Oh boy *cracks knuckles* hmmm for overrated I've probably gotta go with NisiOisin to start. This guy bothers me to no end with his writing styles and I simply do not feel he can write dialogue that doesn't immediately digress into irrelevant overly long babbling when he could easily cut his average dialogue between characters down to a paragraph or two since nobody is typically talking about anything interesting or important.
Also he can't seem to write female characters that aren't completely insufferable on some or manly levels, be it by them being written in such a way that they are unabashedly loved by all despite glaring and very up front personality flaws, overly aggressive and powerful for no reason other than to generate laughs as they emasculate the male characters with confidence in their abilities, overly sexualized such they he can make really bad jokes about the male characters inner perversions and how they're seducing them, and worst of all there's typically very little that redeems them other than the plots desperate attempt to have them come across as desirable to the audience in some way....usually sexually as opposed to personality or development wise.
All of the above pales in comparison to the fact that this guy just thinks he's really clever, when IMO he's just really not. Everything about this guys style just comes off as prentious and undesirable to me in the extreme save maybe the fanservice which is honestly the one thing I think he's truly creative with depicting a dubious honor to be sure.
Also have to add Mari Okada for pretty similar reasons to Nisio, though subtract the charge of pretention and add in that she can't seem to write a likeable male character either half the time in her apparent haste to have them be as weak-willed and get emasculated at some point. Not sure if that's worse than Nisio's having the confident male emasculated through nonsensical BS or not to be honest.
As for underrated writers, this is going to be slightly controversial, but hear me out please folks. I'm going to say Hiroyuki Yoshino, but only just ever so slightly and only in relation to one area of his writing. Don't get me wrong I totally agree that the guy simply cannot write anything other than the most black and white scenarios at times when given full control of the story, his writing for women also comes across as incredibly mysogynistic at times, but one area in which he's underrated I think is generating intrigue. Simply put the man will stop at absolutely nothing to keep the viewers interest and is actually pretty damn good when it comes to the internal pacing of an episode and leaving off on a suitable cliffhanger to keep the audiences interest for next week, it's the inter-episode pacing where he really suffers greatly, though that's more a problem for the original series he's written. Doesn't make him a good writer, but it makes him not all bad since I know what his intentions are and that he just needs to be reigned in like the afformentioned. The only reason I say underrated is that I've never seen this acknowledged by others.
Perhaps another less controversial example is in order though so I'm going to say
Hiroshi Ohnogi. Who? Well he's the one of the writers for the new Yamato 2199 anime and a DAMN good sci-fi writer that usually ends up in the shadow of his larger than life directors (Tomino with Zeta Gundam, Mizushima with FMA, Ishigoro with Orguss, Kawamori with Macross Zero), but nonetheless IMO is a big part of the reason for why those shows are so enduring for sci-fi fans such as myself. Not exactly a household name though and I doubt anybody's going to be chucking his name into the equation like Urobuchi or Kawahara Reki these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soliloquy
The other writers may be worse but don't get as many jobs as this guy gets, what is baffling is potentially a big anime with humongous production value. Seems that Sunrise employs this guy a lot because they do know this guy is golden goose. I wasn't too fond of Sunrise anyway but I guess Japanese Otakus dig the production company for obvious reason and some other, probably a lot of them, Gundam and Gintama fans.
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Yoshino's only been involved as a writer in one Gundam series and it was one of the least popular ever on Western shores amidst the Gundam fandom (okay they're all the least popular now amidst the Gundam Ragedom, but hear me out lol) in Seed Destiny. Yoshino has never worked on a single episode of Gintama. Also I wouldn't really describe myself as a hardcore otaku, but it's no secret that I really dig Sunrise's productions. The reason for this is they are about the only company I feel is consistently treating the sci-fi/fantasy genre (my not so secret favorite) with the respect it deserves in the 21st century and that by god they know how to make a show fun and interesting most of the time. They're obviously not for everybody though as I can think of no other multi-format production company besides maybe A-1 that is so capable of capturing the attention of cross-genre fandom, but making about half of them bitterly angry by the time all is said and done.