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Well, I think Shingeki no Kyojin and Sword Art Online both got boosts in popularity in Japan from their anime series. So I doubt it's that rare, especially since it's commonly considered the point of having an anime (which itself makes little if any money in many cases) in the first place.

It's true that you can be spoiled, but if the author chooses to have a double page there's surely some panel going across both pages, so you spoil yourself anyway if you finish the first page by itself. Given that one can't control what the author chooses I prefer to see it properly and have a chance to read it properly, since single pages are likely to make me make a mistake, since I won't always find out that it's a double page in time. The load on the servers for single strip mode isn't very different overall so long as people tend to load the whole chapter. Regardless of server issues I don't like the format being messed up.

Woo.

But what if you're lying? How do I know if you're right about me having watched with only one other person?

It does sound weird.

You don't think it would make a difference to get the massive wave of season followers MAL has, who otherwise each have very little chance of having seen Excel Saga? It's hard to go higher because comedy by itself has little "substance" compared to the best scenes in anime that are more plot-focused. Also, plot focus is the best way to get me to appreciate characters, too. So to go above 7.5 I have to be laughing rather consistently, or laughing plenty and also finding various points extremely funny.

I don't know about calling it nitpicking when you've been "calling out" my taste in comedy. I do think I like comedy (including a nontrivial number of liked comedies) so I was curious why you would seem to conclude the opposite so strongly. I watch comedies to laugh. If I don't laugh enough at one I don't rate it highly. You didn't say I should enjoy anything in particular, but you seemed to have a strong opinion that I don't like comedy much, so presumably there would be things I ought to like more if I like comedies. Bakemonogatari made me greatly dislike the two main two characters (although for one only at the end) and much of the focus and dialogue revolved around them (and it lacked much other value), so it wasn't good to me.

Well, Excel Saga is only a "miss" for anime fans in general compared to higher-rated comedies. It's still above loads of other comedies and most anime in general, and I think a lot of people would consider its rating mildly positive if converted into a vote coming from them. Obviously it's not a top favorite, though. The bottom 50 comedies are obviously a poor recommendation, but it was unclear if you were joking or being hyperbolic, since you seemed to have a strong opinion on my taste in comedy.

Well, I already received your recommendation for JoJo and said it would be unlikely that I start something that long soon. Are you very eager to know my opinion on JoJo?

It's not the bad song, which can be skipped. But I NEVER saw a studio do this for 148 episodes and 100% of such a long anime before. It's just lazy and/or delusional (delusional about the song's quality) and reflects their poor musical choices in general. There can be an explanation, but HxH is a top shounen manga in Japan so it's a bit absurd to not try pretty hard to do a good job with it, in my opinion. Madhouse is a big studio that's constantly doing many anime at once so any money issues would be more about the distribution of funds within the studio rather than the studio barely staying afloat, and you'd think enough funds would make it to the adaptation of a shounen manga that sells 1.1 million or more per volume in Japan, so it's not a great excuse to me.

Even in Japan manga or light novel series can get big popularity boosts after an anime adaptation of them is made. Manga volumes can sell millions of volumes there as opposed to much fewer for anime (although the latter is overpriced), especially non-movie anime. On MAL where the popularity ratio is reversed it wouldn't be weird if an anime could overpower the previous group of voters (or at least significantly change the rating of the series) with an influx of new ones that came from the anime.

GANBARE!

I like double pages to be together, but otherwise single page is fine. I do want single strip mode for webtoons. I don't like when reader sites pretend they're manga and break them into pages when the original is just a big scroll (and the art is made with this reality in mind).

If you look at the conversation I pasted I mentioned my IQ dropping early on and subsequently said that's why I would become disgusted at myself. You responded by repeating the question and ostensibly not knowing why I mentioned my IQ. Was there some "serious" answer you wanted here instead? Because I figured that saying my mind would automatically shut down out of disgust made things not 100% serious, even though I responded seriously to some components of the overall conversation. If you still have issues you need to be more specific, because I pasted everything and I really have no idea how/where I failed to answer you.

Well, I could've been lying. Maybe I watched it with two humans instead (and a dog!).

If you haven't experienced the parts of the story in question in years then they could be affected by nostalgia or anti-nostalgia even if you have still experienced later parts of the same story more recently.

Excel Saga is far from a recent anime, so comparing its favorites to those of recent anime on MAL is very unfavorable by heavy default. If it came out more recently and was actually new/didn't look old she'd easily have five, ten, or who knows as many favorites, at least temporarily. I wasn't meaning to say she was truly popular, but 698 favorites is still most of a thousand people, so it's not that weird to like her, in my opinion. I do have other comedies with high votes from me, though. I think for anime as well as for live action movies it's not hard for a comedy that does a good job to me to hit the 6.5-7.5 range (inclusive), but going higher is hard, so the ratio of favorites skews away from them. If I'm supposed to understand your harsh thoughts towards my comedy preferences I really need examples of all these comedies I am "supposed" to like (as otherwise there's no way to classify what you're declaring other than me not liking an unknown portion of what you like or what's popular). Of course a comedy that misses will tend to have a weak vote from me, because it loses an overwhelming portion of its potential value. As for the bottom 50 comedies, I don't know what those are but if they weren't horrible to almost everyone they couldn't be in the bottom 50. I don't think you have any reason to suggest I'd like those more.

/s well. /swell

I think 21 was before a shitty "ghosty" BGM they used deep into the anime showed up (although I'm not super-confident), although that may not have been the worst one. I really don't know why they couldn't have done better. Do you see how it feels like them not bothering to change the OP song (they did change the animation) for 148 episodes seems to fit into the same poor music choices to me? It's not like that OP song was even good, much less excellent enough to justify never changing it for an entire anime that lasted years with next to no breaks or off season time.

Okay, so the boost was to the manga's rating? I don't think that's too strange then. The old HxH and FMA both had their ratings go down when the new series came out, not that that's the same thing, since they were years old anime rather than manga.

Maybe I have a fragile mind.

But Hunter x Hunter isn't a webtoon!

The conversation went:
You: "Hey it's me, your forgotten friend!"
Me: "Hey. It's been almost five years, it seems. Have you had enough time to become the grandest being to ever exist?"
Y: "Five years, huh? It feels like it passed so quickly. No, but I think I became one year smarter. What about you?"
M: "It feels like my IQ drops by two points a year, so five years would be ten points lost."
Y: "That's a lot of points lost. So then, I should try to dump down how I talk to you?"
M: "Yes. Dump it down. Dump it down all you can!!!"
Y: "I changed my mind. I won't dump it down."
M: "Aw. I hope I can keep up, then."
Y: "I'm trying to at least decrease the rate of your IQ drops."
M: "Don't worry, my brain will shut down due to disgust at itself at some point."
Y: "Are you sure that's not your mind doing that?"
M: "My mind is the part of my brain I care about the most, so I'm not sure what practical difference this makes."
Y: "The brain and the mind are different entity."
M: ""Don't worry, my brain will shut down due to disgust at itself at some point." "Are you sure that's not your mind doing that?" "My mind is the part of my brain I care about the most, so I'm not sure what practical difference this makes." was said because "[my] mind doing that" would change the first quote into "Don't worry, my mind will shut down due to disgust at itself at some point.". I don't see how it makes much difference to me whether my brain or my mind shuts down because either way my mind shuts down. I only care about my brain because it affects my mind. If it somehow didn't I would need another reason to care about my brain."
Y: "I think I was overlooking the most important point. Why it's gonna happen?"
M: "I said it will happen due to self-disgust. At some point my IQ will reach too low of a level and I'll just automatically nope out of existence."
Y: "Why the self-disgust?"
M: "Because I need my IQ for some reason! Without it I'm just insufferable!"
Y: ""Why the self-disgust?" where did I say anything about your IQ here."
M: "The chain for this conversation fragment was based on my IQ dropping over time."
Y: "Are you fucking around with me? If you don't want to say the reason, just say I don't want to answer. Do not make me go around and around."
At which point does it derail for you?

No, I watched it with a human I know.

Anti-nostalgia? ;p It's easy to like things less over time, though.

I don't understand why you think I don't like comedy or why the bottom 50 comedies would be worth anything to me. Are you assuming things about my low scores for almost everything that my profile explains? Excel Saga's rating here and average on AniDB are okay enough (which I'm not saying is a recommendation to everyone by itself), and higher than most anime. As for Excel herself, she has 698 favorites here ( https://myanimelist.net/character/1837/Excel ) and an 8.86 rating on AniDB ( http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=character&charid=1468 ).

Are these missing details tasty?

It depends on how much worse and how deep (in numbers of distinct parts and episodes) the sequel is.

Maybe the 20% thing affected it. Otherwise did it end really well (compared to how it was before then)?

Sorry, my mind broke under the pressure!

Now why would you rip up your manga volumes? ;p

The chain for this conversation fragment was based on my IQ dropping over time.

Well, at least I had someone to watch with.

I did rate the TV series ten myself...

The files I have were from BakaBT.

How can it be a spoiler? It was in the chimera ant arc or shortly after (you didn't stop long ago enough according to your manga list, I think). You should've read this, but you probably forgot because it didn't matter much. I also reread the chimera ant arc, helping my memory. Anyway, them being "related" doesn't mean much except as a tease because it doesn't seem that they invaded with any purpose...they (or the queen, rather) just drifted in. I did call them invaders but that was more their entitled/predatory attitude after they got there. I don't think the queen landed intending to do much of anything other than survive to give birth to the king.

My picture on MAL is of a character from a comedy, though. Are there many comedies I'm "supposed" to like that you're thinking of? Yeah, we have a lot more affinity than is usual for me with others on MAL. Also, I didn't laugh at what you said but I continued to joke around like a proper retard, thank you very much!

Were significant things lost in the rush?

Well the only boost size I gave you was 0.25, so obviously I'm not saying you get a cool three points from this or anything. The boosts also stack more slowly as you add more, too. It's common for sequel seasons to be considered worse by those that kept watching but still have a higher rating anyway.

Ratings don't increase often anyway. Usually the enthusiastic earlycomers will overrate (even for themselves relative to after the ending) based on optimism that rarely pans out. Ratings increasing years later would be especially unusual.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

Official from Viz?

Because I need my IQ for some reason! Without it I'm just insufferable!

I watched it as it aired, though, so there wasn't marathon pain.

I'm not sure anything was better to a significant degree (although I still prefer the medium of anime to manga outside of degradations to the story or other things). I liked the filler hunter exam and thought it fit in well, but it's not like you have to watch it. I don't recommend any other filler (there was a higher proportion towards the very beginning).

Gore like chimera ants chopping off and eating fingers was censored in the manga. In HxH2011 the censorship was much worse early on. I don't think the chimera ant arc was heavily affected by it overall, but I can't really remember (which means it probably wasn't too bad). I wasn't saying the manga was quite annoyingly censored...it was very few panels that were censored there, and I don't remember any censorship during fights (as opposed to ants eating random nobodies).

You might find something different on BakaBT, but I don't know otherwise. I wouldn't tend to take chances when AniDB already has decently rated options (outside of BakaBT's offerings, anyway), assuming I have a choice. HxH is popular enough that I don't have to take chances. I don't know anything about Hunter-OVA.

Yeah, they were exotic invaders from the dark continent. He didn't actually eradicate them all, though. Most notably chimera ant Kaito is still alive.

MAL is more popular compared to AniDB, especially among season followers and newer/less experienced watchers. 1864 vs. 139,640 makes almost no difference when it comes to sampling error (2.3% "standard error" (two standard deviations) for AniDB vs. 0.27% for MAL; these are too low to believe in much likelihood of the ratings being randomly inaccurate for either site), so all you have to factor in is the self-selected nature of the samples, i.e. what types of voters are more common on each site. The voters on MAL vote higher, too (most anime on MAL are rated 7+ while most on AniDB are rated <7), so the difference in average is less significant than it appears, although still significant to me.
1. So you're saying the rating went up as people watching censored versions went down? I don't see what the issue with this affecting MAL more than AniDB, as I said I would expect, is. Did you keep track of the rating or average on AniDB during the same time you noticed the MAL rating increasing?
2. Same as above, since AniDBers would wait for uncensored releases more often.
3. Well, if it's shounen there are proportionally at least a few times as many elitists on AniDB, plus proportionally a few times as many adults that would much prefer seinen, etc.
4. Are just this and 3 known reasons why AniDB would like it less (other than AniDB voting lower in general and MAL cutting out those who didn't watch six or so episodes)?

Watching 8 cours while reading tons of volumes...I probably won't get on that for a while... ;_x

Unfortunately anything even 50 episodes long (although I'm sure even shorter lengths still matter) or any sequel (or anything normally seen after the most popular way to start the series) always gets a nontrivial boost. I call this drop boosting. Often just a simple second season (the first season can be short so long as it isn't aired just before the second season) is a casual +0.25 to the rating, since it gives non-enjoyers a good place to drop the franchise and have no need to vote on sequels. MAL makes this worse by declaring those who can't tolerate 20% unpersons.

What do you mean by "the opposite"? Something lacking a genre that attracts enthusiastic people early on, making it harder to snowball in popularity and giving it a less high rating compared to what it would end up with for example four years after it finishes?

The pressure is immense!

I said it will happen due to self-disgust. At some point my IQ will reach too low of a level and I'll just automatically nope out of existence.

If you have physical tankoubons don't you have the unscribbled chapters already?

If you want to find out that badly, but you didn't seem to want to given that you didn't like HxH2011. I don't think it fixed itself quickly enough at all to be worth it until it improved unless you MUST watch it like me.

I think the old anime was a pretty good adaptation overall. Of course most of the filler didn't help (although there wasn't much if any of it after the hunter exam arc, IIRC), but it didn't tend to change canon events into something else, which matters more to me. And I preferred the music and overall tone of the older anime over the newer anime.

I don't think so, although the blood could be a dark color rather than a brighter red (although perhaps the lighting mattered for this?). But in the manga it wouldn't be red either (although mentally that's more acceptable). Of course the manga was censored during the chimera ant arc (I guess I don't know if tankoubon versions had full gore). HxH1999 probably wasn't as uncensored as the manga but I can't really remember. In any case HxH2011 was quite annoyingly censored for a while in a way HxH1999 certainly wasn't to me.

I guess Shindou-Anime [S-A] for the TV series and Yellow-Flash for the OVAs. I haven't actually watched these versions but I have them. For HxH2011 I watched Coalgirls for most episodes and don't see a clear improvement (or anything notable as an alternative) on AniDB.

Yeah, I'd prefer a gradual buildup of power, too, but I guess it's still a shounen series in the end, and Togashi must've felt like having monsters suddenly appear.

When you say "[n]early 1000% difference" are you talking about the MAL rating vs. the AniDB rating or vs. the AniDB average?
1. This should affect MAL more (assuming people on MAL care about this as much as those on AniDB would) as MAL has season-followers and those that refuse to wait at a higher rate than AniDB.
2. MAL should care more again due to the higher incidence of "season followers".
3. MAL has younger voters on average so I imagine this helped MAL instead since proportionally more on AniDB probably downplay or reject shounen.
4. This could be more of a negative for AniDB since they probably would know of or care about canon more.

Kaiji is also one of my favorites, of course. So you're saying I ought to watch the newer series? http://anidb.net/a9304 then http://anidb.net/a10206 then http://anidb.net/a10835 then http://anidb.net/a11734 ?

Well, it doesn't look like HxH2011 was very unpopular on MAL, so are you asking if I think something else that was overlooked due to random unpopularity should be in its place?

Yes, it's known (to me, anyway) that the people watching something earlier are more likely to be enthusiastic than those who wait until it ends, and those who wait years past that are even less enthusiastic. Obviously people into a genre will jump on things in that genre much faster than random people more neutral to the genre will.

Thinking of hibernating again?

"Don't worry, my brain will shut down due to disgust at itself at some point." "Are you sure that's not your mind doing that?" "My mind is the part of my brain I care about the most, so I'm not sure what practical difference this makes." was said because "[my] mind doing that" would change the first quote into "Don't worry, my mind will shut down due to disgust at itself at some point.". I don't see how it makes much difference to me whether my brain or my mind shuts down because either way my mind shuts down. I only care about my brain because it affects my mind. If it somehow didn't I would need another reason to care about my brain.

It's harder over time to actually download manga. Everyone wants you to just read online and I find it tedious to download things page by page, so I've given in where I care less, but not for HxH. I mean that I have the redrawn chapters from tankoubon scanlations as opposed to the "scribbled" WSJ releases. If you have low quality art past the very end of Greed Island then you must not have tankoubon scanlations.

Yes, I liked those OPs and EDs, too. Well, I noticed the background music in HxH2011, and some of it detracts from the scenes to me. Maybe you won't notice or won't care, or will even like it. I don't know.

Well, it's not like the old anime was a perfect adaptation at any point, so the question is how much you value an anime adaptation over a manga vs. how much quality was lost in the adaptation. I was really just comparing the two anime since the manga is the only canon version by definition and is a different type of media, making it much harder to compare. When I was doing the rewatch-reread combo I shifted to reading after since I generally liked watching more (and any problems get fixed in a sense by reading after anyway; I didn't have to pick one). I thought that you'd know whether you preferred the old anime to the manga at least to some extent. I don't have chapter ratings...nowhere I know of allows those even now, much less then, plus I'd have to already use the site to do that. I'm also less experienced at rating chapters so if that was the first time I did it I'm not sure how it might be affected by that.

Maybe they never made an uncensored version. It's probably easier to just have blackness and the like as a base than to create decent "gore" and then remove it for TV anyway. HxH2011 messed up a lot early and only slowly started messing up less over time. That's why it took until Greed Island to offer me much in spite of the source material being my favorite series.

I liked doing the rewatch-reread combo (old anime-manga). If you're willing to rewatch anyway then rereading doesn't add very much time in a proportional sense. And this way problems in the old anime don't affect the experience as much since you still get the canon version right after (if you choose to watch first). You could switch the to new anime with the chimera ant arc since the old one stops at the end of Greed Island and the new anime actually gets very good with that arc. The beginning of the arc may be flawed but I don't know how much it'll affect you (for example you can pretend the Kaito flashback in HxH2011 is an actual flashback rather than his true character introduction in that anime, which also conflicts with the fact that he was completely cut out of that anime at the start), plus I personally wouldn't want to stop watching anime when the entire rest of the combo included anime episodes. If I re-experienced HxH again I'd consider comboing all three, but that's more for the interest of comparison rather than thinking that the new anime is worth watching for the first long while.

Yeah, the chimera ants broke nen in the sense of rapidly excelling, but on the other hand there were so many good fights and a good story, so I would say it's my favorite HxH arc.

I don't know much about JoJo. Is there a reason the ratings (after adjustment by my standards accounting for MAL rating higher in general) are middling on AniDB while mostly good on MAL? "Shouneninity" or something?

https://myanimelist.net/character/135879/Himiko_Toga

My mind is the part of my brain I care about the most, so I'm not sure what practical difference this makes.

I thought it was low hundreds, like three or fewer. But it probably didn't matter like it usually would since the early slots likely make advertising money instead of themselves more or less being used as advertisements for the discs.

VizManga has an official version but MangaStream's scanlations come out faster. I'm sure MangaUpdates has names of other scanlators. I use https://sourceforge.net/projects/mangastreamdown/ to actually have the chapters instead of being stuck only reading them online. I must ensure I have all chapters of Hunter x Hunter!

I know OPs and EDs can be skipped and already said background music is more important to me. I just think it's indicative of something that they couldn't be bothered to change the OP song at all even though the series lasted 148 episodes. Anyway, it's hardly as if background music was the only problem for the episodes proper. If you truly don't care about that at all then I think you must be unusual on this, since they wouldn't even put such music in if people in general didn't value it. I know I read other people saying they liked the old music more, too.

I wouldn't have been able to remember enough to rate each episode if it was based on watching it in the past relative to when I rated them. I rated them when I rewatched the old anime alongside rereading the manga. Those votes were made directly after watching those episodes, so I can rely on their ratings about as much as I can on my episode ratings for the new HxH anime, which came out only the next year after I did the rewatch-reread combo.

I did mention things, though. Most of it was two comments back. As for the hunter exams I said "I like the filler hunter exam arc in the old anime." and in general I said "The other filler in either anime is mostly unnecessary at best.". The new anime messed various things up in the hunter exams or earlier, too. They deleted Kaito from existence at the start (I believe Gon received Ging's hunter card from Mito instead, and of course he lacked Kaito as an inspiration to become a hunter...plus I don't even remember how he even got the idea to become one in HxH2011), early on had Lucky Charms type symbols instead of blood, merged Menchi and Buhara's exams into one for some reason (it seemed to want to rush ahead in the story) and also changed her make up exam for whatever reason (and made various people glibly jump to their deaths like total idiots), made Killua's heart-stealing scene far less good due to changing it for censorship's sake, expanded them waiting for hours (that only lasted some panels in the manga, I believe) in trick tower into a filler that took over half an episode and had absolute negative entertainment value (no story, just you suffering to fill the episode's time), and I'm sure many other things just in the hunter exams or before them that I didn't remember off the top of my head. HxH1999 wasn't perfect early on and like I said most filler in it was unnecessary at best, but even there the quality of the filler in it was better than in HxH2011, which had zero positive filler and had bad filler as well as many arbitrary changes (and at least filler can be separated mentally more than pointless, bad changes can). I didn't bother going into the arcs I heavily favored the old anime for because the gap in episode votes was so big.

Well, a lot of good fights are in the chimera ant arc, and that was the best done arc that had much fighting in the new anime, so at least you'd get enjoyment there. If you really care zero for background music then maybe the fights earlier on would still be better, assuming they're both unchanged (I don't remember but probably they didn't change these much outside of possible censorship) and either not censored (I don't remember) or that you don't care about censorship either. If you mostly care about animation for the sake of the fights you could definitely watch those, although I personally wouldn't skip reading them afterwards. I don't know which versions to watch per fight. You already didn't like the new version enough to finish watching it, so I wouldn't count on it being night and day between us at least before I thought it started to improve (Greed Island). I can't actually remember the details of everything specific that well, but the episode votes sit there indefinitely so I used them to hopefully give you a reflection of my opinion.

Don't worry, my brain will shut down due to disgust at itself at some point.

Its discs sold like shit, if I remember correctly, which I'm pretty sure I do.

I've had "unscribbled" scanlations for years... ;p

I do care about the music so it's not likely possible to factor that out entirely (not that this is important next to background music (which wasn't good either), but one OP song for all 148 episodes is really weak, and I didn't like that song either), but I looked through my episode votes for the old and new anime episodes on AniDB, and I think the 1999 version was probably better (or I should say was much better to me) for the Hunter Exam, Zoldyck Family, Heaven's Arena (aka Celestial Tower), and Yorkshin (or Yorknew) City arcs.

The Greed Island arc is where the new anime started to have some decent [more than slightly liked] (which I guess is a ten for most people as far as series votes go) episodes, although I still rated the episodes of the old anime better (but I'd say they weren't the maximum quality the old series could've achieved in some ways).

The Chimera Ant arc is not that great for the first 12-15 episodes out of 61 due to having some problems, but it still has some enjoyable episodes. After that I started giving lots (as in close to all of them getting good+ votes) of episodes good [most series don't get any of these but they're not really rare either], great [pretty uncommon, few series ever get any of these], and sometimes even higher [rare] votes. I gave episode 126 a ten, which is very rare for me (although the source material was my favorite ever manga chapter, it was done such that I thought it was improved (as an ideal anime adaptation naturally would be outside of obscure scenarios where you'd somehow prefer to read it instead) at least at a very key moment).

So I'd say that arc, after the beginning where it was messed up due to them choosing to screw up the beginning of the anime and then trying to make up for that, was pretty well adapted (although it still could've had better background music, it did show reasonable improvements there as well).

The Hunter Chairman Election arc was also pretty solid, and that's where the new anime ended.

The thing is that I don't view there as being a "valid" third party or "objective" view unless we're focusing on technical qualities like animation quality (although this is still impossible to actually judge without any bias). So I would generally either recommend (if I wanted or had to) based on rating, popularity, genre, or some combination of those, or by just telling people to find something I rated 6.5+ if they wanted it to be more personal from me.

You asked "Is it really that good to warrant one of the top spots in MAL." without a question mark. If "As I said before "generally the top spots of MAL consist of the best genres of a specific genre". So they deserve their spots because people voted them highly in a specific genre/type of an anime." applies then by definition it applies to HxH2011 outside of that loophole you left, but you haven't told me exactly what lets something that isn't the best rank highly (is there an example you can give of something not the best making it, and is there a reason for judging it this way outside of personal distaste?), so I would have no idea if HxH2011 could be disqualified under your standards or not.

It can take a looong time to write, proofread, and edit long posts or comments, so I know your pain...

Aw. I hope I can keep up, then.

They probably wanted to make it better as the manga arc was darker than most of the rest of the series, so they probably moved it to a night slot to do so. That's assuming it didn't lose popularity in its previous slot. I don't really know.

You'd need the manga or the old anime to get the beginning with Kaito (or Kite) correct, and you'd need the manga to get the start of the Chimera Ant arc (after the old anime ends) correct (this affects things later in the arc, at least for me). I like the music in the old anime and not the new one. I like the filler hunter exam arc in the old anime. The other filler in either anime is mostly unnecessary at best. The Chimera Ant arc in the new anime is very good after you get past the start which they screwed up (which itself was caused by them screwing up the very start of the series). I actually liked one part from the new anime more than I did in the manga, and that was from my favorite chapter of any manga. Other than these things and however else you might value anime over manga the manga would be the most complete and canon. Ultimately if you catch up on the story you will have to read the latest volumes of the manga, so you can't just pick anime if you want to catch up.

The best to MAL aren't necessarily the best to you, or are they? How do you judge what "deserves" a spot if it's not the best of its type to you? Usually top anime are enjoyable, but not always, and for me it's not uncommon for them to miss even my top 50 (let's say top 100 for you since you've gone through more (it wouldn't scale linearly since better things tend to be experienced earlier, of course)) by a lot even if I did enjoy them.

Yes. Dump it down. Dump it down all you can!!!

One thing is that once it ended MAL applied its 20% minimum rule, so anyone who watched under 30/148 episodes had their vote not count anymore. It also did improve over time, but I didn't magically forget the various problems that mostly occurred earlier. As you might know, people often have the attention spans of gnats and thus often are absurdly focused on the most recent parts of a series. So late/ending parts can pretty much wash away the rest. It was MUCH better then, but still. I did rate it much higher after factoring in later episodes, but it still could've been much better earlier.

I don't know what "deserves" a top spot on MAL. I still like it way more than some other things with top spots. It's not top ten to me, but from my perspective anyone who has 5+ of their top ten in MAL's top ten has very generic/average tastes and/or hasn't seen very much. So I can't really say what "deserves" a high rank on MAL given that the group of high-ranked anime have little similarity to what I like best.

It feels like my IQ drops by two points a year, so five years would be ten points lost.