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.
One that I feel is overrated is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Like sure, I won't deny that it had a huge impact on anime and created tropes used by other beloved franchises, but when I watched it, I was so disappointed with the bare bones storytelling.
There were cool fights and it set the tone for shonen, but that was it. The characters felt bland.
Then there's the general discomfort I had with the way different cultures and races were portrayed. In Stardust Crusaders, their adventure in India felt gross. I know the source material is older than the anime adaptation but still.
Overall, I have a lot of respect for the series, but I had a lot more before actually watching it.
On the underrated side of things, I would say that Pumpkin Scissors was a series that I enjoyed. It wasn't perfect, but it explored a corrupt country following a brutal war. The series follows the group nicknamed 'the pumpkin scissors.' They're tasked with rooting out corruption, but are often dismissed as a propaganda campaign. This is especially an issue with the corps' leader being born an aristocrat.
She's very presumptuous about her ability to effect change in society and she's constantly faced with worse and worse corruption.
One of the other main characters was a soldier who was subjected to harsh experiments to make him into a mindless killer.
The politics weren't perfect by any means, but it was nice to see as a baby leftist.
I really like Jojo, but yeah, the Indian arc in Stardust Crusaders felt kinda racist and there's snippets of bad politics, male gaze, etc. through out the other parts too. Also Steel Ball Run, which is considered to be one of the greatest manga of all time, had a really bad beginning and while admittedly the story was pretty good, most of the characters were forgettable with only a few exceptions and the self-referentiality was annoying.
At least, as far as fanbases of large anime franchises go, Jojo's is alright beyond the annoying Rudol von Stroheim memeing.
Not a masterpiece, but I'd give the series a 8/10.