So here's kinda my list:
HS romance shows where it's all about the wimp tripping up on a girl then getting his 'nads kicked when it wasn't his fault. Or 'Boy tries to be nice and girl beats him for not being PERFECT.' Louise in Zero no Tsukaima needs to be hit BACK a few times.
Japanese has many levels of grammar; I tend to bail on the shows where most chara speak at the street-trash level. I don't mind when a chara who talks street-Japanese gets PWNED by someone else speaking formal Japanese; that's awesome. He deserves it.
'Low-Rez' i.e, coarsely drawn animation. Leave that to the gaijin animators, who make crap like Family Guy, Bart Simpson, and Sponge Bob. Give me beautiful details and landscapes and light treatments, weather and seas done right, eyes that remind me of beautiful gems, etc.
FAIL: One Piece.
Nothing-important-is-happening' i.e, Kanon. Didn't make it through ep 1.
There was another deathly boring show with 'Yokohama' in the name. The guy who recommended it to me said, 'Oh, it's a character-driven show. I guess that means the same as a 'cement block driven sports car,' or something.
Too much helium. If all the seiyuu have high-pitched voices and all the characters look in the 8yr - 12yr range, I'm OUT. All-hyper kiddie voices give me a headache after a while. Figure 17, Bottle Fairy, Ojamajo Do-Re-Mi, gone.
Bhudda-headed or baby-headed boy as the main character. Akira and DBZ, gone.
Being clubbed to death by environmentalist propaganda: Mononoke Hime and the FF movie.
Trashing my own personal religious choice or opinions: FMA. The kid kept insisting 'There is no God' too often for me to get to like him or anyone else in the show. Gone before the end of ep. 1. I don't beat people over the head with my religion, but I won't let an atheist bludgeon me with his unrelenting opinions either. NEXT.
Most anything over like 52 eps, with two or three rare exceptions.
Bleach, D.Gray.Man, Detective Conan, Naruto, Marchen Awakens Romance,
One Piece, Groove Adventure Rave. Done.
(My few exceptions: Juuni-Kokki, Monster, Hikaru no Go,**
**which was a mistake, given the ending.
Bleach I bailed around ep 18 when it became clear that all they were gonna do is block Ichigo from getting to Rukia with a Bad Guy of The Week. I check back a year later and I got the low-rez chirpy bird with the blue hat, and I'm gone.
Stuff that's been on for so long and it doesn't seem to be driving to a conclusion: Gundam.
Anything my Rumiko Takahashi. I like my stories to have a stisfying and comprehensice END to them, and she has openly stated that after the fan reaction to the endign of her first story, she will NEVER end any of her stories. So, if its a Takahashi, I'm OUT. No matter how cool the story, I will *not* get emotionally involved in it! (Sometimes that does take willpower though...)