I just noticed that when many manga use poker in a scene, the win is always obtained through a royal straight flush...ಠ_ಠ

Shoujo does the looser harem thing too. Usually the girl is an uncool, unattractive, clumsy, poor looser yet somehow has dozen of guys who are attractive, popular and wealthy all flocking about her as if she's the best thing ever. In some cases, she'll be so much more masculine than the guys that you'd swear she was a guy too, albeit an unattractive one.

True~ There are some reverse harem shoujo manga out there as well, but they're infrequent, especially compared to how many shounen manga use this cliche. It could be because usually harems are added for comedic effects rather than romance, and most shoujo manga have more romance than shounen?

And in shoujo, usually the MC girl has at least one redeeming quality? Like being independent and hardworking, kind, smart, never-giving-up-on-her-dream, etc. (though I guess it then becomes a shoujo character cliche?) (^.^);;

Whereas in shounen manga harems, the MC is usually an average (or below-average) guy who's bored with life (not that he has much of one), with few (often no) outstanding characteristics (though he may go through some character development later in the series), aside from perhaps a special power, past, or encounter to get the story going.

And just wondering~ Which shoujo manga did you use for reference?

For me, it's whenever the MC has this power or something that everyone around him says will kill him if he uses it this much or in this way yet he always comes out of the fight unscathed.

Also, when the characters never listen to what smarter/more experienced people try and tell him to do, or just go into fights with no plan but everything always goes peachy.There are lots of shounen protagonists with that sort of mindset but you have to give the characters consequences for doing things like that sometimes. Yeah, I get you can get lucky once or twice or even three times but you can't rely on getting a new power or the enemy screwing up majorly every single fight. You have to go into fights with at least a little bit of plan, especially if you're apart of some team of fighters/organization/etc.

Example of how this works is in Shingeki no Kyojin where when Eren's made wrong decisions and people have died because of it as a consequence. He knows that so his character is developed into thinking things through more and listening to others, even though he still has his times where he acts on impulse and emotions.

Bad example is in Naruto (don't hate Naruto personally, it's just the only Big 3 shounen I can recall much of), where he can go into a sudden and unexpected fight with no plan, or not listen to what other people say but in the end with some power up or plot armor he can come out just fine and not have to suffer a consequence for it.


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I've got two that I really hate.

1. Never kills: If there's like a legitimate reason for it then its a little better, but 9 times out of 10 the shounen protagonist will just say "it's wrong" or "we shouldn't". When the villain goes on a rampage and destroys entire towns of people it stops being admirable and just gets annoying. Especially when the villain shows no signs of stopping.

In those situations I always hope that one of the MC's friends gets killed because he was beings stubborn and they end up learning a lesson, but alas, that rarely happens.

2. Reformed Villain: As a part of the "No killing" program the MC then tries to make the villain change sides, make them see the error of their ways. And it works...what?!!? Why would a villain that has dedicated the better part of their life to their goal just give it up after being defeated by the MC!?!

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Cynicism at its best.

If were talking about shounen clichés then we have to mention the ultimate, undeniable power....
FRIENDSHIP POWER!!
Naruto can't get through a single fight without using the word friends.
There is also the classic, MC can only win after getting a beat down through some miraculous twist of fate, cliché.

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The much derailed Nakama Power leads the race of course but the big breasted love interest that constantly trips to get her PLOT and panties all in the leads face and screams ecchi baka without end but then proceeds to beat him up every time he even looks at another woman needs to die too.

What i despise is all the “whacky” borderline-H nonsense and the eyebrow raising gorn in all ages publication but these aren´t cliches and only an epidemic.

@Lost Rabbit: There is a good reason why i graced Fairy Tail with a negative review as it is the perfect storm of ""big boys" crap but the perfectly fine Naruto runs on the power of friendship alone too. Or Yu-Gi-Oh! with it´s heart of cards...

Last edited by residentgrigo at 11:24 pm, Apr 16 2015

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

I don't remember Naruto doing it so much as something shitty like Fairy Tail, where just about EVERY DAMN MAIN CHARACTER does this to defeat the "final boss."
And then it's rinse repeat from there, where a new final boss is introduced, the heroes are taking a beaten, yet against all odds, they come out on top thanks to the power of friendship.

Can't think of the WORST cliche, but I'll list a few.

1. Emo looking guys with hair falling over their faces or guys with ridulously spiky hair.
2. The main character either has one parent or no parents at all.
3. Tsundere girls everywhere
4. Friendship can over come any obstacle..... (seriously, this is sooo over used. )
5. Main character is a glutton
6. All the main characters are teenagers
7. Moody characters with emo pasts
8. Big boobed girls
9. Characters who act like jerks for no apparent reason.
10. Enemies becoming friends
11. Overpowered charcters (okay, there are non shounens with this cliche too, but still... )
12. Girl loves MC but can't bring herself to admit her feelings to him (I'm looking at you Orihime &#128544

Well, that's all I can think about at the moment.....

I hate it when the MC pulls a strong weapon out of nowhere when in peril and save the day -.-

What @residentgrigo said. While One Piece tosses the word "nakama' quite a lot, I find there are quite a bit of significance to Luffy's usage, and he truly does rely on both his friends and himself to resolve the issues within each arc.

I'm also annoyed by what some others call "DBZ formula," where the characters are initially beaten up by a strong boss (or seemingly so), then goes to train - or in the case of Fairy Tail, say some heroic-esque words - and proceeds to beat the bad guy up, regardless of power level differentials and feasibility. Fairy Tail uses this trope ad nauseum so it has very little substance in terms of plot (its substance lies in the abundance of cleavages, breasts, et al).

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Nulla in mundo pax sincera
"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth." - Albert Camus

There are quite a few cliches that I can think of, but a few of the most annoying ones are

1) Super bad asses that are incredibly whiny (I'm thinking about Sasuke here).
2) At least one character has to do nothing but eat (L, Goku, etc.). That's been done so many times and it just isn't funny anymore.
3) Something "sexy" in every few chapters (I was never able to read all of it, but Soul Eater was bad about that in the first few chapters).

The two cliches that I'm hating right now are:

1. The main character always has to be the one to defeat the bad guy at the end of the arc.
2. Secondary characters are thrown by the wayside more and more often as tertiary characters are introduced.

I only started reading One Piece 1.5 years ago but I'm already seeing it falling to an overuse of shounen chliches, including these two.

If you have an amazing ensemble cast don't just discard it for the sake of making the MC or tertiary characters cooler. If the author is good they should be able to do both while still giving the secondary characters an appropriate amount of spotlight.

Lessee here...

1. The harem cliche. I dislike that in both shounen and shoujo.
2. I actually find myself disliking the rude, brash female lead more than I probably should. Hey, if she loves the male protagonist, that fixes everything. Even though she has the ugliest personality anyone's ever seen.
3. The Mary-Sue love interest is pretty bad for me as well. They're not necessarily a "cliche" but I know 'em when I see them. Unfortunately. She's basically the bag of meat the hero has to save more than once. If a female isn't shown as rude, she's shown as useless. Or she gets killed off. It's pretty hard to find the nice characters in between, huh?
4. Every female character in the series falls in love with the helpless protagonist. Hahahahaaaaaa. This isn't quite the same as a harem for me though; it's more of a slow build where you can tally up the females who are mentioned only a couple of times. Still, they're apparently in the story long enough to fall for the protagonist.
5. Probably most of the cliches people have actually listed before me.
6. Despite how I mentioned the love interests, I'd prefer romance to stay out of shounen adventure manga. Not necessarily the shounen demographic itself though. There are plenty of romance shounen manga out there.

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Quack, quack.

I read a lot of psychological or shoujo manga for some reason. Preferably not mixed together.

Don't dare touch my nakama, If you do I'll kill you.

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1st: Death Note