Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
This post looks at characters of the past and where the old trends stand now, we start with female characters, males will get their own eventually.
1. Valkyrie Girls
Also known as the Valkyrie Bitch, these harlots are no nonsense action types, the best example being Black Lagoon's Revy.
They enjoyed a boom during the cyberpunk era of the late 80s and are still in demand today thanks to Chainsaw Man.
2. Wrestling Girls
Prominent in the 80s, wrestling girls influences can be found in shows like Dirty Pair, it's existence today is split between tag team partnerships between two females, also known as the Lovely Angels trope or literal wrestling sports anime with a twist like Keijo.
3. Tsundere Girls
Popularised by Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura and continuing long into the 00s the tsundere hot and cold personality was a core part of romance anime, they are a dying breed these days replaced by socially awkward girls and girls who just tease the male characters.
4. Magician Girls
This is a fascinating one that comes with a unique story of a particular Japanese Idol who managed to break the American market that I'll be tempted to talk about, in it's day, the magician girl commanded admiration but is now an embarrassing fetish.
5. Delinquent Girls
Credited with being the very first lead action girl in the medium, the Delinquent Girls starting from the mid 70s were an inspiration to all who followed after, it's also credited for making the Sailor Fuku uniform an anime staple, not Sailor Moon. Very rare to see nowadays but kept alive prominently by Vtuber Kson.
6. Idol Girls
The age of City Pop and the popular anime idol of Macross Lynn Minmay, gave rise to the idol singer along with magical idols Creamy Mami. These days it's based on collectable card games for girls but is still very much popular.
7. Mysterious Girls
Popularised by the now late Leiji Matsumoto, the mysterious girl has an aura of intense beauty and mystery about them, on a journey of self discovery with very little to go on, you can't help but follow them, hard these days for these types of characters to stay relevant when the internet knows everything.
8. Fantasy Girls
Prominent lead females in fantasy anime everything from the Magic Knights of Rayearth to Lina Inverse, they dominated much of the 80s and 90s. These days they are harem bait for isekai protagonists.
9. Space Girls
Also known as bridge bunnies, these girls are seen as supporting roles on a larger more prominent battle ship, sometimes piloting mechs. Sci-Fi isn't much of a thing anymore but Gundam finally gave a female character top billing.
10. Drama Girls
The mature girls who engage in sometimes forbidden romances, all the rage in 80s shojo, largely forgotten these days as it just doesn't sell well.
11. Thief Girls
Since Fujiko Mine and the girls of Cat's Eye gave thief girls a place, they've always managed to keep a real sex appeal, ironically Lupin and Cat's Eye will crossover later this year keeping the honour among thieves alive.
12. Classic Girls
And finally we have classic girls or European girls. Take a popular piece of literature from Europe and turn it into an anime. Not a big deal anymore and Magus Bride only barely qualifies for the same genre.
If you want me to expand on any of these posts, drop a comment.
I'm here today to give you a challenge, can you criticise your favourite anime?
This test is designed to see if you can accept flaws in your personal top 10 anime.
I'll attempt it with mine and we'll see how I get on.
10. Nisekoi
I often refer to Nisekoi as a better written Love Hina but still like Love Hina, Nisekoi's biggest sin is how crowded the cast gets and how pointless many of the late arrivals get.
9. Jing King of Bandits
There are a couple of stories that took more than one episode, Jing as a concept works better as a situation of the week show. Jing as a character is not suited to long stories, it's a similar problem found in Kino's Journey.
8. Fairy Tail
This one is easy, it gets away with far too much Power of Love and Friendship bullshit.
7. Cowboy Bebop
Within the last couple of years it's showing it's age more and more with less grace, Evangelion suffered the same thing.
6. Ranma 1/2
Is it the length? Nope, just Happosai. This anime would be so much higher if not for Happosai. That and you realise how terrible some of the supporting cast is.
5. Precure
Precure was clearly influenced by many of the Magical Girl shows that came before and during it's 16 years of broadcast to very different returns, Precure at it's worst looks like a pale imitation of a better show, it also has a habit of following it's best seasons with weak seasons. It's current problem is that it's running out of ideas.
4. Lupin the 3rd
Screw it, it's Lupin. That's the logic you need for Lupin the 3rd. It can't be anything else, it's design doesn't support it, so when it tried to do more art house style with practically no gags, it falls flat.
3. Dirty Pair
Dirty Pair has so many iterations that it's hard to keep consistent quality control, there's always going to be one you like and one you hate.
2. Slayers
Has the weakest dub of the top 10 and can easily have stories that do absolutely nothing for the franchise and that's not just the filler talking.
1. Black Lagoon
It's world building is compromised by it's inability to work with it's languages. When needing to use more than one language it can break the story. The Japanese sub draws attention to a character that is bad at English while speaking in Japanese, meanwhile some of Revy's best moments are when actress Megumi Toyoguchi uses English which ultimately gets lost in the dub. I'm also a little bitter about Roberta's ending.
That's my little list, now I challenge you to try and criticise your own top ten. I'm curious to know what you would say about them.
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