Dr. Stone. A generic fantasy trope that lets someone create futuristic inventions out of nowhere turns me off a lot of the time, but actually going out of their way to describe that journey in detail changed my view.

Recently, Frieren. I see it everywhere because it’s obviously popular but was never really interested enough to watch it. My wife started watching it and I just happened to watch along. Turns out it’s actually as good as people say it is. I’m currently halfway through the first season.

Dorohedoro. I mean, the name literally mean "Filthy vomit".

It is amazing.

Most of them TBH, but starting with Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

It reminded me not to judge books by their cover, and kickstarted my (relatively) recent interest in anime.

Nowadays, I would pick an anime up if it is decently popular / highly-rated, even if its premise doesn't resonate with me.

Definitely Gundam Build Fighters. I went in expecting a soulless ad for gunpla, but was met with one of the most charming shows I'd ever seen. It really just felt like the writers loved the whole Gundam franchise.

For those who don't know, it's a show about people building gunpla, and then using technomagic "plavsky particles" to fight their gunpla against each other in tournaments.

I start the season super pessimistic on must of the anime based on title and then end up heavily invested. Generally, it's a romance.

Warrior Princess and Barbaric King. It's not bad, but I feel like they are too focused on world building to tell the titular characters.

Watari-Kun's ******* is About To Explode. I was pleased by how well the characters developed.

Pass the Monster Meat. It was not exactly what I expected.

Sentenced to Be a Hero: initially I thought "meh, yet another series where they fight the Maō", but right in the first episode there was a "hero" stealing stuff, then I was like "well, this is going to be fun". And as the series progressed I started genuinely enjoying its cynical and bitter tone.

Mayonaka Punch: I didn't bother with the series at the start of the season, because you can be pretty sure "arsehole influencer doing dumb shit" is not my cup of tea. But mid-season I got bored, gave it a try because I thought the vampire looked fun (and quickly noticed she was voiced by my favourite voice actress, Fairouz Ai), and really enjoyed it, because the interactions between characters were fun.

I'm sure there's more, but I was l suuuper put off by the first few episodes of A Certain Scientific Railgun... I was not going to be able to handle Kuroko being as over the top as she was initially. So glad I eye rolled through the first half of season 1!

A more recent one was Days with My Stepsister. I had assumptions about what it would be about and initially didn't start it during the season it aired, but I kept seeing each week's episodes rated fairly high and a lot of discussion around them. I picked it up maybe 5 episodes late in the season and ended up really enjoying the story and overall production.

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