Anime you love but everyone else hates?

[Socke]

1. Valkyria Chronicles

I have no idea why Nihon Review give this 4/10. Yes its far from perfect but it is much better than what Nihon Review said. What kind of cock that they sucked. Excuse me but I really, really, REALLY angry with that review.

Ahh yes, they rated Legend of Galactic Heroes as 10/10 and School Days as 8/10...

2. Kampfer

I guess it easy to hate any ecchi/fanservice shows like this one. Perhaps a little too easy. Too easy that people ignored most other good aspects of it.

It depends on other people but this show(at least to me) have good animation quality, good voice-acting, good soundtrack and good character designs. Yes it unfinished but I really hope for its second season.

In my own analogy, it much like a good WW2 game that came out when most gamers hate every WW2 games such as Call of Duty: World at War. People tend to ignore all other aspects because its theme alone.

3. K-On

Yet another show that was hated for its theme alone, if that hatred was never aimed towards KyoAni itself.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by Socke

School Days as 8/10...

One of those reviews was 5/10 I think...

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Originally Posted by Socke

1. Valkyria Chronicles

I have no idea why Nihon Review give this 4/10. Yes its far from perfect but it is much better than what Nihon Review said. What kind of cock that they sucked. Excuse me but I really, really, REALLY angry with that review.

I liked that show too. It really got serious at the end, which was probably a shock to the fan base, but I liked it a lot. It made me feel like theyreally were at war, as opposed the the show's first stupid character shield, and how a scratch on a leg from a bullet narrowly missing (you know what I mean) was a grievous injury. The only problem I had was the ending was a bit too compacted for my taste, but overall I found it very enjoyable.

[synaesthetic]

Pretty sure that like both Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Valkyria Chronicles was judged harshly by people who played the game before watching the animated series.

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by Spectacular_Insanity

It really got serious at the end, which was probably a shock to the fan base

It's actually kind of the opposite of that I think. A lot of the complaints I read on these forums mentioned how the humor and love triangle subplot "ruined the great completely serious war story that was in the game." People seem to ignore the fact that the game featured units such as the camp gay guy with multiple lines about fawning over muscles and the little girl who declared herself to be "Super Aisha" and giggled and cheered whenever she got a kill (and these characters were more over the top in the game than in the anime). Not to mention that basically all the serious moments outside of the main relationship were kept intact in the anime anyway. Yeah they changed some stuff that didn't need to be changed and I think the love triangle was pretty stupid but overall I'm not going to call it a terrible anime because of that.

On a similar note the image thread in the series' subforum has now turned into a discussion of modern military hardware. Guess that kinda shows what people had been expecting even though there was no reason to.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by Socke

3. K-On

Yet another show that was hated for its theme alone, if that hatred was never aimed towards KyoAni itself.

What's with all the KyoAni hate anyway? They do pretty decent jobs....

[Traece]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Pretty sure that like both Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Valkyria Chronicles was judged harshly by people who played the game before watching the animated series.

I'm one of those people.

Actually I watched the first couple of episodes, then played the game. I came to the consensus that Valkyria Chronicles was one of the worst animes I've ever seen by comparison to the game. The game was absolutely amazing in every way. The anime they made even the most bittersweet moments into ridiculous drama. Want a great example? Compare the log cabin scene with the wounded soldier from the game and anime. Biggest failure ever. Now the anime on its own would've been fine but with something to live up to... No.

You know a lot of you might disagree with me on this, but I always got the impression that .Hack is very unpopular. I like all the different .Hacks and it was one of my first anime obsessions. However, others seem to disagree.

I suppose if "Animes you love but nobody else has watched" was part of the topic I'd have to say Banner of the Stars.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by Traece

You know a lot of you might disagree with me on this, but I always got the impression that .Hack is very unpopular. I like all the different .Hacks and it was one of my first anime obsessions. However, others seem to disagree.

I like it too, and I agree cause I often got that feeling about .hack series.

[synaesthetic]

.hack// is pretty unpopular because, well, it's bad. The source material (the games) are bad, and the animated series are also bad.

But the music is Yuki Kajiura and is therefore awesome. "The World" and "Liminality" are great, great songs (a friend of mine totally got to go see Yuki Kajiura/Kalafina live in 2008 and I was so, so, so jealous of her).

[Sorrow-K]

Originally Posted by Socke

1. Valkyria Chronicles

I have no idea why Nihon Review give this 4/10. Yes its far from perfect but it is much better than what Nihon Review said. What kind of cock that they sucked. Excuse me but I really, really, REALLY angry with that review.

Ahh yes, they rated Legend of Galactic Heroes as 10/10 and School Days as 8/10...

I'll bite. I'll quietly ignore the poor grammar and belligerent name calling. It doesn't bother me that you disagree with my rating. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. What concerns me is that you don't understand why I didn't like Valkyria Chronicles after reading my review. That means I haven't done my job.

I was ok with the first half of the anime. It had a generally light-hearted mood so I didn't exactly take it all too seriously, but there were some entertaining moments and the characters, while generally over-the-top, were fairly fun to watch, particularly the important ones like Welkin, Alicia, Faldio, Isara, etc. There was the odd serious moment, which was to be expected, since they were at war (although you couldn't be sure from Squad 7's casualty numbers during the first half), and while the dramatic execution was often a bit shaky, I wasn't going to be too critical since it played within its means and the characters generally remained lively and interesting. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was a decent "pass the time" anime.

The first thing that really made me stop and ask "what the hell were they thinking" was the spoiler filled second OP. It meant that whenever those spoilers came up in the plot itself, the story had no oxygen. It's a bit much for them to ask you to be surprised (or even care) about a major plot twist when it's been right there, staring you in the face at the beginning of the last seven episodes. The logic started to become more and more questionable in the second half as well. There's been some fairly thorough discussions in the episodic threads on the VC subforum, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but there were lots of little things, like

Spoiler for Valkyria Chronicles:

the Darcsens gathering in one spot like sitting ducks in ep 14, or the fact that the weakpoint of the train cannon was so damn obvious in the same episode. Then there was Cordellia taking the Valkyrur sword and shield to the frontline in ep 20, which was convenient for Faldio and Alicia in the next.

Little things like that, which just take you out of the moment because the coincidences underneath all the dramatic occurrences just feel so obviously contrived by a writer.

The other thing that really hurt the drama, IMO, was the fact that the main three characters lost much of their personality during the second half, and become really bland, boring people. You can rationalize it as them "giving up" and being angsty because of all the bad things happening to them, eg.

Spoiler:

Welkin losing his sister, Faldio losing his entire squad and Alicia being treated like a monster

but there still has to be something there, a reason to root for them or care about what's happening to them. For me it was their little idiosyncrasies which gave them so much life and colour during the first half, but these completely disappeared once the show became "serious" (never mind that the serious stuff itself was often executed with a heavy-hand and came with some really tacky dialogue). Then there were all the DBZ-esque fights in the latter episodes, which were a pretty big departure from the early action sequences, which at least tried to focus on strategy and using the conditions to advantage. Oh, and the love triangle had no oxygen because it, too, was spoiled by the OP sequence.

There was one episode in the second half that I really liked, and that was ep 19. It was dramatic, romantic and really momentous, the characters' emotions were raw and felt genuine and the story was well told, allowing us to understand their backgrounds and the meaning behind a few of the important relationships. But all the episodes after this just weren't up to scratch. The execution was shoddy, the writing was questionable... I could see what it was trying to do, but it fell well short of the mark.

When I stepped back after it was finished and realized that there was only one episode that I'd liked during the last ten or so, it became obvious that the show had lost me and I wanted to figure out why. In this case it wasn't so much one big thing as it is a lot of little things, combined with the execution. Also, I'd have no idea how it stacks up compared with the game, since I've never played it. I happen to be the type of person that doesn't like the idea that an anime needs to be loyal to its source to be good, so that's certainly not the reason why I didn't like VC. As for School Days, we have three reviews for that on our site, with three vastly different ratings and different opinions. We certainly don't always agree on every anime we watch, but we see that disagreement as a good thing, since it often sparks discussion.

Like I said, I don't expect you to agree with me. That's not my intention. What I'm hoping is that you can at least see why I didn't like it.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by Sorrow-K

Also, I'd have no idea how it stacks up compared with the game, since I've never played it.

MrTerrorist gives a rather amusing comparison.

[Last Sinner]

Zero Punctiation's review of Valkyria Chronicles is highly amusing.

[Socke]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

What's with all the KyoAni hate anyway? They do pretty decent jobs....

I don't know how to describe it but saying that you like any KyoAni's productions is much like you like any Michael Bay's movies. People will ridicule you for that, even they never saw any KyoAni's productions before. Yes, I'm talking about trolls who jumped onto the bandwagon just because the driver hated it. All others are just playing cool. If you say you love Lucky Star or K-On in public, they will reply "go get a life you moetard".

[Wirbelwind8]

DBZ for me. I liked it because I grew up watching it as a kid and it was just plain awesome for my puny mind to comprend the stalling and dragged episodes.

Alot of my friends hate it though.

[Archon_Wing]

The DBZ movies are totally awesome.

[Ash Falls Town]

Not enough people love Miracle Train for my liking. It's hilarious but can be touching when it needs to be. It had nice story progression and ended well. The weekly problems were handled well but were significantly diverse. It has great directing by a great director and Shiodome and Roppongi are both adorable. Plus it's educational!

However most people pass it off as weird and pandering. Or they assume the humourous parts are all unintentional. (Can anyone seriously say that Tokugawa's comments are unintentional?) Then there are people who pass it off as sexist because it involves men helping women. They help a wide range of women with a wide range of problems and it's no real different from visiting a counselor or similar.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

.hack// is pretty unpopular because, well, it's bad. The source material (the games) are bad, and the animated series are also bad.

I strongly disagree.

I loved the .hack GU games.
I felt that they had an excellent storyline to them, and I genuinely enjoyed the gameplay more often then not (especially late in the final game where you get a new combat mode/style for the main character).

The .hack Roots anime was a pretty good lead-in into the games. I'll admit that it had an extremely slow pacing, but otherwise, I was fairly pleased with it.


The .hack anime wasn't popular because they exist for the benefit of the games (as opposed to the games existing for the benefit of the anime). In other words, the anime is there simply to support (and chronologically feed into) the games. The games is where the vast majority of the real action takes place.

[synaesthetic]

Being a fairly hardcore CRPG fan, as a rule I don't like jRPGs (with a few notable exceptions), so my dislike for .hack// is not terribly surprising.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Being a fairly hardcore CRPG fan, as a rule I don't like jRPGs (with a few notable exceptions), so my dislike for .hack// is not terribly surprising.

Ok, I get where you're coming from now, at least.

JRPG's have an unique feel to them that's not for every RPG fan...

[Wirbelwind8]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

The DBZ movies are totally awesome.

I wouldn't say all of them were "totally awesome" I like the first two like "Tree of Might" and "Worlds Strongest" (personal favorite). The others were mediocre.