The Favorite Anime Thread

[ThePaul]

So most of us here tend to be people that enjoy Anime a lot and talk about it every now and then, so why not have a thread for talking about it, and I don't know.... Listing which ones you like the best of all?

In order to help you keep the lists to something manageable, and thus free up more time for watching anime and other things, here are some suggestions. Feel free to ignore them and just post 8 pages of text, though.

1. Try to keep it to stuff that you really love. You know, stuff you can (and have, if it's old enough) watch over and over. Stuff you really want other people to see, and will force them to watch. Stuff that just gets you every time (with laughter, tears, table flipping, etc)

2. Don't include things that were written and directed by sandwiches

3. Ignore that second thing

4. Use the American definition of anime (i.e. any Animation that comes out of Japan) instead of the Japanese (i.e. any animation).

5. Don't kill anyone in order to write this list

6. Have Fun


Okkiday, so have at it. I'll write mine later, as inspiration isn't hitting me right now and I got dreams to have. Good luck and such.

[Farore]

I guess I should preface this with the fact that I really haven't seen much anime. Mostly I've seen what Roll has shown me. Don't expect anything crazy or that you haven't seen >.< I also can't watch anything that hasn't been dubbed. I can watch what's going on or I can read, can't do both

1. Trigun
2. Soul Eater
3. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia
4. Gurren Laggan
5. Angelic Layer
6. Cowboy Bebop
7. The Life and Times of Sandwich McGee.

That last one is a lie. I just threw a sandwich at the TV and pretended stuff was happening as it slid off. That's all that is coming to my head right now so it is sadly a complete list of all the series I've seen.

Disclaimer: No animals were hurt during the writing of this post. A short green munchkin may have been maimed, but no death resulted.

[Kerreth]

Yeah, my list of anime I've completely watched (or plan to finish watching) is pretty short too.

Full Metal Alchemist
Persona 4
Baccano!
Nichijou

[RollCasket]

It's hard for me to come up with a list because I can't remember all of what I've seen and not sure how I'd order them/narrow them down. If there were a list site like there is for games it'd help a lot lol. It's also hard because some shows have multiple seasons and some seasons may have started good or instead ended good and that makes them hard to place D= Also since I showed Farore some of my more favorites I'll omit those from my list.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
8. (opening for 2nd season but I like all of them)
9.
10. .hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu () I like the whole story/everything of .hack, though GU was my fav of the games (storywise too) the anime for it is bad.

I'm sure I'm missing some important ones but I didn't wanna do more than 10 =X

[Adol The Red]

Here at the top are my favorites. The must see section, if you will.

1. Elfen Lied- Great, great show, but bloody, and can be hard on anyone with a human level of empathy. Still, great show.
2. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind- My favorite overall movie, but still an anime, so it has to be on here.
3. The Slayers- With a focus on season 2, though they are all great. (Still haven't seen the latest ones).
4. Trigun- Awesome, all around.
5. Solty Rei- Maybe for me not on the same level as the others, but I felt more comforatable with a list of five, and it still is a great show.

And here are other good series to check out. Gundam (even if you're not a fan I would suggest giving 8th MS Team a look), GunXSword, Gurren Laggan, Evangelion, Cowboy Beebop, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, Hell Girl, Noire...

Could keep going, but I'll stop there.

[ThePaul]

I'm pretty sure there are several list sites, Roll. I think the one I used to use was Called something simple like My Anime List dot Com, even.

[Bear]

This is an interesting thread. It is really tough to narrow down to a manageable size, as of course there is a lot of great stuff. Anyways, let's go with top 5 with a highly recommended quick pick list; I won't include movies because I think they (and manga) should be separate lists.

1. Gurren Lagann
Human spirit anime always rank high for me. It is empowering and fires me up, gets me excited and charges up my drive. With that in mind, Gurren Lagann is the absolute crème de la crème. It fires on all cylinders and never lets you go. From start to finish, this is a series that everyone owes it to themselves to watch.

2. One Piece
What can I say? One Piece is just amazing. It's fun, energetic, light hearted, silly and bad ass all at once. It has interesting characters and great settings; it sparks the imagination and provokes your curiosity about its world. The later seasons start to drag on with filler content making them not as tight, but all the way through the end of the Skypiea arc, you are good to go (Ep. 195). I recommend watching at least until the Enies Lobby arc though (Ep. 325), as there is some great events to be had. After that, you might be better off reading the manga and going back to the anime for key episodes. Also worth noting is the superb music in this series. Don't let the volume of episodes or art style deter you. DON'T.

3. Hajime no Ippo
Another human spirit anime, this time about boxing. Great pacing, great characters, amazing fights and best of all, no filler in the anime. The protagonist Ippo starts out as a kid who is bullied through his childhood, wants to be reborn, and his search for what it means to be strong. This ranks high from my love of it, but would rank lower if I were trying to inject someone with a diverse anime set.

4. Escaflowne
A mysterious, magical, intriguing and dark series where the heroine is teleported out of her simple high school life into a world full of dragons, airships and diverse species.

5. Kaleido Star
A fun and silly anime, but it's another human spirit anime at its core (do you see a trend?). The heroine Sora wants nothing more than to be a stage performer on the worlds greatest stage, The Kaleido Stage. The Cirque du Soleil of anime, perhaps with a bit more whimsy.

Okay, now for the rest I highly recommend:
Gunbuster 1 and 2
Macross Plus
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia
Golden Boy
Kino's Journey
Fushigi Yugi

I might add more I'm forgetting and there are many that need to be on an honorable mention list. I'll add later as I see fit.

Farore it just takes practice, I think. I would recommend trying because so many otherwise great anime are terribly dubbed. Things seem to be getting better recently and movies are much better at it, but man...some of the English voice actors are just...so BAD.

Speaking of Angelic Layer from Farore's list. I always loved the concept of that anime, so much so in fact that my first guild in RO was "Masters of the Layer". I even named my main character, the guild leader, "Oujirou's Wizard", based on one of my favorite characters. I made him an assassin because Wizard is fast and melee range and I wanted to play a dual wielding assassin like Hawkeye from Seiken Densetsu 3. I would constantly get asked in game why I named an assassin, wizard. If you've wondered why my vent name is "Wiz", now you know. It is still a nickname I've kept with me for 7+ years.

[chrisb]

^ Kaleido Star?! Finally another dude who admits to enjoying it lol.

My list:

*not in my top 10, but still love: Sailor Moon, Kaleido Star, 12 Kingdoms, Kanon, Noir, Najica Blitz, Haibane Renmei, and Witch Hunter Robin.

10. Panty and Stocking - great techno soundtrack, bizarre, stupid, so over the top it's fun.
9. Kino's Journey - Beautiful and eerie.
8. Samurai Champloo - AMAZING soundtrack, good over the top fun, characters you come to love.
7. NANA - realistic romance, cool music, awesome main characters.
6. Victorian Romance Emma - sweet, cute, touching, historically accurate.
5. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - awesome pseudo-politics and very intelligent.
04. The Count of Monte Cristo Gankutsuou - lame start that just keeps building up to an amazing and heartbreaking end.
03. Koi Kaze - disturbing and beautiful story of a brother and sister who's relationship spirals into something dark, twisted, and honest.
02. Red Garden - BEST CHARACTERS EVER. Story doesn't make a lot of sense, but the atmosphere, art and the character development are top notch.
01. Utena - one of the few anime I can call a masterpiece. May sound nerdy but I actually learned how to be a true friend through this show. Fantastic characters and emotional story about adolescence. The quirky random weird symbolism and sword fights are good too.

[Bear]

*Bro-fist's Crispy*

Sora is one of my fave characters, actually. I can always identify with someone who has been on the receiving end of exclusion and persevered through passionate determination and resiliency.

I don't think it's at all silly to gleam life lessons from fiction - so much fiction is steeped in reality anyways and it is certainly an expression of its creators experiences. I watch anime often for inspiration (mostly Hajime no Ippo) - to not let myself give up or run away on something I care enough about, despite seemingly impossible odds against people or circumstances I consider above myself.

[Farore]

My main problem is that I can't just quickly read it and then go back to watching. When I read I have to do it in the character's voice, or what I imagine their voice to be. I can read quickly, but when I do it ends up being so monotone and ruins the experience for me. Reading to me is so similar to watching a movie that it ends up being incredibly hard to do both at once. Roll always cringes, but I have to say: I'd really prefer a bad dub than no dub at all.

Adol, yay Trigun! I think that was really the series that made it click for me. Most of them Roll and I would watch an episode or two a week, but when we started Trigun I was hooked. I'm pretty sure we went through a disc or two in one sitting. And, for not good reason, I would squee and jump up and down excitedly every time the black cat showed up.

I completely forgot about Samurai Champloo until Roll and Crispy posted it in their lists. I enjoyed that one. Another I forgot that no one mentioned yet is Eden of the East. That was actually one that I wanted to watch with Roll more that he did.