I got this interesting idea via digitalboy’s recent post about comparing my tastes in anime to the tastes of the average (English-speaking) fan. MyAnimeList.net (MAL) is a great site to see the overall tastes of such fans, since it has thousands of users from different states/countries with varying tastes in anime. So I decided to see how my favorites rank among MAL’s general populace…
MAL offers many ways to rank anime both in terms of yourself and the average fan. The two rankings I feel give the best idea of the average fan’s tastes are “Rating,” how much users liked it, and “Favorites,” how many users have the title on their list of favorites. digitalboy used “Rating” and “Popularity” in his post, but I decided that “Favorites” would give a better indication of fans’ tastes, since “Popularity” is only how many people have watched that anime (doesn’t mean they liked it).
So how do my tastes compare to the the overall rankings on MAL? I picked 25 each of my favorite titles and characters in order to find out. We’ll begin with my favorite anime titles – I’ve posted them below followed by their MAL rankings in parentheses – the “R” is their ranking in terms of rating (with #1 being the best and #6,000+ I assume being the worst) and the “F” is how many users have favorited that title (the current best record is Death Note at 19,067):
Air (R: 491, F: 1,657)
Angel Beats! (R: 72, F: 3,410)
Azumanga Daioh (R: 179, F: 2,265)
Cardcaptor Sakura (R: 72, F: 2,096)
Code Geass R2 (R: 265, F: 9,086)
Chi’s Sweet Home (R: 412, F: 178)
Death Note (R: 16, F: 19,067)
Eureka 7 (R: 134, F: 2,550)
Evangelion (R: 163, F: 6,500)
Fruits Basket (R: 325, F: 3,065)
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (R: 2, F: 7,602)
Inuyasha (R: 903, F: 3,410)
Kannagi (R: 598, F: 246)
Kemono no Souja Erin (R: 132, F: 127)
Lucky Star (R: 160, F: 2,879)
Madoka Magica (R: n/a, F: 438)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (R: 94, F: 7,737)
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (R: 5, P: 1,001)
Naruto (R: 747, F: 7,852)
Noir (R: 1,023, F: 397)
One Piece (R: 66, F: 10,790)
Pokemon (R: 2,431, F: 818)
Toradora! (R: 57, F: 5,054)
Slayers Next (R: 204, F: 346)
Wolf’s Rain (R: 373, F: 1,823)
What I can conclude is that, as far as rankings go, my tastes certainly match up to the average fan’s. Out of these 25 favorites of mine, a whopping 19 ranked below 500 and only 2 ranked over 1,000! When averaging the tastes of MAL users, this is excellent scoring overall considering how many thousands of anime titles and users there are. As for the favorites ranking, my tastes are a bit more skewered compared to MAL users but still very close, with 17 of my 25 favorites scoring over 1,000. The remaining 8 are scattered between low and high hundreds, mostly low.
Next is characters. Characters don’t get a rating – only the number of users who have favorited them. The current record holder is Lelouch from Code Geass with 15,053.
Trigun
Vash (3,642)
Evangelion
Asuka (2,303)
One Piece
Chopper (785)
Azumanga Daioh
Osaka (2,125)
Sakaki (601)
Inuyasha
Inuyasha (1,709)
Kagome (655)
Sango (320)
Shikabane Hime
Makina (92)
Toradora!
Taiga (3,956)
Shakugan no Shana
Shana (4,444)
Kannagi
Nagi (431)
Naruto
Rock Lee (940)
Gaara (2,952)
Shikamaru (2,169)
Chi’s Sweet Home
Chi (278)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Haruhi (8,464)
Kyon (3,696)
Noir
Mireille (81)
Kirika (166)
Code Geass
C.C. (5,655)
Angel Beats!
Yuri (517)
Lucky Star
Kagami (1,815)
Wolf’s Rain
Toboe (278)
Bleach
Chad (288)
About half of my favorite characters have a favorites score of over 1,000 on MAL, which means they range from extremely popular to semi-popular, both of which are great considering how many thousands of anime characters there are. With the exception of 2, the rest of my favorites have scores over 100, which means they’re not totally ignored on average but aren’t considered very popular.
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To draw a last conclusion with all the above data, I would say my tastes match up with the average fan pretty well. The majority of my favorite titles are also ranked very favorably on MAL in terms of rating and favoriting. A handful of my favorite characters are within the top 100 most popular on MAL, and the rest at least have some fans.
But honestly, does it really mean anything if your tastes match up to the average fan? Of course not. I just enjoy piecing together random data about anime and myself =P But just because you don’t like all the popular titles and characters doesn’t make you any less of a fan of the ones you do like. There are plenty of fans who would never watch an anime no matter how popular it is simply because it’s not a genre they like, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But for me, there are two reasons why my tastes match up to the average fan more than not. First of all, I like checking out all the popular shows because these are often the ones that define anime and bring about new trends and fan bases. I like to know what the overall fandom is into at the moment and follow anime history as it unfolds through these beloved titles because I’m as much a fan of anime in general as I am of individual series. Following the current popular titles increases my knowledge of and intimacy with the fandom more than if I were to just rewatch my old favorites all the time or cherry pick only titles I know I’d love. And secondly, most of the time I end up loving the very popular titles anyway, as you can see from how my favorite anime match up to MAL’s. As for why, well, like all favorites, that’s just my taste ;)
I like your decision to use favorites, but there might be a problem with the fact that you listed *all* of your favorites as opposed to just the ones you actually have listed on MAL, which restricts anime to 5 and characters to 10. If you’re using bigger lists, then it’s not as fair to take the rankings from users who were only allowed fewer spots, because many more may have included those favorites if they had the extra space. So for the sake of comparison, let’s say that many of these stats may have been significantly improved if users could mark down all of their favorite anime and characters.
I really loved my test because it gave me a boost in confidence towards some of my favorite shows. Index may not have been on my list, but I saw how highly it ranked and it made me feel good knowing that people really do like the show, despite the constant beatdown it gets in the blogosphere that it completely doesn’t deserve.
That’s a good point – I thought 10 favorites was too few, since I have more than 10 that I would consider all-time favorites, so I went with 25. But I didn’t realize that picking more than MAL allowed would make the data less accurate…so thanks for pointing that out XD
Putting this post together gave me a boost of confidence too, for example, seeing a show I loved like Kemono no Souja Erin ranked so high even though it seems like hardly anyone in the blogsphere watched it =)
My favorite series (the only ones I’ve given 10’s to so far)
Evangelion (R: 163, F: 6,500)
Fullmetal Alchemist (R 39:, F: 8,665)
Haibane Renmei (R 219:, F: 1,340)
I should probably just go ahead and add Code Geass to that list (don’t know what’s holding me back). And I’m about to finish Gurren Lagann, which has a strong chance of making the top tier, too. So about 3 of the titles in my top 5 rank in the top 50… and for good reason, IMO.
My favorite characters list is pretty brief. Only the best of the best make the cut here. I kind of want to add Pootan from Cromartie High School (member favorites: 1) but I guess I like keeping this list strictly female.
Kino (Kino’s Journey): 916
Asuka Langley Soryu (Evangelion): 2,304
Hinata Hyuuga (Naruto): 1,930
Yomiko Readman (Read or Die): 267
Ogiue Chika (Genshiken): 276
Sheska (Fullmetal Alchemist): 15
I guess I expected some of these characters to be more popular than they apparently are. I thought Ogiue was THE character that everyone liked from Genshiken. And I know Read or Die came out nearly 10 years ago, but has everyone already forgotten about Yomiko? Anyway, I kind of like how my favorites list straddles the line between populism and connoisseurism. I don’t know anyone else who picked Sheska for their favorites list, but it’s a small group that I feel a kind of secret kindship with.
That’s interesting that all of your favorite titles are ranked very highly on MAL, but most of your favorite characters don’t have more than 1,000 votes. Usually the top ranked characters are from the highly ranking anime. But regardless, when you have a favorite like Sheska that hardly anyone likes, that makes the kinship you feel with those 14 other people all the more stronger, huh? ^^ Plus MAL lets anyone make a fan club, so you could always do that.
Cool. I’ll be sure to ckeck out the site for good reviews.
bye.
–End–
Interesting. But I never pay attention to ratings. I go by what the people say or comment, and if I find it interesting, I’ll get it. I do not like anime that is too long like one piece (I’m not saying it’s bad), I just feel that a good story can be told in 26-52 episodes. But I do listen to recommendations. I’m watching Madoka thanks to one of your blogs (And I love it!), and I’m getting Aria as well (sounds interesting from another of your blogs). So I’ll watch it and judge by myself.
I guess everyone has different tastes and ways to pick what they will, or will not watch, but ratings is definitely not one of them for me. Does that mean, I do not care what others think? Maybe… I try not to be swayed by the masses. I like to think by myself. Or maybe that’s what the society wants me to believe. No!! the conspiracy!
Anyway, ratings are not really for me :P
Honestly, I don’t use ratings, on MAL or otherwise, in determining what I’ll watch. I mostly go by what my fellow bloggers and the overall fandom thinks of a certain series, or sometimes recommendations from friends and reading about the title on my own. I don’t think any one blog post has persuaded me to watch an anime I wasn’t already planning on watching…so I’m glad that my posts about Madoka and Aria got you interested ^_^
Considering how many shows we have in common, I’ll take the easy way out and go “I watch popular-to-semi-popular shows”. I do have an strange taste in favorite characters though. Who else would take Koizumi, Saten, Taiga, Hisa, and Mikuru as their top five? Saten and Taiga are immensely popular but the other three are looked over for others.
Popularity has something to do with my tastes. Typically if something is popular, it’s not too bad story-wise, thus they tend to favor to my taste. I think I fit in with the Japanese otaku due to supporting some shows that sell immense amounts. As long as a show is entertaining to me in some way, that’s all that matters (enter Gosick and watching for OP/ED).
I do agree with your point about people who won’t watch a show because of the genre. Mecha would fall in that category for me. As much as people loved 2.0, after watching it, I know the genre is not for me as I was bored during the robot fight scenes. There are others who will only watch that genre. Neither of us would be right or wrong, we just have different tastes and that’s beneficial for everyone. Variety is the spice of life.
I also have a strange mix of favorite characters…I don’t think anyone else has Haruhi and Chopper as their two top favorites XD
Besides anime filled with blatant fan service and ecchi stuff, there isn’t any genre of anime that I won’t watch. I’m also not into robot battles, which is why mecha isn’t my favorite genre either. So the reason I love some mecha titles, like Evangelion, Eureka 7, and Code Geass, is because the robot battles are only a minor part of these shows – they’re mostly about the character, story, and setting development above all else =)
I can safely say my taste in anime ranges from a few popular series to stuff no one (in North America, at least) really cares about. So yes, I’m watching Fractale and Gosick and Madoka right now, but I’m really looking forward to the next incarnation of Appleseed in Spring 2011 with Maaya Sakamoto and Kouichi Yamadera as the main characters voices. I really like the Appleseed universe, which, like Ghost in the Shell, is created by Masamune Shirow. Sadly, I seem to be 1 of 2 people on MAL who actually shows any interest about this series, and no bloggers I’ve read who have previewed the Spring season offerings have paid any attention to it. I’ll bet most North American fans don’t remember the earlier movies or know about the 6-volume manga. (And now I’ve gone and made myself morose again. Ah well…)
Unfortunately very few anime titles can withstand the test of time, and as time goes by, the new fans won’t know about the popular titles of the past. But I believe every series will have its own group of fans, no matter how small and hidden they may be. So don’t worry about it, just like what you like, and you’ll be sure to find someone else to share in the fandom even if it’s not the blogsphere as a whole =)
I should try this someday.
Well. We’ll see.
But it is an interesting way to look at things.