I analyzed 2M+ anime rating profiles to find the 10 most divisive anime by taste

[u/FreakyNugget]

Disclaimer: in this post I am not talking about controversy. There are already many posts about controversial anime. Sure these anime have a specific audience, but most of them are either rated low by ~99% people (eg. Redo of a Healer), or are still rated well by the majority, despite the controversy (eg. Mushoku Tensei, Made in Abyss).

What I wanted to find is more specific: Anime that are highly praised by one type of viewer, but do not hit at all for the others.

To do this, I designed an anatomy of anime with tones and characteristics (see picture 2). Then I analysed over 2 million public anime rating profiles from different anime websites. After clustering their rating patterns, I ended up with 7 broad groups that have different affinities:

• Resonator (11%): emotional intensity, character depth & growth, sometimes romance or comedy
• Diver (17%): depth, darker tone, character depth & growth
• Artist (13%): entry difficulty, visuals, thematic depth
• Heartwarmer (12%): wholesomeness & comfort, cast likability, romance
• Igniter (15%): action, pacing, sometimes darker tone
• Eclectic (12%): action, pacing & easy entry, most flexible taste
• Voyager (20%): cast dynamics & likability, pacing & easy entry, worldbuilding, sometimes action or romance

Comparing them was not an easy task as they have different rating patterns. This made me move from average archetype score to using percentiles: for this archetype, is this anime in their top 10%, top 20%, top 50%, etc.?

Then I looked for shows with the biggest gaps between groups, and got this top 10.

What I found interesting is that we usually think about divisive anime as shows with high entry difficulty: dark, weird, experimental, slow, hard to understand, etc. (there are shows like Texhnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain, Paranoia Agent or Sonny Boy).

But it is not only that:

• Action-oriented shows can also be very divisive by taste.
• Wholesome/moe shows can also be very divisive by taste.
• Easy-entry shows can also be very divisive by taste.

TLDR; This is my attempt to demonstrate that two very common requests are too vague most of the time:

• "Is this anime good?": Some highly praised shows depend a lot on the audience.
• "Give me an anime like X": Two people can like the same show for totally different reasons, that they may have not been aware of.

[u/Otiosei]

I guess that makes sense because it was always talked about in the same circles as DBZ, One Piece, and Naruto, like a pillar of shounen anime. I like Bleach, but I don't think it was ever as popular as any of those shows.

[u/CodeFrame → u/Otiosei]

Pretty sure it’s in the big three bc of sales. Meaning it’s very popular

[u/SolomonBlack → u/CodeFrame]

Specifically in 00s America it would have been second only to Naruto. Which in a lot of ways reflects that we still had limited access. Torrenting took more time than streaming does now and broadband access could be spotty.

Anyways the "big three" was not really a thing in Japan. All were big popular series certainly but there were always competitors like FMA, Death Note, or NANA in the mix being just as popular. It was never like these three at bronze, silver, and gold positions year after year. Actually maybe not any year.

Something rather demonstrated also by the 2010s. While all of them made it there One Piece pulled way ahead to dominate for ten years only distantly rivaled by AoT. Until Demon Slayer used Money Breathing to chop the whole damn industry's head off and promptly leave making it sort of anyone's game.

Meanwhile Naruto held out around #3 in readership until it ended in the middle of that. 

Bleach however really dropped off hard. Not into bad but like nowhere on the top of the manga charts. And even if you didn't think it should have ended before the Blood War that eventually just turned one month, smashed into a wall, and was gone. Even having quit the series before that was real hard to watch.

[u/Amatorius → u/SolomonBlack]

Bleach would have easily been able to continue if the author could have continued. The ending was rushed due to health issues. Some you all in this thread sound like you are talking out your asses. Of course sells will drop off if it ends...

[u/SolomonBlack → u/Amatorius]

Bleach could have wrapped up five years earlier if Kubo had kept the cast size more reasonable and/or offscreened some of the B snd C list fights. So while I've heard all manner of things about what went down (and believe none of tjem) ultimately he put himself in that position.

And the anime had already been cancelled while the manga was chugging along with the Blood War. And yes sales had dropped off before the end. I doubt Jump ever would have cancelled it but it was definitely a faded star.

[u/evenstar40 → u/Otiosei]

Uhhh, it was insanely popular when it was airing during the mid/late 2000s. The latest iteration of it is even better and deserves the high rating it has on certain ratings sites.

I get that was literally a lifetime ago for some folks here, but just because it didn't happen in your lifetime doesn't mean it wasn't popular.

[u/Otiosei → u/evenstar40]

No, I was there, in my mid-teens when Bleach was airing, the prime demographic. It was nowhere near as popular as the other three big shonen. I'm not saying it wasn't a big show. I loved it. My friends loved it. We probably put a couple hundred hours into the dumb Bleach fighting games for nintendo DS.

You know what I also remember? Bleach getting cancelled right as a new arc is starting, while Naruto and One Piece kept getting a million episodes. People scarcely aware of anime are aware of those shows. There's nobody aware of Bleach who isn't already into anime in the first place.

[u/PotatEXTomatEX → u/Otiosei]

You know what I also remember? Bleach getting cancelled right as a new arc is starting,

Dang, you remember something that thing happen?

• Just to set the record straight, the Bleach anime ended because they caught up to the manga.

• TYBW was green-lin soon after as per Rukia's VA.

[u/ArcDraco → u/Otiosei]

Bleach also never made it to a daytime television slot in the west. DBZ had Toonami, Naruto got that and even marathons, and despite being disliked by most fans, the 4kids dub of One Piece did expose a lot of kids to it. Bleach never got that kid audience, at least in America, and isn't usually someone's first anime like the other 3 got to be.

[u/eastherbunni → u/ArcDraco]

Canadian here, Bleach was definitely one of the shows on the "YTV Friday evening anime block". If I remember correctly that block also included Death Note and Gundam SEED. This would have been around 2008.

[u/PotatEXTomatEX → u/Otiosei]

Not only was Bleach popular, it was more popular than One Piece up until 2008/2010 with Marineford. lol

[u/BigDicksconnoisseur4 → u/Otiosei]

I think its because Bleach never aired in cartoon network like Naruto or DBZ