What have you learn about Japan from watching anime?

G

gigguk

Completely Average High School Student
What i've learnt from anime/manga:

-There are alot of damaged properties that can be fixed overnight
-Japanese people must have a nosebleed when they see a good looking girl's panties or in skimpy clothing.
-There is nothing wrong with thinking about your little sister while you masturbate.
-Approximately two thirds of school girls have breasts the size of water melons
-Aparently gravity-defying hairstyles, unnatural eye and hair colour are common these days.
 
gigguk said:
What i've learnt from anime/manga:

-There are alot of damaged properties that can be fixed overnight
-Japanese people must have a nosebleed when they see a good looking girl's panties or in skimpy clothing.
-There is nothing wrong with thinking about your little sister while you masturbate.
-Approximately two thirds of school girls have breasts the size of water melons
-Aparently gravity-defying hairstyles, unnatural eye and hair colour are common these days.
Click to expand...
Thought this might be a serious one :(
Those look realy dated now. See way more girls in the realistic and flat catagories than melons, which are largely confined to series like queens blade which isn't in a school.

As for the genre tropes;

-All hair colurs except for blond (unless they have blue eyes) are natural. For those it's always died and as a "statement" from a rebelious character.
-All members of the same family share hair and eye colour, unless it's gone grey
- all women who speak posh are either lesbian display wierd sexual fetishes in public or both.
- eyes shrink with age.
- the only characters who have visible lips, are either complete sluts or a characters mother.
-girls who where glasses have larger breasts than others
- pilots of giant robots are prone to dressing up
 
A girl will cook for a guy she likes, will put her heart and soul into it, then watch as the guy eats it (which is way creepy by the way), but will never eat herself.

Willpower defeats superior skill, talent and overwhelming odds everytime.

You know when two guys are best friends when one promises the other that he will be the one to kill them, and he'd better not die before that.
 
Reaper gI said:
gigguk said:
What i've learnt from anime/manga:

-There are alot of damaged properties that can be fixed overnight
-Japanese people must have a nosebleed when they see a good looking girl's panties or in skimpy clothing.
-There is nothing wrong with thinking about your little sister while you masturbate.
-Approximately two thirds of school girls have breasts the size of water melons
-Aparently gravity-defying hairstyles, unnatural eye and hair colour are common these days.
Click to expand...
Thought this might be a serious one :(
Those look realy dated now. See way more girls in the realistic and flat catagories than melons, which are largely confined to series like queens blade which isn't in a school.

As for the genre tropes;

-All hair colurs except for blond (unless they have blue eyes) are natural. For those it's always died and as a "statement" from a rebelious character.
-All members of the same family share hair and eye colour, unless it's gone grey
- all women who speak posh are either lesbian display wierd sexual fetishes in public or both.
- eyes shrink with age.
- the only characters who have visible lips, are either complete sluts or a characters mother.
-girls who where glasses have larger breasts than others
- pilots of giant robots are prone to dressing up
Click to expand...

Not so sure that you get way more realistically proportioned female characters these days, the melons are still prolific. Especially with shows like School of the dead,bleach ect ect. Although its all female characters to be honest, and their breasts always seem to be the victims of cheap unfunny gags. However I have hope that the situation is improving.

anyway, stupid things I have learned:
* the shy nerd guy stereoype is actually the real stud muffin, and could potentially have multiple girls fighting for his affection. However the nerd stereotype will continuously miss,ignore or blunder any chance he usually gets rather than take the initiative
* middle aged/ old men/pigs are often disturbingly perverted
*The more extremely feminine a man looks, the more female attention he will get.
*School girls get away with wearing alarmingly short skirts
*Maids are often trained killers
*scars in the shape of an X seem to be the most common type of scar
*Westerners and oriental people have exactly the same phsical features and looks most of the time(apart from the staple blonde hair of course)
 
There are huge stomping mech's everywhere.
Most people have something wrong with them- be it personal trauma or physical difference (eg being a vampire)
All class reps are like Hitler.
All school buildings have a central concrete block with a clock on it.
No one ever has any lessons that last more than 30 seconds.
 
Basically, anime has taught me that pride gets in the way for Japanese men when they enter the working world and women are still expected to get married/stay at home once the baby is born. And sexism is still very much an issue for working women... though that's probably true anywhere in the world 'cause men tend not to like having females ranked higher than them, which is why female American presidents are no-nos.

In Japan, the whole 'senpai/kouhai' respect thing at school is intended to teach students what's required in the future. In every story dealing with working life, the average office worker at a decent company is expected to bow down/act inferior to those higher up the food chain; losing their dignity. And in both Hataraki Man and Suppli, it's shown that two separate office ladies have to A) use their wiles/femininity and B) accept being talked down to by males - it being accepted by others when an older male employee suggests being a female reporter is easy since they can sleep around to get stories.

And, though I speak not a word of Japanese, I know there are no like-for-like swear words - resulting in the likes of Gantz getting dub re-writes with lots of swearing. I hear 'sait-ey!' a lot when a female is describing a male as 'the worst', and that seems to be one of the more extreme insults used. It's impossible to know without speaking the lingo and visiting the country to see for myself, but the language itself seems to put a forced politeness on Japanese people. Combined with the whole '-sama' respect showing and whatnot, it'd be difficult to express oneself as honestly as is possible in English.

As for the whole cooking for guys they like routine, so oft seen in anime with school girls, that's part of the whole future marriage/home-maker thing. Japan is less sexist than it was years ago, afaik, and that's why female characters aren't always shown waiting for marriage in more modern works, but it just seems to be part of Japanese culture for women to act like that.
 
All children are orphans or have parents that take too long business trips. Japan's mortality rate and tourism industry must be huge with all these missing parents. How the hell do these kids survive? They seem to have a pot of money but it's never explained where it comes from.

I absolutely hate this trope.
 
Educational Philistines somehow manage to get into the countries most prestigious universities

The boy always gets cock blocked last moment when trying to confess to the girl he loves

Seemingly average guys somehow get all the girls
 
Just Passing Through said:
A girl will cook for a guy she likes, will put her heart and soul into it, then watch as the guy eats it *and nearly dies from her lack of cooking skill, without ever realizing herself that she can't cook worth a damn* (which is way creepy by the way), but will never eat it herself *suggesting that she does secretly know that she cooks toxic waste*
Click to expand...
Small addendum.
 
ilmaestro said:
Just Passing Through said:
A girl will cook for a guy she likes, will put her heart and soul into it, then watch as the guy eats it *and nearly dies from her lack of cooking skill, without ever realizing herself that she can't cook worth a damn* (which is way creepy by the way), but will never eat it herself *suggesting that she does secretly know that she cooks toxic waste*
Click to expand...
Small addendum.
Click to expand...

lol
 
>Main male lead has a harem while side chars are alone/jealous.
>shoujo is too complex.

Here is a diagram to show my point;

Kirrimir_1287829724.jpg
 
If it were serious then I could actually put down quite a lot.

But for silliness sake:

- Time scales go out the window. Especially in shounen. 5 minutes can last 10 episodes. 3 years can go by in 3 episodes.

- Hair can easily defy gravity

- Japanese people don't look japanese

- Everyone, without exception, is secretly a pervert

- If you need to get something monumental done, then power up.
 
Churchy99 said:
Japanese people don't look Japanese
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Didn't they do some research on this? I can't find anywhere to link to, but IIRC Japanese people think anime characters (who don't have an otherwise obviously defined ethnicity) look Asian, Westerners that they look Caucasian.

Churchy99 said:
Everyone, without exception, is secretly a pervert.
Click to expand...
Come now, that's just a universal truth.

I've learned that they have sensible, well enforced rules about footwear indoors. Who wants crap from outside all over their goddamn carpets (is it my imagination, or didn't people in this country used to remove their shoes at the door)? Not that I'm one for etiquette, but it does seem the considerate thing not to walk mud all over friends / family members' floors.

That and every girl in Japan (no matter how much it goes against her character) is required to dress up in a cutesy / embarrassing outfit at some point.
 
I always remove my shoes at the door, yeah, I think/hope it's still considered the thing to do by polite people. Some people in this country though, you wonder if the combination of their socks and feet are going to be any improvement, though.
 
And you should also have known this:

"A true english gentleman, drinks tea, wears a silk top hat and announces to everyone that they are in fact a true gentleman. "

because it's the truth.
 
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