Is "The world only god knows" that good? I've seen it back when I was in middle school, but never bothered to check it out, mostly because I didn't see any tankobons of it in Indonesia.
I read that one a long time ago, although I think I stopped around the final arc. I recall that people really disliked the ending; which...it's hard to make an ending to a harem anime that satisfies everyone unless you either go full harem or you make individual endings for each love interest. Overall if you ignore that there is going to be some kind of ending looming, it probably is one of the better romance shonen manga/anime? But really depends on if you're into that I think.
Bleach may be brushed off by many people for its rushed ending (and many more), but I really love the world building. How the dead and the living impact each other, Zanpakutos and Bankais (and Bleach's power up in general), use of different culture for different factions. And also Kubo's poem; they might lose some impact because they're translated, but I think they're a nice addition to each volumes.
There's also Mekakucity Actors / Mekakushi Dan (I dunno which one is correct) that was orbiting my mind throughout middle school. It got me thinking of character backstories, how to make them pop out and character designs. I really love the songs "Children Records", "Summertime Record", "Ayano's Theory of Happiness", "Lost Time Memory", "Outer Science" and "Daze". Also this series introduced me to utaites, which led me to temporarily hate vocaloids for their robotic singing. (I mean, vocaloids are instruments, at the end of the day, right? They're not gonna replace humans singing anytime soon.)
For now, those two are the most impactful series in my writings.
I do want to read or rewatch Bleach at some point, especially now that they've adapted it further. I watched it when I was a kid up to the Soul Society Arc but didn't get past that for whatever reason. I feel like I've vaguely heard of the second one but I'll have to look into it.
And for the next question,
I don't know about controversial, so I'm just gonna pick 1 manga with the lowest mal score each from my 10s and 9s lists.
The lowest on my 10s is
Bertia Villainess
I really liked it because I think it provides a good closure.
A complete ending to the plot and tied all (or most) of the loose ends and plot holes that exists in isekai genre.
I think she is the only villainess that has a very plausible, reasonable, and justifiable motivation on why she wants to act like a Villainess.
Most Villainess stories left me with questions like: "oh, I was reincarnated/isekaied as a villainess, I'm gonna do what a villainess do" --> yeah but why? that doesn't make any sense.
It also gives a reasonable background as to why the other characters behave the way they do.
The story does not really break or undermine or contradict the "game plot" that was presented from the beginning.
Because usually with these villainess with "I'm gonna save myself and alter the story" tropes, the story just doesn't make any sense even without that alteration.
This manga has cute, sweet, funny, sad, suspense, and... a really good redemption arc (arc? plot? bit? whatever).
My only gripes is that it has a sequel.
It's still good for now, but I would have liked it to have ended there, as I feared it would be hit by the Boruto curse.
The lowest of my 9s is
Futoku no Guild.
Very apt to your criteria about guilty pleasure.
Do I really need to explain this one?
Boobs. Thighs. Lucky sukebe trope that is not too on the nose.
I liked the actions. I liked the comedy. The harem does not happen instantly, they are developing over time.
Reasonable setting about this "guards but not adventurers" job.
I can't argue if someone says that the story is incredibly stupid. I mean, it
is really dumb. But I liked it.
And that arc when Kikuru got really angry... man, I really like that guy.
Ah, I read the first one fully. I never got into the continuation because well, it really ended at a perfect point. I do sort of hate the kind of meandering, aimless nature of a lot of wn/ln manga adaptations that mean they are going to take years to finish if they do finish, but are more likely to just be promotions or to run out of steam long before that whether the reader base collapses or the mangaka does. This one finishes everything in around a neat 30 chapters, or at least this is a self-contained story that requires no further reading. I was actually talking about this with a friend yesterday; there are quite a few villainess manga that pull things such as "actually the original heroine was the evil on the whole time" or "actually, the villainess was 100% justified in her actions, she just was misunderstood/set up/should have done things a bit differently" and that kind of ruins what was originally enjoyable about the trope; the reason why Bertia manages to change the story is because despite both her and the heroine being transmigrators, Bertia was able to win people over by being her true self, and the other one I forgot the name of spent the entire time assuming the world was a game and following a script. I do prefer "the original heroine was just genuinely a good person", because I feel like in a story thematically about trying to go against fate it's more impactful if the sole thing that changes is a single character, but still; it's good, it appeals to a variety of audiences. I droned on for a bit.
Ah, Futoku no Guild. I read that one a long time ago, I distinctly remember it leading me to, or at least is the only one I remember leading me to, say "Ok, I think I need to curb exactly what kind of manga I'm reading because it's making me feel worse". I tried to read it again recently, and I have just changed so much ideologically that although it's not hurting my brain, it's hard to read. I do know that the story gets more interesting and expands out from "girls get molested by monsters" every chapter, but definitely not my first pick; not as bad as say like, manga where girls get raped by orcs or goblins or zombies (and potentially inexplicably die as a result), but something that I feel like I'll either round back to someday, or never.
I'll have to check the rest of your list out when I get a chance.
I always avoid the shounen section in book stores out of fear that it may fall on me, and series with more than 100 volumes are a great fear to be impacted or buried by. On the net, what truly makes an impact on me is seeing those same series rated above 9 and followed by hundreds of thousands of users. Yes, I am terrified just thinking about One Piece, but Solo Leveling has 2.5 times the number of users they have it on their libraries on this site, it makes me lose faith in humanity once more.
When it comes to manga, long running series can either be repetitive to the point of boredom, having little to no character progression in lieu of keeping it going (The Garfield style), trash fires that are too addictive to stop reading, or works that impact you for the rest of your life. To this day, I remember the Faust fight near the end of Shaman King, and the final part right before the ending, or HunterXHunter, Spice and Wolf (well the manga adaptation), that 100+ chapters of Kingdom I read (don't watch the Kingdom anime by the way it's trash), Berserk (I need to catch up on that), etc. I actually made it to I think...I think I got to either the 500s or 1000s on One Piece, I feel like the 1000s; I got up to Dressarosa. Those all are of varying genre, varying quality, but definitely much more impactful than the unfinished adaptation that only got 10 chapters. One Piece is really good if it's given a shot.
Solo Leveling...is a thing. Manhwa, is a thing. One of my first manhwa was Solo Leveling, and I have essentially shifted back to not reading them. Why? Because a lot of them are like...they aren't about hope. The protagonist of Solo Leveling, Sung-Jinwoo if I'm getting it correctly, could be the hero that saves the world, and in fact is the hero that saves the world by the ending I never got to, but it's like...begrudging. Cynical. Postmodernist. He doesn't fight to save the world, he fights to get his bag; to become infinitely stronger in a world where people are inexplicably cruel and calculating, where you can be discriminated against for simply the number you got when you rolled the dice. It says, "Society is evil and corrupt and hopeless, but if I had the power to break out of that, I wouldn't change it, I would just put myself at the top."; "Morality doesn't matter; it's the results that matter"; honestly a lot of parallels with the wave of superhero media in the West depicting superheroes in a "dark", "gritty", "realistic" , "self-aware" light (although dark doesn't necessarily have to equal bad, it's more about missing the point I would say). I think a lot of the disputes over scores on this site, at least when it comes to isekai, is that some people thirst for a revenge plot, they thirst for a protagonist that doesn't care about ethics and only cares about making people suffer. I wonder sometimes if that really is most of what gets made (not just revenge stories but cynical stories in general), or if it's just what people choose to translate these days.
One of the things bolstering Solo Leveling's lackluster story is simply it's very cool visuals (waow pretty colors). Not that they're all bad, but I am coming to really dislike these constant themes of a "social hierarchy", possibly enforced by some sort of dumb magic/power system, being betrayed by people for no reason or if there is a reason a poorly explained one, and don't get me started on manhua. If people are basing their comments of "Is Japan ok" on their manga, manhwa and manhua bring up A LOT of questions about Korean and Chinese society. I guess if I make another post in this "exploring manga that might actually be fun to read" series, it will probably be about "WN/LNs that are not thematically about why you should distrust society, revenge, cynicism, etc." I think that one is going to be hard to explain.
Edit: I think I was a bit too harsh on manhwa; in times when I felt very dejected and at a low point in life, there were a variety of manga, manhwa, and (maybe) manhua that helped sort of pump me up. In particular, I found stories about someone working their way up from the bottom through sheer effort and willpower (and maybe some luck) to be inspiring, although based on comments I don't think other readers interpreted them in the way I did. For me, it was less so "I would be able to get my life back together if I suddenly got a magical rpg system that micromanaged my improvement and breadcrummed rewards" and more like "I want to see what I can do if I use all of my effort to go as far as I can". Which is why it's going to be hard to explain, because I don't know
exact authorial intent in the first place; it's more like a feeling.
