So I just finished watching Golden Boy (1995), since I was curious about it and was very often recommended on various lists of retro anime to watch. It turns out that the show is obnoxiously horny, reaching "I can't believe it's not Hentai" levels in Episode 5 and that the show revolves around this seemingly incompetent dude that basically thinks with his genitals and always ends up getting the girl. The comedy is also basically 90% sexual and with such a setup, you can't really expect much else than objectification of women.

The animation quality is neat and the ED song is catchy though. 5,5/10

The above description might sound familiar if you've watched Great Teacher Onizuka (1999), which is similar in concept, except it includes a pretty good story and interesting characters. Unfortunately, it also is obnoxiously horny (which makes it creepier than Golden Boy due to the setting of GTO), is very ableist towards one of the students of Onizuka's to the point where episodes centered around them become unwatchable if you have a single ounce of liberatory ideology in your head and the show has some really bad filler episodes.

7/10? Sure. 8,69/10, like the MAL rating says? No chance in hell.

I don't really have examples of underrated shows or manga that are noteworthy enough to warrant me complaining about unfortunately.

  • Alkaid [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    .hack//Sign - it's well paced and has a great sense of mystery as the story unfolds. It doesn't show its hand too quickly, which is nice. I like the way the characters are treated in this show too. Instead of it being action focused, it focuses more on interpersonal relationships and characters dealing with issues of mental health and identity (positive LGBTQ+ representation in the early 2000s too). It's a really wonderful show

    It also leads into games/books/and other anime that continues the story if you like what you've seen so far. If you want to stop at Sign, the story concludes and you get the ending. Win-win

    • Gosplan14 [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Nice, I was meaning to check it out eventually. Especially it's because it's by Kazunori Ito, who worked with Mamoru Oshii closely in Patlabor and directed some really based episodes of that anime original show