I'm on a quest to understand exactly why I like the anime that I do. It's relatively easy to enumerate which ones I like more than others, MyAnimeList exists more-or-less exactly for this purpose, but that doesn't really explore what makes a show excellent beyond an attempt to pattern-match (studio, release year etc.) or to compare with others to find compatibility and recommendations.
...finding interest in the mundane or levity in the absurd.
Teasing an answer more meaningful than "I just do" means examining constituents, and for varying reasons - my continual battle to write creative fiction one - characters, specifically protagonists, stand more prominently than others. To enumerate all the different archetypes would be folly and missing the point: great protagonists - great characters - transcend the clichés imposed upon them by genre or circumstance. All too often though anime lets the archetypes rule - why else would there be the existence of shortcut words like "
tsundere"?
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Or to give its full, punctuated title: Princess Lover! The premise - once again - is to cram as many lithe, buxom females into as confined a space as possible and provide an empty husk of a male protagonist to catalyse their frequently outlandish but never overtly raunchy interactions. In short: fan-service romance comedy. The anime is just one of a number of media co-minglings, starting with the visual novel by newcomers Ricotta (as in the cheese) and followed by light novels, manga, this anime and a related radio show. What should be surprising is just how many different ways such a vapid and paper-thin plot can be told.
this is borderline misogynistic, reinforced by the profusion of quantum singularities where underwear should be
The lead character's parents are killed and while moping near their grave one day he gets embroiled in a scrappily animated chase between a horse drawn carriage and an open-topped jeep full of thugs. One tenuous event leads to another and the pink haired, well-endowed passenger is flung from a cliff into a thicket of trees where upon the protagonist wakes up and finds himself fondling her chest. This is all immaterial of course because he has been adopted by his immeasurably wealthy grandfather, ostensibly in order to find the people responsible for his parent's murder and subsequently avenge them. Instead though he spends time rubbing elbows with various females and partaking in the local school social club (by attending a party after etiquette lessons, naturally). That this feels so familiar is odd considering the set-up at least is superficially unique.
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