Like many businesses, the anime industry tends to play it safe when it comes to adapting certain source material -- mainly manga and light novels -- into anime. As a result, they very rarely take risk, which leads to a lot of anime following a certain pattern, or using some kind of gimmick to up the viewership of their products. But most industries that are unable, or too afraid, to take risks are bound to never grow.
So why are so many companies unwilling to take risks? Well the simplest answer is that these projects -- of adapting things, like manga, into anime -- cost money, and companies want a return for their investment; as a result, they heavily rely on things in the past that are known to work. There is a bit more depth to the reason why though, so we can't just leave the blame solely on the people making the anime, there is also a problem with a majority of people watching.
Since making anime is a business, their survival in this industry rest wholly on the people purchasing the products. And in a space stuck in-between niche and popular, such as anime, a good majority of people buying this stuff want things that are familiar. Rather than being too different, or innovative, companies have to stick to iteration to say afloat. And yet, there is one more factor to round out this interesting safety circle -- which is the manga, and light novels, being adapted to anime.
With the goal of most mangaka and writers being to have there work in as hands as possible, it's no surprise that they want their content to be made into an anime. The result of this is, they end up having to format their stories to fit the formula that many anime follow to even be considered by an anime studios.
Depending on the genre, and possibly the source material, the resulting anime will have something that is used to try and bring a larger audience. Wether it is something based in a high school setting, or an obsessive use of fanservice, these are pretty common tactics used to drive an audience's attention. The ones I want to focus on are fanservice, as I've already mentioned, and patterns used in certain genres.
No Tits, No Service
A pretty common practice in anime is the use of fanservice to grab the attention of the larger demographic that watch anime, that being the teenage male. Some will go over board and compromise the story in favor of filling the screen full of breasts and ass, but some include it in as a treat, and keep their story unscathed.
The two anime I have in mind that follow the latter, and coincidently come from the light novel side of adaptations, is High School DxD and the Monogatari Series. Although they both have good stories, not everyone would be sold on story alone. So they add a little extra titillation to appeal to the layperson.
I'm not bother so much by these tactics, since it is one the of the main reason I got into anime in the first place; however, there are people that don't want sex and story to mix, and I can understand why. But the things that probably bothers me the most, is the tired patterns that are used in things like comedy.
Pay For Patterns
Something that I have previously expression my frustration for is the use of violence against male characters as a comedy platform. I have mostly avoided these type of anime from season to season, but Inuhasa is an anime this season that features this pattern heavily in most episodes.
It doesn't bother me to the point of wanting to drop it, but that kind of "comedy" really doesn't strike me as funny. Either way, I do see this type of comedic relief quite often, which includes a hypersensitive female and a highly, or moderately perverted male, so this pattern will happen frequently.
This probably happens more in comedies with a mix of romance, and they happen to be the favorite reoccurring genre in anime. Nevertheless, there are probably more patterns in different genres, but this one is the one I personally hate the most and want to stop as soon as possible.
Both Please!
Even though I dropped it, I still saw that Free! had a modified "cute girls doing cute things" slice-of-life pattern; and not only that, there was fanservice -- or manservice for those who think fanservice is only for scantly clad women.
So even though they had the initial backlash from fans not liking the hot man meat in their face, the anime itself is pretty safe. Which is fine, but double dipping like they did, seems far too much like pandering for my taste, and that it also one reason for me not continuing the anime.
Any Solutions?
All these examples are still decent anime that I may or may not watch, but listing them isn't going to change much. So you might ask, what are some solution to break this circle of safety? Well I wrote about web series before, and think that starting with smaller projects would be one of the better answers to this problem.
The second being to mix familiar practices with unfamiliar ones, to make things a bit more interesting. Something like The World God Only Knows for harems, and Oregairu for romcoms.
There are probably way more anime out there that have tried and failed trying to do something different, but failure only really tells where you can't push just yet. Overtime, that type of stuff might change, but the best we can do it is to challenge the status quo, and hope something sticks. Until then, we are still stuck in an ocean of safe anime.