Forum - View topicWhat's Your Biggest Guilty Pleasure?
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DeTroyes
 Posts: 521 |
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My guilty pleasure?
Just about every 1970s Go-Nagai series. Cutey Honey, Devilman, Mazinger, Getter Robo, UFO Grendizer... I've certainly missed a few, but you get the idea. The shows were generally cheezy, the stories illogically silly, and the animation painfully basic and quite often repetitive, but despite all of that they still retain a certain degree of charm that's just appealing. Many of them for their time pushed the boundaries of what was then thought of as acceptable for "children's" entertainment, and helped set the stage for the kind of themes and characterizations that anime has since excelled at. Devilman, for instance, was one of the first "horror" anime (certainly the first successful one), and Cutey Honey, besides being one of the earliest "Magical Girl" anime (though only now recognized as such in retrospect), also had some of the earliest blatant examples of lesbian undertones of any series - at a time when such was frowned upon on Japanese television (much less, television aimed at teenagers). If you want to go back and visit some of the roots of modern anime, Go-Nagai's 1970s output (and he did A LOT of these shows) is a good place to start. Last edited by DeTroyes on Wed Feb 01, 2017 4:28 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 2213 Location: Springfield, MO |
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I really love School Rumble, The World God Only Knows, and Saekano, though I wouldn't call any of them "guilty" pleasures. But that's not really a concept I feel much with most anything I genuinely enjoy. I guess if I had to pick out some random titles in recent years, maybe Softenni and Day Break Illusion. I was rather into them, but felt both were rather ignored or denigrated by the fan community at large for various reasons.
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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Well I guess I'm guilty as sin, because I liked Saekano and I like Twin Star Exorcists too.
As for my own guilty pleasures, Bastard! has to be right at the top of the list. Chock full of violence, nudity, and gore, often incredibly cheesy, and on top of that the thing doesn't even have a proper ending at all, anime-only or otherwise, because the OVA project ran out of money. And yet for me it's still one of the most entertaining pieces of anime out there. It's so crazy over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall shonen, and funny as hell to boot, that I just can't help enjoying it. More recently I also found myself enjoying (to my surprise) the first season of My Wife is the Student Council President. Sure the thing's a sex comedy at heart (it's also one of the only shows that Crunchyroll carries both censored and uncensored) and the premise is anime-ridiculous, but what I appreciated about the first season was that beyond the T&A and the silly setup, there was actually a satisfyingly sweet story there about two teenagers learning what it's like to be in a relationship with another person for the first time, along with starting to explore their sexuality in pretty believable ways (y'know, like real teenagers do), and that grounded it enough for me to not only make it watchable but quite enjoyable most of the time. The second season, unfortunately, kind of put that central relationship on the back burner in favor of turning it into a full-blown harem with the male protag getting it on with multiple girls, which kind of soured me on it, so I'll just set that part aside and stick to S1 if I ever re-watch it someday. |
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Punch Drunk Marc
Posts: 1750 |
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Going by everything I've watched, I'd have to say Cross Ange nearly everything about that show was bad. The characters, the writing, the animation, etc. but part of me got a sort of weird enjoyment out of it. I would never willingly buy it, but if someone I know happened to be watching it I wouldn't avoid it.
Sekatsuyo AKA Wanna Be the Strongest in the World is another one. It's also not very good...at all, but its one of the few pro-wrestling anime out there and i think it got fairly decent in the second half. |
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LoriasGS
Posts: 90 |
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I Have one or two but I'd have to go with Future Diary as my main guilty pleasure. I'm aware it's trashy and no part of me ever thinks "Wow this is good show" but I enjoy it so much I just absolutely love it.
It is one of my favourite anime and feels weird being in the same list as Cardcaptor Sakura, Fulmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Magi but I cant help but love it, no matter how terrible I know it is. |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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Last week's episode of Konosuba (ep3 of season 2) made me realize that it was my guilty pleasure. It's by no means an unpopular show and its humour appeals to me most of the time, but man does identifying with Kazuma leave a bad taste in the mouth. The finale of the episode summed up most of his most awful traits and somehow managed to pat him on the back for them while ostensibly dunking on him. I guess the Monogatari series can be pretty similar in this regard, but that franchise's dramatic heights more than make up for it, to the point that I don't feel guilty at all about admitting to liking it (though I still probably wouldn't ever recommend it to anyone).
Oh, might as well mention Kiss x Sis too. An ecchi comedy that's actually funny, whodathunk? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11523 |
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I feel ya.  I've become dismayed at the "than" for "then" creep that's been occurring lately, and facepalm when I see "try and [verb]" instead of "try to" even from reviewers here. The most baffling to me is the frequent use of "women" for the singular that I keep seeing around the internet. But yes, I've pretty much given up the cause. Language will do as it will, and I have my own mistakes too.
On topic, most of the reviewers' picks struck me as someone who answers "what is your biggest flaw" with "I'm just too conscientious about my work." I don't see much for anyone to feel "guilty" about, since most of these titles aren't genuinely bad, just not perfect.
I didn't just thoroughly enjoy it, I bought it (I think it's the only reverse harem in my collection). No shame, no regrets, it's a fun series I'd recommend. I think my top mundane guilty pleasure has to be Wieß Kreuz (aka Knight Hunters) in all its iterations, which got progressively worse. It's wall-to-wall cliches straight out of 60s tv, cheesy melodrama for days, terrible animation and awful music that I love with all my heart. I've seen the OVA with its classic "brainwashed to kill friends" trope and it's the best of the lot. I've consumed its fan fiction, some of which is leagues above the anime in writing and storyline. I've even watched the embarrassingly godawful concert videos, and read some of the manga. Somehow it's like Takahito Koyasu was eavesdropping on my tweener fantasy world and taking notes, and then put it all up there for me to nostalgically wallow in.
Yes, and now we come to the truly guilty portion of our show. Hang on to your hats... Boku no Sexual Harassment (so guilty I can't even bold that  ). This was my first hentai title (I'm not much of a consumer of porn, and have seen maybe 4 hentai?) and after watching it I was kind of shell shocked. Not because of the sex - that's why I was watching it - but because it actually had a story that made me feel emotions, which porn isn't supposed to do, as far as I knew. It left me feeling depressed, especially the haunting closing theme song, which had such melancholy lyrics and was like sitting in some sleazy, smoke-filled dive listening to a strung-out torch singer (I still want to know who Sammy is! I'd love to hear more of his/her music). Plus, I am the queen of angst and this title is just saturated with angst.
And good lord, the cast! Tsutomu Kashiwakura (Harry MacDougal in Outlaw Star), Jūrōta Kosugi (Asuma in Naruto, Arlong in One Piece), Houchu Ohtsuka (Jiraiya in Naruto), Kikuko Inoue (Belldandy in Ah! My Goddess), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Naraku in Inuyasha, Griffith in Berserk), Takahito Koyasu (Weiß Kreuz!) and Akira freakin' Ishida (Yakumo in Rakugo, Katsura in Gintama, Gaara in Naruto). How does straight up yaoi porn get a cast like that? 
Really, the whole experience totally threw me for a loop, being so far outside my expectations from the little American porn I'd seen and the familiar tropes (pizza delivery, bow-chika, etc.) riffed on everywhere. Symbolism in porn! Great voice acting! Who expects that?! Most people can't get past the corn (both literal and figurative), which is a perfectly reasonable reaction, but I can't get past the weird little story going on in the background behind all the idiotic sexcapades.
Best description of this ever. I hated the series, but still watched it, and was rewarded with Kaho's epic rant about how ridiculous it all was. |
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jtron
 Posts: 185 Location: Chicago |
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Great idea for an article; I'd love to see the rest of the regular writers and columnists chime in.
It's hard for me to "hate-watch" stuff when there's so much good out there I haven't seen, and I'm not a fan of the concept of "guilty pleasures" per se, so I think the closest thing for me would be the Working!/Wagnaria! series. They are the anime equivalent of the family restaurant food at the titular establishment - predictable, pleasant, unchallenging, yet sometimes satisfying, a good choice when a better choice can't be made. |
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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Hmm, yeah I'm surprised anyone would consider School Rumble a guilty pleasure. I honestly think it's the funniest anime I've seen (Azumanga Daioh and Pani Poni Dash come close. I wouldn't say Ouran is funnier although it is funny and I enjoy it, and as for more emotional I would say Ouran has more emotional moments but I think the flashback of Tenma and Yakumo as kids in School Rumble was the most emotional).
The World God Only Knows I wouldn't feel that guilty about liking either. I admit they could have handled the premise in more unique ways (yeah, Keima's initial attempts that he assumes will work usually fail but even how he ultimately manages to gain most of the girl's affections were kind of predictable IIRC) but I would struggle to see how it could be defined as anywhere lower than average especially since it does have some funny moments. I only saw the first two seasons of Hetalia and remember it being pretty funny actually. That being said regardless of how good the show is I could definitely see it being a guilty pleasure just by the premise alone. I think my biggest guilty pleasure would be Inuyasha. Kind of a mainstream example, yeah, but we're talking about a long-running series that has a ton of filler that sometimes is hard to distinguish from the actual canon (at least from what I've been told that some of the "let's help out this random village or whatever" episodes are from the manga) as well as the fact that Inuyasha and Kagome's behavior towards each other could wear on the nerves to say the least and the fact that a lot of the jokes were repeated far too much. Still, I'm a sucker for narratives with characters on a quest so I'd say overall I enjoy the series despite the fact that there's plenty of elements to turn off just about anyone. |
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2528 Location: Germany |
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I don´t think that School Days is worth the time investment but i don´t regret seeing it half a year after the fact. I pushed though it in 1 sitting, as that is the only way you can do it.
I am not so sure if there is an anime i like that i objectively view as utter rubbish. Galerians: Rion (i love cyberpunk and PSX style cutscenes) and A.D. Police (i hate ep.2 though) / Parasite Dolls come close enough BUT there is a manga: Wolf Guy - Ookami no Monshou. I will spare you my MU review but it is indeed batshit insanity the manga. Nothing made sense from chapter 1. The 200 page (i ain´t even exaggerating) gang rape scene soured many but that a dude turned into a skyscraper sized ogre after getting a blood transfusion by the titular werewolf has to take the cake.
And that most of the cast was supposed to be 14. Some serious dark magic went on during the production of the manga, as i hate the equally nonsensical and misogynistic 90s manga. I would almost call it a parody of a grim and gritty reboot, almost, but these maniacs weren´t actually serious . Lol. 6/10 Last edited by residentgrigo on Wed Feb 01, 2017 5:06 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Heishi
 Posts: 1343 |
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Guilty Pleasure?
Boy, that's a tough one. I suppose Strike Witches? |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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My guilty pleasure would probably be...Betterman.
It is a show which I can only describe as a complete and utter mess. Everything from either in regards to tone, pacing, structure, and design are just so scatter-shot and all over the place that I just cannot imagine who the target audience for it is. And yet there's something about it that I just find weirdly compelling and fascinating and just so gleefully absurd and audacious. I'm totally serious when I say I've watched the whole series from start to finish almost half a dozen times. It's pretty high on the list for "most interesting and unique anime which I could recommend to almost no-one." |
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2528 Location: Germany |
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I have an idea for a related feature. Bad anime with a standout element.
Macross 7 for example had one of the greatest anime OSTs of all time, the X movie has amazing atmosphere / animation and so on. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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My biggest guilty pleasure would probably have to be Valkyrie Drive Mermaid I've must have watched the series atleast half a dozen times by now the reason why is strictly for the plot I swear.
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John Thacker
Posts: 1008 |
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I have to say that I worry a bit about people who think that standard anime rom-com plots are unrealistic but things like School Days or Scum's Wish are realistic portrayals of their own experiences. Of course those can be good shows and I'm sure that they are realistic enough portrayals of some people, but the more saccharine stuff or at worst the down-to-earth problems of Interview with Monster Girls are way more representative of my middle and high school years. Ah well.
For recent shows, my guilty pleasure in the sense of "this isn't that great but I enjoy it a lot" would probably be Classroom Crisis, if only because as an actual salaried employee at an engineering firm, the show had quite a lot of humor and points that hit close to home. (Also amusing was the way that people who don't work in engineering firms found things like the expense account solution as ridiculous deus ex machina instead of quite realistic.) Doamayger-D is also mediocre but I enjoyed it. For recent shows, my guilty pleasure in the sense of "why do other people not appreciate its genius and call it bad?" would have to be Ninja Slayer, which has to be the best "parody by Japanese people of American stereotypes of Japan," down to how the creators are Japanese people pretending to be Japan-obsessed Americans. The show is designed to work on multiple levels, and works best with both Japanese language and culture knowledge and knowledge of US pop culture ninja and Japanese portrayals in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I think I can call that a guilty pleasure whereas "shows that are critically appreciated but not popular" like Tatami Galaxy or even Concrete Revolutio (left-wing compared to my politics but an interesting show with a viewpoint and historical knowledge.) Last edited by John Thacker on Wed Feb 01, 2017 5:32 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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