Forum - View topicShows that you think are underappreciated and why?
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Darksorrow29
Posts: 412 Location: United States |
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Well I tried searching the forums and seem to find any posts similar to this. I also realize there is a top Underrated List but I think what I’m aiming for is a bit different, plus this will provide discussion.
I view “underappreciated” as something you think more people should know more about or should watch it. Anyway, just mention some shows you think are underappreciated and why. Also feel free to chime if you guys think it is or isn't worth noting. I'll start off. Hatsukoi Limited (384 total user ratings, #385 out of 500 on best rated bayesian estimate, 3 pages of forum discussion). Why do I think it is underappreciated? Granted this show came out in April of 2009, it seems none of my friends who are really into anime have heard much of this or know anyone that has seen it. Also from my limited research there doesn't seem to be much discussion of it. It just feels like many people missed it or maybe not interested. I personally enjoyed the show very much. On paper it looks pretty cliche... if anything the summary of the story really tells you nothing about the show. It has a great mix of comedy and romance while avoiding stereotypical plots in anime. As pointed out in the discussion thread spoiler["You always fall for the guy who's not even close to your type"] seems to be one of the main themes in Hatsukoi. The characters and the stories in my opinion are the strongest points of the show. There is a diverse group of characters each with completely different personalities. It goes through different stories displaying each member of the female cast and their first experience of love. They cover topics such as: confessions, one-sided loves, embarrassment, brother-sis complex, what it means to be in love, why you love someone, failures, rejections etc. It has also been awhile (since NANA) that I have seen such an interesting romance comedy from a girl’s point of view. These days I feel like romance comedies focus on the male character so much. I hope no one avoided this show due to the "ecchi" tag. Honestly I didn't think it was bad at all, there was some fanservice/panty scenes but minimal in my opinion. They are also respectful when they need to be. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I was actually going to do a thread on this very subject, but it seems you beat me to it. Thank you, 'cause now I don't have to make that thread.
I think Kurau: Phantom Memory is a greatly underappreciated show. It isn't aimed at Otaku, it didn't try to make a big splash when it aired, but it is a work of great dignity and a lot of quiet strength. The plot was not massively original but it was serviceable enough. The real drawcards were the very sympathetic and well-developed characters (and no, I'm not talking about chest sizes). Kurau is one of the best-written female characters you'll see in Anime, and Christmas is soooo cute you'll forget you hate Moe. Those two and their love for one another is most certainly the show's core. If you are in any doubt as to the validity of this claim . . . The series exuded a retro Sci-Fi feel, a setting which worked really well. Although, such is the universal nature of the storyline that the story could have been set at other times and still been made to work, only with magicians replacing the scientists. The pacing was very good. A lot of information was given, quite a few characters were shown, and a number of fight scenes were enacted, all in the first few episodes. And it never felt like too much, which just goes to show how great the writing was. The series does slow quite a lot in the Switzerland arc, probably because the writers needed to fill out the episode count. However it never comes close to stalling, as we get some new and yet sufficiently developed characters to hold our interest. As for the end, it is one of those rare occurrences where the ending in an Anime is actually completely finished, with no loose plot threads, and all the characters getting fitting resolutions to their respective arcs. I am saddened by Kurau: Phantom Memory being rated so low. It deserves so much better, and is a real gem in my eyes. If you haven't watched it yet, then go out and WATCH IT. |
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Ian K
 Posts: 250 |
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Hmm. I generally only get around to watching stuff that comes well recommended, and I have pretty demanding taste, so the list of shows I think are OVER rated is considerably longer than the one of shows where the opposite is true. A few come to mind, however.
Noein is a science fiction show that eschews space opera and cyberpunk equally, and has barely a trace of mecha. The scifi elements play with the concept of branching universes, and there's a really interesting take on the idea of observer bias. The characters may come off as stereotypes at the beginning (especially the jackass of a male lead), but they all develop into pretty likable people by the end. The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of Uruk is the second season of the RPG spoof, that was largely panned in the fansub circuit as being inferior to the first. As a result it took me a while to check this out, but when I did I was really surprised at how much better than Aegis Sword is. By largely eschewing the goofy humor of the first season (which never did much for me) and staying much more serious throughout, I found myself enjoying this far more than I suspected I would. It does fumble the ending a bit, cramming what I guess was supposed to be the plot for a third season into one and a half episodes, but it didn't derail the show. I'm curious to see what reviews it gets here on ANN, and whether anyone sees it the way I do. Natsume Yuujinchou looks like a half-baked ripoff of Mushishi at first glance. However, it quickly develops into its own animal, and manages to pull off a similar 'soothing' effect to that other show without feeling derivative at all. Two shows I've started, and have currently put on hold, are Gungrave and Fantastic Children. Because each had a small but vocal fanbase I decided to check them out, and was blown away that everyone wasn't talking about them. At the moment I'm putting off finishing them until I can do so legitimately, so I guess it's possible that they completely fall apart in the second act, but I doubt it. @dtm: You know, I read some really positive reviews of Kurau, but when I checked it out it just didn't do much for me. Maybe I was expecting an action fest with lots of high quality eye candy. Maybe I didn't bond to the characters because of the english dub. Heck, maybe I'm just sexist (didn't stop me from loving Tokikake and Princess Tutu though). In any case, while it was by no means bad, I've never really seen the same thing in this show other people seem to. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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I'd rather watch good, but less appreciated shows. It generally makes you feel much better, since there's no annoying brats going around telling us how proud they are for disliking certain shows, and mentioning that wherever they have the chance to. Particularly one always invading anything related to K-ON! and bashing it, even though he uses a loli/hentai avatar.
Agreed. Definitely not as good as Mushi-shi, but it definitely has a few better sides. While Mushi-shi would usually give me the feeling of exploring the world, Natsume would be the one giving me the same comfy feeling I get after staying home for a whole day(and that's extremely good in my case). Its unpopularity is also welcome and appreciated, on my part.
I would go ahead with Gungrave. Perhaps it could turn differently for you, but for me the show really became outstanding after a certain episode. Also one of my favorite endings. |
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Ggultra2764
 Posts: 4054 Location: New York state. |
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Sure Key would agree with me on this, but Key the Metal Idol is a greatly underrated gem. The series is one big building mystery focused around the nature of the seemingly robot girl known as Key and the Ajo Heavy Industries robots that she is capable of blowing up when they are nearby. The soundtrack is hauntingly powerful and the series has no elements of slapstick as events becoming increasingly intense as more facts about Key and the PPOR robots from Ajo are revealed. Outside of ANN, I don't really hear any mention at all of the series which goes to show how obscure it is.
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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One that seems to have gotten nowhere near the attention it deserves is Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit. I would argue that it as least as good as anything Studio Ghibli ever put out, and that's saying something. I can't think of one flaw worth mentioning and yet it gets no more than a "pretty good" from most reviewers.
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egoist
Posts: 7762 |
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It's not always about the flawlessness. Anime that generally become a great hit usually comes with an inspiring story, and I somehow found Moribito to lack that. There's just not much appeal in a woman guarding a kid, although the anime certainly managed to bring it to another level, it couldn't do much since that's just as much as its roots allowed it to grow. Wouldn't go as far as to call it "underappreciated" since it even got to American TV, and it certainly had its chance to grow. |
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Sophisticat
 Posts: 165 |
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^^ Moribito's got plenty of flaws, although it is one title greatly deserving of more praise.
I nominate The Third: Girl with the Blue Eyes. It won't appeal to everyone, but the themes are especially appealing to me. The ending is absolutely fantastic, in any case. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Really? I've heard a ton of positive stuff about it. In fact, it even airs on Adult Swim. It's tough for me to consider something under appreciated when it's one of the few non-shounen anime that still warrants a TV spot. |
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Darksorrow29
Posts: 412 Location: United States |
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Ian K wrote:
The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of Uruk is the second season of the RPG spoof, that was largely panned in the fansub circuit as being inferior to the first. As a result it took me a while to check this out, but when I did I was really surprised at how much better than Aegis Sword is. By largely eschewing the goofy humor of the first season (which never did much for me) and staying much more serious throughout, I found myself enjoying this far more than I suspected I would. It does fumble the ending a bit, cramming what I guess was supposed to be the plot for a third season into one and a half episodes, but it didn't derail the show. I'm curious to see what reviews it gets here on ANN, and whether anyone sees it the way I do. That's interesting. I actually found the first season more enjoyable than the second. I thought the humor and the RPG spoof is what made season 1 unique and fun. It really killed it for me with the ending. After that it just turned into a generic show for me that didn't excel at anything. I also found the character development to be non existent, which is very sad haha. My personal opinion though. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Tweeny Witches- a fantastic, heartful experimental show that's a new take on magical girls that's wholesome fun for everyone while still being dark, mysterious and forebodding. Add in a fantastic dub [produced when everyone was picking on MB for their subonly dvd's], 2 discs per dvd release, quirky bits of animation between each episode that supplement the story, and a followup OVA with brand-new stories set before or possibly after the finale, and it's one of the best shows of the past few years. The Magic Book-styled artbox is just the icing on the delicious cake Studio 4C made for us.
After the 4 2-disc singles were released, and releasing a Premium boxset with the artbox and all 8 discs, Media Blasters is reissuing the TV series in May [discs 1-6] in a new litebox set that's fairly cheap [39.99 I think]. The OVA is still available too, and picking them up is cheaper then the Premium boxset btw. This is something anime fans should really check out, and well worth owning, as I found it had a lot of rewatchability to it, especially the dub with stellar talent like Wendee Lee involved. Also- the overlooked sister anime of Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan, Magical Witch Punie-Chan. I haven't seen Dokuro [whose plot is mildly skeevy], but Punie-Chan is a revelation. It holds on close to all the traditional 70's/80's/90's mahou shojo elements, like making friends out of enemies, having a cute mascot, using a magic wand, travellin to Earth to train while secretly being a Magical Princess! Only Punie makes her enemies friends by hard, brutal, rather visually bone breaking force, her mascot is constantly plotting to kill her, her magic wand has a sinister eye and has equally sinister magic, and her Mom is the Dictator of Magic Land [and may be responsible for the infamous death of Minky Momo]. It's just gruesome stuff, one horrible moment sandwiched innocently between cuteness. Plus, it has an awesome, super ugly girl gang, and Vietnam flashbacks, which is always worth bonus points. I've only hinted at the tip of the iceberg..... this show doesn't rely on questionable sex jokes, or cliched character concepts, it just takes reign of what we hold most dear in kids anime and subverts it into something awesomely evil while still adhereing to the saccarine bliuss. The subonly dvd from Media Blasters includes all the OVA episodes, and is super cool. |
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RedLeader
 Posts: 310 |
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Heh. I ended up liking both seasons of Druaga myself.
 It also inspired me to go and actually CLIMB the REAL Tower of Druaga. My poor DS had to stay on for a week, but I did it!
What I'm about to say next should come has no surprise to anybody as I've been saying it since even BEFORE the show started airing but you asked about under appreciated shows and to me, this one's pretty under appreciated. Of course, I speak of, Shin Mazinger Shougeki: Z Hen, which aired earlier this year to great praise and adoration among series and genre fans, and to deafening silence from everyone else (which really sucks as it's the opinions of everyone else that count towards shows being released domestically). A lot people were chased off by the perplexing nature of the first episode and poor reviews based on that episode, it seems... Well, that plus, I think most anime fans these days seem to be allergic to most anything involving robots... >_> And what they missed was both the most faithful rendition AND most expansive version of Go Nagai's original manga to date. Sadly, it seems even the series producers' didn't seem to be holding their breaths as the show tried to squeeze at least a 50 episodes' worth of plot into only 26 a measly episodes... :\ Still, Imagawa gave us a lot of suspense, secrets, great fights, red herrings, and a shocking final episode that hopefully means next season we'll be seeing Shin Mazinger Shougeki: Raijin Hen. Another great show that failed to take off with everyone recently was, GaoGaiGar: King of Braves. The series got off to a great start with the first box set, even sporting an excellent dub (I am now convinced Dan Green's sole purpose in life is to play Chief Taiga) only to have low sales result in a delay for the second box set that ended up with NO dub for the second half of the show, and even worse, no signs of GaoGaiGar: Final ever being released... :\ And that's sad. Heralded as the Anti-Eva, while Eva was busy trying to deconstruct all the cliches and character archetypes of the traditional robot show, GaoGaiGar, put them back, in spectacular fashion. And the fact that the whole thing came from Takara and featured a small army of truck and car robots that really resembled the old G1 Transformers (as opposed to the god awful newer mecha designs from both the newer animated series and the movies) was icing on the cake! A great show everyone ignored. Which leads into my third and final entry... Galaxy Railways. :\ It was a nice little show. It didn't really have a large over arching plot, but that was okay. The show wasn't about a great adventure, but about the individual members of Sirius Platoon and their various stories and development. Sadly, the ending felt pretty tacked on and left me a little cold... But hey, there's an OAV and a second season to what- Oh, wait. Funimation's ignoring them. Grrrrr.... Probably because it didn't sell well either. :\ I guess kids these days don't get Leiji Matsumoto any more than they get Go Nagai or giant robots... [sigh] It sucks getting old, doesn't it?
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Toucanbird
Posts: 126 Location: Winona, Minnesota |
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Perhaps because I was dumb enough to watch the English dub, but I thought Noein was pretty bad. Is it just one of those animes you need to watch in Japanese with English subs because I couldn't stand the dubbed version. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Here are a few hidden gems:
Digimon Adventure Not the chopped up compilation. Just this original 20 minute segment. Most people understandably ignore it since they're not into Digimon. It actually works perfectly fine just as a cool little independent short since it can totally stand alone and more importantly, it's actually really well done. There's no cheesy transformation sequences, shouted special attacks or formulaic plot structure to be found here. No, it's just a very well told little story. It's charming and cute without being cutesy. The art style is really quite nice. The kids are cute looking and the monsters are really cool looking and yet it by no means looks like they don't belong together. Battle Angel People probably know of the manga but this adaptation of the first little bit is really quite good all by itself. It looks great with very fluid animation, great character designs and a nice overall look. Where this really shines though is in it's characters. Gally is one of the few genuinely likable anime girls her age. She's sweet, cute and energetic but they don't overdo it like so many anime to the point where it's annoying. She is somewhat unsure of herself but also very forceful and strong when she needs to be. She feels very real, as does Yugo and the relationship between them which feels very genuine and believable. I haven't actually read the manga so I don't know if it's better. This works fine as a stand alone story though and is certainly not just a throwaway. Baby Blue The least known of Shinichiro Watanabe's work. He may have a reputation in some people's eyes as more of a fun and stylish action guy (which is true) but every one of his works also contains and extremely well developed sense of the somber and conflicted relationships between his characters. This really shines though here where he for the most part ditched excitement and action to focus on telling a emotional and bittersweet story of the relationship between two people. It's definitely right up there with his other stuff. I'd also mention Twilight of the Dark Master and Black Magic M-66 but I know Justin covered them in his Buried Treasure column so I won't go into great detail. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Noein is one of my favorite shows, but the English dub is horrible. I watched it originally in fansubs, and when I bought the R1 version, I thought I'd give the dub a try. I found all the main characters' voices very unappealing compared to the Japanese performances. The worst example was the female physicist. In the Japanese track she has a kansai accent, which is usually represented by a Southern accent in R1 dubs. (Azumanga Daioh and Abenobashi are good examples of this.) The English actress made the character sound like she just stepped out of a garden party in Birmingham, AL. Try it again in a year or two with the Japanese track and subs. You might find it a lot more appealing. |
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