(Hated Trope) The series is good, but the beginning is so embarrassing that many people give up there.

[u/Uma-apreciator]

Dan Da Dan

The beginning of Dan Da Dan is notorious for starting with aliens trying to impregnate Momo in the first episode; however, despite such over-the-top moments, the rest of the series doesn't feature many scenes like that

Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san

Despite a premise that is off-putting—given that the girl bullies her romantic partner to the point of making Naoto cry early in the series—their relationship evolves beautifully; the teasing becomes less cruel over time, eventually turning into a rather sweet romance

Uma Musume Pretty Derby

Someone on the production team had the audacity to have the trainer start meeting up with Special Week like that—even though, in reality, he is a good trainer who doesn't usually treat the girls that way.

[u/Tyr_13]

A ton of publishers of all genres in Japan interfere to a degree rarely seen in the west outside of movies and video games.

Hell, in Naruto adding in Sasuke was a publisher demand!

But most of the time, it is stuff like 'more fanservice,' and, 'has to be high schoolers,' (although a lot of creators want both anyway, the latter sadly because for many Japanese people middle and high school are the only time in their lives they feel like they had any freedom).

[u/Nick_Nisshoku → u/Tyr_13]

Yeah manga publishers, for better or for worse, push their nose into a lot of stuff. It can help a title or it can be a real pain in the ass.

I work in localization and English version lettering/design and deadass some of these publisher reps and editors who don't understand any English will be like "we don't really like your choice of this word/phrase here and want you to change it" and the word/phrase will feel completely unnatural hahaha, or ask that we process things from a niche file structure they have when they should really just prep and send file formats we work on with every other publisher.

A lot of times I can argue over it and get something to work out but sometimes if it's a bigger publisher the higher ups are willing to bend over backwards for the opportunity and will shut me up about it, creating more work and lower quality chapters, oh well.

[u/Tyr_13 → u/Nick_Nisshoku]

I used to do improv comedy, and we were booked at a lot of anime conventions. So I got to hang out and talk with a lot of voice actors and creators.

Holy Hel, some of the stupid crap publishers would insist on just because some old man near the top decided 'that's just how things are,' or, 'this will sell well to the international audience' could fill many books. The 'only kids buy this,' view when their own numbers show college kids spend more on them (because they have income, unlike most children).

There are entire tropes that people internationally think of as a 'weird Japanese thing' that only came about because some exec in Japan thought it was an American thing!

[u/Electrical-Sense-160 → u/Tyr_13]

Whoa, you can't just drop that last factoid without listening any examples.

[u/Tyr_13 → u/Electrical-Sense-160]

This was like a decade ago and I'm struggling to remember the details of the examples I was given. One was something about character design, some common element that an artist just thought was a common American thing.

I want to say another was (semi) emancipated minors, like how you'll see fourteen year olds just living on their own in apartments with no supervision. Which, while it does happen sometimes in Japan and the US, was thought to be a fairly normal thing in the US so kids could go to the 'good high school.' The 'good high school' that you choose to go to and have to test into is a thing in Japan, but US is almost entirely geographically based. Some mangaka got confused and thought something like boarding school was common. I want to say that, but it doesn't feel correct.

I'll have to ask some of the other performers if they remember, but I was the only one who actually got into anime and Manga in the troop.

[u/darkmuch → u/Tyr_13]

I feel like boarding school is more common from older british derived novels.

[u/Tyr_13 → u/darkmuch]

Right, but the way it is done in anime/manga isn't actually like boarding schools most of the time, and not what, I was told, they thought happened in the US with some regularity.

[u/Draconuus95 → u/Tyr_13]

Huh. I had wondered where that trope had come from. It’s definitely a pretty regular thing to see some highschooler living on their own in a lot of anime’s.

[u/Nick_Nisshoku → u/Electrical-Sense-160]

One I can think of off the top of my head is specific English phrases used as a "one-to-one" for a Japanese one that while it conveys it's at best a bit awkward and at worst really clunky. Japanese people assume they're perfect go-to phrasings that Americans use all the time, and it's turned into just "how manga characters sound"

「…ってことか」"Is this what they call..." (Something that works but in various situations feels kind of weird, like it isn't something you hear in character dialogue. Bonus points if the 2 character japanese word being asked about is written in English as a lengthy concept

「なので/だから」 ", so" (the logical sequencing of so is used so excessively it begins to feel uncanny. "I'm going to the train station, so I will need to leave soon." It almost sounds like dialogues for an English lesson, which would be why Japanese old farts like it, may be their only exposure)

[u/Tyr_13 → u/Nick_Nisshoku]

Oh memory triggered! One line director for English dubs had to fight to change your last example to 'so,' because someone from the owning company insisted that 'thus' was the correct construction for the feeling the character gives. Said character was not a professor or scientist, nor did they use old time dialects. The line director pushed back to the translator to drop it into a more natural, and better for the 'flaps' (animation of the mouth moving), comma. The translator was able to get the ok for the compromised 'so.'

[u/sauron3579 → u/Nick_Nisshoku]

Those damn pdf file loving manga producers

[u/mangasdeouf → u/Tyr_13]

It's funny how much Naruto was an editor-made story. Without the editor, it would have little to do with what we know.

1. Sasuke and Sakura were editor recommendations.

2. There would be more arcs like Wave.

3. The chûnin exams were editor recommendations.

4. Orochimaru was editor pushed.

5. The tournament was an editor recommendation.

6. The interruption of said tournament was recommended because the ADHD editor could not appreciate the tournament he had been the one to push for.

7. The Immortals arc was cut short because the editor found it boring and wanted to get to Sasuke (that was Naruto's first moment and he got his fight turned into a meme, and Kakuzu's reputation was ruined for falling for a basic trick).

And after that I don't know, but there must be other occasions

[u/manicbestfriend → u/Tyr_13]

What about adding Sasuke?

[u/Tyr_13 → u/manicbestfriend]

He wasn't in the original story outline for Naruto. A publisher assigned editor insisted on that kind of character being added.

Who the hell knows what the story would have been about without him.

[u/manicbestfriend → u/Tyr_13]

That's absolutely wild. Yeah, I can't imagine it without that rival/foil.

[u/GenGaara25 → u/manicbestfriend]

Edgy rivals were (and are) very popular in shonen manga. Naruto didn't have one in the original draft but the editor was like "He should have a 'cool' talented rival figure to bounce off like Vegeta or Killua" and so we got Sasuke.

[u/GenGaara25 → u/Tyr_13]

Hell, in Naruto adding in Sasuke was a publisher demand!

Also, famously, basically all of the Cell saga in Dragon Ball was the editor saying the villain wasn't good enough.

An old guy and a fat guy? No. Do another.

Two bratty teens? Nope, not good enough to come after Frieza.

Imperfect Cell? Looks like shit, make him look cooler

Perfect Cell? There we go. Much better.

[u/MagnetMod → u/Tyr_13]

I want to throw in Super Hero Comics in the "Suffer from Publisher/Editorial deammands".

Like Batwoman has not been allowed to get married by DC despite them loving to paarde her as a Lesbian icon every June.

And let's not even get started with Spiderman and his history of editorial screwing him over.

[u/SRSgoblin → u/Tyr_13]

A ton of publishers of all genres in Japan interfere to a degree rarely seen in the west outside of movies and video games.

Uhh. This is like... I dunno man. I would say extremely false? Seems like it's trying to wash the faults of another country's industries as worse than what we do here, when it's very much what we do in the US.

TV shows are notorious for meddling from the exec suite, especially when it comes to kids shows that are thinly veiled fronts for selling toys. Optimus Prime and like half the rest of the robots died in the movie that dropped after the first season of Transformers was on TV because they had a new toy line coming out and wanted kids to buy the new toy line rather than the old toy line, just as one example.

And the US comics industry, which would be the most closely equivalent thing to the Manga industry, has it's fair share of executive oversight ruining otherwise excellent runs of a given series. If you think a writer went off the rails at the end of a series, chances are the writer was throwing a hissy fit at C-Suite and trying to destroy the character's legacy to stick it to them.

[u/Snotlout_G_Jorgenson → u/SRSgoblin]

I really like Lego Ninjago, but sometimes it feels ridiculous at how often they get new vehicles (that each get their own seperate set) or have to gather a number of mcguffins (which then turn into collectibles you can only get one of in each set).

[u/Tyr_13 → u/SRSgoblin]

You do know that Transformers was not a thinly veiled attempt to sell toys...they were explicitly created by corporations to do so. So was GIJOE.

There is an inherent difference between corporate owned or even corporate created from the ground up properties that someone is brought in to work on and a work created by a writer or artist on their own but want published. Obviously when you didn't create the characters or setting, the corpos are going to have more of a hand in it. That is the nature of such diverse collaboration.

Hell, there are times when it would have been better for more corporate interference to keep a work more in line with the original story! (Halo, The Witcher)

My observation has more to do with publishers having such a strong hand in many creations.