(I'm gonna go on a rant here, I may sound schizo in some parts) I don't know when this happened, but the anime and manga sphere got dominated by basic bitches (male and female) who never consumed anything other than tumblr reviews and base the whole view of the medium on that
The discussions we have about Harem and Shoujo are examples of that, no one interacts with those genres or understand their fantasies, and they have no interest in interacting with it in any meaningful way, they just want surface level contact, enough to fuel their internet wars
That article tries to make Reverse Harems queer,because this is seem as quality, something opposite to the Cis-Straight-Men devil, but only someone who never touched those genres would say that. You can find Male-lead harem with gay kissing, but not Reverse Harems
The easiest thing to find out there is a Male-lead Harem with homosexuality in it. "The boy of the team" is a whole ass trope in Harem animes, and a lot of times they're shown as the best option, you have whole episodes about "The boy makes a better bride than the girls"
But you can't have that, you can't say that something for men is "Queer", because any content that can be enjoyed by guys is wrong, sexist, problematic and whatever else. So you have people turning their insides out to try and make things like Hamefura and Ouran Queer
People will see Katarina be bred by a guy, while the girls do nothing but be called cute, and try to convince you that the two groups are treated in the same way inside the work
They will see Ouran have an episode about Haruhi being a weak girl, and assure you that she's canon NB
Those people don't care about female content,but they want to use it to diminish what's made for boys, that's why they try to cram all of their ideologies in the work, never talk about anything other than how the series validates them, and drop it the second it stops being useful
Those people tend to talk about those genres without mentioning names, because it's easier to defend and attack abstracts concepts of Good and Evil, than to deal with the complexity of fiction. It's hard to say "Men only care about their fetishes" with Kuro Ouji on your side
"Boys will believe that they only need to be nice to get girls because of harem" is another shit argument, not only because of the "Violent games cause violence", but also thanks to the fact that in those series the guy never get girls for being nice
But to know that you need to watch those things, and those people don't know that, so they don't see the episodes about the guy gaining the trust and love of the girls
Continuing my rant: Two days ago this account was hyping Kaichou Maid Sama,a series about a girl becoming the maid of the hottest guy in school. The main girl,who's a tomboy,is always being reminded of her feminine side by the hot male lead
The series is full of fanservice, at least once per two episodes you get a scene where Uzui takes the female lead in his arms and proclaims "You're mine" in a soft and seductive voice. You also have dozens of moments of sexy Maid-Master play and shots of Uzui good body and face
Kaichou-maid Sama is a Shoujo romances, and those series are full of fanservice. In Suki Ii na yo has a sequence where the male lead pins the female lead on the wall, after she stalks him for a day, and start to kiss her repeatedly
He then start to say things like: "This is one is a greeting, this is because you're beautiful, this one is because I felt like it". And this is just one of the many scenes where this Adonis gently takes the loner girl and makes she opens up to his love
Oh yeah, he feels in love with her after she kicks him and makes him fall down in the stairs.
Suki Ii na Yo also has an arc of assuring Mei that her hot popular boyfriend is a virgin
Want another Shoujo, what about Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, where a loner girl, (are you noticing a pattern here?), picks up a Deliquent guy out of the streets and like a small animal he starts to follow her around, constantly showering her with unyielding affection
Want another, "Kamisama Hajimemashita" an average school girl loses her house, then she's offered the chance to become a goddess. She forces the hot demon fox guy into turning in her servent, by forcibly kissing him, later more hot mystical creatures start to fall for her
Want another? Princess Princess, in an all boys school, there's a tradition of turning the most attractive boys into Princess, their job is to wear female clothes occasionally and relieve the stress of their male classmates, with smiles and small talks, or even sexual harassment
Those Shoujo people, like to deny the fantasies that exist in Shoujo, because they don't want to admit that girls are human, they dint want to admit that they have desires and dreams, they want them to clean dolls, who only care about progressive causes and ideas
That's even why when discussing those works they avoid citing names, is easier to defend and attack abstract ideas of Good and Evil than it's go deal with the complexity of fiction
They will also avoid to talk about recent series, because they're too close and it's hard to deny that your series are equal "guy gets lots of girls" or "guy gets perfect gf" when the examples of female works you have is "girl surrounded by guys" and "girl gets perfect bf"
This lack of contact is even one of the reason as to why every week you see one of those Shoujo commenters reinventing Shonen romcom or showing attraction for something that already exists is large numbers in other genres
"ohh, I liked the strong girl from Maid-sama, but i really wish the male lead wasn't so dominating and she was allowed to be masculine and strong", this exists, the male wife shit you keep talking about on twitter, is extremely common on anime.
The tweet there was only used to illustrate the point, doesn't mean that the person was doing that
I was going to keep this rant going by talk about how Harem animes always have episodes focused in showcasing the qualities of the Harem lead and why each girl likes them, but I gave up on that
Not because I think that's not worth talking, but because I watched the Ep.8 of the original To Love Ru and my rant anger became loathing and longing. Man,that shit was really well directed. There's a run gag at the end of the episode,and it's filled with so many good jokes
There's also a scene at the end of the episode where they gave each of the background girls a distinct design and reaction to the pervert moment
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.