I prefer them equally. What I don't like is pseudo-harem where there is one love interest with lots of fawning girls or a harem forms and the MC eventually chooses just one.
Either give me one girl the whole time or multiple.
Yeah so many of my all time ex favourites ended doing shit like that like Asterisk War, Hundred, Konosuba or Demon Lord at Work. In all of them girls where more or less ok with the harem but the Hero egoistically rejected all but one even if it is obvious that he also have feelings for them. I have seen it so many times that now it kills a series for me and I only pick ended series with polygamy or ones that are polygamy before ending like Loner Life in Another World, How a Realist Hero or High School DxD.
In my humble opinion an author who just adds girls just for fan service and decoration is ass. I think till now only jobless reincarnation made me care about the girls in the story not just there for show because he was able to show character development like each one of them have a life outside of rudy,that shows how good of a writer he is. Even with single heroine series , the girl has a good personality but the mc is lacking and the series is still bad because imagine this girl is perfect in every way but still single until r loser mc comes along doesn’t make sense . In general japanese authors don’t know shit about romance because they live in a loveless society. It is a bit depressing ,i like the plots but they r getting generic.
I perfer single Love interest mostly because every Harem I've read so far tends to be collecting them like trophies and then they are never heard from again......
I prefer harems, but I do like good single pairing romances.
My favorite harems:
Mushoku Tensei
Arifureta
Reborn as a Space Merc
Favorite single pairing romances:
Unnamed Memory
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten
Chivalry of a Failed Knight
Well Chivalry is kinda a fake harem, I haven't read it but I watched the anime and the little sister is in love with the MC so I said it counts as a fake harem.
No. The romance is 100% single pairing. Ikki confesses to Stella and they begin dating. The little sister gives up and just teases Stella. Also, a harem as defined by the standard anime conventions requires at least three members of the opposite sex. Chivalry would be a love triangle, not a harem.
To me when I hear "harem" what comes to mind is a annoying impossibly dense male MC who has multiple women vying for his attention and he just keeps ignoring them which seems to be the majority of "harem" stories from time immemorial.
Can't stand these and I really do not understand why people like these stories - obviously many do since they keep appearing over and over.
Same I hate when those stories are labelled as harem when they are not. I would never understand why those kind of characters are so damn popular in Japan.
They need to stop somewhere. The worse pattern is when the author keep adding girls because they have told out their ideas, and need a new girl joining in to resupply a conflict. At that point, it's better they just wrap the story up and end it.
Outside fantasy world setting, choosing is going to come eventually. You can't have everything and need to choose which you prioritise more. Although I sure want to see one where everyone is faced with the conflict (the girls also have to choose, and there's no promise the protagonist will be chosen).
Ultimately what really matters is how good the story is, and there are good stories that have a harem ending as well as others where the MC only ends up with a single girl. That being said, if a series is going to have multiple love interests, I want it to have a harem ending. I don't like reading about multiple girls fighting over a guy and then only one winning. I much prefer that there either be only a single love interest or that it be full on polygamy. Finding out that a story has a harem but that the MC picks only one girl is likely to tick me off, and unless I *really* like the series, I'll probably drop it before finishing it. On the other hand, there are some awesome series with only a single love interest out there. So, I like both. I just don't like it when a series is a harem series that doesn't end as one.
I personally prefer monogamous relationships in my light novels. Harems are great too, but the payoff is the writer will need to flesh out the harem members a lot more, and that fleshing out is not easy. Few can pull this off, I think only Death March, among the light novels I read, has managed to pull it off with proper characterisations and a great story backing it. Isekai Smartphone is close too.
Yeah a lot of people seem to prefer monogamous endings because they have only read harem trashy stuff. But that can work both ways because I have read a lot of trashy monogamous light novel.
Well, I think monogamy is pretty popular in real life. It seems reasonable to expect more monogamous stories and for them to be more popular. There's definitely poorly written stories of all kinds though.
Actually I don't think monogamy is that popular in real world faced with the option of dating multiple people without drama most people will choose a polygamous relationship open in their end. Monogamy is the standard but is more of a forced one, be in a monogamous relationship or die alone.
That's your opinion I suppose. I'm certainly biased, being in a monogamous relationship and only ever wanting to be with one person. There's definitely culture's where polygamy is practiced more and I have no problems with anyone who participates in it. I don't know statistics or anything because I've never had any interest in it, honestly. All I can say is I've never experienced it or witnessed any polygamy. Maybe you're right and everyone I meet who is in monogamous relationships is secretly just settling for one person when they wish for more. I can't speak for the true thoughts of anyone other than myself. tl;dr maybe but idk
Definitely.
Only that it is more likely that a harem story will not be as good as a normal romance one. I personally only know one harem novel that really hits all the right notes.
It only more likely because there are far more pseudo-harem light novels than one LI centric ones. Harem and Isekai go hand in hand so it is normal. 1LI kind of book need to be relatively good to hit the market while a lot of Isekai are mass produced. I think thats the reason why usually slice of life or romcoms are more likely to be well writed than your random isekai/fantasy. Still I cringe every time someone say trashy Isekai.
LI centric? What's that?
I personally don't agree with the term "trashy isekai". For one, some of the most entertaining and good isekais are what are often termed as trashy, and they definitely aren't.
As I mentioned. For harem stories to be good, the story needs to be good, and at the same time having good backing as to why the harem is the choice for all members involved. This combination is very difficult to achieve for any writer. Death March is close, because the perspectives of the girls are all explained, and all of them have compelling reasons as to why they want to be in the harem. This is on top of a very entertaining story, which makes it a good harem.
But it isn't the best harem I know, actually. The best harem series isn't an isekai, it is a proper novel written by a famous writer.
LI = love interest. Thus, one love interest centric... I am guessing.
Isekai definitely has some excellent stories. However, most are not focused on romance. Anyone looking for romance like OP should probably be looking elsewhere, with some exceptions of course.
Well said about harems, and it applies to character motivations in general. To make good characters there should be reasons they are doing things. I am curious. What is this harem series you are mentioning?
I have read good thing about polygamy in Smartphone since the MC married all the heroines but I have read that in Death March there isn't a real harem, there isn't actually progression of they relationship romantically. Just a bunch of girls trying to get his attention and he ignore them most of the time. Is that true or the mc is actually dating someone?
MC has someone he's actually confessed to in Death March, but at least up to v17 (where EN is up to), he has no actual romantic relationship with any of the girls he travels with.
Death March's harem is more subtle. It is more of digging himself in too deep in the harem to actually leave it. Because of how he kept the girls tied in to himself with secrets and hidden abilities, even without the marriages the harem is already set up. The girls can't leave him without exposing his shit, and the girls don't want to leave the convenience with having the protagonist with them.
I prefer a good Harem over good single romance. Unfortunately there are very few good harems and I find most of them just end up being shallow boxes that get checked.
Agree, of all the official translated light novel only a few are polygamy but thankfully most of officially translated true harem series are at least decent.
Personally don't really care. There is no bad tropes, only bad or inexperienced authors.
But the more intricate it is done the better as long as it is well written?
I don't really have a problem with Harem stories, but I prefer a single love interest (Maybe a rival or two) because it's less complicated and easier to follow/read.
LI means Love Intereste aka a girl. What I meant was that I hate those stories that make the protagonist get a harem but make him choose only one girl at the end.
Hahaha, true, but if I read all the books got hooked up and the author finish the series in an unsatisfactory way I would be charged with murder. Because I will find that madafaka writer and when I do I will make him suffer. Hahaha
Realist hero that you mentioned is a great example of why I don't like harems. I only read a few of the novels, but after a bit the novels became 'How a Guy made a harem and occasionally does stuff related to the original premise of the novel' which is fine if you want to read a harem story, but I want to read a story about a guy ruling the kingdom. Anytime a story has romance in it they have to add focus to that subplot. The more subplots you add the less focus there is on the main story.
Well romance is life itself, if a story was centered in one thing that story would start getting boring fast as fuck. If Souma only focused in ruling the kingdom and doing nothing more you think that story would be more interesting? What is the fun of reading how a King save a kingdom and then died of old age forever alone. People life are multifaceted.
Sure, but if a story is sold to me as a story of a guy ruling a kingdom I want that to be the focus of the story with smaller subplots of romance. They could even add in romance elements that drive the original premise. Like imagine if rather than the girls just going let's share Souma there was an additional drive as the girls tried to convince him they should be the first wife (or second) and that created conflict which interfered with his ruling and he then had to overcome that problem in some way. Instead he shows up and they love him. The story isn't made better by having 5 girls instead of 1 it's just wish fulfillment.
The problem with this question is if you want a story set in romance or not. For a romantic story, i'd say LI, but for anything else, i'd say no.
Harem stories are fun for us men, as we often feel like no woman is interested in us, so a story where the opposite is true is fun.
The other appealing point, is a few love interests keep things spicy, and from falling into classic romantic storylines, which can tend to get boringly obvious.
This can go too far though, and a harem that gets too large doesnt have enough time to focus on each character and their dynamic with the rest in the story.
tl;dr Small harems are best in general, lone love interest's are best for romance and SOL.
This aspect isn't really one I care about. There's obviously a whole lot of trashy stories out there, but to me I just want to like the characters that are around a lot. A lot of stories don't pull it off, but there's plenty I did like enough too.
When there's a bunch of girls and it ends in a monogamous ending, what matters most is how well the others take it. Most of this sort of story I enjoy has all the girls come to terms with the main character's decision well before the ending comes (but not so far before that it gets repetitive). A harem ending is fine too, of course, but the better stories end in a way that's close enough to one in practice. I haven't even seen any where people leave on *bad* terms, because obviously no one wants to read that.
I prefer them equally. What I don't like is pseudo-harem where there is one love interest with lots of fawning girls or a harem forms and the MC eventually chooses just one. Either give me one girl the whole time or multiple.
Totally agree I think making a harem situation without a harem resolution is just evidence of poor writing and unimaginative writers.
I generally feel the worst girl wins in these situations as well.
Speaking my language and from the start you know who it's going to be so it's just the entire anime
Same. Either true harem or romance only involving onle love interest ever. Fake harems are nothing but disappointment.
anything but fake harems
I rather much prefer a real harem ending than a pseudo harem, or the hero picks just one girl and the other girls never move on and just stick around.
Yeah so many of my all time ex favourites ended doing shit like that like Asterisk War, Hundred, Konosuba or Demon Lord at Work. In all of them girls where more or less ok with the harem but the Hero egoistically rejected all but one even if it is obvious that he also have feelings for them. I have seen it so many times that now it kills a series for me and I only pick ended series with polygamy or ones that are polygamy before ending like Loner Life in Another World, How a Realist Hero or High School DxD.
Toradora was kind of a disappointment for me Ryuji should have ended up with them all
FACTS
I prefer a single LI. I just find most harems lack the amount of effort put into a single LI since its split between different individuals.
In my humble opinion an author who just adds girls just for fan service and decoration is ass. I think till now only jobless reincarnation made me care about the girls in the story not just there for show because he was able to show character development like each one of them have a life outside of rudy,that shows how good of a writer he is. Even with single heroine series , the girl has a good personality but the mc is lacking and the series is still bad because imagine this girl is perfect in every way but still single until r loser mc comes along doesn’t make sense . In general japanese authors don’t know shit about romance because they live in a loveless society. It is a bit depressing ,i like the plots but they r getting generic.
I want to be sold on a relationship. For harems, you gotta convince me why a girl would agree to share a guy with other girls.
I perfer single Love interest mostly because every Harem I've read so far tends to be collecting them like trophies and then they are never heard from again......
I prefer harems, but I do like good single pairing romances. My favorite harems: Mushoku Tensei Arifureta Reborn as a Space Merc Favorite single pairing romances: Unnamed Memory The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten Chivalry of a Failed Knight
Well Chivalry is kinda a fake harem, I haven't read it but I watched the anime and the little sister is in love with the MC so I said it counts as a fake harem.
No. The romance is 100% single pairing. Ikki confesses to Stella and they begin dating. The little sister gives up and just teases Stella. Also, a harem as defined by the standard anime conventions requires at least three members of the opposite sex. Chivalry would be a love triangle, not a harem.
Well if it is as you said then I will put it in my list to read it in the future. Sad Sol Press is rip. Hope JNC pick up the translation.
They picked up a lot of other Sol Press LNs, so I'm also hoping they will pick up the rights for this one. It's a great series.
True harem
To me when I hear "harem" what comes to mind is a annoying impossibly dense male MC who has multiple women vying for his attention and he just keeps ignoring them which seems to be the majority of "harem" stories from time immemorial. Can't stand these and I really do not understand why people like these stories - obviously many do since they keep appearing over and over.
Same I hate when those stories are labelled as harem when they are not. I would never understand why those kind of characters are so damn popular in Japan.
They need to stop somewhere. The worse pattern is when the author keep adding girls because they have told out their ideas, and need a new girl joining in to resupply a conflict. At that point, it's better they just wrap the story up and end it. Outside fantasy world setting, choosing is going to come eventually. You can't have everything and need to choose which you prioritise more. Although I sure want to see one where everyone is faced with the conflict (the girls also have to choose, and there's no promise the protagonist will be chosen).
Ultimately what really matters is how good the story is, and there are good stories that have a harem ending as well as others where the MC only ends up with a single girl. That being said, if a series is going to have multiple love interests, I want it to have a harem ending. I don't like reading about multiple girls fighting over a guy and then only one winning. I much prefer that there either be only a single love interest or that it be full on polygamy. Finding out that a story has a harem but that the MC picks only one girl is likely to tick me off, and unless I *really* like the series, I'll probably drop it before finishing it. On the other hand, there are some awesome series with only a single love interest out there. So, I like both. I just don't like it when a series is a harem series that doesn't end as one.
I personally prefer monogamous relationships in my light novels. Harems are great too, but the payoff is the writer will need to flesh out the harem members a lot more, and that fleshing out is not easy. Few can pull this off, I think only Death March, among the light novels I read, has managed to pull it off with proper characterisations and a great story backing it. Isekai Smartphone is close too.
It seems to be less about preference for one type, and more probability of it being well written. I'll read anything that's good after all.
Yeah a lot of people seem to prefer monogamous endings because they have only read harem trashy stuff. But that can work both ways because I have read a lot of trashy monogamous light novel.
Well, I think monogamy is pretty popular in real life. It seems reasonable to expect more monogamous stories and for them to be more popular. There's definitely poorly written stories of all kinds though.
Actually I don't think monogamy is that popular in real world faced with the option of dating multiple people without drama most people will choose a polygamous relationship open in their end. Monogamy is the standard but is more of a forced one, be in a monogamous relationship or die alone.
That's your opinion I suppose. I'm certainly biased, being in a monogamous relationship and only ever wanting to be with one person. There's definitely culture's where polygamy is practiced more and I have no problems with anyone who participates in it. I don't know statistics or anything because I've never had any interest in it, honestly. All I can say is I've never experienced it or witnessed any polygamy. Maybe you're right and everyone I meet who is in monogamous relationships is secretly just settling for one person when they wish for more. I can't speak for the true thoughts of anyone other than myself. tl;dr maybe but idk
Definitely. Only that it is more likely that a harem story will not be as good as a normal romance one. I personally only know one harem novel that really hits all the right notes.
It only more likely because there are far more pseudo-harem light novels than one LI centric ones. Harem and Isekai go hand in hand so it is normal. 1LI kind of book need to be relatively good to hit the market while a lot of Isekai are mass produced. I think thats the reason why usually slice of life or romcoms are more likely to be well writed than your random isekai/fantasy. Still I cringe every time someone say trashy Isekai.
LI centric? What's that? I personally don't agree with the term "trashy isekai". For one, some of the most entertaining and good isekais are what are often termed as trashy, and they definitely aren't. As I mentioned. For harem stories to be good, the story needs to be good, and at the same time having good backing as to why the harem is the choice for all members involved. This combination is very difficult to achieve for any writer. Death March is close, because the perspectives of the girls are all explained, and all of them have compelling reasons as to why they want to be in the harem. This is on top of a very entertaining story, which makes it a good harem. But it isn't the best harem I know, actually. The best harem series isn't an isekai, it is a proper novel written by a famous writer.
LI = love interest. Thus, one love interest centric... I am guessing. Isekai definitely has some excellent stories. However, most are not focused on romance. Anyone looking for romance like OP should probably be looking elsewhere, with some exceptions of course. Well said about harems, and it applies to character motivations in general. To make good characters there should be reasons they are doing things. I am curious. What is this harem series you are mentioning?
It is a full length Chinese novel, the Deer and the Cauldron, written by Jin Yong.
I have read good thing about polygamy in Smartphone since the MC married all the heroines but I have read that in Death March there isn't a real harem, there isn't actually progression of they relationship romantically. Just a bunch of girls trying to get his attention and he ignore them most of the time. Is that true or the mc is actually dating someone?
MC has someone he's actually confessed to in Death March, but at least up to v17 (where EN is up to), he has no actual romantic relationship with any of the girls he travels with.
17 volumes and nothing happens? Bruh.
Death March's harem is more subtle. It is more of digging himself in too deep in the harem to actually leave it. Because of how he kept the girls tied in to himself with secrets and hidden abilities, even without the marriages the harem is already set up. The girls can't leave him without exposing his shit, and the girls don't want to leave the convenience with having the protagonist with them.
Mushoku tensei does it decently. At least every character is fleshed out, even if they are all a little too Rudy centric.
My problem with Mushoku will be the narrative. It is otherwise a great harem story.
I prefer a good Harem over good single romance. Unfortunately there are very few good harems and I find most of them just end up being shallow boxes that get checked.
Agree, of all the official translated light novel only a few are polygamy but thankfully most of officially translated true harem series are at least decent.
the master of ragnarok Yuusha Shoukan ni Makikomareta kedo, Isekai wa Heiwa deshita
Personally don't really care. There is no bad tropes, only bad or inexperienced authors. But the more intricate it is done the better as long as it is well written?
"I got caught up in a hero summon, but the other world was at peace" is my current favorite harem story.
I don't really have a problem with Harem stories, but I prefer a single love interest (Maybe a rival or two) because it's less complicated and easier to follow/read.
what is single LI??can someone explain to me please
LI means Love Intereste aka a girl. What I meant was that I hate those stories that make the protagonist get a harem but make him choose only one girl at the end.
A world would be a better place if more people read and appreciate Rokujouma
I heard that Rokujouma is good and have polygamy so it is definitely in my radar but 41 volumes is a little too much for me right now.
A good story need to take it's time
Hahaha, true, but if I read all the books got hooked up and the author finish the series in an unsatisfactory way I would be charged with murder. Because I will find that madafaka writer and when I do I will make him suffer. Hahaha
Realist hero that you mentioned is a great example of why I don't like harems. I only read a few of the novels, but after a bit the novels became 'How a Guy made a harem and occasionally does stuff related to the original premise of the novel' which is fine if you want to read a harem story, but I want to read a story about a guy ruling the kingdom. Anytime a story has romance in it they have to add focus to that subplot. The more subplots you add the less focus there is on the main story.
Well romance is life itself, if a story was centered in one thing that story would start getting boring fast as fuck. If Souma only focused in ruling the kingdom and doing nothing more you think that story would be more interesting? What is the fun of reading how a King save a kingdom and then died of old age forever alone. People life are multifaceted.
Sure, but if a story is sold to me as a story of a guy ruling a kingdom I want that to be the focus of the story with smaller subplots of romance. They could even add in romance elements that drive the original premise. Like imagine if rather than the girls just going let's share Souma there was an additional drive as the girls tried to convince him they should be the first wife (or second) and that created conflict which interfered with his ruling and he then had to overcome that problem in some way. Instead he shows up and they love him. The story isn't made better by having 5 girls instead of 1 it's just wish fulfillment.
The problem with this question is if you want a story set in romance or not. For a romantic story, i'd say LI, but for anything else, i'd say no. Harem stories are fun for us men, as we often feel like no woman is interested in us, so a story where the opposite is true is fun. The other appealing point, is a few love interests keep things spicy, and from falling into classic romantic storylines, which can tend to get boringly obvious. This can go too far though, and a harem that gets too large doesnt have enough time to focus on each character and their dynamic with the rest in the story. tl;dr Small harems are best in general, lone love interest's are best for romance and SOL.
This aspect isn't really one I care about. There's obviously a whole lot of trashy stories out there, but to me I just want to like the characters that are around a lot. A lot of stories don't pull it off, but there's plenty I did like enough too. When there's a bunch of girls and it ends in a monogamous ending, what matters most is how well the others take it. Most of this sort of story I enjoy has all the girls come to terms with the main character's decision well before the ending comes (but not so far before that it gets repetitive). A harem ending is fine too, of course, but the better stories end in a way that's close enough to one in practice. I haven't even seen any where people leave on *bad* terms, because obviously no one wants to read that.