My favorites are 3-gatsu no lion and Monogatari, aka I am a shaft fanboy. And also the Girls' Last Tour manga.
Current recommendation: Girls' Last Tour (manga)
A short and bittersweet 47 chapters of heartrending, yet blissful cgdct post-apocalyptic adventure through a beautiful, slumbering cityscape at the end of a forgotten humanity, led by the greatest dynamic duo in slice-of-life history. The two mains, Chito and Yuuri, have a companionship that is just so endearing to behold. Wrap yourself in a cozy blanket for a night, perhaps with a box of tissues, and let yourself be immersed in this breathtaking world, you won't regret it. I love this manga so much.
10 - I don't have any 10/10s yet and I'm not sure what one would look and feel like
9 - my favorites, I think about them a lot
8 - it resonated with me a lot
7 - it resonated with me a good amount
6 - it resonated with me somewhat
5 - it resonated with me a little, or not at all and I have some other specific reasons for rating it a 5
4 - I wasn't invested in much of anything, but at least it tried (?)
3 - I have problems with several aspects
2 - I have big problems with many aspects
1 - emblematic of everything terrible about anime
I only have five 9/10s: both seasons of 3-gatsu no Lion, Monogatari Series: Second Season, the Girls' Last Tour manga, and the Haikyuu!! manga.
I currently have 26 anime and manga rated 8/10.
I don't quite know who I'm writing this for. But it exists, so if somehow you've found your way here, it's yours to peruse.
The usual person who looks over my MAL is quick to point out my ~4.7 average. Since I rate so low, to accurately compare my list with yours (if you have one), we may need to add two to all of my scores. That's not a real explanation, though, so I've figured that I should lay bare my thoughts here, for future convenience, or posterity, or something. I realize that I tend to rate somewhat mercilessly, and I attribute this to a few things:
1. I've watched a lot of schlock. Nowadays I'm pickier about what I devote time to, but when I first started watching anime I gorged anything like it was a buffet: the Eromanga Sensei-s, the SAO clones, a lot of egregious self-insert harem, and so on and so forth. I've learned since then that I deserve to keep my sanity and no longer aimlessly consume whatever happens to be on my plate. Still, that period of gluttony weighs on my average heavily, and on top of that, I don't really watch much anime anymore, so any +/- change will happen slowly.
2. Most things fail to resonate with me. Or maybe I fail to resonate with most things, I'm not sure which. I've gone a bit coldblooded over the years, in the sense that when I see death or tragedy on-screen, I still require something more than a barebones depiction of death or tragedy to care, and I don't mind what that something is as long as it feels genuine. I don't need there to be death or tragedy on-screen to be moved, necessarily - I mean, I'm a big fan of K-On! The Movie. But what K-On! The Movie presents is far realer in my eyes compared to something like Demon Slayer, despite not containing any of the death or tragedy that the latter depicts liberally.
To be honest I'm not entirely certain as to the meaning of these words that I've been using a bit willy-nilly - "genuine" and "realer" and "resonate" - but I'm at least able to orient these terms within a discussion of a specific topic. i.e., I can reason why some pertinent details do resonate, and why others do not. But, to put out my best attempt at formally defining a general case: I'd say that an anime or manga will not resonate if I think its primary messaging, its purpose, its raison d'etre, is trite, immoral, ambiguous, plain nonexistent, unsubstantiated, and/or trumped by major flaws.
Usually, if I find its characters generally hard to care about, then I won't resonate. Often, when someone's gushing about one of their favorite characters from a show or read that I'm not as enamored with, I opt to bite my tongue so as not to sour the magic in their eyes by telling them all the ways in which I think someone they care about is one-dimensional or tropey or dull. It's a struggle for me to empathize with a character if they don't meet what I admit is a high standard and probably overkill, which is the notion that I want them to be as complex as a real human being might be. A good example of this is my (potentially controversial) take on Fujino & Kyoumoto from Look Back. My general thoughts about their tragedy is that I needed more time spent with the duo in order to empathize with them; they didn't seem complex enough to me, even knowing that the film is autobiographical and about real, flesh-and-blood people. And I'm not sure if this makes me coldblooded or just overly critical.
Well, whether it's because I'm coldblooded or overly critical or whatever, the fact is, a majority of stuff never speaks to me on a deep emotional level, and I understand this to be a bit of an unusual quirk among the crowd. I'd love to talk about it, because it seems like a salient, yet subtle point of contention whenever I've talked to people about anime.
3. I guess this is a corollary of #2. If most things fail to resonate with me, then it must follow that few things do, and I've taken care to make sure that anyone who manages to find my list can tell these gems apart from the mud at a glance. The baseline for anime/manga within this small class of high-achievers is 7, and each subclass beyond 7 gets exponentially tinier. Only 20% of stuff ever reaches the baseline, which is to say that just 20% of the anime I've watched and the manga I've read have really stuck. And again, I have no 10's and only five 9's, one of which is questionable. Lots of people are pretty loose about awarding 9's and 10's, but I've always felt the need to give my favorite shows the special recognition that I think is owed to them. They should be championed in a realm all their own.
In this realm, any 8 is more special to me than all 7's, and any 9 is more special to me than all 8's. I guess that's how any grading scale works. To be more specific, 7's are both objectively high-quality and pretty emotionally compelling; 8's usually possess some visual or narrative flair which elevates the viewing experience as a whole, or are just that striking or visceral; 9's have informed some part of the trajectory of my life; and a 10 may well be life-defining, I don't know yet.
Ultimately, the end result of being so pedantic about my rating scheme for a database of japanese animation and comic books, which maybe three or four people in my life will ever stumble upon, let alone care about, is that the entire bell curve is shifted down the scale by a few points, lowering the average.
And that's why my average score is pretty low.
[End note: One last thing. Many entries in my list are outdated in the first place, and should I take on the painful task of adjusting it all, I think my average score would actually lower. But yeah. I hope my ramblings have given you some idea of the way my head works. If you found this at all interesting, which I'm sure you have, given you've read it through to the end, I have two things to say: Thank you, and feel free to probe me further. :) ]
The graph might not corroborate this, but I've been trying lately not to subject myself to anime that I know I'm not even going to enjoy, which is an improvement in a long-held bad viewing habit of mine. These days I'd rather not force myself to wade through all the seasonal sewer sludge. There are greater discoveries out there to be made. I want to experience all the grand, enchanting stories just waiting for me to stumble by, and I want to connect deeply with the people who live within them; I believe there is no better reason to watch.
Hi Santa! Thanks for the gift, had a great time watching Highschool Boys. The first episode was 10/10 for me, haven't laughed as much with 1 episode in a while. Unfortunately later episodes didn't make me laugh nearly as much but were still definitely enjoyable and every scene with Yassan was gold.
I am in the middle of 3-gatsu no Lion and enjoying it so far. After I finish watching it I'll probably start watching Bakemonogatari cause it's a series I was planning to watch for the longest time and I guess you are the push I needed to finally get around to it.
All Comments (17) Comments
you can never fulfill my sexual desire
I am in the middle of 3-gatsu no Lion and enjoying it so far. After I finish watching it I'll probably start watching Bakemonogatari cause it's a series I was planning to watch for the longest time and I guess you are the push I needed to finally get around to it.