Amusing or annoying anime clichés

[WouldYouKindly]

Hmm, stories that go on for too long piss me off. If your show has a point, a big bad, something like that. Faffing about for 120 episodes is not acceptable(pretty much anything Shounen Jump has ever come out with). I understand you like money, but a shorter, more self contained story ends up a hell of a lot more manageable for someone not getting in at the beginning. I'm not going to wade through 300 episodes, a lot of which is irrelevant to the central plot, in order to be up to date.

Counterpoints to this are shows like Code Geass, NGE, Death Note(a bit on the long end, but nowhere near the 300-400 some shows hit).

Even if you're going to have a less directed show, like most of the slice of life genre, you can only milk so much out of the characters you've got before you run out of good ideas.

Amusing... parodies and subversions of major genres. I like to have my expectations shattered on the rocks like a fleet of sailboats in a hurricane. I don't get these nearly often enough.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

]

]

- Characters who speak in third person. I don't know if it's the translator's fault or not, but it just sounds too childish. Hell, children don't even talk like that. It just sounds barbaric, like cavemen talk.

What? Third person is a natural story-telling voice. Look at movies or books, very few of them directed at adults use first person narrative, first person is a distinct trope of YA, and even in YA it draws some attention to itself. Do you mean when they are actually speaking, as in the dialogue? That would make more sense, but I can't recall ever seeing it in an anime.

I'm talking about when the character is actually referring to themselves in third person in their dialogue. I don't think I recall it being used in dubs, but I see it a lot in some subs, and it confuses me because I can't tell if it's really the character speaking like that or if it's the translator's fault.

Where do you get your subs? I watch a lot of both, and I can't recall ever seeing this, but yeah, that would be annoying as hell.

Excel Saga. Excel never shuts up in 3rd Person. At least the show had this to make up for it:

 

[ThreeName]

Ones I hate: Almost all of them, especially any pertaining to stereotypical depiction of females. They're always either screechy fucks, as useless as tits on a bull, tsundere, or rude and annoying "badasses". Also serieses that never goddamn end. Also character development that is basically "this character is an asshole until something bad happens (usually someone dying), see Naruto, Bleach, Soul Eater, etc.

Ones I like: The tactical battles featured between two protagonists in shows like Death Note or Code Geass (well, the first season of Death Note, anyway), even if it does get very Deus Ex machina-y at times.

Basically anything in Naruto, Guren Lagann or fucking Soul Eater makes me want to die.

 

[Korten12]

2. When characters fight the laws of physics are completely abandoned for unexplained reasons. Somehow normal people are now able to jump 10 feet in the air, and dash at ludicrous speeds and punch through walls because...fuck you it's flashy.

So what, you want every anime/manga to have realistic fighting? That would fucking suck. Normal fighting is nice and a refreshing change but shouldn't be the norm...

OT: Personally I really hate the trope where a female character gets seen naked (in many cases their own fault) and then proceed to hit the main character as if it's their fault. This trope really pisses me off.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Annoying:

-Lack of adults
-Overuse of Fanservice (especially when it involves lolis)
-Overly abusive women (Love Hina, I'm looking at you)
-Action scenes that go on for multiple episodes
-Annoyingly overpowered bad guys (and yet some fans find them "attractive"...)

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

2. When characters fight the laws of physics are completely abandoned for unexplained reasons. Somehow normal people are now able to jump 10 feet in the air, and dash at ludicrous speeds and punch through walls because...fuck you it's flashy.

So what, you want every anime/manga to have realistic fighting? That would fucking suck. Normal fighting is nice and a refreshing change but shouldn't be the norm...

No, but I want there to be a reason. Possessed by a demon? Cool, moving on. Actually a robot? Sure, whatever.

What I hate is when it's like a 12 year old kid who can wall-run up the side of a building for absolutely no reason. If the anime is set in "reality" then don't have normal people leaping buildings in a single fucking bound.

 

[Sabitsuki]

1) The comical boob grab.

You know the kind... Guy trips or falls on top of girl and accidentally grabs her tits. Or girl grabs other girls boobs, because she's amazed by how huge they are. Oh the jolly shenanigans!
I fucking hate that shit, and every anime/manga that pulls this immediately loses a good chunk of credibility in my book. Which unfortunately also includes Berserk, though this happened after the point where it kinda went downhill anyway.

Yes. This. Very much hate this trope. The frequency to which this trope is used is just plain insulting on top of the way it makes something like unwanted groping out to be so humorous or harmless.
Especially these days when I can't help but draw a connection between this (and a mountain of other tropes) and the rising problem that female cosplayers have with convention goers giving uninvited gropes or touching.

Generally a lot of fan service tropes make me incredibly put off. They are probably the major reason why my anime viewing has been extremely cut down in the past few years. It just gets tiresome to see the amount of ridiculous boob bouncing, unneeded panty shots, and contrived boob sock armor/outfits that get crammed into a large amount of series. Luckily I've generally managed to avoid it lately. Except when I made the mistake of watching Highschool of the Dead. Fortunately that series was just a terrible imaginary fever dream I had. It would be awful if something like that actually existed.

 

[Korten12]

2. When characters fight the laws of physics are completely abandoned for unexplained reasons. Somehow normal people are now able to jump 10 feet in the air, and dash at ludicrous speeds and punch through walls because...fuck you it's flashy.

So what, you want every anime/manga to have realistic fighting? That would fucking suck. Normal fighting is nice and a refreshing change but shouldn't be the norm...

No, but I want there to be a reason. Possessed by a demon? Cool, moving on. Actually a robot? Sure, whatever.

What I hate is when it's like a 12 year old kid who can wall-run up the side of a building for absolutely no reason. If the anime is set in "reality" then don't have normal people leaping buildings in a single fucking bound.

Okay I get that. Makes a bit more sense, but if every story that takes place on Earth had to abide by that rule, then things would be boring. D:

 

[Xpwn3ntial]

Annoying:

Spoiler

"Sympathetic" villains. You know the ones. Those guys that are like "Oh, I'm so tortured because my parents died in an accident so I'm going to kill everybody. FEEL BAD FOR ME!" Fuck you, anime.

A horribly skewed gender ratio. It generally favors girls being in greater than 60% of the roles, but it can go the other direction.

Verbal tics.

The "face of woe" and other over the top anime reactions.

Abandoning causality. Abandoning physics is okay since giant robots are unfeasible in real life. I mean the need to refuel and repair the robots going ignored.

Over the over the top ness. Over the top? Generally okay, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is over the top and it's awesome.
I mean the "I'm throwing galaxies like so many throwing stars!" It kills tension and usually stakes.

Girls fawning over a boy that has no qualities beyond generic niceness.

Amusing:

Maid outfits: I will never get tired of tasteful maid outfits.

Cute girls doing X. Yes, that argues with my above point but hear me out. Cute girls = sales. Doesn't matter what they're doing, it'll sell more often than not.

You know what that means? Cute girls driving tanks! Brilliant!

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

I hate Tsundere who are more Tsun than dere. Annoying.
I hate most ecchi protagonists who are total tools.
I hate how in harems, the uninteresting and/or annoying girl is often given the preferential treatment from the start.
I find most shounen tropes kinda annoying, like the super power up.

 

[6_Qubed]

]And one that confuses me:

- The hot, lonely, middle-aged teacher with a shitty love life. I just... don't get it. Are love deprived teachers really a common occurrence in Japan?

Not teachers specifically, but if a female (I'm assuming you meant a female teacher,) is older than a certain age, (read: 25) they are officially considered "too old."

You would think I was making this shit up, because it sounds dumb as hell. <url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChristmasCake>You'd be wrong.

 

[Tanthius]

I agree with virtually everything that's been said by almost everyone in this thread in regards to annoying tropes. My big #1 is high school. High school is everything, it's all encompassing, and everything that matters in life occurs in high school. If the planet is in danger and some mystical force picks a high school kid to save us... we are all well and truly screwed.

I think most of my big anime favorites either sidestep a lot of these tropes or make of the tropes themselves.

Outlaw Star, gene isn't some winy teenage brat. He's a high tech gun carrying badass. He has a great and interesting cast of characters around him that are not just there to die so he has a reason to fight.

Excel Saga was wonderful because of the way it made fun of virtually every trope on this list.

Some of you mentioned High School of the Dead. If you hated it, you missed the point. It was a satirical look at zombie horror. It's over sexed because that horror genre generally is, and if you watch it knowing that it's a comedy, it's incredibly enjoyable.

Spice and Wolf... yeah I like it... screw all of you. But virtually all the tropes are missing... almost.

I can't really explain why but I just give a free pass to some of them though. Trigun, Vandread, Kenichi (God I love those masters), Cowboy Bebop, Sekirei (The only fan service anime I've watched multiple episodes of), just to name some of them. I can't really explain it, but I just dig them despite falling into these tropes.

Oh and special mention goes to Asura's Wrath. The best anime I've ever played.

 

[SageRuffin]

Hmm...

---

Amusing

- balls-to-the-fucking-wall fight scenes
Dragonball Z and Asura's Wrath (a game, but close enough, considering) are awesomesauce. That is all.



Annoying

- Phenotype Stereotype [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhenotypeStereotype]
- C'mon now. Much like the Japanese themselves, people come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. It's really not that hard to understand.

- Fanservice [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fanservice] (for no fucking reason)
I'm no prude. I enjoy ogling a set of ta-tas (just as an example) as much as the next person, and I love me some Queen's Blade [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/QueensBlade?from=Main.QueensBlade] (Tomoe and Elina for the fucking win, whatever the hell that means). But at least the character designs can be somewhat excused due to the fantasy setting. Compare this to Eiken [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiken_(manga)] where heavy fanservice is about the only thing that sustains the show... yeah.

- Harems [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HaremGenre]
Really? How in the fuck does this even work; one person surrounded by 4 to 7 (usually female) suitors and they all have a crush on the main character? And, of course, the main character just so happens to live with them all...

Also, note that the suitors in question usually personify one or two specific character traits...

I can tolerate unwanted harems [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnwantedHarem]. Those can be pretty entertaining.

- Plot lines that don't go anywhere [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot]
Another thing you find more in either fighting games or reboots. I hate when there's all this backstory that's elaborately explained, but the writers instead just sit on it. An example, take DmC. One of the big "features" (I guess) in the remake was that the twins' origins were being altered to that of them being "nephilim" - half angel, half demon. The thing is, the narrative says fuck all with the twins' angelic heritage (I have several personal sources to confirm this). So what was the point of changing that if said change did abso-fucking nothing?

- "Tsunderes" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tsundere]
One, I hate the term (not sure why). Two, it's painfully obvious you like the other character. Please stop pretending that you don't.

- "Meido" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Meido]
This one is largely due to oversaturation. That I think the default outfit is just... blegh.

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Okay. That's enough gabbing out of me. I need tacos...

 

[Ratties]

Hate the girl from another planet bullshit. Really just an excuse to make her get undressed and act like a moron because hey, "shes not from here." Of course she always seems to find the one nerd who is so afraid of girls, he shits his pants when they are around. You know it's just another excuse for the hot girl to go out with the scared nerd fantasy. Know shes not from here, she gets naked and runs around his apartment. Cut to the scared nerd, with blood flying out of his nose. He has to talk to her while she is naked, explaining that people don't do that here. Can't stand it. Really just want it to go away. Of course she will have to protect him because shes super strong, hes a wimp. Will eventually become more manly as the show goes on, I just don't care about nerd fantasies come to life.
[http://photobucket.com/images/Musubi]

 

[SageRuffin]

Snippage

One thing you have to remember is that - and I should've noted this in my own rant above - anime is largely made for the "otaku" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Otaku] crowd (I mean the original, unflattering, Japanese sense of the term, not the bastardized, "stylized nerd," American sense); that's why shit like harems gain so much headway. As it turns out - oh shit! - "traditional otaku" eat that shit the fuck up.

I don't like with it either, largely because its use is generally excusatory (Girls Bravo... what the fuck...). But there's a little insight for you.

Or something.

 

[Cpu46]

The lower the technology behind a weapon, the more effective the weapon is.

Oh man, this reminds me of another anime trope that annoys me to no end, the very japanese idea that a katana is the best weapon ever created, and that a swordsman armed with a katana can cut through anything, bullets, walls, cars, tanks, etc.

Ok Japan, we understand that your citizens don't know or understand anything about guns, but come the fuck on.

I have to say this trope definitely has more to do with the US and European audiences blowing Japanese swords out of proportion than the Japanese boosting their own egos.

I mean in a Japanese produced anime series it makes sense for the best swordman to wield a sword, most likely a Japanese longsword, also called a Katana. Most people don't realize that Katana is a classification of sword not the name of one particular type.

As for it slicing through anything, well taking into account that most Japanese swords have a wicked slicing ability and the fact that most soldiers in feudal Japan were wearing either cloth armor, wood armor, or a poor imitation of plate armor and most non-load bearing walls were made out of the thinnest materials possible. The Tanto, Odachi, Nodachi, Tachi, and Uchigatana would have literally sliced through anything in Japan, which is why the fictional Katana is 'known' for it's cutting properties.

But I do agree with your point. Give me an anime where the main japanese warrior wields a spear (singular spear, Sengoku Basara definitely does not count) or club, weapons that were the actual standard issue of the time and I will be a happy man. Also kinda sorry about going on a slight Katana PSA there. I did some research a while back on the subject and it all kinda just spilled out.


OP: Hate, hate, HATE fanservice for fanservice's sake. If you are going to make an ecchi series go on ahead and label it as such. But inventing reasons for a female characters clothes to shred, ignite, vaporize, or disappear for no good reason other than fanservice alone makes me rage like nobodies business.

Love last minute power ups if and only if:

A) The character was at least hinted to have some powers prior int he series. This means no flashbacks to a scene we've never seen before explaining where all this power is coming from.

B) It happens once. Ok maybe twice if the series is long and again the character is seen, heard, or hinted at getting a power boost.

 

[sextus the crazy]

I despite most fan service, but I also have room in my heart for my hatred towards bland visual novel protags.

 

[Casual Shinji]

1) The comical boob grab.

You know the kind... Guy trips or falls on top of girl and accidentally grabs her tits. Or girl grabs other girls boobs, because she's amazed by how huge they are. Oh the jolly shenanigans!
I fucking hate that shit, and every anime/manga that pulls this immediately loses a good chunk of credibility in my book. Which unfortunately also includes Berserk, though this happened after the point where it kinda went downhill anyway.

Don't you remember how Eva did this with Shinji?

There it works because it's all awkward and zero comedy. And it grants a peak into Rei's character, in that she doesn't answer the situation with a mile high punch, but simply gets up, gets dressed, and walks away like nothing happened. Which from her perspective, nothing did.

OT: Not sure what cliches I dislike or like. I dislike a lot of fanservice and I hate it when there is no resolution to romantic storylines in certain shows and they won't show a kiss scene. For some reason it doesn't seem complete without one.

Watch Kare Kano. It actually shows the two main characters strike up a romance within the first 4 episodes, and follows the relationship from there. Kind of a minimalistic show, but it's very good nonetheless.

 

[Lewieroo0]

I'll probably be stating most of the above as ones i hate but it can't be helped -_-

I Hate:

Tsundere's - They just plain suck. They don't make any sense in terms of their actions and i just wonder why they don't just fucking admit that they love the person their abusing (And i really hate it when they're beating up a character i really like over them, *COUGH COUGH FULL METAL PANIC! COUGH*)

Fan Service - I'm not against sexy characters or anything like that but my god...the kind of shit that shows shoehorn into their characters is just dumb. I can't respect a character who's been constantly whoring themselves to the camera we call the audience.

Too much talking during fight scenes - Katanagatari is a thorn in my arse for this particular cliche. Why must people talk so damn much during a fight scene? It kills the momentum and makes the payoff at the end less exciting and rather predictable...ESPECIALLY if they insert god damn flashbacks in them too. I always wonder why no one kills them while they're distracted talking to each other.

Guys reactions to naked chicks and such - Why are the main protagonists in most anime's so freaked out when they see a naked lady? It's almost like they don't like what they're seeing. I'd find it more amusing if the main character instead of flipping out is more like "...Fucking Jackpot!"

Sounds effects as humour - Silly sound effects with stupid physical humour and/or characters making silly noises just isn't funny on its own. I've always been noticing this since Chrono Crusade which did this alot to the point of irritating.

And i have to agree that there are WAAAY too many Anime's whose main cast consists of nothing but teenagers.

Now ones i do like:

Over the top fighting scenes - Already brought up i know, but i do find anime entertaining when it does what cartoons do best which is crazy bat shit bonkers fight scenes that may defy all physics but god damn are they a spectacle to watch, or are just straight up awesome. Shows like Baccano, Gurren Lagann and Black Lagoon had some memorable scenes displaying such awesomeness.

Buddy Film like setting - I like those kind of Anime's which follow two protagonists of various characteristics and I've noticed quite a few shows that tend to have this kind of style. Spice and Wolf is one of my personal favorite of this kind of style.

Psychopathic characters - I just love nutjob characters. They're always fun to watch and you never know what they're gonna do.

 

[knight steel]

I love fanservice the more the better just something about it that makes me smile,however this is only works for shows that are not trying to be serious or grand, fanservice in a silly show is fine but put it in something else and it becomes distracting .

Spoiler: NSFW fanservice funny vid!