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I man how many Americans show would pass that. Doesn’t glorify unhealthy relationships covers a lotof stuff.
Removed by mod
Reposting from the last time this subject came up
Bolded titles are my top recs. Series listed in chronological order of my seeing them:
Steins;Gate (correction: episode 8 unfortunately has one character grope another one. Everyone rightfully calls him out for being a creepass)
Castlevania (shut up yes it is)
Vivy: Fluorite Eyes Song
Violet Evergarden (not the movie)
Hyouka (skip the ova)
Belle
A Silent Voice
Baccano
Deca-dence
Trigun
Akudama Drive
ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Dept.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Spy Family
Mushishi
5 Centimeters Per Second
Afro Samurai
Your Lie In April
Nichijou
Odd Taxi
Cowboy Bebop
Canaan
Sk8 the Infinity
Supercrooks
Bocchi the Rock
House of Five Leaves
Weathering With You
Haibane Renmei
Samurai Flamenco
BNA
Redline
Planetes
Last Exile
Witch Hunter Robin
Noir
Wolf’s Rain
Boogiepop Phantom
Boogiepop And Others
Ghost In The Shell (all timelines)
Niea_7
Serial Experiments Lain
Megalo Box
Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
Samurai Champloo
Bubblegum Crisis
Ergo Proxy
Read Or Die (OVA and The TV)
Madlax
Moribito
Xam’d: Lost Memories
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Kyousougiga
Orb: On the Movements of the Earth
Cyberpunk Edgerunners
Sonny Boy
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Thus concludes the exhaustive list of animes I’ve watched where I didn’t have to put up with any sexualization of minors
Great list, thank! Have you seen children of the whale ? If my memory is correct it could make it on this list. Also I don’t recall any weird stuff in Arcane season 1 (does it qualify as an anime though?).
How has everyone forgotten about Gundam?
I was looking for someone to mention Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop.
What are your thoughts on Fullmetal Alchemist? I personally adore FMA: Brotherhood and I think it meets these criteria.
Doesn’t violet ever garden have that weird relationship between the underage girl main character and the army guy (my apologies I haven’t see in it a while)
If you watch the english dub, it’s ambiguous enough to be interpreted as a father/daughter relationship. That’s also why I recommend skipping the movie
Unfortunately, the movie is a lot less ambiguous.
But also the movie doesn’t exist lalalala it never happened lalalala I can’t hear you
It would be cool if there was a movie though. Could be cool, as long as they didn’t decide to ship Violet with her slaver and also completely erase any character development she had re: learning to give up the Major and live her life for herself. How awful would that be?
Well perhaps they could do a movie focused on Violet working with another client, since that’s where the show always shined best. Maybe she should could tutor a young girl at a private academy or something. That might make for a good enough movie.
This is an excellent list, Planetes is one I keep coming back to, I always have about it too anyone who will listen!
I’ll have to check out some of these others I haven’t seen.
Another good one is Monster, but it does have problematic relationships
I loved the Planetes manga, too bad it was so short
Kotaro lives alone? Thought it was quite lovely.
It is now on my watch list
Edgerunners had that creep grooming David by sending him porn as a minor, and its just glossed over.
thematically appropriate for the setting. Night city is fucking horrible, and no one should pretend that it isn’t.
also, i just watched that, like, within the last couple hours recently.
The relationship between lucy and david feels kinda forced, but other than that, 9/10 no notes.
Gives three notes, claims no notes at the end.
*no additional notes
The question isn’t things being thematically appropriate. The question is animes that don’t sexualize minors, and Edgerunners fails at that.
Honest question: Assuming that you’re also referring to the creepy ripperdoc porn stuff. Is that really sexualizing the underage character? It does not seem to be something that is trying to make the character sexually attractive to the viewer. It does fit in with the hypersexualized setting and acknowledge that sexual thoughts and sexual identity don’t begin at age 18.
Showing minors in sexualy explicit situations, especially when its played off as a suprise gag and shows the actual content to the viewer, is sexualizing minors, yes. And the ripperdoc is still seen as a positive, to the point where David’s crisis of faith starts when he slams him against the wall when he’s beggining to psych-out and he feels bad, so it’s not like it really villianizes the character.
You keep using the setting like its a gotcha, but it doesn’t change anything by trying to shift the goalposts from the core of the conversation, about not sexualizing minors, i.e. not showing minors in sexually explicit situations, especially those meant to titilate the viewer. Feels akin to the “but she’s a 3000 year old dragon” arguements.
You can talk about coming of age topics and address the concepts without directly showing things on screen. Many pieces of media have done so without that, and do so with making clear the creep doing the grooming is not a positive character in the slightest.
Thanks very much for the long reply.
You can talk about coming of age topics and address the concepts without directly showing things on screen. Many pieces of media have done so without that, and do so with making clear the creep doing the grooming is not a positive character in the slightest.
This is indeed what gave me most conflict. The ripperdoc is a creep and didn’t seem very positive to my memory but I haven’t seen it for a quite a while. Not only was he being creepy but was basically a drug dealer (illegal BDs) preying on a kid, and was an enabler, helping David get into the fucked up life of a merc (and implanting the sande).
Been a minute since I watched it. You talking about the BD producer? Because that shit super ain’t glorified lmao
David’s ripperdoc shares porn with him.
Thank you! I’ve been wanting to get into anime (more than just DBZ), but I’m never sure where to start
Lain
Isn’t the outro for that a naked Lain, who is in middle school?
not all nudity is sexual in nature. haven’t seen lain yet, however iirc it has some themes of loosing ones sense of self which could justify having a pure (lacking in accessories/clothes) body.
From what I can tell from the context that is the intention in the Lain closing. Americans are such prudes they see nudity and assume sex. In the credits she’s curled into a fetal position so it’s not like it’s even provocative.
yea, she’s in a fetal position and surrounded by machinery all around her. it probably symbolises her being pure and natural juxtaposed to the computers around her, or (spoilers)
reveal
her being born from the Wired, as an extension of the computers surrounding her.
or something else, idk, the outro probably has multiple interpretations because it’s lain, so of course it would have.
but like yea, nudity != sexualization.
damn that’s a good list. I recognize some of those names
“doesnt sexualise underage character”
you sure this the list you wanted to paste here?
Add Onihei (iirc)
It’s on my watch list now, will probably make it onto this list next time the topic comes up
There’s a lot of terrible anime, but there’s also a lot of fantastic anime. There’s a lot of anime.
Just like with books. Or movies. Or videogames. It’s a medium, not a genre.
Not at all “just like.” You don’t have to wade through 90% of literary fiction or Hollywood films in order to find a handful of titles that don’t sexualize children or are otherwise fucking gross.
You do have to do that to find a handful of titles that aren’t displaying blatant racism, misogyny, homophobia and/or transphobia. So, yeah, 90% of Hollywood films are in fact fucking gross.
How does it feel to intentionally make a dishonest false equivalence that you, I, and everyone reading knows is bullshit? I’d feel weird about it, even if I didn’t have a ton of self-respect.
I don’t know, you tell me how it feels.
Nah, it’s not BS. Hollywood just doesn’t glorify the same exact types of tripe, but they are just as hit and miss on moral purity. Especially if a vapid, brainless, and underdeveloped plot are considered bad. Then Hollywood might have anime beat on shit vs gold with its mountains of brainless executive-driven scripts…
Vast majority of anime have sexualization of minors tho
mainstream amine maybe, but there is A LOT of anime out there.
your comment is like saying that Hollywood only ever made super hero movies.
Nah… Maybe the vast majority of what you watch but there’s so many out there spanning decades.
Astro Boy. Samurai Pizza Cats. Ergo Proxy. Ninja Scroll. Akira. Ghost in the Shell. Cowboy Bebop. Battle Angel Alita. Yowamushi Pedal.
On and on it goes…
Vast majority? Eh, maybe. I watch a crazy amount of anime, and I’ve only had a few of the shows I’m interested in pull that, and typically I just don’t continue watching. The one trope that I really dislike that gets shoehorned into almost any anime is the over-infatuation of a sibling. I’m not talking incest or anything, but for some reason there’s almost always a character who is obsessed with their sister/brother, and it weirds me out. Not enough to stop watching if the anime is otherwise good, but definitely enough to stop watching if the anime is just soso.
Now, oversexualization of adult characters? That’s almost unavoidable. I tend to just ignore it, until I show an anime to someone who hasn’t seen anime before and then I’m hyper aware of it. That’s why when introducing people to anime I usually pick Death Note or Fullmetal Alchemist. These anime have a good dose of the anime goofiness, but very little fanservice, almost none.
If you’ve been keeping count, I’m curious to see your data.
Only if you go explicitly looking for it, yeah.
An no fan service/no upskirt/cleavage shots.
And no racist depictions.
I’m sorry sir we don’t make those
So basically Miyazaki movies
Definitely Monogatari or To Love-ru or KissxSis
That doesn’t narrow it down as much as you think. What genre are you looking for?
fantasy isekai
Campfire cooking in another world and Welcome to demon school, Iruma-kun! are my main recommendations. There’s also some trash that would fit your criteria, but I wouldn’t recommend watching that (like that one slime tamer anime I can’t recall the title of). Also a dozen or so otome villainess reincarnation anime should fit your criteria, those are getting pretty popular now, though I haven’t watched any of the anime yet. Also some older stuff like Inuyasha might be up your alley, but honestly it’s been too long since I’ve seen them in their entirety, so I can’t really remember. Obviously Isekai is by far the most fan service-y theme in every possible way since most of it leans into power fantasy aspects to flatter the target demographic. In fact, if this was an actual honest question, I would recommend looking at the broader fantasy category, where there is a lot more variety and quality to be found.
I was mostly messing around, but thank you for the in depth write up. since we’re on the subject, what do you recommend for fantasy?
Frieren is the obvious recommendation, with character-driven storytelling focused on philosophical themes. It is genuinely one of the best shows I’ve seen and it’s rare that my expectations for a manga adaptation are blown out of the water so completely. Delicious in Dungeon is also excellent and has more of a focus on little details and creatures (and food, of course) with a very different approach to storytelling and a smaller scope.
I’m a big fan of the comedy and character design in Helck, even if the production quality of the anime can’t quite match up to my other recs. The manga is definitely visually superior. The contrast between the darker aspects of the story and the comedic delivery is pretty unique as well.
Mushishi is an episodic seinen anime focused on mythology and has some of the most beautiful background art, though it has more of a historical setting with supernatural fantasy elements. If virtual fantasy settings are allowed, then I recommend Shangri-La Frontier, which looks like Isekai at first glance, but thankfully is not. It’s also by far the most shonen anime on this list, but very entertaining.
Those are what comes to mind, but I’m sure I’m missing some obvious picks.
I’ve seen most of those (and read all of helck), except for mushishi and shangri la; I’ll add them to my list!
I was going to say Knights of Sydonia, but in not sure all of those are strictly followed. At least there’s nothing overt. And a fantastic sci-fi to boot.
Edit: started re-watching on a lark and there’s A LOT more overt fan service than I remembered. At least it passes the Bechdel Test.
It’s lemonaid, I swear!
3gatsu no lion
Love and Peace enjoyer!
I think most of my list applies
Maybe without
Steins;Gate because of that scene where a guy gropes a girl (though everyone rightfully calls him out for being a creep)
Castlevania because sex scene
Akudama Drive because Doctor is heavily sexualized
Fullmetal Alchemist because Lust is Lust
Cowboy Bebop because Faye is kinda sexualized
Supercrooks because the intro (which is a bop and you should listen to it anyway)
Redline because of one scene with boobs
Ghost In The Shell because boobs
Niea_7 because the very racist Indian stereotype
Bubblegum Crisis because boobs
Read Or Die because cleavage
Cyberpunk Edgerunners because nudity (it’s Cyberpunk lol)
That looks like a lot of exceptions, but it’s only 12 out of 57 shows/movies
To be clear; nudity is fine, just not all-the-time, male-gaze shots put in akin to commercial breaks. Like Gurren Lagan; someone told me to try that one and ye gods the amount of times it was about boobs was ridiiiiiculous.
Ranking of kings, erased, the promised neverland, deca-dence, fullmetal alchemist, pokemon.
You might find some examples but the themes dont really lend to that.
If what you really wanted was of list of animes to avoid let’s start with Basilisk.
“Erm acturally shes canonically 100,000,000 years old, she just has the body of a 14 year old” -☝️🤓
I hate this, e.g. the pairing of Buffy with the 400-year-old Angel. Vampire romance stories are full of this shit and it’s so creepy.
Its pedophilia, quite blatantly it should be banned
Honestly the century old vampire entrancing pretty young women is a standard vampire story trope. See just about every vampire story.
The depiction of pedophilia is not against the law as far as I’m aware. Not in Canada at least. I don’t really think Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be banned.
I like the story of afrutera but the female lead is a child like several hundred year old girl. Male lead is a teen schoolboy and they bang… Also added a other female protagonist to the party that’s well endowed because boobs.
I like parts of this show but it is just super generic harem anime a lot of the time and not really that good.
Minor compliant:
Like with
spoiler
Annoint
being
spoiler
a new body for that one healer
I feel like they explained away “And we can reverse it so no harm done”, the protagonists win by miles every time and never have any setbacks.
Major complaint:
One time I literally paused the show, it was when they get this random dude in the desert.
He’s in the backseat of the truck and I paused it thinking “why is this scene wrong”
That’s like the only time I remember a guy ever being in the backseat, it’s like only ever been female love-interests that are part of his (not-a-)harem. They have so many characters (literally the whole class got isekai’d) but no one gets much screen time unless they’re Yue or a girl with a huge bust that gets added to the not-a-harem
Yeah I get you.
What I like is the fact that the protagonist has a underrated skill and ends up using his earth knowledge and creation skills to make fun shit.
Crafting with the combination of magic and tech is uncommon. Also under dog struggled to survive. He’s not OP out of the gate. Lost his arm early on and ate rotten meat to survive. Not sure I’d survive the shit he went through in the beginning.
It gets real generic and fan service-y after the setup. Also the “underage” vampire…
The setup is better than say, Solo Leveling, but once its done it gets a lot blander just like Solo Leveling.
Granted Solo Leveling has way more issues and is 90% carried by good animation.
I also think the protagonist from Arifureta has a really cool niche ability but it really is not used creatively. For all intents and purposes after the first dungeon his power is “gun” (with “gun” being flexible) and sometimes vehicles or a shield, all of which he got from first dungeon iirc.
It’s creative in a sense that he made firearms out of essentially just magic and knowledge but like… it never evolved past that. Hell I’d take a dust explosion every once in a while or something, thermite, acid. But the focus was “aura” and edginess rather than a compelling or clever protagonist.
That said I still plan to finish the newest season and will prob watch whatever comes out next. The aesthetic got me and ig thats the point
Maybe because I got into anime from Toonami and adult swim, but I never been subjected nor had an interest in this kind of anime. It always seems corny. Then again I’m more of a sci fi/space/giant robot kind of guy. The space colonies that are like biodome like cities are the coolest
Working in manga, the amount of titles I have to throw out of consideration for licensing because of these issues is insane
I find that if you want good anime recommendations, the recommendation must come from someone that doesn’t like anime. Anime fans tend to be really out of touch with certain baselines… like not being an open pervert.(I’ve seen that hentai hoodie, don’t lie.) Also people who don’t like anime can distinguish between “good for an anime” and “good”.
So I offer mine: Cyberpunk Edgerunners and Spirited Away.
As a not anime fan, mine were Samurai Champloo, Bleach (though I stopped 100 episodes in), Cowboy Bebop. Also all of Ghibli.
I completely agree with this.
I’m not an ‘anime fan,’ but there is good anime out there like Paprika and Aku no Hana. They really push what the medium is capable of and don’t just rely on tropes to appease people with low standards.
It’s tough to recommend anime to some people because their opinion of the medium has been tainted by anime fans that will accept whatever slop is shoveled in front of their face.
After giving the medium a chance, not sure I wouldn’t call myself a fan anymore, but I certainly take issues with the typically associated tropes. So here’s my list of more recent shows with either very little or none of these.
Solo leveling Hells paradise Chainsaw man Jujutsu kaisen Demon slayer
Vinland saga Attack on titan
Dan DA dan
Bluelock
Hunter x hunter Spy family Bocchi the rock Apothecary diaries
I’ve seen that hentai hoodie -
at the high school I worked at.
deleted by creator
I tried watching Dragon Ball but couldn’t take that old guy sexualizing a teen. Explicitly saying he wanted to touch her boobs
Mushishi
Damn. I don’t watch anime but is this that widespread within the community? lol
Would Friren count? Romance of the two teens are age appropriate for them. And two dudes that are enamoured with older women, but I think that’s it.
Not to mention, those two dudes are both grown-ass adults. Nothing wrong with a grown man that likes milfs.
I’m waiting for the canonical reason why the female elves look like children while the one male elf we’ve met is drawn like a grown man. And I really hope it’s not that their brain outpaces their body because then we’re in the “5000 year old witch in a child’s body” trope.
If this is addressed in the manga, no spoilers plz beyond a simple “Yes, it is.”
I’d assume it’s because the only male elf is older? Idk this feels like looking for inappropriate intentions because you want there to be one.
Yeah I was about to say this he was way older than friren
Serie looks like a child too and he is not older than serie tho.
I mean, we have a sample size of 3 (in the anime anyway), and don’t actually know for certain how old any of them are. The only thing we really know is that Frieren is likely the youngest.
I’m sorry if my critical exploration of anime I enjoy makes you feel defensive but I literally just explained why I think that would be the worst reason. Don’t worry no one’s canceling Freiren, we’re just having a chat.
“Adult elf bodies reflect their own self-image” would be pretty cool. Especially for the monk.
The issue is we’ve encountered so few elves that it’s impossible to say really anything about them as a whole. Maybe that is just how female elves look, maybe frieren and serie are just weird, or something else. But either way, we’re basically just going on what little we’ve been shown which could change later.
Personally though, I don’t actually mind the 1000 years old but looks like a child trope if it’s not using it as an excuse to sexualuzed the character. Which they really aren’t doing here.
And on the other hand, I also don’t think Frieren looks like a kid. This is pretty common, I’ll see people point out a character who’s a bit short and sometimes flat (though that’s not always the case even) and say that they look like a kid while I don’t see it. So I don’t know if it’s me or what. Serie does look more like a kid to me though.
But we get back to the fact that she’s not being sexualuzed anyway, so again, I don’t personally take issue with it.
If I wanted to be really nitpicky, they do pay extra attention to Fern’s chest after she grows up. And some of the shots can be a little “male pov.”
This is not a diss to the show. I really, really enjoyed this series and would absolutely recommend it.It could, but people could also see it as an example of the 3000 year old loli trope. So it may not be a good example.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ReallySevenHundredYearsOld/AnimeAndManga
She’s a 1000 year old adult. At no point is she ever portrayed as anything remotely childlike.
It honestly fucking sucks that just because this trope exists elsewhere, a show like Frieren can’t tell a serious story about what it’s like to outlive everyone around you without being mistaken for this trope.
You could see her as that trope, but I really don’t think she fits the “loli” description. Lord knows I’m not about to google “loli” to check how closely she resembles one, but I’m pretty sure she’s a rare example of an actually short woman
The loli is not 3000 years old.
- JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Please start on part one)
- Outlaw Star
- Trigun
- Cowboy Bebop
- Space Dandy
- Panty and Stocking with Garderbelt
- Mob Psycho 100
- Samurai Champloo
- Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
No Dungeon Meshi?
Haven’t seen it, I’m only suggesting stuff I am familiar with.
Watch it, it’s very good.
Nabbing a copy of it now, or whenever my torrent client is active. :)
Outlaw Star! Aisha Clan Clan, my beloved queen. The first cat girl crush lol. Very nostalgic.
I remember this as a kid on Toonami, one day they said “asshole” or something (I don’t remember) and my dad was angry and told me I can’t watch it anymore because they swore.
My brother was mad at Toonami not airing the Beach episode, and since it had a critical plot moment, it made a later episode feel like an ass pull. Years later he learned an episode was skipped.
But Aisha Clan Clan is a good waifu.
Cowboy Bebop had Edd running around in those shorts while floating around giving the audience almonds of angles of her body. In outlaw star the cat girl was the pedo.
Sigh. Why would JoJo fans ever recommend starting with anything but the original 90s OVA?
That is pretty awesome animation at least.
- Oishinbo - about a newspaper food reporter / gourmet
- Hinomaru Sumo - about a high-school sumo wrestler
- Hyouge Mono - about a Sengoku-era aesthete
- Warau Salesman - about a vengeful demon who punishes unhealthy urges
- Kaiji - about a gambling addict (who usually has to develop trust to survive)
- Onihei - about an Edo-period crime investigator
Delicious in Dungeon! I think!
It’s got plenty of unhealthy relationships but addressing and untangling those relationships is like, the core of the plot so yeah I think it for sure passes.
Edit: Well actually, it does have one kind of contrived sauna scene between two of the women that feels very fan-servicy but is only a minute or so long. And the chest design of the main “monster” is arguably fan service too (There’s even a one-liner gag about it the first time it’s seen). But generally pretty tame and both of those moments are related to a crush one of the characters has.
