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Anime recommendations / thoughts

This list is like noob anime central. It's basically like saying, "Do you like jazz? I love jazz! Miles Davis is my favorite!"

(I'm not sure that I actually like anime. I just like anime auteurs like Shinichiro Watanabe, Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, etc.)

tl;dr: Watch Cowboy Bebop/Samurai Champloo for a series and anything Miyazaki or Grave of the Fireflies for a movie.

Series

  • Cowboy Bebop (One of the greatest things ever, although the movie was meh. Also one of the only ones I can safely reocmmend in English.)
  • Samurai Champloo
  • Kids on the Slope (I generally don't like "slice-of-life," but I love jazz and Yoko Kanno and Shinichiro Watanabe, so I loved this.)
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (A little slow at times, but very cyberpunk.)

Movies

  • Most Miyazaki, but esp. Nausicaa and Spirited Away
  • Grave of the Fireflies (maybe the saddest movie ever made, animated or other)
  • Paprika (Took me a couple tries to love it, but it's gorgeous. I've heard it's not Satoshi Kon's best, but I haven't seen much of his yet.)
  • Ghost in the Shell (I actually liked 2 better than 1, but it's been a while. Blasphemy.)

Next up for me

  • The Tale of Princess Kaguya (super excited)
  • Tokyo Godfathers
  • Space Dandy
  • Attack on Titan

Have Heard Good Things

  • Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
  • FLCL
  • Akira
  • Metropolis
  • Mushishi
  • Paranoia Agent
  • Code Geass

Didn't Get Into It

  • Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • Naruto
  • Gunslinger Girl (Watched the whole first season, kept hoping for more. The concept is really good, but the execution didn't wow me. The animation took a deep dive in season 2, so I quit.)
  • Hellsing
@swanson
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swanson commented Apr 8, 2014

Some cerebral, psychological thriller type stuff that I liked:

  • Death Note: dude gets a magic notebook that lets him kill people by writing their name in it; cat-and-mouse game between him and the world's smartest detective
  • Code Geass: dude gets a magic eye that lets him force people to follow his orders (but only once with direct eye-contact); political war setting, has giant mechs
  • Steins;Gate: dude is a "mad scientist", has crazy conspiracy theory about a CERN-like corp named SERN (lol), time-travel, etc that starts coming true

Other more random stuff:

  • Bakuman: meta show about two dudes that want to become anime/manga creators, was interesting to see kind of behind-the-scenes on the production stuff
  • Summer Wars: this is a newish movie that seemed exactly like the Digimon movie (or at least what 14-year old me remembered) but it was pretty
  • Maduka Magica: it's kind of like Sailor Moon except realistic, very dark, hard to explain without spoiling
  • I liked K-ON! for some reason, it's about a bunch of girls that start a school rock band. I don't know why I liked it, I felt kinda weird watching it.

@swanson
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swanson commented Apr 8, 2014

If you like sad stuff, this was sad (I guess) and had really good reviews when it aired, I watched it and thought it was just okay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anohana:_The_Flower_We_Saw_That_Day

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