Thanks to Mari for the tag.

Disclaimer: The title warned you what this is about already, so if you don’t want internet arguments, it’s best you head to a different post. Also, there are vague spoilers in the love triangle bit (and large spoilers in the alternate answer) – but if I told you what series they were for, then it wouldn’t be much of a surprise now, would it?

A Popular Anime You Don’t Like

I have said before I gain a bit of a bias towards the hugely popular anime and manga. Sometimes this bias can be overcome, such as with Kuroko no Basuke, but other times it’s not possible. The biggest offender would be Shingeki no Kyojin, since there is the personal story behind that one – namely, it and Hataraku Maou-sama were airing in the same season at one point and the latter flew under the radar.

An Anime Everyone Hates But I Love

Samurai Flamenco? Remember that anime?

I’ve seen quite a few people who drop it based on wanting more of the slice-of-life bits at the start or the episode 7 swerve (those are normally the people who adhere to the 3 episode rule) and not many admit to liking the entire thing…but I did, to the point where I made it the subject of a rewatch project and even tried RPing as one of the characters (although nobody cares about that – it wasn’t very long-lived, anyway).

A Love Triangle Where They Didn’t End Up With Who I Wanted

I don’t normally get grumpy at love triangles, because when it comes to romance anime, I have my tried and trusty (most of the time) one line of defence – “I ship all canon ships”. The point of love triangles is to present each potential suitor as the best anyway, so love triangles probably make it easier to say that line, rather than harder, even if I don’t know who won in the end. Skip.

(That even counts the ambiguous end of School Days, even, because I was backing Kotonoha for a lot of it – “pick the lesser of various evils”, y’know? – and she…kind of…got her way.)

Alternative answer: …um, it might not count (it would depend on if you care about Beyond Information as a “proper ending”…or even watched Beyond Information in the first place), but for Kado, I didn’t want Saraka to end up with Shindo. That was a big source of rage for me, but not necessarily because I wanted Shindo to be with zaShunina instead. (Shindo x zaShunina was the only ship I saw represented while I was wandering the fandom, even though in retrospect – and this mentally scars me just thinking about it, or the logic behind it – there is some level of probability zaShunina should not be able to procreate, or generally do some of the other stuff you see with other ships, with Shindo…because zaShunina’s an alien, y’hear me?)

Specifically, Saraka x Shindo is a “no yay” because there was zero buildup to it, zero chemistry (unless you count the “I want to show you the beauty of this world I’ve been protecting” stuff as “romantic” – I thought it rather platonic) and the resultant child was just a plot device.

A Popular Genre You Hardly Watch

I have a few options – mecha, ecchi/hentai (if you can call that “popular” for reasons that don’t…er, involve humanity’s base instincts), sports (because I’m not a sports person, as stated in the Kuroko no Basuke post) and romance (despite rating some romance manga quite highly, watching people dance around their confessions for 12 weeks straight gets downright painful).

Romance is more palatable if it has a different genre tacked to it, which is how it’s a lot higher on my list than the other genres I’ve listed.

A Beloved Character I Dislike

Asta from Black Clover came to mind immediately and with good reason: his yelling (apparently?) gave people headaches when the anime first debuted, but I watch my anime on mute normally, so I was saved from such a plight. Despite this, Asta is still a screamy ball of energy, volume or no volume, which is why I’m not getting back to Black Clover any time soon.

(…I mean, there must be some reason Asta’s anime, as of the time of writing, has over 100 episodes, while many other anime that deserve a second season don’t get any more than 12 or 13 episodes…)

A Popular Anime I Can’t Get Into/Not Interested in Watching

Already explained Shingeki no Kyojin, so we need a different answer here.

Out of the Big 3 (One Piece, Naruto, Bleach), I only ever liked One Piece and even then, I fell behind after a certain point. Bleach I was actually…kinda fine with, but not enough to keep braving my intense bias and discover if I actually liked it after one chapter…but Naruto? Hoo boy, I tried and went “nup” after I saw Naruto putting graffiti on the monument of the four heads in the manga, so no way are you finding me watching the anime any time soon. He was such a bad influence already at that point, I feel, and with all the cool kids still Naruto-running these days (remember when people tried to storm Area 51?), his influence only got even worse from there…

A Popular Anime I Prefer Over the Manga

I like what I encounter first, most of the time, and generally, that’s the manga. For a lot of cases, one side of the equation is missing though, so I can’t compare.

Sailor Moon is one where I cherish the anime much more than the manga, simply because it was one of my first anime. While both anime are good, I specifically mean the 90s version, because I’ll admit most people – to my knowledge – only like Crystal because 1) people can show it to younger anime fans without the bias of 90s animation, 2) the visuals can be wonky at times, but they look gorgeous at others and/or 3) people hold such strong nostalgia for Sailor Moon as a series that they’ll take anything they can get.

I’d love to get my hands on the Eternal Editions of the manga since I’ve seen them in my usual manga-sourcing bookstore, but they’re (as of checking them for this post) 70% more expensive than getting a standard manga volume and 60% more expensive than a standard Sailor Moon volume.

…I guess lots of people with 90s nostalgia would agree with me on this answer, so it’s not a very unpopular opinion after all…

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Nominating:

• Shoka (because one must)
• Moya (because what could be more evil than driving away 500 followers with unpopular opinions…?)
• Astral (because I’m still trying to get him back from gaming hell)
• Iniksbane (…apparently he’s on hiatus, but I will try anyway)
• Lumi