Anime Clichés You Hate!

I might've complained about this before, but whispered confessions not being heard. I hate it almost every time.

MC: "Why dont you find a guy you like?"
Girl, at nearly full volume: "What are you fucking talking about, idiot, I have loved you ever since our whatever plotpoint childhood promise only I remember, I love your face and attitude and family, and we accidentally kissed when I fell on the stairs and I love you so much."
MC: "What?"
Girl: "Nothing"
MC: "Aight, I'm not gonna press it, all those whispers I heard were probably nothing."

Honestly, I think the presented volume is the highest difficulty for me. If a girl mumbled, or if the guy pressed even a little, I'd allow a little belief, but it's just a beaten to death cliche.

Sometimes an anime will play with it though, and I can appreciate it. I remember "Haganai" makes him ignoring confessions part of an insecurity, and "So I Cant Play H" or whatever that dumb anime is has the MC purposefully ignore what we heard because he didnt want to turn her down and hurt their friendship.

Not great, but better than just leaving the cliche to exist in it's entirely formulaic format.
 
I might've complained about this before, but whispered confessions not being heard. I hate it almost every time.

MC: "Why dont you find a guy you like?"
Girl, at nearly full volume: "What are you fucking talking about, idiot, I have loved you ever since our whatever plotpoint childhood promise only I remember, I love your face and attitude and family, and we accidentally kissed when I fell on the stairs and I love you so much."
MC: "What?"
Girl: "Nothing"
MC: "Aight, I'm not gonna press it, all those whispers I heard were probably nothing."

Honestly, I think the presented volume is the highest difficulty for me. If a girl mumbled, or if the guy pressed even a little, I'd allow a little belief, but it's just a beaten to death cliche.

Sometimes an anime will play with it though, and I can appreciate it. I remember "Haganai" makes him ignoring confessions part of an insecurity, and "So I Cant Play H" or whatever that dumb anime is has the MC purposefully ignore what we heard because he didnt want to turn her down and hurt their friendship.

Not great, but better than just leaving the cliche to exist in it's entirely formulaic format.
A prozd for everything.
 
I might've complained about this before, but whispered confessions not being heard. I hate it almost every time.

MC: "Why dont you find a guy you like?"
Girl, at nearly full volume: "What are you fucking talking about, idiot, I have loved you ever since our whatever plotpoint childhood promise only I remember, I love your face and attitude and family, and we accidentally kissed when I fell on the stairs and I love you so much."
MC: "What?"
Girl: "Nothing"
MC: "Aight, I'm not gonna press it, all those whispers I heard were probably nothing."

Honestly, I think the presented volume is the highest difficulty for me. If a girl mumbled, or if the guy pressed even a little, I'd allow a little belief, but it's just a beaten to death cliche.

Sometimes an anime will play with it though, and I can appreciate it. I remember "Haganai" makes him ignoring confessions part of an insecurity, and "So I Cant Play H" or whatever that dumb anime is has the MC purposefully ignore what we heard because he didnt want to turn her down and hurt their friendship.

Not great, but better than just leaving the cliche to exist in it's entirely formulaic format.

Don't forget Nozaki-kun

damn fireworks (lol)
 
A weird one:
People that switch sides in a larger conflict are almost always villainous or greedy, because apparently only the evil ones would do such a thing and "our side" would never encourage such behavior from the opposition.
Not enough series use turncoats to demonstrate a point or add complexity. A leader makes bad choices that alienates an ally? Great character development opportunity, but usually it's just painted as "turncoat baed" because you're supposed to suck up and be loyal no matter what. While this absolutely is in no way confined to anime, it does seem more common than in western media, at least so long as it's not a story set in the real world.
Some would claim this is some samurai culture thing, but we know that actual IRL samurai switched sides plenty. So if it has anything to do with that then it would be the glorified propaganda version of Samurai developed in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th century.
And it might not be a big shocker, but Legends of the Galactic Heroes is an anime that actually subverts this. We see turncoats with both good and bad motivations alike on both sides of the conflict, as well as disillusioned deserters and such. It's real neat.

Here I'm talking about settings with larger conflicts and politics and such. It doesn't include the typical villain conversions in your average action adventure show, which tends to be very different in theming and execution.
 
You know what I've grown to hate? Whenever a character that is presented as erudite, well-read, thoughtful, or otherwise generally smart (glasses are maybe optional), they always say something, and then immediately backtracks by going "actually, this is a more apt comparison or reasonable presentation." Just say the smart thing in the first place to avoid looking like a scatterbrain that can't think before you speak.
 
I don't know if it counts as a stereotype, but I really dislike yandere characters. I find craziness of that particular kind unattractive and I tend to like eccentric characters in general. I have a strong distaste for the usually useless male lead character that the yandere is into. For example, I found Future Diary quite entertaining to watch but I can't say I liked the two main characters.
 
Monster voices! There's slightly less of it these days, but oh boy am I tired of hearing some monster talk using the same voice filter we've heard since the freaking 80s! You know the one!
Kind of similar, it is painful cringe to listen to older anime when they use the weird fantastical animal sidekick that repeats the same noise trope. I just cant handle the thought of someone standing in front of a mic saying "A-chyuu-nyuu" or "nifu nifi nifu" or the like all day just to add onto a useless side character.

It was the height of kawaii in the 90s, but good lord does it hurt to watch now.
 
It popped up in The Princess and the Pilot, which I have 35 minutes left of, but I absolutely despise that trope of two anime characters doing [insert literally any interpersonal interaction here], one of them loses their footing, and then the guy lands on top of the girl in a compromising position that's supposed to (I guess?) build dramatic/sexual tension but really it just feels like a lazy cop-out to get the characters to literally be on top of one another without going through the actual work of bringing them together. Every time I see it, I'm instantly disappointed.
 
I love fights having impactful blows and such, but I hate how anime overuses characters coughing up or puking blood when they have not actually suffered lasting damage. Learn how to illustrate a bruise, ffs!

Kind of similar, it is painful cringe to listen to older anime when they use the weird fantastical animal sidekick that repeats the same noise trope. I just cant handle the thought of someone standing in front of a mic saying "A-chyuu-nyuu" or "nifu nifi nifu" or the like all day just to add onto a useless side character.

It was the height of kawaii in the 90s, but good lord does it hurt to watch now.
Snarf snarf~
(Fun fact, Thundercats didn't air in Norway to my knowledge, so this was actually my actual first encounter with the IP back in the day)
 
The anime cliché I hate most? The first one would be overpowered swordsman... Here is what I think about swordsman. Having magic just to fulfill your sword fetish is not an excuse for thousands of year of superiority of ranged weapons...

The second anime cliché I hate most is "hazukashii". It might be difficult to have fulfill your love interest/crush in high school, but the most profound difficulty is whether your crush would accept you. However, it seems more common in anime that girls do not fail because their love interest is not interested, but because it is too shameful to have a love interest... even when your own classmates on your own age clearly have their "boyfriends" (not actual boyfriend, but high-school boyfriend, like for holding hands and stuff). I have never ever seen any person from any nation and any culture at any age that would prefer to die instead of being embarrassed.
 
The anime cliché I hate most? The first one would be overpowered swordsman... Here is what I think about swordsman. Having magic just to fulfill your sword fetish is not an excuse for thousands of year of superiority of ranged weapons...
That's not a cliché. That's literally just fantasy. I really don't get your rationale there. If I swing a magic sword and it makes a building explode, a Colt really is the weaker weapon.
--------------------------------

Almost all action anime with any sort of fantasy or superhuman element is mostly guilty of this: A complete disregard for debuffs as tools to employ in fights. Anything debuff related just shows up as a McGuffin that instawins a fight, which is lazy and boring.
Part of why the lack of debuffs is a problem is because of how it ties into power creep. Not having it limits your ability to write tactics and strategy in fights, and it usually forces the fight to simply come down to who punches the hardest.
Debuffs (and support abilities/items) is a great way of giving balance to the power scales.

A worse one is when someone does have a debuff ability, but the writer quickly runs out of inspiration and gives in to the power creep and has the next opponent just be immune by default or some shit.
 
Back
Top