There is no such thing as dropping an anime forever. When I use the term ‘dropped’ that does not mean that’s the last I’ll see of that anime in my life. Dropping a show means that I don’t have the enthusiasm to watch this show currently and at a later date I’ll return to that anime. This later date may be the time when I’m trapped on a desert island with nothing other than a dvd player and a ‘Lucky Star’ boxset, but I will one day return and give the anime another shot. With this in mind, combined with the fact that I’ve passed the 100 anime mark on my MAL account for anime I’ve dropped, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a look back at all those series I’ve dropped, recognise why I dropped them and evaluate when I should give them another go.
Texhnolyze
Dropped After: 2 episodes
Why I dropped it: Interesting fact: This is the only anime out of the 66 I’ve listed so far that I dropped for being pretentious. Even Lain I was quite interested in the parts people would call pretentious.. The problem was simply summoning up the enthusiasm about the rest of the show in order to care about these parts. I suppose this is as good a proof as any that I’m a raging elitist who loves DEEP anime. However Texhnolyze was too much even for me. The deep breathing into the mic got on my nerves. Long stretches of just the main character limping through the streets that were probably supposed to symbolise the characters suffering and whatnot just annoyed me. Far too wrapped up in itself and the idea of trying to prise it open and make sense held no appeal to me whatsoever.
Rebirth Chances: Below Average. The music was great. I’ll give it that. But my reaction to what I saw was far too negative for me to feel any urge to pick it up again. Plus I watched less than a year ago. I don’t think my opinion is going to change much in that short a time.
To-Love-Ru
Dropped After: 10 episodes
Why I dropped it: I’m still a bit amazed that I watched 10 episodes of this show. The power of an addictive opening and hot girls compelled me to continue. In fact, I think it was only when they started introducing lolis that I dropped the show.
Rebirth Chances: Low. Look, let’s be honest here. This show has no redeeming factors other than the hot girls. It knows this as well and simply spends its time reproducing largely the same episode over and over again, possibly introducing a new hot girl to spice things up. The manga got cancelled because readers ratings were so low, the story was going nowhere, the comedy was repetitive and unfunny and the characters had as much depth as a frying pan. Anyone who tries to say there’s any other appeal to the show is lying. I think I’ve graduated beyond watching generic fanservice crap…although I am still watching Highschool of the Dead, so…
Tokyo Magnitude
Dropped After: 5 episodes
Why I dropped it: Me dropping a Noitamina anime? What has the world come to! But Tokyo Magnitude managed to tick a lot of boxes of stuff I really don’t enjoy watching in my anime. Hyper rational characters often don’t interest me. Neither does sob stories nor human struggles. Hmmm, I’m finding this hard to verbalise. It was the realism of the show I guess. This was not meant as entertainment nor was it meant to have deeper meaning. It was an honest study of what would happen in the event of an earthquake in Tokyo. Human struggles and so on. Some people love that stuff. I don’t.
Rebirth Chances: Average. I know the big spoiler that happens in this show and that doesn’t make me any more or less interested in picking up the show again. Also, it has only been a year since this aired and I doubt my opinion is going to change that much.
Stellvia
Dropped After: 5 episodes
Why I dropped it: Oh dear, not another one of these ones. I can remember very little whatsoever about Stellvia. I vaguely remember something about Hogwarts in space and the characters going on adventures on the spacecraft only to be caught by Severus Snape or some other pilot teacher hotshot. There was also sweets in a big jar. And body-hugging space-suits, although they’re pretty much a given when it comes to those sort of series. Otherwise I’m afraid I’m at a loss as to why I dropped it. However I must have dropped it for a reason though, right?
Rebirth Chances: High, as is always the case with shows I can’t remember a thing about. It’s decently rated, if admittedly not all that highly. I never hear anyone talk about the series at all, whether it be with disdain or praise, neither or which is exactly a good sign. However people also don’t talk about a lot of other early 00’s shows that are excellent so eh, maybe I passed over a gem that gets better I swear!
Umi Monogatari
Dropped After: 3 episodes
Why I dropped it: It’s ZECXS so you know what that means kids? Yup, it was the absolute pinnacle of averageness! Remember, being average doesn’t mean you’re bad. I wouldn’t call Rental Magica or Legendary Legend bad shows. I even gave this show a B– after the first episode. But it pretty quickly became clear what was going on with this show. Pure pure magical girl transformation sequences with cute girls being insufferably nice to each other with plenty of yuri undertones and humour innocent and fluffy and involving giant talking turtles. When you add all those together, I’m actually amazed at how much I failed to hate the show. ZEXCS and their power of averageness is truly outstanding.
Rebirth Chances: Low. The little I read from positive reviews afterwards came from the type of fan who love shows with names like Magical Musical ~Chu~ ~Chu~ Lyrical Heart and Soul Puni Puni Girl SOS, a genre that never particularly interested me as you can probably tell from my aloof and degrading attitude towards them. If I’m going to step outside my comfort zone when it comes to these sorts of shows, I’ll watch something a bit more highly rated. Like Cardcaptor Sakura or Princess Tut…oh wait…
Valkyria Chronicles
Dropped After: 6 episodes
Why I dropped it: Ah I remember this! I was instantly dismissive of the show because it was a game adaptation, and we all know they are never any good. But Valkyria Chronicles insisted on not being bad. It had a hot female lead, a tank, a bit of invention gone into the world design and a strange style of animation that gave everything the texture of wood. Around episode 3 there was a tank driving underwater. You know, pretty cool stuff. But this was all just staving off the eventual turn to crapness that was always hiding just out of view. What pushed me away was a plot twist to rival the stupidity of Alison to Lillia. When attacking a base, the main character came up with the daring plan to attack from the side! I know, he’s like the second coming of Yang Wenli.
Rebirth Chance: Above average. As you can probably see, I was more than a bit harsh on the series. All I was really doing was looking for an excuse to drop the series at the first available opportunity. Heck, Cowboy Bebop also had a miserable episode 6…wait, did I just compare Valkyria Chronicles to Cowboy Bebop? Yikes, I guess that means I should end these posts here and now.
Loading …
50 Comments
Hmmm for a change I’ve only seen one of these to completion and plan to watch one other.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 was one of my top picks of 2009 — I loved that show (it made me bawl like a baby, but I am a huge sap). Then again I have a predisposition towards disaster films and documentaries so this was like custom made for me!
Texhnolyze is a series (like Lain) that I keep telling myself to watch, but am never in the mood for. My friend tells me I’ll like it — I generally trust her judgement, but its just actually starting the bloody thing thats difficult.
Wouldn’t touch To-Love-Ru if you paid me and I only lasted 3 eps of Umi Monogatari before loosing the will to live.
Valkyria Chronicles I made it to mid season with but it was so boring and predictable that I just couldnt be arsed with it any more.
Never heard of Stellvia — sounds pretty interesting.
I’m kinda surprised how few people seem to have even heard of Stellvia. I thought it was a lot more popular than that but eh, guess I was wrong
Just one thing, Tokyo magnitude wasn’t even close of being realistic.
There was a near 8.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan during the season of it’s emission. Guess what!, the damages were little and I think no one died. So this show isn’t exactly realistic, only someone who lives in a zone where earthquakes do not occur frequently can believe something like this.
Out of the 6, I watched Tokyo magntiude and To love-ru. Don’t bother with them. I also dropped Umi monogatari at episode 3.
I would watch Texhnolize, but it’s better to hear waht other people has to say about it.
I remember that happening, but the quake was only a 6.9. The Richter Scale is logarithmic, so it was less than 1/10th the strength of an 8.0 earthquake…
Check the facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes#Deadliest_earthquakes_on_record
Ireland doesn’t really do natural disasters, unless ceaseless drizzle counts as one
Isn’t that kind of the basis of Chinese Water Torture? The drip drip drip slowly drives one insane…
It’s a little known fact that the Irish are naturally immune to Chinese Water Torture
We are? Well isn’t that useful.
Tokyo Magnitude has an opening by Abingdon Boys School.
And I have a very big fanboner for them.
And I have a normal boner for the To-Love-Ru girls
Doesn’t mean I want to touch the show again though
True, the song(Kimi no Uta, I think) isn’t one of my favorites..
Haven’t seen Texhnolyze or Stellvia, but TM8.0 is leagues above the other three. I’ll add that Valkyria Chronicles has the distinction of getter much worse as it progresses, so if you’re in the mood for train wreck…
Yeah but from what I know of your tastes, TM8.0 is totally up your alley. For Noitamina, it was rather lacking in the weirdness factor that typically drives me towards those shows
Tokyo Magnitude was an emotional roller coaster, but since you know the spoiler I don’t think it’ll have the effect it did on me, plus it was during a strange time for me when I watched it.
Stellvia is really good, it does have its slow points but overall very enjoyable.
I dropped Valkyria at 5 and have been thinking of picking it up again.
Holy crap, someone who actually watched Stellvia? I was wondering if anyone had actually seen it
This is like a laundry list of stuff that I also mean to finish someday. My opinion’s the same on most of them as well. I don’t plan on finishing Umi or To-Love, but the rest I’ll probably watch sometime since the fall season’s looking quite boring.
I think I’d personally prioritize TM because it’s short, then it’s a real toss-up. I haven’t seen much stuff like Texhnolyze lately, so it would probably be next. Stellvia and VC seem like oh so many other shows to me, and I’m getting bored of that lately.
I think TM is gonna win, and it will probably be the last show I pick up in these posts, unless there’s some massive response to one of the series in the next post.
I suppose Stellvia does reek slightly of generic anime. I’d never thought of it like that, but I suppose I watched it when I didn’t quite know what generic was. Back when I was still innocent
Texhnolyze gets lets pretentious after the first four episodes. They actually start talking and stuff.
You mean they do something more than heavy breathing?
+1 to watch Umi Monogatari.
I don’t normally go for those types of shows but I enjoyed it. It wasn’t a great show but it did a good job with it’s characters and the ending and creating a relaxing atmosphere with it’s choice of animation style and music. I liked it enough that I rewatched it with my sister who hates shoujo shows like Card Captors and she thought it was okay overall (and she actually liked the ending).
-
I finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 but it so wasn’t worth it. Afterwords, I did something I don’t normally do on my blog — I wrote a lengthy piece why, exactly, I disliked Tokyo Magnitude. (I normally keep negative comments short and I don’t like to dwell on them since there’s so much negativity out there already.) One of my issues with it was how the show was presented as a realistic show but relied on constant coincidence and bad/implausible decision making to string the story along.
But Card Captors isn’t shoujo…
I hate how To Love-Ru has such pretty art. ;__;
how is cardcaptor sakura not shoujo o_o what is it then?
all my sister’s manga lied to me if it isn’t D: (then again, it IS english publishers)
steelbound said Card Captors, not Cardcaptor Sakura. There’s a big difference there.
I’m not sure if relaxing while watching an anime is my sort of thing. Then again, that was the main appeal I found in Haibane Remnei. But with Umi Monogatari I’d be more interested in the directors other work. You know, that one on Mars that everyone keeps yattering on about
Yeah, can’t say I really recommend Valkyria Chronicles to bother finishing. I’ve been working through it in fits and starts for about two weeks now, and the stupid level is pretty astounding. The tactically moronic stuff that characters in the show on a regular basis is really obnoxious. I doubt that I’m going to manage to finish it.
Stellvia’s not really something I can exactly recommend. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t really good either. Its pretty average, ultimately, and the romance angle gets pretty grating about halfway through. I don’t feel like I wasted my time in watching it, but that’s not quite a ringing endorsement, is it?
I doubt anything could be as moronic as some of the things Alison to Lillia sprouted, but if they continued the streak from the ‘attack from the side’ then it would be an interesting challenge.
More averageness? Eh, I’ve nearly finished the pretty average Scrapped Princess at this stage. Don’t feel like sitting through another one similar to it
I’m actually gearing up to writing a post about how stupid Valkyria Chronicles has been. Some of the stuff just hurts my soul, its so bad.
I think the real problem, though, is that the show doesn’t realize how dumb it is. I’ve watched a lot of dumb shows, but usually the really moronic ones realize that they aren’t Shakespeare. VC doesn’t seem to get that at all — hence all the fanfare when they flanked around to the side. I’m all for dumb shows, but not when they think they’re srs biznes.
I remember really liking the first episode of Technolyze back when I saw the first episode fansubbed. Unfortunately, the friend of mine who had access to fansubs at the time (I didn’t have high speed internet at the time) pretty much felt the same way you did about said first episode and didn’t bother getting a hold of any more episodes. I lost track of the series and never got back around to it. Not that you’ve mentioned it I might just do that.
I quit watching Magnitude for the same reasons you did. I don’t give a damn about the plights of everyday people put into “fictional” form. It’s one thing when I’m watching an hour long History Channel special and it’s another when someone wants me to sit through a two and a half hour movie, or even worse, a multi-episode TV series about such things.
I avoided Stelvia and Valkyria Chronicles since they didn’t really seem to be anything I hadn’t already seen in some better form. I doubt they’re the trash that To-Love-Ru or Umi Monogatari seem to be, but they don’t hit any of my buttons that’d make me be ignore their genericness.
So yeah, my vote’s going for Technolyze.
You liked that first episode of Techxylyzeyuzk%$? As in, the one where nobody talked for 12 minutes and the rest consisted of lots of heavy breathing? If I had only listened to the sound of that episode, it would have been like I was listening to someone masturbate played in slow motion
This is most likely just me, but I thought that To LOVE ru got stupider and funnier toward the end. Probably alone on that one though.
Didn’t you also like Eiken?
Hmm, tough call this week. My personal favorite of those you put up was TM8.0, but I was watching it week by week, so there was still a LOT of ambiguity in terms of the spoiler which made the ‘speculah’ fun as hell. Seriously, following the Anonymous threads and various bloggers as the realization hit them all one by one was priceless, but knowing this ahead of time certainly diminished the impact. So much so, That I probably won’t bother recommending it.
Spoilerish pic for TM: (http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd34/vucubcaquix/1252945471260.jpg)
As for Stellvia, I’m stalled on one of the earlier episodes. I do like it, and it goes down easily, I just get distracted by a bunch of other stuff at the same time. I think I first picked it up because I initiated a conversation on A Certain Anonymous Imageboard regarding post-apocalyptic anime with hopeful and upbeat themes. Kind of like: “Fuck Yeah! Humanity!” Stellvia was definitely at the forefront of everyone’s recommendations along with another show that I can’t seem to remember for the life of me… oh well. It’s still sitting on my hard drive, part of a growing number of shows that make sure that I have less than 40 gigs left on a 1 TB HDD.…
Oh, Kira-Fansub released some bluray encodes of it a while ago, and the images they used for each post made me laugh (hint: lots of kissing and crying):
http://kira-fansub.blogspot.com/search/label/Uchuu%20No%20Stellvia%20%5BBD%5D
Even I remember the speculah (remember I did watch 5 episodes and kept tabs on what was happening to see if I should pick it up again). I also remember the brother being called the patron saint of mecha anime because he liked robots. He will deliver us the mecha anime we’ve all been craving!
…yeah, I remember the oddest things sometimes
Anime club showed the first episode of Technolyze in a past semester and I couldn’t agree with your opinion more. I love the pretentious stuff, but it went so overboard trying to be pretentious that it seemed to drop all attempts at storytelling or character introduction/development.
We seemed to drop Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 at around the same time, though I kept following along through blog posts. I was looking for it mainly for realism, but things ended up going so smoothly in it that it quickly became unrealistic. Sure there were deaths in it, but it all felt so sanitized that I could have sworn it was funded by the Japanese government to reassure people that things wouldn’t be so bad in a real scenario.
I’d probably say to go with Valkyria Chronicles if you start watching any of them. I dropped it, but mostly because I played the game first and saw how the show didn’t hold a candle to the game, in terms of story or in regards to the game’s beautiful visual style. Plus, yeah, they seemed to forget about most of the tactics in the show. “Attack from the side”, WTF indeed.
Actually, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 WAS tied with the JSDF:
http://tokyo-m8.com/blog/img/0729rikuji_R.jpg
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=102259&show=0
Not surprising in the least. The JSDF and civilian authorities are all over the place as soon as the earthquake hits, have sufficient supplies to hand out, and are so calm and organized that it’s ridiculous. Even the best disaster relief operations don’t go that smoothly. Also, complete absence of US Forces Japan in the relief efforts also irked me a little as an American, heh. There’s no way we wouldn’t be all over trying to help in that sort of situation given how much material and personnel we have already stationed there.
(Link to the poster image no longer works, but thanks for the link anyway.)
It’s funny how the complaints for Tokyo Magnitude range from both too realistic to not realistic enough. Can’t please anyone
I regretted so much actually finishing To Love-ru. A fact I will regret so much more when I inevitably watch the 2nd season this fall as well. And yeah the Thyme OP was awesome. That group had such promise and they disappeared after their 1st album.
There’s a few ‘obligatory’ second seasons I never ended up watching. Birdy 2, Kuroshitsuji 2, Futakoi Alternative, Onegai Twins, Mai Otome. I should probably make a post out of them
were you interested in tecxhnowhatever when you saw that opening someone mentioned in comments as well? lol, i recall that some time ago. i was interested as well, but we’ll see.
actually your review of tokyo magnitude makes me more interested in it than not. fictional disaster stuff is right up my alley, especially if it has other undertones like movies like children of men and district 9. im sure it won’t be as awesome as those movies, but eh, i’ll give it a shot.
Oh wow, I’m amazed you remember that. I’d forgotten about that. It was that anime openings by popular western bands post. I’ll see if I can find it…aha!
http://thecartdriver.com/anime-openings-and-endings-by-popular-western-bands/
i have a knack for remembering the most random things ;/
All in all. Tokyo Magnitude wins. Get to work Scamp!
Indeed it has. Here we go I guess, for one last time
You watching 10 episodes of To Love Ru=Not computing.
Voting for Tokyo Magnitude 8.0.
I watched only two of the anime u put on hold list. I watched Valkyria Chronicles and Tokyo Magnitude.
Valkyria is pretty good if you like romance and mecha. Somewhat like Gundam Seed. lol. I really enjoyed this anime with the dense main character and the loud pretty girl.
Tokyo Magnitude was a really dramatic anime. I can’t seem to predict what was gonna happen . It was enjoyable.
Technolyze is one anime thats really hard to continue after dropping. I did once after 4 episodes and it took me a year till i could pull myself to rewatch it. But the pace of the plot picks up slowly from the 5th episode or so and then from the tenth onwards it becomes great. I know such kind of anime wont get many votes but do try it out. It has a much better plot than lain and the politics particularly is awesome too
Stellvia is among my favorites, and I have an urge to watch it again…
The only one I’ve watch (though I’ve heard of most of them) was Texhnolyze. I quite liked it though I do enjoy dark anime though. However, this has to be the most depressing thing I have ever watched, ever.