Top 10 Worst Anime Cliches

Is there ever that one cliché in anime that you just can't understand why they keep doing, because it's so annoying? I'm not saying that the animes that use these clichés are bad, far from it. I like most of them. However, these tropes are pretty annoying in my opinion.

I'm sure you can agree on at least one of them, and I know there might be some that I missed. However, this is just what I think of when I think of annoying clichés in anime. You're free to add one of your own too.

The Top Ten

Distracting Fanservice

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.

Sadly, quite a lot of characters have ridiculously oversized breasts that make the silicone companies look like they're rolling in money, simply to become fodder for fanservice that has little (if any) relevance to the plot.
Combined with no personality development in some cases, the inclusion of fanservice-only characters is lamentably shallow and ignorant of real emotions people feel. Sometimes we want something more than just having breasts and knickers shoved in our faces. It's as simple as that.
Friendship Saves the Day

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.
Tsunderes

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.
Female Character that Thinks Someone Looking at Her is a Pervert

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.

You know that gal in the beach episode who hates the men looking at her because of their dirty minds. I can't explain how wrong this is.
Firstly, for beach episodes, it is expected of you to wear revealing clothing. Secondly, this can be told by the second character's expressions. If that character has a dirty mind, I will pass, but if he is not and is simply looking at her, then that is problematic.
Protagonist Lacks a Mom and Dad

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.)
Generic Male Leads

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.
School

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.
Dark Edgy Character with a Dark Past

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.

Possibly the most cringeworthy of the anime tropes. Characters with a dark past and dark demeanor can be good (like Vegeta and Piccolo from DBZ), but when your resident edge-lord gains no development from his dark past, his edginess gets old really fast.
Filler Episodes

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.

Oh yes. Fillers. I don't know, but I'm a total perfectionist. My first ever anime was Naruto (fortunately or not), and thus, I had to watch all of the damn fillers even though they were boring to the very core. Ninja ostrich? What was his name again? Condor? Mecha-Naruto... Like seriously?
I got so bored of the fillers that I gave up watching it on my third anime, which was Bleach. Fillers are so intolerable that they defeated my perfectionist personality.
Edgy Edgy Edgy

Edginess is something you can't just abuse, especially with characters. I can understand making a dark hero or something similar, but sometimes it's just too much. Batman, Daredevil, and Red Hood are clear examples in Western comics. While Daredevil is somehow better, the other two are kinda soulless. In video games, there are plenty of examples - half of the cast of Sonic, for instance.
This trope is kind of annoying, even in manga, with characters like Sasuke. Less popular but still annoying.

Akame Ga Kill is a perfect example of this! It tries to be dark and mature, but it backfires. That was my main problem with the show more than anything else. Besides the violence trying its hardest to shock the audience, the show had the characters with awful pasts and circumstances... and then suddenly it went back to its comedy as if it never happened.

The Newcomers

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Young Looking Characters that are Actually Thousands of Years Old

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.
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Isekai World Having Medieval Settings

I usually like medieval fantasies, but isekais kind of kill it for me as it's so overdone to the point where it's annoying.
One isekai anime that doesn't use this cliché is The Saga of Tanya The Evil, where instead it has a World War I-like setting.

The Contenders

Beach Episode

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.

I like when shows have nice, fun beach times, but then they ruin it with fanservice.
Fragile Female Lead

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.
Main Character Has Nothing Unique

There seems to be a huge chance that the male isekai main character is going to look like Kirito, even art style wise, with similar facial proportions and the mouth to nose distance ratio, which actually changes the look of an anime face a lot.

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!
Indecisive Boy with a Harem

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.

You mostly see it in a harem that the boy has a whole bunch of girls who like him, but he doesn't decide who he wants to be with and just ends up with all of them. The girls are pretty much just eye candy to look at, don't really have much of a personality, and their only interest and goal is to please their indecisive love interest.
Whoops! I'm a Pervert Now!

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.
Nosebleeds

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?
Awkward Falling Positions

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.

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?
Out-of-Proportion Boobs

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!
Perverted Leads

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.
Long Drawn Out Battles

This is very popular in Shounen anime. When you think the battle is over and someone is dead, but not really.
An example is the ever so fabulous Dragon Ball series. One example is how Gohan fought against Cell in episode 181, and it ends ten episodes later. The most infamous, however, is Goku vs. Frieza. The planet was supposed to blow up in five minutes, but it takes from episode 97 to 105 for Goku to finish fighting Frieza. Sure, much of that was pointless dialogue, but a good chunk of it was them thinking they won, but they didn't.

This is usually why I stay away from certain long-running mainstream anime such as Dragon Ball Z or Naruto, though I don't hate those series. I can understand if a battle starts in one episode and has to be finished in the next episode, like Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, or the Fate series, but if we're talking over 5 episodes, there's a good chance I'm not watching it.
Trust me, I tried to watch one of Naruto's fights against Pain on YouTube, but since the entire duration of the battle was SO DAMN LONG, I just ditched it and went on with my day.
You Know How the Antagonist Killed All Those People and Tormented Me? Well Now that I Caught Him Let's Forgive Him

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?
Main Character is the Younger of 2 Brothers

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.
Shouting Out Names of Attacks

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).
Bland Harem Leads

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?
Wish Fulfillment Lead Protagonist