Quote:why can't a protag ever just have a healthy, happy relationship as refuge from the conflict generated elsewhere? GrumblemutteretcActually that happens all the time... its just that such a relationship is basically completely ignorable unless its a freakish anomaly compared to the other relationships around them.. It can happen on stage, but is glossed over as completely boring filler... or your watching slice of life stuff and its likely (for me at least) to be an entire series of completely boring, if occasionally slightly amusing, filler. War series do what you want all the time... its just one of the people either dies or stays off stage. Well you could also watch shojo... but I find much of that to be mindless and a lot of it involves people that need to have a few run ins with an axe crazy slasher for being utter scum that we have lots of informed ability that the people involved are great, awesome people in a healthy happy relationship.
If you wanted a series that has the relationships actually being worked out in a harem situation (every relationship with the male lead grows and evolves) where the participants are actually mature about it there is the largely ignored but good Shuffle!!. Seriously, the series is freakishly a deconstruction and a reconstruction of the harem genre at the same time... and it seems completely natural in progression.