Oldtaku: Anime for Grownups

I know I’m going to take some crap for this, but after watching hundreds of anime (and reading hundreds of manga), I’m going to assert the following: anime/manga for females is far more cliche and forumlaic  than anime/manga for males.

Now I’m not sure why this should be. Generally series for males (’shounen’) fall victim to the fight fight fight cliche and the harem cliche.  Put crudely, all guys are interested in are beating things up and screwing.  And females are generally viewed as being more interested in dialogue and relationships than males, so you’d expect female anime or manga to be more varied: yet it’s not.

Series for young girls tends to fall into the endlessly recycled magical girl category  while anime for teen girls tends to fall into the cliche bishounen (beautiful dangerous guys) category. Characters are little more than a small set of quirks to be exploited for humorous effect, some hidden tragedy in their past to give them a veneer of depth, and emotions limited to self pity, unfulfilled longing, unfocused rage, vague protectiveness, and ‘being cool’. I know the last isn’t really an emotion, exactly, but it seems to qualify as a primary state of mind for the characters.

Since cliches are the main detriment to my enjoyment of new series (been there, done that, dozens of times) you’ll see that I recommend very few shoujo (‘girls’) anime. I freely admit that as a man I don’t understand it completely: is this some Japanese paternalism? But then I think of romance series like Harlequin here in the west – basically all the same five plots with the names changed. So my guesses are that a) by reducing the plot and setup to formula they allow the reader/viewer to concentrate on the dialogue and b) the unchanging framework provides a sense of security.

Whatever the reason, there are far fewer shoujo series than shounen series that won’t insult a reasonably intelligent adult.