its to easy to get lost looking for some decent anime. graphics and storyline a must please help me out. finished watching hellsing and there must be plenty more as good if not better out there.
FLCL! aka Fooly-cooly
Excellent animation and really weird storyline about teenage boy who has giant robots sprouting out of his head. It’s funnier if you’ve watched a lot of other anime though … .
Vampire D: Bloodlust
hands down the best I’ve ever seen (well except maybe Spirited Away but that’s another story)
Story line: Eh I’d give it a B-
Jaw dropping animation: A+ across the boards.
Action: Fast and furious with surprising moments of quiet.
loved both vamp d movies, and enjoyed spirited away. no luck on flcl on netflix.
Ok. How about Crying Freeman? Story isn’t the greatest but it’s serviceable. Avoid all the sequels like the plague though.
The Last Vampire is pretty good. I’m bitter about spending 20 bucks on a show that’s about 1/2 an hour long though.
oops I meant Blood: The last Vampire
Record of the Lodoss War has some truly great moments but it’s also a muddled mess at times. I hear they had several different directors that kept changing things from episode to episode.
I say the NAY! It’s a whole 48 minutes!
(but it really is short, and feels like a pilot rather than a movie, cos it’s so damn short!). and you spent 20 bucks only? We bought our copy in Japan for something like 6000Yen, which translated to something like $40USD!
I said ‘about’ half an hour long.
The worst part is the box says 83mins. Yeah if you include the ‘making of’ as part of the running time. Sheesh.
My personal favorites are:
**Standalones ** (single DVDs, essentially – both movies and self-contained short series):
**Ninja Scroll ** – awesomely good action with super-ninja-powers.
**Read or Die ** – “The Paper” is a secret agent for the British Library. I will not explain, because that would spoil the fun. Just trust me.
**Castle of Cagliostro ** – the finest of the Lupin the 3rd movies.
**Ghost in the Shell ** – moody, beautiful, deep. And awesome-looking.
**Series ** (multi-DVD investments)
**Cowboy Bebop ** – excellent SF anime.
**Trigun ** – likewise, with a great combination of slapstick and drama.
**L/R ** – “kiss kiss bang bang” (1960’s-style James Bond-like)
**Noir ** – two female assassins with mysterious pasts
My two favorite online anime resources are:
AnimeOnDVD – especially the “AoD Recommends” section. Great news on upcoming/new release titles, lots of reviews.
Anime Planet’s Anime Recommendation Database is a great place to look up stuff you like to see what others who like it recommend. I’ve found it to be pretty accurate.
Darkhold sorry about that, indeed you did.
Doncha hate that when they include the extras into the running time! Our version doesn’t list the running time obviously, and it was only when we watched it and exclaimed how short it was that we realised OH, THAT’S what that meant!
On the back of the Oz release of Voices from a Distant Star it lists the running time as (paraphrasing here) “74 minutes (30min feature, 44min extras)”. One of the extras is the ‘30 minute feature’ recut into a directors-cut version! You have to wonder how gypped the director must have felt to warrant a ‘director’s cut’ of a 30 minute film! :smack:
Ok, now for some actual recommendations. (some already listed, but these are my recommends so make of that what you will).
ROD Read Or Die- wonderful stuff, as mentioend earlier. There’s a TV series showing in Japan now, but what little I’ve seen doesn’t inspire me. The OVA however is amazing!
Cowboy Bebop the series and the movie of the series Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door are stunning, emotional, wonderful tv. Watch it, invest in it if you have the cash (6 volumes in the TV series and one more for the movie).
Laputa: Castle in the Sky- a Ghibli film, an earlier from the folks who made Spirited Away. Superb, emotional, odd, gorgeous!
Actually, see anything from Ghibli, it’s all good, although Cat Returns wasn’t as fully visually realised as I would have liked, but the story was great!
FLCL -FoolyCooly--it’s so wierd you have to try it, and it’s visually the most dynamic thing I’ve seen in a long time. But as said, funnier if you’ve seen a lot of anime.
Stuff I want to see (if that’s any recommendation)
Magical Shopping Street Abenagoshi (did I spell that right?)
Last Exile
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (the new movie, just released in Japan, expect a late 2004 release in the US).
Ghost in the Shell: Man Machine Interface (the TV series, currently into its 2nd series in Japan (‘2nd gig’) and about to be released on DVD in the US).
And then there’s all those wonderful live action Japanese films that seem to be real-world anime, like The Returner, Sharkskin man and Peach Hip girl, Versus, Princess Blade and many more…
Oh, Braniac 4 thanks for those links, cool stuff.
Lately Cartoon Network has been playing Cowboy Bebop and Trigun during their Adult Swim segment. I’ve been TiVo-ing Bebop, but haven’t caught any Trigun because it conflicts with X-Files reruns on another channel. Bebop is near the end of the run this month, I dont’ know if they’ll be running it again immediately.
It is Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. It is a hilarious parody of movies, and anime genres. Like all of Gainax’s work, it is amazing.
many thanks all. and thanks for the links Brainiac.
just needed a little steering on this genre.
The TechTV network showed “Last Exile” not too long ago, and “Blood: The Last Vampire” has been on premium cable channels a lot. Premium cable also shows a fair amount of other anime – one of them showed Hellsing at one time. “Dirty Pair” used to run on Showtime Beyond but I think they’ve stopped it.
Lupin The Third is one of the funniest things to hit TV anywhere, ever!
Try the movies & the TV serieses. (sp?)
Urusei Yatsura/Lum is another very funny series, both TV & movies exist.
From SF/Drama, try the classic Space Battleship Yamato, known in the US as Star Blazers. Boxed collections were recently released.
You’re welcome. I got interested in anime about 3 years ago, mostly because I could get some of it free at work (I like my job) and so the barrier to entry was really low.
There is a lot of great stuff out there, and there is a lot of crap, and a lot of stuff in between. Until fairly recently, the problem with anime in the US was that you needed to buy it to see it. The advent of Netflix and Cartoon Network’s increasing amount of anime programming has really changed that, and it’s a good thing.
Star Blazers turned me off anime for a very long time, as it seemed to be an endless series of explosions. Dull, dull, dull.
Well, if you’re looking excellent graphics, X (the TV series, not the confusing movie) is a must. The storyline is pretty solid, too.
Now, my usual recommendations:
Neon Genesis Evangelion is bizarre, but it’s also wonderful. If you plan on seeing FLCL, watch Evangelion first, or it won’t make any sense.
Revolutionary Girl Utena and Serial Experiments Lain are also weird but wonderful. Utena is a bizarre, dark story about a girl in a fairy tale gone horribly wrong. It’s also a very beautiful series. Lain is maybe the strangest anime ever conceived, and it’s a somewhat horrific story about the Internet.
Cowboy Bebop is a great series, and I see a number of people have recommended it already. A lot of people don’t like the first four episodes. Stick with it. You’ll be glad you did.
Some of my friends like [b[RahXephon**. It was too serious for me, and I bought the first disc because it came with a T-shirt.
I love Excel Saga, but there’s a lot of anime in-jokes (you’ll want to turn on the Vid-Notes).
I also recommend Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Ranma 1/2 , and anything from Studio Ghibli (Sprirted Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, etc.)
Master Control and I are watching RahXephon right now and, while I don’t understand hardly a lick of it, it’s very, very pretty to watch. It’s also pretty obviously “inspired” by Evangelion (IMHO, YMMV).
I’m also enjoying Great Teacher Onizuka which is about a reformed street punk (Onizuka) who became a teacher thinking it would be an easy gig (summers off, surrounded by girls in short skirts, etc.), but when he’s assigned to a class of delinquents and troubled kids he decides to help them all by becoming the best teacher ever. I think it’s really funny, but MC thinks it’s too silly, slapsticky, and ecchi (mildly pervy–the self-described “Great Teacher” had designs on scoring himself a child bride early on).
A couple of recent dramatic and beautifully animated movies are Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress. The same fellow that made those is also behind the even more recent Tokyo Godfathers (a modern reworking of The Three Godfathers), but I haven’t seen it yet.
I recently saw another (non-Miyazaki) Studio Ghibli film called “The Cat Returns,” which, if you’re a cat lover as well as anime lover, you must see. Beautiful, fluid animation.
I also want to mention Vision of Escaflowne; Junkers Come Here; Now and Then, Here and There (that’s all one title); and Berzerk. Oh, and a bunch more, but the list would be way too long.
My favorite website for looking up reviews is the Meta Anime Review Project, which strives to be like a “Rotten Tomatoes” for anime. You can find nearly everything there.