Don't forget the banger music.

There's a fight in the first season where the MC starts swinging his sword to perform air dodges that really, really irritated me with everything else they said about his "breathing techniques" at the start that basically meant it couldn't do that.

Plus it always just makes me laugh when Japanese writers pretend that's a totally different mystical tradition than Qi.

I really wish everything else about it wasn't so silly because the animation is undeniably gorgeous.

I get what you're saying, but I'm not always fully dedicating time to a show. I've watched plenty of mid shows while doing other things: cleaning, playing games, working, sending emails, etc. Don't really even want to watch anything that good when I'm doing those things. Else I'll be too distracted.

Counterpoint: there's also an ocean of garbage out there.

Maybe this'll get me some flack, but rn this post makes me think of Jujutsu Kaisen. It's fine. Some of the characters are fleshed out well, some of them are at least entertaining, but overall the plot is incredibly simple and the worldbuilding is surprisingly shallow. However, MAPPA is an undeniably talented studio and crucially, it's actively in the process of airing.

Not everything you watch has to be groundbreaking. Sometimes just being "on" and "good enough" is all you want.

I've found I'm a lot happier when I just take things as they come. It's not so much that I want to watch mid shows as it is that I don't want the stress that comes from trying to avoid them. I'm much happier just quickly picking something good enough than spending a bunch of time researching the best thing and then still wondering if I could've found something better.

I enjoyed watching shows most when I had 10 local TV channels to pick from and just watched whatever seemed good enough out of those options, so now I just purposefully limit my options to emulate that, and it's been pretty nice.

God, I fucking despise NGE and how people won't shut up about it

Nah, people tend to use 'mid' as an insult, but describing these shows that way is too generous. They're so damn generic you didn't even feel the need to name specific titles.

I've gotta be honest I don't understand how you can think Re:Zero follows the same formula as those lol. The other three are fairly similar in story structure but Re:Zero? Like you named three typical shounen and then Re:Zero a story where the main character can't accomplish anything on his own, is quite pathetic for the first couple arcs and who's power is to get killed gruesomely and try and lead others with knowledge he cannot share and should not know.

Naruto literally right from the start is shown to be a kid with incredible potential who manages to beat a Chunin. Narutos structure is about a kid who isn't innately powerful (which is imo a retcon due to being Ninja Jesus) but who trains with dedication. IE you can do anything if you put effort into it.

Demon slayer is similar insofar that Tanjiro isn't actually uniquely special though Demon Slayers story structure kind of just sucks all around. The author cared way more about cool looking fights or scenes than making things logically make sense most famously all the Sword effects being completely made up, and not something that exist in cannon, a cannon that has actual demon blood magic.

I've been seeing more people hate on things just cause it's popular and I've gotta admit it's so goofy. You can just not enjoy something that's fine nobody is forcing you to watch Re:Zero if you don't like it. Sometimes fans of a property go really overboard, to name names Full Metal Alchemist fans but Full Metal Alchemist is actually good there's just a lot of people who make it their personality