The world of shojo anime is packed with a variety of charming tropes, conventions, and even running gags, all of which help give shojo anime its unique personality and flair in the broader world of Japanese animation. Shojo anime caters to teen girls and is written accordingly, including everything from inspiring messages of female empowerment to goofy tropes that don’t really contribute that much.
Amusingly, even the silliest or most transparent shojo anime tropes aren’t that bad — they actually add to the appeal sometimes, and fans can’t help but enjoy these familiar tropes time and again. These are the worst shojo tropes that aren’t downright harmful or problematic, and fans have learned to embrace them as a part of the shojo anime experience.
10 Clumsy Protagonists
Physical comedy and pratfalls are common in anime series of all kinds, especially romantic comedy titles or slice-of-life series that have cartoony flair. Interestingly, shojo anime often focuses that physical comedy on the heroine herself, making her a total klutz.
These shojo girls are prone to tripping and falling, dropping things, stumbling into the wall, and more. Most likely, this is an excuse for the female lead to bumble right into her male lover’s arms or give the love interest a reason to take hold of that heroine and help her out as a kind gesture.
9 Protagonists Who Deny Their Own Appeal
Shojo protagonists are often written to be relatable to female viewers and readers, including self-image issues. That’s understandable enough, but it may ring hollow when a shojo protagonist is genuinely beautiful but denies it every time someone mentions it.
These shojo heroines are clearly meant to be relatable with their self-image issues and self-deprecating words, but if she’s a total stunner, it doesn’t mean much. Still, this gentle, dandere-style dialogue may add to the charm anyway, and the girl may mentally blossom and realize her beauty after all.
8 Magical Girl Outfit Transformations
The magical girl subgenre is a staple of shojo anime, most of all Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, among other titles. In particular, Sailor Moon popularized the trope of magical outfit transformations, which can actually eat up a lot of screen time.
These transformations are intriguing the first few times, but then it becomes tedious and hardly seems necessary once viewers get the point. Also, there’s the implication that teenage girls are undressing in public to gear up, if briefly.
7 The Inevitable Bishonen Prince
Shonen and shojo anime alike often feature an intensely attractive member of the desired sex on-screen, with females being a bishojo and males being a bishonen. It’s silly and transparent in both cases, but shojo fans can’t help but love and hope for a bishonen to waltz on-screen.
Countless shojo titles will have at least one gorgeous, princely boy who makes girls swoon with little effort, though the heroine might not be so easily swayed by his looks. Fortunately, this goofy trope is kept in check by the heroine actually trying to connect with that young prince on a personal level and not just fawn over his perfect facial features.
6 It’s Not What It Looks Like
The trope “it’s not what it looks like!” is most common in shojo, though it might also appear in josei or even shonen anime with a heavy romantic focus. The basic idea is that a third party walks in on two other characters and gets the completely wrong impression.
This worn-out shojo trope might sometimes lead to drama, such as accusations of cheating in a relationship. Other times, this routine trope will lead to some serious comedy, and it’ll take serious work to convince a stubborn tsundere, for example, that it truly wasn’t what it looked like.
5 Sparkly Backgrounds
The world of anime is known for countless visual cues, from chibi characters to people going blue in the face out of fear or the famed “yandere stare.” Some shonen anime and a lot of shojo anime use sparkly backgrounds, usually to add flair to a sweet and touching scene.
It’s a fine visual, but amusingly, shojo tends to overdo this, so sparkly backgrounds are one of the prettiest and most predictable cliches of shojo anime. In some series, it seems the narrative will whip out those trademark sparkles for any scene that’s even halfway interesting.
4 Romantically Dense Female Leads
In anime, girls tend to be much quicker on the uptake than boys are when love is in the air. Plenty of girls in shojo and romantic shonen anime notice right away when sparks are flying, but some shojo anime series reverse this with romantically dense heroines.
These romantically oblivious girls simply won’t get the hint when someone shows interest in them, such as Katarina Claes from My Next Life as a Villainess. Such characters are what’s known as an ahodere, and they might have some bakadere elements to them, too.
3 An Obligatory Love Triangle
Love triangles can be a lot of fun in works of fiction, but some love triangles seem to appear just for the sake of it, especially in shojo titles. In-universe, it’s fairly unlikely that three characters would conveniently develop romantic feelings in such a way, but it inevitably happens.
These love triangles can make for excellent fiction in shojo, but they can also feel obligatory and predictable. Even so, it’s always fun to watch this trope unfold, cliché or not, and love triangles might add some much-needed dramatic weight to an otherwise carefree series.
2 Reverse Harems
By default, anime harems depict a central male character surrounded by several beautiful girls who all fall for him, such as in The Quintessential Quintuplets. Shojo anime’s version is simply the inverse, a reverse harem where several handsome, likable boys are all chasing the same girl’s heart.
It’s transparently gratuitous in both cases, but this form of wish fulfillment can be unexpectedly wholesome and entertaining if handled correctly. Even if reverse harems are unrealistic fantasies, shojo fans love watching one boy after another fall for the main girl and then compete with one another for her affection.
1 A Beach Episode
Shojo anime shares this highly familiar trope with shonen, and for similar reasons. Beach episodes are everywhere, even in mecha and horror anime, and shojo anime series with an everyday setting are liable to have such an episode. The beach can be a romantic place, after all, far away from the grind of everyday life.
Beach episodes are sometimes used for fan service, but they also let the characters relax and make serious progress in their relationships, which is essential for many shojo titles. The beach also provides serious visual flair, and kicking up seawater is bound to lead to some major shojo sparkles.
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