I initially watched Daria in my freshman year of high school. Kind of kismet. I genuinely can't imagine a more perfect time to have come into contact with this show, and I don't know that I would love it nearly as much as I do now if it had come into my life when I was already an adult. It's my all time favorite series and, as with most things I really love, I find it kind of hard to explain what it is exactly I love about it. Daria as a whole is pretty unassuming. Save for its final two seasons there aren't a lot of overarching plots, mostly being a chill episodic adult animated comedy. I think it's really good at channeling into a particular kind of teenage psyche though. More than any other coming of age media I've seen, Daria really seems to understand the mundane struggles of growing up. I relate to Daria Morgendorffer more than any other character in media. Seeing the show for the first time felt like seeing myself on-screen for the first time. As cheesy as that sounds. I think it's easy for people who haven't seen this show since the 90's to write the show (and Daria herself) off as just being sarcastic and moody. I've seen people say as much, or even claim that Daria and Jane have some kind of superiority complex. But in the episode to episode grind of Daria it's clear that this is just a show about normal teens trying to make it through high school. The best episodes are those that explore the characters beyond the archetypes people pigeonhole them in. See Jane Run, Lane Miserables, Boxing Daria, and Is it Fall Yet? are really great examples of this. While my opinions on certain episodes and characters may have changed since I first watched the show over a decade ago (🥴) I still love it! Probably always will.