It may be just me, but Kuro appears to be excercising a false choice in his series-end post about Seitokai no Ichizon.

Seitokai is really one of those shows that people either love it or hate it to bits, depending on how much of the jokes they can get. Overall I’d say if you have more than 3 years experience of watching anime, you would love it since it pokes fun at a lot of shows, conventions and tropes in Japanese modern visual culture in a extremely fresh and, more importantly, not self-depreciating manner.

I watched anime since 1971 in abstract and since 2002 in post-Azumanga era. Either way, I qualify for Kuro's "more than 3 years" criterion. Nonetheless I feel no great love for this anime, as documented previously. I don't hate it "to bits" either. Ichizon fails to move me either way, since it's so weakly made. I remember burning hate for Dokuro-chan, "the vilest show I ever watched, made with impeccable professionalism". This is not like that at all.

In a way, Kuro's editorial is a good illustration of the fallacious "getting the jokes" discourse. I thought Lucky Star was made pretty well, despite not recognizing Initial D and other references. And Ichizon is no different. References alone cannot make a success, as far as I am concerned.

Of course, Kuro liked Ichizon very much, so more power to the creators. I am only wondering if we're witnessing an anime digging further into the niche, as critics started saying recently.