/anime/ - Anime

Spaceship Agga Ruter did it right. Everything else is really lame.

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=wz3dBaUh9PU

There 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.

>>5298
Most things in the 90s did the current tropes right

>>5324
It's not shit taste, partially because of this >>9678

Is "The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter" any good? The synopsis reminds me a bit of of Magi: Labyrinth of Magic mixed with a fantasy version of Infinite Stratos' "MC goes to the all/mostly girls school!" plot. The harem is pretty generic: Le Childhood Friend, le Loli, le busty "onee-chan" etc.

>>9807
sounds 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 Magi
I 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.

To Love-Ru is a walking fetish series; In a nutshell some of the things include:
>Hijinks with falling and accidently sticking hands down a girls underwear while their nipple slips out of their shirt and into his mouth, more hijinks of the above but with a different girl, a Vagina cleverly disguised as beams of light reflecting off of dust in a window, but this time it's all with mature women, Rito becoming a rectal thermometer and being shoved up a girls ass (yes this happens), a literal space-bar spa, that includes giantesses that get cleaned
All this goes on ad nauseum… Unless Tearju is going to invent a device that teleports Rito back up onto his own two feet whenever he trips, but it'll cause a tear in the fabric of space-time because he enters an infinite recursion of tripping into pantsu and being booted back up and the tear in the universe looks like a shimmering vagina.
We can all agree that in essence, the show is a thinly veiled hentai, ripping off Urusei Yatsura. Frankly in terms of lewdity I think it outstrips most manga that aren't edgy rapey shit (a la Shinimaou).

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
>>>become
it was always trash

>>11207
IMO it had a mediocre to decent start and just dropped through the bottom.

>>11218
From what I remember, it went to shit after the second episode.

>>11219
>it went to shit after the second episode.
Kek, I've heard the claim that it hit the shit after the second season but this guy… lel

>>5295
>the point of (most) harem series
Ero 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.

>>12948
Consider 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.

>>12953
Link? 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.

>>13035
Old 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.

>>13055
It's kind of scary how accurate CS Lewis was on that, “…a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against a man ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attributes which no real woman can rival. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”

>>12969
I 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 ?
>>13061
What is this from ?

>>13095
NTA 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.

>>13096
So everyone calling you a pol convert was right on the money. Cute.

Man It really sucks that Nyan Koi never got completed, it's plain SoL with a bit of harem but done in a fun and actually interesting way.

>>5313
>>12948
I really hate haremshit but I'll admit you got me interested.

Wish fulfillment and escapism.
Shit sucks.

>>13111
hell yeah i want my wishes fulfilled

>>13112
The 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.

>>13113
so whats real fulfillment and why is it supposedly more real than the enjoyment i get from fictional media? inb4 you post bible quotes

>>13112
I don’t want the author to pander to my wishes. It’s way too easy.

>>13116
>inb4 you post bible quotes
Nobody 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 media
Read 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.

>>13116
NTA, 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.

>>13121
it 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).

>>13124
Well, yeah, because it operates on the same level as porn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>13126
thats whats magical about 2d porn

>Be the breast CYOA
Did Issei Hyoudou make this, lmao
https://archive.ph/qV4Zd

i think a really good recent harem is the otome villainess isekai. it doesn't have any ecchi elements, and the people that are attracted to katarina know each others feelings and accept them. imo this helps the harem feel more like a family and enhances their chemistry to the point where you can't imagine bakarina just picking one person in the end. i highly recommend just watching it whenever, the first season only took me an afternoon to watch in its entirety because of how this anime pulled me in

>>13819
Sounds 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
>>13819
Also 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 Muyo
The first two seasons anyway.

So a lot of people liked that Ishuzoku Reviewers (Interspecies Reviewers) and a big part of the popularity came from the Yeen character but Kemokko Dobutsuen did it earlier, and IMO funnier although they didn't go anthro. And it's been done by Seton Academy using Iena Madaraba.
https://mangakakalot.com/chapter/kemokko_dobutsuen/chapter_9
https://archive.ph/4Dh89

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.

>>13819
Frankly 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 nazis
What?

>>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.