Most of my exposure with anime was whatever was on Toonami and Adult Swim in the 2000s. I’ve not watched stuff like, Ghost In The Shell, Cowboy Bebop (only disjointed episodes out of order), Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I know are highly regarded.
I’ve seen just about every Miyazaki movie at this point. I’ve seen Akeria.
I’m sure there’s more mainstream shows and non mainstream shows that I’m missing and would enjoy.
Thoughts?
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Grab a big box of tissues and watch Grave of Fireflies. Hard pressed to name a piece of cinema that’s made me a bigger anti-war guy.
For lighter stuff - Full Metal Alchemist (I’m partial to Brotherhood over the original, but they’re both good). Avatar: the Last Airbender is Amerime and a bit young, but a genuinely great story. I’ve got a special place in my heart for “Scraped Princess” and “Escaflowne” as well.
Two of my favorite new anime, Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren, also great stuff. They’re just not finished yet, so you can’t binge them.
I just caught up on Delicious in Dungeon, it is such a fun anime. I’ve never bought a magna before, but I just had to get started on DinD so I bought the first two Volumes from a local book store.
I’ve heard of Grave of the Fireflies. I’ll put it on the list but having two young kids makes watching stuff like that very hard. You become very sensitive to kid stuff once you have a kid heh.
FMA is definitely something I’d like, caught random episodes over the years. We just finished watching ATLA for the dozenth time, this time with our kiddo, she liked it, but definitely over her head at this age.
I’ll look up the others you mentioned! Thanks Comrade!
Gotta watch Full Metal, far and away my favorite of all time.
The original came out while the Manga was still being written so it suffered the same way Game of Thrones did, to a much lesser extent but the ending is just waaaay out there. Brotherhood doesn’t tell all them same backstory, but it starts and never slows down.
For first time viewing I always recommend Brotherhood. There is a fan made viewing order that starts with the original then switches to Brotherhood, but it would be kinda confusing as some plots that weren’t from the Manga get laid down that just get dropped after the switch.
I’ve never bought a magna before, but I just had to get started on DinD so I bought the first two Volumes from a local book store.
The Mimic scene was a meme that was running around a year or two back. Once I recognized the show from that, I was hooked.
We just finished watching ATLA for the dozenth time, this time with our kiddo, she liked it, but definitely over her head at this age.
Oh sure, but that’s what’s good. It hits on multiple levels.
Thanks Comrade!
I third? fourth? Brotherhood! I actually have a tradition of every few years watching A:TLA and then watching Brotherhood because it was how I introduced a late friend of mine to anime. They’re both really good stories about leaving your life behind and finding yourself on a journey.
Scrapped princess mentioned!
taking you literally and i’m going to go by decade here. only 2 per decade, which is gonna kill me for some of the later ones, but otherwise i’d be here all day
1970s
- mobile suit gundam: the 1979 anime that started it all, this is the best place to start for one of the biggest franchises in anime. fascinating to see where basically every scifi trope in anime comes from. but it’s also just an incredibly well told war story on its own, no broader context necessary. the way the mystery of char expands and gets revealed is incredible, amuro’s trauma is explored in some interesting depths, the whole cast is really strong. and it’s got classic scifi psychedelia in ways that make it obvious that it was coming off the tail end of 60s counterculture but in a really unique way that manages to feel super profound
- rose of versailles: oscar dejarjayes is the (fictional) captain of the royal guard in late 18th century france, serving under marie antoinette. a woman raised as a man so she could be her father’s heir, she’s basically the best at everything but is kinda dumb. courtly drama! exploration of gender in some kinda problematic but still very interesting ways that are very progressive for the 70s! and then the back half depicts france just falling apart in the leadup to the french revolution as the nobility completely fail the people. unrest builds, things get worse, and the french revolution happens
1980s
- armored trooper votoms: in the grim dark future of the whatever millennium this takes place in there is only war. chirico cuvie is an ex-soldier who just wants to figure out why his unit betrayed him, and is forced to live through the plot of every single action movie made in the 80s. he suffers through a cyberpunk megacity full of corrupt cops, underground mech fight rings, mad max style biker gangs, multiple prison breaks, and an evil priest. and that’s only in the first arc! later he fights in the vietnam war, gets trapped on an abandoned spaceship where all his sins are laid bare in front of him, wander the wastelands of a desert planet while being chased by someone after revenge, and ultimately collapse a massive galaxy spanning conspiracy. fantastic stuff, and the mechs in it are some of the coolest of all time. make sure you watch the sequel ovas because they rule.
- dallos: what if the battle of algiers happened in space? on the moon? and had mech fights? and was the first ever ova and was just absolutely gorgeous classic 80s animation? just really good stuff, the generational differences within the colony are fascinating
1990s
- revolutionary girl utena: utena tenjou has a dream. she’s going to become a prince on a white horse, just like the one who saved her when she was young. no hyperbole, the greatest show of all time. a surreal exploration of gender roles, funny animal antics, memory, sexuality, and the tyranny of the automobile. but most of all it’s about abuse, systems of power, and how to break free. if you watch one show i recommend please make it this one, i cannot say enough good things about it. infinitely gayer than you’d expect from a show that aired in the same timeslot as season 1 of pokemon. content warnings for a LOT of shit, lmk if you need anything specific
- turn a gundam: if you only watch one gundam it should be this one, it’s the best that gundam gets. after 2000 years, the people of the moon come down to resettle an alternate earth that’s basically pre world war one europe. the closest i think a tv show could come to matching (and honestly sometimes surpassing!) the pastoral kinda steampunk aesthetic pioneered by hayao miyazaki. incredibly gentle and brutally horrifying in equal measure, with all the damage you might imagine caused by asymmetrical mech warfare. also the protag has Gender in a way that’s remarkably well handled considering it was 1999. here’s a scene from the first episode that gives me goosebumps from how beautiful it is
2000s
- hellsing ultimate: if you like schlocky b-movies you’ll love this. hyperviolent in a way nothing else on this list is. vampires led by van helsing’s granddaughter and her servant alucard vs catholic supersoldiers vs nazis (most of the nazis are also vampires). imagine the coolest shit you can imagine vampires doing with the biggest guns you’ve ever seen (like, dual wielding anti-tank rifles is the START) and imagine it’s all presented with massive amounts of style. content warning for sexual assault, both threatened and enacted
- death note: kinda edgy incredibly dumb homoerotic mind games, just a lot of deeply ridiculous fun. light and L going back and forth while L’s theme plays is peak. nothing comes close. simply the best to ever do it at the things it’s trying to do
2010s
- revue starlight: the weirdest audition for a high school theater program i’ve ever seen. 7 girls are competing for the lead role, but this manifests as them having beautifully animated sword fights under the supervision of a giraffe. each girl gets her time in the spotlight where her own specific past and reasons for wanting the role are explored. all of them get real homoerotic with it. fascinating show with a lot of stuff to say about the nature of art and passion. the movie is even better than the show, so make sure you check that out after
- nichijou: absolutely wild comedy that tries every style in the book, cannot recommend it enough. words can’t really describe what makes the high school antics so good, but it’s willing to throw everything at the wall and every joke lands. it can have surreal pythonesque humor about strange societies that live on blimps right next to a very grounded comedy bit about 2 girls chatting and fucking with each other and they both work so well. i watched an episode at a time with friends over the course of months in between other stuff as a little treat and loved it
2020s
so i actually haven’t watched that much anime i love this decade, but there’s been some good ones
- bocchi the rock: kinda comparable to nichijou in some of the humor styles, but this has a much more structured story about an incredibly anxious high school girl joining a band and making friends. very pleasant, with some hysterical ways of portraying her fears and a super strong cast including the VERY attractive alcoholic bassist mentor. also has some incredible scenes when they’re performing, making you really believe this high school band has what it takes to maybe make this a full time thing one day. i’m rooting for them, and i’m rooting for bocchi to get a girlfriend! (it’s very funny that the series has a few lines that make it clear she’s gay but it never comes up on account of the crippling anxiety and resulting lack of any relationships or even crushes)
- keep your hands off eizouken: incredibly creative show about a crew of autistic teenagers who want to make anime. the 3 have to figure out all the different things it takes on their own, without letting their imaginations run wild and outstrip what 2.5 animators can do in a relatively short period of time. just a fantastic show, with one of the most energetic and fun opening credit sequences of all time
some honorable mentions:
- ranma 1/2: the harem anime is a longstanding institution. it was arguably created by rumiko takahashi and as is often the case the original is better than any imitators by a mile. in this case it’s because it throws a cast of lovable dipshits into a town together and just making them all fight each other over petty bullshit in ways that blow up spectacularly. plus it’s got Gender
- sailor moon: just deeply charming episodic adventures with some girls that kick ass and take names
- iron-blooded orphans: my second favorite gundam, basically designed in a lab to get linkin park amvs, but it’s also a really good story about child soldiers and the ways the hegemony functions
ones i won’t describe so this isnt the longest post ever
- flip flappers
- madoka magica
- hinamatsuri
- serial experiments lain
- golden kamuy
- jojo’s bizarre adventure
- bloom into you
also here's a bunch of movies
- liz and the blue bird: absolutely devastating quiet drama about the relationship between two members of a high school band. gorgeous, just absolutely beautiful
- vampire hunter d: bloodlust: you liked hellsing, right? here’s that but in a post apocalyptic fantasy world where the alucard equivalent is hired to rescue a kidnapped woman as things go rapidly off the rails
- millennium actress: satoshi kon’s masterpiece. the story of a famous actress, melding her movies and her life together seamlessly as we’re just along for the ride
- inu-oh: medieval japanese rock opera about a blind monk who invents playing like jimi hendrix teaming up with a monster who wants to regain his stolen humanity through the power of song and interpretive dance
- ghost in the shell: introspective, moody cyberpunk piece about personhood and being subsumed by the state. easily the single biggest influence on the matrix’s visual style. has a lot of gender going on- perfect blue: tight psychological thriller about the ways the entertainment industry exploits young women and tries to break them
- night is short, walk on girl: romcom about all the wacky things that happen to a couple college students in one night as the girl tries to drink her way through every bar in the city and the guy tries to find her so he can finally ask her out
- urusei yatsura: beautiful dreamer: what if the cast of a kinda formulaic sitcom were thrown into a david lynch movie and just had to deal?
+1 on Utena being the greatest show of all time. it’s a work of art with peerless depth and actual academic papers written about it. and yet one of the main characters turns into a cow. not a magical cow. an actual, grazing cow. seriously, I cannot stress enough how much this show is essential viewing.
the cow thing is super thematically important! it’s a good representation of her relationship with her family and with the patriarchy and the grooming she experiences! the bit where she lays an egg is even more thematically important, and also very funny
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Samurai Champloo, Gintama, Odd Taxi, Made in Abyss, Ouran High School Host Club, Soul Eater, Assassination Classroom, Chainsaw Man, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Baki, Cromartie High School, Azumanga Daioh, um…that’s all I can think of without googling
Made in Abyss
I came here to suggest that as a joke, with a link to my breathless rant about why Made in Abyss is the worst thing ever made. It’s a revolting show with terrible pacing, worse themes, and absolutely nothing going for it except the background surreal fantasy aesthetic, written by a pedophile who includes loli porn in the manga version.
I still have avoided that show thanks to your post.
Ouran shows un_mask_me has good taste though (it’s a cute classic)
Fair enough
It is wild that the art is soo good but the show is so bad. The production value is amazing. The world building is really intresting as well. It was one of the first dungeon cultivation shows to get big. It is just amazing that there are multiple story arcs about extreme and sexual violence being used on children and people signed off on it.
One of the songs was super popular on tiktok a while back. It was jarring.
It is wild that the art is soo good but the show is so bad.
Yeah, like those soft surreal fantasy landscapes are absolutely on point, and then it’s like the story does everything it can to just skip past it so it can revel in this consequence-free torture and exploitation of Riko, or get hyper focused on revolting ancap frenworld monsters for an entire season. The basic concept isn’t unsalvageable, but imo it would have required fixing the pacing, aging up all the characters, giving the characters actual progression both good and bad, and cutting a lot of the grossest and most clearly-the-author-is-getting-off-on-this shit.
Although even aesthetically I can’t shake the feeling that it’s really derivative and generic, but I can’t point to what it’s drawing on. Maybe just the general sort of surreal fantasy art that would make it into stuff like Heavy Metal or get used as pulp covers in the 70s and 80s.
I think it is encapsulating the early ps2 era vibes pretty perfectly. There is a specific era of cozy adventure type stuff I am picturing.
Thanks comrade! Chainsaw Man and Samurai Champloo are the only ones I recognize lol, definitely will give a look at the others.
I like these threads, I always add things to my watch list too
Have you seen Ping Pong the Animation?
I have not. Just watched the trailer, looks really cool!
mob psycho 100 is a delight.
Sazae-san is still going from 1969 to today.
I will literally only recommend you anime that has spanned across decades.
Sazae was a very liberated woman, and many of the early plotlines revolved around Sazae bossing around her husband, to the consternation of her neighbors, who believed that a man should be the head of his household. Later, Sazae became a feminist and was involved in many comical situations regarding her affiliation with her local women’s lib group.
-Wikipedia
Dear god do I even have enough time left to watch it all?
Notable ones from recent years:
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Birdie Wing - Lesbian golf anime. A European girl competes in unsanctioned underground golf tournaments to keep her family afloat, falls into love/rivalry with Japanese (underground unsanctioned) golf prodigy. Don’t worry if you have no interest in golf whatsoever, this anime makes golf look like an actually interesting sport
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Mob Psycho 100 - Wholesome, wacky, subversive. A shy, physically unfit, unpopular at school just so happens to be born with psychic powers greater than any other living human. However, the focus is the journey he has in improving himself physically, becoming more socially outgoing, and emotionally stable. He genuinely wants to live life where he succeeds or fails based on his effort rather than using powers given to him at birth. 3 seasons, fully contained story.
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Evangelion (followed by End of Evangelion), Madoka (followed by Madoka: Rebellion), One Punch Man, Mob Psycho 100, Redline, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun.
Oh shit, everything but Evangelion is after 2010, uhhhhhhhhhh Legend of the Galactic Heroes! There, now I’ve got 3 decades covered.
Legend of galactic heroes
Galaxy express 999
Gundam the original one.
Watch The Rose of Versailles. It’s very good. Manga was made in the early 70’s, anime 79-80.
check out future boy conan for a classic miyazaki adventure series. late 70s, incredible animation, kinda establishes a lot of the standard miyazaki tropes in a post-apocalyptic agrarian vs doom tech world. available on yewchube last i checked
Some gems that haven’t been mentioned yet:
00s-early10s (some personal favs from a LOT of anime I watched in this decade - geass, death note, etc all classics but well known and regarded).
School Rumble: Yes it’s highschool romcom, but perhaps the peak of the genre. Also a very early role for one of the greats, Ami Koshimizu as Tenma
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: The anti-high School romcom. I’ve always personally felt it was basically taking the piss out of shit like Negima and all the characters are fucked up. If you like Bakemonogatari you gotta go back and experience the original SHAFT kino.
Hidamari Sketch: the other SHAFT classic. This + SZS = Madoka. It’s ume-sensei’s work and the adaptation is very peak Shinbou style. As with most anime, there’s gonna be some fan service but I’ve always felt in terms of “cute girls doing cute thing” shows this was the most earnest, since it really also tackles what it means to be creative (they’re art students)
Kara no Kyoukai: technically movies but the best Nasuverse stuff and the only one I’d ever unequivocally recommend. Some great ufotable animation as well.
Eureka 7: surfing Mecha! Great music! A slow burn that you might not be able to get through the annoying protagonist for the first 30 episodes
Black Lagoon: doing crimes in the Pacific. It’s very cool and explicitly anti Nazi.
80s/90s
Gunbuster: my eternal recommend, though caveat- it’s Gainax with OVA fan service (nudity). Still one of the few truly great anime endings, it’s something else when you finally get to the final scene of episode 6. You will feel feelings.
G Gundam: you probably caught some of this on toonami, but it still rocks pretty damn hard as a hot blooded mecha show
Initial D: EUROBEAT
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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My recommended list to try out and see what you like
1 of the “old school” battle shonen: Dragon Ball (and DBZ + DBZA), Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece (God help you)
1 of the current battle shonen: My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Demon Slayer, or Jujitsu no Kaisen
1 of other classic shonen: Inuyasha, Hunter x Hunter, YuYu Hakusho, Yu-Ghi-Oh, Pokemon, or Digimon
Anti-Recommend to Ruroni Kenshin, it’s a good series but the author is a legit pedophile and is not being punished for his crimes
1 of “foreign” anime: Avatar the Last Airbender, Wakfu!, Black Dynamite, Boondocks
1 of One’s work: One Punch Man or Mob Psycho 100
1 of general romance: Clannad, Toradora, Your Name, Your Lie in April, Hibike Euphonium, Ouran Highschool Host Club (reverse harem!)
1 gay bait romance: Yuri on Ice, Free!
1 of school comedy: Kill me Baby, Nichijou, Daily Life of Highschool Boys, Chromartie Highschool
2 of old neck beard favs: Haruhi, Lucky Star, Code Geass, Serial Experiments Lain, Legend of the Galactic Heros, Afro Samurai, or Steins;Gate
Neon Genesis Evangelion- this is highly influential but try to watch some general Mecha beforehand to really appreciate
Tenga Toppa Gurren Lagann (does NOT count as a general Mecha for above)
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Revolutionary Student Utena
1 of (from most to least serious) Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, or Space Dandy
Azumanga Daioh or Yotsubato&, both are Slice of Life “comfy” series, Yotsubato& is the 4chan girl and manga only
Anti-Recommend to Usagi Drop
1 of: Gundam, Gundam Zeta, or Gundam Iron Blood Orphans
Frieren’s Journey
1 of the “trapped in video game”: Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, hack//sign, or Solo Leveling
1 of your edgy series: Attack on Titan, Goblin Slayer, Berserk (read the manga), or Puella Magi Madoka Magica
1 of Isekai: Re:Zero, Overlord, Tanya the Evil, or KonoSuba
If you like multiple of the Isekai shows then Isekai Quartet is for you
Movies:
Redline
Sword Of the Stranger
Grave of the Fireflies
don’t watch more than one big shonen, just go for one and if you like it maybe check out others. all the ones listed are hundreds of episodes (minus the modern ones, which are all kinda bad. many of the others are also kinda bad). check out yu yu hakusho, which is a very solid classic action series and is “only” ~100 episodes compared to naruto’s 700 or one piece’s 1000+. hunter x hunter is a little longer but is also great, though it’s much less of a traditional shonen fight story so it won’t give you the best idea of what others may be like
yuri on ice isn’t gaybait, those men kissed! if you want gaybait check out hibike euphonium, or the movie liz and the blue bird. i know you put hibike in the general romance category, but that is a lesbian anime where the girls get with guys at the end. idk that liz and the bluebird is gaybait but the girls are never explicitly interested in each other
you really shouldn’t watch zeta gundam without watching first gundam, it’s a sequel that is building a lot on what was already done in the first one. i’ll second ibo though
anti-recommend all of the trapped in a video game ones. they’re bad. log horizon starts good, but it kinda just spins its wheels forever and never does anything with the things it sets up
it is INCREDIBLY unfair to put madoka magica and berserk (which are good, and not fascist) together with attack on titan and goblin slayer (which are bad, and also fascist). madoka is not nearly in the same league in terms of edginess either, it’s genuinely a very hopeful and uplifting show imo. anti-recommend attack on titan and goblin slayer, but i am pro-berserk and madoka
anti-recommend the isekai. they’re bad, and tanya is really heavy on the lolicon and nazi imagery together to a VERY uncomfortable extent
boondocks is excellent on its own even if you don’t like other anime, but if you do like other anime watch some of the stuff that influenced it to pick up on the homages.
Having Samuel L. Jackson voice the whitest character in the show was a masterstroke. The MF DOOM soundtrack.
The George W Bush and Rumsfeld analogy starting a random conflict in an Iraqi convenience store because they wanted to shoplift in broad daylight and bullying a cop named Officer French to side against the Iraqi shopkeeper while they were supposed to be doing something completely different is just chefs kiss
I would also recommend the entire blaxploitation genre of American film
Great post, lots of good recs here.
I’d add to the “neck beard favs” as you call them:
Akagi and Kaiji - gambling winner and gambling loser
Death Note
Wow I didn’t think I’d get such an active post! Thanks to all the comrades who have contributed, and will continue to contribute. Lots of great suggestions in here! Going to bookmark this thread and then possibly compile it into a organized list when I have time.
MegaloBox is an under rated personal favorite of mine. It is a bit overlooked but it is supposed to be a spiritual successor to ashita no Joe. Only it kidna has cowboy bebop type vibes. There is a seccond season. They both have strong leftist themes which is kinda out of nowhere for the modern anime industry.
