Just Anime

Looking back, I can think of a lot of unpopular or controversial anime series I'd say are worth sharing. One series that I'd definitely place under "controversial," for example, would be School Days. Honestly looking back at it, I kind of remember appreciating it since it was the only harem anime adaptation with a harem that had severe consequences, hence the "Nice Boat" controversy with regards to the last episode's airing around the same time there was a murder of a Japanese high schooler IIRC.

In terms of unpopular and recent, I'm not afraid to admit I actually liked how ridiculous Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!! (I Don't Like You At All, Big Brother!!) was despite its premise (which essentially hinted on a little sister lusting over her big brother). I think what made it unpopular was that people presumed it'd be explicit and get into some graphic interactions when in reality the series actually never went that far and stuck with comedy to the likes of B Gata H Kei (Yamada's First Time - that anime about a girl who wanted to have 100 sex partners but was struggling throughout the series on this one, normal-ish guy).

I guess a lot of the unpopular anime series I ended up liking were all kind of lowbrow romantic comedies, which I would admit is a guilty pleasure for me.

Anyone have their own?

@EquitasInvictus:This mande me remember wehn I read that one episode of Higurashi no naku koro ni wasn't aired due to similar stuff

@Asune: I've only watched select scenes from Higurashi but I can definitely recognize why they'd choose to to air an episode. I'd say Higurashi would definitely fit under controversial! I've always wanted to watch it. I've watched Umineko and absolutely loved it!

@EquitasInvictus:The thing is to read it nor watch it xD

btw, I'll say that all excesive ecchi stuff is quite controversial

@Asune: Read it as in read a light novel or another for of media it originated from? (I actually have no idea which media Higurashi originated in)

But now that you've mentioned it, I can't believe I failed to mention Yosuga no Sora. Its main arc dealt with incest and it got pretty explicit towards the end with a shocking and dramatic twist I didn't think they'd actually pull. I actually appreciated it. It was kind of like Myself; Yourself in the kinda drama and controversy involved.

@Neurotic said:

Higurashi was originally an all-ages visual novel, actually a doujin project. Was it that controversial? Or am I desensitised to violence? I found School Days to be much worse, if only because the first 9 or so episodes of the series was your average love triangle...and then it got dark.

I stopped watching Yosuga no Sora after the first episode cos of the incest and weren't they actually twins, making it weirder?

As for unpopular stuff, I didn't mind Endless Eight so much. At the least, it didn't turn me off the rest of the franchise like it did some.

I'd say the Higurashi anime had some graphic torture scenes I didn't expect from an anime series before seeing them. The controversial aspect was how one episode incorporating a graphic death couldn't air due to a murder similar to that of what happened to the School Days conclusion.

And I think you were right with regards to the twins in Yosuga no Sora.

I also definitely agree about Endless Eight. I thought how they executed on that concept was glorious and ballsy. Although even I suffered from fatigue towards the end and skipped through the latter episodes to see what subtle changes they made, I thought it was really intriguing that they actually repeated the day's events multiple times before resolving the issue.

@Turambar: Oh, the title was meant to be something like "Unpopular/Controversial Anime you actually liked." but I don't think all of those characters fit so I just put guilty pleasure in parentheses since I thought it was the best way to summarize liking an anime that was generally unpopular or controversial, like how I mentioned in the first post how I enjoyed lowbrow humor romance anime as a guilty pleasure despite most people's aversions to the occasionally controversial premise of those kind of shows that sort of split the opinions of others from the onset.

As I've mentioned, B Gata H Kei was like that and it actually turned out being a a sleeper hit for some after they realized it actually wasn't as terrible as the premise of "having 100 sex friends" suggested and found some value in its type of romantic comedy a lot of its contemporaries lacked. The female protagonist, Yamada, was pretty much clueless on matters of love and was therefore entertainingly stuck on trying to score on the male protagonist. They shouldn't have sold the premise that way since it ended up having nothing to do with what people thought it was going to. I would call it an anti-School Days case in how it averted the controversy people expected, whereas no one expected Makoto to go overboard like he did in the School Days anime. People were already aware of the visual novel's bad ends, but I guess no one expected the School Days anime to go there.

Anyway I didn't really push the part about actually liking certain unpopular/controversial anime like I would've with the original title to leave room for open discussion.

@Neurotic said:

^ Yeah, you're right. I didn't mean average as a slur, I just meant it was sticking to the school romance thing pretty tightly up until about episode 10, I think it was. I didn't go into School Days expecting that ending, which made the mood whiplash worse than Higurashi, which I knew to be violent beforehand. I still enjoyed it though but the POV shot from inside Sekai's womb was a little much for me.

As for the torture scenes in Higurashi, they didn't disturb me because I thought it was controversial in a broader context (obviously torture is wrong but by that point in the series you've seen many people die in horrible ways) but they disturbed me cos the character being tortured was one of my favourites.

Guilty pleasure is also open to intepretation though. It could be a series that you normally wouldn't like because you're not a fan of the genre or because it's full of moe stuff and not necessarily something that is objectively bad.

Oh yeah I remember that spoiler and I remember not realizing the purpose of that shot until later and I was shocked enough to watch ending again. It felt a lot more uncomfortable the second time around knowing the reasoning behind that.

I see your point about Higurashi, though. There definitely was a lot of shock value in School Days pulling the bad end as opposed to all the other possibilities. (Although hearing about it was what drew me to School Days in the first place since I watched it a little while after its original airing)

Also, you brought up a another good description of what I meant by having guilty pleasure in parentheses for the thread's title. Like despite the incest that gets graphic towards the end of Yosuga no Sora, some might've appreciated the drama in the overarching plot as a likable aspect. @Dream brings up another great case for a similarly controversial series with Koi Kaze which also explores incest seriously.

@sickVisionz said:

My first viewing and impressions of Kanokon would be mine. I've tried watching it again but it seems super crappy to me now. At the time I really enjoyed it though.

This. When I was new to AnimeVice, I began watching KanoKon so that I could try to do some Wiki work for it on the site. At that time, it seemed to be a decent show that showed the hapless Kouta and his wild and wacky life with both Chizuru and Nozomu in their misadventures around both Kunpo High and Japan. For a ecchi/harem-like show, it was a decent watch but not something special, so that is why I never did get around to doing much work on it. However, I have never been able to re-watch it since I now find it to be both annoying and stupid for some reason.

Nozomu, Chizuru, and Kouta

@WatanabeKazuma: I agree; especially on Eden of the East. Actually, I feel like this community is kind of an outlier in terms of the general reception of it here. I really liked Eden of the East, although I never really followed it up with the films as much as I meant to.