Anime you WOULDN'T recommend for a newcomer

Cafe Society
21

I have seen ‘Evangelion’ turn more potential anime fans off than turn them on. It’s not the best choice for a starter. I’d also skip ‘Dual’, since it’s so much a riff on Eva - if you haven’t seen Eva, you’re not going to get many of the references in ‘Dual’.

ANYTHING produced by Nabeshin (‘Excel Saga’ being a very good example, ‘Puni Puni Poemi’ being another) is not something I’d use to introduce someone new to anime.

Though I love the series, I also wouldn’t use ‘Haibane Renmei’ as a starter, though for sure I’d want to show it to someone later on. Same thing with ‘Lain’.

22

Oh, man, I have to second this one. I really like shounen ai/mild yaoi type stuff, and one of my online friends (who I met because we both like FAKE, which fits the aforementioned category and is not extreme by any stretch of the imagination) was raving on about how neat Boku no Sexual Harassment was, so when I saw it in the FYE, I bought it out of curiosity, thinking it would be more on the yaoi side of things, but nothing too bad.

For the entire duration of the DVD, I was racking my brain, trying to figure out why anyone would like this stuff. It was just so sad – the poor main character being used like that by all these people, and being too sheepish to stand up for himself. I felt like crying after a while, as well as being a little bit disgusted, and now I just glare at the DVD case every time I see it when looking for some other, less icky anime in my collection.

23

I wouldn’t recommend my current favorite show Monster to a newcomer. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it to most anime fans. It has a very down to earth concept that makes you wonder why its an animated series and contains no elements that will appear to the bulk of anime fandom and the fact that its animation will turn off the people who would like it before they watch it. It isn’t licensed for release in the US yet and I think this is a good thing since there’s no way that a US anime company will make a dime on this show and I’d rather they use their resources on shows that they will release in their entirety and not put them out of business.

I can’t describe the show in less than a page, but it involves unexpected fallout from making the right moral choices, questions about the nature of evil, and how to put things right when you feel responsible for the worst of actions. It’s set against a back drop of Germany just after the reunification and the show it most resembles is the Fugitive (if Dr. Kimble was hunting the one armed man to kill him and stop the reign of terror he felt directly responsible for). It’s a lengthy series, too, its at about episode 60 of around 80 planned.

Interestingly enough David Cronenburg is making a live action version of the series. That seems to me to be the ideal way to bring the story to the US. It’s a slow paced psychological drama/crime story, not the kind of thing that appeals to anime fans and animation doesn’t appeal to people in the US who like that kind of story…

24

Watched with friends, it’s good even as a first-timer. And it is at least not wholly self-referential, as are many crackpot animes. By that, I mean that Excel Saga plays off a number of different genres and media, all of which (or the near-identical local equivelants) is known outside of Japan.

FLCL (Furikuri or Fulikuli) is not really very good, though it’s interesting in an insane sort of way.

Inu-Yasha is actually easy to get into, but I wouldn’t reccomend it unless I though the individual in question would definitely like it. It could really anoy and irritate somneone who won’t allow for the sillyness backed up to overly-seriousness, and the general Mary Sue attitude that keeps coming up.

Akira was not very good. It had a great first half, but falls aprt thereafter. I wouldn’t reccomend it even to an anime veteran. It apparently makes sense… “if you read the manga.” And that, frankly, is the sign of a movie/show/whatever that fails. If it has to be explained…

25

The Tenchi Muyo sequel with the Galaxy Police or whatever comes to mind. Then again, maybe the whole “magnet for alien girls” subgenre of sex comedy should be avoided at first.

26

And I second that the movie version of Akira is bad. Way too compressed.

That anyone is impressed by it id probably due to them never having seen animation before. So it, ironically, should only be shown to noobs.

27

That anyone is impressed by it* is *probably due to them never having seen animation before.

28

I disagree.

Urusei Yatsura is fine for beginners.

29

UY is fine for beginners, and the first UY movie, “Only You” is very approachable for most audiences.

UY movie 2, “Beautiful Dreamer,” on the other hand, is NOT for noobs. It is a very… oriental movie, where the plot is all about character resolution, not situation resolution. So… most noobs (and more than a few other than noobs) watch it and then attack the person who showed it to 'em because “Nothing happened, nothing changed, and this was supposed to be good?”

I’d second the comments about Excel Saga and FLCL as being not for noobs. Nor would I say that Evangelion is for noobs, either.

“Grave of the Fireflies” is, as Bosda says, great for shutting up those noobs who think cartoons have to be for kids. Of course, it’s not exactly a movie I want to see again, so it rarely shows up on my player. Nor, to quote a favorite character from a book, am I into “conversion therapy.”

On a more serious note: while I love the movies, “Whisper of the Heart” isn’t for noobs, nor is “Only Yesterday.” Both are excellent films, but much of the dramatic tension only works if the viewer is familiar with modern Japanese culture.

I’d also suggest that TV series aren’t the best way to introduce noobs. Most (not all, by any means) anime series are sequential, and not episodic - so there’s a plot that goes through the whole series, and that is rather rare in the US market today. It’s another hurdle for many noobs.

As for “Ninja Scroll,” for a while it was the film used to introduce noobs to anime. I’m not disagreeing with the reasons put forward here - but in spite of that, it’s still a very fast-moving film, with excellent production values, and shows just how far from kid’s movies animation can be without being the complete bummer GotF is.