Harem Vs. "All Girls" Anime Debate

[Kirito]

@Kyero Fox

Why don't you watch Rainbow, that is if you haven't watched it. It's pretty much a male dominated oriented cast in case if you're interested.

[sunset]

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

Is there a anime out there where women are non existant pretty much?

Not just anime.
I could list about a dozen live action movies where there´s not a girl to be found if I still had the energy to fire up the necessary grey cells.

[NK_500]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Yeah, I am thinking of the topic of female empowerment at the expense of male presence. Like, "We have been bitching for years about how girls in shounen are "STAY IN THE KITCHEN", so we shall make shows about awesomely overpowered girls at the cost at pretending that guys are all incompetent or just don't count, or even exist." It's like allowing girls to run a marathon race in ferrari while guys just run on their legs. Tied together.

I think you can exclude Taishou Yakyuu Musume. It's about group of girls want to compete with boys in baseball and they did lose to them twice.

[Tempester]

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

Is there a anime out there where women are non existant pretty much? I mean they are there, just never shown or no major or even minor characters? No, I doubt there is.

You're wrong. There are a lot of yaoi manga that fall right into this, and a few of them have been adapted to anime.

[hyl]

Not just Yaoi or other kind of shounen-ai series but quite some sport animes like for example Prince of Tennis or the older shounen action series like JoJo's bizarre series had little ammounts of screentime for women in it.

[Kyero Fox]

Originally Posted by Kirito

@Kyero Fox

Why don't you watch Rainbow, that is if you haven't watched it. It's pretty much a male dominated oriented cast in case if you're interested.

No thanks, i hate those I hope no one thought the opposite. DBZ was pushin it, thank god for Android 18.. i think.. she did become stupidly weak after Cell saga.

Never heard of it tho, Funny... a Anime called "Rainbow" with no female cast members? >->; its not... yaoi is it? ._.

[asaqe]

Originally Posted by SilverSyko

Infinite Stratos' reason for a female-dominant society was a stupid one. Why would someone even consider investing government funds into manufacturing and mass-producing a space exploration/combat suit designed to function only when being piloted by a female in the first place? Why not both sexes? It doesn't make any sense.

Now that's not to say a female-dominated society is totally unrealistic. Far from it actually. Human genetics continue to change and mutate slowly over time. It won't happen in our lifetime, but perhaps a couple hundreds of thousands of years from now partially in thanks to the degeneration of the Y chromosome, the human male will be practically scarce and unneeded for reproduction. (And btw, this doesn't necessarily mean the entire female population will begin to resort to lesbianism when it happens. Even if the body changes, it doesn't always affect our minds.)

As a guy, it is indeed depressing to think about. I'm just glad I'll be long dead before it happens.

It is just an EXTREMELY flimsy pretense at setting up a harem series. They could have literally forced Ichika to Genderflip and I wouldn't care less since IS is what I consider Kampfer with Power suits.

Mediafactory is simply notorious for publishing such titles. Nothing to worry about, but you should be depressed at how the industry is designed. Artists nowaday don't know how to draw interesting male leads for Light Novels which forces Light Novel Plots to become generic eroge settings with the Ero. When your industry provides the chief source of adaptation material. You really need to set up standards and stop hiring eroge artists to draw the stuff so the authors will not just go "Hey I will ask this guy who drew this Eroge I liked to draw for my upcoming Light Novel about an dangerously incestous harem series that will get fans of it banned on somethingawful, bloody genius!"

I am not asking for an end to female centric casts, mainly more concerned with the creativity of the industry.

[Kirito]

Originally Posted by hyl

Not just Yaoi or other kind of shounen-ai series but quite some sport animes like for example Prince of Tennis or the older shounen action series like JoJo's bizarre series had little amounts of screentime for women in it.

What about reverse harem shows like Ouran Host Club, Hiiro no Kakera, and Hakuouki? Do they count as well considering that there's one female hanging out with 5 or more males most of the time, and in turn love for her at indifferent times. Woman do appear, but their screen time like you said is less, in my case, it's to focus on the heroine's relationship and development with the guys that she's with all the time.

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

No thanks, i hate those I hope no one thought the opposite. DBZ was pushin it, thank god for Android 18.. i think.. she did become stupidly weak after Cell saga.

Never heard of it tho, Funny... a Anime called "Rainbow" with no female cast members? >->; its not... yaoi is it? ._.

I haven't watch enough episodes to see if it was yaoi or shounen ai. People say it isn't though. I stopped after episode 3 because the series just depressed me in general. It was well liked, but it just...well, whatever.

[Kaihan]

Originally Posted by Kyero Fox

Never heard of it tho, Funny... a Anime called "Rainbow" with no female cast members? >->; its not... yaoi is it? ._.

No its not. Though I agree the title can be misleading.
It is somewhat depressing as Kirito said but it is still worth watching, and there is female casts but they more like side/support characters.

[DragoonKain3]

Meh, just my shipping tendencies. I can only ship het, so unless there's at least one relatively major character from each of the sexes, my interest starts to wane REAL fast. Which is a shame really, since some series that I actually liked (ex. Space Pirates) I lost interest in somewhere along the way.

Not to say this is a steadfast rule that I adhere to 100%, as evidenced by me loving last cour's AKB0048. Main reason why I give EVERYTHING subbed under the sun 3 episodes; I never know what might tickle my fancy despite me knowing a show going against my trends.

So yeah, I prefer harem/reverse harem over 'all girl'/'all boy' anime, if it comes down to that. Of course, I prefer a more balanced approach, if only because a story IMO is only more interesting if there are love rivals on both sides of the sexes.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by asaqe

Mediafactory is simply notorious for publishing such titles. Nothing to worry about, but you should be depressed at how the industry is designed. Artists nowaday don't know how to draw interesting male leads for Light Novels which forces Light Novel Plots to become generic eroge settings with the Ero. [...] I am not asking for an end to female centric casts, mainly more concerned with the creativity of the industry.

I think this has fallen a bit afield from the topic, but I would just say that I would hesitate a bit to make this sort of generalization because it seems to speak more to the sorts of works that are popular (particularly among the anime crowd) than to the actual output of the industry on the whole. And, really, I think this is no different than to notice that the majority of late-night anime prominently feature attractive bishoujo characters drawn in the style of the day. Light novels, which exist at the sort of crossroads of manga, anime, and novels, tend to use the same overall marketing strategies that these other media use, and there also happen to be a whole lot of talented bishoujo artists looking for extra work. You could ask "why does the industry keep shoving this stuff in our face?", but you could just as easily ask "why do we keep on buying it?" I think it's a sort of symbiotic relationship.

Originally Posted by asaqe

When your industry provides the chief source of adaptation material. You really need to set up standards and stop hiring eroge artists to draw the stuff so the authors will not just go "Hey I will ask this guy who drew this Eroge I liked to draw for my upcoming Light Novel about an dangerously incestous harem series that will get fans of it banned on somethingawful, bloody genius!"

This doesn't really make any sense to me. The light novels that are adapted into anime are chosen because they're popular. They're popular because (in your example) they're "dangerously incestuous harem series" with character designs by famous eroge artists. If it weren't like this, the series might never have been popular in the first place, and thus would never have been chosen for an anime adaptation. I strikes me as odd to say that the light novel industry has some sort of "moral imperative to lead" -- there are plenty of other novels and light novels out there. Why aren't those other works popular with the anime-loving crowd?

I don't think it's that there's a lack of creativity in the industry. I think it's that there's a rather limited range of works that cross the popularity threshold and raise to our level of awareness. You might ask why a larger variety of works don't gain popularity, but that's no different than any other form of popular entertainment: there's comfort in familiarity, and originality represents risk. Entertainment is, for many, a sort of "comfort food", and risk often goes unrewarded.


But all that aside, I'm not even really clear how that relates to the point at hand. While contrasting harem and "all girls" anime, we already pointed out that they may very well have little-to-nothing in common, but here you're attempting to bridge them because... the male lead is still placed in a female-dominant show? But isn't this sort of obvious to the basic plot structure of a harem show? As I said before, if you don't have that sort of premise and protagonist, the fantasy can't be sustained -- the flimsiness of the particular excuse they used in this case notwithstanding.

[Vexx]

I'm getting the nagging feeling of "but it isn't what *I* like" under a facade of analysis again....

[MEGADANANIMEFAN]

Originally Posted by NeoChan

I wish the MOD will make this a poll thread as well... To start, I tried to watch animes that has an all girl cast like Queen's Blade or some shoujo ai anime but I feel a bit uncomfortable due to the absence of male leads or at the least, male supporting cast. No doubt I love harem because of the girls fighting over a guy.

What do you think? Do you prefer Harem or an All Girls only anime...?

some people hate the male leads for like running away when they walk into a girls locker room or something, or when faced with a girl in the harem they like they turn em down or are too indesisive to decide. but i like it that way. harems beat all girls HANDS DOWN!!!!!! if its all girls then theres not enough drama or romance in my taste

[Tempester]

Originally Posted by MEGADANANIMEFAN

harems beat all girls HANDS DOWN!!!!!! if its all girls then theres not enough drama or romance in my taste

What about yuri? Granted, anime doesn't have much to offer there, but there's a huge treasure trove of yuri manga.

[Insane]

Honestly i prefer anime with all girls cast rather than harem. Harem usually start out very interesting but always leads to shitty ending in which the MC will become an indecisive pimp where several girls's feelings must be sacrificed for the sake of "end girl" he choose.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by A Simple Survey, Chapter 16

“These days, a guy to identify with is no longer needed. It seems people would prefer to peer down with a god’s eye view into conversations between girls.”

“When I think about that, it just seems really creepy...”

I've always wanted to post this quote somewhere

[Master Assassin]

^ The author who wrote that line, truer words were never spoken...

Hmm, as for me, I really think shows can't be functional without a guy to be the butt of every joke - unfortunately, the formula of having a guy right there, being a sitting duck acting like a vegetarian; just so he can be the butt of all jokes while the girls point to him is also pretty disappointing for most of comments I have seen... regardless of whether I enjoy shows deploying such tactics or not.

I also really think that in adaptations, the real star of the show will always be the MC which the show's POV (from the source material) is mostly based upon. However, as the formula won't work well in trying to attract viewers (like us and several other people) of course they have to drag screentimes for his... girls...

Anyway. It's just my two cents. You're free to agree or to disagree, I won't support or debate against any of you

/me goes back to his afternoon nap

[asaqe]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

I've always wanted to post this quote somewhere

Well it is more true than ever. The otaku fandom always devise some way to remove male presence. Too bad you can't make it a true yuri anime since that is the ultimate paradox despite the industry now being overripe for it.

[NoemiChan]

An anime without women is bullshit....

[Izayoi]

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

An anime without women is bullshit....

You just called the majority of the yaoi anime bullshit. This I cannot refute.