Reading that blog post makes me reconsider how well I can talk about anything related to anime.
When I get into something, I want to really understand it and know all about it. That's what I've tried to do with video games, and I like to think I can adequately describe why I like or don't like a game, or what parts are good or bad. And I'd like to be able to do the same with anime, and I want to like good things and dislike bad things. I want to be a monocle and sit on my throne of classy good taste and look down on all these inferior popular shows. But then I read something like that and realize how easily "this is stuff I like" turns into "this is something objectively good".
I don't know whether Madoka is objectively good (I'm kinda in the middle on it), but his argument for the show's quality comes down to it being about themes he likes, and his argument for preferring Steins;Gate comes down to how he doesn't like Sayaka, even though her selfishness is central to the themes of love he so adores. He likes Madoka because some people are really selfless, and he likes Steins;Gate because everyone's a better person there than in Madoka.
It seems silly to me (mostly because of how his telegraphed subjective preferences are mixed with objective statements), but then I think about why I really liked Steins;Gate more than other shows last season. I feel safe saying that the writing is pretty strong, and the voice cast is great, but what pushed it over the top for me and made me care so much were two main elements.
- I was really happy to see a non-comedy show set in the modern day focused around the otaku subculture. For a tense mystery/adventure, the setting resembled a reality I could actually experience more closely than other shows I had seen.
- Makise Kurisu fits a character archetype that I really really like. Kinda like FMP's Chidori, it's the right mix of "tsun" and "dere" which bypasses all my intellectual defenses.
These things made all the other pandering that goes on in the show pretty much invisible, and invested me in the stuff that worked deeply enough that the ending came as an enormous happy payoff.
It'd be easy to just let go and like the things I like, but I also don't want to be the kind of guy who writes that blog.