AnimeSuki Forums

Let’s see… I think what counts as otaku-baits for me are:

• Harem story or story that has a great deal of harem elements in it. I’m okay with love triangle or mere harem vibe (eg. Hataraku Maou-sama, Last Exile, etc), but not stories that has harem as the secondary main-plot (eg. Unbreakable Machine-Doll, Index, Asterisk, Rakudai, and countless others). Stories where the main female character(s) easily fall for the male MC for no strong reason or development (regardless of numbers) is also included in this category.
• Stories that use pervy/erotic/sexual-elements as part of its plot-device. For example, the main guy has to kiss/molest/*insert other sexual deeds here* in order for him or his partner to get power-boost. (eg. Highscool DxD, Testament, and many others).
• Female character designs with unnecessary (and often bordering on brainless) revealing clothes or clothes that unnaturally accentuate their bodies like very tight leather-like suits or see-through clothes or something alike (eg, Dragonar Academy, and many others). Female characters with over-the-top sexual trait (eg. unnecessary big bouncy boobs) also included in this.
• OP male MCs that trample his opponents from the beginning to almost end. Usually, it’s either the male MC is OP as hell, or the setting is conveniently setting the male MC as the top by default considering their skill (eg. No Game No Life, Mahouka, etc)
• Unnecessary fanservice. For example, the writer makes certain female characters naked or in sexually awkward situations for no strong reasons when he can easily write a scenario where those girls don’t have to be that way (eg. Holo’s nudity in S&W, many scenes from DxD, etc)
• Stories with a “chosen one” MC in which he previously had a normal standard highschool or commoner's life before "destiny" comes for him.
• Stories that uses highschool setting & highschool MC for no strong reason (eg. in recent episode of Testament, a fight with a god happened on schoolgrounds. DxD franchise is also guilty of this in some events in its story).
• Stories that are too reliant or too indulgent on their own gimmicks or technobabble or magicbabble rather than focusing on making a good narrative or good character development or both.

Those are from the top of my head. Maybe I’ll come up with more.

*note that my examples above come from animes, and not necessarily LNs as I just want to illustrate my point using what I remember right now*

Oh yea, i remember i was gonna make a post here.

Anyways, regarding your deleted post about LNs in the sakurako thread, before i answer your question, i wanted to know what constitutes to you as "otaku-bait" or "chuunibyou-inspired elements". I usually have different views regarding them as from my view, there is nothing intrinsically chuu2 or otaku-ish about reincarnation, or transfer to another world. Sometimes the writing is masturbatory but that's just shitty writing that can be in any book. MMORPG is a maybe if you haven't played those types of games before. Most animes with any sort of superpowers or very advanced technology is chuu2 to an extent and that's about half of all shows created lol.

One more thing, you mentioned about Holo nudity in S&W and some huge-ass tit girl in another adaption as bait. There are some cases where those fanservice scenes were altered from the source itself to put into the show. And even in the cases where they were present in the source, it was just like one sentence in a paragraph of other things. It's kind of hard to really call it "bait".