Elfen Lied. All gore, no substance. The anime, at least. And the character of the MC's cousin is the most annoying character I've ever had the displeasure of seeing in anime. Just..ugh. Plus, I watched the series dubbed. And the bitch was particularly annoying in that. >_>
Ergo Proxy counts, too. I frankly DO NOT see what people see in this anime. I tried really hard to like this show and find the "intellectual" content that it apparently has - you know, the regular stuff - symbols, deep themes, messages and whatnot. All I got was a dark show (lol, visually speaking. It has a dark color pallette) with a show trying too hard to be a sophisticated show and failing miserably at it. It had an amazing OP track, though. I'll give it that. I dropped it at 18/22 episodes seen, though. Or 23 was the final count? Idk.
Madoka. MADOKA. God damnit, this is one of the most shallow, pathetic shows I've ever seen in my life. It's pitifully predictable even before the third episode shock, and that's all it does: it relies solely on shock value to sell itself. The characters are under-developed and cliche, the art style is horrific, and it's the kind of baseless, shallow trash I'd expect from Urobutcher. Good music, but I've heard better. I do not understand the hype for this one at all. Also, not a deconstruction. Go watch Princess Tutu, then come back and tell me Madoka is a deconstruction. It plays things so straight it's not even funny. Learn what a deconstruction is first, if you don't mind. God, this one irritates me so much.
Fate/Zero, another Urobutcher show that gets hyped to hell and back for reasons beyond my understanding, especially after watching Unlimited Blade Works and seeing what these characters are supposed to be like. It's beautifully animated, but it's literally just a long-winded, very boring prequel; an excuse for as much despair as humanly possible. For a series about a war between heroic spirits, there is very little war to be spoken of and, despite claiming to write this show for Kirei, Urobutcher spends a lot of time ignoring him. It has some nice moments, especially around Iskander, and a fantastic dub voice cast. But it's a far cry from the source material that inspired it.
I'm aware of your dislike for
Madoka since you've made it clear that you despise it with a burning passion multiple times across various threads, lol. But I wouldn't exactly call the art style horrific. I'm not a particularly big fan of the character designs, sure, but the background art was impressive and I was really impressed by the usage of abstract art in there. But that's just what I think. And the music, for what it was, was pretty nice too. Magia is one of the best ED songs I've heard in any anime, ever. Hauntingly beautiful. But yeah, those are just my two cents on the series.
I personally don't get what makes
Fate Zero THAT good in people's eyes, either. I don't quite dislike it as much as you do, in fact, I actually really like the series. But I didn't really begin liking it a LOT till Kiritsugu's flashback takes place. That's like when 2/3rds of the anime runtime is already over. I didn't give a shit about a lot of characters (Tohsaka's dad, the caster and his master, assassin, berserker etc) and particularly not about Kiritsugu (supposed to be our mc, ffs) or his "cause" till that point. Only after that did I start liking it a lot. But, by that point, all it was for me was a bunch of pretty fights stitched together with with all kinds of backstabbing going on and whatnot.
Though I'll be honest, I prefer Fate Zero to Fate Stay Night any day. Fate Stay Night might look prettier but Fate Zero actually had multiple characters that I, at some point, started giving a shit about (Kiritsugu, Gilgamesh, Iskander, Velvet-kun, Sakura, that poor sap who tries to help sakura and even Illyasveil). Not true for FSN. I cared for Rin, maybe? That's about it. FSN looks juvenile in comparison. At least the Fate and UBW parts. Dunno about Heaven's feel. I mean, they're not BAD, per se. Just nothing extraordinary is all.
Overall, not really THAT big on the franchise. It looks pretty as fuck though. So that definitely makes for a compelling argument in its favor. Also, UBW had two of the best OPs I've ever seen in anime. Brave Shine, especially, is top class.
