Discussion Why I don't like Harem

Why I dont like Harem? Because its the "This novel sucks" flag.

Harem can be good. Can.
Most of the time, however, you have a pretty rock collection which is expanded with the next 11/10 rock the mc finds. Their personality often straight up vanishes the moment the become a harem member. Even the woman with an attitude suddenly accepts the other girls.

#selfinsert #wishfullfillment, sometimes quite blatant (ATG, AST, SAO as examples)

That they cant keep up is a given. The MC is generally so beyond stupid broken that its simply not possible to keep up with him. Makes one wonder why the likes of JC (SOTR) dont boost their cultivation with their near infinity knowledge... Oh wait then the girl would have a reasonable amount of power and she would be the one saving the (male) damsel in distress, taking away the authors plot device.

On top of that the desciptions are often so generic that you read 3 and know all of them. And sadly its again a case where she is described as cute, and not shown as cute (as example.)

At the end of the day 99% of all CNJP/KR novels suck horribly and the few decent onces either go with the brilliant waifu approach or ditch romance alltogether. Or are good despite the harem.

There are a few decent harem novels out there. RTW, CoS, EER some others. But those are generally good despite and not due to the harem.

 

I'm straight male. No thanks. Op asks guys why and i answer why. Case closed.

 

He, then no need to read bl, but still dont just discriminate or anything.

 

SAO is not a harem novel

 

back to reading novel.

 

Also I agree with the above, reverse harems are already popular to women, many popular shoujo manga have many guys falling for the fem MC, and dating sims in general are haremish.

I feel like it's kind of pointless trying to argue with this, no matter what, a lot of women will hate harem just like a lot of men will hate reverse harem. It's not a matter of good story or not, some people will always dislike yaoi or yuri or horror or gore or whatever no matter how well written they are.

Just don't read them.

 

Point me to the woman that doesn't want to feel special would you.... and that doesnt discard their partner to get what they want... I may not be from america but I keep up with whats happening there... MGTOW channels and other channels. Woman aren't any better.

Well to be fair I dont care if there is a reverse harem or a normal harem if the story is good but from over three dozen tries (if not much more) i found one good story with a harem tag....

 

I'll make short points:
-Harems and adventure/Isekai are aimed towards men because we like them.
-Reverse harems and cutesy stories are aimed at women because they like them.
-There are exceptions to every rule.
-Bad stories make women into trophies the same way they make men into white knights whose only purpose in life is to save women, I find it funny how a lot of people bark about misogyny, self insert only towards men stories but completely ignore the short stick male characters draw with the double standard on abuse or how they lack any kind of goals other than sacrificing themselves for the girl.

 

I never discriminates i just says my opinion as per the OP question. Things is most Harem story would have Shounen or Seinen in case of JP works to note who the target audience. If the target is girls then it would be Shoujo.
If you have come across story tagged Shoujo and they're tagged harem then that would be quite interesting in itself.

 

Well I only like harem where they are at least alive. It doesn't matter to me if its normal harem or reverse harem. I don't know if I am the one but even if its reverse harem its okay cause why not? They deserve it. As for normal harem..... They are disappointing. Especially the chinese ones. They are completely one dimensional

Anyways, my main reason for reading harem is because of some interesting plots. Not the damsel in distress ones tho. I meant when the girls/boys fight over MC, it becomes interesting. Not to mention the MCs expression lol

 

I guess you're right, it's just that the harem genre kinda creeps me out. Even in the case of BL, the are harem novels sometimes and I just can't help but dislike them... just my personal opinion but I think the genre thing is right as you explained it. But I don't read much Japanese novels these days, so I forget about the genre titles easily. ┐(‘～`)┌

 

Actually I would love to read a good novel where the MC has both men and women in his/her harem unfortunately bi MC are rarer than unicorns the few I have found aren't even worth remembering.

That said any novel that treats people as colletibles needs to have a pretty strong plot to have me read it.

 

Wow, my first time in a debate discussion and I need some fluff to calm myself down

 

I dont read harems anymore. After making the mistake of ATG, never again.

My biggest issue with harems is the hypocrisy. Im ok with a male main character lusting after all the pretty women. Its kinda scummy but natural. If its like this then it adds a ‘flaw’ to his character and adds dynamics to him. Making the story more interesting.
But if a guy is going to fuck every pretty woman he crosses, then dont be pretentious and try to dress it up in pretty ribbons and call it love. Just be honest from the start and say he was horny and attracted to the woman, saw his chance to bed her and took it.
A character like this isnt going to win any moral awards anytime soon, but i think it would at least be more interesting and honest and is morally better than those hypocrite harem men.

As for faux harems, they are a completely different thing. Its just one person being adored by many, but not actually making the moves on them. Kinda like a chaste idol. Nothing morally wrong with this, but it’s usually done in an unbelievable way, so i tend not to like them much either.

 

I can give you the most important reasons for there being so many harem stories out there:
1-) It's because(regardless of the fact if you believe in God(s) or evolution from monkeys) male gender has always been the dominant one. Either since humans were sent here on earth by god(s) or even before they evolved. That has 2 reasons, males being stronger/faster/more durable etc, and females being the ones who get pregnant esentially making them unable to do anything during the later months of their pregnancy and the first year or so after it as well. All the while men are doing other stuff like hunting and leading people in older ages, making money and stuff in more modern ages.(I am not saying women are only good for giving birth or anything in case anyone reading this misunderstood) Now if you are a female who is in her later months of her pregnancy or first year or two after it, then you are quite dependant on other people, naturally. And men becoming more dominant in the relationship between them is basically the result of that dependance.

2-) This reason is much easier to understand: There are a lot more male novel authors than there are females.
3-) Men, from even childhood are raised with much more freedom, being able to do a lot more than women can in this society. And because of that, even without realising it, men just find it much easier to think about having multiple partners for themselves than women do because nobody is going to call them manwhores for having multiple partners. In fact, people are going to praise that guy saying that he must be something special to be able to "obtain" several women and "keep" them for himself.

4-) Someone already commented this but another reason is simple biology. No matter how many partners a woman has, she can only be pregnant with one while men can impregnate as many women as they can ejeculate(not really but you get the point) without having to wait 9 months. Although, god made a mistake in not giving us men higher stamina (*sigh* all the possibilities) even though harems used to be pretty normal but meh, what can you do.

Anyway, all these points are being "fixed" slowly but surely. But I don't think this male>female balance is going to change anytime soon. Simply because none of the points I gave above are fundamentally bad. They might be wrong with todays morals, but they are what brought the world to this stage in the first place. And honestly, even if the whole world gets to the point where both genders are truly seen as equals, harems wil still be much more popular than reverse harems. Men will still be the dominant gender in both family matters and sexual relationships, and society will still allow men more freedom because women have a lot more to cover. It's unfortunate for women but there is nothing anyone can do.
Women have other advantages over us anyway, no need to cry for them. Every other day, there is a college student girl asking for 20 thousand dolars on twitter because she wants to pay her school tuition and she manages to collect several times that money in 3 days, even though people who know her, post her and her boyfriends pictures from her holiday in Miami 3 weeks ago, drinking expensive drinks and shit...

Uh, yeah. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, don't worry about these stuff too much my friend. Just find someone you love and spend your life with him/her. And if he/she one day suddenly says that he/she has someone else they love and want to be in a relationship with her/him too, just shove a 10 inch dildo up their backdoor, take their money and leave them to do whatever the fuck they want. Yeah.

 

Damn true, I would love to read something like that...l but finding a bi character is pratically impossible. A good one, even worst.
If you like books tho there is at least 1 I read where we have that. The female protagonist that is a, let’s say, prostitute (but in a setting where her work is something sacred, so it’s kinda not what you expect it to be) and yes she has women and men.

 

Just passing by again. Wow already 3 pages in the thread, that is a lot (for me).

 

The reason I like harems is both simple and complicated.

On the one hand I won't deny a small part of it is Wish fulfilment. What guy doesn't have a small part of them that dreams about being fawned on by pretty girls?

But I hate people who speak bad about harems as if that's all there is to them because it's not.

Another part of it is nostalgia. Some of my favorite anime growing up were some of the classic harems that to this day I feel were some of the best examples in certain aspects. Negima and Techi Muyo just to name a few. I enjoyed them as a kid and keep in mind I was a KID! Meaning while I might have had some interest in girls I enjoyed these shows even before I was REALLY interested in them.

Another part is harem series really do have some good aspects to them. It allows for you to blend various kinds of romatic genera together. You don't have to have one series where the girl is a bit tsundere or a series where she's more sweet and bubbly. You can have both in the same series as part of the main cast. Also because they are both after the same guy you can play them off each other in unique ways that you just can't do in other genera.

Remember how I mentioned Negima? That series is pratically legendary for how it managed to balance an insanely large cast of characters with all of them being at least partly developed and those that were well developed far surpassed most other series especially back then. It's harem series that tend to have these large casts of diverse characters all bound together. Because they all revolve around the MC it creates a certain dynamic amoung them that can be fun to watch.

Lastly there is just the fact harems generally don't exist IRL. Sure there might be some in some places and there are especially ones in certain foreign countries. But most of us watching anime online don't live in that kind of world. So for us it's as good as fantasy. So in a way asking "Why do you like harems" is like asking someone "why do you like fantasy"?

You can pick apart fantasy stories all day, pointing out how parts of it don't work, or how some things about it seem wrong or unfair. But at the en of the day people just like fantasy even with it's faults. Same with harems..... at least IMO.

P.S.

Spoiler: Side comment about reverse harems

Regarding the subject of reverse harems.... I don't mind them except somehow they tend to be written even worse than normal harems. I don't know what it is but in harems the guy can be a bit plain but he still has a fair bit of personality in most cases and the girls are normally a colorful array of characters even if they do tend to get a bit cliche after you see enough harems. But in reverse harems the girl tends to just be a doll that exists only for the guys to fawn over, all of whom are like greek gods in how overly perfect they are.

So while I have nothing against reverse harems..... somehow they just tend to be of lower quality. I think maybe it's because there is more demand in the market for harems than reverse harems so the talented writers go to where the money is and those that bother with reverse harems are the lesser ones.

I'm not saying all harem series are great either. Plenty have cardboard cut out for MC's and copy and pasted girls. But at least I can say some harems were good. But with reverse harems I think I've only ever seen one that I liked. It was.... the girls name then "of the dawn"... can't remember it exactly right now.

 

Nah it's really just the distribution on their roles. Male and Female were equal task wise.

 

Though most of the story start being harem, how it end can make it stay as harem or pseudo-harem .
Like nisekoi, despite making MC interact deeply with several girl at once, in the end author only make him choose one.

IMO, other than badly written, the reason you hate that story being harem probably because the ship you support never left the port (for some people)