No sooner have I started enjoying something it's like the world conspires to take it all away from me. There have been some 'okay' anime lately that are at least watchable but it's remarkable how even by anime studio standards the amount of utter shit that's being pumped out by the people looking to milk isekai anime in particular for all it's worth as if there aren't a myriad of other genres for them to at least try and see if something sticks.
At least I can instantly dismiss the ones with awful animation that look like it was hacked together by an intern or worse an Indian in a couple of months in blender but what's more surprising is there have been anime with good quality artwork that gets flushed down the drain due to shitty unimaginative writing and it's pissing me off.
Anime often operates on tropes don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting that much from them. However the tropes lately aren't even subtle and are being smacked in your face repeatedly as if you're supposed to enjoy it, it's so bad even the obvious die hard anime fans who spam the comments pages are bitching about it all.
We're used to the 'MC is a loser' tropes, but now it's very much like they're picking out a bingo card of extremely shit MC tropes like 'MC is OP insecure loser and constantly doesn't know his own strength' even people with a single IQ point can see it's a retarded plot point. Or worse they try and use it as a gag but it falls flat when they repeat it every five seconds.
It's so bad now that I will watch anything as long as the male character featured isn't a massive retard. Even Kazuma from Konosuba the king of insecure virgin tropes gets some degree of confidence and can deal with women who give him shit. You don't drag the whole thing out several episodes because it's complete cringe and prevents character development.
Am I missing something here? Is it some asian thing about saving face so they can't ever have MCs that have any kind of degree of confidence in themselves? Or are things really that bad in Japan now all the mangaka are suffering severe depression which would make sense unfortunately.
Anime protagonists tend to be on one end of a spectrum or the other; either over the top horn dogs who are constantly get up skirt peaks and grabbing titties (almost always followed by the tsundere punching them), or pathetic socially paralyzed virgins who get the 'nose bleed' if a girl so much as touches their hand. And the second does seem to be way more common.
I can think of maybe 2 or 3 protagonists off the top of my head who don't fit that mold and actually act like normal guys. I don't know if it's some weird Japanese cultural thing that's highlighting something real, or if it's that they're not allowed to show more guys acting realistic because it's broadcast on TV in Japan or what.
I'm genuinely curious how much of it is a reflection of real life and how much of it is just tropes being written in because they are easy or because the writer is simply writing stuff that he saw when he was just a reader or watcher of anime and manga and these things were tropes long before he started. Are indirect kisses really that big of a deal in Japan? Is holding hands really this monumentally sexy and intimate moment that has guys shaking in their boots?