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Most of the negative responses I see here are from a few reasonable misunderstandings caused by:

1) Not knowing how extraordinary people behave in reality.
The author doesn't help mitigate this problem very much. The difficulties faced by the characters that motivated them to decide to "become ordinary", or put in better words "feign normalcy", are not shown for a while and what is shown just isn't enough for anyone who either wasn't extraordinary as a kid or didn't interact with someone extraordinary as a kid to understand why the characters would behave that way.

2) Not knowing that real world Japan is very much "Nails that stick ... out get hammered flat.".
This is a problem external to this show, but it is a weakness of the show that this must be known to make sense of the characters' actions with the available screen time given to the relevant motivations.

3) Not knowing that the show takes place in that real world Japan.
This is a problem at least somewhat related to this show. The scenes where the characters are talking are anime-tier embellished with artistic visuals, which does make it feel like an anime instead of the mostly realistic fiction that it is. If the animation maintained its grounding in realism throughout then viewers would be more likely to interpret it in the way it needs to be interpreted to make sense.

4) Not catching the purpose and meaning behind the early mysteries.
Anybody affected by misunderstandings 1-3 would likely be too distracted to catch that the early mysteries are critical to establish the two main male characters. If you didn't catch that you'd consider those mysteries to be a waste of time.

5) Having a mistaken idea of what the plot will be because the title... is wrong.
The English title of this show should be "Feigning Normalcy". Pretend that's the title and you'll have a better time.

Hyouka is a similar anime that didn't have these problems because it didn't have extraordinary characters, took place in anime Japan, and the title doesn't mean anything in English.

There are some negative reviews caused by people not liking the pacing. That's not a misunderstanding. The show's pacing is a bit slow.

For me this show was a welcome break from spazfest anime full of overblown reactions, yelling indoors, lethal injuries treated as gags, breaking objects that seem to fix themselves through plot magic, etc. The writing is good, the art is good, the voice acting is good, the characters are good, and this first season sets up its second season for excellence. Hopefully the second season realizes that potential. I generally recommend this show on those grounds despite the fact that many anime fans may not enjoy it as much, with the caveat that reading this review may be helpful for some (possibly many) to avoid going in with the "wrong perspective", insofar as such a thing exists.

Before the review: This show, like many older shows, contains flashing scenes which may trigger seizures in some people, and which many others will find distracting or annoying.

If you're looking for that special something that some 90's anime stories have that you can't find anymore look elsewhere because there is none of it here. With the exception of 2 or 3 quirks you've probably already seen, heard, or read this before. Whether or not it was clever for its time the writing has aged terribly.

The animation was surprisingly satisfying, not just from the innate charm that pre-digital art has, but also because this ... show is better about not using pan / zoom / still filler effects than most other anime of the time, at the very least they're not for very long. Only having 4 episodes and being released over a long period of time probably has something to do with that, even so the animators' efforts deserve recognition for making something that at least isn't jarring to watch nearly 30 years later.

Still not worth suffering through the plot. Not recommended.