Love & Relationships in Anime vs. TV Dramas

As a viewer of both Japanese Anime and U.S. TV Drama, I've found that the mechanics of love and relationships aren't the same. Anime and TV shows typically have the same number of episodes per season, except anime is more consistent. TV dramas typically start their seasons beginning mid-late September/early October, have about a 1 month hiatus for the holidays and continue until May. Depending on the network and the writers you get around 26 episodes, but that can vary. Anime is more predictable in the number of episodes they have per show. You can get 13, 26, or 52 episode shows. That is your typical structure; some shows have 100+ episodes (aka never ending). The difference between TV dramas and anime is that anime shows are pretty much one time deals, once the show has run its course, there no more 'seasons' like in TV dramas, where a network can opt to renew the show for another season. Technically the 52+ episode shows are multiple seasons, except that it's not broken up, just played continuously (one per week). That way, anime watchers don't get stuck with boring filler TV shows as regular shows go into a summer hiatus while filming continues or there is just a break.

I will explain anime love and relationships first, as it's probably the tougher of the two. And I will be focusing on the anime that has more high school age kids, which is typical in teen TV drama. There are so many, many different kinds of anime you can watch. If you look at Netflix, anime has its own subgenres due to the variety. Sci-Fi, Romance, Horror, Drama, Fantasy, etc... so the types of romance also vary quite a bit. Most anime romance & relationships have fundamental rules that you can see through a variety of genres.

The girl typically does the confessing to the boy she likes. Asking the guy out is not very common. Love letters are normal, and a girl usually confesses her feelings to a guy in a letter, or in person via a meeting arranged through a note (letter). The delivery of the note can be done a variety of ways; in the shoe locker of the guy, having a friend deliver the letter to the guy, personally handing the letter to the guy (which usually ends up with the girl running away), or the girl handing him the letter and waiting nervously for a response. After the delivery of the letter, answers to the letter are usually received within a day or two, either on the roof of the school or behind the school, meaning, secluded locations. Of course a guy can confess his feelings too, but a guy writing a confession letter is pretty a-typical. Guys typically have face to face confrontations with the guy blurting out his feelings because he's so nervous and awkward. Face-to-face confrontations by a boy or a girl lack direct eye contact until an answer is given. In either case, the girl or guy receiving the confession usually is shocked, as if they were completely oblivious to anyone’s' feelings. Of course there are other types of confessions, but those are often during times of dire circumstances; such as a culmination of feelings and the girl gets in harm's way somehow and the guy bursts out telling his feelings to try to snap the girl back to reality. Or if the main character guy is on the verge of dating a minor character girl, the main character girl that has been hiding her feelings will blurt out her feelings in an desperate attempt to get the guy, because she had hoped the whole time that the guy would understand her undying love for him simply because the girl talked to him twice, alone.

In anime, physical contact, especially skin to skin contact, is a big deal, whether a girl and guy are dating or not. If a girl and guy's hand would happen to touch, both would flinch and be embarrassed. If a girl stood close to the guy he would appear nervous, especially if he liked the girl. Holding hands is a BIG step, hugging is an even bigger step. Usually a hug occurs only if the girl is emotionally upset and in a sign of affection the guy will hug her, and that hug will initially shock her and she'll freeze up, but only for a moment, then she will melt in his arms and have a real emotional breakdown. A girl and guy dating often will simply wave a good-bye to each other. Another sign that a guy and girl may be involved is if they are walking close to each other. Proximity is important. Then you get to the kiss. It's uncommon to see kissing in anime. But the times you do see kissing it's often very dramatic. It's almost always a first kiss too. You may only see one or two kisses in a series, and only if there is a dramatic romance.

You will not see a romance like you are used to in a TV drama. Romances in TV dramas can be a sub-plot that surfaces as a main plot time and time again, but that's not true with anime. You either have a romance in anime, or you don't. A romance in anime is still a romance if the guy or girl harbors their feelings until the end of the series where some circumstance will make them confess. Unrequited love is almost a given in anime. When a girl and guy start dating in anime, especially if it's a main character, the relationship is pretty solid. It may have it's rough spots, but break-ups are very circumstantial and not common. Romance I described for anime is a basic overview, and it does not cover all types of anime romance, just the typical ones.

In TV dramas, romance and relationships are much more, for lack of a better word, dramatic. Confessions are not like confessions in anime. It's more along the lines of your traditional 'boy likes girl' scenario. If a guy is interested, he will ask her out, either to dinner, to a movie, or something traditional like that. You will also get that 'instant attraction' type of relationships where the guy and girl would be talking or just be standing really close to each other and somehow their lips would have acquired a magnetic attraction for each other and their kissing. In TV dramas, unlike anime, it is not uncommon for the kissing to come before hand holding and hugging. TV producers know that that sort of thing will attract an audience and so kissing is very common in TV dramas. Another plot device that attracts an audience is unstable relationships and break-ups. TV Drama would not get its name if it did not have drama, and the most common way to drum up drama is for teens to have relationship problems and break-up. Whether it's because of another girl or guy, or because they don't feel the 'magic' anymore (aka the kissing is no longer good), a TV drama's relationships will go through many predictable hook-up and break-up stages.

A relationship in a TV drama may start relatively early in the season/series only for it to have a rocky path throughout the entire season. Or two of the main characters will become more and more attracted to each other throughout the season and have a magical episode where they act on their attraction at the end of the season only to start their rocky relationship path the next season. Of course hook-ups always have an episode or two of bliss and happiness, but the producers of the show have determined that that does not get TV ratings, so they always make the relationship become unstable.

Where a relationship/romance in anime tends to be a culmination of the series, in TV dramas it is almost the opposite where relationships/romances start at the beginning of the season/series. In anime, producers aren't typically worried about gathering ratings from a romance; rather, they prefer getting ratings for the uniqueness and quality of the series they created. In my opinion, I think the approach anime takes is better than the way TV dramas work. I prefer seeing a quality series, with good music, good animation, and a good story, rather than romantic ups and downs that are designed to hook the viewer emotionally through shallow plot devices. Seeing a romance/relationship work out in anime is much more satisfying because the characters will go through more normal motions of relationships, doubting their feelings, trying to discover their feelings, overcoming obstacles to approach the person, or simply accepting their feelings for someone. Anime is full of shallow characters, but shallowness hardly ever wins out in anime and the shallow characters are often made fun of for that. It's the personal growth of characters that makes anime romance and relationships better than TV Drama romance and relationships. Of course that's only true of the anime has that sort of aspect in their story line. Anime is able to do more, because they aren't limited by a young actor's abilities, rather they simply have to pull from a vast list of voice actors and the animators can do the acting of a young character that a young flesh and blood actor cannot.

Anime and TV relationships can both be enjoyable, but I find that I prefer anime ones because they seem more realistic, once it's compared to real life romance.