Unpopular Opinions You Hold About Anime

[LumRanmaYasha]

It doesn't help that most of the interesting characters are either killed off, or shoved into the sidelines to give the unlikable ones more screentime, or in Itachi's case, get's overhyped in-story to high-hell and back to the point where everyone becomes sick of him. Kishimoto is also the worst of the big 3 shounen mangaka when it comes to writing female characters, and that's saying something.

. No no no, trust me. Bleach is infinately worse than Naruto when it comes to well-written female characters (at least in the post Soul Society chapters).

Having characters being pushed to the sidelines is a problem in both Bleach and Naruto. Both series are equally bad in this regard. It's one of the key reasons the Shinobi War and the Arrancar arcs of these series annoy me.

I actually thought Itachi is an okay character, but he's far from actually being decently written, and honestly seems more like an object of the plot than an actual character sometimes.

Speaking of female characters, I'm really sick of how a majority of shonen series these days feel the need to have big-breasted ditsy female characters in order to attract readers. To me that just shows cheap tactics to make up for poor writing ability. You know one thing I've noticed about all of Togashi's work? Between YYH, Level E, and HXH, there's not a single over-sexualized female among the group. Hell, Togashi isn't even afraid to put in downright ugly looking females into his story, yet give them a ton of character depth and also give them a really important role in the story. Just look at Palm from HXH. She's ugly as fuck but a damn interesting and useful character. Now, you could maybe chalk up Togashi's lack of doing this to his crappy artwork, but personally I think its clear that he's a writer who is confident in his writing ability to keep his stories interesting (and for what its worth, HXH's main reading demographic is of the oldest crowd that reads WSJ), and clearly he has a bit more respect for the female gender than most other shonen mangaka do. Granted that, this is a magazine that is primarily targeted towards young boys, but still, just think of what some of these writers are teaching young, impressionable kids, in terms of how they perceive women. To me, the over-sexualization of female characters in shonen series has gone to downright disgusting degrees in certain works (History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi comes to mind, here).

I never though Palm was "ugly," but I am glad Togashi doesn't over-sexualize his female characters and actually does a good job of making them well-written.

I also find the level of fanservice and sexualization present in modern manga (not just shounen) to be unnecessary and tasteless. Sadly, it seems that many mangaka are incapable of actually writing interesting female characters, so they decide to just make them walking T&A shots instead.

Totally agree with you. I hate fan-service with a passion, and always avoid anime and manga that feature it frequently. I hate this is such a prevalent trend in anime and manga. It annoys me. 

You know what the saddest thing is? There are even some female mangaka out their who over-sexualize their female characters and can't write about women for shit. You know you've got it bad when even female writers can't dignify their own gender in the slightest.

Like who? (do NOT say Rumiko Takahashi because that is simply not true in any of her works).

[Rynnec]

You know what the saddest thing is? There are even some female mangaka out their who over-sexualize their female characters and can't write about women for shit. You know you've got it bad when even female writers can't dignify their own gender in the slightest.

If a manga isn't filled with bland-ass bishounen, then it's filled with bland-ass T&A bishoujo instead.

I also find the level of fanservice and sexualization present in modern manga (not just shounen) to be unnecessary and tasteless. Sadly, it seems that many mangaka are incapable of actually writing interesting female characters, so they decide to just make them walking T&A shots instead.

I honestly wish we had more anime with the same basic concept as Queen's Blade or Koihime Musou, but with less T&A, and more interesting characters and plot development. Unfortunately, that would take actual effort and talent. Something msot anime writers don't have.

No no no, trust me. Bleach is infinately worse than Naruto when it comes to well-written female characters (at least in the post Soul Society chapters).

Bleach's female characters may be bland, but at least none of them are irritating the way characters like Sakura are. She's the primary example of how not to write a female character.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Bleach's female characters may be bland, but at least none of them are irritating the way characters like Sakura are. She's the primary example of how not to write a female character.

Orihime is infinately more irritating and terribly written. I think she is the worst written female character I have ever read in a shounen manga. Seriously.

[Rynnec]

I honestly don't hate Orihime as much as other people do. Sure her love for Ichigo is forced and her character arc was fucking awful, but she can be legitimately amusing sometimes. Rukia can get irritating too, but at least she has some semblance of competency, and is no more or less useless than any male character that isn't Ichigo.

Sakura, on the other hand, annoys me to no end. She has virtually no personality other than being in love with Sasuke for god knows what reason, no character arc other than becoming useful...for one arc, acts more like a whiny bitch more than anything, and whenever she does do anything, she just makes things worse. And she's supposed to be the female lead!

[LumRanmaYasha]

I honestly don't hate Orihime as much as other people do. Sure her love for Ichigo is forced and her character arc was fucking awful, but she can be legitimately amusing sometimes. Rukia can get irritating too, but at least she has some semblance of competency, and is no more or less useless than any male character that isn't Ichigo.

Sakura, on the other hand, annoys me to no end. She has virtually no personality other than being in love with Sasuke for god knows what reason, no character arc other than becoming useful...for one arc, acts more like a whiny bitch more than anything, and whenever she does do anything, she just makes things worse. And she's supposed to be the female lead!

Eh, Sakura at her worst has not pissed me off as much as Orihime has, but I hate the both of them anyway. It's true that Orihime has some redeemable moments, whereas Sakura has amost none (I liked her when she tried to protect her unconcious teamates in the Forest of Death portion of the Chunin Exam and her battle with Ino, but that's it).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I honestly don't hate Orihime as much as other people do. Sure her love for Ichigo is forced and her character arc was fucking awful, but she can be legitimately amusing sometimes. Rukia can get irritating too, but at least she has some semblance of competency, and is no more or less useless than any male character that isn't Ichigo.

Honestly, I didn't have much of a problem with Orihime aside from her being a pretty bland and boring character. She didn't exactly annoy me, though....until after she got kidnapped. At one point, I recall a certain scene in which Ichigo is fighting to rescue her, and he gets insanely wounded. She goes to heal him....and then doesn't because she gets scared and screams for Ichigo to save her....while he's still bleeding out. And that's more or less where I stopped reading Bleach. To be honest, I don't remember the specifics of that scene too much because I haven't read Bleach in ages, but I could link you to a 2-part review of Bleach which has a portion of it in which the reviewer covers that particular scene and his distaste for it in depth.

[Rynnec]

I think I know the scene you're talking about. Was it the fight against Nnoitra (the guy with the constant grin, spoon collar, and the spear thing with a crescent-shaped blade) and his servant?

[LumRanmaYasha]

I think I know the scene you're talking about. Was it the fight against Nnoitra (the guy with the constant grin, spoon collar, and the spear thing with a crescent-shaped blade) and his servant?

It sounds more like what happened in the Ulquiorra fight, to me (you know, the emo arrancar).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I remember the fight being with Uluquiorra, myself, but I haven't read the series in a while, so Rynnec may probably be right. The opponent wasn't the important thing, though. It was the way that Orihime acted in that scenario.

Here are parts 1 and 2 of the Bleach review I was talking about. One of these videos has a piece that goes into detail about that particular scene.

I think the thing that really bothered me about it is that it painted Orihime as being a hopeless damsel with no backbone, which aside from being a complete set-back to female characters in general, really contradicted how useful she was in the Soul Society arc. Until that scene, I never minded the character that much, but after that point I couldn't help but feel that the hate she received was pretty justified. That's just my opinion, though.

[Avaitor]

The only girl better than Orihime is Fluttershy

[The Shadow Gentleman]

-I don't get why people call Outlaw star a "stupid" show. Is it intentionally silly? Yes. I like that aspect of it, personally, though I can admit that Fred is a really badly written gay stereotype, which makes me kind of ashamed that I still find him to work as a comic relief character, but other than that I never felt the show ever came off as unintentionally idiotic. Personally, I think its a worthy piece of the space western trilogy, even if its not as good as the other 2 series.

It may be my least favorite of space western trilogy, but I defiantly don't consider it a bad series. Just not my cup of tea.

My point was that I think the main reason that Naruto doesn't hold up is because of the lame writing and honestly crappy characters. The story was never really the weak point of the series, as some of the haters claim, and it can get pretty ambitious at times. The problem is that Masashi Kishimoto is clearly not the most talented writer (though I will say that he's at least miles better than Kubo, any day), and if I were to be blunt, he kind of sucks at it. So the main problem with Naruto is not its story, but its badly written characters, and as I've said, characters are the most important part of any series to me. The story can be fine, or it can be kind of crappy, but good characters are what keeps me caring about a story. Naruto has a bunch o pig-headed unlikable douche-bags in the beginning, and while a lot of characters get more tolerable as the manga goes along, they then just become completely bland and uninteresting. It also is one of those shonen series that succumbs to having way too many characters introduced at once, hence why you get a lot of sub-plots that go nowhere, and you can't help but forget the names of over half of the cast, or even that some characters even exist within the series.

Basically, I'm saying that I don't really like this series either (I don't necessarily hate it, though), but my unpopular opinion is my reason for hating it. A lot of people blame the story. I honestly have no huge issues with the story. I hate the fucking characters more than anything else.

It doesn't help that most of the interesting characters are either killed off, or shoved into the sidelines to give the unlikable ones more screentime, or in Itachi's case, get's overhyped in-story to high-hell and back to the point where everyone becomes sick of him. Kishimoto is also the worst of the big 3 shounen mangaka when it comes to writing female characters, and that's saying something.

Thats my beef with Naruto. Not so much the story, but the lack of characters I actually care about.

I still need to watch Dragon Ball. I have a feeling I'll really like it.

[Rynnec]

Here are parts 1 and 2 of the Bleach review I was talking about. One of these videos has a piece that goes into detail about that particular scene.

Ah yes, The Lust mini-arc. That entire fight as a whole is a summation of everything that's wrong with shounen manga, all of the weaknesses of the genre rolled up into one.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Bleach is just so dull. The one time Kubo tried something new it came off as YYH-lite with a silly twist at the end which was entirely unneeded to get Soul Reapers (including his own powers) involved for no reason.

The only girl better than Orihime is Fluttershy

Fluttershy isn't afraid to throw a punch (or be aggressive) when needed, at least. Orihime never does anything.

I actually like Naruto. As in 'can tolerate', but I have not liked about anything that has happened since the stupid Chase Sasuke arc before the time skip. There are a few things I liked in Naruto:

• Naruto's growth up to the Chunin exam
• The general art style in part one
• Character designs
• Setting and world
• Naruto's willingness to try odd skills
• The Zabusa arc
• Rock Lee
• Shikamaru's first fight
• Naruto's sage powers
• The idea behind the sound ninja
• Kabuto's original goals

And as you can see most of that was destroyed or made irrelevant at one point or another. Most other things I don't really like include basically making every female character useless, Neji being wasted past his first fight, Naruto getting dumber, Sasuke doing stupid things that make no sense, half the cast not being used or pointlessly forgotten, and the general go nowhere tune the series has been going since they made Akatsuki the focal point. There are things I like but as a whole it is marred by bad directions in the storyline and shallow characterizations.

I also find the level of fanservice and sexualization present in modern manga (not just shounen) to be unnecessary and tasteless. Sadly, it seems that many mangaka are incapable of actually writing interesting female characters, so they decide to just make them walking T&A shots instead.

I know someone's going to throttle me for saying this but Caska from Berserk was great before "what Griffith did" and she has since been all but useless for far too long. Waste of potential.

[Foggle]

I know someone's going to throttle me for saying this but Caska from Berserk was great before "what Griffith did" and she has since been all but useless for far too long. Waste of potential.

120% friggin' agreed. Caska went from a cool character to a blubbering [wo]manchild (who is actually used for comic relief in the newest chapters). Don't forget that she turned into what she is now because she was raped.

I can no longer read Berserk because of that shit, quite honestly.

[Rynnec]

Didn't Gutts also get raped in his backstory, but not turn crippilingly insane and revert to a child?