Manga, Anime - Whichever you want to call it.  Not here to debate that though.

Let me get this right off the top of the journal entry so people don't misunderstand me.  I do not hate Manga/Anime style artwork.

What do I actually hate in this entry then?  Gratuitous Fan-Pop.  If you don't know what that means, you only need to look at the vast sea of the market to figure it out.  The market is saturated and flooded with crap, and then crap on top of crap.  And then fan fiction comics and style imitators piled under those craps.  

Not only are the fans trying to copy the art style, but adapt the writing style as well.  You may as well shove a gun to my head and I will allow you to give me a swift death before I read any of this drivel that people shovel out their in their fan-angst.

There was a time, even when manga/anime reached its peak that there were good stories with good art out there.  There was a time when the stories were original and fresh.  But I think that period has ended.  Now the producers of this medium have killed their own style by over-doing it, and the deep-rooted fans make a mess of it.  But that is the way of things I suppose.  Each innovative idea that catches on is duplicated to catch some of the market share and then it chokes on its own vomit.  

Here are some example themes that are choking the life out of the genre:

Same-Sex relationships:  We get it already.  I am a huge advocate of same sex relationships, and believe they have their place without need for discrimination.  But in this genre we are beat over the head with it.  To the point now, that so many stories focus solely on the relationship and forget what the actual theme or plot was.  This goes for gender-mixing too.  The main problem is that the relationships being presented are so flimsy and thinly coated they are practically meaningless.  They seem to be put there, just to be present and no more than that.  It is redundant.  First develop a good character ground and then give us the relationship.

The Near-Miss Relationship:  Fuck off with this shit already.  So many stories, even the more popular ones seem to want to consistently play off this mind-numbing near-miss relationship tension that goes on for fucking-ever and never goes anywhere.  I'm looking at you Inuyasha, or Bleach, or Vampire+Rosario....and so many others.  It's fun for a section of the story, but does not play well for an entire story.  Often the fallout of such relationships is just as fun to play with as building towards the relationship itself.  Just move the shit along after the first time you are tempted to repeat the same theme. Fuck!

The Never Ending Problem / No Change: I often see this in popular stories.  Where the main plot is touched on, but you know that nothing is going to change.  Grow some balls and make change happen!  Your formula gets thin and cold after a while.  Rumiko Takahashi is the ultimate villain writer of this.  You could be guaranteed that in Inuyasha or Ranma 1/2, that NOTHING is ever going to change throughout the entire series; not the problem, and definately no character growth in that formula.  

Forgetting Your Roots:  Bleach is guilty of this.  What started out as a good, down to earth man vs spirits story turned into nothing more than a power-level brawl fest of who has the largest animated penis.  iT worked for something like Dragon-Ball Z, because thats what the show started out as, and pretty much kept on spot.  But Bleach killed itself the moment they forgot about ghosts, and people and went on with 100 issue battles.  When you lose your characters, and they become nothing more than power levels - the story then sucks.  People don't relate to how powerful a character is, they relate to how human they still are.

Character-splosion: A variety of interesting characters is fine.  But when you start adding in dozens of characters and start turning the focus away from your main character that you got everyone interested in, well ...fuck you.  Create a new splinter series if you're going to do that shit.  After about four or five main characters - I start loosing interest.

Small Cute Pet:  Yay! Fucking cute comic relief.  But they're fucking everywhere now.  There have been very few good ones, and a fucking truck load of bad ones.  I could feed nations with the number of cute asinine pets that inundate these stories.   If you want to extend the personality of  a character - add it to the fucking character itself, don't try to create another cliche clap trap.

Story Focus:  Biggest culprit - GANTZ.  What the fuck?  We went from a mysterious ball that made copies of people who died go hunt down strange aliens...then...to vampires...and then...fuck the vampires...to total earth invasion by aliens who are too much like us.  While Gantz remains the only manga I still read, I still gotta say...avoid this type of story telling.  If you have a theme, roll with that.  If you get tired of the current theme...stop.  I give Gantz a lot of credit, the creators have a lot of balls and suffer no other weakness like the ones listed above.  But I have seen other stories change pace in bizarre ways like Gantz who don't have the sexual or violent balls that Gantz does.

Here are some stories that worked in recent and past years that did not trip over the above problems.
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Macross Series
Cowboy Bebop
Gantz (except for the last point)
D-Gray Man (even though it had somewhat of a 'cute' companion).
Black Lagoon
Darker Than Black
Hellsing
Claymore
High School of the Dead (though it seems to have been starting out with the The Near-Miss Relationship crap)
Evangellion
Bubblegum Crisis Original and 2040
Soul Eater
Blue Gender
Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood
Witchblade

There are hundreds of series out there.  I have tried to watch many, and keep hitting the above road blocks when I start watching them.  Some are so inane and over the top on certain themes - such as the supernatural that it gives me a headache  to watch them for more than a few minutes into the first episode, or first few issues.

When I look at Deviant Art and I see fan art come up - always seems to focus on one of the characters or points, or even archetype that I have grown to dislike in the genre.  

I mean come on...Succubi with wings on their heads?  Looks fucking stupid.