Highly acclaimed anime you dropped.

[verdant monkai]

Angel beats: The highschool thing just seemed lazy in this one. Do mangakas shoehorn in the highschool shtick so kids will relate to their characters, and it allows them to just draw school uniforms rather than bothering to come up with actual designs. The only character I was vaguely interested in was the girl who was organising them and she was nothing special to be honest. When your main sense of threat and dread is a moe anime blob girl... I struggle to put into words how unoriginal and disappointing that is.

Akame ga Kill: Aside from pure unadulterated edge and good character designs gakill didn't do much for me. The main character should win a prize for being blanc of the century. The other characters on the other hand were quite interesting.

Spoiler

I could deal with it when they killed off the glasses girl. But when they killed off my favourite character Bulat I just gave up. Of course one look at the wiki told me the two main characters (two of the most boring fucks ever animated) are alive. Killing off supporting characters isn't ballsy its just predictable after a point.

If your plot is as piss weak as stop the evil dictatorship, interesting characters are just about the only thing that can keep you afloat. But when your only thing is just killing off your side characters to seem edgy, then you are just ruining something which had potential.

Gurren Lagann: Yeah I only got to episode 8.
Age old news I know but in my opinion... Kamina is the only thing worth a damn in this anime. My main complaint is the beast men, what a lazy excuse for an enemy force. Some of them are just hairy people, some of them are straight up furrys. Call of duty has more original enemies than gurren lagann. The main chracters mech just looks like an autobot. And don't get me started on the design of the spiral king. Admittedly Yuko is ok and I like the look of older Simon.

Spoiler

I know why they killed him off. It was so Simon could become as great as him inherit his will blah blah blah. But why couldn't we just have kept Kamina and drop Simon completely. There's no wait or arduous progression to greatness then, some would argue a progression is needed but I'v never met anyone who didn't think Kamina was great from the get go.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

Rant time: I dropped Your Lie in April. As a person who has played in many piano competitions, this anime is full of shit.

I knew I was in for a bad time when that blonde hair girl performed, and the main cast was all like "oh my god so bright, so talented." There is as huge disconnect when what the characters tell you is different than what your ears tell you. I don't want to be rude to the real person who did the recording who i'm pretty sure is extremely talented, but it wasn't "wow I am moved" stuff. Then they always force the fact down your throat that that she is a amazing unreachable virtuoso who plays music for children and cares so deeply for you that she even cries in front of you (obligatory character development) and is perfect in every way, oh except she's dating your best friend lol.

Then there's the whole Arima "I can't hear the notes when I play because my mother beat me as a child" Kousei. How the fuck can you not hear the notes? Selective deafness? How is that even possible? You don't even have to hear the notes to be able to play a song. If you practiced a piece enough, you can play it with earplugs, hell you might even be able to play it blindfolded.

The worst thing is this "Your piano told me everything, all your feelings" bullshit, as if you can actually telepathically transmit feelings into random audience members. I know music is powerful, but it's not magic. You can't show people images of your life just by playing a piece a certain way. Jesus.

I watched 12 episodes of this and forgot to go back. I don't think I can pick it up again.

 

[Nazulu]

Kill la Kill and it's piss poor jokes, if that's what it was meant to be. It's a show that jumps around quickly and hardly ever shuts up, like it only knows how to grab our attention by jingling keys in our face. It's just a whole lot of hypo fluff that's extremely annoying.

Elfen Lied feels like it was written by a 5 year old with it's comical violence, bland as hell characters trying to perform drama/romance, with others that pull a 180 and feel completely out of character (or the closet psycho), all while wanting us to take it seriously.

FMA: Brotherhood's comedy bits are painful to see and hear, while it's dramatic scenes are absolutely hilarious. I didn't completely drop this one since I came back to it with friends to laugh at it's 'big moments'.

Hunter X Hunter 2011 is what you get when the hacks in charge learn from Lucas in how to make emotion and general execution, skipping character building to get to the half-ass DBZ like action. And DBZ still did it better!

 

[Scarim Coral]

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (I only watch 6 of them due to it being out of order)

I didn't liked the out of orders episodes and yes I could had watched them in the proper order but still. For some reason I couldn't get into it, maybe because of the gerne didn't really interested me that much (slice of life is kinda boring for me) eventhought it has plenty of surreal stuff going on (one of them being a time traveller and the other is an esper etc).

 

[Godhead]

Welcome to the NHK: My brother tried to show it to me and it got so awkward I laughed myself out of the room. On the other hand I've only watched two animes outside of feature films like Redline or Angel's Egg to completion. Those two being Gurren Lagann and Macross Frontier. Gurren Lagann I watched with my brother and dad and Macross Frontier being a result of nobody being at a hobby shop I used to hang out at being desolate outside of the manager and other regulars who would work on minis while watching shows on a laptop.

 

[Elfgore]

Kill La Kill- Gave it up until like episode 5, or whenever that guy with the nail gun comes, and after that called it quits. It was just so boring and wacky for the sake of it, it just turned me away. Not to mention the lack of action, the fact the fanbase over-hypes it to oblivion, and worst of all. The fact people treat it like its anything other than an anime with an insane amount of fan-service because it "fits into the plot".

God Eater- Not sure how popular this one is, but I've seen quite a few people praise it. First off, the sub group that Hulu uses for this series is shit and they should not be an official sub team. Their subtitles are literally text boxes that either pop up halfway into what someone is saying or cuts out too fast. Now, that can be the only reason as why I stopped, I could just watch it online where people actually put work into their subs. But even then the show was pretty boring and had a pretty standard plot of "special guy gets recruited into an elite group to fight giant monsters".[footnote]Never heard of that one before *glances at Attack on Titan*[/footnote] After my minimum three episode test I called it quits.

Black Butler- It took me five episodes to realize this show was not meant for action or deep plots. Just for girls to stare at a hot demon butler.[footnote]Not that there is anything wrong with that. Girls need their fanservice stuff too.[/footnote]

Dance in the Vampire Bund- Why is that small child taking her cloths off? After five episodes and most likely getting myself on the FBI watch list, I decided to drop this fan-service, loli, vampire, boring ass baloza.

Fairy Tail- After over three attempts, twice making it to episode one hundred. I've called it quits. Fairy Tail is not a good shonen anime. I have so much to complain in this anime, I was thinking of doing an entire thing in user reviews about it. First up, action. I don't know if their animators just suck and can't draw decent fighting scenes, or they lack the money for it. Fights are far to short, un-epic, and usually only contain about thirty seconds of action. They build up a fight for fifteenth minutes between these two guys, just for one to knock the guy out in one punch. Characters, One Piece rip offs ahoy. Not to mention, I never felt like the main cast got stronger. In One Piece, when a character learns a new attack they make a big deal that you know about it. It helps me not only be told, but also see the characters getting stronger. Fairy Tail just says fuck all that and has a character go "look how strong he's become". I never see them actually getting stronger though. I could go on, but I've ranted enough for now.

 

[JemothSkarii]

I haven't really dropped highly acclaimed ones, but I've seen some where I have no idea why people love them so much. Oh, actually there is one I actually dropped:

Elfen Lied.

It's been done to death though, so I'll just say the absence of plot bored me to tears. Other anime I've watched all the way through and wound up questioning the taste of some people.

Blue Exorcist springs to mind.

Why is this loved so much? The plot only happens for a couple of episodes, most of it is just slapstick and shenanigans. But it's not really built for slapstick shenanigans. What little actual plot that is there is kind of interesting but thread-bare. Considering what kind of anime it was, fight scenes were few and far between, and the plot with the big bad guy is resolved in one episode.
Then there's just plot holes everywhere, holy hell so many plot holes.

Thinking about it there are newer popular anime I have dropped. Season Two episode 1 of Sword Art Online was throwing me out the window. Partially because the second half of the first season was just too much and it looked like they were going to make it worse and WAAAAAY too CGI.

Aldnoah.Zero was a disappointment after episode three and with that godawful cliffhanger in the first season, I refused to watch the second season. Reading about the second season and seeing some snippets made me laugh my ass off with how dumb it wound up being and the ending being even more trash than the first season's.

Owari no Seraph is probably the other one. It's like a mish-mash of the most common tropes and story elements I'd seen ever that I was successfully guessing the events of each episode. MC even had a Shirou level line in one of the episodes. The only good thing about it was maybe that chick with the scythe. Even then, it was the most bland predictable anime I'd seen in years.

Last one is Gatchaman Crowds, though I should probably go back to that. The main character got on my nerves something fierce. Made me want to break my computer.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Okay, get your pitchforks and chainsaws ready.

Death Note

Watched around 3 episodes I think. By the last one I watched I thought "This would be better as a book. Why am I watching an anime about people sitting around and explaining things instead of, you know, animating?" Never went back.

 

[Kaiser6012]

Yu Yu Hakusho

Twice. Both times after the Byakku/Kuwabara fight. I get that it's a seminal shonen manga and I can see greatness in it, but... I dunno, by that point I didn't feel as though the plot was progressing quick enough to keep me compelled to keep going.

 

[laggyteabag]

Cowboy Bebop.

The lack of an overarching plot really bored the crap out of me. I hate filler episodes at the best of times, but when your entire anime is *just* filler episodes, I fail to really understand how it got to where it did.

Bleach.

I started to watch it, but after an episode, I just decided that it wasn't worth the 300+ episode commitment. I could watch many, better, animes to completion, or watch one very long one, full of filler episodes[footnote](Someone very kind showed me a 'Bleach without filler' list, which cuts it down to around 150 episodes, but that is still a little too much for me, really.[/footnote]. I'm good, thanks.

Sword Art Online

I actually quite enjoyed the first arc, as it had a lot of potential, but the series really shouldn't have moved away from Sword Art Online, because that was by far the anime's/manga's strongest asset. When the show moved on to fairy land, I was disappointed, mostly because they pretty much shelved Asuna as we knew her, and turned her into the weakest character in the show, and then they went onto Gungale, or whatever, and did the same thing to Sinon over the course of that arc, too. When they went back to fairy land, I just gave up. Can't be dealing with that setting, again.

 

[Hagi]

Death Note.

At first it was kinda interesting, then it just started feeling like some weird intellectual dick measuring contest between the two protagonists. Primarily aimed at letting viewers self-identify as one of either protagonists as a power-fantasy with enough pseudo-philosophical shit thrown in that they can pretend they're not.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Monster

Yeah, it's actually quite brilliant, and yet... something about the way the dialoge was written just made it feel kind of goofy, in that typical anime sense. Not that there's anything wrong with being goofy, but the show was going for a very serious and dour tone, and the dialoge I found didn't really match up. I'm thinking of maybe picking it back up again, or maybe I should just go read the manga.

 

[jhoroz]

Death Note.

At first it was kinda interesting, then it just started feeling like some weird intellectual dick measuring contest between the two protagonists. Primarily aimed at letting viewers self-identify as one of either protagonists as a power-fantasy with enough pseudo-philosophical shit thrown in that they can pretend they're not.

You pretty much nailed it with your last sentence. Death Note works great as an edgy fedora detector

 

[zidine100]

Dragon ball z

I freaking loved the parts I watched

Then namek happened.

Lots and lots of namek.

I then sorta dropped it because the whole freeza fight just got..... totally bleh.

Full metal alchemist

I liked it alot, but half way through it I sorta got into a bad situation where I had to move out of my previous flat and I had to live with my sister for a bit while looking for a new place and obviously i stopped watching it. Now I cant watch it as I dont remember everything that happened up to the point I was at but I know enougth to the point where watching the episodes ive already seen would just be boring.

 

[Fox12]

I stopped watching Welcome to NHK for a while. I eventually came back to it, after people swore up and down that it got better. Some compared it to Eva, in the sense that it was supposedly psychological, and explored themes of loneliness and identity. Pfffft. Nope. One of the worst anime series of all time, total garbage. The characters are unrealistic and awkward, making it hard to watch. One guy is so scared to leave his room that, when his sister gets arrested, he almost starves to death because there's no one there to feed him. He eventually crawls out of his house, begging for food and water. I laughed so hard.

Fullmetal Alchemist:
People will tell that this is apparently the best anime of all time. And I just don't see it. It's not bad, per se, but it just seems like a typical shonen anime, like Inuyasha. It has an interesting premise, but it's underutilized, allowing an excuse for magic fights. The humor is awful, the story is long and padded out, and very little of interest happens. Not awful, but not good. I got bored and dropped it halfway through. I think people view it with rose tinted glasses from their Toonami days, give that it had some shocking moments.

Texnolyze:
I keep promising to finish this series. It's from the people who made Lain for gods sakes. It's the people who made Haibane renmei. I love Abbe's work, and I've followed the career of the writer for some time. Nothing happens for long stretches of time. But this show is dull to the extreme. It's not even that there's a lack of action, it's that there's a lack of plot. I got to episode 9, and I honestly think the whole thing could have been condensed into three episodes. No music, almost no dialogue, except when a character spits some pseudo philosophical nonsense, almost no character development, long stretches of time where you're just watching still shots of nothing happening... and the whole series takes place in a dessert. It's just so boring. Worse still, it's pretentious as all hell. I'll defend Lain to the ends of the earth, but I can't defend this. I've been told, by people I respect, that it's worth watching just for the ending, but man is it a chore. I think the series would have been much better off as a 13 episode series, like Lain.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

I don't know if I'd say I "dropped" these shows, but ones that are on definite hold are:

Revolutionary Girl Utena- I'm not an Ikuhara fan. I've sat through all of Penguindrum and hated it, so I started watching Utena afterwards hoping it would be better and for the first few episodes I was mostly laughing at how stupid a lot of it was, before growing annoyed again and stopped. I think I instead watched Kino's Journey after that, and loved it.

Bakuman- I only watched season 1, and can't bring myself to watching more. It's not terrible, it's just not what I was looking for in a show about making manga. Everything's depicted way too "shounen-like," which I get that that was the point as they are making shounen manga, but I couldn't take all the cartoon-ish rivals, dramatic speeches about how supposedly skilled a particular mangaka is, or the romance that I have major issues with. I would rather see something a little more grounded when it comes to anime about the manga industry...

...or something like Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun.

Other than that, I tend to finish the terrible shit I watch, so that I can ***** about them afterwards.

Most highly acclaimed anime I haven't finished yet I will eventually, though. I just haven't been in an anime watching mood as of late.

 

[Zen Bard]

Attack on Titan - I really found the concept interesting (even though it's basically The Walking Dead with creepy giants) and thought the animation was pretty good. But gawd did the story crawl!

Gave up about halfway through the first season when I got tired of watching episode after episode of a bunch of whiny people standing around screaming at each other.

Bring on the flamethrowers...

 

[raankh]

Code Geass

From an action perspective I loved the mecha bits, but the actual plot was the most predictable tripe I have ever watched. A poorly written Shakespeare drama with some shallow philosophy thrown in for good measure.

When the supposed climax of the story approached, I just rolled my eyes and pressed stop.

Attack on Titan - I really found the concept interesting (even though it's basically The Walking Dead with creepy giants) and thought the animation was pretty good. But gawd did the story crawl!

Gave up about halfway through the first season when I got tired of watching episode after episode of a bunch of whiny people standing around screaming at each other.

Bring on the flamethrowers...

I agree; especially the presentation. The first ~7 episodes are told as flashbacks in the manga, which makes so much more sense. You are immediately introduced to the core of the story and the backstory is told when it becomes relevant. Laying it out chronologically like in the anime gives you an impression of an entirely different story, and it's jarring when the big reveal happens to the point where the first 6-7 episodes suddenly don't matter anymore. Which they don't, since the actual story starts just about then!

The manga is a pretty straight up and average shounen-battle-thing-and-its-dark-and-edgy, but the anime tries so hard to be something else. It fails.

edit: by the sound of it, maybe you didn't even get to the reveal? That would be such an epic fail on behalf of the writers....

 

[verdant monkai]

Cowboy Bebop.

The lack of an overarching plot really bored the crap out of me. I hate filler episodes at the best of times, but when your entire anime is *just* filler episodes, I fail to really understand how it got to where it did.

This beautifully sums up my feelings on bebop.

You pretty much nailed it with your last sentence. Death Note works great as an edgy fedora detector

I love death note but I can admittedly see a load of socially awkward kids thinking because they have no friends they are basically L.

Elfen Lied.

It's been done to death though, so I'll just say the absence of plot bored me to tears. Other anime I've watched all the way through and wound up questioning the taste of some people.

Has it been done to death? the gratuitous graphic cute anime girl death? The only series I know that comes close is higurashi (when they cry), but those characters don't die for good. The first time I watched Elfen lied was a trip through an emotional wringer, I don't know of anything else so unapologetically packed with gore and mutilation of central characters. I found it disgusting as well, the hacking off of bodily parts, the incest, the child abuse.
I'll defend Elfen Lied to the death because of how unabashedly tasteless and unpleasant it is.

 

[stroopwafel]

Texnolyze:
I keep promising to finish this series. It's from the people who made Lain for gods sakes. It's the people who made Haibane renmei. I love Abbe's work, and I've followed the career of the writer for some time. Nothing happens for long stretches of time. But this show is dull to the extreme.

Hmmm..Texhnolyze is probably the most impressive piece of fiction I've ever seen(not just anime). This show left a deep emotional impact on me. I think Texhnolyze is actually the opposite of pretentious. Nothing in the show is put there for esoteric purposes. Texhnolyze is more an introspective on the human condition and it's really so far removed from any other anime I can think of.

I've heard the complaint that Texhnolyze is boring quite often though..so different strokes I guess.

Anyways I'll second Fullmetal Alchemist and Monster. I quite enjoyed both animes up to a point but lost interest in both and never really went back. Both animes probably also had too many episodes for me as I had a similair thing with D Gray Man.