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.
>>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>>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
>>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.
>>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). 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
>>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.
Unique IPs: 20