I wouldn't say that those manga mentioned are overrated, but because they were popular they became crappy. Argument behind my reasoning ?
Simple, we see that manga gets popular so they offer more to the author as long as he keep his manga going for another 30 volumes. It's really hard to keep being fresh after 30 volumes about the same topic, with mostly same characters and same main goal.
Inu-yasha was actually really entertaining at beginning - but at some point the whole finding shikon no tama or whatever became so boring. And Naraku the immortal nemesis - just die already, most of us are already bored with him.
I blame Naruto cheesiness with gay relationship between Sasuke and Naruto and that those skills became overly strange - the only lacking thing is Sasuke screaming "HADOKEN" and Naruto "KAMEHAMEHA". It wasn't like that at beginning, so it kinda bites when we have something like that now. The manga should have ended when it was still believable but it simply was too popular.
Bleach - too long. And too many characters we really don't need to care about. It's almost feels like characters were forced there just to keep manga fresh. But making up new character isn't keeping manga fresh, but keeping it farther from some end, goal. In manga readers like to know that main hero accomplish something or is nearer some truth and not that there is about 100 other side-plots around the main problem.
Spoiler (highlight to view)
Death Note - author not only had that forced ending problem, but also he didn't have much ideas for Near and Mello - hence the second part wasn't so great. L died and that was not something unexpected - it was either Raito or L. And manga shouldn't completely end at that point, but whole investigation of Near and Mello looked more like those guys had freaking ESP.
School Rumble - I was a great fan, but it annoyed me how it returned to point 0 almost 20 times around the plot. Also too long, but it coming closer to the ending.
Dragonball Z - Oh come on ? Overrated ? This is father of 90% of todays shounen. I know Dragonball Z is stupid, but I enjoyed it when I was 13 and I think that's the proper age we should think that anime is for.
Popular manga are too long because they are popular. But something made them popular in first place, hence they were good at some part...
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...except for D.Grayman which is complete shit ;p
Last edited by lambchopsil at 8:39 pm, Jun 3 2008________________