Over-rated / Under-rated shows

vashdaman said:
It's probably already been mentioned in this thread, but I'll say it again: One Piece.

I've never even seen it, but it surely, surely can't be as good as Japan seems to believe it is.
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I'm inclined to agree. I enjoyed what I've seen it (admittedly, just the first 20 episodes or so), but the part of the manga I read (the current arc) felt almost impossible to follow in terms of the number of characters it was trying to juggle.

It feels almost too predictable to wheel this out too, and understand it's subject, but as much as I try, I can't help but find the art style pretty ugly too.
 
Overrated - Space Dandy

One of the biggest disappointments I've ever seen. Yeah, the colours are all nice, but the characters are awful and considering it tries so hard to be funny, it fails miserably. If Hollywood ever pick it up, I expect James Franco and Seth Rogen to be involved.


Underrated - Okami-San and Her Seven Companions

Such a nice series. Nothing groundbreaking, but the animation is good, it has a really nice cast of characters and it's got an overall fun tone. It gets surprisingly dark in some places, but it's still really good.
 
I've never thought Hosoda's films are good enough to crown him the next Miyazaki, but I have enjoyed the ones I've seen so far.

As for me, I think Library Wars is very underrated. It's an interesting premise and it's done pretty well IMO, but hardly anyone seems to have seen it.
 
IncendiaryLemon said:
Just Passing Through said:
Overrated, are the game-changing genre re-inventions. Shows like Gurren Lagann, Evangelion, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Some of them are good, but they're not that good. I started watching Madoka Magica again recently, two episodes in and I'm wondering what the big deal is. I'm even a little bored.

Also Monogatari
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I'm going to have to massively disagree with you on those.
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Changed my mind about Madoka Magica... I got to episode 3, and suddenly remembered... "Ahh, that's why it blew me away..." Been enjoying it ever since, and got the final episode tonight. But I still feel Evangelion, epic as it is, is still overrated, while I still don't see the epic in GL at all..
 
I'm surprised people think Gurren Lagann is overrated. I don't see it much as a game-changer, but more an epic tribute to giant mech anime. It's so over the top and is a great tribute to the genre.

While I did enjoy these, I feel the following series are overrated:
Haruhi Suzumiya - It was an enjoyable watch, but I felt it was very much a show full of stereotypes and doing a whole lot of nothing.
Clannad - A good show, but "forces the feels."

A lot of sword and sorcery anime I love (Scrapped Princess, Rune Soldier) seem to be quite niche, so it's more the genre is underrated and unfulfilled, especially lately.
Lost Universe - I think the show is fantastic and totally underrated. People seemed to hate on it as it stopped a rumored new series of Slayers (which in turn stopped a new series of Lost Universe).
 
I think the trouble I had with Gurren Lagann, and to the same extent Kill La Kill - is that while I enjoyed both of them a great deal and can see why they're held in such regard, is that it feels a little forced to a degree. It's like someone shouting in your ear going 'You're gonna have an amazing time, right, yeah?!?!' - They seem so concerned with acting all zany and wacky, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just that my personal taste is when the same effect is achieved through more artful, subtle means.

When I watched GL, the bits I enjoyed most weren't the action scenes, but the emotion behind the characters I still think Kamina's death, particularly coming so soon after the Yoko kiss scene, is one of the best rug-pulls/tear-jerkers in anime ever

And in the case of GL and KLK - I like that both series are very concerned with a process of 'building' and movement - they start in one place, but very swiftly move on to another place entirely, continually snowballing into something bigger and grander in scale.

Anyway...

Underrated - a few here...

Rozen Maiden - looking back now, it feels like a prototype to shows like Madoka Magica, and I still think it has some of the best gothic-lolita designs out there. Also, Ali Project FTW.

A few fairly recent Manga releases - that while reasonably well regarded, I think deserve a bit more dues - Guilty Crown (a poor man's Code Geass perhaps, but better than many give it credit for, plus an amazingly good soundtrack) and Robotics Notes (really unfairly compared to Steins Gate and probably loses out a lot because of that)
 
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Just tons of good suggestions in here, but I'm going to pick out the two I agree with most firmly:

ayase said:
Overrated - Martian Successor Nadesico
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NormanicGrav said:
For Under-rated, I'm going with Shiki
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My personal vote for underrated would go to Jinrui wa Suitaishimashita (Humanity Has Declined), for overrated it would depend on how the mood took me.
 
Overrated - Code Geass. OK I have a general dislike of CLAMP, but I have problems recalling any other anime that had me so disinterested in characters.

Under-Rated - Heroic Age. OK how did this not even get a UK release???? It is an epic space opera with mecha and is jut a huge amount of fun... I mean protagonist shouting "Thank you for being so tasty!!" at a alien squid thing whilst waving at it and it's waving back after he's just stolen one of it's tentacles for food... That's almost Ghibli levels of ecological harmony, the story evolves beautifully and you learn more and more as it progresses. Just thinking about it has made me want to re-watch... That's definitely got to be the sign of a good anime.

Sorry for going off-track but anyone know why Heroic Age didn't get a UK release? didn't do well in the states? I think an Anime Ltd release of this would have me jumping for joy but don't know how likely that is...
 
I don't know if I could really call any show overrated, even just from a personal point of view I usually enjoy popular shows about as much as I expect or more. That said, I probably need to watch more of the "big" shows since I've only seen a few that people have mentioned as "overrated".

I do think it's interesting the way that people can have very different experiences with the same show. For example, I remember someone saying they didn't enjoy Shirobako because they couldn't get over how much it seemed to be about promoting how great anime production and the people working in it are. I thought it was funny because those elements were completely irrelevant to the things I loved about the show (the characters and the "working life" themes, mostly). Similarly, other people like it for very different reasons to me.

I guess these kinds of things are fairly personal anyway, I'd probably say Shirobako is underrated until everyone in the universe admits how awesome it is. I suppose I'll have to keep working on that mind control project.

Anyway, the show I wanted to mention as underrated (although I expect I could think of many) is Love Lab. It's a rare "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" show with an actual ongoing story. I don't think having an ongoing story is inherently better than being episodic but I just really liked the way that Love Lab managed to weave it's story in and it stands out as unusual for that type of show. It does make it more disappointing that we're unlikely to see any more Love Lab though.
 
Already been mentioned but:

Overrated - Ghost in the Shell (1995 movie)

The visuals are lovely and the soundtrack works perfectly in the context of the film. However, I find the much vaunted philosophical aspects of the film to be shallow and presented in a way that is too obvious. IMO an intelligent film presents its ideas subtly and lets the viewer draw their own conclusions. It's not as bad for this as its sequel, but GitS doesn't really do this on the whole: it outright tells you what you should be thinking.

In addition, the characterisations are quite undercooked, and the humour of the manga is completely missing.

I do like the film but I don't believe it deserves the near rapturous reception it receives from some fans.
 
Baggie_Saiyan said:
What do you guys use to tell whether an anime is over/underrated? imdb ratings?
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I'd imagine it's usually a combination of perception of popularity and personal opinion of quality. I'm not sure there'd be a much more reasonable way to measure it, given that entertainment is subjective anyway.
 
Yup just the general feeling I get about a show from marketing hype, forum reactions and sales figures. Literal "ratings" are... medium.
 
Yowanda-san said:
If at least one other person has heard of it, it's overrated and thus not watching because then you're just conforming to populist trends. For this reason, I've recently taken to watching soviet animation dating from the 70s. I like to imagine that the feeling of being the first to set eyes on otherwise 'buried' animation is not unlike the emotions experiences by the colonists of the new world, I am, for all intents and purposes, exploring and mapping unknown territory.

Just kidding~ Maes sums it up pretty nicely though. Pretty much the quality of the show in comparison the buzz around it.
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Does that only count if even the people creating it never watched the completed version?

I do think that's one of the interesting things about animation (or any collectively created media really), that the people working on it will often not get to see everything else and will likely only see most of the other parts when the project is complete (if even then, since there's no guarantee they'd all watch it).

I guess this is totally off-topic, sorry.
 
Infinite Ryvius is one of those shows that mystifies me as to how anyone likes it.

I've seen people talk about it really enthusiastically online... but it's just terrible. Whiny, dislikable characters, unsightly animation and atrocious writing. As if the culprits said 'Hey! Clarity's over-rated! We don't need to explain JACK! Let's just have stuff happen and keep cutting back to things randomly, in a way that does NOTHING to advance or explain the story! And if we do it enough, maybe we'll fool our audience into thinking what we did here was actually decent!'

That's maybe a little ascerbic, but when the show DOES get around to resolving characters and story arcs, it does so in a completely underwhelming and unsatisfying fashion. And it unwisely strings out the one interesting mystery it poses (just who or what the hell is Naia?) far, far too long.

Were I able to review the series for AUKN, it'd get a 4 / 10. And that's taking into acount the fact that the story at least gets an ending that somehow makes sense.


To balance that out with something more positive, there's a great show called Argentosoma which I believe has been license-rescued by Sentai. I doubt it'd set anybody's world on fire, but it's a pretty solid little show that shares some of its core concepts with Evangelion. Mysterious alien invaders, giant robots derived from alien technology, tormented lead character (though where Eva's Shinji is a whiny little bitch, this guy has REAL problems) - and it's pretty good looking, in my opinion. It also does more than enough differently to Evangelion to make the comparison one you have to narrow your eyes and squint at to see it.
 
Shinji may be a whiny bitch, but if I was a 14 year old who one day got shoved into a giant robot with no training or prior knowledge and told "The world and all of humanity is depending on you not screwing up" whilst also having my mother die and my father barely acknowledge my existence other than a means to an end, I'd probably be a whiny bitch too.
 
Well all I'll say is, when *I* found myself in Shinji's position in my teenage years...

Wait. No. That doesn't work.

Urrm...

...

I like Argentosoma better.

[Runs.]
 
Under-rated? Hmm.. within my own collection I'd have to say the DVD which cops for the most flack which I actually like in a deeper way is Saikano (A.K.A She The Ultimate Weapon). Quite a few times I've encountered lacklustre reviews of something which though admittedly is downbeat and a little overwrought at times, is nevertheless emotively quite powerful stuff (maybe I'm a bit biased because I got it super cheap..).
 
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about She The Ultimate Weapon - and I can understand a lot of what the negative reviews get at, but equally, I do find it an interesting show nonetheless. It's very of its time, and I'd say its biggest sin is probably the really ugly animation quality/style - characters faces look really chubby, and the quality in general is really grey and muddy.

That said, I like how dark the series gets in places - the main male character, for example, is a complete jerk and abuses so many people in his life, while the female lead is a whimpering wreck that obviously has to face massive hardships. With the combination of mecha body-horror and a pretty hammy romance 'will they/won't they' plot, that again feels very of its time, there's lots to appreciate on a simple level I suppose.
 
Lutga said:
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about She The Ultimate Weapon - and I can understand a lot of what the negative reviews get at, but equally, I do find it an interesting show nonetheless. It's very of its time, and I'd say its biggest sin is probably the really ugly animation quality/style - characters faces look really chubby, and the quality in general is really grey and muddy.

That said, I like how dark the series gets in places - the main male character, for example, is a complete jerk and abuses so many people in his life, while the female lead is a whimpering wreck that obviously has to face massive hardships. With the combination of mecha body-horror and a pretty hammy romance 'will they/won't they' plot, that again feels very of its time, there's lots to appreciate on a simple level I suppose.
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Hehehe.. I know what you mean about the animation style (I think it's 4:3 rather than 16:9 though, isn't it?), but for me it feels quite nice and loose - kinda keeps out of the way of the heart of the story. I think thought that as with the Shinji complex of Evangelion, that the situations the characters are faced with puts them in circumstances where hindsight and experience are both in short supply for their ages. I can well imagine that as overwrought as it can be at times, that life would be very ad-hoc affair in such overwhelming scenarios. As for the ending - wow. No spoilers, but looked at in the right way it's almost approaching that disarming attack which Kubrick pulled off so well.
 
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