Zachary

Saw the title and was intrigued, skimmed the article and feel like it missed.

Popularity and MAL ratings are quite far removed from each other. One can drive the other, but that's not always the case.

That's why MAL community size is it's own metric, and the "most popular" list has a lot of variation in its scores... SAO is a classic example of poorly rated but wildly popular. This is all additionally skewed to reflect the community that cares to track and score anime on MAL rather than just watch and discuss it with their friends.

Personally, I dropped to be hero x as I was not a fan of its split protagonist storytelling - it was too jarring moving between each new character for me. I could potentially see those who dislike the animation style as well, although I'm sure it appealed to many. I might give it another chance at some point, tbd.

Not against anybody hyping up a show - but I seriously don't think it should be based on MAL ratings alone.