#harem anime

[astragifs]

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

comic by @baalbuddy

[everythingismadeofchaos]

Hey so I have to ask this question. I am an old, and I've been trying anime sporadically for literal decades (since I saw Twilight of the Cockroaches in the theater), but I couldn't find much I liked and didn't really start getting into it until I saw One Punch Man season 1 after it first came out and before season 2 and it made me laugh and just have a wonderful time. At that point I realized there probably was a lot of anime that was worth my time, and I started looking for it, and what I discovered was that anime is actually like most things: most of it is crap and has no interest for me, but some of it is really good and some of it is fantastic. So just recently I found Dungeon Meshi.

I love Dungeon Meshi. It's inspired me to actually try reading manga, which I've never been able to enjoy before. I sporadically tried comics over the years, but it still hasn't stuck even when it's material that I'm really interested in; I don't know why but it just doesn't work for me. Manga never has either, although I haven't really tried it much. But now I've tried reading Dungeon Meshi and I'm having kind of mixed results but I'm happy I'm trying it even though it's kind of diluted by the fact that I've already seen this story in the anime. I'm really looking forward to another manga by the same author that I ordered the other day at the suggestion of somebody on Tumblr, when I previously asked for advice. I have high hopes that I will enjoy that more than I enjoy the DM manga simply because I've never seen the stories before. Apparently there are seven short stories; that should be fun.

But my question is this. Is the inherent creepiness of anime what's really holding it back in the west? All of the sexualization of young girls, and even leaving aside young girls there's this phenomenon I'm going to call "the chainmail bikini effect" because it kind of parallels a phenomenon in Western fantasy, that all really screws up my enjoyment of the story. I can't bloody stand harem anime. I find it so, so aggravating. And the thing is, I'm really curious about this other genre with all these other ideas and settings and conventions and I really like all of that stuff. It's just the creepy pseudo-pedophilia and hypersexualization. I feel like most anime wants me to be a pedophile and that's creepy as fuck.

So how much other anime is there that isn't like this? One Punch Man really wasn't, although there were one or two characters I guess who were kind of parodies of the genre, which makes sense since the whole thing was a parody, but there's got to be more. I mean I loved Ascendance Of A Bookworm, because even though that was a young girl there was absolutely nothing sexualized about it. I loved the Saga of Tanya the Evil. It really stands out and is completely different from anything else that I'd ever seen in that genre, although it does remind me a lot of a book I read a couple of decades ago called The Blue Max, which they completely ruined in a movie starring George Peppard; the book is about this character sort of fighting against his own personal demons and losing, but the movie character is just a positive decent neato white hat hero guy and it ruins the whole concept. Tanya is like that book (not the movie obviously).

What else is out there in this department? What am I going to enjoy like Delicious in Dungeon because it doesn't carry these creepy garbage ideas? Suggestions actively solicited. And thank you very much in advance for reading this wall of text.

[jackgoodfellow]

Content Warning: ~comedic body horror~

Thanks for reading!!

If you liked this comic, please consider reblogging it and/or following my page! But also! It is okay if you don't feel like it! Either way, I hope you have a nice day because you deserve nice things! Happy Halloween, y'all!!!

More from this series:

Comic cover page with concept/character summaries

Episode 1

All content from "I Escaped My Genre..."

The head and tongue in this panel are a 3D model that I made in Nomad Sculpt and then imported into Clip Studio. Then, upon deciding that 3D modeling is hard actually, I discovered I could fake a 3D look for the rest of the body by modifying a metallic brush. I was going for "thing you see in an early 2000s video game as a kid that fucks you up forever"!

[obscureanimeoftheday]

Obscure Anime of The Day:

Amnesia

Aired: 2013

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Harem, Josei, Mystery, Psychological, Romance

[dannibi]

[saint-miroir]

[mdhwrites]

Why Are Harem Protagonists So Boring?

"Because it's easier to insert yourse-" Shoo, shoo. You're not useful except from a marketing perspective and we're here to talk about writing, not marketing. Besides, if that's all that's ever said on the subject, we can never improve the problem so again: Shoo.

Now, with that out of the way, let's actually discuss why.

A blank slate is easier for the GIRLS to insert themselves into.

Okay, that's only like half a joke but the principal is actually similar to the appeal to the audience, as well as essentially hedging your narrative bets as a writer. See, a good romance is built on chemistry. On the concept that you like seeing two people together and you think they could make each other happy. As I talked about in my last blog, The Problem with Harem Childhood Love, this is actually such a complex topic that doing it for just two people is an entire genre and enough to support a full length story.

Now extend that to SIX. Worse yet, not three distinct couples but five of these people all have to go "Yes. This one person is the one we want." That is, to put it mildly, fucking hard to sell. After all, to make people feel positive emotions towards any and all of the potential pairings here, you have to put a lot of time, work and effort to flesh out each character and make them have a proper dynamic with the main character that brings out something new in your protagonist so as to keep them feeling fresh.

But what if there was nothing new to pull out? What if the girl essentially dictated the entire dynamic? That simplifies things a great deal and while it makes for a less compelling romance, if the dude is as boring as white bread, he also won't come across as an actually terrible option for any of the girls, thus rendering him fine. Just... fine.

And fine is genuinely a hard bar for this genre to clear sometimes, hello Rent-a-Girlfriend, who's main character is such a creep and asshole who has made up his mind and is stringing these girls along because it makes him feel good, while pushing the one he likes WAY out of her comfort zone, that quite frankly he should just be thrown in the dumpster like the trash that he is. A lot of harem protagonists though are this sort of pervy, skeevy asshole who when asked "You have the ability to do whatever you want for a day, no repercussions," would look back at you as hellfire fills their eyes and sin fills their groins because sadly, there was never an ethical code within them to begin with anyways. THIS sort of harem protagonist is the one that I think can be rightfully accused of just existing purely for audience wish fulfillment and should never exist ever again.

But that doesn't mean fine needs to be the only bar we strive for. We don't need our opinion on the main character to be simply apathy so that we don't mind him getting with the girls he's surrounded by. No, we can strive for better and it actually comes from a very simple question that is a bitch and a half to answer:

"What sort of guy would all of these girls want to be with?"

Now that might seem obvious. That's the basis of all romance stories after all. Why and who someone would want to fall in love with. With two characters, that is indeed how it should be and the backbone of the genre but when you have a roster of 3-5 other romantic partners to cover, finding a unifying factor is actually as much a problem narratively as it is a boon.

Part of the reasons why harems seem to be mostly written from the perspective of the sorts of girls that a guy would like (outside of just assuming guys have a wider interest in partners -_-) is variety. While harems may have their dedes and their tropes, it still is important that each one be able to cover a different flavor of romance, comedy, etc. trope so as to make sure that one character spending time with the MC feels distinctly different from another. This is part of why most even half decent harems have a wide variety of personalities so as to facilitate this flavor of the week appeal.

If they all are supposed to be equally interested in a guy with a real personality though and own, personal beliefs, the easy answer to that is uniformity. If they're all the same except hair color then OF COURSE they'd all be willing to get with him. This is how you get something like Mabuharo where essentially everyone there is some amount of tsundere or yandere, or at least most of them. This can quickly lead to narrative repetition though and boredom with the main cast as there doesn't really feel like there's a real distinction between them.

This can, again, be fixed by actually making someone so complex as to be able to actually appeal to that many different people through different sides of themselves but if not done right, it can just make the character feel inconsistent. Again, good romance writing is a lot harder than people think and this element of it is one of the hardest. Does that mean we're doomed though? Not really.

I'm only going to do one example but let's take a pretty normal, male archtype: Tough guy with a heart of gold. Looks scary but is actually a decent dude. What sorts of girls might be into him, why and how can he quickly woo them in case the story isn't able to be very long?

Shy: He is the protector. Someone who she should be terrified of but as he clearly means her no ill will and can scare of the anxieties of the day by not giving two shits if people look at him funny, she can immediately want to be by his side for that comfort.

Rowdy/Tsundere: Someone she can spar with, verbally and sometimes physically. Someone who's treatment from the world has left him capable of taking some jabs, again, in both regards, while also dishing out his own verbal barbs. She wants to get with him because they are equals.

Genki-girl/Happy: She can see the wearing down of him due to the harsh world and make it her mission to brighten his world so that he remembers how nice people can be and why he's a good person. In return, he can help her with her naivety and expand her understanding of the beauty the world can have by showing her the rougher parts of it that he was forced into, with him reclaiming that joy in the process. In the end, both are happier for having known each other.

Smart girls: He is a project. Someone to make better by refining his rough edges until she learns to appreciate them. While she works on him from a bookworm perspective though, her own care and determination shining through with how much she'll put up with to get his grades up, he helps her where she's lacking in street smarts until they aren't on equal footing in their respective fields but they're a lot closer and have a lot to thank for each other.

The Dark and Brooding One/Kuudere/Potential Yandere: Doesn't find her scary/mysterious and they both actually see the other as a bastion from the assumptions of others. While the boy suffers from his gruff exterior because people dislike him, the girl suffers from people assuming she'd be too mature for childish things or too scary to approach and be friends with. They are kindred spirits that can lean on one another.

There. Five girls, off the top of my head, for just one incredibly basic archtype of dude. These aren't admittedly the most complex girls either but it's a good baseline to then expand and flesh out for a harem that can bring out nominally different things from him while not having to push so far out of the comfort zone of his archtype that you have to dedicate too much time to his character development and so can keep the focus on the girls. It still gives him SOME sort of personality though besides "Nominally okay dude." Heck, I still technically worked backwards from this, coming up with each archtype one by one after choosing what the guy would be like, but the question never changed: Why would these girls fall in love with him?

It's not as hard as you think it has to be, love doesn't have to be that complicated (not in fiction at least), and so please just put in that little bit of extra effort. Your story will be better for it, even if your market share will be a touch smaller.

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I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[astragifs]

[djsherriff-responses]

harem anime but all the girls are milfs (age range from 35 to 50) who are either divorced, widowed or dealing with some relationship issues with their husbands and the harem protagonist is basically the rebound

Also the milfs are bffs and the harem protagonist carries their shopping bags

[sophieinwonderland]

"However you do the math, you can’t end up with less than one personality." Idk, girls in many harem anime don't really have a personality other than the fact that they are in love with the protagonist... Or does that still count as having a personality? lol (I know it's anime, but that's besides the point... xD)

LOL! 🤣

Personally, I'd like to think of them as minmaxers! They still have a whole personality, they just threw all their personality points behind a single obsession to get the absolute most out of it!

[ketchuplaser]

Any isekai fans?

[corecoremagazine]

[obscureanimeoftheday]

Obscure Anime of The Day:

Akikan!

Aired: 2009

Genres: Action, Comedy, Drama, Ecchi, Fantasy, Harem, Romance, School, Seinen, Superpower

[doublesama]

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is not only one of the best anime of 2023, but one of the best rom-com anime of all time.