YMMV / Arata: The Legend

• Americans Hate Tingle: While Kadowaki is generally a hated character, he does has some share of fans in the east (both native Japan and China) due to his character development. However, nothing can withstand the sheer amount of hatred and contempt he received in the west. This could largely be due to Values Dissonance. In Japan, bullying was rarely brought up and wasn't taken seriously unless an authority was involved. Although the manga absolutely does not condone this, Kadowaki is still a Karma Houdini who becomes the main antagonist, meaning he gets the amount of attention. This threw off many western readers who wished that Kadowaki can just dropped dead already. See The Scrappy below for more details.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Judging by Watase's notes in the backs of some volumes, Kannagi does very well in character popularity polls.
  • Out of the Six Shou members, Kikutsune is easily the most popular among the fans judging by the Japanese and Chinese forums, and fanarts he has from a lot of artists.
• Fridge Horror: When a person from Amawakuni crosses over into the real world, they end up in the exact same place the person from Earth crossed over into Amawakuni from, and vice versa. Five out of the six shinsho (not including Harunawa) are actually from Earth. So far, we've seen that they all entered Amawakuni at really awful times - such as Kikutsune crossing over after falling through a crack in the earth, in Pompeii, when the volcano was going off, and Isora being prosecuted as a witch and being dunked in the water, presumably before being burned at the stake. The real Fridge Horror sets in when you realize that some innocent citizens of Amawakuni, having no clue what was going on, crossed over to Earth and were mistaken for the shinsho they replaced and died horribly in their place.
• Ho Yay:
  • Not much yet, but Hinohara seems to like Kannagi's transvestite version way too much. Also played with during the Kugura arc, wherein Kugura falls in love with a cross-dressing Hinohara, much to the latter's chagrin. The Bishie Sparkle that Kugura views Hinohara with after the Unsettling Gender-Reveal don't help matters much.
  • Rami's declaration of "Mikusa-sama's the only one for me!" isn't so Les Yay to the cast who are in the dark about Mikusa's true gender, but it's another thing for the audience who found out before the characters. Even Kotoha, the only other member of the group to know Mikusa's secret at the time, admits to being impressed by the strength of Rami's love.
  • Hiruha, originally one of Kagura's Zokushou, later chooses to join up with Hinohara's team. He says that it's because Hinohara looked cool when fighting Kagura, blushing as he says it. He later leaps on the opportunity to ask Hinohara to wash his back during the Hot Springs Episode.
  • There's a lot between Kikutsune and Isora. But in particular, Kikutsune explicitly told Isora that he's the only person that matters to him and that he won't release him even after they return to their world.
• Memetic Molester: Harunawa received this reputation to this degree by the partial fandom. He teased Oribe in a creepy way, inserted his sharp nail between a girl's breast, grab Oribe's breast with the latter under his mind manipulation, hunted and killed little girls...
• Moe: Kotoha, so much. Then there's Miyabi...
• Nightmare Fuel: Chapter 23, "Behind the Curtain", makes chilling use of the Gory Discretion Shot. The double-spread in chapter 46 that introduces Orochi ain't pretty, either - not to mention what Orochi can actually do to people, as we see with Eto later on.
  • The first two times Hinohara demonizes are pretty scary - the third time, when he's almost entirely demonized and has partially merged with Tsukuyo and is chasing after Kadowaki in an Unstoppable Rage is absolutely terrifying.
  • Ameeno forcing Ikisu to submit to him. It's arguable the most violent fight we've seen so far, and the worst part? Ameeno isn't using his Hayagami at all. The most he uses it for is to demonize, but that's pretty much it. For the majority of the fight, he's just using his brute strength, and at the end, he literally rips Ikisu's onigami form apart.
• Periphery Demographic: The series is mainly targeted for boys as it serialized in Shonen Sunday, but it ends up getting more female fans than the former due to its overwhelming bishounen and shojo feel (thanks to Yuu Watase's influence as a shojo mangaka). However, it led to some dispute whether the series should be categorized as shojo or not.
• The Scrappy: People aren't fond of Kadowaki. There are characters who are jerks, but popular because they're fun to watch, and then there are jerks who people hate just as much as they would hate if they were to encounter them in real life. Kadowaki is the latter. He's a bona fide rich kid Jerkass whose only justification for his cruelty to Hinohara is the fact that he has a neglectful father and that Hinohara is better than him at sports. Naturally, when he comes to the other world to hinder Hinohara's efforts to save it, his hatedom only increases. Once in the other world, he reveals himself to be a full-blown sociopath: he treats everyone like crap and sets out to kill powerful Shous just to gain power, and ruthlessly kills anybody who gets in the way of an already murderous goal. The biggest problem with this series is that this fucker isn't dead yet.
  • It's even worse than that. They actually were friends up until the point where Hinohara lost to him in a race, and he thinks he did it deliberately. See, his mom walked out on him and his dad, and he thinks Hinohara lost to him because he felt sorry for him. Yeah. This twisted asshole's murderous hatred and years of cruelty is because, from his perspective, his best friend didn't have the heart to beat him immediately after his mom disappeared. Oh, and if that weren't bad enough, what really ends up setting him off is getting knocked out. In a challenge he made to Mr.Arataactually the other Arata after he asked if they were friends or not. So, not only is all the death on account of his misplaced spite for a downright understandable action that didn't even happen, it turns out to be hypocritical bullshit, to boot. And we are supposed to take him seriously?!
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks! : A lot of fans of the manga had this reaction to the anime, seeing how it changed a majority of the plotline - they took out Oribe, Seo, the Island of Lost Children arc, ignored the original story of the Suzakura arc, told us about Kannagi and Akachi's past friendship way too early, etc.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot : The setup seems interesting with Arata pretending to be a maiden, getting framed, they switch....and it turns into a fairly normal Trapped in Another World type thing. It's well executed an all, but it seems like there was a bunch of awesome in the setup that just didn't get used.
  • Readers are underwhelmed by this series for its lack of world-building as it doesn't revolve much with the Hayagami and the history of the fantasy world, which many people felt it would had been a better story focusing on those elements, but instead got the boy Trapped in Another World and dealing with characters who has Wangst backstories.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: With a lot of characters that has a Dark and Troubled Past, there's are some that bounds to fall into this for many viewers:
  • Kadowaki is the most guilty of of this as this is the prime reason for his The Scrappy status (see above). He has the strongest Freudian Excuse for all of his actions. His excuses was that Hinohara purposely lost a race against him, losing the ability to run, his parents divorced, and his father neglected him as a result. The author wanted us to get on board with him and take him seriously as a character with Kadowaki's main goal is to be equal to him. But this did not convince nearly every viewers because all of his actions comes off absolutely petty and hideous to root and/or even sympathize with him, *especially* his bullying toward Hinohara.
  • Akachi, whose conflict with Kannagi was meant to be the Foil to Kadowaki and Hinohara's. While he has a horrible past and his hatred for Kannagi was reasonable due to being brought as slaves, forced apart from Emisu as a result by Kannagi for many years, tortured to death, and Kannagi failing to protect Emisu, this does not justified his actions to slaughter Kannagi's clans (including a pregnant woman). And no, wanting to be Kannagi's equal does not absolve that whatsoever. This was Lampshaded by Kannagi, but later double subverted as he forgiven Akachi.
  • Yataka. We are supposed to sympathize with him because Kikuri broke off their relationship and Yataka seeing the intentions for why she did it made him even more guilty and heartbroken as he was willing to give up everything for her. However, his action and decision to assassinate Kikuri despite his motive was to put her out of her misery makes him borderline looks like an abusive boyfriend instead.
• Wangst: The common criticism of the series is how much we are supposed to sympathize or root for some of the characters due to their sad or tragic backstory. But depending on your sensibilities, the backstories of some of the Shou may or may not feel like this. Hinohara is typically considered guilty of this more often than the others since he constantly wins over the Shou by highlighting his past which annoys some readers. However, the biggest problem is the series treated Arata and Kadowaki's conflict as a main serious thing when theirs is arguably minor and contrive compared to many other characters who suffered much more than them, some dealt with poverty, slavery, abusive family, disability, etc.