What is your most hated trope in manga right now?

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As for shonen tropes, the one I dislike the most is when an extremely powerful ally character is taken out, killed, or decommissioned to show how serious the series has become. This trope has been seen in various series such as Bleach with the death of Captain Yama, Black Clover with the death and rebirth of Julius, and Jujutsu Kaisen with the imprisonment of Gojo. While I understand that introducing a powerful character can make it difficult for the author to create tension, killing them off or stripping them of their powers in a cheap manner is not an effective way to demonstrate the severity of the situation.
Hey dude I think you copied my exact comments and posted them.
 
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Another trope I hate is the blank slate MC’s who get all the girls and is seen as overly powerful. I get power fantasy series are a thing and attracts specific types of readers but having an MC who’s effectively a wet napkin in terms of personality is so tiresome. Give me a character who’s dynamic, who’s unique and who actually has drive and a reason to be who they are. Not a MC who probably thinks white bread with milk is flavorful.
 
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Manga release xx.1-2-3.
Never forget.

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I hate it when certain mangas constantly break the fourth wall and reference other mangas. It's fine in moderation, but in Me and Roboco, it feels like every second or third chapter has to talk about either Jump or a popular manga like Jujutsu Kaisen. It's even worse that most of these references just end up being praise, like ''OH HOW GREAT IS JUMP MAGAZINE''.

It was funny the first time but it feels like the mangaka gets a bonus whenever he does this. The manga is funny without having to do this, but all these cheap attempts at humor really drag down my enjoyment of it.
 
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Convoluted timelines (stories that spoil themselves since they start from the future, and then keep circling betweeen the present and the past), mental gymnastic (characters that spend too much time pontificating on things instead of just checking reality), mandatory sexual fetishes (lolis, shotas, furries, and so on).
 
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My all-time hated trope is tsundere characters; I don't get why anyone finds them interesting or entertaining. They act more like mobile drama balls than sympathetic characters. I've wanted desperately for an MC to react to their bullshit with a simple, "Oh, you don't like me? Fair enough, I won't talk to you again," and have that be the end of their relationship until/unless the tsundere actually matures and realizes how much of a pain in the ass they are, but I have yet to see that in any manga. I watched Familiar of Zero, and by the end of the first season, I was hoping that the MC would turn his plane around and strafe all of those assholes before escaping from the hell that they'd summoned him into.

More abstractly, tonal inconsistency. I get light, fluffy manga about, I dunno, a group of otaku in an office falling in love. I get dark, heavy manga about a girl seeking revenge against an emperor who murdered her entire family without understanding the political situations involved. I even get the slow, desperate spiral into doom that Helck and some other manga manage to pull off. But yoyoing back and forth between wacky slice of life romcom antics with a pair of cousing trying to take care of this weird girl they found on a beach, and horrifying scenes of little girls getting their limbs torn off, is fucking awful. Or the random, one-off scene in some power-fantasy monster-of-the-week adventure story where we learn that oh yeah, the government is running a brutal program slaughtering thousands of clones of the main character (who is, of course, a child) and now it's just in the manga's world forever, and the characters just move on. It makes me hesitant to start reading certain genres because of how rife they are with this edgelord shit.

More recently, shit worldbuilding. People have already mentioned status screens, paper thin settings, hideous understanding of morality, and plots that exist only to glorify the MC, but it goes even deeper. Nothing in their worlds make sense. They're not filled with people, they have cardboard cutouts, waiting for the MC to show up and show them how to exist in the world that they've supposedly been living in for millennia. I just read a manga where it was noted that fish was expensive because no one knew how to keep it safe for eating past a few days. Because this was, of course, a medieval world. Meanwhile, we've been preserving meat practically since before civilization existed on Earth!
 
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I hate it when a manga has a supernatural character as a main focus and then introduces thousand more characters like them, which just dilutes the uniqueness of this character and the overall story. I guess the mangaka wants to expand the world, but it feels like it makes the story feel less special.

One example would be from False Child, in which a tanuki takes on the shape of the main couples deceased daughter and is treated like a surrogate daughter.

"Ok, so she's a shapeshifter. Five or six chapters in I'm going to introduce another shapeshifter who works as a government worker and reveals herself as such, who then passes around pamphlets as if this kind of surrogate-child situation happens all the time!'

I just don't get why this is necessary.
 
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When the bad guys have ugly face, fat, or are so recognizable and doing bad things simply because they are bad guys. I hate it if there's only white and black color. It feels cheap and childish, it's as if the author really want to hightlight how much good guy MC is. This usually happen in isekai where MC always save the damsel in distress.
 
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When the bad guys have ugly face, fat, or are so recognizable and doing bad things simply because they are bad guys. I hate it if there's only white and black color. It feels cheap and childish, it's as if the author really want to hightlight how much good guy MC is. This usually happen in isekai where th MC always save the damsel in distress.
Although ironically most of those series have the MC look super bland and in a perpetual state of boredom and I think the mangaka's think they look cool.
 
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The whole "I died and reincarnated but also brought along memories and perversions" trope. This works in Mushoku Tensei because it's integral to his growth as a character, it has a purpose and a reason in that "god" likes screwing with him and seeing what he does so letting him keep memories is natural.

Your brain and your consciousness are different. Your brain stores your consciousness, your brain stores your kinks, your brain stores your likes and dislikes and your personality. Your consciousness is simply your awareness of the world around you. Again, it works in something like Mushoku Tensei because we have an active force likely interfering and even if he isn't, it can be forgiven because it does play a part in the personal story and growth of the character. Other manga just use the "I was a japanese worker" because it's easier to set a backstory.

What makes it even worse is that this backstory makes no difference to the story or character. They never think "Oh gee I died suddenly, I hope mom is ok!" or anything like that, it's just "Oh snap I'm dead, time to make a harm!"

Like, they were a person BEFORE they died right? Even average people have friends and family, like come on man.


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Second most hated trope is Harems, for several reasons.

1. They're dumb.

Most people have enough of a hard time dealing with 1 lover, let alone several.

2. They're misused.

Historically, harems have never really been happy relationships for anyone other than the guy (AND THAT'S ONLY SOMETIMES!). They're typically full of backbiting, treachery, deception, jealousy, spite and outright hate. Real life harems are VICIOUS for a simple reason. The women want the guy, not each other. They want the man's heart so they'll do whatever it takes to get it and this would often lead to, in no uncertain terms, outright murder and assassination attempts. Harem women are absolutely RUTHLESS. Then imagine being the guy in that situation, where you have to make sure every woman you've slept with isn't trying to kill the other or manipulate you for favor. These were terrible situations all around.

Even if we ignored all of that, the guy usually ends up picking only like one or two women in the whole harem to be truly affectionate with anyway so it's not even like he benefits by having a large group of women around him, he's just horny and greedy.

These tropes ARE NOT for power fantasies, they're for political intrigue and drama because don't think that these women didn't have their own internal political groups against each other. Holy hell did they ever.


3. They're made of dumb tropes.

I think we all know by now, but the women in these harems are tropes and not characters. Like, to the Nth degree.


4. They're pointless.


We all know who the MC is gonna end up with, and it's gonna be the most milquetoast one of them because Japanese people have as much variation as a perfect circle.
In response to Harems:
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These points are true. But manga/anime doesn't have to be like real life. Putting a twist on something real is part of the artform.

I think the most relevant point here is #3. This is something that needs to be changed beyond Harems. I'm seeing it in more genres. Original characters need to be created, not tropes.

About #4. Maybe I'm not as experienced with Harems, doesn't usually the one closest to a Tsundere wins? And isn't MC the milquetoast character and at some point may or may not become a chad?
 
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In response to Harems:
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These points are true. But manga/anime doesn't have to be like real life. Putting a twist on something real is part of the artform.

I think the most relevant point here is #3. This is something that needs to be changed beyond Harems. I'm seeing it in more genres. Original characters need to be created, not tropes.

About #4. Maybe I'm not as experienced with Harems, doesn't usually the one closest to a Tsundere wins? And isn't MC the milquetoast character and at some point may or may not become a chad?
By milquetoast I mean the standard, completely unsurprising and uninteresting one. Usually if it's a choice between a Tsundere or a woman whose whole personality and presence is just outright dedicated to the MC then that is the one that's going to win. That's why you never really see a Tsundere in the leading role when one is around. If the Tsundere is the leading option, she's generally absent.
 
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Status: Hiatus
You know, that crap that’s on hiatus for years then gets an update chapter or two before getting scrapped.
 
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Status: Hiatus
You know, that crap that’s on hiatus for years then gets an update chapter or two before getting scrapped.
Ehh, I wish the mangaka behind School Zone would pick it up again, but my enjoyment doesn't take precedent over her mental and physical well being.

If a mangaka is not interested in continuing a manga, then what can the readers do? I'd rather see an abrupt update chapter over rushed "got the axe" chapters. Like in Useless Ponko.
 
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Bad Harem Manga were the author forcely shoehorn the main mfl as best girl some screentime during sub heroine character development chapters
 

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