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Something I have always wondered, why is most anime centered on fighting? DragonBall Z, RWBY, Bleach just to name a few. I've seen some that aren't, but it seems to be few and far between. Is this something that just relates to the Japanese lifestyle?

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    You're watching the wrong shows then. There are tons of shows which have literally no action or fighting at all in them. Just to look at currently airing things, Golden Time and Non Non Biyori both fit your description.
    – Logan M
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 14:49
  • Most anime are based on manga, which is basically a Japanese version of a comic strip, and I suspect that proportionally far more American comics are centred around a big strong guy beating up bad guys than Japanese ones. Also, RWBY isn't even Japanese, it's an American show done in a Japanese style.
    – Qiri
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 15:16

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Anime can be broken into three broad catagories - shounen, shoujo, and seinen. These translate into roughly young guys, young girls, and adults (as in not young people). Most of the "popular" shows are shounen, which contain a lot of action/fighting, simply because that demographic likes that kind of thing more.

As can be expected, there are also shoujo shows, which are mostly romance, drama, and romantic comedies. Seinen shows contain themes of psychology, mystery, and other stuff adults are interested in.

In the end, you can compare the anime genres to western movie genres, you have big block buster action flicks, aimed towards guys, you have chick flicks for the girls, and you have these thriller/mystery/philosophical stuff for the "sophisticated"

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It's not that all anime is focused on fighting, but that your average American is ignorant enough to believe that living in japan makes you a Kung-Fu master out to save the world with your proud and honourable style.
Truth is, we are the brutes who are all about fighting, so those are the anime that are popular here. Whereas in Japan and other places, the more complex and less flashy anime are more popular.

Not that we don't all love some ass kicking, big explosion, breasts flying everywhere superhero action.

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From otaku's point of view.

If you know Dragon Ball, I think you can understand this answer easily. First few parts of Dragon Ball is adventure manga instead of battle (fighting) manga.

It was running in Weekly Shonen Jump. Jump has a voting system (by postcard) and the ranking is very very important. If a manga can't get a good result, that manga should be discontinued soon.

In the first part, Dragon Ball is not popular. Then the author tried to change the style. For example, adding more gag, introducing more enemies. Finally, he found that battle manga can get more vote and continued over ten years.

Other than Dragon Ball, many manga has these change. For example:

The story has the loop:

  1. A new enemy is coming.
  2. Protagonist loses.
  3. Protagonist trains.
  4. Finally, wins.
  5. Go back to 1.

But recently the user of shonen has different interest. They stop reading at step 2. Then, recent shonen manga has a different story.

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Note: RWBY is not an anime.

It's all based on the demographic you watch. You appear to watch most of the shonen anime, but that's understandable as most of this kind of anime is popular because people like this kind of things. If you don't think action suits you, I'll list a few from their demographics and you can go check them out.

  • Kodomo: for young children (Doraemon, Pokemon, Inazuma Eleven)
  • Shojo: for girls aged 8-18 (Sailor Moon, Ouran Highschool Host Club)
  • Shounen: for boys aged 8-18 (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Attack on Titan, One Piece)
  • Seinen: for older men over 18 (Tokyo Ghoul, One Punch Man, Parasyte)
  • Josei: for older women over 18. I don't have any picks apart from Boku no Pico and I seriously don't want you to watch that, so... nah...
  • Emotional/Romance anime series that will make you cry: Clannad, Clannad: After Story, Erased, Your Lie in April
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    out of all josei anime out there and you pick Boku no Pico?
    – Darjeeling
    Commented Dec 7, 2017 at 1:17

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