Most underrated anime or anime character?

[Cy~]

Do you have a favorite anime or anime character that most people don't know or don't care about? Is there an anime that most people consider bad or just average that you've watched and loved? If either of these is a thing, then share your story here! I'll start.

 

Rozen Maiden (2004 series)

I really, really loved this show. I was running out of loli in my life , and I just happened to stumble across this one day. The premise sounded completely ridiculous, but the awesome OP song had me hooked. I watched the whole thing, I loved it, I was teary eyed :'(, and I was ready to go online and tell the world how incredible it was. Wellll, it turned out that not many thought it was awesome. Average, maybe, but not totally amazing.

 

I was shocked and discouraged, but I didn't really care. It's still one of my faves.

 

 

What about you?

Edited May 29, 2017 by Guest

[Orius]

Character, yes: Miki Sayaka. But talking about why she's underrated would take so much time and a lot of texts, so let's leave that for another time.

 

Underrated anime: Shigofumi, maybe. It's one of the first anime I watched, and it had a really cool concept. It's about letters from the dead being sent to their love ones from the afterlife. It's an episodic anime for the first-half, something I enjoyed, and the episode nature worked well in exploring different sides to the theme of "dead letters". Unfortunately, the second-half spiraled somewhere generic and edgy. It's been such a long time, but I think what ruined the show was the terrible villain and his cliched motivation.

 

Regardless, I still feel like it received way less attention than it deserves. It's also got beautiful animation and great character designs.

 

Next up, we have Gunslinger Girl, the first season. This is an example of how anime can appeal to adults. It's about child soldiers brainwashed into killing people without remorse. Very depressing and bleak, but retains a bittersweet tone to it as you can see that the girls still have their happier moments with their "masters". It's a shame the second season got so boring. dealing with political sub-plots rather than focus on the girls.

 

And then there's Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son), a criminally underrated masterpiece about children experimenting with cross-dressing, dealt in a very tasteful and lighthearted manner. It's full of 'feels' and can make you cry sometimes, but would probably make you smile and laugh more often. It's a very charming piece of work. Also has a manga that you should definitely check out if you like the anime, as the anime only adapt a portion of it (I haven't the time to check it out myself, however...).

 

Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku (Now and Then, Here and There) also doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. Another bleak dystopian anime that deals with very mature subject matters (rape for starters). It's a very depressing version of "hero gets transported to another world/time", where the hero isn't able to do jack-s*** about the terrible state of the world, unlike most of the similar stories you'd see out there where the hero becomes the Chosen One and save the world. It's safe to say that the hero (just a little boy) gets kinda broken by the end of his journey, or at least, becomes more mellow and mature.

[User 1510]

Do you have a favorite anime or anime character that most people don't know or don't care about? Is there an anime that most people consider bad or just average that you've watched and loved? If either of these is a thing, then share your story here! I'll start.

 

Rozen Maiden (2004 series)

I really, really loved this show. I was running out of loli in my life , and I just happened to stumble across this one day. The premise sounded completely ridiculous, but the awesome OP song had me hooked. I watched the whole thing, I loved it, I was teary eyed :'(, and I was ready to go online and tell the world how incredible it was. Wellll, it turned out that not many thought it was awesome. Average, maybe, but not totally amazing.

 

I was shocked and discouraged, but I didn't really care. It's still one of my faves.

 

[ATTACH]31562[/ATTACH]

 

What about you?

Here are some underrated shows that I'm aware of:

.Desert Punk

.Detroit Metal City

.Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal

.Basilisk

[Nutty]

I expect a lot of people to disagree; but Kiznaiver is a really great anime in my opinion.

 

People usually criticize Kiznaiver for being too melodramatic and exaggerated, which I do agree with to an extent - but not entirely. And it is also not to say that I dislike the melodrama present in the show, in fact, I would argue that the show is made for it. Noriko is a character in the series that a lot of people blame for the excessive drama that ensues. That may be the case, but that is why I like her (to put it bluntly).

 

I wholeheartedly connect with this show on an emotional level. That's why I like it so much; and a mere short post like this won't nearly do it justice. But I will be writing about why I love Kiznaiver after re-watching it this summer along with my other favorites. So I guess you'll find out why think it is extremely underrated then

[existentiallylostdumbell]

Speed grapher

Shigure, I wish they finished it

Also Samurai Champloo was epic, but I'm pretty sure everyone knows about that

Nabari no Ou

Samurai deeper kyo

Rurouni Kenshin, this one's pretty common though

Edited May 29, 2017 by Guest

[Cy~]

Rurouni Kenshin, this one's pretty common though

 

I haven't watched the anime, but I did watch the movie adaption, which I think is a pretty close translation of the best arc from the anime. I'll say that I strongly agree with this. It's kinda common, yeah, but most people don't think that it's amazing. I think it's pretty damn good, myself.

 

Character, yes: Miki Sayaka. But talking about why she's underrated would take so much time and a lot of texts, so let's leave that for another time.

 

Orius, I actually agree with you (STRONGLY) about Miki Sayaka being extremely underrated. I don't have much reasoning on my part. I just consider her to be a beautiful character in terms of personality, and I am really a fan of the Sayaka-Kyoko ship...

 

I want to see those texts that you would write about Sayaka, though. I think that this topic would be painfully incomplete without a stirring defense of the most underrated character from Madoka Magica. Seriously, it actually frustrates me how she's so overshadowed in the fandom, despite having one of the best character development arcs in that universe.

[existentiallylostdumbell]

Here are some underrated shows that I'm aware of:

.Desert Punk

.Detroit Metal City

.Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal

.Basilisk

 

Desert Punk is one of my favourite anime of all time, especially that blue-haired chick

Basilisk was good but sad, it's an action tragedy. Haven't seen the other two. I've watched the series for Rurouni Kenshin but not the movies, maybe I should

Edited May 30, 2017 by Guest

[Orius]

I want to see those texts that you would write about Sayaka, though. I think that this topic would be painfully incomplete without a stirring defense of the most underrated character from Madoka Magica.

I agree strongly, which is why I want to commit to this cause only when I have ample time and my full attention on writing the post. lol I'm a bit tied up with my visual novels right now, however.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Guest

[Orius]

Alright, I'm going to be honest: the reason I've been putting this off is because I felt that no matter how I write, it won't do Miki Sayaka justice. I felt that @Cy~ probably gave me too much credit. I'm not very eloquent, really, so I was pressured about giving Sayaka a proper defense. And besides, I know someone else from another forum (AnimeSuki's Triple R) who could do a hell of a job writing an entire wall of text defending the character much better than I'll ever hope to do. Here's a link to his post defending her against someone who was obviously emotionally-biased against Sayaka for reasons unknown.:

https://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=3698571#post3698571

 

That said, I love Sayaka. I can't overstate enough just how much I love her as a character. So, I'll give it my best shot. I'll try not to lift from Triple R's excellent defense and form my own personal opinion, but I do feel the need to reference some of his arguments as they're so well-written.

 

Miki Sayaka. Warrior of justice. Foolish idealist. Biggest punching bag in Madoka Magica. It's easy to hate Sayaka based on mere appearances. For starters, the popular character archetype is rarely the idealist of purity, let alone a flawed character striving to be one. Superman and Captain America are two of the most well-known punching bags because they're "lame" and "boring", because the desire to do good for goodness sake is supposedly not relatable as opposed to more human subjects like alcoholism (Iron Man) and the death of parents (BOTH Batman and Superman, yet the latter gets dismissed because he gets over it instead of whining). And I feel if we are going to talk about Sayaka, it's important to look at characters of similar archetype because of how the world perceives such a character. Look at Saber and Rin from Fate/Stay Night. Which of the two do you think is the more popular one? Wide-eyed idealists simply have no place in people's hearts.

 

And it's not just similar character designs we need to look at. We also need to look at the opposition, the polar opposite that people love, and why they love them while jumping on the hate-train for the more idealistic counterparts. Yes, before we move on, we need to take a look at Akemi Homura.

 

What makes Homura better than Sayaka?

For starters, she sacrificed everything for a girl she loves. That makes her more selfless, supposedly. Homura suffered a lot of emotional pain watching Madoka die over and over again, somewhat similar to the character design of Okabe Rintaro (who appeared in Steins;Gate in 2009 before Madoka was a thing in 2011). The girl who leapt through time was also incredibly badass because she has guns, and people favor big-ass machine guns over some petty swords any day. She nukes witches with rockets for crying out loud! And best of all, she "sucks it up" and doesn't let emotional angst gets in the way of doing something about her pain. She's everything a girl would want in a strong female character. Right?

 

Here's the thing: Homura is a time-traveler. We don't know how many times she has made a time-leap, so her mental age is... questionable at best compared to the likes of Sayaka, a 14 year old, and always a 14 year old when Homura reversed time. There's no room for Sayaka to grow the way Homura did because she's always stuck in the same time-loop. So to put Sayaka on the same pedestal as Homura (who has grown so much from a weak and nerdy girl to a cold-hearted badass) is incredibly unfair and illogical. Yet people do.

 

One reason a lot of Homura fans hated Sayaka was because Sayaka supposedly 'bullied' her in one of the timelines. When Homura was just starting out as a magical girl, Sayaka was unhappy about her joining the team and questioned her loyalties. There's a good reason for this if you've played the PSP game of Madoka, which delved into the first meeting of Sayaka and Hitomi. The reason Sayaka met Hitomi in the first place was because she got lonely after seeing Homura got as close to her childhood friend (yes, Madoka was her childhood friend) as she did, and Hitomi began hanging out with her. Another thing you might have missed is that, during the Drama CD, Sayaka wasn't mean to Homura at all, treating her like another friend. We don't know what might have happened after she became a magical girl to cause her to act that way towards Homura, so I don't think it's fair to judge her based on that single outburst.

 

Why I couldn't stand Homura

For myself, there's one scene that made me dislike Homura the way Homura fans disliked Sayaka. It was that scene when Homura tried once again to convince Sayaka to use the grief seeds, and Sayaka claimed that Homura seemed to have some agenda of her own, and she didn't trust her because of it. That's when Homura confessed that it was true that she only cared about Madoka and not wanting to see her sad because of Sayaka's foolishness. After that, she pulled a gun and threatened to put Sayaka out of her misery. That's when Kyoko intervened. Whether if Homura would have pulled the trigger if Kyoko didn't step in, we'll never know. We won't even know if Homura had outright killed Sayaka in previous timelines just to save Madoka the long-term pain.

 

Now, Homura has justified reasons to be that bitter, I understand. What I couldn't stand was the fact that her fans put her on some sacred pedestal like some holy infallible goddess. Homura is obsessed with Madoka to the point of stalking her, almost as obsessed as Sayaka was accused of regarding Kyosuke. She would do anything to see Madoka happy, even if it means getting rid of that one friend of hers making her sad. Remember, this is a teenager who has time-looped countless times and watched her friend died as many times. Her sanity is definitely in question here, so it's not exactly her fault. Look at Okabe when he time-looped as many times in Suzuha's ending (in the visual novel). He became broken and went insane, albeit because of different reasons (reliving the same moments again and again can drive you nuts). But because her sanity is in question here, I have good reasons to believe she would have pulled the trigger and isn't as pure as her fans would like to think.

 

I think I've covered enough about Homura and my feelings about her relationship with Sayaka. I feel that, in order to defend Sayaka, we need to address that Homura isn't any better than Sayaka nor is she any worse. With that out of the way, let's move on.

 

Sayaka's Motivations

Before we can talk about Sayaka's life as a magical girl, we need to examine her life before that and how she behaves under normal circumstances. This is important because her values become distorted after certain... revelations.

 

The first thing you need to know is that Sayaka's values are very black and white. She loathes herself whenever she does something good out of selfishness rather than for the sake of others. There's a scene where she complains about how unfair it is that they, perfectly normal girls without any disability, were given the power to make their wishes come true as opposed to others with real problems. It's either helping other people or helping herself. There's no compromise between these two principles, not for her. This isn't the same as being selfless, mind you, and is more akin to having a low self-esteem. This is important to remember because she seems prideful to a lot of people when it is the entire opposite - she thinks nothing of herself, period. Acting selfless would actually make her more prideful because it would mean she feels she has something valuable to give the world.

 

Another thing to remember is that Sayaka and Kyosuke were also childhood friends, far longer than Homura and Madoka were friends, and definitely much longer than Kyoko and Sayaka were yuri-baits. So it's not surprising that Sayaka cares as much about Kyosuke as much as she did, or even surprising that she sacrificed that much for him. He's not just "some boy she meets and falls in love with like an idiot."

 

Speaking of which, stop calling Sayaka an idiot. She's not the ditz who's too stupid to make proper decisions (Madoka's the real ditz of the show, but a lovable one). If anything, I feel that much of the franchise unfairly creates comic relief at her expense. She's the butt-monkey in a lot of scenes, not just the anime but also the Drama CD and official artwork. Remember, Sayaka has very low self-esteem, so she's perfectly fine with making a fool of herself if it makes her friends laugh for a brief moment. She's reckless, not stupid, impatient, not unintelligent. This is most notable when she learns to stop Homura's time-warping device in Rebellion and escapes before the latter has the chance to turn the tables on her. A pre-Rebellion example would be her detection of Homura having an agenda of her own, proving she's sharper than she looks. She is no genius girl, but she's certainly not on the other extreme end either.

 

Refusal to Harvest Grief Seeds

Now we're really getting to the heart of the matter: Sayaka's values as a magical girl. I'd like you to look at it from her perspective two very important things:

 

- Homura's actions. Her perspective of Homura has been negative due to certain actions Homura committed: antisocial behavior in class, hurting Kyubey (before she knew what was going on), dismissing Mami's act of kindness to offer a grief seed, and not to mention harboring a seemingly selfish agenda of her own.

 

- Kyoko's actions. Her perspective of Kyoko isn't any better, if not far worse. Kyoko wants to wait for the witches to hurt more innocents before harvesting them. She suggests to break Kyosuke's arms so that he would have to rely on Sayaka forever. She tells Sayaka to give up on being a magical girl because she's not willing to do things in her seemingly selfish way.

 

From these two perspectives, it's not hard to see why Sayaka wants to become a different kind of magical girl, one which the world sorely needs now that the only "good" MG, Mami, has passed on, and why Sayaka sees injustice in the world of magical girls, where people are out for their own self-interest. And considering that Kyoko's desire of waiting out witches before hunting them down, it would be justified to assume that Homura acts with the same kind of self-interest, wait for witches to hurt more innocents before the harvest. Much like the reason why she refused to take the stolen apple from Kyoko, this is the reason why Sayaka refused to take a grief seed from her: principles. How much blood was soiled on Homura's hands when she got that grief seed, one would ask. It's definitely not the type of person Sayaka would accept gifts from. Actions speak louder than words, and Homura's actions (especially on later timelines when she outright ignored Sayaka's existence) certainly didn't earn her trust, and might have even convinced her to take up Kyubey's offer in becoming the hero the world needed.

 

Sayaka's Wish

Sayaka didn't make the wish to get into Kyosuke's pants. Let's get that out of the way. She remembered Mami's advice very clearly, that she must differentiate between helping others and helping others to earn gratitude. It's the reason why she beats herself up for falling into the temptation of wanting Kyosuke's love (AFTER the horrific revelation about magical girls, mind you, not before). Before the revelation, she was happy with her decision and didn't have regrets, telling Madoka that it was her own choice to become a MG, and Madoka shouldn't feel burdened because of her decision.

 

That is... until everything went wrong. And I do mean everything.

Consecutive series of things that went wrong

Let's sum up what went wrong for Sayaka:

 

- She's told that her body is a mere shell, a walking meat-bag. In every sense of the word, a zombie. There's literally no one in the world she could connect with. Homura and Kyoko were still on bad terms with her (Kyoko didn't become friendly till much later), Madoka isn't a magical girl to understand the pain, and Mami is dead. She's alone in the world, shouldering the burden of defending the city.

- She learns that, Hitomi, the friend she relied on during her lonely period (when Homura was hanging out with Madoka) is infatuated with her childhood crush.

- She's given ONE day to decide whether to go back on all her principles of not wanting to save Kyosuke to earn his gratitude. ONE. F-ING. DAY.

- After seeing Homura and especially Kyoko's actions, she's further convinced by others that the world is cruel and lacks any semblance of justice when two misogynist on the train talk about training a girlfriend like a dog, thereby telling her that even her desire to defend the world and do good is for naught.

- After all the pain she goes through because she became a magical girl, she hurts Madoka and tell her to get on her level if she's going to pity her. This probably hurts her the most because Madoka's an even greater best friend than Kyosuke, and she just told her to suffer the same awful fate she's going through.

 

Let's not forget, all these happened to a 14 year old girl. What's more shocking is that she didn't crack much earlier.

 

In Conclusion...

My writing was a bit messy, but I'll sum it up as best as I could. Sayaka started out having rather harmless ideals. She sees that there are no other magical girls willing to stop witches from hurting innocents and she steps in while helping out her childhood friend in the process. She only has regrets in her conviction when the values of her world changed after Kyubey's revelation, meaning her own values never changed till the world around her distorted her principles. If this was an ordinary magical girl show like Cardcaptor Sakura, she would be perfectly fine as a warrior of justice like Saber. Unfortunately, her noble principles don't fit the dark universe of Madoka Magica where a magical girl's despair is equivalent to the miracles she grant. The nobler she tries to be, the more pain she will suffer. She's a noble hero who tries to do good, but ends up being told that her heroism is for naught.

 

Sayaka is cool. Sayaka is kind. And best of all, Sayaka is now the hero of justice she always wants to be in Rebellion, and maybe even after which. I can't wait to see what fate lies for her in the next movie of Madoka Magica.

 

Phew. Hope I did a decent job at the very least. This isn't the best defense of Miki Sayaka out there, and there are a lot more coherent arguments you could find via Google search. This was more of an attempt to lend my own opinion of Sayaka than anything else.

Edited June 3, 2017 by Guest

[Cy~]

Phew. Hope I did a decent job at the very least. This isn't the best defense of Miki Sayaka out there, and there are a lot more coherent arguments you could find via Google search. This was more of an attempt to lend my own opinion of Sayaka than anything else.

 

Bravo!

 

This was really magnificently said, tbh. I would say more in praise, but I'm actually deranged atm due to having just walked up the side of a mountain. However, I would like to add a few things that, I think, reinforce your perspective.

 

Homura is obsessed with Madoka to the point of stalking her

 

I'll double down on that and say that, actually, I'm not sure that I would count what Homura feels towards Madoka as being love. I know that a lot of people in the Madoka fandom consider Homura to be this selfless lover, but in reality, she seemed to be an extremely selfish, controlling maniac. Let's think about it.

 

Homura jumped through time again and again and again and again not for the sake of saving Madoka, really, but for the sake of herself, so that she would not have to suffer and deal with the pain of total loss. Why couldn't she just accept it as fate and move on? It seemed as though Madoka was quite comfortable with *her* own decisions.

 

This was not some random circumstance taking Madoka away, it was Madoka, making a conscious decision to do whatever she thought to be in the best interests of others, and Homura attempting to intervene. Why? Well, it's obsession. Obsession and love are rather different things. True love allows others the freedom to chase their own rainbows. Obsession? Well, it's just a desire for ownership, the desire to set the course of others lives for them.

 

With that said, I don't dislike Homura. I tend to be a little obsessive myself, tbh. However, I view Sayaka as a stronger character, for all of the reasons that you listed, and all of those that have been shared by others in other places.

[Orius]

Bravo!

 

This was really magnificently said, tbh. I would say more in praise, but I'm actually deranged atm due to having just walked up the side of a mountain.

I'm going to be honest: I feel I didn't put in 100% effort into writing that post. It was kinda a rushed job, and I kinda wanted to get the responsibility out of the way. Sorry if that sounded like I hated writing it, which I don't. I love defending Sayaka, but I honestly feel that I could've done a better job if I had written the post over the course of one or two days rather than patch together a series of arguments off the top of my head.

 

But that just shows how much I like Sayaka to take defending her so seriously. lol

 

I'll double down on that and say that, actually, I'm not sure that I would count what Homura feels towards Madoka as being love. I know that a lot of people in the Madoka fandom consider Homura to be this selfless lover, but in reality, she seemed to be an extremely selfish, controlling maniac. Let's think about it.

 

Homura jumped through time again and again and again and again not for the sake of saving Madoka, really, but for the sake of herself, so that she would not have to suffer and deal with the pain of total loss. Why couldn't she just accept it as fate and move on? It seemed as though Madoka was quite comfortable with *her* own decisions.

 

This was not some random circumstance taking Madoka away, it was Madoka, making a conscious decision to do whatever she thought to be in the best interests of others, and Homura attempting to intervene. Why? Well, it's obsession. Obsession and love are rather different things. True love allows others the freedom to chase their own rainbows. Obsession? Well, it's just a desire for ownership, the desire to set the course of others lives for them.

 

With that said, I don't dislike Homura. I tend to be a little obsessive myself, tbh. However, I view Sayaka as a stronger character, for all of the reasons that you listed, and all of those that have been shared by others in other places.

I agree completely. I know it's hypocritical for me to say this, but I'd rather not turn this into an anti-Homura rant, which was not exactly my intention. I can definitely understand why people love her, and I do understand her pain, so I hope Homura fans won't take this as an attack against her character.

 

With that out of the way, I do have to agree with her feelings towards Madoka being obsession more than actual love. This is proven by her actions in Rebellion, where she would sacrifice Madoka's choice to remain a savior for all MGs by choosing what she selfishly felt was best for Madoka. I think, deep down, she recognizes that it's not true love she's having, but mere lust. After all, she calls herself the Devil when speaking of her love for Madoka to Kyubey, so I feel that she at least understands that her 'love' isn't pure, and she's doing it out of her own self-interest.

 

I also have to state that I personally feel that Sayaka has a stronger friendship with Madoka than Homura, but the reason I didn't go into this in my previous post here is the same reason I didn't want to turn this into an anti-Homura rant. That's not related to the defense of Sayaka, so I'll leave that for another topic.