I can relate to you. The recommendations from most users, including even those that appraise less known and excellent shows, are total garbage. That's because artistic preferences of most people are almost completely random and unpredictable (just like those of the person above me, lmao Fate/Zero in the same list with One Piece, what the hell), they see no problems with giving Bocchi the Rock same rating they gave to Princess Mononoke, and so on. Even if they know something really worth their - and your - time, odds are they are not competent enough to rate it justly compared to other shows. You'll never get any good recommendations from an average MAL user, forget about it.
I noticed that actually demanding viewers who do not give away their 10/10s to everything they see discover everything they enjoy by using the sense of good and bad. They intuitively check every new show they'd like to see against a set of indicators of quality, which may include such things as studio, director, ratings, critical reception, personal recommendations, production value (literally ask yourself does it look cool, it works surprisingly well) and so on, to decide if something is worth watching or not. They key word here is intuitively - it happens completely subconsciously, without your intentional control. You just feel if something is going to be great or not, including after you started watching it. If you are smart enough, you will have no problems developing this ability, and if you are completely average MAL user, you won't, and you won't even need it because you won't care if it will be honest and sane to give Bocchi the Rock and Princess Mononoke the same 10/10.
The third eye in action
My favorite strategy to find good shows is to find something I haven't seen yet (and probably heard about) in the lists of people whose top picks consist of shows that I personally consider good. If such shows unseen by me appear multiple times in their lists, odds are I've missed something great. It is very time consuming, but it is fun. You can use not only MyAnimeList for that, but virtually any online anime community, such as r/animesuggest and r/myanimelist. This is why I watched Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinju (it was not this great, the plot sucked, but it still shocked me and made me cry) and Monogatari series (sheer brilliance, the second season is incredible).
Another strategy is to use less known, excellent shows, to find viewers with such lists. These shows attract disproportional amount of demanding viewers who try to be honest and sane with their ratings, reviews and recommendations. I have found a person on this website with the highest affinity rating I've ever seen just due to that one personal favorite hidden gem pleb filter. I found some other brilliant reviewers with vast knowledge of brilliant and less known anime because they liked this show, too. It could not happen if I was monitoring ratings for Made in Abyss or Madoka Magica, because simply almost everyone loves them, and it would be impossible to find viewers who are not generous with ratings and would love them as much as I do. But shows with such filtering properties are exceptional, and odds are you are not as capable as me in finding them, so, try to develop this third eye vision I told you about, you are certainly smart enough to do it. |