Anime your top ten favorites

ANC

ANC

Well-Known Member
Rurumo said:
hmmm maybe if you're a baby boomer? I'm Gen X and grew up watching Macross, Mobile Suit Gundam, Voltron, among many other that were easy to find, but I didn't get super into a long running series until well into adulthood with Initial D, Hunter x Hunter, and Bleach.
Click to expand...
I think I was about grade 7 or 8 when Thunder Cats was on TV here
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
@ANC:

As a BB myself, most of the ‘early‘ stuff was mobile-suit-based, and I’ve *NEVER* been able to get into those (the five-minute transformation scenes are THE WORST), though I have enjoyed a few (Knights of Sidonia/NFLX). More than anything else, anime is a way of telling stories, and it’s wired to a Japanese cultural matrix that leaves most ‘westerners’ completely adrift.

Key genres in anime are shonen (coming-of-age for boys), shoujo (coming-of-age for girls), seinen (end-of-childhood/brink-of-adulthood); the fundamental tropes include isekai (lost/reborn in different world), fantasy/gaming/roleplaying, slice-of-life (all kinds of life), mystery, horror, supernatural, romance, comedy, music, action/adventure, military, ‘historical’. These tropes, and their target/subject genres, get mixed up pretty thoroughly. The result is a wild variety of stories and narrative viewpoints - which often slide from one trope or genre to another.

For me, the storytelling is the key, so I’ll watch nearly anything - at least for a while; yes, I’ve been disappointed, but much more often I’m left laughing, exhilarated, pondering - and/or in tears…and glad I flipped the coin and just watched it. So much of it is genuinely excellent, brilliantly written, visualized and enacted (Japanese voice-actors are *famous* and have followings), and presented with incredible skill and nuance and variety. Plenty is ordinary to sloppy, derivative, or just not well-conceived, and it depends as much on production era as on any other factor: improvements in technology have taken anime from crude/simplistic to complex/dazzling/psychedelic, just as world events and cultural shifts have changed the stories and their telling along the way.

Speaking as an old man (‘67-edition hippie), having the last two years to fill, being able to share the quirks and pangs of Japanese teenagers as they struggle with school and puberty, of high-school nebbishes thrown into a world where they know nothing, understand nothing, and have to survive thru wit, grit, and determination, of discovering that their own comfortable world can be a cruel, scary, and dangerous place, has been oddly healing for me. A new perspective on adolescence, has given me a chance to rework some of the things that I ‘got wrong’ growing up…and that’s been pretty incredible.

I hesitate to recommend anything to you at this point, but if you just want to dive in somewhere, Cowboy Bebop & Samurai Champloo (yes, really) are classics: limited characters to follow, intertwined threads enlarging the stories, and limited episodes, more like complete miniseries than endless, ongoing story.

Assuming you’re interested enough to read this…either way, welcome to the conversation


(this is all just my opinion, and there’s tons I don’t know)
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
Jeffislovinlife said:
What is that on?
Click to expand...
It doesn’t seem to be streaming any of the usual places…CR *has* had it, but apparently they rotate what’s available to stream, ‘cause it’s not there now. Definitely on my list now!

CR has slowed down the adding of Funny shows: this week they added Lord Marksman & Vanadis, Grimgar: Ashes and Illusions (*excellent*, maybe THE BEST isekai (I’ve seen)), Higurashi GOU & SOTSU, and Space Dandy; otherwise, it’s been the currently-streaming stuff, and dubs. They are for sure not done.
 
Last edited:
Jeffislovinlife

Jeffislovinlife

Well-Known Member
Bagginski said:
@ANC:

As a BB myself, most of the ‘early‘ stuff was mobile-suit-based, and I’ve *NEVER* been able to get into those (the five-minute transformation scenes are THE WORST), though I have enjoyed a few (Knights of Sidonia/NFLX). More than anything else, anime is a way of telling stories, and it’s wired to a Japanese cultural matrix that leaves most ‘westerners’ completely adrift.

Key genres in anime are shonen (coming-of-age for boys), shoujo (coming-of-age for girls), seinen (end-of-childhood/brink-of-adulthood); the fundamental tropes include isekai (lost/reborn in different world), fantasy/gaming/roleplaying, slice-of-life (all kinds of life), mystery, horror, supernatural, romance, comedy, music, action/adventure, military, ‘historical’. These tropes, and their target/subject genres, get mixed up pretty thoroughly. The result is a wild variety of stories and narrative viewpoints - which often slide from one trope or genre to another.

For me, the storytelling is the key, so I’ll watch nearly anything - at least for a while; yes, I’ve been disappointed, but much more often I’m left laughing, exhilarated, pondering - and/or in tears…and glad I flipped the coin and just watched it. So much of it is genuinely excellent, brilliantly written, visualized and enacted (Japanese voice-actors are *famous* and have followings), and presented with incredible skill and nuance and variety. Plenty is ordinary to sloppy, derivative, or just not well-conceived, and it depends as much on production era as on any other factor: improvements in technology have taken anime from crude/simplistic to complex/dazzling/psychedelic, just as world events and cultural shifts have changed the stories and their telling along the way.

Speaking as an old man (‘67-edition hippie), having the last two years to fill, being able to share the quirks and pangs of Japanese teenagers as they struggle with school and puberty, of high-school nebbishes thrown into a world where they know nothing, understand nothing, and have to survive thru wit, grit, and determination, of discovering that their own comfortable world can be a cruel, scary, and dangerous place, has been oddly healing for me. A new perspective on adolescence, has given me a chance to rework some of the things that I ‘got wrong’ growing up…and that’s been pretty incredible.

I hesitate to recommend anything to you at this point, but if you just want to dive in somewhere, Cowboy Bebop & Samurai Champloo (yes, really) are classics: limited characters to follow, intertwined threads enlarging the stories, and limited episodes, more like complete miniseries than endless, ongoing story.

Assuming you’re interested enough to read this…either way, welcome to the conversation


(this is all just my opinion, and there’s tons I don’t know)
Click to expand...
Only thing to add is maybe Inuyasha Fullmetal Alchemist and maybe Gantz
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
blueberrymilkshake said:
Little witch academia was good. I feel weird saying that as an adult man. Had good bones though.
Click to expand...
Dude, I just posted that I watched Astarotte’s Toy (a second time) recently - you have nothing there to feel shame about. The big secret about anime is that it’s not as weird/wild/transgressive as people imagine (although some is genuinely revolting (IMO)). I got over watching Japanese coming-of-age stories a while back…most anime is incredibly decent - innocent, good-hearted, feels real emotionally; I think we all have some screwed up adolescent wiring still installed, as a parent I see signs of strong ethical/moral instruction arcs in many of these shows.

Not ashamed to say a lot of the anime I’ve seen has touched me deeply in places where I don’t get touched much anymore, not any less myself if I say I have cried long, loud, and hard in response to (parts of) some shows, and some things in me hurt less because I was ‘available’ to being taken by the story, the characters, the voice actors…as cathartic in its own way as giving yourself up to a trip.

We all pass around recommendations for shows, but maybe the most joy I’ve had in this is clicking on something I knew nothing about, the joy of discovering something wonderful. Jeff did that for me with Steins;Gate. Rumuro did that for me with Mushi-Shi.

Can‘t wait to hear about what you find!
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
Two of my favorites from the current season are Trapped in a Dating Sim and Aoashi, the soccer anime. Otherwise this season has been pretty weak and I've dropped most of the shows.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top