You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Got me there.
::fap fap fap fap fap fap fap::
And we call it anime these days. Japanimation sounds kind of racist, or at best old-fashioned.
Anime is greatly varied, and like any style of cartoon, you won’t love every one of them, but you may like much of it. Think of it this way: I hate (loathe!) Scooby Doo… but I love the Simpsons. Two different styles altogether. Anime is the same.
I can’t help you or anyone else love anime. The styles and stories are too varied. It will be a personal selection for you, just as you choose to watch or not to watch American cartoons, sorting out the good from the bad.
The best advice I can give, however, is try to watch anime in it’s original Japanese, and read the subtitles if you don’t know the language. It stays truer to the story (and hey, you might learn a new language in the process, bonus). English voice actors (not always but far too often for me to not mention it) slaughter the originals. English dubs/edits often change the original story so completely, it no longer resembles the beauty it once was.
For example: Not everyone will like this anime, but enjoyed it and I found the original so sweet and endearing, but Cardcaptor Sakura. It’s originally about a 10 year old girl, who is pretty normal, she’s sweet, kind - and human. When Nelvana translated/edited/raped this sweet little anime, they edited out anything that showed her being afraid in any way, anything pertaining to Japanese culture, anything that made Sakura look like the lead character, and included a secondary character as a “main” (he was a boy, so the show didn’t seem “sexist”, they said. “Sexist”!) Any homosexual overtones were obliterated (but we saw that coming… even though it isn’t blatant in the original, just implied and accepted as perfectly normal… why shouldn’t it be??) In short, the original series has 70 something episodes… but in the US, it has been painfully trimmed and pruned to 28 episodes. Wow. And Sakura sounds like a spoiled brat 16 year old, and so does her best friend, who is a real sweetheart in the original.
As I said, not everyone will like that particular series as much as I did (but I love cute shows as well as the more dramatic, gothic ones), but it is an example that can be applied to many series translated into English. You see an anime in English and think it is ridiculously cheesy? Because it is. That doesn’t mean the original is, too.
It’s not all about “porn” or “magical girls”, that’s just what has been popularised/sensationalised in North America. Look deeper, and you can find some real treasures.
I agree, although I tend not to blame the actors. I think it’s a question of the direction or the problems with the differences between languages. They have to put emphasis in places where it wouldn’t make sense in English (maybe it did in Japanese) or add extra noises to deal with extra mouth movements and crap.
Apologies; I agree with this. I didn’t mean to come across as blaming the voice actors, but as I can plainly see, my typed words pretty much do so 
It’s not their fault, they’re doing the best they can with the slaughtered scripts and directions they have, and of course, as you said, trying to make some English sense out of a cartoon drawn in a language which uses more vowels than we do!
Another *Cowboy Bebop * fan here. Quite a few episodes can be watched as stand-alone stories, but it’s well worth the time to see the whole series. Lots of fun in there, but some of the episodes can be emotionally wrenching. (People who have seen this series know what I’m talking about.) Be sure to check out the feature-length film if you get a chance.
*Hellsing * has already been mentioned. I thought it was a pretty tight 13 episode series. I’m not a big vampire fan, but the series kept my attention anyway. This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, but I thought it was really good.
I also recommend *Trigun * and Ghost in the Shell .
I’ll second ** Serial Experiment Lain , ** Blood ** and ** Cowboy Bebop
I’d like to add the serie ** Boogiepop Phantom ** (which has interesting visuals and a dark atmosphere but you’ll have to see all 12 episodes to (somewhat) comprehend it) and the movie ** Kite **
If you liked the visual style of Aeon Flux you’ll enjoy **Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari ** and Trava Fist Planet but I don’t know how widely available those two are.
Regarding dubs, The industry has become more professional (and profitable) during the past few years. I think the dubs are much better then they were in the past. It’s when they start editing shows for (kids) TV things get bad. (for a recent example see 4kids’ One Piece)
For humor try Lum/Urusei Yatsura or Lupin the 3rd.
Lum is an alien involved in a love triangle with the most lecherous boy on Earth, Ataru Moroboshi.
Lupin is the world’s greatest thief. Think Big Job crime movies, done for laughs.
Some companies are better than others though. I find Manga Entertainment does really good dubs, (They are working with Bandai on GitS: SAC, though I don’t particularly like Motoko’s voice at times). Other groups, though, especially groups like Nelvana and 4Kids who aim their shows at a younger, TV audience…shudders I haven’t even seen CCS in the original, but I can tell so many times when it has obviously been changed and things look wrong. I’ve also seen the first ep of One Piece, and from what I’ve seen it isn’t a great dub at all. Shaman King is decent, but there are some things that got changed that I wish hadn’t–Morty’s book is a dictionary, not ghost stories! And I hate Tao Ren’s voice.
Well, then I have an old-fashioned dislike for anime. Next time watch it with the accusations of racism.
*looks at his copy of My Neighbor Totoro
Fox… Pan and scan… no subtitles… crap. At least I got it out of the cheap bin at Wal-Mart.
I can definitely echo the recommendations of *Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, * etc.
I’ve got one recommendation that isn’t dark, cyberpunk, or political. In fact, it’s light, medieval, and hilarious. Rune Soldier. It’s like a game of AD&D gone horribly wrong.
Butchering the storyline isn’t an inherent trait of dubbing - it just seems to go hand in hand because shows imported for mainstream US broadcast are, as a rule, dubbed and altered enough to look like a domestic product for an audience who wants to be entertained without having to perform cultural translations on their own(“Rice ball? What the hell is a rice ball? Oh, it’s a donut!”).
Both dubbing and subtitling is a compromise from watching and understanding a film in its original language, and both have gaping faults. Your eyes can only focus on a small area at a time, and no director frames his movie expecting you to spend most of the film reading the dialouge all the way at the bottom of the screen. Dubbing frees your eyes to actually view the action onscreen, but then the original voicework is replaced. Then there’s that interview style of dubbing, where the original voice is overlayed with a translation track - other countries do that for movies and TV shows too (check out the Portuguese (I think) clip on the Futurama vol 2 DVD or Yo Soy Cuba), but that’s a weird effect.
Anyway, the best advice is to pick and choose whether you want to read subtitles or listen to the dub depending on the quality of the dub or subtitles of whatever show you’re watching. With DVD, you can easily flip between the audio tracks and titles to settle on which seems to be giving a more satisfying and accurate experience.
And for some reason, French dubs always seem to be spot on. We need to figure out what they’re doing. I’ve seen Friends in French and it’s like the original cast came in and translated it themselves. And listen to the French tracks on the Simpsons, Family Guy, and Futurama - they’re perfect!
First:
Let me second a number of the recommendations already made for the OP (and add a few of my own):
Ghost in the Shell - I’ve not seen the TV series, but the movie is visually stunning, with a pretty good plot. Mind you, I disagree with about 80% of the position of the work as a whole - but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie.
Wings of Honneamise - bitter AND uplifting.
Grave of the Fireflies - one of the most depressing movies, ever. While it’s not cyberpunk, it is a very moving view of the last 3-6 months of WWII from the perspective of a pair of young children. It is extremely well written, and has the stunning visuals the OP asks for. Don’t watch alone.
Gasaraki - this is a bit iffy, it’s not entirely what I’d call cyberpunk, it is however an excellent political/philosophical thriller. But it is very sequential. To the point that, while the characters stay the same through much of the series, the conflicts in the series are constantly evolving. You can’t look at the first episode and expect that’s what the rest of the show will be like.
Neon Genesis Evangelion - it starts out feeling like a fairly standard ‘giant robot’ show… then it twists slowly along the series, until you’re questioning everything. I loved that.
Lupin III especially The Fuma Conspiracy - a series/franchise with several recurring characters focusing on an international thief: Lupin, and his gang. The movies and TV series are very wildly varied. Based on the OP’s given tastes, I’d stick with Fuma, rather than the more famous Lupin movie done by Miyazaki - Castle of Cagliostro.
Inu-Yasha - a bit of a stretch here: There’s a lot of the silliness that the OP is railing against in it. On the other hand, it’s also an excellent horror story and quest, and avoids about 90% of the female character stereotypes that annoy me in anime. The female lead is conscientous, intelligent, determined, and not very well prepared for her new role helping a half-demon recover parts of a dangerous artifact. In spite of that, while the power of the male lead is important, in all the conflicts I’ve seen it is the action of the female lead that decides things. Besides, it’s by Takahashi Rumiko.
Now, regarding all the reccomendations for Miyazaki films - I have to say, reluctantly, given what the OP is asking for, that they’re not quite the best suggestions. I love Miyazaki’s films. I’ve been sending emails to Disney/BVHE/Miramax monthly about my favorite Miyazaki films ever since they got the rights back in '97. But, given the OP’s tastes, I’m not so sure that these are the sorts of movies to use to woo the OP to the anime side of the Force.
They are great films, and visually stunning. They also lack the bitterness, or hard edge I associate with cyperpunk. Since that’s what the OP is asking for… while I think that Spirited Away is a great film, it’s not one I’d suggest. If the OP wants a Miyazaki with a hard edge, Princess Mononoke would be the one I’d suggest. But, be aware it’s not the normal tone for the movies from this man. Heck, remember we’re talking about a man who makes pirates into wonderfully sympathetic characters. 
Finally, my two cents about the Dub/Sub dichotomy.
First off, you’ll have to make up your own mind about 'em. Don’t take anyone else’s views as the last word. We’ve all got prejudices. Mine lead me to prefer subs. (To the extent that when it became available I got the Monthy Python and the Holy Grail with the Japanese dialog track so I could say I’d watched it in the original Japanese. :eek: ) The reasons I prefer subs are twofold.
-
I hate, loathe, dispise, find repulsive, and want to claw my ears off any time I hear what I call a ‘Teeny Bopper’ voice doing duty for an adult female character. It just makes me cringe uncontrollably.
-
One of the problems with translations of any kind - a line that reads well will often not carry over into vocals. So, it’s far easier, IMNSHO, for the production company to make a decent translation when they’re writing the translation - than if they have to make it sound good, too.
Now, a lot of people hate US dubs for ‘dumbing down’ the shows. This isn’t really the fault of the dubbing, rather it’s a reflection of the difference in markets between the US and Japan. In the past most US advertisers, and broadcast types, viewed cartoons as something that has a maximum audience age of about 11 or 12. Whereas many popular anime are written for older teens, even adults. So, the dumbing down does happen - but it’s not endemic to dubs, per se, rather a response to the market pressures to make the animation marketable to a younger audience.
Most of the movies/shows on the list here are already beyond that pressure. Wings, I’d heard, had some issues where the politics behind things had been simplified in the dub, but that’s the only one I know for certain where it happened.
Finally, as a long time sub reader - I have to argue with the assertation that you can only look at one section of the screen at a time. Actually, most people only pay attention to one section of the picture at a time. It is possible to train yourself to pay attention to a larger picture. After a while, reading the subs becomes second nature, and you’re looking at the whole picture being presented.
This can be a very tricky task if you watch the wrong shows or movies, or if you watch them without an understanding of the culture that produced them. The best television show I’ve ever seen, Japanese or otherwise, is Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I would not expect someone who’s unfamiliar with the conventions of Japanese animation to tolerate the show for any length of time.
The problem of animation lies in its strength, namely the ability to portray the world however our imagination conceives it. Although animation can be exceptionally detailed, it is not often “realistic”. What would be the point? If you want to make a show that accurately depicts modern Tokyo, it isn’t difficult to film in modern Tokyo. If you want to make a show about a postapocalyptic “Tokyo 3”, a bit of imagination is required.
When this unrealistic portrayal limits itself to the setting (fantastic places and situations), identification with the work isn’t difficult. But animators, more often than not, have no qualms with “unrealistic” portrayals of people. Exaggerated expressions, distorted physical proportions, generalized features - These are all the tools of animators, and they would be fools to ignore the possibilities. After all, if they were truly interested in perfect physical accuracy, live actors would do perfectly.
So they take advantage of their medium. They exaggerate and distort. They use their artistic talents to express thoughts and emotions in a way that actors cannot. And the distortions and exaggerations eventually take on a life of their own. They eventually become artistic conventions that have their own meaning in the context of their culture.
This is what has happened with anime. If you’re not a part of that culture and have no previous experience with these conventions, it’s easy to view them as totally silly (especially since they are totally silly much of the time). Without much exposure to the culture, it’s very difficult to tell exactly why the superdeformed effects are used. Is the show normal and using the effects as shortcuts to inform the reader of the emotional state of the characters? Is the show using superdeformed animation to poke fun at itself in a metafictional way? Or as in the case of Evangelion: Is the show using animation conventions to establish a comfortable and familiar tone, so that the show’s later seriousness becomes a disturbing overthrow of the previous comfort and stability?
Above all, I advise patience when trying to understand anime. As with every other medium, most anime isn’t very good. There have been plenty of suggestions about what you might want to watch, so I’ll just add another vote to Cowboy Bebop as a potential good place to start.
I hope you find one of these suggestions interesting and compelling. Anime (and animation in general) fascinates me, so I think you’ve made a good choice. It’s also commendable when someone actively attemps to overcome their initial aversion to find something worthwhile. Good luck with finding something you enjoy.
For pure style I’ve yet to see anything that rivals Vampire Hunter D:Bloodlust every time I watch it my jaw is on the floor the entire time.
The problem with liking anime is that 99.9% is pure junk (and this from someone that fell in love with it the first time I saw an anime movie) blame the culture barriers, blame the voice actors, blame some hack that re-edited the show or just blame the fact that Japan often cranks this stuff out like an assembly line. Go to some anime fan sites and look at recommended lists and reviews and see if you can find some plots that seem interesting and appeal to you then you’ll either slowly develop your own catalogue of likes or you’ll still hate it and move on.
I actually like anime but I don’t really think most of it is all that good. Even my favorite series, Cowboy Bebop, isn’t much better then many action/adventure series that have appeared on American television over the years. On occasion you’ll find a real gem like Princess Mononoke but those are few and far between.
Of course as others have pointed out taste vary. It’s entirely possible that you won’t ever like anime and that’s perfectly ok. There are anime series mentioned in this thread that I can’t stand. Many people love Neon Genesis Evangelion but I hated the series. I watched 5 episodes, dubbed version, and I couldn’t believe how incredibly dull and silly it is.
That brings up some other things I dislike about anime. Shows where young kids or teenagers pilot robots and are responsible for saving the world, cute kids who hang out with a bunch of adults for no reason (Edward in Cowboy Bebop being the exception), or the style of making silly animations to denote certain emotions. I think a lot of anime does get lost in translation and I’m certainly no expert on Japanese culture.
Marc
The problem with disliking continuity between episodes is that you really only open yourself up to certain shows - mostly children’s shows and comedies. I happen to like Pokemon, for example, a show that’s decidedly episodic. Most shows meant for people 12 and older feature a running story that progresses every episode. Inuyasha is a good example of this. The story is wonderfully captivating, but if you miss an episode, you’re more or less screwed. Since the series has now ended at 167 episodes (with the manga still being made and more episodes being planned next year), it’s not exactly easy to catch up on.
You express a taste for serious, adult (read: not pornographic, but “mature”) anime, but a distaste for continuity. You might want to look in to a brand new series, Samurai Champloo, that just started airing in Japan. It doesn’t have any wacky faces or anything like that and it’s very episodic. There are no DVDs available, but the cardinal rule of the anime fan is, if it’s not licensed, it’s OK for you to download with subtitles. When it gets licensed, though, it makes such copies illegal. For right now, I believe it’s fine.
There are also short OVA series you might like to look in to. The first one that jumps at me as Oh! My Goddess, by Kosuke Fujishima. Basically the story of a lonely college age student who accidentally makes a wish about needing a girlfriend and he gets sent three Goddesses, two of which hate him for falling in love with their sister. Sounds pervy, but it’s quite heart warming. You might also want to look in to Tenchi (Tenchi Muyo, in particular). The Tenchi series are basically alternate universes (same characters, different situations), but Tenchi Muyo is by far the best. At only six episodes (not including the extension OVAs just released in Japan), it tells a very compelling story about a Shrine keeper’s grandson caught in an intergalactic conflict. Even though it has some dramatic moments, it is first and foremost a comedy, but without so many of the “cliches” like a show similar to Excel Saga would.
There’s some anime based on video games that can draw you in if you dig the show. Viewtiful Joe just started airing, Rockman.EXE (Mega Man Battle Network), despite a ridiculous dub, has been running strong in Japan, Tales of Symphonia is going to be animated soon (by the same studio and designer that made Ah! My Goddess), and Star Ocean is great if you liked the game. If you’re not in to video games, though, it’s kind of a moot point.
Also, Lupin III. If you were a fan of the French novels, Lupin Arsenic (could a more literary doper correct me if I got it wrong?), you might enjoy it. I’ve never met anyone who disliked the franchise. It’s just so universally appealing to root for the noble thief.
Why do all the characters have to look like Speed Racer? I haven’t seen them all, but in all the Anime I’ve (accidentally) seen, they’re all some variation of Speed Racer/Sport Billy. Japanese animation can do better, or be more varied at least. The Simpsons’ animation is done by some Japanese animators, no character in the Simpsons (and probably Futurama) look like Speed Racer. (I hate Speed Racer).