Hm, I heared
Kare Kano recommended quite a lot, but haven't watched it yet. Maybe it's time to pick it up?
***
Watched two episodes of
Utena (which is a bit hard to find), and I can definitely see parallels to
Penguin Drum (sort of like a signature). It's quite a unique mesh-up; the music they play when they enter the duel grounds made me think of the older Godzilla movies, of all things. Heh.
***
Yeah,
Clannad Afterstory is cruel. Relentlessly, so. (I sort of think the
very ending works better in the game than in the anime... although it's clearly been set up for a long time, it comes a bit out of nowhere; I found it somehow hard to take - although the wishful thinker in me was sort of grateful for the reprieve.
)
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And finally, yep, master pieces are often somewhat "flawed", but apart from "real flaws", there are also elements that not everyone "gets". (By which I mean: Some of the things that puts of the majority is what actually draws a minority in.)
Madoka is an interesting example.
***Spoilers ahead***
It's a very popular show, but it seems interest didn't pick up until the sudden mentor death. People then loved the story telling, but most hated the entropy twist. Me? I loved the show from the get-go (the juxtaposition of the weird witch space, with the stylistically overemphasised idyll - "the epic drawing of the curtains", when Madoka wakes her mom...). And where most people online seemed to have a that-came-out-of-nowhere experience after the entropy plot, I thought "Oh, of
course. Now it all makes sense."
Many people were put off by the witch fights, especially early on. They couldn't take them seriously. I love those witch fights. Now I'm not, generally, a fan of this sort of Shinbou madness (they're my least favourite parts in
Zetsubou Sensei, for example). But here they just fit. (Shinbou animation + Kajiura soundtrack perfectly complement the story, here, I feel.)
Many of the critique points don't apply to me; or - worse - if they would listen to these critics, they'd lessen the appeal of the show for me.
One major critique point I do agree with: Pacing problems: underdevelopment of characters like Hitomi or Kamijou (and too little time spent on Sayaka's funeral); Kyouko's character development would have made more sense, if they'd dished out her backstory in bits and pieces (but they didn't have the time); and so on.
Finally, if anything about the show has set a standard it's Kyubey, the non-evil villain. Most everything else is either pretty standard (plot progression), or too unique to copy well (such as the witch fights).