Ask John: What Started the “One Guy Many Girls” Trend?

Question:
A lot of anime seems to revolve around a normal male protagonist surrounded by beautiful women who may or may not be competing for his affection. Examples of this include Tenchi, Love Hina, Dual, and numerous others. Where did this concept come from? What anime was the first to truly start this trend?

Answer:
As far as I’m aware, the earliest anime series to use the idea of one male surrounded by a bevy of bishoujo was the 1981 romantic comedy Urusei Yatsura. While hapless Ataru Moroboshi rarely found himself actually the center of massive female attention, his constant wooing of Shinobu, Sakura, Benten, Ran, Oyuki, Ryunosuke, and occasionally even Lum, is probably the first time an anime series used the concept of one boy surrounded by women as a plot device.

Romantic triangles have existed in fiction since the beginning of literature itself. The earliest major example I can think of is the relationship of Amuro Rei, Char Aznable and Lalah Sun in the 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam TV series. It was virtually inevitable that eventually an anime would take the concept of a love triangle, and the seminal influence of Urusei Yatsura, and simply expand the two themes by adding a few additional characters. This evolution occurred in the early 1990s with a virtually simultaneous pair of events. The modern “bishoujo game” came into existence in the early 1990s, placing a player in a game with the goal of bedding as many fictional game gals as possible, with the ultimate goal being the selection of a single mate and a happily ever after ending. These erotic computer games doubtlessly influenced the creation of Tenchi Muyo in at least some subtle degree. (It’s also very possible that the 1988 Ah! Megami-sama manga series had an influence on the creation of Tenchi Muyo, but the first Ah! Megami-sama OAV was not released in Japan until a year after the premier of Tenchi Muyo.) The 1992 Tenchi Muyo OAV series seems to have originated the shy guy/lots of girls theme that has become a virtual anime cliché. Like the computer bishoujo games of the time, Tenchi Muyo was obviously intended for a young male audience that took to the idea of being a single male surrounded by a host of attractive young women. Tenchi Muyo simply introduced the concept, and executed it so well, that like Gundam’s introduction of mobile armor, Dirty Pair’s use of scantily clad girls with guns, and Pocket Monster’s concept of collecting something, the idea of one guy in a house with lots of girls turned into a genre cliché virtually overnight. While Tenchi Muyo, Pokemon, Gundam and Dirty Pair were all simply evolutions of previously existing themes, they each struck a chord with viewers and created virtually instant genre conventions that were immediately picked up and utilized by other series.

Tenchi Muyo creator Masaki Kajishima returned to his concept of one man surrounded by women with later projects including Dual and Gosenzo-san E (the adult anime series released in America as “Masquerade.”), and series including Happy Lesson, Sister Princess, Tenshi no Shippo, Kanon, Love Hina, Hand Maid May, Hanaukyo Maid Tai, Steel Angel Kurumi, Ah! My Goddess, Saber Marionette, Geobreeders, Nadesico, and probably many more than I’m forgetting. While it may seem too obvious that Tenchi Muyo was the first anime to use the “one guy many girls” set-up, Tenchi Muyo, in fact, could be argued to be the single anime that marked the change from the shonen, action oriented anime of the 1980s to the more domestic comedy and shoujo heavy 1990s. The years leading up to the 1992 premier of Tenchi Muyo are characterized by series including Secret of Blue Water, Lodoss War, Cyber Formula GPX, Tekkaman Blade, Nuku-Nuku, and Yu Yu Hakusho, and magical girl or school life shoujo series including Hime-chan’s Ribbon, Sailormoon, Miracle Girls, Yadamon, Oniisama E…, Yawara, and Kingyo Chuuihou. The “one guy many girls” plot device that’s so common nowadays simply did not exist before Tenchi Muyo introduced it in 1992.