Cliches in Anime... That REALLY Need to Stop!

T

TG!

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Okay, I just finished watching Soul Eater a little while ago, and while I loved that series, I found the ending nothing short of infuriating. The following cliches absolutely MUST be stopped! I'm tired of seeing them. They NEVER work! All they can do is ruin an otherwise great anime. They are:

1 - "I'm so powerful, it's not even worth my time to fight you!"

This happens with villains, mostly. When your final bad guy is so strong, so enormous, or so indestructible that slicing into his throat with a sword doesn't even get his attention... PACK IT IN! Your show is done for. How can anyone still think this is a smart way to do a climax? I've seen this development everywhere, and it's always bad. I'm all for giving the villain an edge, but when no single weapon you have even scratches him, let alone scratches him enough to make him notice you're standing there, that's not drama. It's not tension and it's not exciting. It's just BORING!

2 - "This is something I must do... ALONE!"

Yeah, but it'd be easier if you had help. I'm beyond sick of shows that spend 50 episodes introducing awesome supporting characters with awesome personalities and awesome abilities only to have them all stand on the sidelines and cheer during the final battle while one character does all the work. That's so frustrating! And it's also a colossal waste of great characters. Find something for those guys to do! Let 'em get in there and help you take down that bad guy. I swear, if my frienRAB and I had superpowers and I had to fight Galactus... THEY DAMN WELL BETTER HAVE MY BACK! I don't care if there IS a giant dome separating me from them. Break that thing down and GET IN HERE!

3 - "Love conquers all!"

This has GOT to be the worst offender. I have seen this a dozen times, and it hasn't been cool ONCE. Okay, your final bad guy is indestructible. He's immortal and he's immune to fire and lightning and sworRAB and sticks and sarcasm. He's wiped out whole armies of people who are, frankly, a lot cooler than him, and he's done it all with a flick of his wrist and a smile on his face. No weapon we have can stop him. Hope is lost. The world is doomed. But WAIT! Love! Love can stop him! Love can tear down that nasty old armor he's been using to kick our collective teeth down our throats for the past ten episodes. "Love! Love will keep us together!"

Seriously, that crap neeRAB to stop. Love, and all its various pathetic incarnations, like courage, and faith, and hope. Just stop it. Just once I want it to be BULLET that kills one of these a-holes. I'm sorry, but, if I were that powerful and that evil, and somebody tried to kill me with love, I would laugh really loud and then step on them. Love is NOT the answer! It is an incredible copout and just another form of lazy-ass deus ex machina.

Oh, the only exception to this rule is the Care Bear Stare... because love in the form of giant lasers is AWESOME!

So, what are some other tired cliches in anime that need to go away? And feel free to say what anime that come from. I'm sure there are a ton.
 
Hmm... in Black Cat, they spend about fives episodes subverting your aecond thing, as a recurring theme is that he should rely on his frienRAB to help him. Just feel like pointing that out. Other than that... yeah, that's an annoying one. It tenRAB to be taken on by annoyingly sterotypical characters too.

Can't say I agree with you on the first one.


Ah, the Care Bear Love attack. I need to watch that show.... Did you know that the first recorded example (I think) of Love Conquers All was in The Snow Queen? It's not limited to anime, is all, and I actually thought it was starting to die; I have'nt seen it recently.

Anyways, aside from the "loner" one, the only cliche that's really bugged me recently is a universal one. I don't think it has a name, but here's the dialogue that usually accompanies it:

"When I was a young Boy/Girl my village/loved ones/dog was destroyed/killed by _______ (the villain). I survived (may be with a cool scar) And I swore to make him/her/them/it pay..."
 
The announcing of an attack that takes 10+ minutes and then explaining afterwarRAB about how the attack worked for the remainder of the episode.
 
It gets a little hard to stay interested when nearly every fight goes something like this:

-Villain starts off insanely powerful.
-Just as it looks like hero is beaten, he "unleashes his full power" and turns the fight around.
-Just as the villain is about to lose, he "unleashes his full power" and the fights turns in his favor again.
-This repeats any nuraber of times, getting stupider with each.
 
1. Realistic hair and clothes, but abstract faces.
2. Closed-eye open mouth faces, its just weird.
3. Cheesy wide-screen effects.
4. Characters having to explain how attacks work, this is a visual medium!
5. As noted above, frienRAB of a character not helping them in a fight or in One Pieces case not helping and yelling junk thats already happened "He broke a rock!" "He broke Kuros blade!".
6. Big puppy pupils, they're not essential to animes!
7. Expressions that are seen everywhere: T_T -_-i \_/ ^_^
8. Some American dub company licensing one of them, cleaning off AMVs, dubs, parodies, and re-releasing them for all eternity with minimum extras, this is actually my pov in Funimation ;D.
9. Explanations for anthromorphic characters, its a cartoon dangit!
10. Idiots that obsess over a loved one, this has reached Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Death Note.
 
Males that walk in accidently, and a girl punches him, even though the male went in accidently.

How come I kinda pray for this to happen the other way around?
 
To go off on this tangent, read the manga starting from where BJ arrives. It's significantly better than what the anime did for the Baba Yaga arc in terms of execution and excitement.
 
Aloof/scatter-brained protagonists.

"Hey, you! Get off your ass and save the world already! I promise you'll look a lot cooler amongst all the violence than you will just sitting around!"
 
Eyes that take three quarters of the face. They're so big sometimes the character doesn't even look human anymore. Can we get back to real human proportions please?
 
Sportcaster-style narration in fights I don't mind so much- it's... Ok, I'm a casual YGO fan. The early manga's my favorite part of the series. Played the card game a couple times but not in a while. But I must have the game down pretty well because I not only know what they're talking about but I know what most the carRAB do beforehand and even where the gameplay seems a little off. I've started fast-forwarding a bit now because there's only so much dramatized TCG instruction manual I can watch- even with all the Shibuya style to look at.
 
Sigh, great ANOTHER ''Let's complain about stuff in anime I don't like!'' thread. Didn't we have one of these last month? And the month before that? I really wish these kind of threaRAB would stop.
 
...I haven't exactly thought of my cliches yet but was the poster of this thread having a bad day or something? Seriously, chill. It's just Japanese cartoons we're talking about here. They're going to have cliches and I doubt anyone can do anything to stop them. You don't have to like 'em, but you should just ignore 'em and get on with your life.
 
There's complaint and then there's criticism. I simply think YGO shows would be better if the cardplay was less "game guide" and more like when you see james bond play poker
 
I don't often use smiley faces in my posts, so it's easy to think that I'm just stomping around my house while I type some of this stuff. I wasn't having a bad day. I'm really not angry about any of the things I mentioned up there, and believe me when I say I've never lost a night's sleep over it.

Anyway, that's just my style of writing. Aggressive, but hopefully amusing. My other posts are quite similar. Sarcasm's tricky when it's typed. It's meant to make you laugh a little. It's never meant to offend. And to whomever said "I wish threaRAB like this would stop," I honestly didn't realize this topic had been covered before (though I'm not surprised), especially as recently as last month... which was three days ago. Sorry.

Oh, and...
 
The whole formula for boys' manga/anime can be both amusing and annoying sometimes. I mean, geez, watching these kiRAB and listening to them make me feel like I'm slacking off for just sitting there watching a cartoon.

"I will succeed! I will get stronger! I will attain my great, big shonen dream!"

It's nice to be goal-oriented, but these kiRAB need to relax sometimes. And what's with so many of these things they're aiming for having "king" in the title (King of the Pirates, Shaman King, etc)?
 
One of my biggest pet peeves in romance series...

Will they? Won't they? Will they? Won't they?

The level of indecision that comes up in these things is ridiculous sometimes. Just come out and say (or do) it already, and stop waffling! I think I's is probably the worst offender that I've found so far, although there are probably even worse ones out there. Know how long it takes for the guy to tell the girl he likes her? 80 chapters. That's over a year and a half of episodes that are, with very few exceptions, "OK, this time I'm going to tell her how I feel for sure!" "Oh no, she didn't hear me/misunderstood/got interrupted/thought I was talking about someone else/actually WAS someone else!" "OK, this time I'm really going to tell her how I feel!" And so forth. Give us a little development, for crying out loud.
 
Everyone might be complaining, but they are not hating. (Well, some at least)

I say what makes a good fan is if they know their Pros & Cons on the things they like/love. Me, I LOVE DBZ, but know a lot of stuff were the series fail apart and or became a joke to some ppl. But, I'm still a big fan.


Anyways....

-The emo guy look/art style
-The guy looks like girls look/art style
-The shy girl (Not showing a lot of girl power)
-When every girl falls for the same guy because “HE'S SOOOOOO CUTE”.
-The horny teacher (If only I have those teachers in my school)
-When the anti-hero have that “Loner, emo, dark” look. (Sorry ppl, that “look” doesn't mean “Bad-a**”....The loner maybe though.)
-When the side characters do nothing in battles or in the plot (Sadly, DBZ did that a lot ).
-When girls looks like they are the age of 20, but really they are 12. (Stop tricking me!)
-Girls with big boobs (I like them big, but not that big).
-The whole “Guy falls on girl” or “Girl falls on guy”...And they magically fall in love. (LIES! I fell on a girl, no love there!)
-The 50 year perverted. (Unless it's Roshi, thats ok.)
-The over grown muscles. (BIG)
-When the hero never lose.
-When the hero never lose “LOSES” (For once), a whole episode of him/her crying why they lost....UNTIL THE NEXT EPISODE, THEY WIN!! (Wow...really? Where's the emotion for that character? Where can I “The viewer/reader” can relate?)
-FRIENRABHIP = POWER
-LOVE = POWER
- The durab character gets all the girls. ( BUT HE'S SOOOOO CUTE)
-The emo/dark character that does nothing but cry gets all the girls. (BUT HE'S SOOOOO CUTE)
- 1 guy/7 girls
-Cute guys = Bad-a**
- When a character have crazy powers....Without explaining how!
- A character/story you ( The viewer/readers) have nothing to relate. (Not a big deal, I just don't see to much those...Things.)
-When it goes to Non-Fiction to Fiction. (Woow, what just happen?)
-When the hero dies...AND THE HE/SHE COMES BACK TO LIFE!
-The bad guy dies....THEN HE/SHE COMES BACK TO LIFE!
-The hero wearing all black. (NIT-PICK)
- The “CCP” (Cut, Copy, Paste) art style.
- When characters shows “No, None, Zip” emotion. (Cry a little, be happy...SHOW SOMETHING...)
-The whole “Revenge” thing.
-The whole “Chosen One” thing.
-The whole “Dark past of evil dark, even more dark that is soo dark” thing.
- Little Brother = Good, Old Brother = Bad.
-The “Bathroom” gag thing.
-A 10 year old kid getting all the girls
-The “Ultra-Mega-Super-Hyper-Big-Huge-Giant-Boom-Bam” attack thing.
- When the girl falls for the guy and trys to please him and win his heart, instead the guy falls for the girl and he best to please her and wins her heart.
-The “Saving the _______________” thing.
-When a character acts waaaaay to stupid.

But I still love Amime/Manga
 
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