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The List - 5 Worst Anime Relationships


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Hal14



Joined: 01 Apr 2018
Posts: 653
Location: Heart of africa
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:12 pm Reply with quote
Laughing Laughing Rolling Eyes
Before i even clicked i knew
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3017
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:29 pm Reply with quote
I'd probably put both NANA and Oniisama e.../Dear Brother... on my list. Shojo titles are absolutely rife with this stuff.
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Heishi



Joined: 06 Mar 2016
Posts: 1314
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:38 pm Reply with quote
Oh god, Love Hina. That is just...no.
It has one of the worst, if not the absolute worst, female anime character in history: Naru Narugesawa
I have no idea what makes her so effin popular to begin with. She almost perfectly symbolizes everything wrong with the anime girl archetype.

Love Hina as a whole, reminds me why I love shows like Aho Girl so much.
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StarfighterPegasus



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 149
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:40 pm Reply with quote
Why isn't Sakura and Sasuke up here, or Naruto and Hinata?

Sakura came off as a fan girl in the first series only wanting Sasuke for superficial reasons and then it escalated in the second series where Sakura still clung to Sasuke even after the guy tried to kill her twice and put her in a horrible mind trap. That made Sasuke the worst boyfriend material and Sakura desperate for love, sending the wrong message to the audience. "If you keep trying a person who has little to no interest in you will fall into your arms. Don't give up" That is a horrible message. No wonder Kishimoto said Sakura was one of his biggest regrets.

Naruto and Hinata are not much better. first off the series is called Naruto so if they are going to give Naruto a love interest it has to be someone who gets as much focus as the hero. Which means Hinata should have had Sakura's spot on the team. It tells the reader or watcher that this character is Naruto's main love interest. By shoving Hinata to the background it weakens the relationship building between the two characters giving the feeling that Hinata was more of an after thought, showing the weakness in Kishimoto's writing which shouldn't be there because the Naruto series excels at relationship building between characters.

Hinata wasn't very interesting and she had limited interactions with Naruto, choosing early on that she would be with him despite the two having little chemistry between them. Making Hinata come off as desperate and a stalker to a degree. It isn't really healthy to wait for your lover to fall into your arms.

Then there was the character baiting of Naruto x Sakura during Shippuden that really grinded my gears because it shows that Kishimoto knows how to write a romantic pairing.
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Heishi



Joined: 06 Mar 2016
Posts: 1314
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:44 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Then there was the character baiting of Naruto x Sakura during Shippuden that really grinded my gears because it shows that Kishimoto knows how to write a romantic pairing.


Sakura is actually worse than Hinata, honestly. I dislike Sakura for the same reasons I dislike characters like Naru Narugesawa.
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TravellinMatt77



Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 85
Location: Durham, NC
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:53 pm Reply with quote
Lelouch Lamperouge and Shirley Fenette (from Code Geass) are another great example of a doomed couple. It's pretty complex, too. Lelouch spurns Shirley because he wants to protect her, but even after Shirley discovers the truth about him, she persists in putting herself in harm's way for the sake of their love. To be fair, though, Lelouch and anyone is a bad pairing.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4566
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 1:59 pm Reply with quote
Gonna second Sasuke and Sakura. Sure girl, have your childhood crush on the surly brooding hot kid. That's fine. Now continue to desperately cling to said crush after he betrays your whole village, joins up with its greatest enemy, joins up with its other greatest enemies, tries to kill its leader, tries to kill you on multiple occasions, tries to kill your closest comrade on even more occasions, and just acts like a complete irredeemable douche in general. Oh, but it's all right, because he helps the good guys win at the end, so it's like nothing ever happened! And then he dumps raising a daughter as essentially a single parent on you because most of the rest of the village still hates him for aforementioned reasons. Yikes...you don't realize until you type it all out like that just how toxic it is.

The funny part is that, at least earlier on in Shippuden, Pierrot seemed to be trying to push Naruto and Sakura closer together, as they gave them a few lower-key moments together that I'd assume weren't in the original manga. Eventually they had to yield to the brick wall of canon though.
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StarfighterPegasus



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 149
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 2:03 pm Reply with quote
TravellinMatt77 wrote:
Lelouch Lamperouge and Shirley Fenette (from Code Geass) are another great example of a doomed couple. It's pretty complex, too. Lelouch spurns Shirley because he wants to protect her, but even after Shirley discovers the truth about him, she persists in putting herself in harm's way for the sake of their love. To be fair, though, Lelouch and anyone is a bad pairing.
I tend to dislike the whole. "I can't love you because I have to protect you" thing. Its like they can't do both at the same time or something. That is the trademark of bad romantic writing right there.
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Lactobacillus yogurti



Joined: 17 Aug 2011
Posts: 839
Location: Latin America
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 2:06 pm Reply with quote
My personal gripe would have to be Tsubasa and Sanae from Captain Tsubasa.

spoiler[She was obsessed with him ever since she was a kid, acting all jealous and not afraid of bonking people with her flagpole for it, and then she just became a doormat, while Tsubasa only cared for football... And he only finally noticed her after another guy pursued Sanae and Kumi, the younger manager, confessed to him.]

Takahashi Yoichi can't make decent female characters or relationships... The only one worth its ink is spoiler[Kojiro and Maki.]

Another relationship I can't stand is Yuki and Naruse from Namaikizakari. spoiler[He's just so pushy regarding her and doesn't quite understand that she's not comfortable with it, yet she's also too afraid of speaking up. It's toxic. REALLY toxic.]
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#HayamiLover



Joined: 22 Jul 2018
Posts: 796
Location: Eastern Europe
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 2:07 pm Reply with quote
BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
I'd probably put both NANA and Oniisama e.../Dear Brother... on my list. Shojo titles are absolutely rife with this stuff.


I could point out that Japanese female prose very strongly idealizes destructive and tragic relationships, but NANA directly shows these relationships as problematic and its message is straightforward that it is bad. It's like blaming Romeo and Juliet for promoting blood feud.
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killjoy_the



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2457
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 2:18 pm Reply with quote
Smart move not to have a poll on this Laughing
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Calsolum



Joined: 11 May 2010
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 2:18 pm Reply with quote
I think this is one of those few lists that I can agree with wholeheartedly.
Well technically I'd throw some more in there but all these choices I can get behind.
...
...
huh. I had an interesting thought ... I think it might be easier to completely agree on or strongly support a list that portrays negative qualities instead of one that celebrates positive ones. Like best pairs, favourite shows, best characters, ect.

nah that's probably just my imagination.

Shield hero always felt like a creepy situation, especially how Raphtalia solution to showing her sincerity to Naofumi was to... keep her leash on. I mean I get that he had trust issues and those are scars that don't and shouldn't go away easily but... couldn't you have come up with a better, positive solution author? I hope that their relationship equalizes later on but really with such a terrible start, it's almost unsalvageable to me.

Yuno is... iconic. She's pretty much the image of yandere for as long as I can remember. And while the consensus is that she's batshit insane, which she is it should also be noted that spoiler[she's a victim of severe mental and physical abuse via her parents.] She has no empathy for anyone not even spoiler[her past self, killing her in order to replace her and redo everything from square one]

Oreimo.
...
...
I don't want to talk about this series or the his other series with the same fetish. Hentai should stay in their section.

Misa was... uh. A real piece of work. I feel sorry for the spoiler[two shinigami] who died for her. I suppose sometimes you can't help who you fall in love with.

Never saw love Hina, I was a fan of Ken Akamatsu. Loved "A.I. Love you"(Which I now realize was a pun) and Negima, but the latter series got stale after a long time. Ended up dropping it around the time spoiler[he entered some tournament against his father's comrade] which I suppose was for the best as I heard he ruined his own series due to conflict with his editor or something. I know there's a sequel series but as far as I'm concerned Negima is over.
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StarfighterPegasus



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 149
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 2:29 pm Reply with quote
Heishi wrote:
Quote:
Then there was the character baiting of Naruto x Sakura during Shippuden that really grinded my gears because it shows that Kishimoto knows how to write a romantic pairing.


Sakura is actually worse than Hinata, honestly. I dislike Sakura for the same reasons I dislike characters like Naru Narugesawa.
I actually liked Sakura in the beginning when she seemed to be the one to keep Naruto under control in a though abusive but motherly way. But when it came to Sasuke, her tsun side seem to have disappeared and it was nothing but dere. I would have liked Sakura more if she out grew her crush on Sasuke and while still loving him wasn't afraid to stand up to him and not tolerate his douche bag tendences but that never really came to be.

Hinata should have been given more screen time and giving her a movie doesn't really make up for the neglect she was given. I think its a rule in romantic storytelling that the reader and or watcher will pair up the main hero and heroine of the story and to many the main heroine of Naruto is Sakura so it only makes things even more rough for Hinata when Sakura was given so much attention in Naruto that people are tricked into believing Sakura suppose to be Naruto's main love interest and the excuse that was given to sink the ship "You only liked me to compete with Sasuke just felt so...weaselly.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 3:15 pm Reply with quote
I think it's fine not to give a main love interest the most screen time, but you still need to give them some development. Hinata didn't really have that and you compound that with Sakura, the love interest who is the most developed, being a bit messed up and it fall apart.

There's so few show who follow character over a long period of time, I wished they instead introduced some new characters over time. Childhood love interest rarely work out irl because people has adult are so different from kid.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18138
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 3:50 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
There's so few show who follow character over a long period of time, I wished they instead introduced some new characters over time. Childhood love interest rarely work out irl because people has adult are so different from kid.

While your latter statement is mostly true, it's not that odd; both one of my sisters and the cousin I am closest with ended up reuniting with and marrying their high school sweethearts after separating for several years during their college and early career days. (Though apparently in the cousin's case, there was a tacit understanding when they broke up that they'd marry each other if neither had found someone better by their late 20s. They've been married for around 20 years now.)
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