I am partial to Shounen Anime, especially sports series. I started watching anime in the late 90's when I was around 12 with Toonami stuff...Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors etc. I did not know what anime was before that and there was nothing else available to me at the time. The first manga I ever read was Fake in high school. I often go into a series blind basically putting anything on my PTW list if it at least looks potentially interesting. I try not to base series on looks alone and want to try and watch a variety of things even if it is something that might not appeal to me...which is why I have so many dropped series lmao.
I used to try to watch everything on my PTW list even if I wasn't liking it but it started becoming a chore. So if I am not vibing with the characters or getting bored I will drop it. I try to give things a chance though by watching multiple episodes of something before I drop it but it is usually not in my favor.
I rate series high if it has characters I like and has at least some sort of plot that is not all over the place. If I get interested in the characters it can change the outlook on an entire anime for me and I will enjoy it more. However, if a series has blah, annoying or uninteresting characters it's not going to get a high score from me. As tastes are subjective (no matter how many people on here try to say otherwise) just because someone else enjoyed an anime, I might not have. I don't care about animation, a minuscule plot hole, etc. If an anime has likable characters and can keep me entertained it is good enough.
The most important thing about an anime for me is the characters. If I cannot get invested with the characters, I cannot get interested in the anime even if it is supposed to be good. As anyone can see I have pretty shit tastes anyways....wow just like everyone else on here! So I could care less about arbitrary ratings and opinions unlike some people on this site.
As for how I rate my series...I enjoy anime with characters I like so anything with characters I am interested in and an okay plot gets a pretty high rating from me. As for plot, it doesn't need to be anything amazing. The anime just needs to have one that flows ok, be somewhat interesting and not all over the place. I am picky when it comes to finishing anime I am not that interested in...as shown by my dropped list....if it's boring I drop it, I do not care if it's really good to a lot of people, popular, or just plain shit. If I can't form a connection with the characters and they are blah to me, I can't focus on the anime. I usually like faster paced anime, with some amounts of comedy and am not really a fan of slower paced anime, but there are always exceptions.
Endings don't mean that much to me in anime. Like if the ending was good in an anime but the rest of the series was not, it's not going to get a high rating. Likewise if half of an anime was good but the other half wasn't... ex: Kill La Kill. I really liked the first part of the anime but I did not enjoy the second half of the anime.
10 Ratings are My Absolute Favorites...I do not think any anime is a masterpiece and that they all have their flaws but I enjoy these series so much I can overlook their shortcomings. So my 10 ratings are series that are my top favorites and they are my favorites because they are 10's lmao. I do not see them as perfect and they can easily be 9 and even 8 ratings if I did not have a personal bias towards them. Like Yu Yu Hakusho could easily be a 9 or 8 due to quite a few boring episodes and arcs. However, the Dark Tournament to me makes up for it, thus it being one of my favorite series. Yuri on Ice I felt was too short to flesh out the plot and characters though, the amount of warm hearted feelings it gave me makes it a 10 in my book.
9 Ratings are the hardest series for me to rate for some reason lol. And to differentiate from 10s because they are so close to being 10s for me, they might as well be and are still my favorite series. I could have rated something a 9 because I felt it was too short, or had a bit of a slow start, I disliked an aspect of the anime etc. Rurouni Kenshin for example, there were characters that got on my nerves too much I just couldn't overlook it. Banana Fish is a 9 since a certain character died and I am not okay with that!!
8 and 7 Ratings are pretty much normal meaning 8 being very good and 7 good. 8 ratings are still really good and some are even favorites. It could be that I felt it needed to be longer or still great characters but I didn't like them well enough to give it a higher score. Let's use Dr. Stone Stone Wars as an example. I loved the anime and the MC as well as a lot of the characters but the season was too short imo to really do much with even though I really enjoyed it. I would probably rate it higher if it was just a series all in one and not cut up into multiple seasons. As for 7 ratings, I still see 7 as a high rating. Though maybe most of the series was really good and then it kind of started to decline or there were a few boring episodes but the good episodes balanced the series out.. Examples MAR was an anime I really liked but it started to bore me because it went on for too many episodes. Kino as much as I liked the series, there were multiple episodes that bored me and Kino and Hermes being really the only main characters and I liked them well enough but didn't love them.
6 Ratings are like MAL says...fine...nothing amazing...maybe just a cute simple story or a series I liked at first but started to get worse over time. The plot could be too fast but I still liked the characters etc. Could have some things I had issues with in the series too. Death Note I gave it a 6 even though I really liked it because I think it declined after what happened with L. Or a lot of series I rated a 6 I enjoyed the first half of the episodes and then my enjoyment just dropped.
5 Ratings are basically my meh scores...Not horrible, not good just meh. Or I just really disliked the series for some reason but not enough for it to be a bad rating. Kuroshitsuji II...I wished it would have followed the manga. Some of my 5's are just because the series was not for me, others are the plot was all over the place or too slow, however, I liked a couple of the characters in the anime and I enjoyed some of the episodes.
4 and 3 Ratings are just disappointments...specials and OVAs that bring nothing to a series, an anime that bored the crap out of me, bad pacing, or just a bad series, or a series that just did not live up to what it was supposed to be. An example is I just watched Space Dandy, which is supposed to be a comedy...I did not laugh a single time and found most of it boring. As it is a comedy that is supposed to make people laugh but did not make me laugh, I gave it a 4. Code Geass...I didn't like the main character and thought he was a giant D-Bag (the rest of the characters were ok) so I couldn't get into the series.
2 Ratings are just bad adaptations (mostly bad yaoi adaptations because most of them just have bad or incomplete adaptations. Or this rating is just for horrible anime in general.
1 Ratings are those that just done fucked up. Be it ruined adaptions like Promised Neverland, and Tokyo Ghoul Or series that received too many sequels and just fell off a cliff. ala Psycho Pass.
I rate series based on personal enjoyment and do have some annoying and over complicated ways to try and score my series. The higher rated a series is on my list, the more I like it...yes that is it...mind blown!
I try to watch at least a few episodes of a series to give it a chance and to figure out if I like it or not...the longer the anime the more episodes I will try and watch before I drop it to at least form an opinion on it. For me it's easy to form an opinion on an anime even within the first few episodes. Almost all high rated anime on my list are series I ended up liking even within the first few episodes, while the average rated ones are mostly ones that I liked a few episodes in and ended up disliking later in the series or series that were just not for me. Lastly, low rated ones are mostly ones that I knew I disliked even a few episodes in...this was in my phase when I tried to complete everything I put on my PTW list lol.
If I don't like something I will drop it...simple as that. I used to try to complete everything but I decided that I am not a masochist that forces myself to finish something I am not enjoying due to some made up rules on the internet. Reasons for dropping a series can vary and be something teeny that annoys me to larger issues...I just found it boring (main reason I drop anime) or it wasn't for me, I didn't like or connect with the characters etc. To other issues such as the anime started out good but went to shit, pacing, bad adaptations, hating where the anime was headed etc. To petty shit like I just hated a character who ruined the series for me.
Sometimes I can finish a series I don't really like, other times I just can't and have to drop them. As I have gotten older my patience for trying to watch anime I am not really enjoying has gotten a lot worse and I am more picky when completing things. I may try to watch a lot of things to try to still find a good series but more often than not if it is not good I won't be completing it.
Basically if I find myself getting so bored of a series that I am not even paying attention to it, is usually when I drop it because why try to even watch something I cannot focus on when I can watch something I will enjoy? I don't rate dropped series because I feel like it is unfair to rate something I did not finish. I used to rate every dropped anime a 5 just because that was the average score but I found it just messed up my mean score too much. I do not view all my dropped anime as bad, it's just something that was not for me and therefore I really just didn't enjoy it. I try to watch many different kinds of anime just to give them a try even if I know going into it that I probably won't like it just to see if I might. If I don't they get dropped...which is why my dropped list is so large.
As for my on hold anime...I ended up taking everything off my on hold list and putting it back on my PTW list because most of them were on there for so long I forgot what they were about. I put things on hold for many reasons. I really enjoyed the anime but I just do not feel like watching it right now, I am contemplating on dropping it, it bored me so I needed a break from it, I watched some of it long ago and don't remember it so I put it on hold to watch later etc. So I plan on watching some of my on hold list and dropping others.
I don't really have one way of watching anime, I just need to be in the right mood to watch it. If it is an anime I am not really in to, I try to find the dubbed version so I understand what is going on while not having to completely pay attention to it. Otherwise I will watch it subbed if the dubbed version isn't available or if it's just horrible. I watch subbed versions of anime that I really like or if my favorite VAs are in it.
I do prefer to binge series that I really like as well. It is difficult for me to watch only one episode of something currently airing if I am really getting in to it. But also it's hard for me to wait until it's completely finished airing to start watching it as well...see the conundrum lol. So sometimes If it's something currently airing I will watch the first few episodes to see if I like it and then usually wait until a few episodes are released and then watch multiple episodes in a row. Or even wait until it's finished airing and binge it. It just depends on how I am feeling and how good the anime is. If it is a series I am just feeling meh about (looking at you random seasonals) it is easier for me to just watch episodes as they air.
If it is an anime I really want to watch I will probably watch it as it airs or wait for a couple of episodes to be released. For anime that have already aired I just watch what I want to watch, usually higher priority stuff first. Though at the moment I am trying to complete shorter series and lower priority ones to trim down my PTW list a bit.
I torrent my favorite anime and store it on a 8 Terabyte hard-drive and watch it on a WDTV box. If you have not heard of one, it is like a stream box but can store downloaded videos as well as stream. Probably one of the best gadgets I have ever bought. I also stream series from my laptop and watch it on my Google Chrome-cast.
How I tag my series...right now I am just going with a demographic tag, type and year (yes I know not all series have a demographic but it is just easier for me to filter through my list.) Usually I just use a script to automatically do the tags for me. However, MAL's tagging system is a hot mess and makes no sense. So I usually use other sites to add tags to my list after the script is done. MALs tags are usually inaccurate, have missing or wrong demographics, tags are not uniform with others of the same series, some can have more tags added or they try to tag every little thing. Like most series have comedy or drama in it....they all don't need tags for it...unless it's the main focus.
How I pick series to watch... I mainly just start watching something that intrigues me to see if I like it for myself. I do not rely on reviews or scores to see if I will watch or like something....I like to figure it out for myself. I do not care about reviews or the MAL score, especially on MAL where a very high percentage of reviews are just bad and the scores of a series means nothing. Even if a series has a low score I might like it. If a series has a low score I will not be put off from watching it. I just might go into it wondering what the reason is for it to be scored so low.
I usually look at the main picture of an anime and read the synopsis, if it piques my interest I'll try it out. Sometimes more often than not it doesn't turn out in my favor but other times I have found a lot of great anime that I otherwise probably would not have seen. I do tend to stay away from genres and demographics I don't really enjoy for the most part...might be hypocritical of me but every anime fan is hypocritical in some way and don't try to tell me otherwise.
How I handle my PTW List...
I use the priority options...High ones are ones I know I will like and for sure watch, medium ones are ones that I have vetted and moved them up from Low priority after watching a few episodes of and it looked like something I might enjoy. Lower ones are series that have not yet aired and look like series that are just ok. I haven't tried watching them yet to see if I will like them to move them up to medium priority yet.
I go through my lists every few years to try and shorten it. Meaning if it is something with a lower priority setting and I know I might not like it I try and watch a few episodes of it to see if I want to keep it on my list. If I don't like it, I drop it. If it is something that I might be interested in watching I move the priority up to medium.
I watch what I am in the mood for but will try to go for shorter series first to make my PTW list smaller in a faster amount of time. I also try to watch at least a couple of finished airing series off of my PTW list along with the seasonals I am watching as they air.
I don't have multiple of the same anime series on my PTW list...to keep it more manageable...like I haven't been caught up with My Hero Academia yet...so I only have the 5th season on my PTW list...not the 5th and 6th season. I will complete the 5th season and then add the 6th season to my PTW list once the 5th season is off of there.
Types of characters I like...I usually like strong and independent female characters and most of the time stoic or cool acting male characters and bishounen!! Types of characters I dislike are really generic, useless, jerk, and crybaby male characters and bossy, clingy, useless, whiny, bitchy and Mary Sue like female characters. I tend to like anti hero types of characters and really hate characters who kill characters I like lmao...cough...Blackbeard cough... also dislike characters who have huge egos or are arrogant when they really just suck (looking at your Kuwabara!). Also dislike overly brash, really naïve and idealistic characters who do not think of the consequences of their actions. However, there are always outliers for all of these. I don't mind the characters from the character types that I dislike who change for the better and have good character development (ex: Endeavor, Erina etc.) it is the characters that refuse or do not change that I have a problem with.
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