Once something gets popular, there’s always a bandwagon that forms to make the most of its momentum until it comes to a stop. It happens to everything, includinganime. Art styles change, stories get refined, and shows fall in and out of favor as tastes evolve.
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Luckily for some shows and genres, they get to stick around even once their peak has passed. Mecha fans will always find something to scratch their robot itch. The formula for battle shonen anime hasn’t really changed that much sinceDragon BallandYu Yu Hakusho. Butother trendsweren’t so lucky.
7Sukeban Anime
The older and younger generations will always clash with each other. It’s why humanity has seen cultural shifts in nearly every medium, be it rock n' roll in the 1950s, or different forms of avant-garde art. 1980s Japan saw the rise of shows and comics about juvenile delinquents, with ‘sukeban’- punk schoolgirls- catching on in particular as they either caused trouble or shut it down.
For example,Sukeban Deka, a manga about a punk girl working undercover for the police, was so popular it inspired two OVAs, three live-action movies, and multiple TV dramas.Hana no Asuka-gumi, which followed a gang of sukeban fighting other punks, also received 2 OVAs and similar acclaim. As didTales of Yajikita Collegeand the more comedicProject A-ko. The trend faded out by the 1990s, but leads with attitude would only get more popular in the following decade.
6Edgy Dubs, Edgier Content
One of the reasons anime caught on as its own thing was its more mature focus. The likes ofAkiraandGhost in the Shellwere more adult and in-depth to fit alongside Disney classics on store shelves. Their tone was why distributors like Manga Entertainment went all-in on bringing over as many ‘grown-up’ movies, series and OVAs as they could. The 1990s saw the rise of edgy content, and some of these early entries were the edgiest of all.
For every cult classiclikeWicked CityandNinja Scroll, there were terrible over-the-top examples like the grossApocalypse Zero, the nihilisticViolence Jack, and terribleAngel Cop. If dubs could translate an insult into a curse, they’d go for it and double down. While blood, boobs, and bad language will always have their appeal, they’re generally more refined today thanks to newer forms of distribution and evolving tastes.
5Pokeclones
Those series got away with it because they were usually released direct-to-video or shown very late at night away from young eyes. Good 90s kids who stuck to their programming would get gentler affairs. The biggest of which wasPokemon. The tie-in to the Nintendo games was a force to be reckoned with during the tail end of the decade and start of the 21st century.
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So, other studios got in on the action.Digimontweaked the formulaby making their equivalents virtual pets, whileMonster Rancherused an isekai fantasy setting. That’s without getting intoBakugan Battle Brawlers,Legendz,Fighting Food-ons, etc. They’re less common nowadays, withYo-Kai Watchperhaps being the most notable Pokeclone running today. The rest either stuck to games or disappeared entirely.
4The Evangelion Bandwagon
Neon Genesis Evangeliondidn’t destroy the mecha genre, though it still stood out from the pack. It was more introspective thanMobile Suit Gundam, more tense thanMacross, and had a dark tone of its own. The series was almost its own thing entirely compared to the rest of the genre. Nonetheless, other series would use it as inspiration to provide something much more moody, albeit not as blatantly as the Pokeclones.
Themech vs alien showRahXephonstarted off more directly takingEVAtraits (e.g. the intro) before gradually mixing in its own elements. Likewise,Sōkyū no Fafneralso usedEVA-like tropes with its pilot & mech mental connections without outright hitting the same beats. The same couldn’t be said forDe:vadasy, which copiedEVA’s character archetypes and plot turns nearly word for word while throwing in a gross adult turn that left it as a bad memory for those who saw it.
3A Harem of Harems
The start of the harem genre, where the lead is surrounded by suitors that leave them conflicted, is generally credited to manga maestro Rumiko Takahashi and her 1980s breakout hitUrusei Yatsura. But the genre hit its peak in the 1990s and 2000s with shows likeTenchi Muyo,Ranma ½, Love Hina, andOuran High School Host Clubcatching on with fans after some wish fulfillment.
The genre hasn’t disappeared since its arrival, as the formula of pretty babes/hunks is always a crowd pleaser. It’s just not as dense or as shameless as it once was.Modern successes likeKonoSubaandMy Next Life as a Villainessmix in a hefty dose ofself-referential ironyto make the eye candy more palatable, alongside newer trends like isekai and light novel female antagonists.
2Slapstick Abuse
Slapstick violence has been a flagship of animation since its beginning. However, there’s a kind of uncanny valley to on-screen fights. The term is usually used to describe the icky feeling people get from characters who are too unrealistic to be human, yet too realistic to be fantasy figures (see Renesmee in theTwilightfilms). With violence, if it’s too cartoony to be an action stunt fest or horror scene, but too raw to be a wacky gag, it can just feel off.
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Shows likeKen Akamatsu’sLove Hinaare good examples of this lack of balance. Keitaro being smacked around by his suitors was meant to be more slapstick. However, in context it can feel more like abuse today. Modern anime tends to balance the two out more evenly by either toning it down to something more appropriate or going allLooney Toonswith it (Nichijō’s Misato, the ‘Gundere’, breaks out literal firearms around her crush, but never hits anything).
1The Glomp
At least that sort of thing stayed in anime, right? The fans didn’t start copying those gestures because they thought it’d be cute…did they? True, they weren’t uppercutting each other to the moon a laLove Hina. They did glomp each other though. It was a running tackle that overly enthusiastic characters did towards their friends and loved ones like inRanma ½and similar shows.
Fans would replicate it with groups or at conventions, which became such a problem that many cons banned it to protect cosplayers and guest stars from getting hurt. It would join other fandom foibles like the infamous yaoi paddles in notoriety before largely disappearing from the community at large. Which is for the best.
