Grave of the Fireflies is a movie I force myself to watch every few years. It’s that good… and that painful.
Mm. Comedy time. Ranma 1/2 is the prototypical slapstick screwball comedy, the equivalent of Three’s Company. So is UY… some people might know it as ‘Lum’. It’s got the girl in the tiger striped bikini who has horns on her head.
Cyberpunkish, hm? Okay. Dai-Gard. Office Workers Saving The World. It’s a giant robot fight, sure. But the people controlling it are an insurance company, it was sold to them after the end of the last war… and management just doesn’t care about the damage to the world, if they can make a buck. People covering their tails… It’s like Office Space meets Voltron.
Initial D. Can’t stand the dub, hope it evened out, but the car races in it are really darn nice. Story of a kid in high school who makes his mark doing outlaw downhill races, and his realization that he does have something he wants in this world, he does want to be the best.
Martian Successor Nadesico. Ever see Robotech when you were a kid? This is sort of a loving tribute to it, and a dozen dozen more shows you never saw. Despite that, it makes sense, the dialogue is snappy, and it’s generally well written. If a messed up comedic sort of thing.
Trigun: Funniest western ever. Then a sudden left hand turn at the end.
Cowboy Bebop: One of my favorites ever, though I prefer dub-Edward’s voice
Mobile Suit Gundam: The original series still holds up. 08th MS Team is sort of a Vietnam story. I’d reccomend it for your tastes. Seed is a retelling, sort of, of the original series. Go for 08th MS Team. Miller’s Report is a digest version of the series as a movie.
Excel Saga: Advanced stuff. Funny. Sort of… mmm… Japanese South Park, but only in complete attitude. No other resemblance, including animation style.
Read Or Die: In two varieties. The OAV and the TV series. Go for the OAV. It’s one disc, and it’s good spy superhero stuff.
Helsing: Also good stuff. Vampires in modern times.
Cyberpunk cyberpunk… Armitage III? Hm. Most of the cyberpunky stuff is either really dated or really japanese. Still, Bubblegum Crisis and the later retelling, Bubblegum Crisis 2040 are good.
Oh, of course. Scr-y-ed. Scryed? It’s sort of… a cross between X-Men, Lord of the Flies, and The Game.
Steampunk, though, Last Exile is nice. Napoleonic Era warfare… In the SKY!
A note. The Japanese often retell the same story over and over. Mobile Suit Gundam’s main characters and plots reappear as Gundam Wing and Gundam Seed, just redrawn and modified.
OAVs, what we’d call Direct to Video, are higher quality animation than TV series, as the shorter length allows more drawings per episode. They’re usually much shorter, too. TV series can be 26-32 episodes.
The concept of continuity isn’t always there, either. Tenchi in Tokyo’s cast are not the same people we saw in Tenchi Muyo. Things change drastically.
Mixing and matching can get you confused.
