Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is… interesting. I’m not sure I really would recommend it, per se, but it seems like the kind of humor that a lot of people like (it reminds me a tiny bit of shows like Archer I guess). You can watch the first two dubbed episodes for free, legally, on Funimation’s (the licensor’s) site, if you really like it you can subscribe to their free trial and probably watch the rest before your two weeks is up.
I’ll second Gurren Lagann. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth sitting through the bad bits to get to the hilariously awesome bits.
From a selection of genres:
Sci-fi:
Others have mentioned Ghost In The Shell, so I will too. A word of friendly warning: This series as a whole is very “talky”, it really helps if you are able to pay attention to extended dialogue. That said, I have seen this show’s English dub described as particularly superb. And Batou is a friggin badass. That is all.
Big O is another good show, best described (as it was when it initially aired on Adult Swim) as “Batman with giant robots.” The show centers around Roger Smith, a suave professional negotiator who secretly pilots Big O, a giant robot known as a Megadeuce which is left over from whatever major event caused everybody to lose their memory 40 years ago.
Military:
I’m trying to think of any military animes I’ve seen that weren’t also sci-fi… not sure if that is indicative of anime in general or just my tastes in it. Anyhow…
Mobile Suit Gunam - Lots (and lots and lots) of different shows and movies under this title, with something like three or four separate universes running parallel to each other (Universal Century, After Colony, and a few others that I forget the names of). These shows are all over the spectrum in terms of campiness and realism. Some shows have thought-controlled super robots with feathery wings and laser whips and superhuman pilots, while other shows have strictly land-bound robots with badly scraped paint jobs and salvaged spare parts firing rapid-fire cannons at each other in tense jungle fights piloted by battle-worn mundane grunts. My personal favorite of these is The 08th MS Team, which swings towards the gritty realism end of the “Giant robot combat” scale.
Super Dimension Fortress Macross - See above, but with far fewer spinoffs and TV series. These shows tend to focus more on transforming giant robots. Numerous examples of giant mecha that transforms into fighter jets, and a few examples of flying aircraft carriers that transform into even bigger mecha.
Harem Comedy:
A genre unto its own. Take a guy, preferably some mild form of loser (perhaps one who is training to be badass), who is thrust into such a situation that he has a half dozen or so amazing women hanging around him and fighting each other for his attention.
Tenchi Muyo - A classic. Tenchi Masaki is a young student whose family maintains a Shinto shrine. In the original series, Tenchi accidentally releases an ancient demon locked in the shrine, who turns out to be the space pirate Ryoko. Add in a pair of princesses, a mad genius, a ditz cop (and later her long-suffering partner), a badass grandpa, and a cat-rabbit that transforms into a space ship, and you have a great early 90’s anime series. Several alternate settings for this show as well, with varying backstories for all of the characters.
Rosario + Vampire - A human boy somehow ends up being sent away to a boarding school for monsters, where no humans are allowed (but where all the monsters are required to keep their human disguises per school rules, allowing him to blend in). He ends up befriending a redheaded vampire, a succubus, an ice demon, and a witch, while trying to deal with the various crazyness that results when you have a bunch of teenaged monsters in a high school setting. Also, the redhead vampire, normally very mild-mannered and shy, turns into a fearsome vampire huntress when her crucifix is removed. Lots and lots of fanservice.
Works from Gainax are of varying quality but always worth watching, IMHO (which is by no means universal). Admittedly I haven’t seen anywhere near all of their output.
Its beginning is nothing special*, but I thought the subbed version was damn near perfect. Dubbed… not so much.
Generally speaking the dull guy recedes into the background and the story shifts to the women. At least that’s the way Tenchi Muyo and the manga Negima! have tended towards.
Please Teacher! - High School student marries his teacher, who happens to be a space alien. Marriage must be kept secret, which leads to love triangle. Running metaphor for depression inside series.
Please Twins - Set at the same high school 2 years later, the focus shifts to 3 new arrivals. Wikipedia: " It centers on a family of three teenagers in high school all living together who are unsure which two of them are related to each other due to a reference from an old photograph. …The three main characters, mostly the two female leads, are in a predicament of wanting to discover their past versus the risk of losing a romantic relationship."
So why do I like those last two soap operatic animes? Mostly I like their constructive outlook. Hollywood treatments establish emotionally difficult situations… which trouble and overwhelm the protagonists!!! Please Twins poses an embarrassing and emotionally difficult problem for the characters… which the series implies can be worked out with a decent attitude… though in the end someone must necessarily suffer hurt.** Fan service aside, I find the perspective to be refreshing and comparatively mature.
- Not unusual with anime. Often the series won’t really establish itself until the 2nd or even 4th+ episode. Examples include Haruhi Suzumiya and Corpse Princess.
** …and it doesn’t seem to occur to the creators to make the hurt beautiful, ennobling or even the main theme.
Also bear in mind that Gainax is a HUGE studio, style wise. That anime I mentioned above, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt? That’s Gainax, you would never in a billion years guess it’s by the same studio that made Neon Genesis Evangelion. Everything from the art style to the entire genre is completely 100% different.
There is my list: Good, OK, and Bad (Description):
- Macross series (original, Do You Remember Love? and Frontier): Sci-fi story about a young pilot joining the military to fight aliens with Transformer-like plane. Also has love triangles and brillant singing. Also known as Robotech in the first U.S. dub.
- Kimagure Orange Road series-Psychic boy and his quest to win the girl of his heart but gets involve in a love triangle. Good 80s love comedy.
- Full Metal Panic (first and second season): Story about teenager mercenary protecting a young girl with ESP powers. Good action and comedy. Third season was realy bad through.
OK
- Sailor Moon-Great 4 arcs till the Death Circus–it seems writers were running out of good plot points to deal with.
- Evangelion-Good till the WTF ending.
- Haruhi (first season)–It was good when they had that alien chick battling Yuki, parody on anime and good comedy arcs (the murder on the island). Only thing that I didn’t like about it didn’t have a focused plot when through it seems it wants to.
Now the bad:
Sorry but I think Escaflowne is really bad:
Hypocritical heroes (Allen is shamed that Dad wants young girl but wants Hitomi?):smack:
Plot holes (Who did the CD belong to? Only Hitomi, her grandmother, and Newton came but never had one? Would Newton be smart enough to build a high-tech kingdom based on 17th century math? What about a CD)
Art design (I love Doonsbury noses [sacrasm],
Acid trip recaps (Was it dream? Or maybe a vision? Suppose to be serious but funny instead).
Gundam Wing
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Unrealistic political scenarios (Lets make Reina our puppet queen but now take her rule seriouly. She is SUPPOSE to be your puppet.):dubious:
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Dialogue-Shakespeare makes more sense. Every episode has flowery dialogue and soliquies–people talk too much to themselves. “That mobile suit is made out of–Gundamium!” “Its a Gundam!”:rolleyes::
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Sterotypes–Chinese guy hates women, fights enemy at Chinese river!?
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Everyone wants to pilot the Gundam—that makes them insane?:smack:
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His and Her Cirsumatces (misp)–If Evangelion was a comedy, had more budgetless and lazy animation (one whole episode:recap: next episode: half of a recap), and when Hideki Anno is more whacked.:eek:
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Sakura Wars The TV Series:
1.Characters were either really weird, overly mean or b(*89y to Sakura (yes she is a klutz and the character deserve to be mad in the first episode but they over do it), -
Weird character designs (the one girl with the red hat). :eek:
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It Your Birthday song :o
I really like Zipang. It’s a bit obscure, and the human figures look terrible (in contrast to the lovingly-drawn hardware and backgrounds), but it’s the first Japanese media product of any description that has really addressed Japanese culpability in World War 2, even if it is about time travel and is, at times, pretty silly. Also, it never finished - it got cancelled after its first season.
In a nutshell, it’s about a modern-day Japanese navy destroyer that gets sent back in time to World War 2.
I forget the name, but there was a book where two destroyers (or frigates, I forget) get sent back in time from the modern day to WWII, where the American destroyer ends up linking up with the Pacific Fleet, and the other destroyer (I want to say Indonesian) ends up with the Imperial Japanese. Evidently it heavily involved the sort of culture shock you’d end up with in that scenario, for such situations as the female sailors on the US ship or the Muslim sailors on the other ship. Never read it, but I came across it while shelving books one day when I worked at a library.
Not just Transformer-like: Jetfire, one of the Transformer characters, was originally a Valkyrie toy. I’ve only watched one of the movies, but I’d also recommend this series.
If it was more than just the two ships, you might be thinking of John Birmingham’s Axis of Time series.
I like to think of Avatar as the first real American anime. Obviously, others have tried, but none others have truly pulled it off. That’s my first recommendation for Anime, or T.V. shows in general.
I know others disagree and call it a cartoon, simply because it’s not Japanese. Then turn around and call Korean shows “anime” anyway, even though they’re not japanese. Cough cough Dragon Ball Cough cough
Which are you counting as third season: Second Raid, or Fumoffu?
Dragon Ball is a Japanese manga which became an anime produced by Toei Animation, a Japanese animation studio. It wouldn’t surprise me that some of the drawings might have been made in Korea, but that’s just subcontracting.
I don’t begrudge you Avatar. Though personally I think of it as an Eastern-Western fusion, drawing from some of the best elements of both. Recommended.
A year Later
I found Panty, Stocking and Garterbelt to be mucho bizarro. Sort of funny in retrospect, given how much I was looking forward to it. Some of the upthread reviews seem apt (as in er-um…yeah)..
FLCL (Fooly Cooly) seems over-rated to me.
What’s the best way to view anime? Some of the DVD rental places are disappointing: they don’t keep the entire series in stock, so your number 1, 2 and 3 choices stay unfulfilled for months, until you figure out that they will never be shipped. At least Netflix was a little more upfront about things, though their selection of anime was limited. Has anybody tried Crunchyroll and Roku?
With that in mind I enjoyed (ahem) the first 12 episodes of Noir. Girl wakes up with total amnesia except that she possesses advanced assassin skills for some reason and possesses the name of an adult assassin with an equally mysterious past. Diverting, though not especially deep.
Serial Experiments Lain is a great one to really sink your teeth into. It’s not easy going, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
Shounen isn’t usually my cup of tea, but D. Gray Man is exceptionally well done. It’s fairly long, (103 episodes) but has very little filler.
Casshern Sins is my personal favourite. A lot of post-apocalyptic fiction seems to sacrifice atmosphere for action, but this series gets both right.
Speed Grapher is one of the strangest and genuinely disturbing bits of anime I’ve ever seen. There isn’t much that gets under my skin in the way of video, but this came very close.
I’m curious what makes Avatar: The Last Airbender the first “American Anime”, as opposed to earlier works (I’ve seen the same statement made about Exo-Squad, a series I highly recommend)
Crunchyroll seems like a pretty good deal for what shows they have, but ironically, I have issues with it because I live in Japan, causing connection issues with their video servers (seems more latency related than your typical region-specific copyright issues).
On that note, I’ve been watching Girls Und Panzer lately. Fun show, with the premise being that high schools have tank teams the way schools in real life have baseball teams or football teams. Some light national stereotyping (the captain of a team from an English school spends her tank battle calmly sipping a cup of tea while commanding her tanks, for example), and a lot of zany characters.
Oh, and the wife has been watching “Is This A Zombie?”, which is a fun show about a crossdressing zombie magical girl (well, magical guy. He was brought back from the dead by a necromancer, then accidentally took the powers of a Magical Girl. It makes just as much sense in context.)
I encourage everyone to watch Attack on Titan. I am no anime freak but this one is seriously good!
Space Battleship Yamato 2199 - if you watched Star Blazers as a kid you’ll go nuts for this reboot, which is the rare remake that’s just like the original, only ten times better. Fantastic animation, an expanded storyline, enough callbacks to the original series to make hard-core Yamato nerds flip out, and FINALLY there’s more than one girl on board the ship.
I really enjoyed A Woman Named Fujiko Mine - stylish, funny, mean - and Flowers Of Evil, which is rotoscoped to hell and back, super creepy, and is utterly unlike anything else you’re likely to see anywhere on TV. Both are available streaming on sites like Crunchyroll.
This show was one of the most popular of last season. I liked it though I thought it got a little slow in the last half. Also, note that the story doesn’t end with the last episode and will be continued next year.
This season I’m liking “Kill la Kill”.
Darn it, Flander, I came in here specifically to say this!
I went on a binge a few weeks ago and watched all 25 1/2 episodes in about four days. It’s like Jeopardy: if you cut out the recap at the beginning, the “coming next time” bit at the end, and the opening and ending animation, each episode is only about 17 minutes long.
The setting is bleak, but gripping - almost like World War Z or 28 Days Later, since Humanity seems doomed to extinction when facing the Titans. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, because the writer is a master of fantastic plot twists that really make you wonder what’s going to happen next.
The main characters are very deep. They have their motivations, their desires, and (especially) their fears. You can applaud the heroes for trying their best even if they don’t always win, and you won’t be grumbling about how pathetic they are (I’m looking at you, Shinji Ikari!) even though they all have their faults.
The TV show takes you about 60% of the way through what is currently published of the manga, which is still being written. If you’ve read the manga, you’ll notice in many cases that the show is a scene-for-scene adaption; it’s almost like watching an enhanced version of the manga, with the same camera angles and everything.
This is an enormous hit on both sides of the ocean, so I imagine at least one more series is on the way, and there’s talk of a live-action movie (!!!) next year.
So, enough of Attack on Titan. I can’t believe I didn’t ever comment in this thread. Maybe I was on hiatus or something.[ul][]Lupin III and the Castle of Cagliostro - Miyazaki meets Monkey Punch. This is the finest animated movie ever made, and it’s over 30 years old![]Patlabor: The Mobile Police - The first movie is fantastic. The TV shows and OVA’s can be hit or miss (the upcoming live-action adaption looks horrid!), but are generally good if you stick with them.[]Gunbuster: Aim for the Top! - No, Gainax doesn’t suck! They gave us Gunbuster! Despite not having the time or budget to completely animate the final episode, the ending was still better than Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gainax’s mega-masterpiece.[]Neon Genesis Evangelion - Are you enjoying the Rebuild movies? Good. Are you confused? Yeah, me too, but… Mari Illustrious![]Bubblegum Crisis - Watch the original OVA series set in 2032 rather than the remake. Try watching it in Japanese with the totally rockin’ 80’s soundtrack. Do not try to stomach the English adaption available on iTunes. Watching this without Kinuko Oomori’s slammin’ vocals blasting through the background is like trying to groove on William Shatner’s cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” without ever having heard the Beatles’ version.[]Bubblegum Crash - I can’t honestly say this three-episode OVA is good (hint: it isn’t), but if you were left hanging after episode 8 of the original Bubblegum Crisis, at least you get some answers by the time it’s over.[]Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket - This short OVA has a fantastic story, plus plenty of classic Gundam action.[]FLCL - I heard this mentioned already, too. It’s bizarre, and hilariously funny. Plus, rockin’ soundtrack by The Pillows! There are only six episodes, so if it’s not your cup of tea, yuo can bail out without too much time invested.[/ul]
I… actually kinda hated it. The worldbuilding was very interesting, but the main character was insufferable and the plot rapidly steered itself AWAY from the interesting worldbuilding. Now, I admit, I gave up around episode 5 or 6 or something, but I sure wasn’t digging it.
I can back most of psiekier’s recommendations (though wow, you’re kinda digging through some ancient history for some of that stuff. I mean, I love Bubblegum Crisis and Patlabor Movie 1, but this is like, the stuff I watched in college, and that was… a while ago. >.>)
MY favorite NEW Anime lately is Silver Spoon. My heart has seldom been so warmed, yet it’s also poignant and thoughtful.