Explain the appeal of Harem Anime

[happyninja42]

Ok so, honestly not sure why this has been bouncing around in my head, I think because I watched Sword Art Online recently, and realized it's basically a mild version of a harem anime.

But, what is the appeal of having a show with all of the members of one gender sexually attracted to the protagonist?

Is it just the ego stroking thing?

I mean, if you are the one person being pursued, I can understand that to a degree, everyone likes to think of themselves as irresistible.

But, as I understand it, most of the fans of harem anime are usually women, who are usually represented as the cluster group.

So, why is this appealing? Is it the hope that the girl that is "you" in your head canon might eventually, become the love interest at a later season? Because, if there is one character who is the actual lover of the protag, the rest are just hangers on, and their love basically becomes pointless.

Like in Sword Art, all of the other females in that show, were introduced as having a desire to be with Kirito, and yet in later seasons, they just hang around, go on mission quests with them, and chat with his lover. So why couldn't they just do that as friends? There was no need to establish the sexual attraction for the supporting cast, because they never do anything with it. Aside from one very specific exception to that, where the attraction was a major part of the story arc, the others were just a forgettable kind of thing. So why bother? I just don't get it, but to be fair, I don't really get a lot of the appeal of anime, given it's specific tropes.

So, can anyone who is a fan of this genre help me understand the appeal? 'Cause I just really don't get it from the examples I've seen.

 

[Queen Michael]

The fans are mostly male. And it's a self-insert thing. Like you said--ego-stroking.

 

[Worgen]

I think in sword art it was cause the writer didn't know how to write women that weren't in love with kirito. Hes apparently said as much in an interview.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I'm skeptical on the statement that the fans of harem anime are majority female.
While women may watch them, I'm pretty sure the demographic the creators had in mind is straight men.

There is such thing as reverse harems however and a lot of ladies sure love yaoi.

 

[Phasmal]

This is the first I've heard of harem anime having mostly female fans. I thought it was always a bunch of dudes arguing about who is "best waifu" and that sort of thing.

Also

Pandering to virgin shut-ins

That.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Pandering to virgin shut-ins

I question the need of 'virgin' and 'shut-ins' when it comes to sex. Like the Harem anime fantasy seems pretty straight forward to me, "Here's a hot girl, you can have sex with her. Here's another hot girl, you can also have sex with her. Here's a third hot girl, you know what to do, etc..."
That just seems like a pretty standard sexual fantasy to me, one that virgins and people who have had sex both have. And shut-ins? I'm not sure that's necessary. I think most people would enjoy being able to have sex with multiple attractive people, regardless of social skills.

I think its just straight up sexual fantasy.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

AH! Okay, yeah, Otaku. Those guys are pretty fucked up. I can see what you meant now.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Pandering to virgin shut-ins

HEY.

I go outside.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Pretty much what everyone above me has typed, harem are like the ideal dream for the lonely guy who can't get the girl/ loved in real life.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Because accepting being an awkward person and making no attempt to not continue being awkward is simply you being disinteresting or unlikeable in reality, and acknowledging that fact would hurt fi-fis?

Sorry. I don't think there is a nicer way to categorize this entire genre of garbage.

If you do happen to be antisocial, awkward, or other ways socially inept. That's fine. You don't need to change if you don't want to. But at least be a van Gogh about it rather than creating fantasies where if only people could see how great you are. You know. Without actually bothering to change at all. That's unhealthy.

I'm not Miss Butterfly 2016, myself. I also don't pretend I'm as interesting as someone who does actually bother connecting with people, making an effort, as opposed to life raining men and women atop of me and calling it 'romance' or 'comedy'.

It's retarded.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

Aside from people who are lonely, others just like the fantasy have having multiple women/men fawn over you.

I enjoy a good harem anime now and again. Not too often, as they are pandering, but I'll indulge a fantasy now and again.

My girlfriend plays plenty of those visual novels where multiple men are vying for the main character's affection.

Seems pretty straight-forward to me. A lot of people enjoy romantic attention, and whether we could actually deal with the situation in real life or not, having multiple extremely attractive people trying to give you that attention is titillating.

You don't have to be a lonely, stereotypical loser to enjoy content with romance and sexuality, people. Why's that so hard for others to grasp?

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

As others have said, it's usually a story where some completely unremarkable (and sometimes completely unlikeable) average guy suddenly has multiple attractive women striving (and sometimes outright fighting) for the privilege of jumping his bones. Wish fulfillment supreme.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Pandering to virgin shut-ins

Which makes it incredibly weird how blue-balling so many of them are - 'oh, here's 18 Amazingly Hot, Super Skilled, Slavishly Loyal Women who are all the Ultimate Submissives, BUT NO SEX, NO SEX FOR YOU, NONONO YOU HAVE SEX YOU DIE HORRIBLE, PAINFUL DEATH but also the girls communicate by rubbing their breasts on your head and having random orgasms BUT YOU CANNOT TOUCH YOUR PEE PEE OR YOU WILL EXPLODE WITH DEATH'.

Like, surely the virgin shut-in otakus would want to see someone like them get all sorts of tail, yeah?

 

[Saltyk]

I honestly don't know. I generally dislike Harem anime. About the only one I've ever really liked was Tenchi Muyo. And even that series only really has two girls that seem to want Tenchi. The others are all there for their own reasons.

Maybe I would enjoy these types of anime more if there was something more to them than tits T&A with various girls and a main character who is not even a little interesting. I'm kinda wary of just saying that Harem anime just exist for lonely Otaku's, but body pillows do exist...

 

[Tarias]

It's a psychological trick, much like the skinner box, where you create vastly different characters to appeal to different people in order to pit them against each other. This then allows you to drive competition with the fans both internally and externally as a means to substitute time intensive writing with the pandering baked in will they won't they type of writing. It's also why nothing ever happens, other than teasing, because if something happened, you would alienate half or more of your fanbase immediately and then you'd lose the rest because the central conflict is gone.

We all identify with characters, we want the characters we like and identify with to win. The male protaganist remains as vague and nice as possible in order to reduce him to a sort of trophy you can cheer your favorite on to winning. It also doesn't matter why they all want him, it just matters that our like-a-likes have something they want in competition.

The waifu wars are not the main purpose, but are the understandable side effect, being that it was the intent to foment such active engagement in women thus driving long term purchases for little effort.

The content is thus almost never there, but it hooks you until you realize it doesn't matter who wins, who you like, or what the 'crisis' of the week ends up being because there is no change, no development, and an alarming tendency to let nobody win in the end.

Now the ecchi harem titles aren't exactly the same, as they tend to have even lower story standards and try to coast on sexual interest , meaning shallower characters and conflicts.

How do i reach these conclusions? By examining how I felt about Ouran High School Host Club of course! Also believing everything I've heard about how these harem shows are primarily enjoyed by women, because I don't care enough to actually look for numbers, or whether it's true or not cause this is a forum post, not a research document.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

It's a psychological trick, much like the skinner box, where you create vastly different characters to appeal to different people in order to pit them against each other. This then allows you to drive competition with the fans both internally and externally as a means to substitute time intensive writing with the pandering baked in will they won't they type of writing. It's also why nothing ever happens, other than teasing, because if something happened, you would alienate half or more of your fanbase immediately and then you'd lose the rest because the central conflict is gone.

We all identify with characters, we want the characters we like and identify with to win. The male protaganist remains as vague and nice as possible in order to reduce him to a sort of trophy you can cheer your favorite on to winning. It also doesn't matter why they all want him, it just matters that our like-a-likes have something they want in competition.

The waifu wars are not the main purpose, but are the understandable side effect, being that it was the intent to foment such active engagement in women thus driving long term purchases for little effort.

The content is thus almost never there, but it hooks you until you realize it doesn't matter who wins, who you like, or what the 'crisis' of the week ends up being because there is no change, no development, and an alarming tendency to let nobody win in the end.

Now the ecchi harem titles aren't exactly the same, as they tend to have even lower story standards and try to coast on sexual interest , meaning shallower characters and conflicts.

How do i reach these conclusions? By examining how I felt about Ouran High School Host Club of course! Also believing everything I've heard about how these harem shows are primarily enjoyed by women, because I don't care enough to actually look for numbers, or whether it's true or not cause this is a forum post, not a research document.

This is pretty much what I was going to say. I think most of the people here are looking at this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too deeply (In the, you dream about falling down a well because you want to have sex with your mother because it represents her vagina, too deeply) and projecting their own negative thoughts on this too much.

The reason you have a harem anime isn't to give people the fantasy of being fought over, it's so you can have a love story with several different types of female characters and with lots of characters there will almost always be at least one that appeals to someone. If anyone here had ever actually looked into any of the fandoms of such stories for even a second then they'd see that. But no, it's far easier to just scathingly look down your nose at something you don't like and make a hasty generalization that assumes the worst of people.

 

[hermes]

Wish fulfillment of the audience in its purest form.

The idea that, by some contrived circumstance, someone that is not popular or has any particular skill can end up in the middle of a group of highly desirable people from the opposite sex that all fall in love with him/her for some reason.