@enternalfir3---finally found a manga that has very feww cliches and thats Hoshi no Samidare, the premise is ridiculous but the main character is actually planning to destroy the world and so is his love interest...how awesome is that!! try it people even though the art is horrible.

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Angel Beats--best anime of the 2010 spring season

Childhood friend/divine punisher of perverts + clueless guy/accidental pervert.

Over-all tolerance of female-on-male violence
Mostly in response to misunderstood and ecchi situations but there are some cases where the female character beats the crap out of the male character for whatever reason she wants and the male characters never resist even when they've done nothing wrong.

Butt-Monkeys
That is, characters who are the butt of every joke and get constantly tortured as a source of comedy. If the main character is a butt-monkey, I will not read that manga.

Main Character who is stupid or at least a poor student
Perhaps mangaka think they will make their main characters more relate-able by giving them less intelligence but if you think about, stupid people are not average people. Maybe the intent is to give them more of an underdog factor. In any case, I don't appreciate it, it's like they're trying to say something about young boys

The best warriors and smartest minds in the world are [Japanese] high schoolers

Hierarchies of power
In history, if the leader of group was the leader because he was the most powerful then he would lead his group into battle. It doesn't make sense to have the most powerful person as leader if he's just gonna spout ideological crap and only appear after all of his minions have been defeated.

Last edited by McCasper at 12:32 pm, Apr 6 2010

I see that I'm not the only one that feels this way. I second this *lol*

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I'm a bit of a drifter between two countries

I hate it when a character has a brutal fight and bleeds a lot and then after recovering a bit of time he has no scars of his battle and is completely fine as if he never fought at all.

The main character never dies. He just gets cut here and there even after going through a brutal battle that would kill someone instantly in real life. Also, he obtains an new skill or weapon after being defeated in battle and comes out stronger when he faces the same adversary again.

They announce their move AND tell the story how they got that move BEFORE doing the move. Like it matters? I suppose us readers would like to know so they put it there for our sakes.

Too much talking in battle. SHUT. THE. HELL UP.AND.FIGHT. ALREADY.

Wastage of space because of speed lines and drawn out sound effects in manga.

Good guys never die. Unless it's in the past or they're some sort of mentor who is passing on their legacy to the main character or something like that. Or a friend who was not part of the main cast for very long, but still somehow manages a flashback here and there whenever the mangaka remembers them.

Females characters always being weak. I know there's probably a couple strong female characters out there, but really, how many are actually fighting side-by-side with the main protagonist? How many actually have a chance to fight as one of the protagonist's "partners" or against the main antagonist and not some weaker underling? And really, why do all females characters have to specialize in something stupid like "healing"?

Bad guys leveling up sequentially. Seriously, the bad guys always start out just weak enough for the main character to beat and get steadily stronger, allowing the main character to train up or power up until they're ready for the big boss. Why can't an extremely strong antagonist show up and destroy them all, instead of stringing them along and training them up with steadily more powerful enemies?

Japan being the center of the universe. Seriously, would it kill them to make the setting somewhere else in the world? I'm so freaking tired of the asteroid/alien/virus/secret society/monster/portal to somewhere else/safe haven/secret weapon of doom/genius/magical artifact/source of power/earth-shattering incident ALWAYS being in Japan.

That can get tiring after a while.
But the yanks pretty much do the same thing with books, movies, tv-series and whatever else.
I believe it's called being egocentric.

I hate how the female characters always need to be protected by the main character, no matter how capable they are.
It's like they're saying; "you just sit tight and look pretty, I'll handle the rest." Even if the female is much stronger and could solve the situation in like 5 minutes instead of three volumes.
Once I'd like to see a manga where the female gets taken by the baddies, main goes to rescue her. Then when he arrives she already broke out and is halfway done taking out the baddies.

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Do but despise reason and science,
The highest of all human gifts -
Then you have surrendered to the Devil
And must surely perish. - J.W. von Goethe

When it seems like a character dies but he comes back in a few chapters! "Oh no ACTUALLY I escaped into a parallel dimension/they found a cure/I barely evaded the attack that's supposed to screw over all of earth I'M STILL ALIVE GUYS!" I HATE that. Can't they just stay dead once they die? Naruto was really bad about this one.
I also don't like it how many series tend to slip into the battle genre after a while. Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro was about solving mysteries (and eating them!) but the last few arcs were pretty much unrelated to mysteries, except for like a couple of filler arcs. I liked the first couple of fights with X, since it was related to a mystery but HAL and 6 kind of just came out of nowhere. They only vaguely mentioned them possibly having a connection to the ultimate mystery, but really it was about battling. I love the series anyways, but still..
The same thing happened with Reborn!; it started out as a comedy but now it's just a battle manga with some comedy elements. I guess that's not so bad but it feels like that's how a lot of series are now, and IMO it's getting kind of stale. I believe they touched upon this in Bakuman, when they were saying that when a series isn't doing well in Genre X they can always switch to a battle manga. I hate that! Can't they think of another plot device instead of sticking in some sort of ultimate baddy who is going to destroy the universe?!

that pretty much sums it up, especialy with girls. Even in a manga like Naruto which isen't that hardcore shounen (at least in my oppinion) the girls have a wierd habit of being healers.

"Oh I'm so weak and fragile, protect me mr protagonist while I sit in the back and heal"

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I'll give it a try, thanks.

A heroine that can't fight, is sooo dependent, is ALWAYS calling the hero's name when in danger!
Orihime: Ichigo... Ichigo! ICHIGO!!!!

List of mangas with likeable heroines
Hoshi no Samidare
En Passant [Typical girl needs to get rescued (twice), but you love her]
Spice and Wolf

It is surprising how much people have to say on this subject, but personally I don't mind the cliches. The predictability is sometimes annoying, but a nice 'Oh! I knew he was really a bad guy!' or simply an 'Aha! I knew it!' is comfronting at times.

But sometimes to progress the plot they inact some not so timeless plot devices, the worst of which in a shounen manga is when they give magical items or anykind of powerboast to the cast. Most resent example in my mind is Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn! where

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An instant or an eternity. Both are the same, in the passing of an instant lies the beauty of eternity.
-Ginen Shounen

Because I am a small man, my heart is moved by what's in front of my eyes, not by what the whole world needs.
-D.Gray-man

Worst shonen cliche: EVERY SHONEN HERO OF RECENT TIMES is younger than 20. I'm so sick of reading about tweeny bopper heroes!

The typical shounen cliches I absolutely abhor:

1.Hero WAS weak. Became strong somehow. Heroine always gets saved by him.
Sounds cliched enough?
Or... Hero shouts his move before using it. Eg: Hero yells: "Ultra laser beam!" and then promptly took out a laser gun and shoots the villain. What seriously pisses me off is that the villains don't prepare/ try to stop the hero's move when they get warned (the name of the moves serve as a warning)...
Or... You know who is good and bad. Hero is always on the good side. Villain looks seriously evil AND is on the bad side. A good manga nowadays doesn't have distinguishable evil people and good people-main protagonist just has some goal.
Or even...It is the last fight. Main protagonist vs main antagonist. Drumroll please!!! (sarcasm btw, the tension building up when the fight was about to start doesn't need to be emphasised that much!)
Protagonist is losing... THEN... He suddenly thinks about all these people depending on him/ suddenly learns the secret move... And he gains power and beats the antagonist.
That is very cliched shounen stuff. Eg: Gash Bell is pretty cliched.

Or something like the hero is naive/innocent/ stupid, really. Those stereotypical heros are really pissing me off- what human can be so selfless?! What hero is actually so kind and protective?!

Or just some shounen manga with a bit of romance involving a hero who isn't the most good looking. Side characters look better than him. Herione is very cute. Hero doesn't look good enough for her but she still falls for him. SO RANDOM

One more (lol, sorry if this is too long/boring): Those gross (no offence) ecchi shounen mangas generally always involve some male main protagonist who isn't suspected that he is quite perverted and often exposed to the HEAPS OF FEMALE'S 'parts'.
No one is giving him weird side looks and thinking... 'man, what a pervert'.

EDIT: Oh yea, you know, in shonen mangas, they changed the main female chracters personality from weak - to tsundere. Like, the female can beat the crap out of the main male character!! It is becoming overused now...

Last edited by perpetual at 11:48 pm, Sep 15 2010

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Simply another normal human being...

Like McCasper said: Over-all tolerance of female-on-male violence, but:

Female tsundere childhood friend who beats the crap out of male childhood friend with everyone else watching and the weak and doe like female who feels bad for him while watching but does nothing about it and the other characters who are watching that comment on the tsunderes love for her childhood friend which then escalates her embarrassment to more anger and violence on the main character until at one point in the series it becomes evident to her that she is being overly aggressive towards him at which time she stops for some time until it picks up again and ends the series with more violence and the fact that no assault charges were taken against her.

There is also the doe-like female who is oblivious to all violence, too.

Yeah, I see this a lot, unfortunately.

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I care waaaaay too much...