Was it painful? 
But seriously: for all those who dislike anime or think it is all the same - watch some Miyazaki. Particularly Spirited Away and Princess Monomoke.
Style over substance. Not that I don’t watch some. Cowboy Bebop, Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku. Spirited Away (Princess Monomoke was ok, but not as great, and I really don’t like Howl’s Moving Castle.) One of the problems is the Japanese insistence on unhappy or unfinished endings…I don’t always need a happy ending but I really do prefer a satisfactory ending or some kind of resolution. Also as I grow older I really want older protagonists. I can’t stand teeny-boppers and young twenty somethings grow less interesting every day. I stopped playing Final Fantasies because of this.
I agree with Eyebrows of Doom, this was pretty snarky. And what I’ve come to expect of Western anime fans as well.
Those are two movies by an acclaimed master. You can like those two movies and still think anime in general is done in an unappealing style. I know I do. I have my shows that I’ve watched and enjoyed but like all things everywhere, 90% is crap.
Eyebrows of Doom is right; The IMDB and Amazon links were a terrible freaking cop out.
That said, this isn’t an easy request, because it’s like saying “I haven’t read any books lately. Can someone recommend some books I might like? What would be a good book to start with?” As I mentioned in an earlier post, we’re not dealing with a genre here. I could recommend good Japanese animation involving pretty much anything from supernatural murder mysteries to post-apocalyptic horror, to competitive Go.
That said, I’ll try to recommend a few things that are not too old and that I enjoyed.
The Secret World of Arietty is the latest from the reknowned Studio Ghibli; It might be considered children’s fare, but it’s clever and warm and pleasant to watch. Also, super pretty. Full length feature film.
Last Exile is old by some standards, but is in no way dated; It’s a fairly intricate story about a world in conflict, and a few people who get caught up in events that are larger than they are. Also, airships. 26 Episodes. Also available on Hulu.
Mushishi is set in…some sort of semi-mythic rural Japan, and recounts the tale of a “Mushishi” - a man who works with the mysterious, semi-supernatural creatures known as Mushi. It has a curiously peaceful vibe going even though some of the stories are sad or scary. 26 Episodes. Maybe available on Hulu.
Baccano! (The exclamation point is part of the title) comes close to defying my ability to describe it. It’s a sometimes zany gangster crime thing set in the 1930s but also immortal alchemists who… yeah. Stuff. 16 Episodes. Maybe on Hulu.
Azumanga Daioh is a crazy strange comedy about high school girls, dreams, ambitions, and … I dunno. It’s hilarious. And sometimes I cry. 26 Episodes.
Muh. I wanted to mention more movies and/or shorter series, but I don’t know any others that can be considered particularly recent. I mean, if you haven’t seen Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away or Castle in the Sky, stop wasting your time on this forum and go watch them, but I expect people with any interest in the medium to know about these by now.
Absolutely. But 90% of everything being crap is very different from 100% of one genre being crap.
There exists “good” anime, that is stuff of better artistic quality, better writing, more witty or profound, but I’d never deny that most of it is derivative and thus really only of interest to fans. Same as the majority of any genre.
As for the style, it’s a matter of taste. De gustibus and all that. My own peeve with anime is the insistance in some of it on plucky young girl protagonists (non-sexualized in Miyazaki, sometimes disturbingly sexualized in other anime). That I could do without, as a meme.
This! This drives me crazy for some reason.
There are some great movies out there, but the gasps just grate on me.
I’d second “Arietty”, but avoid the Disney English dub and seek out the British English dub or, better yet, the original Japanese with subs.
I also recommend, “Mushishi”. Soothingly weird, like a heartwarming “Twilight Zone” episode.
I loved “Azumanga Daioh” but I think it is not a good entry point for a westerner. It’s just too bizarre and, forgive me, Japanese, for the uninitiated. Some will find the pedophilia and young lesbian humor off-putting. But it’s like “Peanuts” on acid, so if that sounds intriguing, go for it.
Speaking of young lesbians, I recently laughed continuously throughout both seasons of “Yuru Yuri”.
My other two current anime loves are, “Squid Girl” ( a super cute and hilarious literally ‘fish out of water’ series) and the amazing science fiction series, “Stein’s;Gate”.
Understood. But they all share a common style in animation and presentation. The cheap ones look like Pokemon. The more fancy ones look like expensive Pokemon. The whole style of animation is grating to me. And the obsession with children. And the gasping.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t like it. But I will never understand why. It annoys me.
No, I’m sorry. They absolutely do not. How many pictures do we need provide? I swear this gets done in almost every anime thread we have, and people like you skip those posts.
This is about as absurd as saying that all Western Animation looks like The Simpsons.
That’s okay, I find your reasons for being annoyed to be completely irrational, so I feel like I’m the logical, intellectual one here. 
We’re no longer watching this stuff on VHS tape; If you actually get a physical disc, you’re practically assured of having language tracks and subtitle options. (Aside: To whoever said “annoying voices I can understand are better than annoying voices I can’t”, I am the opposite - annoying voices in english drive me INSANE, but the same level of stupid in the Japanese, I can’t understand, so it just washes right over me.). and I don’t think Arietty is available for streaming anywhere, so…
Yes! Thank you. I was fishing for some sort of “peaceful X-files” comment, but that didn’t seem right. Your analogy is much better.
Yes, it is insane. Some people really like that though.
I hear really good things about Stein’s;Gate, but I haven’t seen it yet.
They really don’t? I mean, I am all for your right not to like it, but they don’t all look the same, and they certainly aren’t all obsessed with children. Maison Ikkoku is one of my favorite ones, and it’s a lovely romantic story, with rather adult themes. The main characters are college students, a slightly older landlady, and everybody’s parents. I can’t remember if there are any children involved but probably only in little parts.
Cowboy Bebop has a ten year old hacker who is the comic relief, much needed at times, as it’s a fairly serious anime about bounty hunters.
And those two have extremely different animation styles!
I loathe anime.
I love animation. I grew up on animation. I go out of my way to see the Oscar nominated animated films. I worked as a freaking ANIMATOR!
Anime, in general, sucks. It is bad animation by the technical aspects I already mentioned. Also, given human nature, anime fans wind up damning far better animation while defending anime, like trashing Disney and Pixar, and they wind up looking like idiots.
We had a long thread in 2009 about this.
I don’t have the Disney “Arietty” disc (or, as they renamed it, “The Secret World of Arietty”) but I suspect it doesn’t provide the British dub as an option, but it may well contain the Japanese track. I was suggesting the British dub over the Disney dub as the better option for English speakers who don’t like subtitles.
It’s a mind-blowing time travel extravaganza with tears and laughter. I watched it with subs but I’ll eventually watch it again in English just to experience it in a slightly different way.
I’m a life-time Japanese cartoon nerd; and while I can cheerfully accept that most people don’t share my obsessive-compulsive disorder, I’ve seen enough of the stuff to freely admit that much of it is junk aimed at children and teenagers, with a smattering of material aimed at basement-dwelling super-nerds who shun society (and vice versa).
However, the Japanese cartoon industry is a wide, wide field, and lumping in cheap, toy-shilling TV shows with independently financed feature films does them both a disservice. One could easily spend an afternoon watching “Goldie Gold And Action Jack”, “Rocket Robin Hood”, and “Super President”, and conclude that American cartoons were the worst sludge ever inflicted on human eyeballs. Don’t even get me started on “Clutch Cargo” or “Mr. T And The T Force.” Or the Chuck Norris cartoon. Or the Rambo cartoon.
The fact is that for whatever reason, audiences around the world have been entertained by Japanese cartoons for fifty solid years. Maybe the animation quality fails to live up to the exacting standards of the Walt Disney Corporation (who brought us such brilliant works of animated genius like “The Black Cauldron”, “Atlantis”, and “Treasure Planet” ) but generations of entertained people say “so what?”, and then they say “Ssh” because they’re watching something they enjoy.
It’s available On Demand via AT&T U-verse in my area, which makes his advice pertinent to me. So…
The main thing that annoys me about anime is people who are into anime.
I know you already replied to a comment on this but:
I think people like me have “dealt with it” pretty well, by avoiding things that have unattractive animation with oversized eyes and gaping, lipless, toothless mouths.
And honestly, having someone say “deal with it” doesn’t make me think, “Oh, maybe I’ve been wrong and just looking at the wrong thing.” It makes me think, “Oh, my impression about the eyes is exactly correct and it’s the preferred style, so anime isn’t right for me.”
I have spent enough of my life educating myself about other area of art, such as whisky making and jazz, and can grasp the subtle differences between examples which might seem very similar to non-aficionados.
At my age I am not about to commit to the time it will take me to learn to appreciate anime. Sorry, not enough interest on my part.
A similar one that you may enjoy is Haibane Renmei (link). It’s a slowly unfolding drama/scifi/mystery that the Gargoyle household loved.
In my case, most of the stereotypical kids shovelware anime (Pokemon, Naruto, Speed Racer, and all other 5fps screaming flailing stuff) is unwatchable. 99% of what gets produced is indeed cheap crap (but then, so is Hanna Barbera, Filmation, etc). Sit through a whole American Saturday morning lineup and say with a straight face that superior art and production is occurring. Peel off your veil of nostalgia and see that The Smurfs and Transformers have the same crappy repetitive loops, poor framerates, and non-existent speech sync.
However, there are amazing gems to be had, both for visual and story qualities, that one truly does a disservice to themselves if they dismiss the whole anime format.