Important: "No Antagonist" means Exactly What It Says on the Tin. If the story has neither an antagonist nor a conflict, it most likely takes place in a Sugar Bowl. Contrast Plot-Irrelevant Villain, where there is a villainous antagonist but is of little to no importance in the big game. Not to be confused with Imaginary Enemy, where there is also no antagonist at all, but the protagonist thinks there is.
This trope is also common in Lit Fic, where it is usually broken down into the categories "character vs nature", or "character vs themselves". Most Slice of Life works have No Antagonist, due to the conflict being life itself, but that doesn't apply to all such series, where the antagonist can easily be someone damaging the life of the protagonist (for instance, the local school bully). The trope does, however, require an actual conflict taking place within the story-works with no real conflict, such as sandbox games, would not apply. In other words, if the central conflict is Bob vs his own drug addiction, it is this trope, but if it is Bob vs the drug dealer, then it is not. Therefore villains are technically allowed, but they can only cause harm indirectly. In the case where it is not, the work would have No Antagonist. For example, if Bob is seriously addicted to heroin and the work focuses on his battling his addiction, then a drug dealer that constantly supplies Bob would not count as the antagonist, even though the dealer is certainly not nice unless there is conflict generated between Bob and the dealer. It's possible that one of the characters will be the Hate Sink: not actually a Big Bad, but someone who makes the characters' lives more difficult to give the audience an outlet for the bad-guy hating. If villainous characters do appear in this kind of story at all, they will be a case of Villain of Another Story and/or Greater-Scope Villain they will not hurt, in any way, any of the story's main characters, even if they do horrible things to other unseen people. As long as there are no "bad guys", this trope applies. It could also be that the conflict arises from some sort of natural/scientific disaster, or from simply trying to survive in a hostile environment. This could mean that the conflict comes from an internal struggle, such as with addiction, or it could arise from tensions that must be resolved between the well-intentioned main characters. It simply means that the central conflict of the work has no characters who are a defined source of friction. This doesn't mean that there is no conflict or tension - otherwise there wouldn't be a story. Instead, the forces at work are more intangible and not bound to a set of characters.
Rather than representing the conflict as the "good guy" against the "bad guy", the central conflict is caused by other forces and does not feature characters in direct opposition to each other.
Some stories, however, are cut from a different thread. Since all fiction essentially narrows down to conflict between two or more opposing forces, it is typical to represent these forces in the story's Main Characters, with the story's focus character called The Protagonist -usually ( but not always) being the " good guy" ( from the perspective of the work, at least)-and another in opposition to the protagonist called The Antagonist, who is usually ( but not always) the " bad guy" ( again, from the perspective of the work). except, of course, when they don't happen to be present at all. They give the audience (as well as Moral Guardians) something to channel their hate towards with terribly evil actions such as genocide, committing crimes for immortality, kidnapping ( or even worse), world-conquering, and kicking of puppies, even they can scare the audience (and children) by being the horrid monster they are through screentime. The Big Bad is supposed to help drive the plot, right? They provide the biggest obstacle for the hero to overcome.
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