Anime Recommendation (again...)

[barbzilla]

I know this thread has been done to death, but I haven't found any other threads that encompass my particular tastes in anime. What I would like to do is to provide you with a little background and a list of anime that I do like, and see if anyone can recommend any anime based on my personal preferences.

I started watching anime a long time ago (10-15 years ago, not sure exactly), but it wasn't episodic. I watched the full length feature films, and for the most part loved them. The thing is, it wasn't readily available to me, so I only watched it when I found one used locally. Recently I have started watching the episodic anime. I have managed to find a few that I like, and many more that I just couldn't give a flying hamster's ass for.

I do know that I don't enjoy the DBZ style of anime (slow progression, little story, and battles that last forever with escalating power levels), and that seems to include much of the mainstream (in the US) anime that you find on television. I ended up picking up Crunchyroll for my phone, and I have netflix/hulu plus for my television. So if you recommendations fall into one of those programs, it would be helpful (but not a per-requisite as I can afford to buy my anime elsewhere if necessary).

Anime Movies I Liked:
Vampire Hunter D
Ninja Scroll
Ghost in the Shell
Akira
Princess Mononoke (spelling?)
Cowboy Bebop (movie and show)
Darkside Blues
X
Wicked City
Blood The Last Vampire


Anime Shows I Liked:
Cowboy Bebop
Fullmetal Alchemist
Demon King Diamao (spelling?)
High School of the Dead (this and Demon King I can live without the fan service)
Edin of the East
*I am forgetting some of the ones I liked*

I really wish I had kept a full list of the ones I didn't like, but I have a few that I do remember:
Bleach (though I did managed to get through two seasons before I decided I didn't like it)
Naruto
Any of the space mech series I've watched (though I have seen a few space based animes that don't involve mechs that I loved)
Most of the land based mech series I've watched (though there was one I liked, too bad I can't remember which one it was)


If anyone has any Animes that stand out intellectually that would also be quite welcome. Thank you to everyone who tries to help me out here.

 

[Angie7F]

shingeki no kyojin!!!

I think this season there are too many good animes. But Aku no hana and Shingeki no Kyojin are my two favorite.
I Also like Hentai Ouji, but it is just the usual moe stuff.

 

[Casual Shinji]

As usual I'd like to give a shout out to these great compilation films.

Spoiler: Neo Tokyo Labyrinth

Spoiler: Robot Carnival

And ofcourse.

Spoiler: Memories

 

[barbzilla]

Nice, thanks for the ideas. I'll give a few of them a watch (I tend to try to wait them out at least a season before I reject them). Some of these look really good, and all of them sound interesting.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

I recently watched Last Exile, Samurai 7 and Samurai Champloo. I thought they were all very good, but I can admit that Champloo might not be for everyone since it had a very hip-hop inspired vibe.

 

[VanQ]

Just gonna go ahead and drop my usual list in here. I can recommend a heap more if you decide you like any of this stuff.

Accel World A good series based on a futuristic video game called The Accelerated World. It's pretty stylish all round. (Spiritual sequel to Sword Art Online)
Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko - If you can figure out what the hell this show is about please let me know.
.Hack//Sign - Awful animation and production values and terrible pacing but a really good look at child abuse and how they escape from a harsh reality.
Denpa Teki na Kanojo - Watch this. This show is excellent and outstanding in every way possible, an absolute must-watch in my opinion.
Eve no Jikan Gekijouban - See above.
Mardock Scramble - Also see above.
Fate/Zero - This is the Nasuverse done right. Try your best to track down the BD subs for this if you can, it's simply stunning both visually and storywise.
Kara no Kyoukai - More excellent Nasuverse stuff.
Golden Boy - No need to analyze this. It speaks for itself.
Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari - Tenchi Muyo spinoff that's set in another world as the title implies. Yeah, this is a harem but it's great when a harem lead is not afraid of his own cock, he just has better things to do. Kinda gotta watch it to understand.
Magi- The Labyrinth of Magic - Pretty cool story set in a middle ages Arabian Nights setting where magical labyrinths appear around the world full of treasures and Djinn that would choose the next king.
Mouretsu Kaizoku - Also known as Bodacious Space Pirates. Don't expect One Piece, it's a show about strong and cute female characters and politics and insurance fraud. And a whole lot of Space Ship porn on the side. The soundtrack is also absolutely lovely.
Nazo no Kanojo X - It's honestly as weird as it sounds but it's a lovely story that's one of my all time favorites.
Shiki - Slow starter but an excellent vampire horror story set in modern Japan.
Sword Art Online - Set in the world's first Full Dive MMO environment where 10, 000 players are locked into the game and will die in real life if they die in game. Excellent first cour but the second cour lacks the tension of the first. Hope to see a season two for Gun Gale Online.
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya - Yeah, it sucks that the TV show has such an awful fanbase and the Endless Eight sucked too but this movie is an objective masterpiece. And I do not use that term lightly. Make Sure you watch at least episode 1-5 in chronological order, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody and at least the first two and last episode of Endless Eight for maximum effect. This is a movie that actually managed to turn 5 minutes of deep introspection into one of the most tense and watchable scenes of all time.
The iDOLM@STER - Based off an extremely popular Japanese video game series where you raise a group of 13 young, unknown girls to become top idols. Slow starter but it quickly picks up pace as the girls become more popular and it's worth watching for the performance scenes alone.
The iDOLM@STER: Xenoglossia - Ignore the relations it holds to The iDOLM@STER and you have a giant robot anime that's so bad it's good. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion, it's so horrifying that you can't look away. The first episode sucks pretty bad but I couldn't stop watching after episode two.
Tasogare Otome X Amnesia - This is a pretty cool and interesting specimen. It's more or less a horror/romance story for girls but is extremely enjoyable nonetheless.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

A Certain Scientific Railgun comes to mind, although I would suggest you read the manga first. The only reason I say that is because you have High School of the Dead on there. No idea if you'd like the show though, as I tend to be all over the map on what I like. Anyway, the story's about a city where children develop special powers. The star, Misaka Mikoto (or maybe Mikoto Misaka, not sure) is one of seven level 5s (the highest rank) and she deals with conspiracies in the city and how things aren't what they seem. Very little fan service, if any at all.

Anyway, the first two seasons could be better, but are still good, and if you read the manga, you could even skip them if you want to. However, the current season deals with the Sister arc, and it's...soul crushing, but in a good way. Sadly, it's only in Japanese at the moment, so you'd have to watch it on the internet from a streaming site. Not T.V.

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

Anime that stands out intellectually! I don't know about that. A lot of anime that set out to be smart end up badly like Ergo Proxy. Even those that are good like Serial Experiements Lain can be hard to understand and ultimately a waste of your time. Lain for one will only be fully understood if you are very familiar with the history of computer technology.

Here are some shows that I consider intellectual:

Lain: but you can't get much from it without a ton of prior knowledge.

Kino's Journey: It's about analysing aspects of human civilization. Every episode takes place in a different location and has a different set of characters. This gets very brutal at some points. Usually it's just calm. It happens on a science fiction world.

Mushi-shi: sane with Kino journey, but it does so in the scneario of 19th century Japan and has clear supernatural elements. It also tends to pick isolated locations to tell its plots unlike the cities Kino uses to visit. This has great visuals and is very calm.

In both cases of Kino and Mushi-shi the only recurring characters in every episode are the main characters. And in the case of Kino also her bike. Which speaks.

Jinrui wa suitaishimashita: this is complicated. So humanity has entered a state of decline, because of our stupid behaviour. Most our technology has become incomprehensible to the people alive and resources are scarce, despite the whole world being covered in greenery, it covering many of our once bustling cities. We have stepped down from our coveted post of dominant race in favour of 10 centimetre creatures called fairies, sometimes also called Humanity 2.0. Now we have to deal with them in order to survive the new harsh conditions of our idilic, pastoral post-apocalyptic world. Fairies are like humans on steroids. They are very industrious, dominate crafts with such skill and have social rules evolving so rapidly they can build a civilization in a day. Fads come and go very fast. So they are very convenient plot devices. Even though it may not sound like it, this is a very good show. It's mostly divided in two-episode arcs that use the fairies to analyse and criticise a different aspect of human society, like our religions and our manga industry. The show also likes to switch gears and tone with every arc, sometimes genre. It's also not told in chronological order. It's only 12 episodes long, and receives the highest recommendation from me.

Kara no Kyoukai: the Garden of Sinners. It's a series of movies ranging from 40 minutes to 1 hour and a half. It's dark and bloody, but usually not gratuitously so. The main character is a lady named Shiki, and she is a psycopath. To be concise, she's the female version of Dexter. She struggles with building meaninful relationships with other human beings while dealing with the fact she really likes killing things. Kokutō is my favourite character in this. He works for the same sorceress as Shiki and has a knack for investigating the strange occurances. He is a more interesting character than Shiki because he isn't a fighter, and is vulnerable investigating people against whom he would be clearly outmatched. He constantly reminds me of Deckard entering Sebastian's appartment alone going after the two militayr veterean super androids. Thankfully he appears in every episode. The animation in this is gorgeous and has an anormous budget that really pays off during action scenes.

 

[porous_shield]

Speed Grapher: follows the exploits of former war photographer Tatsumi Saiga, who investigates a secret fetish club for the ultra-wealthy called the Roppongi Club. He tries to photograph the club's "goddess," a 15-year-old, exploited girl named Kagura, but is discovered. As he is about to be killed, Kagura kisses him, granting him the ability to destroy anything he photographs. The series is a little odd, and like many anime, has fanservice but I enjoyed the story and the characters; also the intro was Girls on Film by Duran Duran but I think it was changed because they couldn't get the rights to it...or something like that.

Girls Und Panzer: girls using Second World War era tanks in a tournament. The series is light hearted with very little fan-service and the ammunition they use is non-lethal so their isn't any blood and gore. I found the characters engaging and especially the tanks they use and the tournament they are in is surprisingly realistic since they had a military history advisor on staff.

Moyashimon: a guy, who can see micro-organisms with the naked eye, and his best friend go to an agricultural university. I loved everything about this series. The characters are great, it can be pretty funny, and the situations they find themselves in are compelling; what's more I learned a few things about micro-organisms.

 

[Gatx]

-snip-

Gintama is one of my personal favorites. If you have 6 minutes and 37 seconds to spare, watch this clip [http://vimeo.com/38013872]. More or less gives you an idea of what a roller coaster this show is. There's also really, really good action scenes that's just straight up sword fighting, no crazy anime powers.

I'd highly recommend Shingeki no Kyojin (aka Attack on Titan) that's playing this season. Good intriguing story that amazingly enough in this day and age doesn't sacrifice pacing to desperately grab your attention.

Another show this season that's pretty intersting is Suisei no Gargantia. I haven't seriously gotten down to watching it, but it's a really interesting premise. Guy in a mecha fighting a space battle in the distant future gets warped to a "mysterious planet covered by mostly water" *wink* with a Waterworld-y thing going on. It's certainly one of the more creative settings I've seen in anime in a long time.

If you want a show that really makes you think I'd say you should give Gundam Unicorn a try even though it is a space mecha anime. The battles are absolutely beautiful, but there's also a lot of underlying political conflict and explores morality and human nature. To get the maximum effect you'd have to watch the original Gundam series (or more realistically the three compilation movies), Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam, and Char's Counterattack (or just read about the bits you think are interesting after watching the movie).

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya - Yeah, it sucks that the TV show has such an awful fanbase and the Endless Eight sucked too but this movie is an objective masterpiece. And I do not use that term lightly. Make Sure you watch at least episode 1-5 in chronological order, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody and at least the first two and last episode of Endless Eight for maximum effect. This is a movie that actually managed to turn 5 minutes of deep introspection into one of the most tense and watchable scenes of all time.

Hell yes, I almost cried during the Caught the Heart on His Sleeve [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaughtTheHeartOnHisSleeve] bit. If you told me Haruhi was going to do that when it first came out, I wouldn't have believed you. Plus it's absolutely beautiful, rivaling anything done by Makoto Shinkai, and his stuff looks like this:

Spoiler

 

[MiskWisk]

I'm only going to through two out.
1) Accel world. As VanQ mentioned, it is pretty good.

2) Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan). Set in a world where mankind has been pushed behind a set of three walls 50m high by man eating Giants (or Titans) ranging from as small as 3m to about 25m. I have to say, shit doesn't hit the fan quickly in this, it is more catapulted. And that is as far as I am willing to spoil this.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Just to name a few-

Tiger and Bunny- It's pretty much Japan take on Western Superheroes and they did a good job on it too!

Samurai 7- A cyberpunk ish version to that classic movie, Samurai vs giant mechs? Yes please!

Shirokuma Cafe- This is not for everyone as it is more mudane and real life setting but I just find that anime so relaxing to watch!

Jojo's Bizzare Adventure- This is a newer anime but it from a acclaim manga. It feature manly men, over the top expression and reaction and a killer soundtrack and aswell awesome fightscene and lore (the whole series is base on one family generation).

 

[Terratina.]

Most of what I would say has been said up there [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.407851.17030088]. I'm going to throw in Persona 4: The Animation because it is a really good adaption of the video game. If you watch .hack//SIGN and enjoy it, I would recommend .hack//Roots which is the tale of a MMO newbie being drawn into something bigger than himself - the struggle between two rival guilds for a rare item that is rumored to be able to override the very foundations of the game. Seeing as Eden of the East is on the OP's list, I'll throw in another recommendation for another .hack anime: .hack//Quantum. Which has awesome art and awesome pacing and is probably the best of the .hack animes.

 

[barbzilla]

Awesome recommendations, I'm going to have to make a list off of this thread! My current starting list is as follows:
Shingeki no Kyojin
Baccano
Memories
Samurai 7
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
Kino's Journey
Gintama
Tiger and Bunny

I've actually got a full list from everything recommended, but those are the ones I intend to start on. I did start watching Deadman Wonderland last night, and thus far its been pretty entertaining.

Most of what I would say has been said up there [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.407851.17030088]. I'm going to throw in Persona 4: The Animation because it is a really good adaption of the video game. If you watch .hack//SIGN and enjoy it, I would recommend .hack//Roots which is the tale of a MMO newbie being drawn into something bigger than himself - the struggle between two rival guilds for a rare item that is rumored to be able to override the very foundations of the game. Seeing as Eden of the East is on the OP's list, I'll throw in another recommendation for another .hack anime: .hack//Quantum. Which has awesome art and awesome pacing and is probably the best of the .hack animes.

Is Eden of the East a .hack?

 

[Terratina.]

Is Eden of the East a .hack?

No, it's just very similar in tone to .hack//Quantum.

 

[barbzilla]

Is Eden of the East a .hack?

No, it's just very similar in tone to .hack//Quantum.

Ah, I was wondering when you brought it up due to EotE. If they are as similar as I hope, they may make for very good watching. I just hope the ending is much better than EotE (I couldn't stand the afterschool special approach they took).

 

[Terratina.]

Ah, I was wondering when you brought it up due to EotE. If they are as similar as I hope, they may make for very good watching. I just hope the ending is much better than EotE (I couldn't stand the afterschool special approach they took).

.hack//Quantum is similar in the fact that the main female lead meets a person with no memory of who he is and has a MacGuffin that can cause major changes. Things get rather crazy in the third act though, however, the ending is decent enough.

 

[sextus the crazy]

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you have any love of Magical Girl shows, Drama, action series, or just good shit in general, watch it. It's one of the best series in recent memory.

 

[barbzilla]

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you have any love of Magical Girl shows, Drama, action series, or just good shit in general, watch it. It's one of the best series in recent memory.

Not sure what a Magical Girl show is, but I'll give it a go. My girlfriend may enjoy it, if nothing else.

 

[steveschmidt85]

I would recommend few anime which I recently completed.

Beck
Mirai Nikki
Golden Boy
Oreshura
Shingetsutan Tsukihime