A recent post on Japan Powered talks about certain anime titles that even people who hate anime could watch and enjoy. The idea it’s bringing out is that, despite how much we love it, we know that all anime – from shonen to slice-of-life – is full of tropes and character archetypes we see over and over again. Many of these cliches we love, some we don’t, but generally what makes us stay fans is that we don’t mind such things in our anime or even have specific tropes we can’t get enough of. But for some people, anime-specific tropes such as bishy guys, moe girls, giant robots, wild fantasy battles, and cuteness for cuteness’ sake, just aren’t their thing. So today I wanted to think about what anime are virtually free of these cliches and seem to cater to universal tastes rather than otaku tastes…

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