BTW anyone looking for unspecific recommendation please check out this poster. I watched a good chunk of it and each and every anime on that poster can be recommended without reservations.

It helped me to find a bunch of great classics when I first started watching anime.

 (rightclick and open to see it bigger)  

Just kinda curious... but why isn't Naruto Shippuden, or Bleach ever listed/discussed in this type of thread? I've seen a few users in this thread who I know watch at least one of them. Those two are honestly the only anime I watch anymore. Elfen Lied honestly turned me off to a lot of the smaller anime. Claymore was pretty cool though, got attached to a few characters, but didn't like how it ended.

There are people who watch almost everything every season. I can't do that. I have to cherry pick. There is a sea of shit out there.

There are certainly a few on that list that I would skip, but there is a lot of great stuff on it too. I'm currently watching Mahou Shojoutai due to recommendations but I'm having quite a difficult time getting through it. It seems like a generic "dark" fantasy story so far, but maybe (10 episodes in) I have yet to see the hook.

Though they are decent anime, Naruto and Bleach are so painfully mainstream a lot of seasoned anime watchers lose interest in discussing it. Not to mention they have fillers out the ass which is soooooo fucking annoying.

Ongoing anime from previous seasons aren't listed in polls, etc for the current season so that we can discuss newer anime that are airing in the season. Naruto/Bleach already have big enough fanbases that they have their own dedicated forums for discussions, which is generally not the case for the newer anime. So in general people like to talk mostly about the new stuff as opposed to anime that are carried over from previous seasons.

That's of course not to say you can't talk about Naruto or Bleach here. I like them both but it's always fun to see any up and coming anime others have found.

I'm a fan of the longer series which don't end abruptly in 20 episodes.

A lot of anime tell a fully fleshed out story fro start to end in 24 episodes.

And some truly masterful anime can tell a story start to end in 24 minutes. It's not about the length (of time), it's how you use it!

Of course, but 20 episode animes don't really click with me all that often. I prefer the longer ones. Maybe it's because I like to think about a specific story for a while, and I don't want them to end quickly? Idk