That is a lot of anime! I've not heard of a lot of these, but then I am woefully behind the times. Thanks for the link to Shana as well, that looks like a really useful resource and a good way to see what's new.

For my part, here are a few that I've particularly enjoyed. Check out youtube for examples of the style.

Movies:
Patlabor
Ghost in the Shell
Spriggan
Vampire Hunter D (either one)
Streetfighter 2

Series:
Space Brothers
Planetes
Macross Plus
Mobile Suit Gundam 08th MS Team
Berserk

And Space Brothers again. If you're at all interested in hard sci-fi, this is worth a watch.

The only anime I've actually seen is Kill la Kill, which is famous chiefly for being the most batshit crazy thing to ever hit television. The writing can be really hamfisted and the fanservice is frequently gratuitous, but the afore-mentioned batshit craziness makes it entertaining enough to be worth it, and about halfway through its run it transitions from Monster of the Week filler episodes to solely plot-based ones and achieves a much better quality than it previously had.

Here's one that's been super below the radar until a couple years ago, which was when I first heard about it.

Allow me to throw in a big recommendation for Legend of Galactic Heroes, a massive sprawling sci-fi series from the 80s, that's only very recently been fan-translated into English.

The closest way to describe it that I can think of is as a space version of Game of Thrones. It's about a struggle for the galaxy between 2 major factions, the democratic Free Planet's Alliance (loosely modeled on the US), and the Galactic Empire (kinda modeled after pre-World War 1 germany). The super unique thing is that the show doesn't take sides, instead showing the corruption and limitations of both forms of government. It's centered around 2 brilliant military commanders, one on each side, as they rise to the ranks and become the driving forces for their side in the conflict. At the same time, typically, each episode will alternate and focus on one of the two sides, as the corruption on the democratic side leaves it open for a potential military coup, and an aging empire and complacent noble families leave the empire vulnerable to a deadly purge.

One of the reasons I mention it here, is I think people who hate traditional anime might actually enjoy this one, because it's the most "normal" for better terms anime show I've seen. There's no wacky anime stuff here at all really, and especially later on in the series, it becomes a pretty remarkably dense look at political structures and the role of government (you could swear there's massive Bush-era Iraq critiques all over this thing, if it weren't for the fact that it was made 20 years earlier). It's also entirely scored with classical music (and really well chosen classical music), which when paired with massive space battles, betrayals, and revolutions, is extremely effective, and a big plus for me.

I can't over-emphasize the Game of Thrones comparison in terms of how dense the show is with characters (though it helpfully reminds you by highlighting their names when they show up), with hundreds of characters involved, across a series that runs for upwards of 60 hours. This is both the greatest strength and weakness, as it makes it a super rich experience, but also one that can be really difficult to get into. The other thing I'll say is that the animation is definitely pretty basic and not very flashy, this is much more about story than being visually stylish.

If you're interested, you can track it down via bittorrent and youtube and what-not, and see if its in your wheel-house. It's tough cause the really interesting political stuff doesn't kick in until a couple hours into the series, so it can take a while to get into, but it's also incredibly rewarding if you do.

The order to watch it is,
1. My Conquest is the Sea of Stars

2. Overture to a New War

3. Episodes 3 and onward of the main series (Overture to a New War is a better executed remake of the 1st two episodes)

(I find TV Tropes' descriptions of anime much more helpful in deciding if I'd be into whatever show it's describing than Wikipedia for some reason)

Kill la Kill is awesome. Love it. It's an awesome deconstruction of the Magical Girl anime genre. It starts out as what is typical of these kinds of shows. Over the course of its run, it manages to justify mostly everything dumb about the genre. Ridiculous and a lot of fun :)

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is probably my favorite anime. It's almost everything I've ever seen in an anime stuffed into one that changes artstyles on a dime. I had a big, stupid grin on my face from beginning to it's intentional(?) Gainax end.

(Note: I'd suggest watching with subs... as the english dub is surprisingly... not great)

Last edited by MadBadCoyote (2014-10-24 21:34:25)

One thing that should be remembered is that anime isn't a genre. It's simply the word the Japanese use for all animation, and which in the US is used to refer to cartoons from Japan. Asking for recommendations is like asking for good live action films: you really need to be more specific as to what your interests are

Given those first two CG Appleseed movies had nothing to do with the actual books, I may have to check out the third one. Unless the Bioroid Hitomi is drunk and Deunan has a stuffed Briareos on her bag, it's not Appleseed. From the wiki, it looks like Appleseed Alpha ends just as the first book starts.

I'll toss in my first recommendation: Black Magic M-66.

Instead of tying to do an adaptation of his mythological/cyberpunk manga, Appleseed creator Shirow took one small segment and expanded it into a 48 minute action story which just hints at the wider political situation. A very nice story. You can find the dub on Youtube, and the sub is probably kicking around. The DVD is probably out of print.

Last edited by Invid (2014-10-26 21:31:03)

Looks very cool actually, but what's really sold me are the episode titles.  They include:

Episode 2: Setting the Old Woman`s Qualms Aside, the Flying Pussyfoot Departs
Episode 10: Czeslaw Meyer is Forced to Rework His Tremble-Before-the-Specter-of-Immortals Strategy
Episode 13: Both the Immortals and Those Who Aren`t Sing the Praises of Life Equally

Just on that basis, there's no way it can fail to be great! 

I'm afraid I really don't have a lot in the way of recommendations.  I haven't seen a lot of anime, and the ones I have are not particularly obscure ones:

Paranoia Agent:  Oh...my...sweet...Jesus. Probably the most disturbing thing I've ever seen on television.  Desperately bleak and completely brilliant.  Here's the opening credits.  Even having the transliteration and the translation of the lyrics pasted onto the screen doesn't make this any less unsettling. 

Serial Experiments Lain: About halfway through, my friend and I started referring to it as 'Ralph Bakshi's Last Year At Marienbad'.  If that sounds appealing, you'll probably like it.  And as undergraduate cod philosophizing goes, it's actually not too bad, unlike other shows we might name.  (*cough* Battlestar Galactica *cough*)

FLCL:  This must be what our grandparents saw on the screen when we were watching Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry cartoons.  A breathlessly bewildering kaleidoscope of crazy crap presented in a way that's almost incoherent.  But in a good way.

The only even maybe slightly obscure one I've seen is Kino's Journey, which I liked a lot.  It's a little hard to describe.  Sort of a travelogue fantasy with old school fairy tale overtones about a young girl and her sentient motorcycle who travel from country to country, but only staying for three days in each one.  Oblique and interesting. 

And just out of curiosity, any suggestions for relatively recent (say last 20 years) family-friendly anime series, especially for a precocious 8-year-old girl who likes video games and comic books?   We've seen (or know about) the classics (e.g. Speed Racer, Star Blazers, Heidi, Sailor Moon, etc.) but I have no idea what's out there more recently.

Yeah. As soon as I saw episode one's title was
"The Vice President Doesn't Say Anything about the Possibility of Him Being the Main Character"
I was pretty much sold.

For kids, check out Tsuritama. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuritama It has a weird kid with a fishbowl on his head, lots of life lessons, and an exiting fish-catching climax.

I just started Baccano today. 6 episodes in and it is great. I just wish they named the characters better.

As for all anime being written by hacks, I can't disagree more. They have their tropes, but you guys are talking about things like Lain and Paranoia Agent. They're both over a decade old. I highly recommend you watch some of the shows from the last few years.

More recent anime:

Log Horizon http://myanimelist.net/anime/17265/Log_Horizon
MMO players trapped in the game. The unique focus of the series is mostly political: among players, the community and NPC relations.

Strange+   http://myanimelist.net/anime/21067/Strange+
Bits about a dysfunctional detective agency. There are lots of butt jokes and surreal comments in these 3 minute episodes. I found it hilarious.

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san http://myanimelist.net/anime/10216/Yond … -san._(TV)
A demon-summoning detective uses powerful demons for menial tasks and weird cases. Very funny.

Fate/Stay Night  http://myanimelist.net/anime/356/Fate/stay_night
An anime adaptation of a multi-storyline visual novel. In the game, the story can go in several directions based on your choices. Various anime are being made for each variation of the story.

Last edited by Jp12x (2014-11-08 05:52:26)

I just finished Baccano! last night. http://myanimelist.net/anime/2251/Baccano!

It's a great story and is stuffed with both fun and disturbing moments.

Warning: The first story ends with episode 13. The anime is 16 episodes and the last 3 eps are starting the next storyline which are not resolved in the anime. It genuinely feels like someone planned a 26 episode series and production stopped on episode 16. If you are interested, the story continues only in the original light novel series (which is ongoing).

My wife and I enjoy Fate/Stay Night, she even cosplayed as Saber for Otakon one year. We still need to watch the Unlimited Blade Works movie and Fate/Zero, and I guess UBW is getting a series treatment too. (Didn't stop us from using the closing song from UBW as our first dance song at our wedding.)

Christmas is a time for some families to gather around and watch TV, but if you're like me and aren't that interested in what the in-laws are watching you take to Netflix to see what you can find. It's under this context that I discovered and watched Arpeggio of Blue Steel.

Take the basic premise of the Battleship movie (alien warships come to Earth to take over the seas), turn down the built-in vitriol against it, turn up the anime tropes, and add a few years after first contact.

Years ago, the Fleet of Fog came from nowhere, imitated the form of human naval ships but with added alien technology completely obliterated human forces, and proceeded to blockade the seas and cut off all intercontinental contact, though did not invade land. Then, for some reason, the sub I-401 defected to Chihaya Gunzou, a cadet at the Maritime Academy. Two years later, he and his crew are the only hope against the Fleet of Fog.

The anime covers a single arc, and deviates from the source manga a bit from what I've been able to gather. With just twelve episodes, it tells a tight cohesive story though I found myself wishing for a bit more exposition on some things. In the manga it's mentioned nice and early that Gunzou's father had defected to the Fog; it's never stated in the anime, though that's one rumor. We never find out where the Fog came from, and the human crew members aren't very well fleshed out. There's the XO who wears a helmet; the excitable weapons officer (think the same archetype as Sokka from The Last Airbender); there are the two cute girls, the sonar operator with pink headphones and the engineer with the unfortunate dual stigma of always being in the engine room instead of the bridge and of being animated with a bit extra boob jiggle.

Ships are better characterized, as all major ships of the Fog, including I-401, have created human-like mental models of themselves. This is perhaps appropriate, as the story is more about them and the effects our protagonist has on them than it is about the humans on the sub. All of the girls in the opening are mental models of various ships in the series, each with their own distinct personality (except for the I-400 and I-402 creepy twins, they obviously share one). (Apparently one is even referred to as Fast Battleship Tsundere by other characters in the manga itself.) I enjoyed the development of them, and if I had to choose a favorite character it'd be from them, not from the paltry pool of humans.

Two movies are getting released next year, one a recap of the season and one an all-new story. While I'd've preferred a new series, it's still something I'm looking forward to.

I've liked each of the Fate that I've seen. But, I mostly like them as they are divergent stories that start the same. Each story features one of the girls as a love interest and turns out differently as a result. Ufotable seems to be making the better adaptations:

http://myanimelist.net/anime/356/Fate/stay_night

http://myanimelist.net/anime/6922/Fate/ … lade_Works

http://myanimelist.net/anime/25537/Fate … avens_Feel