Audience-Alienating Premise: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Elfen Lied]]'' actually poses thought-provoking questions about nature vs nurture and unethical science. To anyone walking in, however, it's just a gory series about little girls being tortured. You're lucky if they don't think of you as a sadistic paedophile.

** Although tempting, using this series to demonstrate that anime is [[Animation Age Ghetto|not always for children]] is just as likely to backfire as anything else, since people will simply jump to [[All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles|the other extreme]].

* ''[[Lyrical Nanoha]]'' is a [[Magical Girl]] series aimed specifically at [[Seinen|young adult males]]. While this unique approach may work in Japan, it's a different matter in the west. Most adult male anime fans in the U.S. would take one good look at [[Fundamentally Female Cast|the cutesy imagery on ''Nanoha''{{'}}s DVD and run for cover]]. As it stands, the licensors have passed on bringing any more of ''Nanoha'' to American shores... and it looks like it'll stay that way for the foreseeable future. Maybe if they used [[American Kirby Is Hardcore|a different type of cover]], it'd be more acceptable considering ''Nanoha'' is less "[[Magical Girl]] series" and more "Action packed, mecha series disguised as a cute [[Magical Girl]] series".

** Then the franchise got this trap within themselves when they created the spin-off manga ''[[Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force]]''. Whoever thought that what the fans of a female-starring franchise famous for its [[Yuri Genre|Yuri subtext]] want to read are the adventures of a really uncharismatic male character that is [[The Chosen One]], [[Remember the New Guy?|gets along with the previous cast seamlessly]], nerfs the previous cast, [[Demoted to Extra|demotes to extra the protagonist of the franchise]], and embroils into a heterosexual romance no one really wanted to read about, should be fired. This manga basically alienated all the franchise fans, the combination of uncharismatic lead and the fame of the franchise couldn't attract new readers, and eventually was killed as a result.

* ''[[Madoka Magica]]'' exploited this trope by starting off disguised as a mostly normal-looking cutesy [[Magical Girl]] show, causing many people to [[Tastes Like Diabetes|stop watching it in disgust]] before the real, [[Cosmic Horror Story|much darker premise]] took shape. But, of course, [[Late Arrival Spoiler|once everyone learned what the show was actually about]], the trope got played straight, since some of the people who actually ''like'' cutesy magical-girl shows didn't have any interest in watching a brutally deconstructed version.

* ''[[Suicide Island]]'': The title itself will probably scare away a number of people. The premise goes like this: the Japanese government has lost big chunks of money due to hospitals being crowded with people attempting to commit suicide. In response to this, the government gives these people the choice of trying to live on or die. If these people choose to die, they will then sign papers, they will pass out (nicely), and they will wake up to find themselves on the titular Suicide Island. They are declared [[Unperson|UnPersons]] and they can do ''whatever'' they want on the island, as long as they don't try to leave...but there are really no means (and likely not even desire) to leave anyway. The premise itself will probably scare a number of people off, because they might think it's just a story where they get to watch people commit suicide. While some of the characters do, it ends up scaring the other characters into trying to live on and make the best of their situation. The story could be compared to ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' on some levels. Also, the story examines the minds of these characters, to help the reader understand why they would want to die in the first place. The examination reveals some dark stuff about Japanese culture, like the [[Hikikomori]], pressures of society, [[There Are No Therapists]] (actually, there are in this story, but it doesn't seem to be working), the stigma of shame, and so on. Indeed, the story seems to be a critique of how Japanese society has something fundamentally wrong with it, and is causing people to not really ''live''. It's likely that this story did not sell well in Japan, and it's hard to say how well it would have sold in other countries, since there is no way to sugar-coat this story!

* ''[[Wandering Son]]'' portrays puberty and LGBT issues - especially [[Transgender]] ones - quite seriously. This puts off many people (mostly cis heterosexuals) since it's outside of their comfort zone or they're so used to comedies about the subject. And even people wanting to read the story for its transgender themes get turned off by {{Spoiler|the revelation near the end that one of the transgender characters actually isn't trans}}.

* The manga ''[[Lotte no Omocha]]'' is a story about a strapping young man who is tricked by elves into moving to another world, specifically so a 10-year-old succubus can have sex with him for the rest of his life. Trying to talk about it generally goes like this: "It's a story about a man becoming a surrogate father—" "Wait. Isn't that the one with the ten-year-old succubus?" "Yeah, but–" "Ten-year-old. ''Succubus''."

* Basically the reason it took a decade to get ''[[Den-noh Coil]]'' released in America. It's a sci-fi series about transhumanism with cyberpunk themes (with a plot point about [[Augmented Reality]] used for the purposes of gaming and play that predates ''[[Pokémon Go]]'' and similar games), but the story features (and is geared towards) preteens, and the narrative style is very much [[Slice of Life]].

* ''[[Mysterious Girlfriend X]]'' is the story of a boy that falls in love with the [[New Transfer Student]] after becoming addicted to her saliva. That he first tasted ''[[Squick|from the pool of drool she left in her desktop]]''.

* ''[[Houou Gakuen Misoragumi]]'': the story of a girl who is sent by her mother to an all-male boarding school with the hope the girl doesn't become a childless lesbian, a school where the girl is basically treated like trash. The plot expects us to side ''with the mom''. Oh, and the [[Cure Your Gays]] only applies to the heroine, the male [[Ho Yay]] runs aplenty. Forget the fact that the American editorial who attempted to bring this series has to drop it after just one volume due to protests over its homophobic premise and [[Double Standard]] execution, the fact that they attempted to bring it in the first place is the really surprising thing.

* ''[[Kiss Players|Transformers Kiss Players]]''. Even before the sensationalist, gorn-filled way the story was shown, the silliness of "[[Transformers]] powered by being kissed by teenagers" was making the story pretty tough to sell.

* While ''[[Assassination Classroom]]'' is actually quite popular and regularly appears in the bestselling Graphic Novels lists, American publishers were squeamish to publish in first place because the premise of "armed students went all out to murder their teacher (who is an omnicidal alien teaching them their killing ways)" didn't feel adequate in a post-Columbine atmosphere.

* Similarly to the above, ''[[Detective Conan]]/Case Closed'' couldn't find a market in America due to a mix of this and [[What Do You Mean It's for Kids?|the different cultural expectations for children entertainment]]. It has the same kind of bloody cases of, say, ''[[CSI]]'' or ''[[Law and Order]]'', but it's drawn and narrated in a way that makes those accessible and appealing to elementary school kids. Adults don't want their children exposed to such bloodshed; teenage and young adult anime fans will find either the art style or the narrative childish.

* ''[[Oreimo]]'', the quintessential [[Brother-Sister Incest]] franchise. Not helped by the author {{spoiler|actually going there in the novels, unlike the anime only leaving it in [[Incest Subtext|subtext]]}}.

* ''[[Soul Eater Not!]]'', for more or less the same reason ''[[Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force]]'' failed. It's an [[Slice of Life]] spin-off to ''[[Soul Eater]]'', which was a supernatural comedy-action series. It was unappealing to long-time ''Soul Eater'' fans for both its themes and being starred by new characters with little to no connection to established characters, but fans of the Slice of Life genre weren't interested in such a spin-off of an action shounen.

* ''[[The Familiar of Zero]]'' actually ''evolved'' into this trope, due to the [[Flanderization]] of its main characters from "[[Ordinary High School Student]] [[Trapped in Another World]]" and "[[Tsundere]]-ish [[Cute Witch]]" into "[[I'm a Man, I Can't Help It|Perverted Jerkass]]" and "[[Bastard Girlfriend|Psychopathic Sadistic Tsundere]]" respectively.

* ''[[Tokyo Akazukin]]'', an extremely dark, gore-filled manga whose premise is that a young girl that self identifies as [[Little Red Riding Hood]] goes finding her true love Mr. Wolf by partaking in sexual acts with numerous pedophiles and then gruesomely killing them when they fail to devour her. The amount of [[Lolicon]] is such that it simply can't be licensed anywhere outside Japan.

 

* ''[[Vidas Robadas]]'', an extremely dense Argentinian [[Telenovela]] about human trafficking, whose heroine is a woman that was kidnapped and forced into prostitution. And also was pittied in the Argentinian equivalent of the [[Friday Night Death Slot]]. It got a cult fanbase and the status of [[Acclaimed Flop]] after earning several prizes.

* ''[[Victorious]]'' got hit with this from multiple angles. An edgy [[Kid Com]] about an aspiring pop star didn't really appeal to its target audience of older kids. The humor was overly reliant on adult humor, innuendos, mean-spirited moments, [[Squick|foot fetish]] jokes, and sexually suggestive scenes. A good example of how sexualized this show is: one episode features a scene where [[Genki Girl|Tori]] performs a sexy song and dance number... which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that she took on [[Ms. Fanservice|a very attractive appearance]], complete with her wearing a very revealing dress that shows off much of her modesty, especially the legs. And unlike any of [[Dan Schneider]]'s other shows, the characters in this show would occasionally shout at their lines, which got very annoying. Putting these facts together, it didn't really do well with critics or fans, and it ended up getting cancelled after three seasons.

 

== [[Music]] ==