[Question] Potential Major Story Genres

[RDNexus]

As you know, Anime and such can be classified in between a few to many genres/categories, given the kind of story it may be.

What I want to ask is, if among all those genres/categories, there might be a few major ones, like Super Power, Mecha/Super Robot and Magical Girl/Warrior, and which ones do you think could be those.

[0cean]

You mean genre that only really apply to anime (and stuff) that are more or less prevalent enough to count as more than just something obscure? Well, it won't be Mahou Shoujo, that's for sure. Only few of those exist compared to the whole of anime.

Mecha? Definitely. There's also Ganbatte, Harem, (maybe these days) Isekai and Healing.

[RDNexus]

I meant genres which could define a big number of stories.
As if, you could only define Animes by a handful of genres, which ones do you think would matter the most in a broader scale.

[wuhugm]

Make distinction between genre and category please

Genres are Fantasy, Romance, or Sci-Fi

Categories are Reincarnation, Boys Love, or Mecha

That is the case in Japan too
Genre is general classification
Though in narou now Isekai has been classified as genre coz the sheer amount of it

[0cean]

Technically, with just Action, Comedy, Romance, Drama and Ecchi you'd have pretty much every anime covered. But Drama ends up with everything not fitting anywhere else and with the exception of Ecchi the others will have a hard time staying meaningful, since they have to make do for stuff that doesn't really fit in. But hey, Ecchi is fine, so let's keep that around for a second look.

Searching stuff that gets the most of anime covered without becoming a meaningless, you'd basically get:

EroAnime - Also known as Hentai. This one is a no-brainer. Around 1300 titles are Hentai.

Ganbatte - This is for everything where the protagonist aims to get better at something. It covers all sports anime (like Major), all battle anime (like One Piece) and lots of other stuff that is kind of competitive in some sense. I'm guessing this covers around 1200 titles.

Mecha - Ah,... otoko no romance. Another 1000 shows covered.

Harem - It got itself a lousy reputation, but the market is still there. You get most VN adaptations, romance/school stories and even some others (Tenchi Muyo) with this. All around probably 600 shows.

Four "Genres" in and we already got 4100 anime covered. There are only around 13000, so a third isn't so bad. I'm not pulling these numbers out of my ass either, I'm looking this up in a database and round up, since not everything is tagged anyway.

Healing - Now this is a true Otaku genre. Also one I don't get, since it's for shows were nothing happens. Some call it slice-of-life, but that isn't entirely correct. These are just shows without any (or much) conflict. Thus they "heal" their audience by their soothing nature. They never make any kind of big wave, but they are massively popular. With about 1700 that's even more than the porn anime.

Now we've covered 5800 of the 13000 titles and this is where we can have a brief look at Isekai. They seem to be all the rage these days, but there's not even a full hundred of them. So are they really worth mentioning? There are more Mahou Shoujo anime around and there aren't as much of them, either. Let's just forget about everything not even making the 500 barrier. Remember how we wanted to keep Ecchi in mind? Let's get to that.

Ecchi - Really popular and there would be probably more, if I didn't also exlude everything I searched for before, so with the Harem stuff already gone, there aren't as many left. Only about 600.

Adventure/Travel - Not sure how to call this, but it's basically the protagonists traveling around the world and having exciting things happen. Really populare, too. About 1700 anime.

Sci-Fi - Especially in the 1970s anime just went nuts with Sci-Fi. And even with everything above excluded, there's still around 600 Sci-Fi titles left.

Fantasy - Same as Sci-Fi. 800.

Comedy - Yeah. Whatever. 1300.



So that's it. 10800 of 13000 Anime covered with just ten "genres". Not bad.

[RDNexus]

@wuhugm
Genres might be the more specific term I'm looking for, albeit @0cean's post seems more akin to what I was exactly looking for.

@0cean
Great post, thanks a lot, it seems to be kind of what I was asking about. But, by the way...what about the remaining 2200 Anime left of those 13000?

[wuhugm]

Wasn't your question : If an anime has multiple genres, which one is dominant?

Like Infinite Stratos is both Action and Harem

I don't think the calculation works like that @0cean, coz an anime almost always has multiple genres. You can't just substract like that.

The all encompassing genres would be Action and Romance

They almost always be the main plot or at least subplot to majority of anime

[RDNexus]

I'm not sure if my question had such a meaning, but what I was trying to ask was for genres that could be considered as major, broader in the amount of stories it could define.

That's why I stated that @0cean's post seemed to fit my intention better.

[0cean]

Originally Posted by xrick

Great post, thanks a lot, it seems to be kind of what I was asking about. But, by the way...what about the remaining 2200 Anime left of those 13000?

Well,.. those are the ones that didn't quite make the 500 cut. Like Isekai. Or Mahou Shoujo. Crime stories like Meitantei Conan. Ghost stories like xxxHolic. Then those weird artsy ones we get whenever the stars align right, like Kaiba. Shows for little kids. Those type of anime. Also the hundreds of music videos are included in the 13000 number. As are anime from as early as the 1930s which are just short (3min) movies in black and white, but technically count as anime, too. Lots of miscellaneous stuff.

Also, I think I missed to catch action titles like Hellsing or Black Lagoon. Of those there are also more than 1000.

[MisaoFan]

Originally Posted by 0cean

Well,.. those are the ones that didn't quite make the 500 cut. Like Isekai. Or Mahou Shoujo. Crime stories like Meitantei Conan. Ghost stories like xxxHolic. Then those weird artsy ones we get whenever the stars align right, like Kaiba. Shows for little kids. Those type of anime. Also the hundreds of music videos are included in the 13000 number. As are anime from as early as the 1930s which are just short (3min) movies in black and white, but technically count as anime, too. Lots of miscellaneous stuff.

Also, I think I missed to catch action titles like Hellsing or Black Lagoon. Of those there are also more than 1000.

What about horror series?

[RDNexus]

Better yet, what was the source for your posts, @0cean?
Since it seemed to be kinda spot-on on what I was looking for...

[0cean]

There basically are no horror anime. Of course, depending on your definition of horror, even Shingeki no Kyojin may count, but in the sense that I understand horror, anime of that kind are more or less non-existent. Their number may as well be zero.

The source is myself. Plus a database for the numbers.

I'm actually interested in the topic for a while and am still pondering what other "anime-genre" there are in general, not just the popular ones. Stuff like Reverse-Harems (Ouran Koukou Host Club, Hakuouki,..), Yuri (Candy Boy, ..), Incest (Koi Kaze, Yosuga no Sora,..), Loli (Kodomo no Jikan, ..) ... even the Onii-chan Love thing which isn't quite incest and mostly comes with ridiculously long titles, like:

Oniichan Dakedo Ai sae Areba Kankei Nai yo ne!
Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai
Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!!

and so on and so forth. Then there's CuteGirlsDoingCuteThings which heavily overlaps with Healing, but still isn't quite the same, either.

[0cean]

Just remembered:

Magical Girlfriend - A genre that I think fell out of favor with Otaku. It's those shows where a beautiful girl falls out of the sky or is discovered through other means.
Exmaples: Laputa (1986), Aa! Megami-sama (1993), Chobits (2002), Onegai Teacher (2002), Kannagi (2008)