[XFire]

Originally Posted by KLGChaos

Yeah, and I guess that's why it doesn't appeal to me much anymore. It's not just harem genre getting boring, but as I get older, sticking to one girl becomes more and more appealing to me than having a harem of girls. I'd rather have the MC focus on one girl than 10 different girls that ends up with 9 of them hurt or a non-ending at all. Plus, polygamy is not something I'll ever really appreciate unless it's in a pure comedy based series like TLR or something, as I am a bit of a hopeless romantic who believes a guy should be faithful to one person. Anything that has any kind of deeper romantic plot and I get completely turned off by the harem around it.

I actually agree with this. Any series that takes the romantic aspects of the story seriously should only have a one-on-one relationship. Otherwise the harem-members end up becoming these pitiful people desperately vying for the attention of a single person, and honestly that seems a bit unhealthy for all involved.

Spoiler for Comparison to Umi no Misaki:

I have seen a grand total of one series that pulled of a "harem" in a pure romance without degrading the girls involved: Umi no Misaki. And does so by virtue of three factors. First, the focus of the manga is almost entirely on the guy and the three girls (there are like ten named characters). Second, the girls all get like ten-chapter arcs and equal treatment (by the author, not just the MC). Third, the MC didn't realize how emotionally invested he and the girls had become until it was too late to break off the relationship without breaking someone's heart and constantly beats himself up about it. And to reiterate, this is an exception among exceptions, and still doesn't cut it for some people.

If done at all, harems should be done in a setting where it's basically the background to the larger plot (not that kind of plot. stop snickering) like in MnO (damn war business gets in the way) or Campione (those pesky Heretic Gods make planning a picnic a little hard), or in a purely comedic environment like TLR (I once saw a post claiming that since the girls panties got more screen-time than they did, the panties should be considered harem members) or this one, DxD (the MC pulls more power-ups out of boobs than most magicians pull rabbits out of hats).