YMMV
I live for Thursdays when I can get another 30 minute chunk of my current obsession, Mawaru Penguindrum. It's the newest anime from the director of Revolutionary Girl Utena and just like its predecessor, it's made of pure crack with way too much symbolism going on. I watch every new episode twice, trying to pull it apart: is this an allusion to that? What does this mean? Every week after the new episode, I'm tempted to rewatch the old ones, to see if the new information changes the way I look at the old information and if new things then start to stand out. Others have remarked that Penguindrum is a "troll" show with a "troll" director, but somehow this doesn't stop me from reading way too much into things and wanting to dissect every little thing in the show for deeper meaning.
You know who else gets called a "troll" show(runner)? Steven Moffat of Doctor Who. He's dangling questions left and right, but in contrast with Penguindrum, I honestly don't feel like trying to dissect his puzzles like so many other fans do. Doctor Who doesn't feel as tightly woven as Penguindrum, but that's where the YMMV comes in: I'm not sure if that's entirely true or just how I feel.
Overall, I don't 100% understand why people can love Doctor Who so much. I would grade it as solid B-movie fluff. It usually falls a little flat on some of the technical issues or gets caught on some inner rule (the Doctor can't really die, etc.) that keeps it from really being brilliant. Take the Doctor's ability to regenerate: it's conceived of as a simple, almost hokey solution to continuing the show even if you lose actors. But the Doctor's ability to regenerate, over time, has become its own sort of brilliance. It's a funny thing.
Perhaps the major difference between Penguindrum and Doctor Who is that I have no idea what's going to happen next in Penguindrum. I can trust certain things not to change or to occur in Doctor Who. It's why I didn't cry at The Girl Who Waited or care a whit that Steven Moffat is trying to kill the Doctor (since they were never going to pick the old Amy in the first place, and the Doctor can never really die).
You know who else gets called a "troll" show(runner)? Steven Moffat of Doctor Who. He's dangling questions left and right, but in contrast with Penguindrum, I honestly don't feel like trying to dissect his puzzles like so many other fans do. Doctor Who doesn't feel as tightly woven as Penguindrum, but that's where the YMMV comes in: I'm not sure if that's entirely true or just how I feel.
Overall, I don't 100% understand why people can love Doctor Who so much. I would grade it as solid B-movie fluff. It usually falls a little flat on some of the technical issues or gets caught on some inner rule (the Doctor can't really die, etc.) that keeps it from really being brilliant. Take the Doctor's ability to regenerate: it's conceived of as a simple, almost hokey solution to continuing the show even if you lose actors. But the Doctor's ability to regenerate, over time, has become its own sort of brilliance. It's a funny thing.
Perhaps the major difference between Penguindrum and Doctor Who is that I have no idea what's going to happen next in Penguindrum. I can trust certain things not to change or to occur in Doctor Who. It's why I didn't cry at The Girl Who Waited or care a whit that Steven Moffat is trying to kill the Doctor (since they were never going to pick the old Amy in the first place, and the Doctor can never really die).