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[itisnotlogical]

SAO is probably the first "entertaining trash" anime I've watched. It's genuinely awful, but I still had a good time watching it just because it's everything awful about anime in one show. It also has no self-awareness which makes it even funnier IMO.

[Cruxador]

Yup, for whatever reason lots of those fanservice-heavy battle harem animes seem to be from light novels instead of manga. Sure, not all light novels are like that, but if you see some anime that seems excessively obsessed with magical and/or cybernetic battle girls' boobs, then it's pretty good odds that you'll find it was from a light novel rather than manga.

Well, I mean yeah, but what I meant is that you won't find a Saturday Morning Mahou Shoujo aimed at little girls in a light novel.

Hahahaholyshit, there's going to be another SAO.

Why does this franchise still exist again?

It's popular with teens.

But his real innate talent is for hoards of girls to fawn over every little mundane highschool-related thing he does, for some inexplicable reason. He takes a shit, 6 girls are outside the stall shouting "Subarashi!" I really wish this was more of an exaggeration than it sounds like. I think one blogger called him the "magical hall-monitor" because he does shit like tick names off a roll and girls comment about how wonderful he did it. It's like it was written by some school nerd to make himself feel better that his nerdy school duties were really appreciated. But that's just one aspect of the series which makes it my favorite bad series.

To be fair, high school girls are pretty dumb when it comes to attractive guys. Not saying it's a good series or anything but... Y'know.

[Reelya]

Now I want to see a show called Bieber At Magical High School. The plot is that basically no matter how huge a tool he acts like, the girls still cluster around screaming.

[i2amroy]

Hahahaholyshit, there's going to be another SAO.

Why does this franchise still exist again?

Because strange as it might seem, the anime itself (not talking about anything else, those can be pretty horrible), works surprisingly well as a strange shojo-esque series where the main character isn't the real main character.

(Seriously, super cool guy that has loads of girls that want him, but he's chosen his one "true" girl and sticks by it even when helping out others, and has female-focused arcs that are way better than any semi-male focused one. With the exception of the rather short arc where Asuna was stuck and had to be rescued you can't tell me that this hasn't been a very action-y shojo anime, regardless of what the source material is. )

[Reelya]

It's not Shojo. Shojo is pretty specific in how it's structured. And it's not structured like SAO. In Shonen light novels, or visual novels / dating sims, it's normal to have one bland male MC, and each novel / arc focuses on a different girl, her backstory and how he helps save her. The point is that the male MC is the POV character for the viewer.

Shojo works the exact opposite to that. Take Fruits Basket for example. Each arc is about a different guy's problems. Just because there are girls in it doesn't mean it's automatically shoujo. In fact, execessive numbers of girls almost certainly indicates something was not published as shoujo. That's just how it works. Out of all those stereotypical cliched "cute highschool girls x things" animes, I found exactly one that was published in a shoujo magazine.

[Culise]

Nah, the main guy can be chased after by female rivals (or male rivals; The Gentlemen's Alliance comes immediately to mind) in a shoujo.  Those female rivals should just also be defined by their relationship to the female lead.   Assuming, of course, this is a shoujo manga with a female lead; there are plenty out there that don't.  By the same token, even your shounen harem love triangle can have a male-female-male love triangle as often as it has a female-male-female triangle.  Maison Ikkoku's early enough that most of these tropes weren't fully codified yet (and indeed, it was one of the chief codifiers), but it had triangles for both.

[Reelya]

By the same token, even your shounen harem love triangle can have a male-female-male love triangle as often as it has a female-male-female triangle.

But they're handled very differently. When it's two girls in a harem, they're balanced so that the viewer can ship whichever one they want. But male rivals are "the jerk" who is going to steal the girl who rightfully belongs to The Hero. In Shoujo: that is reversed. The second girl is "The Bitchy Ex Girlfriend" or similar, whereas two guys fighting over the girl is the fantasy-fuel for the female viewer. Think Twilight.

I'm kinda curious right now whether people don't actually know what Shojo is, or you guys haven't seen enough to be able to tell whether something is shojo or not? "Has girls in it" is not the definition.

[Culise]

Are we conflating something somewhere, or just over-generalizing?  The first male-lead shoujo I was thinking of was Otomen, which doesn't have a rival in my opinion (the closest I can think of is actually a male character, and not a jerk at all) or a harem. 

I mean, to go back to the original point, i2amroy was just making a joke about looking at SAO as a shoujo manga where Asuna is the main character and Kirito Sue-ish by virtue of his "perfect boyfriend" role rather than his "supremely competent main chara" role.  You suddenly popped off on a serious tangent about how it's not shoujo (it's not, but it's funny to see how it can work that way), and I pointed out only that in your serious tangent, shoujo as a demographic does not require a full reverse-harem or a female lead serial-dating.  Heck, Dennou Coil is a shoujo in spite of being "Serial Experiments Lain by way of Hayao Miyazaki."

[Reelya]

i've read about 100 shoujo mangas, and I've seen pretty much all the major harem animes, plus most of the major shojo romcoms that got animes in the last ~6 years. That's my basis for analysis.

[Culise]

i've read about 100 shoujo mangas, and I've seen pretty much all the major harem animes, plus most of the major shojo romcoms that got animes in the last ~6 years. That's my basis for analysis.

Most, you might have been able to get away with.  Many, sure.  All? That's a beast of another color.  You can't even say all shoujo manga are harems or all shoujo manga have male romantic interests, much less that all shoujo manga have...

Oh, you edited your post out from under me to talk about harem anime rather than shoujo anime.  That's just unkind.

[Reelya]

Are we conflating something somewhere, or just over-generalizing?  The first male-lead shoujo I was thinking of was Otomen, which doesn't have a rival in my opinion (the closest I can think of is actually a male character, and not a jerk at all) or a harem. 

When did I say all shojo series have a male rival? I don't even know what you're talking about anymore. You're arguing against something, just not anything I said.

[Culise]

Your original post before your first edit; it looks like you made subsequent edits after that as well.  I shall just drop the matter; we're plainly both arguing past each other by responding to outdated posts, and that's frankly not worth my time.

EDIT:
Oh, it's also that you don't even seem to know what I'm saying given your last edit to that particular post, either, which is another demerit against debating the matter.

[Reelya]

We were talking about love triangles, and I said they code them differently whether it's in shoujo or shonen (the genders and tropes are almost always inverted).

that isn't implying all shojo or shonen for that matter have love triangles.

[Mattk50]

I heard that hxh is supposed to be a good show, is it some kind of giant in joke? All the characters are one dimensional, the plot makes no sense and actively contradicts itself, the writing intentionally works against having any kind of suspense and then there's the extremely slow pace, im watching it at 1.5x speed 24 episodes in and it still feels slow. Does it get good later or something?

So far i'd rank naruto and one piece way ahead of this and i don't rate either of those very highly.

[Frumple]

Can't speak for the anime, but the manga was pretty a'ight, iirc. Not amazing, but solid enough, and it did have one of the most amusing uses of a speech bubble that I've ever seen.