What's Wrong with Romance Anime?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #anime6 years ago

When I browse for new anime to watch, I can never help looking at the tags. Certain tags like vampire, school, or shounen immediately turn me away from a series because I know that most shows in those categories fall into trends I dislike. There are, of course, exceptions to these. I liked Kekkai Sensen, I liked Angel Beats, I liked Hunter x Hunter. But I've never found a genre so good and bad at the same time as romance.

So many anime have a problem with handling the romance genre in part because of the other genres the creators want to include in the show. Often, comedy-romances will have the main couple get together and break up every episode due to misunderstanding after misunderstanding. Part of what makes misunderstandings funny is that they rarely happen, but can lead to characters having coherent conversations about several disjoint topics at the same time. However, if all the characters are doing is talking past each other for four hours, stories don't progress, characters don't develop, and most importantly, I am bored. If the writers decide to include slice of life, they inhibit themselves to the slow everyday grind that doesn't make good television. Things might happen, but only around the 600 episode mark (wait--no Pokemon is more than 1000 epsiodes). The slice of life genre itself necessitates that nothing important happens, otherwise the writers might have to think about something like plot.


[gokai desu~]

The other part wrong with romance anime is the time period they choose to place their story. When all your characters are in high school, there's only a few themes your story can have, and those themes lose impact quick. Either it's a story about growing up and getting past crushes, about finding the one person right for you, or about the wacky hijinks of kids who will never find anyone. It doesn't help that the personalities given to the male characters for shows like this is dense as a brick and rejects all advances. Whenever something meaningful happens, the characters are either too flustered to do anything, or their reaction makes the other person too flustered. This isn't necessarily unrealistic so much as it doesn't make a good story. The best romance anime should work just as fine before and after the relationship starts. Any less proves that the whole point of the show was to see them get together. I've heard that Golden Time makes up for many of these flaws, but I've also been given plenty of reason not to watch it.

The best romance anime leave the beginning phase of the relationship as short as possible so the interesting characters can carry the plot themselves. Ironically enough, Sword Art Online handles this aspect fairly well. After going on some dates, Kirito and Asuna find that they're a good match, and I find the romantic scenes between them much more entertaining than the generic tsundere crap that happened early in season 1. Spice and Wolf would be my recommendation for someone who wants a good romance, but that's the only story I can think of that handles romance the way it should. Some other anime handle romance in an acceptable way, while still not being great. Shows like Sukasuka, Toradora, and Koe no Katachi are the best examples I can think of, so go give one of those a try.

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Thanks for sharing @double-negative! I liked that you provided a solution to what would make romances better in anime. My brother is a big anime fan so I've seen the kind of stuff he watches and reads. Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z is probably the most I know about it though. Still, I enjoyed reading through your analysis. Anime and animation in general handle relationships in funny ways sometimes. It's definitely a different form of story telling.

Thanks for sharing!

The best romance anime in my opinion is School Rumble. It's the best because it isn't just romance. It's a lot of other genres mixed into one. You get your comedy, action, drama, and everything else all rolled into one.

There are MANY characters but they're all likable and relatable. That series has possibly the best story telling i've seen in any anime in a VERY long time! Give it a read/watch when you can!

I love that this didn't turn out to be a boring analysis, you were able to carry me along through it all. Maybe because it has to do with romance?🤔 lol!

Romance do need to be given a little bit of attention over there to make it worth watching for others, they definitely are trying but they can do a better job, right? Whats your favorite genre?

I guess my favorite genre has to be fantasy. It's a shame for me because just like romance, few shows know how to properly handle fantasy.

Fantasy is quite an interesting genre. Yeah, hopefully, they will get better with that too...

I think it's not the specialty of anime makers, as you say. vampires, robots and killers, much gore little romance.

When you said that most romance anime place their stories in school you reminded me of an anime that I saw many years ago by locomotion called sakura mail, was just the story based on 2 cousins who did not know they were and were studying and at the same time falling in love, of course until they realize and nothing else happens, by the way the anime was romantic but the category was soft-hentai so it was not so romantic if not that I entered into sexual grounds but very subtly.

I think it is to force the situation within a violent market romance has no profitability, I will look for some of the animes that you have cited to see them.

thank you for sharing, greetings

Anime is no more inherently violent than games or books. It's just that action gets more recognition, so it's easier to market those types of stories.

Good point. In short, it's a violent industry.

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What about Noragami, Inuyasha, Eden of the East, and Vampire Knight? They have lots of romance too, but I'm not sure if they are considered in the romance genre.

I haven't seen Vampire Knight or Inuyasha. I would say Eden of the east isn't really a romance, though it tries to be. Noragami seems to go for more of a friendship angle, and I plan on talking about that eventually.

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You know what is funny? I keep saying that I've never seen any anime! :D And now you tell me that Pokemon is one as well :D I finally don't think like I was living under the rock :D

Thank you for that! :)

I have never seen romantic anime, but in "Soul Eater" there is a bit of romance between Maka and Soul, and I liked it, they do not do it so cloying, and it develops slowly which made me stick with the series. Ultimately the anime is a fun world if you know what to look for.

I have never watched a full romance anime before and would very much like to try watching one. I am a sucker for romance :) I used to watch Robotech series and that had some element of romance but most parts of the movie is all action packed. Thank you for the recommendations.