It's a lot of fun rewatching two great anime franchises, but there's little point keeping a scorecard between them any further. Nanoha won 2/3 of the time in its original season, and during A's it was better than its corresponding Higurashi ep the entire season long. Unrelenting dominance.
Even if Higurashi Kai somehow made a comeback during Strikers, Rei + Kira aren't as long as Vivid + Strike, so it's physically impossible for Higurashi to be as good as Nanoha anymore.
Nanoha seems to be way better than Higurashi. Which means my petulant ranking of Nanoha down in the 30's, and similar series like Nanoha that lack an ending in the 30's, 40's and 50's, was horribly mistaken. The fact is even without endings, these shows, while they last, are so superior to the competition that half their tales are worth the full story of anybody else.
The previous rankings before my latest revision seem to be a heck of a lot more accurate and authentic. Basically I was just mad that Sword Art Online hasn't announced a sequel yet and was in the mood to punish it. That isn't a very good way to judge things.
Shows with missing content should be dealt with more mercifully. Instead of raging about what's missing it's important to just enjoy what you have. There is an argument to be made for my treatment of series distorted by filler though.
If you look at an anime's worth as the value added compared to its original source, a show ruined by filler has no value added, and therefore can't possibly compete with even mediocre series.
Of course, that's not how I've historically been rating series. If I did that, all original anime would automatically be the top rankers because they have infinite value added compared to their non-existent sources. Historically it's just been 'are you better than the other guy?' But maybe value added should be somewhere in the metric. If you offer nothing but a watered down, ruined version of what already came before, are you really an artistic masterpiece?
So, while reserving the right to be angry with shows affected by filler, I think I'll forgive the shows penalized simply for not being as long and thorough as I wish they had been.
Sadly, I don't think Akame ga Kill! was a very good series until they fought Kurome (it was okay, but nothing to write home about), and the anime deviated soon after that into filler, so I don't see much point in restoring Akame to its previous position of honor. The manga just got better and better from there, with a fantastic ending. The manga also has Zero to enhance its value, which the anime lacks. Which means the reasoning behind it being a top ten manga just doesn't extend to the anime's ranking.
It is extremely difficult to juggle all these separate parameters and come up with a fair ranking for 193 different series, but that's what makes the effort so rewarding. Stephen Hawking would've grown bored with anything less than black holes.
So, yet again, I've gone back to the drawing board and switched all my rankings around. Punish filler = yes. Punish series without endings = no. With the lesson learned from Nanoha, hopefully this time I got it right. (Nanoha benefited the most from this Nanoha-inspired revolution, jumping all the way to 10th place.)
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