In September I attended AnimeUSA 2013 and I went around asking people about their current top 5 favorite anime shows (not counting movies). Most people stared at me for a moment before their expression turned sheepish and confused, responding with something along the lines of “U-um, uh- well, that’s really hard! Only 5? Wow, I’ll need a moment to think about it.”
Mashup of Characters from Different Anime
I tried to ask as many people as I could while still being able to enjoy the convention myself and wound up with 40 lists of 5 anime shows. As a notable part of my methodology, I did mostly approach cosplayers, since some people in a hotel on an anime convention weekend are just bystanders that wouldn’t be able to answer my question.
There were 99 titles mentioned out of the 200 collected total show answers, which I think really shows the diversity of the Anime community from such a small sampling. A lot of the shows only had one mention, and a number of those shows I had never heard of before, like Patlabor (which makes sense since it seems to be a Mecha series). But other shows only mentioned once surprised me because I thought they would have more people talking about them, like Guilty Crown.
Guilty Crown
I intended to make a chart containing only the shows that had more than one mention, since I thought that there would probably be only about 60 shows total with only about 50 or so repeated, but there turned out to be 43 shows and 143 results, which still seemed like a bit much. But even with 28 shows and 118 results the chart still looked… not very visually helpful.
Huge Anime Chart, 28 Shows, 115 Results
Once I narrowed it down to 5+ mentions, there were 8 anime shows left, which seemed to be the most popular.
First, as a side note, I want to point out that the listing of “Full Metal Alchemist” contains both the original series and Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and that the listing of “Gundam” contains all answers that were a Gundam series, G Gundamn, Gundam Wing, and a few others. These are both shows are classics that probably got people into anime, as are Sailor Moon, and Pokemon.
Soul Eater
Of the more recent shows, Soul Eater is one that I consider to be a ‘modern classic’ which has joined the others on the above list as being a well-known show that most people in the community like or are at least well aware of. The other two, Free Iwatobi High School Swim Club and Attack on Titian, were the most popular new anime at the time of the convention, hence how they both made this Top 8 Answers list.
Attack on Titian
Attack on Titian had the most mentions with 7 total. You might be thinking that with only 7 out of 40 people surveyed saying that Attack on Titian is one of their top 5 favorite anime show that it wasn’t that popular, but I asked them about their top 5 shows, so I’m sure that many of them considered Attack on Titian, even if they didn’t put it down.
Overall I found this polling process fun and interesting! I think that I’d like to do it again at a future convention but ask more people… and write the post within a month of the convention, which I failed to do this time. Oops. Ah well, I hope that you all enjoyed this!
animeotakuculture 
It’s so interesting that you have become a research person. Although I haven’t followed Anime, I found it fascinating to learn a little about the subject through your writings. I’m impressed with your work!