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Originally Posted by Kaioshin_Sama
One of the other reasons I like mecha I might add is the excellent character development I find that often goes along with them. Be it a fluke or not I don't know, but I find it to be the case. Again to me just because their is a mecha in a series cannot immediately rob the story of any meaningful character development by default. It does give it any less of a chance of having the characters connect with the viewer than something like True Tears.
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True this may be, but there aren't a great number of people that associate "mecha" with "character development". Hell, there's no reason why the two are mutually exclusive; FMP:TSR, for example, has some of the best examples of character development one can find in anime. But if you watch a character driven drama (those series people mistakenly call "slice-of-life") like Honey & Clover or Nodame Cantabile or even a lesser title (relatively speaking) like Asatte no Houkou or Hitohira, you'll almost certainly find some sort of character development since that's the whole point. Sure, the whole thing is just perspective, but the common perspective is that one is less likely to find good character development in a random mecha title because there's no obligation for a random mecha title to supply character development... just mecha.
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Originally Posted by Kaioshin_Sama
I could also name a number of ideas that I think are exploited now, one of which is the definitive Key style series of eroge adaptations (Comedic beginning/really melodramatic ending), but that would be a waste of time and not productive. What I will add though is that I don't hear anybody complaining about them being overexploited, when there are at least as much of them or more per season than mecha series. It's kind of a double standard to say mecha is overexposed when there are just as many examples in other genres and tropes, but I guess I've come to expect that kind of thing these days.
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I don't think anyone's going to argue that the high school setting for romance series isn't a cliche. Why this particular cliche doesn't get berated in the same way as the common mecha cliches, I'm not sure. Maybe people, myself included, have had better luck finding good series within that particular subgenre than in mecha. Experience informs intuition.
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Originally Posted by qtipbrit92
Second, the appearance of any subgenre within a series will remove impact of many other subgenres within it. Take your example, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. Almost pure drama and romance. There was even very, very little comedy included, mainly during its first two episodes.
Another example, Shakugan no Shana. I say it's a romance, some say it's an action, some say it's a slice-of-life, some say it's a drama. Obviously, mixing any genres will lessen the impact of any other genres within it.
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I don't really agree with this at all. A well made anime should be able to blend aspects from different genres together in such a way that they all complement each other. See Bokura ga Ita for a near perfect mix of drama, comedy and romance, or Nodame Cantabile for a slightly different but just as effective mix of the same things. Full Metal Panic mixes romance and action fairly well (although I can't be the only one who wishes they'd handle the romance slightly better), while Higurashi has a weird mix of comedy and horror, and yet somehow pulls it off. If an anime contains a mix of things taken from different genres, and they don't work together, that's a flaw of that particular anime. There's nothing inherently wrong with mixing genres if the people doing the mixing know what they're doing.