Forum - View topicNEWS: 'Magic Repo Man: Dumped by My Party, I'll Cash In With a Cute Support Fairy to Become the Stro
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Dop.L
Posts: 746 Location: London |
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Is the life of a magic repo man always intense?
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Suginami85
 Posts: 6 |
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What's with all the "my-colleagues-do-not-recognise-my-greatness-but-I'll-show-them" stories lately?
Did Japanese viewers grew out of harem fantasies, yet they are just as petty as working adults? Last edited by Suginami85 on Wed Nov 12, 2025 9:00 am; edited 1 time in total |
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varmintx
 Posts: 1320 Location: Covington, KY |
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When the stupid title is so egregiously long it can't even fit in the title of the forum thread.
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Oggers
 Posts: 467 Location: Ontario, Canada |
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Well, a lot of these "kicked out of the party" stories also double as harem fantasies, since the main character will inevitably end up surrounded by hot girls who fall for him immediately since they can see how great he truly is (unlike the stupid jerks from his former party). |
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akitainu
 Posts: 208 Location: SATX |
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I laughed when I read this. People looked. |
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DRosencraft
Posts: 704 |
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As Oggers notes, most of these do end up going the harem route anyway, so there's not really much daylight. From a macro perspective, you have two thematic undertones merging, both of which are at the center of the harem fantasy motif. First, the target demo tends to be "lonely" young males in the sense that these are males who are not in a romantic relationship and may not necessarily view prospects of having such a relationship in the near future. This has born out in various polls and surveys in Japan, as well as some of the regions anime exports to. Part of the cause of that "loneliness" is the fear of rejection. When you circle back to the wish fulfillment aspect of many anime, what more hopeful message is there than, "hey, you may have been rejected by your old group, but that's cause they didn't understand you. Here's this new, better, group that adores everything about you from day 1 and will do everything for you." These subset of anime gently push that notion of getting out there and not being a NEET, that there's stuff about you that even you may not realize are great, and some group (possibly of hot women) is waiting for you. The second is the revenge plot. Many of these "kicked out of the party" shows tend to not settle on just being kicked out the party, but the road towards getting some type of revenge on the original party. This again plays into the "lonely male" fantasy that they've been wronged by the group they're with, which has resulted in them being as they are, and the desire to not only overcome their current state (the part 1 that usually leads to the harem story), but make the original offenders suffer in some way. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20003 |
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If there's one thing you can never have enough of in a world of RPG-style swords and sorcery, it's banished stories!
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SaiyanHeretic
Posts: 108 |
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That sounds really positive and affirming... until you remember that 99% of anime in this genre stars a potato-faced protag-kun with no discernable character traits, or indeed redeeming personal qualities at all, because he's meant to be nothing more than a cipher for the audience to self-insert. But I suppose being honest about that up front is a hard sell. This entire genre is the anime equivalent of Hollywood movies aimed at middle-aged divorced dads: brainless and formulaic, a band-aid for inadequate incels to feel better about themselves without being challenged to self-reflect and address what they need to change which will actually improve their situation. "You're just misunderstood! It's not you, it's the world that's wrong, so here's a better one! Have this overpowered cheat skill that solves all your problems! Women will throw themselves at you! Your enemies will rue the day they crossed you!" Light novels so derivative from one another that they might as well be AI-generated. Animators stretched thin to deliver a minimum viable product for crass merchandizing opportunities. It's the cancer killing this industry. |
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CelticMutt
Posts: 96 |
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The majority of these "kicked out of the party" stories are allegories for Black Companies - ie the infamous Japanese extremely exploitative companies. The protagonist is always someone whose talent isn't recognized by the people they work with/exploit them, so they get canned only to find people who truly appreciate them while also getting revenge on their former colleagues. It's something that speaks to workers who feel the same way about their job, and wish they could do something about it but can't because of Japanese work culture. |
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