Well, looks like the cat’s out of the bag…and I’m running out of material. I know there are approximately six point eight nine zillion of the things floating around in the otaku-infested aether, but I’m at a loss to come up with any specific titles. Horrendous anime romantic comedies are my electronic crack. I must watch them, marvel in slack-jawed amazement at just how awful they truly are, and wonder to myself why on Og’s not-so-green Earth anybody would ever make them, let alone actually watch them. Which I then continue to do. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and I like it. Leave me alone.
Anyway, to date I’ve completed:
[ul][li]Ranma 1/2[]Love Hina[]His and Her Circumstances[]Happy Lesson[]Vandread[]Slayers[]Goldenboy[]Urusei Yatsura[]Inuyasha (what of it is available, anyway)[]Maison Ikkoku (neither insipid nor particularly comedic, but romantic nonetheless)[]Steel Angel Kurumi (shudder I had to force myself to finish this one, sitting there with clenched teeth, muttering "so bad…why am I watching this…so very, very bad…)[*]Probably a couple others that my brain has purged from my memory due to exceeding the allowable size of the “Ungodly Vapid Entertainment” folder[/ul][/li]
Sooo…what else is out there with which to continue my quest for high-quality brain entrophy, cutesy-Japanese-style? Somebody out there’s gotta know. Speak up! Don’t be afraid! Know that there’s at least one other!
I love Chobits! I am a huge fan of cheesy, awful, must watch anime. But some of it ends up being pretty good.
Working my way through *Fruits Basket * and *Magic Knight Rayearth * right now.
I love the Utena series, but the movie makes me crack up laughing because I find it so bad. Oh, lord, that has some awful lines that my geeky lil bro and I love to quote to each other. I also adore Card Captor Sakura, but I don’t find that cheesy as much as it is cute. And sweet. But some people just can’t sit through it.
:eek:. That’s what I came into this thread to recommend! (And I’ve only seen a handful of animes as well.) Not that it’s that bad, but definitely has sappy or cheesy moments, although I can’t remember if it was ever sappy and cheesy at the same time.
Sorry, meant to include a link with the above. Here it is.
Also, have you seen Magic User’s Club? The romance is there, but very, very tenative.
Finally, have you considered Fushigi Yuugi, aka Mysterious Play? It’s a romance, among other things, but not really a comedy for all that it has a LOT of comedic moments.
Hmm… for insipid, have you seen Moldiver? It’s hilarious, if only to see what new costume the main character’s friend will be in this ep.
Then there’s El-Hazard. This series is admittedly homage to the worlds and writing of E. E. “Doc” Smith, and the Arabian Nights. It’s a lot of fun, and a personal favorite of mine. But avoid the Wanderers TV series. I’ve not seen it, but I heard that sucked ass. The OVA series, however, are great fun. And lots of cheesecake, too.
Try Fushigi Yugi. There’s lots of it; three boxed sets. The first and second boxes, Suzaku and Seiryu, compose the first story, and the third “Oni” box is a new story, which I didn’t manage to make it through. The story is very much a teen girl’s fantasy; all the men fall deeply and madly in love with the protagonist for no apparent reason. Still, I enjoyed it as an amusing “period” fantasy romance, with some very funny parts. Even though I kept wanting to slap the characters and yell “Just tell them you love them, you moron!”
There’s also Escaflowne. I haven’t seen much of it, but I’d bet there’s some romance going on in there. There are also medieval-style mecha and killing and stuff, so it may not be all that romantic.
I heartily recommend El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. (Why is is that all three of my recommendations involve people transported to alternate dimensions?) There’s also El-Hazard 2, but I didn’t like that nearly as much as as the first one. They’re pretty silly, but the main romance of the first series had me seriously choked up. …though, that’s during the time that my marriage was dissolving, so it’s possible that it was just the thought of a true and perfect love that got to me.
Oh, oh! I almost forgot Video Girl Ai. It gets very weird in the last episode, but the cheesy teen romance is pretty fun otherwise.
I watched a bunch of Love Hina as well. I should finish off that series some day, it was fun.
Now I’m going to go be embarassed about having opinions on anime romances.
[And also, on preview, that Otaku Loki beat me to the punch on my recommendations]
Wow, beaten to the punch on all of my recommendations…
I’ll second (oops, third) Fushigi Yuugi…
I also like Oh My Goddess! a lot. The original 5-part series does have a high cheese/story ratio, the movie not so much, but the new TV series has a lot of romantic cheesy stuff inserted into it. (I’ve only seen the first three (region 2) DVDs, no sub, no dub, but some bits are so very insipidly cheesy, they are immediately understandable – even if you don’t speak Japanese.)
Oddly, the manga isn’t as insipid (in my opinion), even though the TV series is more based on it.
Ai Yori Aoshi. Starts off as a straight romance, then suddenly changes gear and becomes semi-comedy. Either sweet or cloying, depending on your tastes.
I tried to watch Chobits but I couldn’t stand it because the male lead is such an idiot. Most of the anime I’ve seen with teen male protagonists are like that. They’re shy idiots who freak out whenever any female characters show any sexual interest in them. Then you move into adult anime and the male leads turn into serial rapists, sometimes clearly psychotic serial rapists. WTF?
One of my favourite series is Abenobashi Magical Shopping Arcade (Abenobashi Maho Shotengai) – very funny, but sad, as one of the major characters dies (and the whole point of what goes on is to try to stop him dying).
A great movie is Tokyo Godfathers – again, a lot of sadness mixed in with the fun, but it does end happily.
Two more that haven’t been mentioned, of the genre with improbable family situations, are Happy Lesson (a school boy adopted by five "Mama"s, who are also his teachers) and Please teacher (Onegai Teacher) (a school boy married to his teacher, who also happens to be half-alien)
I would think Please Teacher,Fruits Basket, maybe Chobits if you can stand the main character - I can because I like nerdy guys, but not everyone does.
But they’ve already been recommended, Shucks!
Let’s see, that leaves an anime that remains in my top five: Boys over Flowers, but it’s not out in a boxed set and I believe the series is not fully out here yet (even though it’s from the mid nineties). If you were in Minnesota I’d borrow the first few dvd’s to get you hooked, because I am just that evil.
You will probably like Marmalade Boy, but gosh - this was one of those anime’s that caused me to miss sleep, just as a warning. I’ve only bought the first of the ‘Ultimate Scrapbooks’ and just refuse to let myself watch more. shiver
A couiple in the genre of super-powerful combat androids that look like beautiful teenage girls:
[ul]
[li]All-purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku – In this, the twist is that the combat android has the brain of a cat. And she has to defend her young master against his power hungry mother, who is the CEO of an mege weapons corporation.[/li][li]Mahoromatic – This has the sad twist that at the end of each episode we are reminded of how many days are left of Mahoro’s life span, and the improbable twist that a combat android freely chooses to work as a maid[/li][/ul]
