Japanese cartoons
I need some recommendations of anime.
I have been really bored lately after work. I just go home and play Disgaea or read through my RA Salvatore. But my book supply is running dry, and Disgaea, while fun, is painfully repetitive and can't be endured for long hours ever consecutive night. So, I need some stuff to watch.
I was a rare breed of Japanese major in college. I was only one of four or five in the whole world who was passionate about Japanese but completely ambivalent towards anime. I didn't hate it. I didn't like it. I had no real strong opinion about it.
I have enjoyed a few animes though. I just finished watching Fullmetal Alchemist, which I downloaded about six months ago and just never did anything with. Love Hina was fun watching with illithid, because we had a fun game where we would scream boobies at the top of our lungs every time we saw a gratuitous chest shot. It made our voices hoarse.
There are few things in this world I hate more than Evangelion. It was the absolute worst piece of trash I have ever endured in my entire life. They went through a systematic build up of religious references, before they were bland and overdone in other media. Then, by episode 26, the writers realized they were at the end of the series, so they quickly thatched together an internal monologue for an ending, and said congratulations for no real reason.
I wish I could tell you more, but that's most of the anime I have any decent experience with, beyond the occasional patterings of Ranma on TV before I went to school in the morning.
So, here's what I'm looking for:
1. It can be funny or serious, no big deal. But if it's serious, it has to actually go somewhere and have meaning. I don't mind having to seriously sit and think about an ending, but the ending DOES have to be intuitive.
2. It can't require too much attention. I like to play video games while watching stuff on TV at the same time. I can multi-task that way.
3. Nothing too long. Dragonball Z has like 40,000 episodes to it, and I'd like to finish whatever you recommend sometime in my lifetime.
Your thoughts?
I have been really bored lately after work. I just go home and play Disgaea or read through my RA Salvatore. But my book supply is running dry, and Disgaea, while fun, is painfully repetitive and can't be endured for long hours ever consecutive night. So, I need some stuff to watch.
I was a rare breed of Japanese major in college. I was only one of four or five in the whole world who was passionate about Japanese but completely ambivalent towards anime. I didn't hate it. I didn't like it. I had no real strong opinion about it.
I have enjoyed a few animes though. I just finished watching Fullmetal Alchemist, which I downloaded about six months ago and just never did anything with. Love Hina was fun watching with illithid, because we had a fun game where we would scream boobies at the top of our lungs every time we saw a gratuitous chest shot. It made our voices hoarse.
There are few things in this world I hate more than Evangelion. It was the absolute worst piece of trash I have ever endured in my entire life. They went through a systematic build up of religious references, before they were bland and overdone in other media. Then, by episode 26, the writers realized they were at the end of the series, so they quickly thatched together an internal monologue for an ending, and said congratulations for no real reason.
I wish I could tell you more, but that's most of the anime I have any decent experience with, beyond the occasional patterings of Ranma on TV before I went to school in the morning.
So, here's what I'm looking for:
1. It can be funny or serious, no big deal. But if it's serious, it has to actually go somewhere and have meaning. I don't mind having to seriously sit and think about an ending, but the ending DOES have to be intuitive.
2. It can't require too much attention. I like to play video games while watching stuff on TV at the same time. I can multi-task that way.
3. Nothing too long. Dragonball Z has like 40,000 episodes to it, and I'd like to finish whatever you recommend sometime in my lifetime.
Your thoughts?
Comments
Don't judge Evangelion too harshly by its ending, as it was largely a product of budget and scheduling constraints toward the end of the series' production. They've since retconned a new ending with the films. I really enjoyed both Death and Rebirth and End of Evangelion, and would suggest you give those a try. The pacing is much better than the show, and the ending was a lot deeper than the introspective snoozefest that was the old ending.
Also, watch FLCL. After finishing the Evangelion films, Studio Gainax apparently went batshit insane and decided to make the best six-episode anime ever.
If you're a fan of parody, it doesn't get much better than Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. Some brilliant genre-hopping fun to be had therein.
Azumanga Daioh is pretty much a perfect adaptation of a 四コマ to animation. I would not have thought such a thing was possible, but all the fast gags are carried over brilliantly. It may seem a little off-putting to see that it's a comic about high school girls, but the humor is some of the best I've ever seen in an anime. Stef and Matt can vouch for me. So can anyone else that has seen the show, because everyone likes it.
Edit: Last Exile is also a really good anime, but it also might need more attention than you want to give.
Also you might want to check out Air Master because, though it may not have the most in depth story (I don't really know, only on episode 6) the fight scenes are MARVELOUS. They're a bit DBZ like in that they're not exactly possible, but damn are they entertaining. Oh, and it has several gratuitous panty shots during the fights, they sorta subtract from its coolness because there's no better way to get off-topic from the fight than by exposing the main characters undergarments. I mean come on though, she fights in a school uniform, what the hell?
Edit II: I also have to add Kaze no Stigma to the list because of the shear entertainment value of what you should probably call "total pwnage." It gets a bit off track near the middle of the series but resumes with a good finale.
Edit III: Whoa, damn I'm awesome, put Eureka 7 on the list too, it requires a bit more attention again but damn is it good.
Edit IV: Whoa boy, I'm going overboard!!! Anyways put Wolfs Rain up there too, damn good.
Also, I can't help you. I really don't like anime. But you could always get Doctor Who. That's a good show.
Also, how has nobody mentioned The Meloncholy of Haruhi Suzumiya? That show was awesome!
Remember tho: The episodes are NOT in chronological order, it's on purpose
Check out Gurren Lagan, it takes everything awesome about giant robots and goes completely insane with it. I believe there's one scene where a robot punches another robot so hard it tears a hole in time-space. Seriously. Also Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show made by Nickelodeon with an anime style. It's about a kid destined to stop a horrible war and save the world. It sounds kinda cliche but it's got great characters and the fights are pretty cool too.
I also liked Deathnote and Cowboy Bebop. You could always try to find that show with the go-carts. OH! It was on for a short time when we just arrived in Japan. There was Viewtiful Joe movie/mini-series. Try to find that.
Deathnote started out kinda epic, but it got incredibly stale and boring after that. If you watch nothing but the first 15 episodes, you'll enjoy it.
Even after Light became all evil again, he was still flippin' lame.
<SPOILERS> I was also pissed off when they killed off L, he was just replaced in the next episode. WTFthehell was up that with that shit!? Why kill someone off when you're just going to make a character that's exactly the same as him? </SPOILERS>
Honey & Clover - Probably my favorite ever
Read or Die
Trigun - Another classic like cowboy bebop
Black Lagoon - The closest show to Cowboy Bebop I've seen, straight bitchin'
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - A second vote for gurren lagann if you like absurd over the top action (same studio that did FLCL)
Or just go HERE and look at the top rated shows, that's how I go about it.
And I'd pretty much have to disagree with most of NoLonger's post, hahaha.
Edit: if you don;t want to download 'um you could probably watch all of the above anime on anime6.org.
Also I watched Puni Puni Poemy... It was very odd, from the characters and humor I could tell that the same director and animator made Excel Saga
http://www.baka-tsuki.net/project/index.php?title=Suzumiya_Haruhi
After that, I will probably do Cowboy Bebop or Trigun.
Hey, FuzzyRobot, is "Honey & Clover" interesting after Morita goes to America? Morita is my favorite character in the series, and without him the episodes feel sluggish...
I also got the first 5 seasons of Good Eats that way too.
Hellsing looked good, but it also looked like I had to pay a lot of attention. And, the version is in Japanese, and my Japanese is not so good anymore. I need to pay active attention to follow, I can't passively listen anymore.
But, sometimes they run those other non-related cartoons in the middle, as many kids shows tend to do, and those suck. I'm not a fan of those.
Hmmmm...I don't really remember where in the series that is or even which season, I just remember really liking the series overall. So I would recommend sticking with it.
If there weren't so many other things to watch I'd rewatch it.
I think that kids TV shows these days suck ass, and this generation of kids is going to grow up retarded. I'm going to start archiving all of my good shows, so I can make my kids watch good stuff when they get older. And when they exist.
EDIT: Mighty Max is also SCIENCE-tastic! At the end of every episode, Max does a brief educational summary of where they went. In the space episode, he talked about going into deep space, and then he said this: "Hey I bet you didn't know that space time is actually curved, and that scientists are moving toward a theory that unifies quantum mechanics and general relatively in a quantum theory of gravitation!"