For once , I actually don ' t think it ' s because of bias against old anime . If we ' re talking MAL , a user has to watch ~ 20 % of an entry for their score to be counted . Most people who don ' t like something drop it relatively early on , and a large bulk of older series last way longer than one cour , meaning they ' d probably have to watch at least 5 episodes to be counted . Also , OVAs are much shorter in comparison , but their scores are still similar , so I don ' t think dislikeofolderanime is the cause because both the series and OVAs have a similar audience . I ' ve noticed that , on MAL , any entry that has a member count under ~ 8 k has a much lower score . I think it makes sense . If you ' re a western anime fan whose made it to the point where you ' re watching old anime and such with a low member count , then your scores are almost definitely going to reflect that . In my experience , newer fans tend to be more liberal with scoring , while older fans with a longer , likely more varied lists tend to have a much stricter system . It ' s not that new viewers hate older shows exactly , though many claim to , it ' s that older viewers tend to rate harsher on average , and they also tend to watch more unknown stuff . Scores are generally lower across the board on lesser known sites like AniDb , but even AniDb is skewed towards the same series that MAL is .