Script

So MAL made a post about Mob Psycho 100 II recently breaking into the top 13 shows on the website, those with a score of 9.00 or above. I see people left and right complaining with how overrated it is, and honestly, it kinda ticked me off.
 Now, that’s not to say I don’t think certain shows are overrated in my opinion. I’m actually guilty of commenting such things sometimes in my past years as an anime fan, but I’m not here saying you shouldn’t have an opinion on stuff. Rather, I’d like to present my perspective on how MyAnimeList works as a website, what its rating system actually means, and what I personally think it’s the right mindset to approach and interpret it.
 I’m actually kind of obsessed with lists... particularly anime lists, as it is my main hobby. Not even in a necessarily healthy way, I actually think I look too much into MAL’s top anime page, but I want to at least make the hours I spent of my life looking at it worth it in some way.
 Whenever a popular show gets a sequel, 99% of times that means it will increase in score, as long as the show maintains its overall quality, due to people who dislike the show to drop out and consequentially not scoring seasons past the first one.
Let’s take Haikyuu as an example: 1st season - 8.64 / 2nd season - 8.86 / 3rd season - 8.97
A very gradual increase here. Haikyuu’s animation and story quality doesn’t vary significantly from season to season, so that makes sense. For the majority of users rating the show, even if they score two seasons differently, it wouldn’t usually be with more than a point of difference between them.

The same can be seen in the case of Boku no Hero, although its 3rd season doesn’t have a greater score, but the scoring statistics pattern is basically the same. It doesn’t mean the 3rd season is OBJECTIVELY worse than the 2nd. It actually just means most people rated both seasons with exactly the same score.

Then there are bigger score differences between seasons. Take 3-Gatsu no Lion: its first season is rated 8.45, while its 2nd season is rated a whopping 9.05.
 Now, 3-Gatsu is not a shounen series. This means it doesn’t have such a broad appeal, and the fact that it is tagged as a sports anime and it is about Shogi (basically japanese chess) is a HUGE turn off to most people. Of course, this means that right off the bat it’s not gonna be such a popular series, but even amongst the people that actually start watching it, a good amount of them will still say it is boring, for whatever reason they may have.
 Despite this, you can still see its score distribution is pretty similar to that of Boku no Hero’s first season. However, with 3-gatsu no Lion season 2, despite the fact that the general consensus is that it is at least slightly better overall than its predecessor, you also take out of the equation the people that didn’t like the show enough to watch its 2nd season and BAM: 9.05. Why of course, it’s easy of any of the people who scored the first season any less than 9 to go like “THIS IS SUCH AN OVERRATED SHOW!!”
A classic example, similar to 3-Gatsu, is Clannad.
Clannad’s first season is bottomline your typical Key Visual Novel adaptation, but with incredible production values. This said, it’s more obvious than in 3-Gatsu’s case why its second season is so much highly rated than the first: because of its drastic increase in quality and an increased focus in its central story and themes, which is an unprecedented thing in Visual Novel adaptations. With Clannad being a show themed around Family, which has a broad appeal as a drama, in contrast with 3-Gatsu no Lion’s seinen shogi setting, it’s been one of the highest rated anime on MAL for years.
 Just recently  though, its score dropped from 9.00 to 8.99, which sadly ACTUALLY triggered some fans.
 Looking back at Mob Psycho 100 II, it really is a thing to be celebrated that it hit the score of 9.00 on MAL: it’s one of the most consistently well produced shows, with every episode offering comedy, drama and action in a balance that you only see in shows like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. Hell, even the official Twitter of Mob Psycho 100 II shared, celebrated and thanked the fact that it got into MAL’s top 13 anime!
 You can have whatever opinion you do about the show, you may have rated it anything below a 9, but what’s the point of pointing out that you think it’s an overrated piece of crap? Maybe you even LIKE the show but just don’t think it’s AMAZING or as good as certain shows below it on MAL’s top list, so therefore it doesn’t deserve a score of 9.00? Well, why is that? Like it or not, Mob Psycho is a series with an immensely broad appeal, and that simply shows in the numbers. Because it’s scored slightly above your favorite show, it doesn’t mean it’s overrated or it’s OBJECTIVELY regarded as a quintessential masterpiece. Here, let me show you (), Mob Psycho 100 II is currently rated 9.02, with 36.9% of votes being 10s and 36.5% being 9s. Let’s take a look at shows below it (), Clannad After Story is rated 8.99, but 48.7% of voters rated it a 10! Owarimonogatari Season 2: 42.6%; Code Geass R2: 43.2%. This just goes to show that the vast majority of these shows’ viewers absolutely LOVE them. Actually, more people consider them masterpieces than people consider Mob II a masterpiece! In Mob’s case though, the vast majority of viewers either rated it a 10 or a 9, and the scores below a 9 are more scarce at the moment that in the case of the shows I mentioned. And that’s simply how math and statistics work.
 Is Aria the Origination, one of my favorite anime of all time, an underrated show because it’s sitting at 8.57 on MAL? Hell no, because I know it’s not a show with an appeal as broad as some shows sitting on MAL’s Top, even if I don’t like those shows as much or if I don’t like them at all! However I see that the majority of Aria the Origination’s viewers actually rated it a 10, and that is more than enough for me to consider it fairly rated. And this goes for many others: Death Note, Gurren Lagann, Monster, One Piece, and many other highly appraised shows have a majority of people rating them a 10 despite not being in the top 10, 20, or 30 on MAL.
 Who cares if our favorite shows are rated 7.2, 8.7. 8.99 or 9.10: these are all great shows for many people, and we, as a community, regardless of our own personal, biased, nuanced and differing opinions, should just celebrate when a GOOD show is produced that can make a lot of people happy and entertained, and be proud that this medium, despite many flawed attempts, keeps  pumping out quality content that we can celebrate every year. Wether you think it’s a 6, a 7, an 8, a 9, or a 10, it is, at the end of the day, a positive entry in this Masterful medium that we collectively love.