The Top 6 Harem Tropes I Wish Didn't Exist

[Beocat]

 So, anyone who has ever watched a Harem anime (or one with Harem elements), this might be familiar to you.  This is a personal list of six of the Harem Tropes that personally irritates me to no end…some worse than others.  So let’s start!  I actually trimmed it down from 10 Tropes just to make it more concise.  Anyone agree or disagree with me here?  What are your thoughts on the tropes?  This is not an all-inclusive list (that would take months as many as there are to fully flesh out) but feel free to list your own top gag-worthy harem tropes you'd like to see discontinued!  And which are the worst offenders?  For me, Familiar of Zero, the Tenchi Muyo franchise (and related shows), and Lord Marksman and Vanadis are by far the worst offenders overall. 

 

Disclaimer:  I had planned on canning this post but a few people commented that they actually wanted to read it, so here goes....  By the way, some of you may become offended by some of what I say down there...tough.   

 

6.  And the wind rises……I’m not sure that’s what Ghibli was intending with that title but it describes it perfectly….that skirt straight up.  The Marilyn Monroe look is very popular in anime.  This is exacerbated by the dress code of Japanese schools (which insist on short skirts in most anime).  Apparently, seeing a woman wearing her panties is very, very intimate…I mean, you can look at lingerie models in the department store catalogue and get essentially the same thing, so it must be life-altering to see them, right?  Common examples include Negima with Negi’s sneezing wind, Your Lie in April’s Kousei meeting Koari scene (as he times it just right to get a photo of her panties…inadvertently of course!) and yes, Your Lie in April is a Harem (Kousei has at least three girls who are in love with him), and so many more…  I personally think anyone who wears a short dress or skirt is taking chances there so the normal reaction of “I’m gonna smash his face for looking” reaction you get nearly every single time in anime is kind of uncalled for.  This is really an unnecessary trope.  I just wish they’d stop using it.  I roll my eyes every time it happens and like a psychic I know what will happen directly after...

 

5.  Let’s have a sleep-over!  Now what harem anime has not done this?  Short of pillow fights, it’s a staple of the genre.  Sometimes the MC is living alone (his parents died or moved away….never mind that it’s illegal for a minor in Japan to live alone like that), occasionally he has just a single parent watching over him.  Always the girls see an opening to play house!  Common examples include Tenchi’s harem of alien girlfriends who live at his remote home with him and his perverted father who acts as a creep the entire time, Kanon where one of the girls moves in randomly and another is his cousin who already lives there…Familiar of Zero in the later seasons (I have so many issues with this one.  How did this anime sneak its way into my heart?  Must have been Louise and that whip of hers….), Log Horizon….really, I would have more difficulty finding a harem that did not employ this tactic on at least one girl.  I seriously am trying to think of one that I could exclude…maybe Your Lie in April?  That’s the closest I get to No Sleep Overs.  He still suffers from the lack of a proper guardian, so I can't really give him a free pass.

 

4.  Boobs….  Big or small….apples or melons?  Maybe just paper and melons?  Anyways, every harem (or nearly every one…I would suppose some hentai harems are exclusively triple G sized in the breast department) has at least one big busted girl and one flat chested one.  I suppose they are foils…at least character foils for breast development…because no character development will ever take place there.  Typically, these girls are at odds with one another.  Big boobs constantly pointing out and demeaning flat chest for not having any…flat chest constantly feeling self-conscious and upset for not bouncing or busting out of their clothing.  Honestly, some guys don’t even care about boobs!  Let’s just get over it and move on.  No one wants to watch two women argue and demean one another over the size of their organs.  No one compares them.  We get the picture because…well anime is made of a bunch of picture frames essentially.  We can see it without the argument.  Not to mention it generally serves as an excuse for a close up on the breasts...not what I want to see.  In my collection, the worst offenders are Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, Tenchi Muyo, and…Familiar of Zero (FoZ is becoming a broken record here…)

 

3.  May I squeeze them apples?  The inevitable boob squeeze, copping a feel down below and other forms of groping women.  Not just for train rides anymore!  Sometimes even the women ask for it and other times…well…creeps be creeps I suppose.  This is an unfortunate addition to most anime out there, especially mainstream ones, harem or not (Seven Deadly Sins for example).  I have to admit that the Japanese society has a lot of fondling and rapes that occur on their trains/subways that doesn’t seem to occur in the rest of the world.  While I do not believe that violent video games cause violent people, I do think that the widespread fondling in anime might contribute to a relative acceptance of such actions by impressionable individuals.  It’s in most anime that come out and Japan watches more anime than the rest of the world.  If it’s okay for the MC to do it and everyone loves him for it, why not Creeper67 on the last subway car too?  I just think that if Japan really wants to stop the poor life choices of some individuals who take the train to work and back, the least they can do is take a personal stance against it in their own artwork.  That is my own personal opinion anyways.  Now, I know every single one of you can name an anime where the MC reached out and squeezed a boob (usually followed by a blush and a squeal of delight, maybe even drool…which is downright ridiculous.).  Some particularly bad ones that come to mind are Lord Marksman and Vanadis and Familiar of Zero.  Now, Lord Marksman or Tigre, he’s pretty handsy.  One of the Vanadis actually only has one scene in the anime where she teleports to his room at night and he gropes her breast while half-asleep.  Yeah…that was all her character meant apparently.  That is just one example of many from that anime.  Familiar of Zero…when is Saito not copping a feel on the Princess or the Maid or really any female character other than Louise?!  He deserved every lashing he got! It didn’t help that they were all trying to get him to do it.  Us women just can’t squeeze our own apparently.  Now, a sister trope to this trope is the “Oops…..” trope.  Oops, I tripped and landed in a compromising position on top of you!  Oops, I reached for the door and accidently fondled your breasts instead!  Oops!  Somehow something went all wrong and you ended up sitting on my face!  Yeah…an accident…  lots of accidents happen in Harems.  If an accident like that happened to me, I certainly wouldn’t be pursuing him as a romantic interest.  Let’s leave it at that. I already mentioned the Oops moment from Your Lie in April, then of course, Familiar of Zero had it…and Tenchi…  Oops is usually followed by someone being angry and someone being embarrassed (and sometimes it’s both at the same time for the same person). 

 

2. There are only three kinds of harem focal points.  The first kind is a womanizing pervert who just wants to squeeze things…boobs, butt cheeks…you name it, he’s probably squeezed it before.  You can throw in the accidental perverts in there too…you know, the kind that have done pervy things…by accident of course!  Then there is the second type of guy who is just very average.  He excels at nothing (or pretty much nothing until the women show up, then he excels at something) and yet girls are obsessed with him, picking him out of a crowd even as interesting even though they know nothing about him.  Usually, these types find the girls to be a hindrance or a distraction.  Then there’s the third kind of guy.  The third guy is the kind that has no real reaction to girls.  Usually, he’s the type not to notice that they like him (Kousei from Your Lie in April is a perfect example of this. He’s utterly clueless!).  Guess that’s part of the romantic tension.  The guy who actually likes one of the girls and actively pursues her at the expense of another’s attention is pretty rare.  Then again, would the harem still exist or would it be a rom-com then?  Hmmm….I might need to consider that.  No other tantalizing men exist in the world of anime, at least, not any that are sought after by so many women at once.  Remember, if you want women to chase after you, be one of those guys.  Don't be interesting, observant, or chivalrous.

 

1.  And the number one biggest eyesore and vomit-worthy harem trope on my list is….  Become a whore!  So, it is very likely if you have seen enough harem anime that you would have come across this particularly distasteful trope.  Typically, this trope takes a shy, demure, proper woman (or girl) who has little real interest in the MC and suddenly pastes on the Major Slut personality and discards every single piece of her original personality for this new sex-crazed one.  It gives off the vibe of I’m so desperate for a man, I’ll literally do anything and…oftentimes in anime they will go to insane lengths.  The biggest and worse offender of them all that comes straight to my mind is the Maid character from Familiar of Zero (I disliked her so much I never bothered to remember her name).  Starting out in the first season, she was very proper and respectful, fully clothed, and had reasonable reactions to Saito’s lecherous behavior.  Then season two comes around and she drops her entire personality to become a desperate slut, even going to the lengths of climbing in Saito’s bed between him and Louise, usually with barely any clothes on at all.  At one point, she essentially serves him wearing nothing but a tiny apron in a blatant attempt to tempt him into ravishing her.  She went from being a pretty good character in my book to being downright loathed by me.  The whole debacle was demeaning to what she had been…and honestly demeaning to women everywhere.  Then again, that show was prone to nearly every harem trope I list, so it isn’t surprising that the Princess experienced a similar devolvement as well.   I guess the take away point here is that if a man refuses you and pursues someone else, you should take off your clothes and try again anyways.  ~gags~ 

Edited April 29, 2018 by Beocat

[Beocat]

On 4/29/2018 at 1:59 AM, Wedgy said:

I can't help but feel like the grope trope and the thirsty, sexually frustrated and socially inept girl are the worst here. Not only because of their frequency in anime, but the fact that it carries the wrong message that somehow this is normal, acceptable behaviour. It's not. I ever see a Meliodas wannabe try to play out his antics to some poor girl in real life I'd probably take care of his family planning. It's disgusting. It's unfunny. Perhaps one of the reasons I wasn't so fond of 7DS, or at the very least the MC (how could they possibly make a MC so utterly hateable? I don't know, but 7DS managed it.)

Exactly! Number 2 would have been further down the list had it not been an example of extreme lack of creativity. The grope trope is also the one thing that I believe really gives anime a bad reputation among most people unfamiliar with it. I find most anime with a huge grope focus have abhorrent MCs.  They aren't humorous or enjoyable. Just cringe worthy. The "become a whore" trope is just downright bad writing and so messed up. If you can't write that character in a believable manner, it just shows how bad a writer you are. Not to mention how nauseating it is to see it take up the precious screen time per episode...

 

On 4/29/2018 at 1:59 AM, Wedgy said:

I think harems could be more fun and enjoyable if they were wholesome. Take Furuba for example- easily a reverse harem. Not-so-bright girl moves in to a house with a bunch of men, one of them very outright a perverted novelist. However, from what I can recall, she was generally treated well and while there was some competition among the men, they knew their boundaries and respected hers. (Maybe this can be blamed on their curse, there were a couple of times Ayame got the shit smacked out of him because he was cold and sought refuge in Tohru's shirt.) 

Ah, a reverse harem lover, like me!  Yes, reverse harems are more wholesome and base more on plot and character development. Some like Uta no Prince-Sama maybe go a little too far in the harem (up to season 2 was good but season 3 just seemed to stray too far with too many reverse harem characters and not really any development) and others like Amnesia or Diabolik Lovers have some real crazy, creepy guys....  but it's the good ones that make it worthwhile. In general, there are more good ones than bad whereas straight up harems have too many bad ones and not enough good ones.