The Z List

These animes are extremely popular, but use too many stereotypes, use prodigious amounts of Fridge Logic, and just should be avoided. They give Japanimation a bad name to the non-anime world because they are popular enough to have english anime dubs. If you've read one of these, shame on you. I hope you're still sane.

Shonen:
1. Dragon Ball Z <eda+vg+flm> : This is the metatrope namer and the inspiration for the list name. The Mooks can blow up planets, people NEVER die when they are killed, and it has too many derogatory memes attached to it(references will be deleted). Plus it has a live action movie with white people which is UNFORGIVABLE.
2. Naruto <eda+vg+flm> : According to most people it was good, but then the gay filler season happened and they 'went dbz' in shippudden. It has an acclaimed abridged series which seriously detracts its reputation.
3. Yugioh <eda+vg+flm> : Ohhh boy. This is just the original series btw. I don't have to explain this one.
4. Pokemon <eda+vg+flm> : Are there ever. I don't need to explain this one either, but it would be first except its not that popular, therefore not much of a threat anymore.
5. One Piece <eda+vg+flm> : The art style looks rather crappy. Not much else to say. According to Michael they have the same plot over and over again.
6. Bleach <eda+vg+flm> : They went semi dbz and started using the One Winged Angel trope all over the place. There is very bad continuity, I'm sure if you started reading halfway you'd never find out and never need to find out that these guys are actually spirit beings in the afterlife whose normal jobs are to claim human souls, which is the original story premise. All you gotta know is whose bankai does what and how many chapters it would take to kill him.
7. Gundam <eda+vg+flm+ln> : I'm thinking this series deserves a little better than z rating because its a pioneer of mecha anime. tell me what you think.
8. Code Geass <eda+vg+sm+ln> : Lets see what stereotypes they have. Boobs, mecha, ninjas, boobs, magic powers, wtfhax plot devices, and boobs. Did I mention they have a lot of oversized breasts? It has a fairly vroopy plot, but they stole from too many other works(Gundam, Evangelion, Death Note, Star Wars, and monomyth) to be considered B-rank.
9. Fairy Tail : Nakama punch. Yeah pretty much.

Hmm seems like we have a little pattern here, each one of these mocks a certain type of people:
DBZ - Martial Artists (Amos edit comment: they don't really use that much martial arts, mainly yelling and lots of power blasts, only weak people get beat by fists in this show. In Dragon Ball it was martial artsy, but still lacking then too).
Naruto - Ninjas
One Piece - Pirates
Bleach - Samurai
Gundam - Robots (IN SPAAACE!!)
Yugioh - Card games (ON MOTORCYCLES!!!)

Shojo:
1. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
2. Lucky Star

DBZ isnt that bad.
Naruto and bleach ownzorz.
Pokemon and Yugioh suck but i like them anyway.
Yugioh GX and 5DS also need consideration for lauging at.
Yugioh GX, there is a cardgame.
ON the result of this card game, player 1(A psychic named sartorius) bets cards he doesnt have. Player 2(A Prince of some random country named prince ojin) bets the control to his country's mind control satelite.
Player 1 cheats and wins in 0 moves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49qD4hBxI4g&playnext_from=TL&videos=q-OWzNBGkwU

you're just part of the giant fan following, of course you would be biased that way. GX and 5D are in the Y list, which is coming soon.

Although the show wasn't worth much, the Yu-Gi-Oh opening theme was AWESOME.

POKEMON <3

@Quan: Oh c'mon, you know there were better animes.  Pokemon was so average it didn't get time on Toonami, Cartoon Network's Anime Fun Time (RIP Toonami and all the other good shows CN cancelled due to extreme white-ness in management)

@Vroop: Lol thats true, although the One Piece English intro was probably the best anime intro sung by Black People (link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb2UPfaZDI8&feature=related )

@Wayne: Yeahhh, One Piece did host the same plot over and over.  It went like this:
1)Luffy and Friends find someplace and theres a obvious protagonist there
2)The Big Baddy of the Day stomps in and rains on everyones parade
3)Luffy's minions fight the Bad Guy's minions, and Luffy's guys win
4)The new protagonist tries to fight the Bad Guy but the Bad Guy wipes the floor with him
5)Luffy, who has been watching the battle the whole time, steps in at the last minute and takes down the Bad Guy with ease
6)The new protagonist joins the crew

I got sick of this Spin Cycle plot and stopped reading One Piece because it got too dull too fast.  That and every other page there seemed to be a full page dedicated to portraying a yelling face.

I really liked zatch bell.

the idea was really cool

OH YEAH I forgot about Zatch Bell! That was a good Anime, and it's plot was like FSN for tweens. Anime was > Manga, I looked at the manga and it was just weird....

Vroop wrote:Although the show wasn't worth much, the Yu-Gi-Oh opening theme was AWESOME.

true dat.

nullset12 wrote:POKEMON <3

Hot Skitty on Wailord Action!

MarthMarthy wrote:OH YEAH I forgot about Zatch Bell!  That was a good Anime, and it's plot was like FSN for tweens.  Anime was > Manga, I looked at the manga and it was just weird....

Find yourself another series to serve as a comparison baseline, and learn to use multiquotes.

I think Elfen Lied would be a candidate for the Z list. It's rather popular on other Otaku cites, but its not that great. Here's the story in a nutshell:
A cat-girl skitzo can disembowel anything with her mind, but only does so when her evil personality takes over, who decides to put the Shiro Theory of Mortality to the ultimate test. She's then trapped by some people because of something, and runs away completely naked (so yes, theres hentai in it) and murders anythting that moves, including, but not limited too: women, children, adults, relatives of the other protagonists, antagonists and protagonists. People explode, theres lots of blood and gore, and more people die. Oh and she has a crush on a guy who's basically the only person who she doesn't turn into blood-jam, and she tries to have sex with him.
Its a perfect example of Killing/Gore/Porn Without Plot. Sorry kaede, this is the kind of cheese that lands itself onto the Z list.

cat girl wtf?

She was a human subspecies that has two bone growth sticking out of her head that look like cat ears. Only thing I really liked about the anime was the opening song lilium.
And why did you put my name in that post?

Because its the name of the protangonist(?), so I thought you were a fan.

Nope it's not that great of an anime and i've heard the manga isn't that good either (though i have been told that it has more plot then the anime).

I use Kaede because it sounds better then using Nina as a handle.

Visual Novel > Manga > Anime

Cycle of Japanese works

No, thats the mini version. Heres the full:

Visual Novel > Manga > Anime > Movie based of the Anime > Live Action Movie

Wonder where that leaves UBW sense it's better than the anime.

Its not based off the Anime, its based on the Visual Novel. I didn't put that up there because as far as I know its the only Movie to be based on a Visual Novel, so its just a outlier.

specifically , the movie isn't based off of the anime at all. Therefore, it doesn't follow this chain of logic

Well I would have to argue that the Samurai Champloo anime is much better than the manga xD

But that's an exception it seems.

Same thing with zatch bell, the Anime was better.

NOOOO THE MANGA has more spells in it

The art style only looks crappy for One Piece. There is actually a lot of attention to detail. No other manga has such vivid backgrounds. In terms of purely non-realistic art, One Piece is the greatest (Vagabond is best for realistic). One Piece only has similar plot early on. Right now, the plot changes like completely for every arc.

Oh cmon, I love Gundam. They actually managed to combine robots with real drama and a linear plotline. Plus in most of the series (Gundam SEED & Destiny do not exist in my mind), the Gundams are actually pretty much balanced compared to other mobile suits (00 gundams get owned by innovade suits).

well aren't you looking forward to the gundam movie...

heck yeh, its coming out in japan like tomorrow or today

no dub/sub though

yeh
I can watch the battle scenes though

Dragon Ball Z is still good, and it was good for its time. Least the badguys are actually evil, and they don't waste their time with tons of grunts (aside from frieza). Yeah i definitely has a lot of staple used up ideas, but hey IT MADE THOSE IDEAS. Dragon Ball the original series was made in 1984. Dragon Ball Z started in 1989, these are some old mangas here. It's classic, no other stories really copy the method behind it. And yeah, they are all overpowered, that part is kind of ridiculous. Like when majiin buu kills half the planets population from one ledge, (how do you hit that many targets while blindly firing upwards?).

I agree gundam does belong higher up it's still sucessful has fared well in other areas besides anime (Rides in japan the mmo and of course models/toys) and still is relevant to today specially the original. I say it at least deserves a B.

Also theres a new gundam movie I didnt know that which series is it covering?

Its Gundam 00 - Awakening of the Trailblazer. This is basically the last installment to the 00 series.

Cool guess i'll look it up when I get the chance.

Once again ... didn't need to know that

Sandow dont spam a form with useless chatter take it to spam.

dinasemrys wrote:The art style only looks crappy for One Piece. There is actually a lot of attention to detail. No other manga has such vivid backgrounds. In terms of purely non-realistic art, One Piece is the greatest (Vagabond is best for realistic). One Piece only has similar plot early on. Right now, the plot changes like completely for every arc.

Oh cmon, I love Gundam. They actually managed to combine robots with real drama and a linear plotline. Plus in most of the series (Gundam SEED & Destiny do not exist in my mind), the Gundams are actually pretty much balanced compared to other mobile suits (00 gundams get owned by innovade suits).

a) Jing and Soul eater have much better background than one piece. And really, see fairy tail that has better art too

Yu Yu hakusho was pretty good

it had same basic plotline as DBZ. as in:
strong guy appears -> main characters seem weak -> they get stronger -> they beat strong guy -> restart with new strong guy

dinasemrys wrote:it had same basic plotline as DBZ. as in:
strong guy appears -> main characters seem weak -> they get stronger -> they beat strong guy -> restart with new strong guy

I want to use this as an example: This was DBZ's thing, there might have been a few other manga that were doing this at the time, but not nearly as many as there are now. All the mainstream shows follow this pattern, which makes them lame, because they are all ripping off DBZ's thing. Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, D. Gray Man, Psyren, Noblesse (but instead of main character seems weak, its Main character completely destroys strong guy, without any effort) etc.