" (no male interactions) your audience is going to hold you up to those expectations. if you break that promise later on, the people that have paid money to play your game will probably get pissed. if you don't like the expectations, you should have been clear about it from the starts, and these companies know what they are doing:
they were the ones that created these tropes and culture in the first place>>26862funnily enough this is common in porn, be it manga or anime. there were some hints towards it like 15 years ago, I can't remember specific titles but one important disclaimer is that these weren't romance anime, the series that oscillated in this direction were normally edgy thriller, drama or terror, where personal relations weren't the focus but more like a plot device to signal the alignment or moral compass of some characters
chobits harem baits but at the beginning but kind of subverts it as the story develops
>>26865The presence of males other than the mc interacting with the harem is netorare according to them
I think it's one part wish fulfillment and another part marketing, where you can market merch to various shippers if you don't explicitly state a "winner."
>>26870That's unimaginably pathetic.
>>26873It must be incredibly exhausting to see yourself getting cucked over things like that daily.
>>26875>fiction is not realholy shit!!
>>26884>How come every single female story is a reverse harem?Based females.
>>26884it's different though. take twilight for example, women self-insert as the female protagonist and there is a focus on romance, which means that in most cases the girl picks one of the male leads and the story ends. harem for men doesn't really have a self-insert component, and while there are some that eventually take a route, most tend to be either vaguely or explicitly inconclusive
in other words, "reverse harem" is just romance with multiple potential leads, regular modern harem is slice of life
>>26889because no one wants to hangout with men, they want only women friends
>>26889>harem for men doesn't really have a self-insert component,Lol wut? Most harem stories are isekais nowadays, the most self-insert genre to ever exist.
>and while there are some that eventually take a route, most tend to be either vaguely or explicitly inconclusiveWrong.
brother we marxists speak in terms of trends and categories, not cherrypicking
self-insert is rather rare nowadays and people have some confusion with the term. most male protagonists are plain and people not familiar with anime mistake that for self-insert bait, but there is little to no actual self-insert by the audience nor is that the intended effect by the author. the protagonists are plain mostly to avoid alienating viewers: he is not the point so there is nothing to gain by giving him a personality, but you might lose audience if they find him annoying. case in point it is extremely rare to see otaku talk about the interactions of the protagonist with the girls, ever
but with reverse harem you have a very strong self-insert. if you read twilight you are literally bella and edward loves you. the protagonist is plain but in a completely different direction, she interacts, or rather, has an actual dynamic with the romantic leads. I don't remember bella ever having an actual conversation or exchange with edward, you are just carried forward by the story. I think that's the main difference between plain and self-insert
>>26892>self-insert is rather rare nowadays and people have some confusion with the term. most male protagonists are plain and people not familiar with anime mistake that for self-insert bait, but there is little to no actual self-insert by the audience nor is that the intended effect by the author. the protagonists are plain mostly to avoid alienating viewers: he is not the point so there is nothing to gain by giving him a personality, but you might lose audience if they find him annoying. case in point it is extremely rare to see otaku talk about the interactions of the protagonist with the girls, everLol I love how leftypol has invented the argument technique of
>You are wrong>long ass paragraph of non-sequitrs>never say one word about how you're wrong>hopefully you got bored of my rambling and string of non-sequitrs before realizing I'm never going to backup my claim
>self-insert is rather rare nowadays and people have some confusion with the term. most male protagonists are plain and people not familiar with anime mistake that for self-insert bait,Want to take another shot at it?
>two paragraphs is too long for me
I accept your concession
not to mention that I was talking about modern harem and you brought up something from 20 years ago. kind of weak trolling
ways to tell a story a harem story is a self-insert for men:
>main character is a incel loser virgin who gets some lucky break:
<his grandfather left him a bathhouse to run
<his uncle left him left a girl's dormitory to run
>main character is a incel loser virgin usually who has lived a full long life of being a loser incel virgin and dies at the age of 40+ or something
<and is now given a second shot at life to hopefully not be an incel loser permavirgin this time
<cue harem
You can tell a self insert because the main character is an incel loser permavirgin for no other reason than the average reader of these softcore pornos are incel loser permavirgins.
>>26895>not to mention that I was talking about modern harem and you brought up something from 20 years ago. kind of weak trollingAnd you have 0 examples. I'm not trolling, you're just denying the obviously reality that all these softcore porno animes with loser MCs are self-inserts.
I don't care enough to throw examples, but you have a pop understanding of anime, vibes you picked up from internet memes and not the actual content. it's like when people think they "know about history" because they like countryball memes and video-essays. the people that either follow seasonal anime or have an honest interest in it already know these things I'm verbalizing. feel free to come up with an honest argument
>>26896>You can tell a self insert because the main character is an incel loser permavirgin for no other reason than the average reader of these softcore pornos are incel loser permavirgins.It's true. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing about harem anime is that it's boring and unfunny, watching porn is much more exciting.
I don't think it's even about guys wanting 10 girlfriends. I think it's about wanting to sell your anime to 10 different guys, all of whom have different tastes in waifus, so you give your MC 10 girlfriends so that all 10 guys in your audience will like at least one of them.
If your MC only had one girlfriend, you risk displeasing everyone in your audience who was more interested in someone else.
>>26900Is the MC even necessary at that point? Seems like you could cut the literal middleman and make each girl bi and interested in eachother.
>>26902I mean, it does sometimes seem like the harem is a lesbian polycule that a guy wandered into by accident and he can't find the exit anymore
>>26904in recent series the male protagonist often isn't even such, they are instead either an animal or a literal object like a sword or a hanbaiki. the most prominent harems these last seasons have been basically hamefura clones, so male demographic with a female protagonists and a harem with both male and female romantic leads
>>26902They need a male mc to self insert as
>>26912Maybe the trick is to have the self-insert be mysterious and ambiently present, add characters the audience might relate with instead, and give the MC traits until the captive audience self-inserts into the characters they moreso relate to.
Arknights has a self-insert, the Doctor, that has near-complete amnesia and wears form hiding clothing and hood, and in the anime adaptation they're making an androgynous VA. By the time the doctor starts to get traits, like eating ramen raw packet first and pouring water in like in vidrel to make the ramen in their mouth, I had already started to strongly relate to Texas, and I've seen a lot of people online kin Lappland.
>>26903K-On is so tame though, it was even shown on Disney Channel. Does this series pander to moefags or something?
>>26926you mean like a remake of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" but in revolutionary russia instead of medieval england? the funny thing is that it should end the same way: despite the protagonist best efforts, the revolution ends up collapsing into a bureaucratic mess and repressive policies like it did in real life, because it didn't depend on the actions of one individual, but on the material and political conditions of the moment
>>26889>harem for men doesn't really have a self-insert componentThat's ridiculous. Most harem protagonists have basically no personality and are drawn like generic Japanese teenage boys because they're meant to be easy to project onto.
>most tend to be either vaguely or explicitly inconclusiveYeah so that the viewers can just pick whichever girl they like the best without there having to be a "canon" choice that conflicts with what they want. The inconclusive nature of the romance is part of the self insert.
>>27067She was my favourite, it was so cute when they did that ritual and she started having fun.
>>27074Its funny how the occult club has the nicest members in the show.
She had a nice va too, she was treat whenever she was on screen.
But even harems are rarely ever real harems. The main character always winds up with either no one or only one person not a poly relationship
>>27128I read a story that had an actual harem ending, in modern times too
It was trash
>>27128hamefura ends with wholesome bisexual polycule
>>27137
Harem animes been popular for decades
>>27137
>I have yet to see that.
bro is blind :skull_emoji:
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