Months ago I was cleaning out my room and I decided to get rid of a couple of posters. You see I have posters of anime I don't even particularly like or follow or am a fan of, like Gundam Wing and Angel Sanctuary and Fullmetal Alchemist and Inuyasha and Detective Conan. One of my old posters had Speed Racer on one side and a bunch of girls in gym uniforms on the other. It was a tough call, but I put it up on the Speed Racer side. While shows about racing bore me, there is nothing I am more suspicious of then harem anime. (and abusive male characters, and damsels in distress, and guys with the same hairstyle as Allen Schezar, and guys with the same personality as Allen Schezar... but that's a different story) And those girls looked an awful lot like they came from a harem anime. Also among my list of now discarded posters was a picture of Steam Detectives on one side, and Saber Marionette J on the other. I know even less about Steam Detectives than I do about Saber J. Guess which side I hung it up.

Duh, Steam Detectives.

Now I don't know the details of Saber J. I've never seen the show. I've flipped through volume 1 of the manga, though, and found it lacking in both brains and beauty.

Let's begin with the beauty, shall we? Now I won't be long, and I won't linger on its lack of bishounen. I never actually seek out the pretties when I start a series. I usually just wait for them to come to me. I watch for the plot and for the characters, not for their looks. (Although when I do find a pretty, I don't look a gift horse in the mouth.)
I know this is a shounen series and more concerned with the attractiveness of the girls than the attractiveness of the guys. But that is where my beef is. The girls are great, but for one feature, and one that I know is very important for guys, or at least in shounen manga and anime: the boobs. I noticed with some dismay when I read the manga that the breasts of most of the women in that series, though meant to be huge, are oblong and hang off the chest of their owners like limp sausages. >_< Saggy tits are just... no... About the only girls who don't suffer from this problem are the three main girls: Bloodberry, because her outfit is constructed so as to give her the support that she needs (and thank God it fits her), Lime, because her breasts aren't big enough to be a problem and because her outfit hides these imperfections, and Cherry, because she's flat-chested.

And now, the brains: Now, the backstory of the series is one of your typical sci-fi post-apocalyptic cliches. The world is going to hell, so all of humanity leaves Earth in a big ship in cryogenic sleep, and then crashlands on a planet. There are only seven survivors: one woman and six men, and the woman is so injured they put her into cold sleep... at least I think that's it.
Anyways, these guys are lonely and not getting any, so one day one of them gets an idea... (I don't know how it really happened, but this is a very likely alternative of what happened.)

I'm not sure what the scientists were called, but for the record let's call them George, Lloyd and Sam.

Sam: *sigh* I miss my wife...
Lloyd: Yeah, me too.
George: She was so pretty... and I loved her cooking, and I dunno what she put in the soap but my clothes always had that nice fresh scent...
Lloyd: ...
Sam: ...
George: ... *coughs in embarrassment* And she was a brilliant biochemist, too...
Lloyd: Yeah.
Sam: She was an awesome woman.
George: I miss her... And man, she was great in bed...
Sam: I know! I'm going to make an exact robot replica of my wife!
George: That's a great idea! And I'll make one of mine!
Lloyd: Are you guys insane?! That's totally unethical!
Sam and George: *blank looks*
Lloyd: Don't you remember, back when we left home? All those bulletins about objectifying women and stuff like that?
George: This is nothing like that. I mean, that was literal. We're doing figurative. It's completely different.
Lloyd: But still...
Sam: What are you, a girl? It's not like there's anyone to stop us. Now help us with the blueprints.

And so, the fem-bots were created. I don't know how many centuries later, the planet is populated entirely by clones and genetic mixes of those six original scientists. Now, since the planet is populated entirely by men, yaoi fangirls initially squeal in delight, because that means that gay is everywhere. Everyone is gay... or are they? The main character's sexual identity is ubiquitous, because he seems to be attracted to the fem-bots. The annoying, flamingly gay man who is after this young boy (and the young boy looks like he's ten on my poster) calls the kid's kink unnatural. But if everyone is gay on this world, wouldn't the fem-bots have changed gender? One would think a scene similar to the one I described above would have occurred.

This scene would have occurred with the descendants of Sam, Lloyd and George, so we'll call them Sam, Lloyd and George regardless. Add a mental jr. if you like.

Sam: I dunno if I'm the only one who noticed this, but don't fem-bots look strange to you?
George: I dunno what you mean. A fem-bot looks like a fem-bot.
Lloyd: Yeah. If it looked like anything else, it wouldn't be a fem-bot.
Sam: Yeah, but our ancestors created the fem-bots to keep them company, but you know, they're not much company.
George: The fem-bots were created in the image of the Legendary Woman.
Lloyd: It would be a terrible break from tradition to change that.
Sam: I know! Let's make them in the shape of men!
George: Yeah! And they'll be real sexy too! They'll be able to serve you and service you too!
Lloyd: Are you guys insane?! That's totally unethical!
Sam: What do you mean?
Lloyd: It's just wrong to create something that close to human!
George: But weren't fem-bot created to look like Woman? And wasn't Woman human?
Lloyd: Women are objects anyway!

The yaoi fangirl in me weeps at such lost potential. But that, my friends, is entirely beside the point. As I have demonstrated, the entire enterprise is both highly unnatural and completely ridiculous. But then again, most harem anime are, and like in most harem anime, women come out the losers in this battle between the sexes. How come there are no proper harem anime in which a girl with absolutely no redeeming qualities have hordes of hot guys chasing after her?

The point is that this is not a great show if you're in any way a feminist. Apparently it's also got fight scenes, but the ones I came across were robots with unnaturally long boobs use these buns of steel (and they really are) as flails. >_<

Weird. I've never heard of that manga. >_<

Never? I thought it was fairly well-known. Although I've noticed that it's hard to keep track of the older ones now that the new ones are translated and brought over to North America so quickly.

The manga looks a little ecchi to me. I've seen the first series, however, and I liked it, even though I'm not a HUGe fan of harem anime myself. There's a lot of humor in it.. and a bit of romance. Yeah yeah, they're robots. But they're robots WITH A SOUL. Kinda. ;D There is a gay guy, Hanagata. He's quite amusing, since he has a crush on the main character, and he has Hotohori's voice, which makes it all the more fun.
There is seriously something wrong if you're judging it because it has no yaoi. "Oh no! there are LOTS of straight guys, even though there are no REAL women! *gasp!*" I'm sorry, and I don't mean to make you upset, but that's kinda the way I feel. One shouldn't judge a series because there's no yaoi content. Of course, I guess that could go either way. I'm sure there are some perfectly good shounen ai/yaoi series with good storylines. I just refuse to watch most of them because I prefer not to see boys kissing. For the record, I'm the one femme that actually kinda likes Gravitation, though Shuuichi should totally be a girl. I don't know why he's not. ;) Stupid Shuuichi! I love you Ryuichi!!
Anyhow, I'm done. I like Saber Marionette J!!! ;D
:D :ph43r:

I'm not judging it harshly because it's not Yaoi. I'm just saying that it's rather strange, is all.

Shuichi should be a girl. But then, he'd give girls a bad name. He's not a girl, he's not a guy, he's a... thing.

A thing? What kind of a thing are you talking about? :blink:

Dunno. A thing. You know, the kind of thing that neither a guy, nor a girl. You know, sort of like Zoicite in Sailor Moon.

Oh. <_<

I have both the manga and the anime, and I can say this for certainty: They aint as bad as you think. Well so long as you can put up with Hanagata, the most flaming anime character ever created! It's difficult, but those of us who can put up with him are eventually rewarded with ample amounts of android T&A and a story about tragic love, an epic conflict of global proportions, as well as the very survival of the human species.
The manga tends to lean much heavier towards the ecchi stuff than the anime, but the story is just as solid. That and it ends before the utter crapfest that was SMJ to X, which is a BIG plus.
And if your looking for a good harem manga for girls, check out Fruits Basket.

I checked out the Fruits Basket anime and I wasn't impressed, but people bitched me out about that in the Fruits Basket thread.

If you say so about Saber Marionnette... But you have to admit, the setting isn't very plausible.

I, from a male perspective, find the setting no more unlikely than that of any other harem anime.
I mean seriously, the marrionettes were originally created by straight me to replace women. As the generations went by the marrionette's role changed from one of companionship to one of robotic servitude. The reasons they didn't change their models from female to male is 1) a continued reminder of women and 2) If it aint broke, don't fix it. Their robots looked like women because thats the way they always had, and there was no reason to change that. (Plus they probably found them attractive in ways that they probably didn't fully understand.)
And also, it wasn't that every one on the planet was gay, it was that there simply were no women. When the opposite sex simply does not exist, then the entire concept of homosexuality gets thrown out the window. And in a world populated only by members of one sex, of course it would seem odd for some one to show love for something other than what is there. Also, the only person in the series expressly presented as gay is Hanagata, and that is purely for comic effect and to display the drasticness of the situation. For all we know the vast majority of the people could be A-Sexual, considering that the need to reproduce has been completely nixed by cloning technology. It could also be that most of the people are heterosexual, as is natural, but simply have no outlet for it due to the absence of the opposite sex. I mean Otaru wasn't the only guy who "Liked" marrionettes. Faust and Ieyasu were both willing to wage war over the last surviving woman, Gensai was an old perv, and lots of random guys were constantly telling the girls how cute they were. That's just a thought though. The anime does a much better job at presenting a "world picture" than the manga.

If you want to see a series that shines a completely different light on the Male/Female planetary seperation theme, go watch Vandread. It gives new meaning to the term "Battle of The Sexes" and features pretty people of both sexes.

I intend to watch Vandread. It sounds really good.

Just as soon as I finish watching Kyou Kara Maou. And Gungrave... and stuff.