Forum - View topicAre you an underground or mainstream fan?
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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First off, I watch and enjoy pretty much EVERYTHING and I'm not a person to drop a show because "it's popular so now it sucks".
(I actually find fans with that attitude pretty annoying heh) But when I ask myself what my absolute favorite series are, they are mostly underground series or series that don't get that much attention compared to mainstream anime. I don't think it's because they're less known. I find them usually more interesting, just by chance. So I was wondering if a lot of fans here are the same as me? :3 Are underrated/not-well-known anime generally what you favor over anime that literally EVERYONE is watching and talking about? If you are confused, I'll give examples of each. Mainstream: Naruto, Bleach, Haruhi Suzumiya, Fruits Basket, Full Metal Alchemist, Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Ouran Host Club Underground: Full Moon, Princess Tutu, Spiral, Black Cat, Flame of Recca, Gakuen Alice, Chrono Crusade, Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok. And if you are an underground fan, do you think less popularity somehow makes the series more appealing to you? Just random curiosity. (and feel free to add your obsessed series that nobody ever talks about, thus needs more love!) |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18195 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Boy, you're to get a lot of disagreement about what counts as "underground" - so much so, in fact, that I suspect that it will render this thread pointless.
Case in point: Chrono Crusade was a very popular and well-known show in its day; in fact, it's ranked 55th (out of more than 5k titles) on our rankings of how many registered users have seen part or all of the series. Virtually any anime fan who's been on the scene since at least the mid-2000s has either seen it or is at least basically familiar with it. Black Cat is also in the Top 100 for most viewed titles. If you want this to work, you probably need to establish a definitive cut-off on what counts as "mainstream" vs. "underground" using those viewership rankings. Even then, those rankings aren't flawless; Princess Tutu is practically a mainstream series around here, for instance. |
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Ringking
Posts: 338 |
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I find it to be a strange and confusing thing that there exist people who would take how popular a series is into consideration before deciding if they want to watch/like it. If there something appealing to me about any given show then I'll watch it, I dont really care if its been seen by everyone or by nobody at all....
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I watch old, rare, and obscure OVAs and films for enjoyment. Digging for one-shot episodes that have no manga or novel tie-in are about as "underground" as you can get. What's great about anime versus film at large is that it's all contained in one language by one nation, and most of the entries anyone would willingly seek out only extends back 45ish years to the late 60s. Most of the content in existence only begins from the mid 80s on when OVAs and short-form seasonal anime began to flourish. Watching that stuff, like Dead Heat and Okubyo na Venus, is pretty much hitting rock bottom in terms of popular appeal.
Around here, and most places where seasonal airings are followed, I would think it hard to remain mainstream only. It's not wrong to also enjoy the super popular titles, but getting the less-trafficked ones is super easy these days. What was once popular, like Project A-ko, Iria:Zeiram, Bubblegum Crisis, and the slew of Kawajiri projects, would be consindered "underground" now. |
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The Lost Prophet
 Posts: 46 Location: Australia, Adelaide |
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I prefer to watch what other people have already face-checked for me. That way there is a better chance that I'll enjoy it. I watch that top anime list like a hawk lol. For this site, I'd consider myself mainstream. Kind of hard to tell otherwise.
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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It's ironic because Doraemon is about as main stream as you can get when it comes to anime. In Japan, anyway. Yet here it would be extremely underground since most American anime fans haven't seen it or really care to. Most stuff I love the most tend to fall into this category. "Mainstream in Japan, but underground here".
Maybe that makes me some meta-hipster, where it's so mainstream it's actually obscure.... |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7983 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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I'm not strictly either, more like something in between. A mainground fan? Understream? I watch based on the show's plot and whether it interests me, regardless of it's popularity.
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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If I use your examples then I am apparently right in the middle. I like four of your mainstream shows and four of your underground shows. As Key said, it might be better to use the viewership rankings. I have never paid any attention to that because I really do not care about popularity, but now that you have raised the question I think that I will take a look at the list and see how my tastes compare. EDIT: Now that I look at the lists I think that they would not work for this because there is no "Least Viewed" list to balance the "Most Viewed." In the Top Ten Most Viewed list there is one that is a personal favorite ((The) Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) and three others that I like (Bleach, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Princess Mononoke.) So I like 40% of the 10 most viewed. In the Top 50 Most Viewed list there are seven favorites and eight others that I like, so I am at 30% there. Judging strictly by that I am slightly on the underground side of the scale, but that is not really very meaningful without a comparison of the least viewed. There are also two in the top 10 and 21 in the top 50 that I have not seen any of, so that makes the results a bit different if that is taken into consideration. I like 50% of the top 10 that I have seen, and 27% of the top 50 that I have seen. Last edited by Touma on Fri Sep 07, 2012 7:10 am; edited 2 times in total |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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TitanXL, sorry, if there are two like this, none of them is a hipster.
Well, someone in Japan must like Harlock and Yamato since there are still being around. The popularity of the show is one of the least important factors to me, but I'd lie saying it doesn't count. As a reviewer I love the feeling that I have an opinion about good thing that most of the people have never heard of and can share it with others, as a historical nerd I love tracing the changes in industry. That make me go deeper than floating superficial layer of the shows, but I never refuse watching something just because it's popular here and there.
I in the opposite direction, yes, but I doubt if anyone put the thing that straight when it comes to liking a popular show. IMHO it's secondary to recommendations/ rankings/ talks dominated by the most popular things. |
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Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
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Quality is irrespective of popularity. A quality show is a quality show regardless of the number of people that watch it. (This is not entirely true, if a show's popularity increases its longevity, to the point where people still talk about it two decades later, then that will increase its quality, albeit only by a small fraction.) I make no distinction about popularity when forming my opinions. For example, my top five favorites look like this, using the Encyclopedia Most Viewed Rankings:
Akazukin Chachan : 1339th Most Viewed (596) Bakemonogatari: 131st Most Viewed (4672) Read or Die OVA: 91st Most Viewed (5659) Daughter of Twenty Faces: 1219th Most Viewed (683) The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi: 8th Most Viewed (13794) This is fun! If you go down my list, you'll see things like Shion no Ou (1369th) next to Honey and Clover (149th), Madoka (331th) just before Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito (787th) and Martian Successor Nadesico (223rd). Of course, this, like all measures as flaws: popular old shows have a boost while popular newer shows languish while awaiting more viewers. I like to seek out and watch old and obscure titles, but they are, like popular anime, more often bad than good. Majokko Tsukune-chan is a cleverly subversive bit of comedy (and has a must see Christmas episode where Tsukune-chan, attempting to save Christmas, accidentally kills Santa Claus) is down at 3322nd, tied with Elementalors, a confusing mess of a story that doesn't come close to living up to it's potential. If you go down the list, you'll see ratings, on average, drop the farther down you go. This is not coincidental, cream tends to rise to the top. Well, that went far afield. Anyway, to answer the question, I am neither. I am an omnivorous fan --I'll watch anything, popular or not, good or not. If I've watched a lot of obscure shows, it's because I've also watched a lot of popular shows as well. But there is a certain joy to be had in watching an obscure show, if just to be able to share it when you find one of those other 50 people that have seen it. //If you are wondering, my current avatar comes from the 4345th show on the list. It's not a very good show at all, but I love it for being bizarre. |
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4750G
 Posts: 546 |
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I wouldn't exactly call what you call underground as such, mainly because a lot of them are so popular. I think the only difference is that the titles in your mainstream list have very aggressive fan bases (except Ouran, I think). Anyway, your definition of underground notwithstanding, I don't think I fall into either. I watch an anime if its plot intrigues me or if it is recommended to me by my good friends. I don't mind if it's mainstream or underground.
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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I'm just an anime fan. I watch what interests me, I don't watch what doesn't interest me. I couldn't care less whether a show is "mainstream" or not. I don't watch Naruto because the main characters bore the hell out of me, not because it's "mainstream."
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jcaliff
 Posts: 156 Location: Houston |
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The vast majority of stuff that has been licensed and released in the US would hardly be considered underground, especially with the amount of advertising and promotion most of those releases get in the anime community.
I personally like both popular and obcure stuff. And like Melanchthon, I like to seek out unusual and obscure (in the US) titles. One of my favorite OVAs is Otohime Connection, a one-shot based on a two-volume manga series. I would never have watched it based purely on the cover art, but picked up a used vhs on sale many years ago and fell in love with it. Bought the LD, the manga, and have finally found some copy settei a year or so ago.  It's a story set around a couple of cute adult guys and a teenage girl who run a small detecive agency. It starts off with them trying to find a missing cat, and rapidly escalates into something more serious. It's amazing how much they fit into the video without making it feel like they were cramming it in, and left enough out to make me want to know more.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Melanchthon's list is much closer to my tastes as well. Reading the original question, shows like Shion (my avatar) and Nijuu Mensou ("Daughter of Twenty Faces") were, along with Bartender and Hataraki Man, some of the first things that came to mind. Of course none of these shows were ever licensed in R1 so there is a limit on how popular (or "mainstream") they can be.
A more interesting case is something like Moribito, which has very high rating scores, an R1 DVD release, and streams on Crunchyroll, but is still 219th in viewing. Is that sufficiently high to rank as "mainstream" or is it still "underground?" Even more complicated is the case of Nodame Cantabile, which was never released in R1, but still is 187th in viewing and 25th in Bayesian rating. There was a dub released in Asia which can now be seen on Crackle, but for reasons known only to Sony will almost certainly never appear on a disc in R1. Based on a best-selling manga, the Nodame franchise includes an anime version with two sequels, a live-action TV series and two movies. Despite its obvious popularity in Japan, it is probably still unknown to most foreign anime fans. |
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Chiibi
Posts: 4829 |
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Key phrase is "in its day." It's currently widely ignored compared to long-running shounen anime. I respect that everyone's going to have some disagreement but I don't think anyone in their right mind would say the series, nor any of the others I listed is on the same level of fandom as One Piece or Hetalia.
I agree and think it's silly....but that's not actually what this thread is about. The topic of the thread is: By chance, do your top favorite anime titles rank as very popular or are they more obscure?
Hell yeah! 
My favorite of these is Princess Rouge. It's absolutely amazing~ |
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