I tend to watch most of my anime as it's currently-airing. Which means I don't have quite as many resources to use when picking what to watch. So how do I pick which shows to watch? Relatively ordered by importance:

1. Premise. If a small plot summary makes me think "Oh, that sounds interesting", I'll probably at least give it a few episodes. Basically, I don't want to watch something I've already seen before. Even if it's been retooled, recolored and repackaged. I'm very vary of anime that include in it's premise phrases like "Ordinary Highschool boy/girl" or "Childhood friend" or non-shoujo anime that includes at least three female characters in it's plot description. Not ironclad rules, but more like major Red Flags. So to get me interested, an anime has to at least sound unique enough to stand out on its own. To put it simply, I don't much care for straight genre pieces. They tend to be very formulaic, and if you've seen one, you've seen em all.

2. Promo Art/Trailers. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say, and one image can more often than not tell you all you need to know about an anime. Sometimes its nice characters designs, sometimes its a unique art style, and sometimes its just a giant troll(Damn you, Urobuchi!), but promo art and trailer are often the look anyone ever gets at a new anime.

3. Staff and Studio. It stands to reason that people who have made shows I like are more inclined to make other shows I will like. I know that most studios don't actually have much control over what they produce, but certain studios do tend to get "typecast" into a certain niche. KyoAni does moeblobs, SHAFT does weird artsy sh*t, and Sunrise does mecha shows. But I do know that the staff tends to have overall creative control of the projects they're given. Akiyuki Shinbo loves to put his thumbprint on pretty much every project he does, to varying degrees of success(and head-tilting).

4. Fan Hype/Critical Acclaim. While I have my gripes with the mainstream fandom, when the collective fanbase gets excited about something, I do take notice. It doesn't always work out(I'm looking at you, Guilty Crown), but it's a good litmus test. When I'm clearing out my backlog, I usually watch/read some reviews from critics I trust, since hype has usually long since died down.

What does it take for me to drop a show?

1. Lazy/bad writing. Plot holes, poor characterization, deus ex machinas, Mary Sues. Such are the banes of my existence. As an amateur writer myself and a critical-minded viewer, it is very easy for me to pick up on obviously poor scripting choices and very difficult for me to overlook them. If the production team didn't care enough to even have a coherent narrative, then why should I care to watch it?

2. Poor execution. This one is a little harder to nail down, but some anime just don't live up to the potential they started off with. Sometimes animation quality dips, or the themes aren't fully explored, or the cinematography just isn't utilized well. But for whatever reason, the show just isn't quite the best version of itself that it could have been.

3. Fanservice. Not a big fan. It's often distracting, unnecessary, and objectifying. And more often than not, just overcompensating for lack of actual story structure or characterization. If you have enough time for fanservice, you have enough time to develop the plot or characters.

4. Worn out otaku tropes. Mysterious transfer students, brother-sister incest, girls learning to cook to get a boyfriend, beach episodes, the list goes on. When an anime plays these tropes completely straight, it just makes me roll my eyes out of my skull. I've already seen them done, and I've probably already seen them done better.

As a general rule, I'll only buy anime that I've already seen and enjoyed. I rarely ever blind buy anything, and when I do it's something that comes highly recommend from sources I put a lot of stock in.

@Neon My friend, I fear here in this post it is now the time for me to be doing a bit of the mocking. One thing i've noticed is you use the "I" a bit more then others here on the forum, yes thats kind of unavoidable as its a way to say how we our only voicing our opinions, and please don't hate me for saying this because even now as this is typed this person typing cannot avoid that latter *although as you can see he is trying XD*

What *insert poster here* XD is getting at, your points are valid, but you like most either intentionally or unintentionally seem to be thinking a bit too highly of your own views on things, again i'm not faulting you or trying to start a fight here, we all do it, I do it, you do it, Renzo does, he,she,it, they, we all do it. But I have to say, you constantly state how we are making ecchi or fanservice the boogie-man or the scape-goat, and to an extent that may be true but when its such a widely shared view point surely its not all just misconception or blame-games, certain types of content genuinely can interfere with the quality of a work, certain things can make or break a show in any form of media, and overall yes this is all highly subjective to ones own preference, but again if something is seen by so many as a crutch or a symptom, there must be something at least in the presentation of that thing that is flawed.

Yes ecchi in and of itself is no better or worse then anything else, but the fact that for so long it was so overused and even today so many anime are slaves to the perversions & whims of whatever the latest otaku trend is, it is detrimental, it is self-defeating. Again I realize this happens in ALL forms of media in some way or to some extent, but that doesn't justify it, at least not in my book, I know theres so many things you can chalk up media's current desperation too, an uncertain global economy, an uncertain future, a lack of true creative talent in the industry, and yes those are all things out of our control, but this, well this isn't about that, this is about what we do have, what we can view, and what we know even with all the negatives it is still capable of doing. Call me wishy-washy if you will, call me old-fashioned, but I love animation, it's imagination given life, we know it is capable of so many great things, and yes great things do still come, but the fact that it abused so, used to make just generic fodder to keep toddlers entertained because their parents are too busy or to satisfy the lesser cravings of some kid or middle-aged shut-in in Japan, its just sad. And yes I know, I KNOW not ever animation can be perfect or a masterpiece, I don't expect it to, but at the very least I expect some heart, that spark of creativity, that thing that lets a show, a toon, an anime no matter how cheaply made or how cheesy still have some redeeming or entertaining quality to it. So much modern media, and so much modern anime lacks that. Not because of fan service, but because they use so much fanservice, and so much innuendo, and moe, and loll, and incest, etc, etc, & so on in anime these days, and why. THEY ARE DESPERATE, and when a show obviously reeks of desperation, quite frankly its off putting, I don't care if its an anime, a live action show, a toon, what have you. Its a turn off!

So many anime are merely made for a quick buck, generic boob, harem & moe shows with thinly veiled plots, trying to hide the fact that this show doesn't have any more creativity or intelligence to it then one of those horrid reality shows we see on nowadays.

Again yes you are right in saying even in Ecchi, Harem, Moe, etc there are some gems, any genre can have good or bad, but certain genre's are abused soo much that the gems there are, well there buried in piles of empty candy wrappers, shows that are nothing but visual fluff, with no nugget of caramel or chocolate inside.

Again I realize my views may be old fashioned and wishy washy, but I stand by my statement, Animation is a beautiful thing, and its sad to see how often it gets underused or abused. And yes it is wrong of us to solely blame Fan-service for that, its not its fault, its just the trope the roulette will chose to be over used this time around, just as Giant Robots & Martial Artists that looked like they were on steroids were in the past XD. Any trope or cliche that gets too much spotlight will sadly become a scape goat, even if it doesn't fully deserve it, but until another one comes along, or until the industry gets its juevos back, things aren't gonna change mate, no matter how much either of us want them to.

And with that my overly heart felt rant is done.

@Neon I can agree depending to much on critics is a bad thing, but honestly I watch most for entertainment purposes the same reason I do anime or anything else, heck most things that people review are probably something i've already seen, and there are many times I disagree with a critic's view point. Yes it is important to think for ones self, yes its important to give everything a fair shake, but as even you have stated in the past, not everyone is going to like everything.

And yes many so called "critics" are self-indulgent/ self-absorbed arses. But in a way arn't we all to some degree, getting online going on forums making videos, to satisfy something within our selves either consciously or sub-conciously. Yes they can be annoying but at the end of they day they are no better or worse then you or me. Yes it is sad there are those that henge on their every word, but it can't be helped...sadly *sigh* And again some, like myself do primarily watch them for entertainment purposes, there are rare times they will review something I haven't seen and if i'm teetering it may help convince me to check something out, but never has a critic solely formed my opinion on something.

But again my post wasn't really about critics it was about animation as a whole and I do admit it was very VERY off topic, for that I must apologize, it came from a primarily emotional place.

I would never think less of you for watching anything Mr. Neon, even if its something I personally despise, in all honesty your one of the few people on the internet I genuinely respect, we may not see eye to eye 100% of the time *but c'mon if anyone did that we wouldn't have any fun now would we XD* But yeah, your one of the few people online I hold NO ill-will against what so over, I would never want to try to dissuade you from enjoying something *well unless its MTV or MOMH then I might have ta slap yea with a cold mackerel XD*

So yeah.....

The overall point I was trying to make in my last post though is that its sad to see knowing what all animation can do, we don't see that spark as often as we used to, its still there, but seems to be harder to find at times, but thats just me & my eccentricness I guess.

And yes we do need more critics who can look at en ecchi anime or more controversial work from a more objectionable view point.

Well, I hope you're not entirely against fanservice. I think if it's used to a tasteful degree, it can actually, while not necessarily make a show better, attract more viewers, and it's possible for an anime to have fanservice and still have actual story structure or characterization. And there are some female characters in anime who are very fanservice-y and still manage to be well-developed and have admirable personalities. I think Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail is a good example of this. She does show off plenty of skin a lot of the time, but Mashima portrayed her as a strong, independant, and stubborn young woman who sees her fellow guild members as her family and fights to protect them when times are tough. Mashima also fleshed out her relationships with other characters as well as her backstory. Not only does she fight through her fear and pain, she encourages others to fight through their fear and pain as well.