Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.
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@lisast If you take out the "delicious foods" aspect of I'll Never Set Foot in That House Again!, half the content goes away.
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One thing that didn't use to bother me much, but which is increasingly grinding my gears, is harems. I used to enjoy harem stories quite a lot, but after reading a whole bunch of them, and starting to write (admittedly crappy) stories of my own, I've realised that nothing destroys the romantic tension between two characters like adding a third (and fourth, and fifth etc.) wheel to the mix. In the end, most harems devolve into a game of pokémon ("Gotta catch 'em all!"), which I guess isn't fundamentally bad as a means of simple entertainment. It's just that there's nothing romantic about it. Thus, when I read stories with harems nowadays, I try to set my expectations low with regards to the romance.
Another thing that tends to annoy me, and which has had me drop series before, is a cliché that I guess isn't specific to Japanese media (though I've mostly encountered it there): the main romantic pairing(s) getting separated, sometimes for a whole volume or more, whether because the love interest gets kidnapped or possessed by the big bad (or is otherwise preoccupied), or because the protagonist has to go on a journey and the love interest gets put in the freezer in the meantime. I don't know why this one bothers me so much, though I suspect it's because it feels like a cheap way of adding tension. Romantic subplots/main plots are some of my favourite parts of stories, and as long as the partners are separated, there literally can be no romance, except inside the heads of the characters. Even worse if the protagonist then goes around picking up harem members while the whole separation thing is going on.
The weird obsession with breast sizes has been mentioned before, so I'll just add that I fully agree.
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I don't like the trope of having one insecurity making you completely different from your peers. For example horimiya, Hori is just a homebody, and Miyamura is not an otaku. My dress up darling, Gojou just likes making hina dolls.
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@waterdweller said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Another thing that tends to annoy me, and which has had me drop series before, is a cliché that I guess isn't specific to Japanese media (though I've mostly encountered it there): the main romantic pairing(s) getting separated, sometimes for a whole volume or more, whether because the love interest gets kidnapped or possessed by the big bad (or is otherwise preoccupied), or because the protagonist has to go on a journey and the love interest gets put in the freezer in the meantime. I don't know why this one bothers me so much, though I suspect it's because it feels like a cheap way of adding tension. Romantic subplots/main plots are some of my favourite parts of stories, and as long as the partners are separated, there literally can be no romance, except inside the heads of the characters. Even worse if the protagonist then goes around picking up harem members while the whole separation thing is going on.
The only western story I can think of off the top of my head is Percy Jackson: The Titan's Curse. It was used as a reason for Percy to even bother getting involved in the plot of that particular story.
Green's Theorem
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@someoldguy and the other half is like... Major pedo vibes. Another thing I hate is 1,000 year old Loli characters. Can't we just have a series about adults?
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@piisfun said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
The only western story I can think of off the top of my head is Percy Jackson: The Titan's Curse. It was used as a reason for Percy to even bother getting involved in the plot of that particular story.
Just looked up the details on wikipedia. I guess if I hadn't dropped that series at the beginning of the second volume (due to annoyance at Percy and Annabeth's completely pointless squabbling, IIRC), I would've definitely dropped it when being faced with that plot. I suppose I never really was all that taken with that series, so it didn't take much to get me to drop it.
@salientmind said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@someoldguy and the other half is like... Major pedo vibes. Another thing I hate is 1,000 year old Loli characters. Can't we just have a series about adults?
I'll never understand this preoccupation so many Japanese authors seem to have with children and young teenagers. Sometimes it gets downright disturbing. It's to the extent that it seems almost universal for male protagonists to be entirely surrounded by girls or women younger than them, with the only exception being the token 600/800/1000 year old who looks like a little kid. Can't we get the occasional "waifu" who looks like an adult, acts like an adult, and is, like, maybe a decade or two older than the (already adult) protagonist? Off the top of my head, I can think of only one series I've read where the male protagonist hooks up with someone like that (Reborn as a Space Mercenary), and it was a breath of fresh air.
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@joey-gil My Dress Up Darling does not feel like a harem story, he has one girl he likes who loves him, and the rest just really like him for how well he makes their cosplay dresses but aren't in love with him. He doesn't seem like the type to put up with harem nonsense either and won't "string" a girl along for fun.
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@waterdweller said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
two older than the (already adult) protagonist? Off the top of my head, I can think of only one series I've read where the male protagonist hooks up with someone like that (Reborn as a Space Mercenary), and it was a breath of fresh air.
I loved the first couple of volumes of "The World's Strongest Rearguard", because Arihito was an adult with adult love interests. As the harem grew, the ages of the new characters got lower. The whole series would have been better with one love interest and many "adopted rascals".
I am holding out hope that he makes it clear he isn't about a harem.
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@waterdweller The target reader are sex deprived and lonely 16- to 18-year-old boys, so of course they read erotic fiction and since sex sells, sexy young girls are everywhere. What is funny is I read that part of the reason for Japan's falling birth rate, other than over-work, is it's impossible for most Japanese women to measure up to the beauty standards 2-D women have set. Japanese men are not as interested in real Japanese women as they used to be. They have to be either really young and cute or older but still sexy, but an average looking woman? She's going to be an old maid.
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I hate harem stories that don't have a harem ending, like Rosery and Vampire. Many times, these other girls will risk their lives for the MC and each other yet get kicked to the side at the end. But when the harem gets too big, like in Another World with my Smart Phone or Death March or World's Strongest, then it just gets stupid. No man will be able to keep up with all those woman's sex drives as they get older, having a large harem seems more like a power fantasy then even remotely realistic (breaks immersion). Also, sometimes the MC has a harem, but you can't figure out why the girls want him so badly. Sometimes he's just really strong but other times he's the only guy around, like there is one guy for every ten women or something.
The glory of Japanese food is also overblown and used as filler for an otherwise shallow story.
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@someoldguy Filler for an otherwise boring story.
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I generally don't like detailed fight scenes either, but my one exception to that is Lazy Dungeon Master. The sheer creativity Keima shows in the types of attacks he comes up with during the fight scenes totally makes it worth reading them in that one series. In pretty much every other series it's just skippable paragraphs.
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@waterdweller oh god I hate the kidnapping plots. It's even worse when it's forced marriage or similar as well...
I then usually hate the resolution even more when they forgive the (usually rapey-threatening) antagonist...
I've come close to dropping some series because of that garbage
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@waterdweller I agree with you, but as I read on some other thread, these stories are typically geared for pre-teens and teens. I really don't understand it, being older than that, but apparently these authors believe that 12 year olds don't want to read about anyone over twelve. And they want to see that the 12 year olds are so much better/smarter ... than older people. Maybe people in Japan have serious complexes? Anyway, this would not be such an issue if the authors didn't expicilty say the characters are only 12 and draw them as such. I pretty much just pretend all the characters are 10 yrs older and it usually it more reasonable. Oh, a 12 year old has their own apartment and cooks for themselves and blah blah ... suuuurrrre. But, a 22 yr old, okay.
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I do agree that more than one (maybe 2 or 3 max) love interests is pretty dumb. I don't know what idiot thinks they could possibly keep up with that. I have been married a long time and can tell you that more than one would have probably made me kill myself years ago. Anyway, I beleive historically the nobles/king did have more than one wife (see Apothecary Diaries), but I believe it was limited to like 3 or 4 max and strictly regulated as regards to who inherits... So this harem thing, like Realist Hero and Spirit Chronicles with a dozen or so "love" interest is just dumb.
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@christopher-lamay said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Anyway, I beleive historically the nobles/king did have more than one wife (see Apothecary Diaries), but I believe it was limited to like 3 or 4 max and strictly regulated as regards to who inherits... So this harem thing, like Realist Hero and Spirit Chronicles with a dozen or so "love" interest is just dumb.
Historically harems existed, but they weren't fair or equal relationships as LN often try to depict them. There was always a significant imbalance of power, and love had very little to do with it.
Bookworm and Apothecary diaries are those random outliers. I can't imagine having the bandwidth for anything else if I was truly caring for the emotional needs of 2 other people plus "working".
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@christopher-lamay I've seen a few western works were the kid hero(es) end up outdoing all the adults around them... The most famous one probably being Harry Potter. It doesn't veer as far into Adults are Useless territory as some of the others, but when you've committed to writing a kid/teen hero, you really can't avoid having them outperform the adults at some point...
@salientmind Bookworm's an especially good example there, since I don't think we've seen any of the multi-wife men actually in love with more than one of their wives (with the others usually being political or economic matches).
@Folker46 I've heard the 'anime girls are ruining our youth!' claims before, and I'll be honest, it's just a 'new media are EVIL!' style urban legend, like Rock and Roll makes teens into hooligans! or DOOM creates school shooters!. Japan's birth rate is declining, true, and their media does push some unrealistic beauty standards... but those are hardly unique to Japan. Take a look at Instagram, or any of the many scandals about airbrushed photos in magazines.
What does drop the birth rate in developed nations... well, there are a few factors, but it boils down to this: The transition from a society where it's more or less mandatory for a woman to have children, to one where they can increasingly decide to do other things with their life. Every woman that takes the option to not churn out kids drops the average birth rate that little bit more.
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Let's avoid going down the real world politics route here. (anymore than we already have)
Let's keep this topic on track.
Thank you
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@myskaros said in [Hate on what you Love.
And not just the size, but the fluid mechanics behind how their shape varies depending on angle/brightness/wind speed/etc.
If it was actual fluid mechanics I'd be interested, but usually it is ignorant enough to end up uncanny valley or that feeling you get when the author hasn't done enough research. For all the attention on boobs, so little of it is insightful or observant.
