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What tropes/cliches are your favorites and most hated in anime?
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My Favorite: Beach Episodes, they're pure fun and sometimes they help the plot to develop.
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Most hated: When they have to explain their techniques in the middles of fights, almost all shonen animes that I can recall are guilty of this, that pretty much kills the immersion for me.
I hate when a show has a good premise, an interesting world, an intelligent magic system, and fun characters, but still feels the need to cater to horny boys because they don't have any confidence in the show as is. If two nations are on the verge of battle and the main character is a princess who is trying to setup a last ditch summit before things go to hell, we don't really need scene of a pervy tailor molesting her in order to get her a dress measured. (And I don't care if the tailor is also a woman, show, you're missing the point!) If you can stick that scene in, you can take it out.
On the other hand, the reason I pan the streams every season is because every once in a while you get a show that zigs where it could zag and has a really neat twist on an existing formula. If the Princess has to make a choice between an arranged marriage with the prince of another nation for peace, or her relationship with the tailor who is a supportive friend and not a pervert, that's pretty conventional, but things could change if both royals have their own relationships to attend to, and have to build a working relationship pretending to be a couple. Or the Princess falls more for the prince's sister, or the Princess rejects the deal all together because she is not going to let her country become a vassal no matter how hunky the prince is. If you set up a simple premise and then blow it up for something more impressive half way through, you have my attention.
I am not a big fan of anime in general so I will say the things I hate most:
The characters, specially woman are ridiculous and unbelievable. You have strong masculine woman then the tiny and childish and finally the quiet and sweet one. 90% of the anime will revolve around this 3 stereotypes. And all look like toddlers.
What I love is the liberty the writers and directors have, there no limits with cgi, budget or investors like in a normal movie and that let them to create more interesting and unique stuff. Sadly, I haven't seen anything like that, it is all filled with fan service.
I'm also not an anime fan per se, and am as suspicious of anyone who self-describes as one as I would be of someone who self-describes as a fan of TV. I've found you can largely limit your exposure to your gripes if you do two things - prioritize films rather than shows, and look for titles that are tagged as seinen or josei. Those are marketed toward early-20s-to-mid-40s male/female audiences respectively and tend to be written for a correspondingly higher maturity level than ubiquitous shounen anime targeted at young boys.
If it's worth anything I think I'm probably the most skeptical person in here when it comes anime that has still seen enough to make worthwhile recommendations. I think about 3/4 of the shows in the thread mrbig linked should work for you, and then it'd be down to your taste.
Have you seen this thread? https://tildes.net/~anime/q4q/im_looking_for_anime_shows_with_a_lot_of_depth#comments
Yes I have checked it. And even plan to give a try to a few. Thanks.
I’m very tolerant to cliches because most of them can be great when well employed. I don’t have a favorite, this highly depends on the story.
There are a few cliches I find abhorrent, such as the overtly sexualized infant that’s actually 1000 years old. I don’t even think that’s necessarily immoral as a virtual fetish of some kind, but I don’t find it erotic at all. It’s usually very distracting. I’d rather see some adult titties.