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Yeah, it's cool. I feel that when you're part of a niche fandom or hobby that people can fall into a trap of feeling there is one static measure of quality, like all anime can be judged equally. However, anime is a medium, not a genre; there are many different genres and elements within different anime and different things are going to appeal to different people. You can try to objectively judge all anime on the same scale, but your individual tastes are always going to have an influence on your judgements. I see the same thing in tabletop gaming as some people just can't understand why some games are as popular as they are and feel that since they don't like it and therefore don't think it's a good game that it automatically shouldn't be enjoyed by ANYONE. But in reality the main reason that they don't like the game is probably because they don't like a core mechanic of the game, in which case of course they don't like it! It's just kind of dumb. It's like if an anime fan says, "The Queen's Blade series is a total piece of shit and anyone who rates it higher than a 5 has total shit tastes!" Then you ask them why it's a shitty show and they say, "Well, it's nothing but fanservice!" .... Well yeah, that's just about the entire point of the show! Of course you wouldn't like it then! That doesn't mean that it can't be enjoyed by people that enjoy fun, gratuitous fanservice. Anyway, rant/presentation over. =P

I just watched the first two episodes of New Game! this morning and I'm enjoying it pretty well so far. It's a nice slice-of-life show with some good characters and interactions between them. That alone is enough to ask for most of the time for me, but it also has the bonus of following ADULT characters in the workplace! And the cool workplace of making video games at that! Pretty good so far and I could really only see the series getting better as it goes on, as I get more attached to the characters and they start getting more into making games. I'm glad that I was able to get some immediate joy out of this show to put my fear of full burnout mostly to rest. And yeah, I've heard a lot of good things about Erased and hope that it's able to finish my Anime Watching Challenge on a high note. ^_^

And no worries about your lack of interest in tabletop gaming. It's not for everyone and it can become a pretty hefty hobby if you really get into it, something that you don't seem to have the time for at the moment even if you did have a passing interest in it. I do think it's cool that you've heard of Gloomhaven from a friend, though! It's not a game that you see everywhere so it's nice to hear that word about it is getting around. My group will hopefully get our first game session with it played tomorrow as long as everything goes well. I'M VERY EXCITED!!! XD

And that's about all from me at the moment other than the fact that I'll hopefully be going to see the new Star Wars movie tonight. I've never been a huge superfan of the series (I actually never even sat down and watched them until I was in my mid-20s or so, so I didn't grow up with it like a lot of people my age), but I do enjoy them well enough just as "good movies" so I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with Episode VIII.

Hey dude! It's cool, don't worry about the late reply. Life can get crazy.

Actually, I might have written in kind of a confusing way, but I actually finished watching SNAFU before I even got Skyrim, so that didn't contribute to my lowered enjoyment of the series. I do think burnout was probably largely to blame, but I also think the characters just didn't really do it for me. For school-life shows it's really important that I get into the characters and I didn't connect with them much. I probably wouldn't be able to get around to rewatching the anime again any time soon, but I would be willing to give the next season a try sometime. I mean, I didn't hate the series or get totally bored while watching it; I just didn't love it.

And speaking of underwhelming shows, I finished Noragami and Bungou Stray Dogs recently. Noragami was good enough to squeak by with a 7, but I really couldn't justify giving Stray Dogs any higher than a 6. It had its good points, but I was mostly bored while watching it. I finished it this morning and really had to push through it. Again, some of it might be a bit of burnout. I'm kind of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with my Anime Watching Challenge with just two more shows to watch by 24 December so I'm sort of just looking forward to getting this finished now. But right before I watched Noragami, I did enjoy Death Parade quite a bit, giving it a 10 and ranking it at my #50 at the moment. And right before that I was kind of surprised at how much I ended up enjoying Date A Live (gave it a 9 and it just barely missed the cutoff for my Top 100). So I was at least still able to really enjoy anime right before I watched Noragami and Stray Dogs. I don't know. I'll see how I ended up liking my final two shows: New Game and Erased (Boku dake ga Inai Machi).

Although I haven't been playing Skyrim quite as obsessively lately (I finished a few major side-quest-lines and got REALLY high level; currently at 64 which cuts out a lot of the challenge of the game), I am getting pretty distracted by a new MASSIVE board game that I recently got in called Gloomhaven. I haven't gotten a chance to actually play it yet, but just going over the components, organizing the game, and learning the rules has made me really excited to start playing it! Since you're not really in the tabletop hobby, I won't get too into why I'm so excited about this game, but I will say that my mind has been drifting a lot while watching stuff since I got the game in, especially when I was watching Stray Dogs. Don't know how much of that is due to me not getting into the anime or me really, really wanting to play Gloomhave; probably a bit of both. =P

With needing to make sure that I finish my Anime Watching Challenge (plus other distractions) I haven't really had the time to watch anything new of significance since the second season of My Hero Academia. But I totally plan to check out Mahoutsukai No Yome next year! I'll probably make sure to fit it into my 2018 Challenge. My roommate has been watching it and really getting into it. He keeps calling me lame for not being willing to watch it with him. =P Glad to hear from another person that it's really good, though! It's fun to watch shows week-to-week and being able to fully digest the episodes, but it is also nice to just run through a whole series as quickly as possible, especially if it's really good. ^_^

Hopefully next year I'll be able to do the Challenge more smoothly and not get so far behind that I start needing to catch up and end up getting burnt out. I think I'll be fine after the things I've learned during this year's Challenge. There's also a Manga Reading Challenge that I'd like to try doing sometime, but I don't think I should take that extra burden next year. Besides, I'd like to focus more on actually finishing stuff I've started right now when it comes to manga.

Hey, no worries about the delayed reply. Hope your exams are going/went well! I've actually been getting really distracted because I started playing Skyrim a few days ago. Got kind of obsessed with it. I'm a sucker for side quests and I love messing around with the home-crafting system that was added with one of the expansions (the PS4 version that I have has all of the expansions pre-loaded on it). It's been a lot of fun, but I need to try to pry myself away from it a bit so I can make sure I can keep on track with my Anime Watching Challenge. I'd been doing really good, but I haven't watched anything for it in the past five days after finishing My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (mostly because of Skyrim). That one didn't really resonate with me much; just gave it a 7. I really feel like I should have liked it more, but it just didn't connect with me. I don't know. Maybe I'm getting a little burnt out. It's probably good that I'm taking a little break before I pick my next series to watch. I might go for something completely different next: Kaiba. It's another series like Potemayo that I originally came across YEARS ago, but never watched past the first episode or two. It's a really unique looking series. I'm looking forward to finally finishing it.

Yeah, I still haven't gotten around to reading ReLIFE or Genshiken. I think I should try to at least start reading a few chapters of something each night before I go to bed then I'll gradually make progress. I was doing that with playing Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSP; I'd played the original version of the game on the old PlayStation and loved it, but I'd had the PSP remake for a really long time and hadn't really played it. I haven't been playing it lately though. Don't know why I'd fallen out of that habit.

Hope I don't annoy you by talking so much about doing the Anime Watching Challenge, but one of the things that I do really like about doing it is that I can put shows on my challenge list that I've heard a lot of buzz about or have been recommended to me a lot and it pretty much forces me to finally watch them. My "Plan to Watch" is a bit of a bloated mess and there was a time that I stopped adding things to it because it was getting a bit out of control because a lot of things sound interesting to me. Sitting down and finding things to fit into all the little categories of the Challenge really helps me and, again, forces me to actually follow through with watching them.

Haha! Yeah, I just finished ReLIFE. I can see why you were disappointed by how they left the "ending", but as a long-time anime fan I'm mostly used to a non-conclusive ending and felt that the anime went out with enough of a bang to leave me satisfied (with the development of Oga and Kariu's relationship and the reveal that Hishiro is subject 001; probably should have saw that coming, but I didn't). But yeah, I gave it a 9 (tentatively placed at #58 on my working Top 100 List) and if it was actually a more wrapped up story it might have been able to get a 10 from me. However, I really like what we got. I would love to see another season, but I wouldn't be fully heartbroken if we never got one. Again, that's kind of just the nature of a lot of anime adaptations: they work largely as advertisement for the original manga, light novel, and/or other source media and merchandise. On that note, I'll definitely start reading the manga whenever I get a chance. Although I did recently get volumes 3-11 of Genshiken Second Season, so I have that to catch up on, too. Too much to read, too little time!!!

The only series that recently REALLY left me sour with its drop-off ending was No Game No Life. I won't go into detail about it since it doesn't look like you've watched it yet, but man, I really wish that series was twice as long. The ending just really left me wanting more. I mean, I still gave that one a 9, too, but it would have definitely been a 10 if it had a better ending. The main thing that made the ending leave a bad taste in my mouth was that the ending reveals that the characters are shooting for a major goal, and they're only 1/8 of the way to achieving that goal at the end of the anime. -_- I really hope that the prequel movie does really well and they decide to make more of the TV anime. Otherwise, I guess I'll read the light novels someday....

Yeah, after I finish the Challenge I might go through all of my reaction posts and make some reviews based off of them. It really is a shame that blogging hasn't gotten any love during the 8 years that I've been on MAL. I feel like there are three (seemingly easy) things that they can do to vastly improve the visibility and functionality of blogs: (1) Put recent (non-private) blog posts on the home Panel by default like reviews. (2) Since the blog system requires at least 1 "Anime Relation" to post an entry anyway, link those posts to those related anime similarly to how each anime page has a section for Forum Discussions related to the anime. (3) Make the comment section of blog entries less stupid. Blog comments are not engaging at all and there is no way for commenters to be notified that someone has replied to their comments unless you message or comment on their profiles; @ tagging them doesn't even work anymore. It'd be nice if the comment section for entries just worked the same as forum posts.

Sorry for the mini-rant. As someone who actually likes to use the blog function, its lack of support can be really frustrating.

Haha! Don't feel bad about talking about your situation. It really is a raw deal and you should feel free to complain about it. Good luck with finding a good deal on a PS4 that can actually get shipped to you! And yeah, I have some friends who have gushed about how awesome Witcher 3 and Horizon are; those are definitely games that I plan to get into, eventually.

About Gamers, I get the feeling that people going in with the wrong expectation might be playing a large part in it not having a higher rating on MAL. As you said, people are probably expecting a series that centers primarily on gaming, but instead it turns out to be another high school romantic comedy. So no matter how good of a romantic comedy it ended up being, people going in with that expectation are bound to be disappointed anyway. That's my theory anyway.

Oh, I see you've also watched the series that I'm currently watching for my Challenge: ReLIFE. I am really connecting with that series with its socially awkward and romantically oblivious high schoolers (me during my late teens) and the wiser but still really screwed up adult filled with regret (me in more recent years). This might be the only show out of my current batch that will likely crack my Top 100. Potemayo and Love Live came close, but came up a little short (gave both 8s) while Another fell a little flat and bored me a little too much (got a 7 from me, was really close to a 6). Unless ReLIFE really screws up the ending (should be finishing it today after work), it should be getting at least a solid 9 from me; it could get a full 10 if it really nails the ending. It's been a rather pleasant surprise.

Yeah, I could probably just do slightly more refined versions of the reaction write-ups I've been doing on my blog of the stuff I've been watching for my Challenge and I can probably turn them into pretty solid opinion-reviews. Reviews would be a way for me to actually get my opinions seen since there is almost NO way for people to just happen across my blog. I'm kind of annoyed with how little MAL supports their blogging platform. =P

That really sucks about your country's recession and the inflated PS4 prices. I hope things improve soon. And sorry for under appreciating my access to gaming. I actually think I'll be using it a big more soon as a friend has been talking about Skyrim a lot and it's making me want to finally start playing it. I did finish a little quick puzzle platformer called Hue (it was free with PSPlus this month). It was pretty interesting. I really would like to game more, but with work and two other major hobby interests (anime and tabletop gaming), it's really hard to find the time to really get into it these days, especially when the games that I like to play the most (RPGs) can suck 100+ hours from me since I'm a bit of a completionist.

Speaking of gaming, I see that you recently watched Gamers. I've heard good things about that one and I'm glad to see you gave it a solid 8. I think I'm going to work it into my 2018 Watching Challenge for sure!

Haha! I actually haven't written a single review yet. I mostly just don't feel I have a critical enough mind to really judge an anime like that, but I have begun to think about maybe trying my hand at it anyway and kind of write about things in a up-front subjective way instead of trying to put on a front of having a "proper critical view" on things. =P

Yeah, I game a bit. I'm actually much more into tabletop gaming these days, but I do a little console gaming at times. I'm pretty much Playstation all the way. My first real video game love was JRPGs (Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Cross, Vandal Hearts, Legend of Dragoon, etc.), so Playstation had my fix. I have a PS3 and PS4 right now, although, again, I don't play a whole lot these days. If you do Playstation, pluvia33 is also my PSN ID if you want to send me a friend request on there. ^_^

Haha! Well, I'M not crazy about the Dragon Ball franchise. I don't know if you read the intro to my Top 100 List, but the trigger that actually got me to do the list was a conversation with a guy who essentially dismissed my legitimacy of being a true anime fan when I told him that I wasn't really into Dragon Ball. I basically said that yes, I am a "true anime fan", but I'm just not that into Dragon Ball. I don't hate it, but it wouldn't even crack my Top 100. In response, he was like, "What? You have a top 100??" Basically admitting that he has never even SEEN 100 anime. I'm not saying that you HAVE to have seen over 100 anime to be a "true anime fan" (whatever that is), but for someone to dismiss MY legitimacy because I'm not in love with what is literally 1 out of 10s of thousands of anime out there was too irritating for me to not kind of put him in his place. But yeah, more to the point, I don't really have anything against the Dragon Ball franchise; I can see why it's popular, but it does get really basic and I personally don't find Akira Toriyama's art to be very attractive. It can be fun, but in the end, meh.

As far as Trigun goes, I really do think that the payoff in the end was worth the "just okay" start. I mean, if you can get through all that Naruto filler, getting through the first half of Trigun shouldn't be that big of a deal. =P

And yes, time can totally be a factor when it comes to taking on something like the MAL Anime Watching Challenge. You could always go in at a lower level, but still, if you're a busy person having such a commitment can feel like too much pleasure, could make it start to feel like a chore. Personally, I don't really have too much going on these days. I finished my Bachelor's Degree last year and have a good paying job so I'm not planning on going back to school any time soon. I don't have a significant other at the moment and my other social commitments are pretty limited (mostly done on the weekends) as I'm a pretty introverted person and rather selective of the people that I interact with. Other than my 40 hours of work each week, the only things that really compete for my time are other hobbies and entertainment and my own boredom and laziness. Again, I find that doing this helps to keep me focused.

Actually, Naruto is 720 episodes! Just Naruto: Shippuuden was 500 episodes; the first Naruto series was 220. Then you can probably add on Boruto as part of the franchise as well which is currently 30 episodes and running and there's also all the movies, OVAs, and specials.... I actually watched all 220 of the first series, but dropped it 60 episodes into Shippuuden as it was airing. With how long it got in the end, I have no regrets.

I had always liked the look and characters of Bleach a lot more than Naruto. That's why I stuck with it for the entire 366 episode run while it was airing. Even though the story got a bit iffy in the end, I am sad that they ended the anime without adapting all of the manga. There's probably no chance of ever getting a conclusion, but I'd love to see a Dragon Ball Kai-style re-edit of Bleach plus a final season. Oh well.

I might try slowly going through Hunter x Hunter sometime next year. I'm currently trying to complete the 2017 Anime Watching Challenge. I signed up for the full board (watching 49 entries) and got really behind. I was doing really good at first, but from late March to September, pretty much wasting 5 months. I got back on track lately and have been doing pretty good with it. I really like doing the Challenge because it makes sure that I prioritize getting at least some anime watching done while also enjoying my other hobbies (mainly tabletop gaming lately). I was a little worried that it might start to become like a chore to "force" myself to watch that much anime, but it hasn't really felt like that often. Blood Blockade Battlefront ended up being REALLY boring to me, but at least that was just 12 episodes, and it was at least pretty to look at. Also, Trigun took a while for me to really get into (it was one of the contributing factors to me falling behind), but the series had a really big payoff in the end (in my opinion). I'll hopefully manage the Challenge better next year and find time to watch other things (like Hunter x Hunter) in between my Challenge entries and not fall behind. I really love anime and want to be able to watch as much as I can. ^_^

And geez, One Piece.... I actually just checked the entry on MAL and it has over 800 episodes so far! Just crazy. I mean, the series is coming up on airing for 20 years almost non-stop with weekly episodes! I'm so glad that shounen shows are starting to get away from this a bit with how shows like One Punch Man and My Hero Academia having one or two season long stretches and then taking a break so more manga story can come out instead of slowing down the story and putting in filler.

And man, I'd LOVE to at least re-watch Bakemonogatari! But again, I don't even have the time to watch everything new that I really want to watch. The problem with having a wide range of tastes is that there is a LOT of content that I find appealing. Speaking of hoping for the author to write more, that's the story of my life as a Haruhi fanboy. It's been 6 years since the last book was released! That's forever in light novel time. XD

Haha! Yeah, totally understand about Hunter x Hunter. I've heard great things about the series and have watched the first episode, but actually committing to watching it is a pretty daunting task. I've watched all of Bleach and the first season of Naruto back in the day, but watching that long of a series now with more adult responsibilities, other hobbies, and social commitments.... just don't really have time. I'd rather just watch a bunch of smaller anime instead.

And yes, the Monogatari Series has been at my #5 favorite series for a while and I don't see that changing any time soon. I'm mostly caught up on the series. Just need to watch the second and third movies and the latest stuff, Owarimonogatari 2nd Season. I'll probably finish catching up some time next year and savor it. I just love the dialog and character interactions in that series.

No, I'm not the type to discriminate based on race. I'd like to say that it's unlikely to still find such people in the US, but sadly if you've heard about some of the stuff that's been happening here lately then you'd know that isn't true. Two of my best friends growing up are actually black. We try to keep up with each other, but I haven't seen them in a while since we live about 2000 miles away now. I'm hoping to have a chance to visit them sometime in January though when I'm planning on taking a trick back to my home town to see family. Anyway, that's cool that you're from Africa. I've met a few people from there.

And yeah, no worries, we gotta see our anime however we can. I just know that for people with normal access to Crunchyroll it can make it easier to see an anime if it's on there. Right now I'm actually watching a little series called Potemayo from 2007. It's been really amusing, but it came out during what we in the North American anime market tend to call the "lost period" between 2007 and 2009. It's after three of our biggest anime home video companies (ADV, Geneon, and Bandai) went out of business and before Crunchyroll started streaming almost everything. So it's not a very well known series and I have to watch it from fansubs that I downloaded years ago.

Oh, and one last thing I will say about Haruhi before I just shut up and let you watch it whenever you get a chance: As I mentioned Endless Eight, unless watching nearly the same thing over and over again doesn't really bother you, I would recommend just watching the first and last version of E8 and one of the ones in the middle. I think Endless Eight V might be my favorite out of the middle due to its stylistic similarities to K-On.

Haha! I wouldn't really call an 8.01 a "poor rating" on MAL. And a few things are worth noting when talking about the Haruhi franchise:

-Once upon a time, the first 2006 was highly regarded around the time when it first came out and it was in the top 10 rated anime on MAL.

-The 2009 episodes which filled in some story holes that were left in the 2006 series had some major controversy which really dragged the franchise down. This mainly came from the way they did the Endless Eight story's adaptation. If you haven't heard, they made eight episodes which were largely the same exact episode but with different animation directors and very slight story differences. This pissed off a lot of people, especially ones that were really hoping that the Disappearance storyline would be part of the 2009 episodes.

-Speaking of the Disappearance, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie is the official climax of the anime adaptation and is still very highly regarded with an average score of 8.76 and ranked at #37 on MAL.

-As I mentioned in this blog entry, the ratings on MAL in general are kind of crap. =P

But yeah, you may or may not enjoy the series, but I do obviously hold it in high regard and think everyone should at least give it a shot. I don't know where you live, but if it's available in your territory, Crunchyroll recently added the Haruhi TV series to their catalog.

Oh! And thanks for the friend request! ^_^

By the way, in case you didn't notice it on my profile and if you're interested, I did a list of my Top 100 favorite anime/manga series about a year and a half ago. I've been keeping a running list on a spreadsheet and will probably do an updated list sometime next year since I've been getting back into watching anime more regularly this year.

Thanks, I do tend to pride myself a bit in having a pretty wide range of tastes. That's one of the reasons why my scores tend to skew rather high compared to more critical anime viewers, though I have tried to re-evaluate a few shows more critically recently. Also, I've been an anime fan for something like 20 years, so I've had plenty of time to broaden my interests in different genres. And as far as just my numbers go, I do watch and shamelessly log a good amount of hentai which can inflate my numbers a bit since those tend to be short OVA series. =P

It's nice to see that you've updated your list more! Looks like we have a decent amount of similar ratings. But call me a stickler for math, but if you had only added about 0.5% of the anime you've actually seen and 20 was that 0.5%, that means you've actually seen 4000 anime? I mean, that's impressive if that's true! I wish I had that kind of time. XD

Hmmm, I probably don't need any further recommendations at the moment. I have over 200 entries in my "Plan to Watch" (and that's with me restraining myself) and 42 that I'm supposedly "Watching" and need to actually finish. I really wish I could just go somewhere, stop time, and watch every anime that I'm interested in....