I really need to watch the second series. I adored the first. It’s one of the few things I’d recommend to a complete anime noob.
Oh yeah with regards to the tiled images this site makes them really easy to drag and drop without having to resize stuff in an image editor
Been a long time since I saw it but I remember really loving it until the ending which felt so flat that it soured the whole thing for me just a bit
I wonder if the manga does a better job with that I haven’t really heard anyone talk about it
I watched the incredible hot springs OVA last week and all of the comments on the site where I downloaded it were angry hornyboys complaining about the lack of naked women and I gained just a little bit more love for the show’s creators and exactly the same amount of disdain for the kind of animewatcher that downloads a hotsprings ova
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I’ll put a list in here eventually and it will surprise no one, but I’m gonna go out of my way to ahead of that tell people to watch (and read, although only if you like pain and by pain I mean being on the boat because it’s always on hiatus) HxH
Real late in the game my PERFECT SON is implied to have a trans sister and he DEFENDS HER from their very bad family and that just, that warms my cold dead heart
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A bunch of my faves have been mentioned already so here’s my attempt at bringing up some others
Aldnoah Zero
Very fun watching the protagonist strategize his way out of fights against technologically superior opponents. Decent intrigue, plenty of pathos.
Gurren Lagann
I mean, c’mon. This show is so fun. Maybe doesn’t treat it’s female cast well enough though I don’t think there’s anything I remember being problematic. Every stupid thing that happens just makes it even better.
Eureka Seven
This show is very Sega Blue Skies if that makes sense. I just always dug the vibe big time. Action and romance abound. Opening theme is a banger.
Toradora
Apparently my favorite anime trope is Intimidating Dude Who is Actually a Soft Boy, especially if they’re really good at/passionate about domestic tasks like cooking and cleaning. This one hits all the right notes for me. Maybe guilty of having teenagers with too much agency, but that’s every show about teenagers.
Hyouka
My second favorite trope is Misanthropic Dude who is Secretly Thrilled to be Relied Upon. Fun little central mystery that feels like a plausible thing some kids would investigate. Short and sweet.
Naruto
Yes, I mean this without irony because I think just about every fight is hype as fuck. Desperately needs a remaster with a bunch of the bloat trimmed off a la Dragonball Z Kai. I think guilty of starting a trend where every single villain must be sympathetic and get several episodes of flashbacks to establish why it’s going to be sad when they get killed even though they’re doing evil shit.
Shin Sekai Yori
Fascinating world building. One of the most interesting post-apocalyptic distant future settings I can recall. The relationships between the characters feel a little tawdry but that also sort of makes sense in the setting? My memories of a lot of this are admittedly vague.
Anohana
Teenage melodrama cranked to 11 with a supernatural twist. My wife and I can utter the name of one of the characters at any time to inflict instant sadness upon one another. The ending is bittersweet but the form of said ending basically makes me want to lay down and cry. There’s a subplot with one of the characters dressing up in clothes resembling those of one of the girl characters (IIRC as some kind of manifestation of trauma). Not treated as a joke but definitely treated as Deeply Weird so perhaps tread with caution if you might find that triggering.
Pick number 9 is ALL OF ANIME I can’t get enough of this junk it’s honestly a little embarrassing but I have to own it.
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whats up gamer girls and anime freaks its time for words upon words
starting from lawful good and reading in the direction of baka gaijin comics:
Ouran HIgh School Host Club is an anime I first encountered upon graduating college. During my college years I had purposefully distanced myself from anime in order to focus on a “cooler” persona that fucks. This unilateral disavowal of all things japanimation lead my friend as a joke to turn on OHHC to try to annoy me. In truth, the delightfully energetic and very anime series was exactly the thing to slake my 4 year long anime fast. It was a moment that was very “right when I think I’m out, they pull me right back in”. I love Ouran’s characters and I was very invested in lets say the “main ship”. Also the aggressive gendy bendy might be psychology.
Speaking of psychology, Princess Jellyfish was an anime I vibed with instantly. I have a huge soft spot for characters (re: people) who are very passionate about things and Princess Jellyfish’s cast are all that. It’s also a narrative about the friction between culture and subculture, society and deviance. However, unlike other anime’s that deal with these themes its refreshing and not a heady and dour slog through trauma.
Okay I lied sometimes I do dip my feet in the trauma zone and while I seriously considered Madoka and Eva for my pick in the category of “anime that kind of makes me want to just die” I feel like the most stylish and memorable entry in this genre is Devilman Crybaby. I became interested in this because it was directed by the same person who oversaw another favorite of mine, Ping Pong. This anime was so in your face and aggressively edgy but in a way that is sincere to me. Also basically I’m a huge sucker for anything that makes overt reference to Abrahamic demonology. It’s no wonder then after watching this anime I began my 392408th playthrough of smt III nocturne.
Mob Psycho 100 is so good. I really liked 1 punch man but I found the story and character arcs of mob psycho a lot more enjoyable. Saitama’s constant no sells are funny to a point but I feel like the stories that he’s a part of don’t really grab me like those in Mob Psycho. MS100 deals with themes of talent and hard work that are present in a lot of shounen anime but takes an interesting spin on them. I really love it.
Barakamon is a precious little anime that warms my frigid black heart. Its a slice of life anime about a calligrapher that things he’s hot shit but learns lessons in humility and community through characters that you cant help but love. If you need to feel good instantly I highly recommend this.
To take a jarring left turn Paranoia Agent was a mind bending anime I watched in high school that I loved for its weirdness, that I recently re-watched and found I liked it for its themes AND mind melting weirdness. I also have to point out that the opening theme is such a banger holy moly.
I’m going to cheat a little bit and talk about both Fullmetal Alchemist 03 and Brotherhood in one blurb. I love them both for different reasons. 03 seems a lot more concerned fleshing out ideas presented in the interesting world that it has laid out before the viewer. While I think ultimately it doesn’t deliver super well upon the end of this anime, the journey getting there is still really exciting and mysterious. Brotherhood is way more about the characters and the adventure in my opinion. Its a lot smoother of a watching experience if you skip directly to like the 8th episode and have watched the original series .
Keep your Hands of Eizouken is the most recent anime I’ve watched that has entered the pantheon of “anime that I love”. This anime is the new hotness that everyone is talking about and I understand why. It’s about a bunch of girls who start an animation studio with so much heart and gumption its hard not to love it. Also Kanamori is a stone cold goblin queen and I love her.
Look, Death Note is good. I don’t care if its corny and everyone loves it. It rules. Fight me.
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Death Note is a great time. Every time people try to attack it for its excesses, they just end up talking about what makes it great.
re: the ones i recognize, a place further than the universe is good and very accessible, assassination classroom is… well, the gender stuff got to be too much for me, especially in season 2
Dunno about doing the whole 3x3 grid gimmick, but I am here to recommend my personal favorite anime: 2001’s Noir. Following two female assassins who pair together after discovering some element of shared past between them – where one is an amnesiac who is recently awoken from an assumed identity, and the other is already more firmly established in the underworld (yet similarly disturbed and left in the dark to elements of their upbringing). Most episodes tend to center around a singular hit / job; exploring the circumstances as to why the pair (who assume the alias ‘Noir’) are hired, their planning for said mission, and ultimately the violent execution thereof.
Of course, that’s only the most surface-level description of the proceedings. What Noir is really about is the deepening relationship between a pair of girls whose set of skills and line of work leaves them both emotionally detached, and the kinship they manage to find in each other. For as grounded and satisfying as the action may be to watch, the best scenes in the show [in my opinion] are those which see the duo attempting to act out normal lives – stopping for coffee at a Parisian bistro, cutting each others’ hair, or simply peeling potatos for dinner (while wearing a Wu-Tang Clan apron).
There’s of course a deeper conspiracy that unravels over the course of the show, and which serves to further illustrate the central theme: Regardless of whether or not you are “forced” into the life of a hired gun / trained killer - be it by unfortunate circumstance or conscious choice - you’ll be made to suffer the consequences all the same. All your chances at happiness and humanity will be slowly stripped away from you, until the only solace you might be able to find is in people similarly stricken by the condition. And perhaps the only hope of escaping the cycle is by finding someone similarly disillusioned by it all – who you can carry out with you, and continue to find comfort in as you re-enter the world.
The most common complaint regarding the show is the idea that it “drags” – spends episode “unnecessarily” not moving the plot forward. These complaints are fucking stupid: Episodes which might not directly progress the narrative still serve the incredibly important and interesting purpose of developing the characters, and exploring their senses of morality and the meaning they find in their lives. It definitely lends to a show that takes more of its time to get to its conclusion, but I for one love every lingering second of it.
The studio, Bee Train, would go on to produce .hack//Sign just a year later, before following up Noir with two more anime centered around “girls with guns.” I’ve heard that Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja are pretty hit and miss by comparison to the first in the unofficial “trilogy,” but Noir is still perfectly suited to standing on its own. Oh, and it also has a score composed by Yuki Kajiura – the absolute queen of anime soundtracking.
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im not good at writing reviews or anything but this is fun!!
not in any particular order except what i thought of them in
revolutionary girl utena
well okay this is my #1 favorite. strange, funny and heartrending series. watching this through the first time was really magical and uhhh got me to question my gender identity. the final episode was like a half hour of sustained crying, the ending is so fucking triumphant and beautiful im misting up just thinking about it. movie is also highly recommended as an alternate universe coda that leans way in on the surrealism and gayness
future boy conan
it’s a Miyazaki tv show!! nuff said kinda! if you thought “laputa’s cool, but what if it was a series?” this shows for you. I love it, it’s endlessly fun to watch… like i said though im struggling to describe it in terms that aren’t basically “what you know and love from Miyazaki’s films” charm! wanderlust! quiet beauty! the only thing that’s missing is joe hisaishi
cowboy bebop
you already know. youve seen it. i almost feel kinda boring mentioning it but i’d be a liar if i said it isn’t one of my favorite shows of all time
.hack//SIGN
this is cheating a little because i havent actually watched it in years, but i was thinking a lot about this show recently and how it influenced me. like my fursona is basically an evolution from a character that was a ripoff of tsukasa. i ought to watch it again, i remember it being very sedate, maybe even a little boring, but in a way i could vibe with. the soundtrack is Yuki Kajiura and yeah she rocks
BEASTARS
the most recent anime ive watched and an instant favorite!! i went into this knowing very little about it beyond the premise and was consistently surprised at all the turns it takes. it’s VERY teen melodrama and deeply fun in that way. genuinely interesting social commentary too. despite what you may think it isn’t really a race metaphor, much more about class and gender politics
keep your hands off eizouken!!
another recent favorite. this series fucking rules tbh it might have become my all-time fave right after utena. Extremely funny and genuine exploration of creativity and production of media. every single time there’s a scene detailing a process in animation, you can just feel the passion radiating out of every line. watch this show right now if you haven’t already. i just noticed how badly i messed up the screencap. lol oh well
sailor moon
this ones an oooold favorite from when i was a kid. Going back to watch it, i had forgotten how hilarious it is. So many fun takes and expressive drawings. it might visually be my favorite Japanese cartoon. i want to live in a world that looks like those gorgeous pastel backgrounds. picked a scene from S because it’s my favorite/the best season and i may be a little biased about my favorite senshi lol
little witch academia
also cheating a little because i love both OVAs but have only seen a bit of the series and need to watch more (it seems like it carries forward the same spirit). What if a trigger series had all the good shit about trigger and none of the shit that sucks? and it was about adorable witches in a richly animated art nouveau magic school? if that doesn’t sound appealing to you, then may god help you, because i won’t
FULL METAL ALCHEMIST! brotherhood
loving all the fma appreciation itt. i pretty much agree with the_clraken here, what i actually like is a composite of the first series with brotherhood. i dislike how grimdork the original series gets and prefer brotherhood’s warmer tone, but they’re both worth watching (and the retreaded brotherhood episodes almost feel like they were trying to speedrun through that part of the story, the quality improves drastically once they’re past the story split). always loved the alternate history setting and cool eldrich horror alchemy shit
FULL METAL ALCHEMIST. (brotherhood)
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I probably would have included Death Note in my grid had I watched the show, but I only read the comic version. I found it compelling and stayed up very late a couple nights reading it. I remember thinking that the first half was much stronger than the second half, though.
Incidentally, the Blu-ray version of the show is heavily discounted at the moment.
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gonna read this thread later and make a big list of things i want to watch, but just want to show off my anime cred byy saying that the only anime i can recommend is death note and paranoia agent, real obscure underneath-the-radar stuff, y’know?
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i’ve just discovered the laughing salesman and oh wow these are just exquisite handfuls of bubble era assholism
i must recommend
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Man With Excellent Taste has logged on
time to post about Good Shows
Cross Ange
celebrating five years of being mad at this cartoon. of all the dumbass mecha Sunrise shows that did stupid bullshit, this one is my personal favorite because it’s porn my kind of dumb
Teekyu
I like dumb, short cartoons and Teekyu is the dumbest and the shortest
Inferno Cop
objectively the best Trigger show
Shows based on comics by Choboraunyopomi
all of these are shorts and they’re all dumb as fuck and excuses to do random non sequiturs in 3 minutes and I love them because they’re so mercilessly, breathlessly stupid
I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying
I can’t believe I’m still talking about cartoons with 3 minute long episodes but this is a cool show based on a comic by famed pervert Coolkyoushinja and if you ignore Destiny Fucker, it’s a good slice of life and that first season has such a sweet ending that it warms my heart whenever I see it
Shirobako
no, wait, this is actually a good show, why am I listing it
a good cartoon about why working is terrible and hell is other people
also one of the few shows I don’t want PA Works to apologize to me for
The Great Passage
wait, a show about adults for adults? turns out writing a dictionary is good and entertaining
Heybot!
the absolute stupidest cartoon I will ever like, a whirling storm of bizarre gags, inappropriate references and toy shilling except also all of those things are important parts of the plot, which the show somehow actually has
an episode of Heybot is about a water boiling robot shoving its plug into a a poster of Heybot that’s on a wall of the bar from the beginning of Akira, which results in Heybot getting an STD where he cannot urinate and his on/off switch inflates from the pee over the course of the episode
seemingly at one point during the second Video Game References episode, the crew just puts on a note they must’ve gotten from a producer that they’re referencing things that are too old for kids to know about
I will keep chasing the insane stupidity this show gave me and never, ever be able to match it
in conclusion, no one should actually watch Heybot
K-on!
if you ignore that the show started the decade-long and running trend of shows about girls doing fuck all for 22 minutes a week, you watch it and find out that the progenitor is actually a good show and also K-on is on netflix
Urusei Yatsura
if I don’t name a show from before 2010 they will come and break my fingers and then I can’t shitpost about cartoons
the manga is way better mostly because the show only covers like, the first 20 or so percent of the story
hey why are we not shitposting about the new (and final) season of High School Romcom SNAFU
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teekyu and ai-mai-mi are excellent shows for girls with toothpaste for brains, i love to feel my iq decreasing
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I was waiting so long I basically forgot about it. I’ve been reading the manga, though
this show is monumentally stupid
I watched several seasons of it at once with my roommate in college and you can really feel the loss of braincells after an extended session like that
great show
ah that would explain the jarringly abrupt and out of place final episode
guess I’m picking up the manga now
I haven’t seen an episode of this show since highschool ( I think there was another season I missed ?) and I strongly suspect that the MC will not come across nearly as likeable now that I am not the target audience
boy do I ever have the show for you
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oh wow it’s like the second coming of di gi charat
anyway why isn’t anyone mentioning the greatest comedy anime of all
straight title robot anime
Revolutionary Girl Utena (life-changingly good show)
Nichijou
Digimon Tamers
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Little Witch Academia
Avatar: The Last Airbender (yeah that’s right fuck you i’m opening that can of worms)
Outlaw Star
Beastars
I’m saving the last spot vacant. Still in the middle of watching Vision of Escaflowne (it’s incredibly good!! the only good isekai show), Cowboy Bebop and Dirty Pair, and enjoying all of these tremendously. I’m also one-upping the recommendations for Card Captor Sakura (mostly the first season, there’s some really good stuff in season 2 so I don’t recommend skipping out on it but I don’t think it’s as strong. I also haven’t watched the new series), Mob Psycho 100 and GunBuster
This thread reminded me that I also really want to watch Patlabor (watched a few episodes as a kid but I don’t remember much), Future Boy Conan and Princess Jellyfish
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hear, hear. i have an old thread about this where i make the case for talking about all cartoons as just CARTOONS (or animation if you’re boring and think cartoons sounds too childish) and only distinguishing the country of origin when it’s relevant, in part because of how pejoratively people use the term anime. of course it’s become one of 3 different threads people use to talk about Japanese cartoons separately from any other cartoons but ive grown to accept that because i like it when people prove my points for me
Hot take: the term “anime” get proliferated as a genre unto itself mostly by video rental places, and streaming services have carried the torch, even though we now live in a world where you can acquire animation from anywhere without needing to order fandubbed VHS tapes from a webring. its continued use to separate Japanese animation from anything else is outmoded and should be examined more carefully
i mean if people started doing shit like calling Adventure Time “American anime” maybe i’d be less bothered at least it’s consistent
can we bring back Japanimation though… is that offensive… Yeah probably. We probably shouldn’t. i just like a good portmanteau
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