Anime reccomendations?

[Boogiebop]

Hey,all.
I've read and enjoyed some of Evangelion (only up to when Rei stabs that thing with the giant spear, though, so don't drop any spoilers, please!), and watched Naruto obsessively for a while.

Does anyone have any reccomendations for some new anime to watch or read?

Some things to keep in mind:

1) I am a total newb when it comes to anime, so dont think "oh, he's probably already read that" because I probably have'nt.

2) My Dad is a pastor, and he really comes down hard on cartoon n00dity*, so keeping that to a minimum would be great.

3) I'm really into sci-fi.

*yeah, I have a content filter. sucks, eh?

Be sure to get me a photo of your dads face if you ever watch NGE: Death and Rebirth. It'll be awesome.

Hell I'm a stone cold, atheist, cynical bastard and my face was a treat.

[Keffria]

Eh, you know what? I wouldn't recommend Evangelion, except maybe as a sort of Rite of Passage that every anime-watcher (I REFUSE to say 'otaku') has to go through at some point whether they like it or not.

Honestly, I thought it was trying to be two series. At first, it was a boring Adolescents Save the World With Robots anime with the requisite loser protagonist and male-targeted fanservice, and (for the most part) a severe lack of character development. Oh, and some gratuitous religious and mythological imagery thrown in for kicks. Later, it was a weird cop-out involving pretentious and intentionally confusing psycho-babble and more religious stuff... Just because something's difficult to understand doesn't mean that it's necessarily good.

Plus, certain people feel the need to compare all sci-fi series (especially mecha-based ones) to Evangelion. News flash: anime had robots, angst, and Judeo-Christian imagery before that show made its debut. Nevertheless, Evangelion has ruined quite a few series in fanboys' eyes. (Off-hand, I'd name Argento Soma and RahXephon, both of which are often bashed as Eva clones... Incidentally, I thought the latter was decent, and the former wasn't bad, either, though neither is exactly a masterpiece or anything I'd fangirl over.)

You know what? If someone posts something about anime on here, it's almost a guarantee that I'll say something. I *like* anime/manga, even though so very, very much of it is crap. The series that don't suck make up for the ones that make my eyes bleed.

[Mercury Hat]

The lesson here is Loveless makes any anime look like gold.

Isn't your anime club the same one that decided to watch Descendents of Darkness? Someone there must be a BL fan, which always sucks. -_-

Yeah, we watched that one as well but there wasn't much indication in the first episode of that there'd be so much man-lust. I think the former president tricked us into watching it by saying it was about the death gods and stuff. Loveless... we knew it would only get worse from then on, but I think that one was voted in to see just how terrible it would get. And it got pretty terrible. Almost anytime something happened, the whole room just let out a big "auuuuugh".

The anime of Monster follows the manga almost to the letter, but it adds in a kickass opening and closing song so I like it more. The only problem is it's 74 episodes so it takes up about 12gigs of space .

But seriously, I'll say Mushishi again and that everyone who has access to bittorrent should get the fansubs. I hope they finish coming out in time to nominate it in anime club.

[Keffria]

The best thing that can be said about Loveless is that the main character was at least seeing a therapist, which is something that virtually every male anime protagonist needs.

I'd actually been holding off on Mushishi because I wanted to read the manga instead, but I may just have to watch it, since it doesn't look like anyone's going to pick it up so that I can hold the book in my hands.

Oh... And has anyone ever heard of "Requiem From the Darkness"? I rather liked that show. Interesting visual style, no real character development to speak of, but a series of interesting and not-particularly-creepy-though-they're-supposed-to-be mysteries. But nobody has ever responded with anything but 'huh?' when I mention it.

[Mercury Hat]

The best thing that can be said about Loveless is that the main character was at least seeing a therapist, which is something that virtually every male anime protagonist needs.

That's the worst part because she wants to bone him, too, and she's even older than blondie!

I'd actually been holding off on Mushishi because I wanted to read the manga instead, but I may just have to watch it, since it doesn't look like anyone's going to pick it up so that I can hold the book in my hands.

From what I hear, the anime follows chapters of the manga very closely, with each chapter or two being single stories like the episodes of the show. I found a few scanlations of it, but the art kinda put me off: all the characters' limbs are long and gangly, even worse than CLAMP stuff.

[Cat42]

**the first post**

Be sure to get me a photo of your dads face if you ever watch NGE: Death and Rebirth. It'll be awesome.

Hell I'm a stone cold, atheist, cynical bastard and my face was a treat.

For real and for true you can skip Death and Rebirth. Death is just a recap of the series and has no new content if you watch the director's cuts, and Rebirth is the first half hour of End of Evangelion.

Death and Rebirth was made for 2 reasons

1) It'd been awhile since the series had aired so people would probably need a refresher course
2) GAINAX (as was typical of them at the time) was running behind schedual. If you watch the trailers for End of Eva, you'll notice a great deal of it is the animatic.

I will say one thing about the use of the religious and psychology references: Supposedly, Anno has gone on record saying that he used that to help tell the story to show that he's smarter than alot of other people.

I know he's gone on record about Eva saying that he threw everything of himself into the story.
If you look at his earlier work, you'll see references to the works of Freud and Jung, as well as religious references, but never as concentrated as Eva.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Is fairly safe reguarding nudity, if I remember correctly

[Brockway]

I finally finished Samurai 7. I have the original somewhere on my computer, so I kinda knew what would happen, but the beginning is soooo boring. I stopped watching at like episode 5 back when it was still coming out.

It really picked up once they left that stupid city! I watched the last 17 episodes over the past couple days, and really enjoyed it. Some stuff was different from the original (other than the obvious robots and guns) but it still had the awesome ending.

...

Three things bugged me though in the story though.

The young Samurai got some in the original!! I figured the miko was the love interest, but nooo, she liked old guy. Her amulet even turned all orange >_< The 3rd thing was Sanae died in the original. She was dead in a bandit cave! Her husband (Ruriwhatever) went all crazy like young Samurai did in this one.

[[AlmightyPyro]]

Cowboy Bebop and Trigun are the only Anime you'll ever need.

[RemusShepherd]

I know he's gone on record about Eva saying that he threw everything of himself into the story.
If you look at his earlier work, you'll see references to the works of Freud and Jung, as well as religious references, but never as concentrated as Eva.

Well... The creator of NGE was on anti-psychotic medication for the first half of the show. If you watch the episodes back to back, you can almost see the instant when the meds wore off. That's why the early episodes are mostly happy-feely schoolkid stuff, and the late episodes are wacked-out angst and craziness.

From what I hear, he went back on his medication after the series ended. And then he was told to do Death and Rebirth. So it has all the themes that came out in his psychotic script-writing phase, but none of the crazy genius he had when his brain was imbalanced.

I love the series, myself, especially the last half.

[Cat42]

Well... The creator of NGE was on anti-psychotic medication for the first half of the show. If you watch the episodes back to back, you can almost see the instant when the meds wore off. That's why the early episodes are mostly happy-feely schoolkid stuff, and the late episodes are wacked-out angst and craziness.

From what I hear, he went back on his medication after the series ended. And then he was told to do Death and Rebirth. So it has all the themes that came out in his psychotic script-writing phase, but none of the crazy genius he had when his brain was imbalanced.

No, Anno left the Production of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and went through a 4 year long depression. He came back with Eva, and it intentionally starts out like that to lull the viewer into a false sense of security. Hell, if you just watch the opening sequence, they give away alot of stuff that happends towards the end, even in the movie.

Death and Re-Birth was primarily to buy time. End of Eva was to compliment the TV ending, though is a very different ending (I'm meaning Shinji's final descion). It's also sort of a "Screw you" to the fans who sent him death threats over the TV ending.
Don't believe me?
Well Kimochi warui.

[Skylark King]

Here you go... here's the list of Sci-Fi anime everyone should see that has never been aired on Cartoon Network:

Irresponsible Captain Tylor
Martian Sucessor Nadesico
Wings of Honneamise
Crest/Banner of the Stars
Crusher Joe (you Bebop fans owe a metric fuckton to this show)
Macross 7 (the 7 is important)

There's lots more, but those are readilly available.

[KittyKatBlack]

Man, 4 pages and you people missed all this?

C'mon...


Read or Die.

Happy Lesson.

Onagai Teacher.

Chobits.

Gunsmith Cats.

Armatage (Was interesting but I forgot if there was nudity in it or not.)

(I'd suggest Black Lagoon and Desert Punk, both of which are awesome, but very heavy on the adult themes, unfortunately.)

Things to steer clear of:

Galaxy Express 999. (In my opinion probably one of the worst animes made.)

Ghost in the Shell Original Movie. (I loved the Ghost in the Shell manga. This movie was AWFUL compared to the original. Though, Stand Alone Complex was done much better.)


Also, I'm surprised that a pastor would let you watch Evangelion of all things. Unless he doesn't actually know what the show is about... you know, with them fighting against the will of God and killing angels and all that....

[Rock_dash]

Galaxy Express 999. (In my opinion probably one of the worst animes made.)

Are you talking about the series or the movie?

Also I like the first Armitage movie (No nudity that I can recall), but the second one was kind of a snooze fest, IMO. It lacked anything that made the first one interesting.

[Boogiebop]

**the first post**

Be sure to get me a photo of your dads face if you ever watch NGE: Death and Rebirth. It'll be awesome.

Hell I'm a stone cold, atheist, cynical bastard and my face was a treat.

For real and for true you can skip Death and Rebirth. Death is just a recap of the series and has no new content if you watch the director's cuts, and Rebirth is the first half hour of End of Evangelion.

Death and Rebirth was made for 2 reasons

1) It'd been awhile since the series had aired so people would probably need a refresher course
2) GAINAX (as was typical of them at the time) was running behind schedual. If you watch the trailers for End of Eva, you'll notice a great deal of it is the animatic.

I will say one thing about the use of the religious and psychology references: Supposedly, Anno has gone on record saying that he used that to help tell the story to show that he's smarter than alot of other people.

I know he's gone on record about Eva saying that he threw everything of himself into the story.
If you look at his earlier work, you'll see references to the works of Freud and Jung, as well as religious references, but never as concentrated as Eva.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Is fairly safe reguarding nudity, if I remember correctly

We must be looking at different DVDs then. Death was filler but rebirth was very much different from the end of Evangelion DVD i have. Then again I did get them from two different regions.

Rebirth in particular had the 'Asuka drops boat on people's head' scene and Aoba's (i think it's Aoba) awesome "YOU KILL OR YOU DIE" line and ends with Shinji hollering at the camera. E.O.E takes off just after that. So essentially half of death and rebirth is filler. That being said, death does feature 'that' scene (everyone who's seen it knows what I'm talking about) which really threw me off.

As for NGE as an anime series. It's not the absolute work of genius some fans make it out to be. A lot of it falls prey to Anno's egotism (namely the last few episodes of the series) that being said I'm still more fond of the series ending than the alternate movie ending. It struck me as more true to the central theme of the series.

Oh and I second planetes, good series. I also recomend Gundam Seed, it's the only gundam series I can stand (Destiny was awful).

[Biev]

I don't know your tastes, but here are some of my favorites. Anime series: Serial Experiments Lain, Last Exile. Movies: Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. Manga: Chobits.

[Cat42]

Armatage (Was interesting but I forgot if there was nudity in it or not.)

I was gonna recomend Armitage III (The OVA, not Poly-Matrix, that's just rededit dub crap with a sleepy Keifer Sutherland).


In my copy (Mangle Entertainment's Region 1), Rebirth ends right before the Completed Eva series touches down.

In End of Eva (Mangle Entertainment's Region 1), Episode 25' contains all of rebirth, and ends when Unit 01 finally launches, and Shinji (as always) is screaming at the top of his lungs.

And in Death, did you mean the scene with Gendo's Hand while he's talking to Unit 01?

[Rock_dash]

And in Death, did you mean the scene with Gendo's Hand while he's talking to Unit 01?

I assumed he meant the "hand full of baby batter" scene.

[KittyKatBlack]

Thought of a few more:

Nadesco

Those Who Hunt Elves

Bakaretsu Hunters (Sorcerer Hunters)

Outlaw Star

Dirty Pair Flash (I'm pretty sure there's no nudity in it, but I haven't watched the entire series. None from what I've seen though.)

I know there was another one, but I can't remember exactly which one it was.

(I would suggest Mahoromatic and Ranma 1/2 but both contain nudity. Not sexual in nature, generally. More for comedic effect, but it's still nudity.)

Galaxy Express 999. (In my opinion probably one of the worst animes made.)

Are you talking about the series or the movie?

Movie. Lame plot, horrible art and shallow characters. Dragonball Z had better production value. And I hate Dragonball Z.

[Black Sparrow]

Outlaw Star

That one's a good sci-fi series. But you may need to get the edited version. The female lead is nude quite often, in a nonsexual way.

[KittyKatBlack]

Outlaw Star

That one's a good sci-fi series. But you may need to get the edited version. The female lead is nude quite often, in a nonsexual way.

Ah, Melfina. I forgot all about that part....