Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.
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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.
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@strangeattractor said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@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.
And so little of it is original, it’s like the author went to the light novel supply store and got a box of default oppai descriptions
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@lily-garden I know you were exaggerating when you said it earlier, but if I read one that took wind speed into effect of some boobs I'd have to laugh out loud. How would that go anyways?
"She had breasts that were so wonderful, that when you stand behind her you can feed a drop of wind speed" haha
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@kuali said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@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...
I really like the way the JRPG video game series Legend of Heroes handles this issue. The main characters are teenagers, and the reason they get to do important things is that the adults are short staffed and some of the adults are off doing other important things. Then the adults show up and be awesome in dramatic moments as they reveal the results of what they've been up to. Yes, sometimes the kids outperform them, but they also have their time to shine and they sometimes provide needed support. It's so much better than when a story keeps the adults ignorant, or corrupt, or incompetent.
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@waterdweller said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I've realised that nothing destroys the romantic tension between two characters like adding a third
For me, I don't care about the romance of harems so much as the sheer mechanics.
I guess when you're a 13 year-old boy, the idea of sleeping in bed with a bunch of pretty girls sounds fun. But in reality, skin-to-skin touching gets sweaty and uncomfortable after about 5 minutes, and finding a spot for all your limbs is awkward, and long hair is ticklish, and most people fart in their sleep, and being sandwiched between multiple bodies unable to adjust your position would be torture after an hour or two.
Honestly, all those multiparty napping scenes just leave me feeling exhausted - "Jesus, that can't be very restful".
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@unknownmat That was great on Demon Lord Retry. He was sleeping with the two (really daughter figures) by his side and the third one on top of him and he thought "How am I going to get any sleep like this."
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@unknownmat this has always blown my mind. Humans produce ALOT of heat, and these people are practically sleeping in a pile like puppies. Someone is going to pass out. It's going to be hot, sticky and gross.
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@salientmind Well, the grass is always greener on the other side, as they say. A man sleeping alone may dream of sleeping in a pile of women; A man sleeping in a pile of women will dream of having his own bed :)
