I'm coming in from an entirely different direction. I'll just admit my dark passenger right now.
I love shoujo anime.
THERE! I said it. I watch other stuff as well, I like Samauri Champloo for instance. I also like Inuyasha like I like Law and Order in that I can turn on any of the like million episodes and be able to watch it without being confused. On the other hand I really liked Paranoia Agent back when I saw it back then.
But My real bread and butter is the girly stuff, I got my husband to watch and enjoy Ouran High School Host Club for instance (its my fav).
So while I really dig girly stuff that I have little context in knowing whats considered good or not, I know I just couldn't get into Cowboy Bebop. My friend got a tattoo about it he was that into it, and I just can't get why. The characters were just meh to me.
On that note...
UncleUlty said:
Vampire knight: I may end up sounding like a naive idiot but wow this is stupid. It's mostly from our female lead,don't worry this is not just her burden to bear. She keeps charging in only to get saved.They give her a weapon that is never useful and ends up out of her hands in a minute.The main vampire is a manipulative twat and everyone else is generically good looking dull. The plot is passable but the love triangle lacks any spark or compatibility between the characters. It's vampire rules are even sillier than Twilight's and seem like a really forced metaphor for sex. Overall just a really stupid Shojo show.
A few are subverted in yes I could call them overrated and they are but I still love them: NGE,Madoka and TTGL.
Thank you! I tried this one out, and even as a shojo fan, I couldn't do this. I LOVE vampire stuff (I mean look at my avatar, best thing ever!) and this reminded me of crap like the Vampire Diaries where the drama was all supposed to be, to me at least, about "beautiful" immortal being just laying around and some shitty shallow angst. Unlikable cardboard characters.
Other than that, I would say Full Metal Panic. I don't think it balanced its mech and slice of life proportions very well. I agree with those who said the whole esper stuff was interesting, I even liked the silly high school stuff because I like silly high school stuff, but the bad guy did nothing for me and there was just too much meaningless mech fighting with no character or plot development. I stopped watching near the end of the first series.