Messy title, I know.

To explain myself better, I created this thread so you and I can voice our thoughts on anime on which our opinion has changed. Despite the title, it doesn't have to be a love/hate thing. It could simply be an anime that you once really loved, but now find mundane, or anime that you thought nothing about, but now think are good.

Or it could be about how your tastes have changed in general, like liking mecha anime more now than when I was a teenager.

I'll start with a few examples of my own:

Utena: I first watched Utena because I saw it recommended here, and at first I was bored to death. I'd watch the first episodes, drop it, remember it, watch a few episodes again, and then drop it again. It was only months after my first watch, when I managed to stick with it till episode 10 or 11 that something finally clicked and I got hooked and watched the rest of the anime in a few days. I still don't know how it happened. Maybe the first few episodes are weaker? I'd have to watch it again to be sure.

Dragon Ball Z: This case is pretty typical. Has a kid I watched DBZ, like every other kid my age did back then, and loved it. When I finally sat down to properly re watch it years later I found it so dull. Every action took forever and most of the battles weren't nearly has interesting has I remembered them. Surprisingly, I ended up finding myself liking the original Dragon Ball more. Like Z, it's also filled with filler, but its more comedic tone makes it flow so much better.

Most Ghibli movies: Like a good music album, Ghibli movies are the kind that seems to reveal something new every time you watch it. Laputa and Pricess Kaguya are examples that I found myself liking much more after a second and third watch. But even weaker movies like Marnie and Nausicaa reveal a lot on repeated viewing.

Most Harem anime I watched when I was a teenager: Yeah, most haven't held up very well, I can't believe I actually sat through To Love Ru when I was 13. If I was looking for fanservice, there were better options! A few have held up a little, Sora no Otoshimono still has a few fun episodes, but the vast majority no longer interest me at all, they give only boredom now.

I started watching anime relatively late, so I have a surprisingly small amount of shows I watched way back when before my tastes changed to how they are today.
While I certainly didn't watch them as anime (I didn't even know the conceptual difference back then), I did get quite a kick out of the Beyblade and Bakugan anime that aired on TV some two or three times a week, and I'm pretty sure those wouldn't hold up today, lol.
Other than that all that ever came on were Ghibli movies (all of which I loved, except Pom Poko) and the 2003 Appleseed movie, which is still one of my all time favorites

I had a big gap between the made-in-Japan cartoons airing on Australian TV back in the mid-60s (Kimba and Marine Boy), and then figuring out weird uses for my new DVD drive starting in late '03, before falling further down the rabbit hole, so I have no idea how I would view the 60s stuff now.

Increased familiarity with the quirks and idioms (and just being in the habit of consuming Japanese with subtitles) mean I'm probably more tolerant of stuff I considered marginal in my early (pre-2010, say) exploration -- titles that come to mind are Chobits (dropped, but just watched admittedly in a spirit of historical interest), Koihime Musou and sequels (which I didn't even consider looking at when they were new), and Ideon, which I actually found myself appreciating more when rewatching a few years back.

While there are examples I can think of where something I liked I now think awful, none of them that I can recall are anime related.

Justacrazyguy wrote:Dragon Ball Z: This case is pretty typical. Has a kid I watched DBZ, like every other kid my age did back then, and loved it. When I finally sat down to properly re watch it years later I found it so dull. Every action took forever and most of the battles weren't nearly has interesting has I remembered them.

Yea, I went through something similar, though I think I stopped watching while I was 12 or 13(while they were airing one of the Buu sagas) because I realized the show was kind of always the same old same old. Then when I was 17 my friends and I picked up the Frieza saga on dvd and tried to spend a Saturday night watching it but mostly just spent the night laughing and joking around. It's a cool show and it got me into annimay, but I couldn't rewatch it now. The trading card game they came out with back in the day was my favorite of all the ones I played though.

I don't like to admit this, but the first time I watched the first 4 episodes of NGE when I was 13 or 14 I was pretty much bored, especially with Episode 4 and I didn't watch the series in full until I was 23, by which time I got it. But I'm glad I watched the entire series when I did.

The series I probably had the biggest swing of emotions with on my 1st and 2nd full viewings was probably Angel Beats!. I still like it, but the first time I watched it I really loved it. On a rewatch there were parts I kinda just wanted to be over with and a lot of the more emotional scenes didn't pack a punch when I knew they were coming.

Both of the Mushishi series I enjoyed watching much more the first time through as well. This might be a weird comparison, but rewatching it was like the time I replayed Shadow of the Colossus; I didn't find it as fun knowing what was wrong and how Ginko was going to try to solve that episodes problem, just like it's not as fun to beat a boss when you know exactly what you need to do and when! I still think both series are fantastic, but I wish I would have just watched them the one time.

Eureka Seven is a series that I thought was above average on my first viewing, but which really blew my mind the second time around. I liked the music more, the characters more, and the series just made more sense.

The way justacrazyguy talks about Ghibli movies is similar to how I feel each time I rewatch an episode of Ping Pong the Animation or the first season of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. I think they're both perfectly executed and you notice new things about the characters with each viewing.

It holds up in a lot of ways, but Rurouni Kenshin definitely gives off more Saturday-morning cartoon vibes than it did watching it originally.

It's also hard to watch any content connected to that series because... cheese pizza.

Love the characters, love the sentiment at the heart of it. But that crap is now always at the back of my mind.


In part through watching the DBZ abridged series, I appreciate the Dragonball series probably more than I did as a kid, but also still hating how much talking happens.

Still, the Super Saiyan prophecy, and Gohan's succession to SJII was well done in my book.

Justacrazyguy wrote:Most Harem anime I watched when I was a teenager: Yeah, most haven't held up very well, I can't believe I actually sat through To Love Ru when I was 13. If I was looking for fanservice, there were better options! A few have held up a little, Sora no Otoshimono still has a few fun episodes, but the vast majority no longer interest me at all, they give only boredom now.

Same I used to love Tenchi Myuo the first classic series, but I have not been able to rewatch it since. Harem to me in Japan has not moved on as it's stuck in this time warp where it plays really hard to male fantasy and the female characters don't grow outside the lead as people or move on from them. They are just there to be fan service romantic props, also gender switch does not solve this issue as the same issues happen even in an all female version. Like if they modernized this had characters growing outside the male lead and leaned less on fan service they could fix this really stale formula.

I've undergone a major ideological shift over the past couple of years, which has altered my taste in all forms of media (including anime, of course).

I no longer seek out ecchi anime, although I still enjoy most of the ones I used to watch. I now avoid any ecchi anime with yuri or other kinks/fetishes featured prominently, which is why I dumped High School DxD and Momo-Kyun Sword. Actually I now care far less about sexual content in anime/video games than I did even 3 years ago. I've gone from hating Sony for censoring certain Japanese games, to not even caring about it anymore because there's so many far more important issues in the real world (and I also kind of agree with Sony's decision now, though my reasons are very different from theirs). Aside from all that...

Pokemon- Liked the anime as a kid, but always hated Ash and the other human characters. That problem has only gotten worse as I've gotten older, and it's putting me off from re-watching the first two pokemon movies and Mewtwo Returns.

Nadia: Secret of Blue Water- Though I now heavily disagree with a lot of the themes and messages it conveys, it's still a great series and I look forward to re-watching it sometime in the near future.

Samurai Champloo- Nope, never watching it again. Too damn much rap music and rap-inspired humor. Used to love it about 17 years ago.

Girls und Panzer- Still love it as much as I used to, but now I kinda agree with some of the detractors that the girls' skirts are too short.

This thread is perfect as I recently went back and rewatched a few series that I had rated as 10/10 on my MAL from when I first got into anime over a decade ago. First was Angel Beats which turned into a slog after about 5 episodes, so I'd give it about a 5/10 now. Haganai was the first harem series I watched and always had fond recollections of the show even though the light novels went to shit, but man that was bad, re-rated to a 3/10 just because Yukari and Rikka salvaged a few funny moments. Most surprising was Elfen Lied which I ended up still loving just as much as when I was a teenager. So 10/10, would let Lucy tear me to shreds.

There are some fanservice-heavy series that I cringe about having liked in the past (Love Hina, Gunsmith Cats, etc.). Cookie-cutter plot fantasy series also tend to bore me.
Plot and a detailed setting are pretty important to me, although specific types of fanservice still work (e.g. traditional clothing... ).

Never really had this happen to me. Closest I can get to answering this question is ELFEN LIED: revisiting the show as an adult is a very different experience from watching the show as a teenager. A lot of the cracks becomes way more obvious.

Still have a bizarre soft spot for it. There's a great Youtube video that does a better job I ever could on why that is: This one right here.