i dont know if this has been said before but the fact that you can't kill your nemisis til the final episode
like full metal panic: they blowed the guy up three times and he didn't die til 6 monthes later when shot in the chest at point blank range and then the corpe explodes wtf?
I like chocolate!! No matter what flavor you get, you can always taste the broken dreams!
~Dead people should stay dead, otherwise whats the point of killing them???
Fillers. What else needs to be said?
the main person always makes the choice to take the dangerous journey to save a maiden hes never met in his life but has had strange dreams about
Man, I must not have been watching the same anime as you guys, all those clichés I remember from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back then. I feel old.
Some I can think of:
In shoujo, the main character is almost always an hyper airhead who eats as much food in one meal than the amount it takes to feed an entire family for a day, yet she's never gaining weight. (Looking at you, Usagi and Miaka...)
Magical girls transformations that last for close to five minutes, with sparkles and ribbons, and the equally flashy, time-consuming attacks with nonsense Engrish names.
Which leads to the monster of the day. Who never thinks of killing the heroine during the time it takes to perform the aforementionned attack.
The cute mascot. It's either: a) talking, b) magical, c) a cat or something as equally cute and girly (puppies, rabbits, squirrels, you name it, it's probably been done in at least one show), or d) all of the above.
Not just hair of unnatural colour, like electric blue, but also hair that defies gravity and/or is extremely spiky. You'd think someone who had accidentally bumped into the character might have lost an eye already...
Besides all the characters that have been named Sakura, there is also a lot of cherry blossoms. Enough to make you think the cherry tree is the only type of tree there is in Japan.
Transfer students from other countries, even if they never put a foot in Japan, and have no relatives that come from or live there, always speak and write perfect Japanese.
If it's a show about people fighting crime, the actual law-enforcement is filled with incompetent people that only exist to be awed or pissed at the main characters' 1337 crime-fighting skillz.
Pantyshots.
deadly holy men
How about when they run toward each other yelling and the there's a flash and they finish at each others places but one othe them falls over? Has that been said already?
When people are swordfighting incredibly fast, then suddenly one of them jumps in the air and brags for about 5 minutes, falling about half an inch per minute, while his opponent just stands there and listens. It's terribly bad sword technique and disregard for physics all rolled into one!