The Ick: Anime Tropes that Repel Viewers

Anime as a genre is bigger than it’s ever been. Every year it seems the genre finds new ways to grow and expand and draw in more eyes. Whether it’s a Shounen Anime with a budget to match the hype or an Isekai where a man is reincarnated as a chair, Anime has never been stronger as an industry.

But a recent scene from one of the biggest shows of the recent era, Jujutsu Kaisen, has brought up some discourse and gripes and various icks some viewers have with the genre.

Anime has been growing in scale, the art is better than ever, some of the stories, match any other media in terms of complexity, gravitas, and emotional impact. But by that same token, Anime as a genre has more than a few recurrent elements that can easily put off some viewers.

It’s okay we’re not related by blood!

One of the more problematic elements in any given show and the impetus for this article is the prevalence of incest as a topic within Anime. Far from just kissing cousins, many shows delve head first into the garbage bin with brothers and sisters full-on lusting after each other. It begs the question who is this for?

In the case of Jujutsu Kaisen (JJK), the reasoning for the implied incest is so on the nose for an already morally dubious character it reads almost like a hat on a hat. Now of course the elements had always been there but there’s a difference between UiUi being possessive of his big sister and said big Sister Mei Mei, sleeping in bed with him completely in the nude. You can say it’s to show Mei Mei is a bad person, but that has been evidenced in almost every appearance of the character.

Now JJK is by no means the worst offender in this category, but it is the most notable at the time of writing and would have been a glaring omission. Another show or duo of shows that have this problem in spades are the works of Tsukasa Fushimi, the infamous Oreimo, and EroManga Sensei, masterclass works of bad taste.

One could make the argument, that shows like those mentioned above, are notorious and that only people with a fascination with schlock would hazard upon them. That would be true if not for the nature of discussion in the digital age.

Positive or negative attention matters little to the algorithms of X, formerly Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. A show being discussed is a show that is being promoted. And that discussion can be about how terrible it is but that doesn’t negate its impact on the media.

I swear the dragon is 1,000 years old!

Anime has such a diverse pool of character designs, from the burly men of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Baki to the silly Doraemon to the iconic Sailor Moon.

One recurrent element in many Anime and Anime-adjacent projects is the older-than-she-looks “lolicon” character. That is to say, a character that looks like a child, acts like a child, and is treated like a child but “actually she’s 1,000 years old so it’s okay”

A notable example of this is in the show Ms. Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid which has the character of Kanna Kamui, who serves as the surrogate child of the main characters Tohru and Kobayashi. There’s no problem with this until she is isolated with an actual child, Saikawa where it’s stated after the fact Kanna wanted to engage in some explicit behavior with her classmate who was 6 years old.

Keeping in mind that both characters are depicted as children, this is an uncomfortable enough scene, but remembering that one of the characters is in a universe hundreds of years old, adds a predatory element to a show that is otherwise unnecessary.

His personality is sexual harassment

Anime has progressed beyond the need for the perverted character whose entire personality is that he is a pervert. In the rare cases where the perverted character is a female, the point remains as such. Delete them from the history books lest they offend the gods.

Hyperbole aside, the number of characters that exist in this trope is almost as comprehensive as the list of Anime.

There are the old men, like Muten Roshi from DragonBall and Jiraiya from Naruto, and there are the younger perverts, like Sanji from One Piece, or Miroku from Inuyasha, or Brock from Pokemon . There’s Mineta the worst character in fiction, there’s Meliodas from Seven Deadly Sins who’s the worst protagonist in a shounen.

These characters are defined by their “comedic” arousal levels and are usually used for slapstick but at the expense of the plot, pacing, and the female characters in their shows. Viewers are forced into the role of a voyeur as the character ogles various women in the show sometimes to a disturbing degree.

For some examples let’s start with Master Roshi from Dragon Ball. Roshi has the most prolific history of sexual harassment of the characters mentioned, as seemingly every woman in the franchise who encounters him receives some form of unwanted attention. During the Tournament of Power Arc, Roshi seemingly threatens a character with sexual assault for the “crime” of tempting him. Jiraiya proclaims in his introduction he’s not a “little pervert ” but a “big one”. His character goes on to leer over the various women in Naruto while also being one of the most powerful legendary ninjas in the show’s universe. Miroku, from Inuyasha, is this in spades, as his entire character can be summarized as a “perverted monk.” as opposed to Jiraiya’s perverted sage. Miroku is a bit worse as he routinely assaults women throughout the story and though his motivation(needing to sire an heir) exists, it doesn’t justify his treatment of women. Meliodas, from Seven Deadly Sins, is much more of the same, ogling the main female lead of his show and routinely physically assaulting her as well. This becomes somehow even more problematic as the story progresses and shows Meliodas has done this multiple times. One thing aside from the assault these characters have in common is their behavior is played for laughs in their show but reads as tone-deaf concerning the world outside of Anime fandom.

This is to say, the problem with these characters is their jokes, aren’t really jokes. When watching it toes the line of “dirty old man” to possible criminal assault but the viewers are either expected to laugh it off or worse sympathize with said perverted character.

The Joke is Assault

In recent years there’s been a reduction in this kind of joke, but that is not a tragic absence. The trope of physical or sexual assault being played for laughs is one that will not be missed if it is ever fully abandoned by the medium.

To preface, a character being violent is not a problem, a character getting hurt is not the problem, the problem lies with the setup and punchline repeating ad nauseam.

The male character does something usually a clumsy pratfall or rude comment so the female character overreacts and physically assaults him.

This is in contrast to the “female character exists, and male character “can’t help himself” and sexually assaults her in any myriad of ways.” which was touched upon in the previous section.

The rare permutations on this, the female pervert and the male tsundere are few and far between and don’t do much in the way of salvaging this overdone bit.

Both styles should be relegated to the trash bin as there’s much more room for humor that doesn’t start like the written testimonial of a restraining order.

I hate Anime, it’s so cool.

As a lifelong watcher and enjoyer of the medium, the notion of feeling shame for enjoying something is childish at best. It doesn’t harm anyone if someone enjoys My Hero Academy‘s objectively worst character or they hate the best girl, Tsuyu.

When addressing the problematic elements of a show it’s not to call for “cancellation” of it or hatred. It’s to acknowledge this thing could be better. Artistic vision is important but not infallible.

Toriyama brought back Goku, as is his right, but calling that out as a bad decision is the right of the end consumer. What can be done about these problematic elements is wholly dependent on the trends that Anime studios choose to follow. In prior decades it was blood and violence as the big ticket sellers, then it became “slice of life”, and now it’s Isekai.

It used to be that female characters were nothing but eye candy and damsels in distress to be won by the hero. Now they’re heroes of their own stories.

Tropes are not inherently problematic, but the overuse of them with no commentary, no creativity, and no tact, leaves some consumers with bitter tastes in their mouths.

Criticism is meant to help, and in this case, some things should be discarded.

What do you think? Leave a comment.