Top 10 Worst Anime Cliches

Fanservice can be done well if it's fun or for comedic purposes. However, sometimes the creators decide to put in way too much fanservice, and it becomes very distracting. High School of the Dead is one of them. It's an action-packed anime about zombies all over Japan, and yet so many times when the action happens, the fanservice gets in the way. It just takes you out of the moment and is overall unnecessary.

Or that one female or male lead that's only there for fanservice and doesn't actually have any character development. Their whole existence is just eye candy for the audience, and it makes them look like a tool.

Ever liked an anime where everything seems to be perfect? The characters are likable, the action is great, and the story is engaging. Then you get to a certain point in the anime, whether it be the end or not, that you realize the writer didn't know how to properly end a fight. So what does the writer do? The power of friendship conquers all!

You see this in certain animes like Fairy Tail (especially) and even Soul Eater did. Except they called it bravery, but you could replace it with friendship, and it would be the same thing. I hate it when that happens. It can ruin the anime for me.

Friendship can't solve everything. The world doesn't work like that. You have to be strong in the real way, and that doesn't include suddenly becoming powerful because you're thinking about your friends. That's just lazy writing and could fail a show entirely.

This may seem small, but have you ever noticed how the main lead either has one parent or no parents at all? This seems to be in almost every anime you come across. For some reason, the main lead doesn't have their mom or dad, whether they're dead, they abandoned them, a divorce, or they are too busy to ever pay attention to their child.

Here's a list of main characters with either one parent or none: Pokémon, Attack on Titan, Ouran Highschool Host Club, Kaichou Wa Maid Sama, Kotoura-san, Mirai Nikki, Naruto, Black Butler, Your Lie In April, Say I Love You, Soul Eater, Bleach, Fairy Tail, Clannad, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Batman. (Okay, that last one isn't an anime, but you get my point.)

They are just awful people. Why not be nice like in the anime Ore Monogatari (My Love Story)? No tsunderes there, and it's one of the best romance animes ever made.

They are all basically the same character. No matter what happens, the man does something (good or bad), gets blamed, and most likely gets hurt. The end result is either proving him right or wrong (mainly wrong), but there's no real apology or development after.

After seeing this character type in almost all anime, even the fans of this cliche should see by now that it has overstayed its welcome. If the man did something wrong, he's Hitler, but if the woman did something wrong, then nothing happens (in fact, sometimes the man still gets blamed). If you really want "gender equality," then both sides should have the same ups and downs.

To be honest, I never understood why people like tsunderes. They are not cute. They are just mean people. It's not a good role model. Please give me a good reason why they need to exist.

It's not only like this in anime. It's basically like this in every second fantasy or sci-fi movie. Either they are unrealistically strong action heroes or your average imperfect big mouths with a good heart that learn a lot along their way.

The thing is, when you have a female character that fits this description, it's automatically more interesting because it doesn't fit the stereotype. Plus, female leads often have more developed personalities and background stories. Quite often, the villain will be a whole lot more relatable and interesting, or at least he has more of an attitude.

I get that the male leads are often supposed to be a placeholder for YOU, the viewer, but it doesn't change the fact that everyone around you is more interesting.

This should be #1. Poor gentlemen. They keep getting abused just for looking at something or being called a "pervert" when they are not. This is a cliche that needs to stop in anime.

Take a look at many of the shows that have this cliche. Note: Some to many of these shows are good ones, so if any of you see your favorite in this list, just know that I'm not saying they are bad. I'm saying that they have this cliche. Here goes: Sword Art Online, Your Lie in April, Akame ga Kill, Guilty Crown, Love Hina, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Soul Eater, Naruto Franchise, and many more.

I'm sure we all saw this one coming. How many animes do you think take place in a school? So many! Even some of my favorite animes like Code Geass, Angel Beats, Another, Fruits Basket, etc. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's becoming very obvious that most of them take place in school.

There is more to life than school. I watch anime to see an amazing adventure with characters, not to be reminded of why I hated school in the first place. We've all been to school. We all had exams, bullies, clubs, and some good memories. Except I don't always want to see that.

Especially since some anime is much more interesting if you take the school aspect out of it, like with Code Geass. I wanted to see Lelouch come up with clever ideas to stop his enemies and free Japan, not him working in the student council room with whatever they were doing. There's plenty of good anime that don't take place in school, like Wolf's Rain, Berserk, Attack on Titan, etc. So it can be frustrating to see school anime sometimes.

I hate these episodes. There's nothing more annoying than wanting the plot to continue, only to get filler instead. Whether it's through flashbacks (Yu-Gi-Oh series) or dragging out a single arc over many episodes (Naruto), it can be incredibly frustrating. Then there are instances where they fight numerous foes who have nothing to do with the main story before finally continuing (Sailor Moon). It's just an excuse to fill up more episodes and gain more viewership.

However, it becomes very distracting when it's overused.

Ever see that one character who never reveals much about themselves because they're afraid to hurt the people they care about? Or when they act cold towards them in order to keep them away or safe from their past? This happens a lot in anime, but it normally doesn't bother me.

However, I do see this a lot, and my tolerance meter can only take so much of it sometimes. Even some of my favorite anime like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Naruto, Attack on Titan, and Kaichou Wa Maid Sama follow this trope.

Lowkey shocked this wasn't already on the list because this is a recurring problem in anime, IMO.

While not all anime do this, it's often used as a loophole to lewd minor-looking characters by the authors, hentai or otherwise. Also, the character listed in the image is actually 598, but my point still stands since she technically falls under the trope of having an arbitrary age of a ridiculously high number despite looking young.

In this anime called Infinite Stratos, the beach episode had no point. It was literally just to show the female characters in bikinis, and naked at one point. The bikinis weren't even for kids. They were like an adult woman's lingerie.

Beach episodes can be done well, but popping them in just for filler is a surefire way to ruin the fun of them.

Seriously, quit treating female anime characters as sex objects.

Almost every anime harem scene in which the male lead has NOTHING unique about them.

Every Digimon main male as Tai, Davis, and the others. Typical of all shounen characters!

This is mostly in Shoujo anime, but I've found it in Shounen anime too. It's that one girl in an anime that can't do anything right but always promises to try her best, even if she fails. She's always getting bad grades, is the slowest runner in gym class, can't lift anything heavy, doesn't stand up for herself when being harassed, or is very dependent on the male lead.

I know we all have our flaws, but it's hard to support a female character when she can't do anything by herself and is only there for the lead. Like Yuki Kuran in Vampire Knight or Erika Shinohara in Wolf Girl & Black Prince. Yuki is very dull and was only put in the show so that females can pretend that they're her, imagining themselves as a woman in a love triangle with two handsome leads. Yuki isn't a character herself, in my opinion.

Erika is a pathetic character in my eyes. She allows Kyouya to call her a dog and forces her to do things to her just because she lied to her friends about having a boyfriend. So now she has to pretend that Kyouya is her boyfriend despite him treating her like a slave. It's sad to see that.

I hate the cliche where every (or almost every) girl in an anime is in love with the same boy. It makes the girls seem hollow and lifeless, as if they cannot cope without being in love with an otherwise bland male lead. It also is kinda ridiculous how a boy can be the sole sexual icon for so many girls.

Akame Ga Kill was ruined by all the female characters (except Akame, Najenda, and kinda Leone) fawning over Tatsumi. It adds nothing to any show and ruins potentially interesting female characters by making their only story lovesick, giving them no depth whatsoever.

I absolutely hate this. I remember watching an anime called Demon King Daimao, and it looked really cool. In the first or second episode, a girl made some awesome magic that was well-animated. I wanted to watch the main character learn this at the magic school, but unfortunately, the entire thing was this cliche.

The next few episodes consisted of dumb side plots, like a girl he accidentally violated chasing him with a wooden katana in nothing but a white button-up shirt. Or when he (the main character) was forced to stay in some enclosed box that wouldn't open until morning because of some sort of punishment. And the constant explosions that left the above girl with tattered clothes.

Not to mention this idiotic girl that was bad at magic and whose only strength was invisibility... and she had to take off her clothes to be invisible. I hate it when an anime has a promising storyline and instead shoves this perverted crap onto me.

It was funny once. But in 50% of anime shows and every second episode of it, it just becomes tedious, boring, and annoying.

Generally, anime uses tropes and jokes way too often!

There's no way a person can nosebleed that much when they're around something sexy. And how a person doesn't bleed to death because of this, I don't know.

Do anime characters just have an infinite amount of blood in their bodies?

Sometimes I even have to rewind and ask, "How?" It's a trope that really annoys me. Couldn't the writers find a more believable way to create whatever weird misunderstanding they're trying to set up?

These scenes are so annoying. How do these situations even happen? Plus, the girl is never the one getting in trouble. It's always the guy. They can literally see the guy getting yelled at by the person who walked in, but the girl never does anything. They never think, "Hmm, I know that it wasn't like that, so maybe I should help explain that that wasn't the case."

Nope, they just leave the guy to get punched, slapped, or whatever the mangaka can think of. At this point, they'd throw a whole missile at him over a misunderstanding.

GTO is a comedy, and it is all about pervert jokes. I hate all that in a regular show. But in its own show, it made sense. It was hilarious and showed how ridiculous all that is. And if I recall correctly, Onizuka transforms into a halfway normal person in the end.

They're annoying, nobody likes them, and every girl wants to rip their eyeballs out. Could a character get much worse?

It's fine when it's a recurring character, but if you've got a main character like that, it's a problem.

Just... just STOP IT! STOP IT! Somebody needs to install that Anti-Horny Bonk Dog in anime production offices, except it's an actual human being holding a baseball bat.

Alternative punishment: the writers and artists have to run 2 miles each morning and afternoon with two bags full of meat fat equal in size to the biggest breasts in their cast attached to a chest harness.

Ouch! They look so painful and swollen! I'm noticing a trend, and it seems that people have gotten desensitized to big boobs that are three handfuls or bigger. So now, in order to be considered big, they have to be drawn head-sized or bigger. Imagine how bad that would feel!

In a plethora of anime, the protagonist or another central character is a younger brother. He has an older brother who has either gone bad, is mysterious, or has disappeared. An exception occurs in Yu-Gi-Oh, where the older brother Seto Kaiba is one of the central characters, and Mokuba is his younger brother.

Fatal Fury (Garou Densetsu if you're in Japan) is an exception. There the protagonist is the elder brother, though the fanservice-y female lead is more interested in the younger one.

And usually too daft to even realize that literally every girl in their surroundings is into them. For bonus cringe, let one of the admirers be a sibling. Are incestuous tendencies on this list?

So many series are guilty of this, and I hate it! In this image, I can agree that Obito was WAY too easily forgiven. He caused so much damage, killed so many people, and caused a war. Yet the characters forgive him? That's just disturbing and unbelievable. Could you imagine if that happened in real life? The world would be a scary place to live in.

It's absolutely bizarre how characters can commit terrorist-level threats but get zero repercussions for it. Imagine if we let serial killers off the hook.

Don't forget Lucy from Elfen Lied.

Seriously, how did Kouta forgive her so easily?

I am very, very sad to say this, but Code Geass is guilty of this. Occasionally Kallen or someone else in a Knightmare will yell out their attack. Why, though? It might give enough time for the enemy to counterattack. It's annoying as well as pointless.

Imagine a character shouting "ICE ATTACK" and then getting shocked when the opponent blocked it using fire. That is one of the most stupid things in the world.

Is "shouting out names of attacks" your attack? If so, then you just shouted it. This is my attack, too. I call it "attack on your attack-name attack" (no-jutsu).