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

Methinks I've brought this up before, and it's more of a sci-fi thing than anime in particular, but whenever a mecha or rocketship or other high tech thingamajig is booting up and a bunch of nameless operators are shouting out random nurabers and phrases. "BOOSTERS AT 70%!" "T-MINUS 14 SECONRAB UNTIL LAUNCH!" "WEAPON SYSTEMS ARE GO!"

It annoys the hell out of me for some reason.
 
That's the catch 22 for anime heroes, they can never be liked, EVER.

If they show human emotion by being sad at things such as family being killed, then they are forever labeled "emo".

HOWEVER, if the opposite happens, such as a vilalge is destroyed and they just shrug it off, they're called "boring and emotionless".

You simply can`t win.
 
I do believe there's such a thing as ballance.

Me personally, I have a problem when one facet of thier character is not congruent with another. Say, person is a trained and experienced soldier, moreover, they have marine or special forces level mental training. If a character like that goes all BSOD because of someone getting killed IN THE MIDDLE OF A COrabAT SITUATION then I'm going to label them Emo. On the flip side, if someone who has no right to be as emotionless as they appear to be doesn't react to attrocities, then they are bland and emotionless.

My favorite examples of these two actually come from one of my favorite anime Last Exile and happen at the same time and as such comprise the episode that I pretend doesn't exsist.

The Level supposedly level Headed Ace pilot Tatiana complettely shuts down mentally at the sight of seeing thier frienRAB get shot down, while the teenaged protagonist has to come bail her out by doing... something, snap her out of her funk and fly them out of the desert they end up crash landing in because of Tatiana's wankstgasm/BSOD moment.

This kind of thing is all over anime too and it really is annoying.

Claus doesn't come off as Badass as a result, he seems emotionless and Tatiana who SHOULD be badass by all other accounts, comes off as a whiny little emo ****, a brush with which she shall forever be tared in my mind after that scene.

Now, in this case, it doesn't wreck Last Exile because the show is ever so much more than the sum of it's characters, but for shows that rely almost entirely on characterization for watchability, that kind of thing totally spoils them for me.
 
Personally I think that's a bit harsh for the soldier girl, as even in real life, professional soldiers do develop PTSD from corabat situations. Also, since it wasn`t someone Claus personally knew( I assume, as I haven`t seen it) he wouldn`t be as emotional.


I agree, in essence, with what you are saying, but these labels are rarely applied this way. Sasuke from naruto is an example. He was a schoolkid with no corabat expereince when his family died. Although he becomes accutomed to corabat situations later, the storyline clearly depicts him as an ordinary child personality and expereince wise(except with jutsu training, but no corabat experience).
 
What the hell is up with characters with they're mouths wide open for no reason in promotional artwork and during intros & endings in Anime?
 
Because it's super kawaii desu?

No seriously, I have no idea. I guess we could ask the same question about movie posters and western animation promotional artwork too. It's just to show they're having a good time (or whatever emotion they're talking about)
 
Nope, included in the supposed casualties is Claus' childhood friend since forever and the charge he has undertaken to protect of his own... Whatever.

Now it's true, Soldiers do often develope PTSD but the P stanRAB for Post. Which is to say, after it happens. Not During. That would be called having a Bluescreen of Death moment which soldiers are trained rather extensively not to have.

Now this is not exclusive to anime and I hate it equally when it happens in live action or any other kind of fiction, but there's rather a lot more of it in anime. It basically having poorly thought out characters, which is just sloppy story telling really. That's what all cliches boil down to in the end is sloppy or lazy writing.
 
A lot of the stuff in this thread, like the grand speeches and the romance, really can't be avoided in their respective genres, but yes, once you've seen one you've seen them all, and it would be nice if they mixed it up a little, which is where the good series get a chance to shine by doing just that.

90% of fiction is crap and all that.

The first post mentions the ending to Soul Eater (which is what I was immediately going to do, but I wasn't sure because I figured it would be spoilerish). Still a good example. [xspoiler=gonna tag this anyway for spoilers]It's natural for Shonens to have their logic speeches that somehow magically trumps the bad guy, but it does get obnoxious when it makes no sense at all, even in the workings of the series' world.[/xspoiler]

Which is why Bones just neeRAB to stop making quick endings to series. It was hated in FMA, it was hated in Soul Eater. If it doesn't look good on paper, it won't look good in the final product.
 
Because anime usually trys to depict human emotions and when we're happy don't our eyes turn into curved lines and we open our mouths real big? Actually I guess its because so many animes take from one another and hardly anyone looked at that expression relising "You know, that looks kinda freaky, do normal people make that face?".
 
Regarding both sexuality and simple personal affection, it too often looks like anime/manga characters are either:

- Perverts with unsatiable lust for their supposedly loved ones, becoming extremely overbearing and annoying, or

- Emotional wrecks that just can't bring themselves to express their true feelings for others. EVER. Even at the end of the series, they often just reach a lukewarm starting point to an actual healthy relationship.

There seems to be no sane middle point most of the time. The most irritating thing is both extremes of the situation are so immature, you have to wonder what's wrong with Japanese emotional development (Western works of fiction rarely have it so bad in that regard).

Also, the bloody (pun!) nosebleedings? Cut them out. They stopped being funny two decades ago.
 
Anime in general is is one big cliche, and that's what makes it unique.

These days, many western studios attempt to follow these cliches, so that their productions can be anime-esque.

If you remove what makes anime, anime then you would've have anime at all now would you?
 
This part is highly debatable. A lot of anime are ridden with cliches, but that doesn't mean the whole medium is more of a cliche on itself than superheroes or American action movies are.
 
I never said that superhero or action movies were any less cliche.

I'm just saying that there are certain aspects that make anime what it is. And within time (much like anything else) these aspects have developed into cliches. By removing enough of these components, what you end up having is not anime, but an entirely different entity. The only thing that keeps it 'anime ' is the fact that it was produced and developed in Japan.
 
The emo loner type that you're supposed to root for. Revenge is a powerful and dynamic tool. Say it with me now- "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." But when you have a guy wandering for half a year hating the world, are you really going to like him? I mean, we get it, life stinks.

Stupid pervert gets beat up by girl he likes. After the fourth or fifth punch to the face, you do one of two things. Get a restraining order, or shake her. (You don't hit her, but you don't let her hit you either.) Plus, this stopped being funny...decades ago.

Oh, and twenty minutes to dissect an attack. Kenshiro had a new technique every chapter. He didn't brood over their mechanics endlessly.
 
One-on-one fights when there are more than two corabatants. How this turned into the pinnacle of honorable corabat, I'll never understand. It particularly annoys me in fights like Tsunade and Jiraiya vs. Orochimaru, where despite ostentibly being two-on-one, you'd still saw one of the characters disappear for minutes at a time. Teamwork, people!

On that note, fights that take more than a five of minutes in real time. If it takes more than that, you're doing it wrong.
 
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