Anime: The World of Fake Romance | The Artifice
Love is everywhere. Here, there, wherever you're reading this excerpt from, even in the fictional world… right?
I stumbled upon this article and was fascinated by the title simple because I've been having the same feeling recently. At first I thought it might be I built an immunity to the love, like it was some kind of drug, since I do watch quite a few romances. Later, I began to realize that there is this lingering stench of falsehood to a good chunk of romances.
Although the excerpt coming from the link doesn't say much about it, the content give nice examples of the bad, or fake, romances and the good; it flows pretty well making for an entertaining read that ties both opposites within a similar context -- that being the harem genre.
An interesting thing that popped into my head while reading this was the formula that was set in place strictly because, on the manga and anime side, the writers wanted to keep an engaged audience -- for example adding new character or more conflict between establish relationships. This formula, like many other mediums, ended up becomes what romance is known today and the new form is anything but realistic or believable. It has gotten to a point where I sometimes catch myself saying thing like, "I expect these characters to fall in love", so when they do -- even without any kind of development -- you trick yourself into tightening up the loose ends yourself.
So if you are interested in a deeper look at the romance genre, I'd say give this one a read.