One of the funniest things about enemies-to-lovers ships is how they’re almost always obsessed with each other. Like if a character actively chooses to interact with another character over and over again instead of simply ignoring them? Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall
"Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall." - This is a raw line.
Idk if it’s specific enough to actually count as a trope, but I do love those anime fights where someone is getting the absolute shit beaten out of them, but not only do they keep fighting, they're grinning the entire time.
I was talking to one of my friends about shitty battle shonen tropes, and idk if this one has a name, but I like to call it the Obligatory Romance.
A lot of you probably figured what I’m talking about just with that first image, it’s everywhere in battle shonen. The protagonist has a love interest for the whole series, but nothing romantic actually happens between them(except for one emotional scene and a fuck ton of pining), then they’re married in the epilogue. Any real romantic dynamic is never established beyond the absolute minimum, because the characters never actually get into a relationship.
The most annoying thing is that the romance is always essential to the love interest, the very core of their character and motivation, and it means jack shit for the protagonist. Sasuke is absolutely instrumental to Sakura’s motivation for all 700 chapters of Naruto, while she could reasonably be removed from the entire franchise and Sasuke’s arc would remain mostly intact.
It’s romance out of obligation, like the author put it in just to check a box. After all, someone needs to have their kids so the epilogue can set up a sequel series.
There’s a reason ships like BakuDeku and NaruSasu are popular, they include real chemistry and a level of plot importance that the actual ships simply lack. Sword Art Online is bad by lots of measurements, but Kirito and Asuna 1) have chemistry for days, and 2) fucked in episode 8.
It isn’t a make or break for me, I still really like a lot of these series, but I also think they could benefit from taking the Oda approach and just making the protagonist ace.
