Overrated:
Anything by CLAMP Their stories are repetitive, their characters are cute and fluffy with little or no depth, they seem to think love is about perfect people who never get into arguments and they keep using the same themes, character designs and ideas over and over again. And yet everyone buys into it. Tsubasa and XXXholic are their two latest, most over-hyped titles and their weakest IMO. Tsubasa = cashing in on past sucess and XXXholic = Lets watch Yuuko freak Watanuki out. They have talent but they aren't going anywhere with it, leaving good stuff like Clover for drivel like Tsubasa and ruining Chobits with sappiness.

Naruto, InuYasha, Bleach
Self-explanatory I think. I don't see what's so amazing about any of them.

Fruits Basket
Its good...for about the first 7, 8 volumes, then it turns into a soap opera.


Underrated:

Hunter x Hunter (the anime)
One of the best shonen titles out there, excellent characters with plenty of depth, a completely unpredictable storyline, no filler and plenty of humor and fun. Well worth checking out.

SKU
If you aren't put off by the shoujo-ness of the first arc, you get hit by the weird visual effects and symbolism. A lot of people miss out on what a good series this is because they can't see past the weirdness.

Loveless
Ok, hear me out before you throw things at me. Loveless fans are mostly crazed fangirls. The more...shall we say, discerning fans think it's stupid fangirl trash, all about kittbois and boy's love, without even giving it a chance. I think that the people who would really appreciate the series don't ever actually get their hands on it, and its pretty good.

YamPuff wrote:

Overrated:
Anything by CLAMP Their stories are repetitive, their characters are cute and fluffy with little or no depth, they seem to think love is about perfect people who never get into arguments and they keep using the same themes, character designs and ideas over and over again. And yet everyone buys into it.

Let's be friends.

Seriously I've just repeatedly and reliably been very underwhelmed by anything CLAMP. The artbooks are lovely to look at but the plotlines end up lacking for me. It's like a gallery of awesome characters with little substance to back them up, they end up with huge casts so everyone will find someone to like but I find liking them hard when there isn't a whole lot of personality behind any of them beyond 'cool quiet badass' 'insane pretty boy' 'mysterious girl-woman', etc. I guess people like the fantasy, huh? But to be honest, I've never read a shoujo manga I've really liked, the medium just doesn't agree with me. But CLAMP's manga seem to do really, really poorly translating to animation. I remember practically choking on MKR.

Speaking as a big fan of Bleach, I don't disagree it's overrated - nothing could live up to the hype it has, much like FMA or One Piece or Azumanga Daioh - but I do like it, so since so many people don't understand why it's popular, I'll give my take (note: I'm watching it on TV, so I can only speak to the first 30 episodes or so; I hear there's a non-manga filler arc afterwards that's pretty bad, alas).

First off, though, it's a shounen fighting series. If you hate shounen fighting series' in general, Bleach isn't likely to change your mind, since it does have most of the trappings of one, including the rather relaxed storyline pace. No tournaments as of where I'm viewing, though, thank god.

Bleach mixes its genre up with the occult investigator genre, which is hardly new (see Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Fate Stay/Night, et cetera), but it's still a popular mix that many people find neat, including myself.

Bleach has a TON of characters, which it balances amazingly well so that almost everybody gets their own little bits of spotlight time and you're exposed to all sorts of weird and wonderful people, from the school's aggressively obnoxious lesbian to the bombastic TV psychic to the painfully shy young girl who goes psycho if you cut her and can kill a grown man in one punch to the badass one-armed fireworks expert with the abominible taste in house design who teases the hell out of her little brother. Very few series so successfully balance such a large cast, or even attempt to. Net result is that most people find neat characters they like, including a few characters they haven't seen "done" before in any show. I strongly feel this is arguably the most remarkable aspect of the show.

Bleach is never afraid to make fun of itself. Pretty much every character is going to have fun poked at them, usually sooner rather than later and I like that. But it balances the humour well with drama, so even knowing that the cool loner intellectual badass is actually a whiz at sewing, or knowing about Rukia's complete lack of any sort of talent for drawing an illustrative diagram, you can still take them seriously when the story needs you to.

Finally, Bleach simply has a wonderful amount of visual and aesthetic style which elevates it above the shounen pack. You need look no further for proof of this than the first opening sequence - the series drips "cool", and lots of people like that.

I won't say it's a brilliant work of sublime genius, but hell, there's a lot worse shows I could watch Friday nights. *coughcoughlikeEureka7cough*

Edit: Oh yes, and one other thing that's very important to me... Bleach isn't disgustingly sexist, unlike many shounen fighting series (Naruto, for instance). It has lots of important and badass female characters who exist to be more than somebody's romantic interest or kidnap victims.

Last edited by Blade (03-07-2007 11:06:54 AM)

I'll back up the X tv series.  I was quite hesitant to watch it at all given it was CLAMP, but I gave it a try and I rather enjoyed it.  It's not your typical CLAMP series.  Now if yous ee the movie version and draw your conclusions from that, it's like taking your conclusions about Utena tv series from the Utena movie.  Just don't.

onsenmark wrote:

Underrated: I liked Turn A Gundam, It's too bad it'll prolly never come out over here.

YES! Someone else who likes Turn A Gundam! It is probably my favorite Gundam series, but all anyone ever wants to these days is gush over Wing or Seed. Stuff Gundam Seed, Turn A is infinitely better!

I would say Gundam Wing is extremely over-rated. I enjoy it myself, but so many people act like its the best Gundam series EVAAAR. Out of all the Gundam series I've seen (Turn A, X, War in the Pocket, G, and Victory), I'd rate it only above G-Gundam (ugh, what a horrible pile of shit that thing was). I enjoyed it for what it was, but it isn't the best Gundam out there.

Aww, everyone's dumping on CLAMP I like CLAMP, although I do have to say I'm mostly un-interested in their newer stuff - wish they'd just go back and finish up the X manga, and also Gohou Drug Gohou Drug is on hiatus because X is on hiatus, because the magazine it was serialized in objected to how violent X was getting, so it put both of those series on-hold. BOO! Tsuabasa just isn't that good, go back to something good!

Anyway, I was going to make the argument that Kanon is under-rated in some ways. Yes, yes, in its target audience its hugely popular, but I feel like it actually has appeal for those outside of its specific target audience, and amongst the non-target audience it is under-rated. I am enjoying Kanon quite a bit, despite generally disliking harem anime and having never played the games its based on. The characters are cute, its extremely clean (harem anime with no panty-shots?! someone, call the media!), and the girls in it, while obviously liking the protagonist, never throw themselves at him in the blatant and degrading fashion that most harem heroines do. I think if people gave it a chance, they might like it - however, it seems the harem tag scares off most people.

Another over-rated anime would be Full Metal Panic. I thought Fumofu? was hysterical, but I just could never get into FMP itself - it seemed like a weird mash-up of humor and terrorist-fighting that just didn't work too well. And I HATED how they portrayed the girl with grey hair - she went from being a strong female character to being seemingly solely concerned with getting the guy, which really bugged me. And all the guy ever seemed to be doing was saving Kaname (is that her name?) from terrorists. Yuck. Gimme something more progressive, please.

Oh, and 's the Blade, because I completely agree with what you say about Bleach. Bleach is so much fun, you just gotta avoid the hype.

YamPuff wrote:

Ah, yes, X/1999. Its a deeper darker one, but I still saw a whole lot of parallels. Sweet naive innocent girl, dark moody guy, the one priestess or whatever who couldn't walk or talk who was basically a photocpy of a Wish character. Never really got into it.

allegoriest wrote:

...I might be horribly wrong, but wasn't there a manga they did where they just killed the main character off in a stupid way to end it? Tying his shoe or something? I might have imagined that though.

That would be Wish. Rushed, sloppy ending that one. Big disappointment.

I agree, but it's one of my favorite Clamp manga nonetheless. I think the one I hate the most is Tokyo Babylon. I can't believe I was stupid enough to buy the whole thing. Worst manga ever. @_@

Yeah, Tokyo Babylon ended up being extremely disappointing, although I guess I'd attribute that fact to it being one of their earliest works.

X does have archetypical characters, but they have depth to them, so it never really bothered me.

I actually liked their one-shot that was based on an old Korean legend that was based in real life about a Korean princess. It was quite entertaining, and I've always enjoyed their art style.

YAY CLAMP HATE.

I mean, yeah, I don't like CLAMP either. It's sad, because CLAMP has this lovely "summary on the back of the book" factor that makes me believe this is something I might WANT to read, when trite love stories and shallow wish fulfillment are actually nothing I want to read at all. It seems to me like one person comes up with these complex and interesting plot and background ideas that, under capable hands, would make amazing manga but with CLAMP it just ends up being more of the same bullshit in a different setting. I'd hate CLAMP a lot less if they had horrible premises to boot. Shitting all over the good ones makes it so that anyone that actually wants to do something with those ideas get's chastised for copying CLAMP. ;/

But uh, on a postive note.  I've never read Clover. I liked the premise (as usual) but ended up shying away from it (as usual). The only manga of theirs  I've ever  felt any positive emotions about was Rg Veda. You thinik I should give Clover a shot?

A Day Without Me wrote:

onsenmark wrote:

Underrated: I liked Turn A Gundam, It's too bad it'll prolly never come out over here.

YES! Someone else who likes Turn A Gundam! It is probably my favorite Gundam series, but all anyone ever wants to these days is gush over Wing or Seed. Stuff Gundam Seed, Turn A is infinitely better!

I would say Gundam Wing is extremely over-rated. I enjoy it myself, but so many people act like its the best Gundam series EVAAAR. Out of all the Gundam series I've seen (Turn A, X, War in the Pocket, G, and Victory), I'd rate it only above G-Gundam (ugh, what a horrible pile of shit that thing was). I enjoyed it for what it was, but it isn't the best Gundam out there.

Aww, everyone's dumping on CLAMP I like CLAMP, although I do have to say I'm mostly un-interested in their newer stuff - wish they'd just go back and finish up the X manga, and also Gohou Drug Gohou Drug is on hiatus because X is on hiatus, because the magazine it was serialized in objected to how violent X was getting, so it put both of those series on-hold. BOO! Tsuabasa just isn't that good, go back to something good!

Anyway, I was going to make the argument that Kanon is under-rated in some ways. Yes, yes, in its target audience its hugely popular, but I feel like it actually has appeal for those outside of its specific target audience, and amongst the non-target audience it is under-rated. I am enjoying Kanon quite a bit, despite generally disliking harem anime and having never played the games its based on. The characters are cute, its extremely clean (harem anime with no panty-shots?! someone, call the media!), and the girls in it, while obviously liking the protagonist, never throw themselves at him in the blatant and degrading fashion that most harem heroines do. I think if people gave it a chance, they might like it - however, it seems the harem tag scares off most people.

Another over-rated anime would be Full Metal Panic. I thought Fumofu? was hysterical, but I just could never get into FMP itself - it seemed like a weird mash-up of humor and terrorist-fighting that just didn't work too well. And I HATED how they portrayed the girl with grey hair - she went from being a strong female character to being seemingly solely concerned with getting the guy, which really bugged me. And all the guy ever seemed to be doing was saving Kaname (is that her name?) from terrorists. Yuck. Gimme something more progressive, please.

Oh, and 's the Blade, because I completely agree with what you say about Bleach. Bleach is so much fun, you just gotta avoid the hype.

Now, now -- I *liked* Wing... but only for the mecha. And Duo is frakking win. XD

And G Gundam is made of hotblood and win. XD

And I'll admit -- I effing HATE Tsubasa. I've read the first nine volumes, and for me, it's just "meh". Give me Emma any day.

dollface wrote:

I won't lie, Chobits was an anime I saw several several years back, and I thought it was wonderful. I agree completely that CLAMP gets more credit than they really deserve, but I'll always think Chobits wasn't quite as run-of-the-mill. It annoys me that every annoying otaku-wannabe in my anime club thinks that they are soooo extreme because they saw the first episode of Chobits. According to them, they've tackled anime and hentai in a single bound. I got pissed off and brought in my ripped copy of Sensitive Pornograph out of spite.

I'd also like to add that SKU is underrated. Anime like SKU or Lain [also underrated, IMO] have their sheer brilliance passed off as mind-fucks[which they are sometimes], and end up second place to cutesy little scruff-muff anime where the guy always gets the girl through a series of amusing and cliche events. Might I add that these girls are not:
1. Cross-dressing sword fighters who dream to be a prince
2. Foreign princesses who turn out in the end to be witches because they loved their brother, the prince
3. Androgynous lesbians who fell in love with their childhood friends
or any other new and interesting characters.
.

Whoa! You brought in Sensitive Pornograph!? That ova is pretty smutty, and that's just an understatement. How did your anime club react when they watch THAT after Chobits?
Hm... Now that I think of it, you can't really blame them for not liking Lain or Utena as much as other "cheesy" stuffs. People here aren't that exposed to anime until cartoon networks decided to air some stuff. But, you know, the stuff they air is usually still stuff that general public considers as cartoon. Full of actions, good guys get the topping of their choice for ice cream while bad guys get the crust of the pizza.
But, come to think of it, "Oniisama e" has an androgynous lesbian who fell in love with her childhood friend. I like St. Juste-sama, but I love Kaoru-no-Kimi even more. Kaoru-no-Kimi's exactly how I picture Utena would be when Utena grows up.
Although, I agree with you about the scruff-muff anime... Fushigi Yuugi *shudders* it feels so unrealistic as opposed to Utena, and Utena's the one with the evil cowbells!

A lot of the reason why SKU and Serial Experiments Lain remain underrated is because it's a "Thinking Anime". You CANNOT watch either series without starting some serious conceptualizing at some point. Now, honestly, Evangelion falls into the same category, but it gets "spared" from this because there's mecha.

Raven Nightshade wrote:

Now, honestly, Evangelion falls into the same category, but it gets "spared" from this because there's mecha.

That isn't really mecha at all!

I think almost every series that asks the viewer to think and draw their own conclusions is overlooked.  Several here have written off almost everything that's ever aired on USA TV as overrated, but you have to give [adult swim] some credit for airing Paranoia Agent.  I read a while ago (I think on their website) that they aired it despite knowing that it wasn't going to be a ratings machine for them, because they ([as] programming director & staff) liked it.  They also aired Evangelion virtually unedited.  (Obviously there's a zillion Eva fanboys and fangirls out there, but it still is a series with artistic and philosophical merit.)


And Rae, as for Boogiepop, wow!  I can't wait to watch it again.  I read Boogiepop and Others first, then watched its live-action counterpart (a little cheesy, but still cool), and then watched Boogiepop Phantom.  It helped me a little bit as far as knowing what the 'event one month ago' was and who a couple of the characters were, but I was definitely still trying to wrap my head around it all... with still much work to do there.

Last edited by Imaginary Bad Bug (03-07-2007 07:42:50 PM)