Anime out of the blue, ie surprised you liked it

[Sukunai]

Just curious, not looking for recommendations so much as just curious, what anime have you seen in the last year, that you started to watch only to be blown away that you liked it, when on the surface you thought it had no chance with you.

My recent list is

Kasimasi Girl Meets Girl
If it being labelled yuri scares you, frankly it's not really that accurate a label. And, this anime has some really nice hidden meaningful content. I'm a guy, and I liked this anime considerably.

Nanaka 6/17
Initially I thought it would be entirely juvenile, I was surprised when the show proved it could have a nice inner message. This is worth watching.

High School Girls (or is it Girls High)
The first ep is likely the last for a lot of people. Frankly this anime is not bad, although it is a bit much in a few sequences. But taken as a whole, it's not even close to as bad as that first ep makes you think.

by the way, I don't normally watch ninja/samurai/vampire violent and or horror type stuff, so predictably I won't have seen much of that.

[Beast Spear]

Almost every anime that I love started off with me saying "Wow, that looks stupid".

[Corran]

Kasimasi Girl Meets Girl
If it being labelled yuri scares you, frankly it's not really that accurate a label. And, this anime has some really nice hidden meaningful content. I'm a guy, and I liked this anime considerably.

I very much agree. It is shoujo-ai, but the mind has a difficult time thinking about it that way given the context of the story and pre-existing relationships.

[The Origonal Head Hunter]

Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya suprised the hell out of me, I thought it'd just be another high school comedy/romance, and found it to be anything but.

[post-it]

.. two come to mind -- I regretted that they were so short:

the three GunSmith Cat's and the six Magic Users Club OVA's; I fell head-over-heals for Nanaka

[angelx03]

Just curious, not looking for recommendations so much as just curious, what anime have you seen in the last year, that you started to watch only to be blown away that you liked it, when on the surface you thought it had no chance with you.

My recent list is

Kasimasi Girl Meets Girl
If it being labelled yuri scares you, frankly it's not really that accurate a label. And, this anime has some really nice hidden meaningful content. I'm a guy, and I liked this anime considerably.

Wait a minute! Yuri scares people?!!

I'm a guy, and I love that series A LOT!

[ZephyrStar]

Gurren Lagann.

[SwordOfStryfe]

Actually as weird as this sounds Bleach. I watched the intro and thought this show has gay written all over it. Six Months later I actually watched the first episode and got hooked. Onegai Twins because I loved Onegai Teacher and thought that there was no way it could be anywhere near as good as Onegai Teacher.

[NS]

BECK, Mongolian chop squad. I wasn't surprised so much by the fact That I liked it. But more of what it was as a whole. Before I went into watching it I was like "This is gonna be about a band touring around and such" But it really surprised me, And still kicked ass.

[SarahtheBoring]

Bleach, from the other direction - the "they fight, and bite, and fight and fight and bite" genre of anime does nothing for me usually. And now I kick myself for starting in on a hugely long manga series. Oh well.

Kare Kano, because traditional angsty-ass romance does nothing for me either. Granted, I often want to punch Arima in the face.

Evangelion, because I don't care about giant robots, and "I hate my dad" doesn't strike me as an original psychological theme. I also hated it after renting two episodes (the only thing I liked was Misato) and didn't watch the rest for about 6 years.

So, you never know.