Quote:
Originally Posted by stray
I never mentioned "significance" -- that's your goalpost, not mine -- but its kinda sad that chain smoking best girl Shizuka-sensei isn't "significant" enough for you. And there's Iroha too. Hachiman spends like half the series being flirty with girls other than Yui and Yukino, and if its on the fringe like that its probably not something to suggest to someone who absolutely doesn't want a harem, especially if you're going to be belligerent about labels after the fact.
You've always had first girl bias and such in harems but what you've got a lot of nowadays is a harem element without harem stakes. There's zero chance of Kirito going for Alice or Sinon over Asuna but you can still sell plenty of their merch. As I see it stuff like Oregairu is really built to fit into that grey area, as well as Rental Girlfriend and similar series. Maybe harems haven't died but they've definitely changed quite a bit.
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That's my point though: different people have different goalposts. To some, some character might not play a big enough role or be central enough to the storyline to be serious love interests/rivals. Some people might not include a character as a real love interest if they're not a "primary character". And some might include or exclude characters if they do or don't feel like that character has a crush on the hero (like, to the extent that I personally saw, I never saw any indication of romantic interest from Sensei to Hachiman). Either way, I haven't seen past the second season and it's been a while, so I won't claim to be an expert.
And SAO is also a good example of how different people might have different perspectives, since Kirito has a lot of admirers but he's clearly a one-woman man. This's especially true in the Aincrad arc, where those admirers don't stick around long. I even heard they have even less presence in the LN, though I haven't read it.
In any case, the point remains. Different people have different standards for what does and doesn't qualify as a harem, or OP, or any number of other terms. Thanks to this, people could completely agree about story but argue incessantly because their terminology differs. Thus why I said it might be better to be clear and specific on what one wants and simply say that something doesn't quite fit rather than accusing people of lying or not knowing what they're talking about, then getting mad when they respond with the same accusations.