Interest Stacks

This one really hurts. I *adore* Attack on Titan, but I just can't get behind the legions of young fans who unironically refer to it as "peak fiction". I know it sounds condescending, but I am BEGGING you all to broaden your horizons. Ever watched something non-shonen? Ever read a book? Ever heard of Mysterious Skin? I'm begging you.

I love me some Cowboy Bebop, but the hyperbolic praise for this one seems to be more a result of cultural context than anything else. For many fans, especially older Millennial Americans, Cowboy Bebop was their introduction to "real" anime, that which was uncut from its original Japanese version and geared toward an older audience. As a result, I think some tend to inflate just how good/significant it is in their minds, going as far as to claim that the English dub is better than the original Japanese audio track (it's not), and that it changed their lives (I doubt it really did).

I ENJOYED BERSERK. Let me say that first and foremost. But for 24 episodes of build-up to culminate in yet another gratuitous SA scene (as though Berserk didn't have enough of those already), it just doesn't deserve an 8.56 score on MAL.

I'm not even mad at this one; it's just not *as* good as people say. The characters are flat and the pacing is slow, simple as that.

Overlong, emotionally flat, and not very good. I do appreciate the effort though.

Basically copy and paste my description of Cowboy Bebop. While I liked Eva enough to watch End of Evangelion AND the Rebuild films, I don't worship the ground on which it walks. For many Americans, this was Baby's First Big Boy Mecha Show, and it shows just from the number of geniuses who go on and on about how, unlike those OTHER mecha shows, "Eva isn't just about robots - it's about the characters"!

History lesson: the idea of the main boy having PTSD and not wanting to get in the robot is taken from Gundam, and the idea of the apocalypse happening at the end of the show is taken from Devilman. Heap your praises on those stories instead, please and thank you.

Guess I'm just a hater, but Grave of the Fireflies did not connect to me. The main character literally *chooses* to run away and starve. The fact that his misfortune is not something that happens to him as a direct result of war, but rather a dumb decision he makes while being stressed out, makes it really hard to appreciate the good things that this movie has going for it.

This isn't really the case now, but at one point, Elfen Lied was widely considered to be a modern classic by US anime fans. YouTuber hazel (who is amazing) said it best:

"Multiple people I have spoken to told me that Elfen Lied fundamentally changed the way they see the world, and this just baffles me. Are you less racist now because of Elfen Lied? MORE racist?????"

I just don't get this one. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was good, but it didn't change my life and rock my world. I put this one in the same bin as Attack on Titan; maybe experience a few more stories and then reevaluate this one.

I will simply never understand how anyone sat through 25 episodes of this boring, poorly-paced, nonsensical show with flat, featureless artwork and characters so generic that I can't remember their names at all. How anyone sat through it *and liked it* is a mystery all its own.

This one also kind of hurts. While I do really like YYH, I only enjoy it as a Saturday morning cartoon, really. Over the course of 112 episodes, our main characters refuse to ever grow or change, punching an endless cavalcade of two-dimensional baddies in increasingly flashy ways. Again, I *like* the show, but it is not in any way worthy of more than a 7.5 on MAL, let alone a score of nearly 8.5. Constant asspulls, including the reversal of a major character's death with literally no explanation *at all* prevent this story from being taken seriously as more than just a few friends messing around. None of it actually matters or will be set in stone, so what's the point?

Copy and paste my description of Demon Slayer. Jujutsu Kaisen is nothing more than a highlight reel of all the worst shonen tropes with some nice storyboarding on top.

This one REALLY gets me. So often you'll hear Tokyo Ghoul fans say that "Tokyo Ghoul:re and Root A were bad, but the anime got off to a good start" and other things along those lines. While it's true that the various Tokyo Ghoul anime declined in quality over time, it's also *untrue* that the first Tokyo Ghoul anime was all that good. It's full of cardboard cutout characters whose motivations change with the wind, a near-incomprehensible story, and edgelord sensibilities that result in what is obviously a vampire story instead revolving around "ghouls". There is literally a character in this show who is introduced to the audience by KICKING A GUY'S HEAD OFF OF HIS BODY, and by the halfway point of the show, said character has already made a heel turn and joined the good side after falling in love with a human woman...offscreen, of course. How anyone enjoyed this, I do not know.

Oooh, pretty colors! As someone who watched Demon Slayer while it was coming out and enjoyed/supported it, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is THE most overrated anime I have ever seen. Strip away the 3D camera movements and the fancy CGI compositing and what's left? Oversexualized and underdeveloped female characters? Cardboard cutout villains (and protagonists, and side characters)? A boring, repetitive story in which the characters go to a place, fight a demon for eight episodes, chop his head off, and then get subjected to his manipulative and ham-fisted tragic back story? When Attack on Titan's animation took a hit in the first part of the final season, it was still widely considered an amazing show because the story and characters were consistently good. Now that season 3 of Demon Slayer is finished, however, many people are starting to see that it's all style and no substance. Personally, I think season 2 made that obvious to those who were paying attention.