Recommended Anime/Manga?

[Steamflogger Boss]

That's what made it sound really appealing actually.

And yeah I have no issue with watching it on youtube. It was never even officially localized. If it were in print and I could buy it, that would be different.

[RiderKick]

That's what made it sound really appealing actually.

And yeah I have no issue with watching it on youtube. It was never even officially localized. If it were in print and I could buy it, that would be different.

Oh, then prepare to enjoy it, though i ended up thinking of the superhero parts as my favorite mostly because how it's subverted by having a hero with more common sense than usual tired of the normal tropes and a bunch of overeager but rather incompetent villains.

A certain blue werewolf fight and the build-up of a certain killer robot sketches come to mind, oh, and the bomb one is pretty funny as well, though again, most of it is just villains and heroes having a normal life.

ANYWAYS, here is another slice-of-life recommendation, Tonari No Seki-Kun:

This anime/manga is about two kids in a classroom, a girl that wants to pay attention to class and Seki-Kun, a kid with an overactive imagination and lots of hobbies that constantly brings up games, toys or new things to try at class while the classmates and teacher somehow don't notice it.

And from there comes the active imagination of both kids to what they do, the girl trying to disrupt Seki's activities so he can pay attention in class or her just getting really involved because of her imagination and it's all done with a ton of charm and humor to it, also a suprising amount of creativity to the whole thing, like i said, they have a really big imagination.

Plus, there is no romance at all and no ecchi moments!

The two kids interact a lot but it's more in a friendly or rivalry way, and since they are mostly in a classroom and the girls don't have exaggerated bodies, you just get a wholesome but really funny show you can watch with your family if you wanted to.

Hell, just look at the opening of the show where Seki-Kun is doing a freaking anime in the classroom, it perfectly captures the series in itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBaTMEAe6bc

[null1024]

Yeah, Tonari no Seki-kun is good fun.

[Vludi]

The Case of Hana & Alice is a pretty fun slice-of-life movie, though it feels a bit more like live action than anime. Other ones I'd recommend are Omoide Poroporo and Whisper of the Heart.
As for TV, Uchouten Kazoku is a laid back show about tengus and tanukis living in a modern Kyoto and their family matters, it's from the same writer of Tatami Galaxy.

[RiderKick]

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai is pretty damn good too!

Granted, i have only read the manga(and am still reading it) but i hear the anime is great, which makes sense, since the manga is a very charming and funny slice-of-life series to begin with.

Particularly when it expands the characters and starts being more than just some petty squables between two characters trying to make the other confess and we see more of their life, i have to admit, i probably laughed way more than i should when Shirogane went to a conference with french students despite not knowing a word of french and him pretending he knew french to a student famous for insults who couldn't conceive the notion of him not understand french(and the principal as well):

[Vanguard]

I have been re-watching and re-reading Monster. Just to state the absolutely obvious, this series should be taught in schools (say, in a course on "world literature/comics/culture/etc."), if only because Johann Liebert is the greatest antagonist ever. He looks quite David Bowie-ish too, don't you all agree?

I've got mixed feelings on Urasawa. He's the best in the business at building hype and his art is superb, but sometimes he starts stalling for no apparent reason and some of his plot twists are really out there. I'm pretty sure he makes up a lot of his stuff as he goes. Billy Bat turned into a total mess. Monster mostly kept it together, but there was a lot of unnecessary repetition (how long did Tenma spend learning to use a gun and asking himself if he could really kill a person? How many times did we need to read that story book?). I didn't read 20th Century Boys but I hear that fell apart halfway in too. I think I liked Pluto the best of his manga because it gets to the point fairly quickly and since it follows an existing Tezuka plot the twists don't get too wacky.

[Randorama]

Vanguard: stalling is something that editors push for, so that a series can be better exploited from a financial point of view. Authors must acquiesce, though. Everybody does it unless there are huge constraints on completing a story within a certain time-frame (on Pluto the Tezuka estate had control, and even so the ending is messy).

I agree wholeheartedly on your comments, even though I still think that Monster is sublime stuff (the rest of his works, just OK). Not perfect, because of the problems you mention, but still sublime. I actually like his Master Keaton works, although they are really "mere" entertainment for me.

[M.Knight]

Tonari no Seki-kun looks rather fun! I'll put it on my to-watch list. I heard good things about Kaguya-sama too, I'll probably watch the anime adaptation once it's done.

As for slice of life recommendations, here are some of mine :

-Welcome to the NHK : Based on a novel, this is the story of Sato Tatsuhiro, a 22 year old hikkikomori who dropped out of college 4 years ago and has fallen into a reclusive and solitary lifestyle. It's an unusual kind of anime that tackles a lot of psychological topics and feels a lot more genuine and human than most shows I've watched. It's easily my favorite anime but it's not necessarily for everyone. If you are looking for something carefree and relaxing, you may not find that here, though there's still some great dark humor and if you have any experience with the things Sato goes through, the shared misery can feel kinda comforting in a way.

-Super Sonico the Animation : While it seems at first glance to be nothing more than some cynical advertisement for Nitro+'s mascot character, I found this show to be a lot better than it has every right to be. Not only Sonico is a character with actual hobbies and interests and has a life worth following, the series itself also never gets stale as each episode does its own thing. One will have a mystery to solve, another one is a horror spoof, others will focus on music, and so on and so forth. One of the episodes (The seventh I think) also has her on a countryside trip, and I found it very engrossing but in a subtle way. This episode feels like it nailed the kind of "soothing" experiences that your median slice-of-life anime tries to convey but end up being absolutely boring instead. Here it was fascinating and I loved every moment of it.

-Cromartie High School : An absurd comedy revolving around the lives of some high school students who look like adult thugs but do and talk about the wackiest things. Some of the other characters are also pretty out there, such as the robot delinquent or Freddy. What's pretty good about this series too is that the exaggerated character design provides a very nice contrast to the absurdist style of humor that's mostly conveyed through the dialogues. It's not trying to hide itself by being artificially over-the-top, it just naturally unfolds its jokes and situations and it's so funny. Some of the episodes are more miss than hit though, but overall a great watch.

-Watamote : A comedy show about a weird and paranoid high school girl with lots of social anxiety. While the subject matter is rather serious and the depiction of her condition is pretty accurate, there are also a lot of funny situations that come out of it as she often gets herself in embarassing situations or overthinks what others think of her.

I guess my recommendations are a bit unusual as I am not really a big fan of the genre. The problem for me is that a slice-of-life show has to have characters whose lives are worth being the main topic. Most of your high school animes have boring copy-pasted characters who undergo the same trite situations anyway so why bother with them?

Danshi Kouhousei no Nichijou - A comedy about the daily lives of some high school boys. Captures the real essence of high school life far better than these things usually do.

I would also second that recommendation. The only thing I didn't like in it was the way they did the annoying thing of having girls beat up boys for laughs, especially here because the few girls are plain bad people and deserve to get beaten back, yet for some reason they get away with everything. There was only one instance of that that I actually found really funny :

Spoiler

I don't remember the exact episode, but the fight interrupted a concert, and one of the organizers asked the band to keep playing music to provide some BGM lmao.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Cromartie High School is INSANE.

[BryanM]

The first season of Genshiken is worthwhile. (And is notable for having more realistic characters than the caricatures most animoo has devolved to.) But most Slice of Life shows have poor longevity. (I think the second season of K-On is especially pointless. Let me spoil it for you: CAKE AND.... TEA!)

That wiki list of them is pretty wonky. Haruhi was a prototypical blockbuster of the genre and should be there, while Mysterious Girlfriend X is a saliva fetish+magical girlfriend series that doesn't. Free! is a typical highschool sports anime. While Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions hits all the major prerequisites (repetitive activities with a stable group in recurring settings).

[Steamflogger Boss]

The first season of Genshiken is worthwhile.

Yep. The 2nd season really drops off though.

[Vludi]

The first season of Genshiken is worthwhile. (And is notable for having more realistic characters than the caricatures most animoo has devolved to.) But most Slice of Life shows have poor longevity. (I think the second season of K-On is especially pointless. Let me spoil it for you: CAKE AND.... TEA!)

That wiki list of them is pretty wonky. Haruhi was a prototypical blockbuster of the genre and should be there, while Mysterious Girlfriend X is a saliva fetish+magical girlfriend series that doesn't. Free! is a typical highschool sports anime. While Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions hits all the major prerequisites (repetitive activities with a stable group in recurring settings).

Maybe Haruhi is too wacky for "pure" SoL (S1/movie are more of an urban fantasy dramedy/drama with quite a bit of mystery). Chunibyou has a pretty insubstantial first half but a very melodramatic second half, but yeah overall that list is very provisional. SoL is difficult to define anyway: comedy, romance, cgdct, drama, coming-of-age, tearjerkers or iyashikei all classify as "SoL" in anime/manga despite those having little to do with each other.

[professor ganson]

Yotsuba - First manga I ever read and one of the best. It's a comedy slice of life about a young girl and her innocent, charming perspective on the world.

Yotsuba&! is my favorite manga, and it's why I asked about slice-of-life anime. Thanks again to everyone for the all the suggestions. I plan to make good use of them.

I have started with K-On. It has a simplistic charm that's drawing me in.

[mycophobia]

Yotsuba - First manga I ever read and one of the best. It's a comedy slice of life about a young girl and her innocent, charming perspective on the world.

Yotsuba&! is my favorite manga, and it's why I asked about slice-of-life anime. Thanks again to everyone for the all the suggestions. I plan to make good use of them.

I have started with K-On. It has a simplistic charm that's drawing me in.

it's good as hell dude. the second season moreso than the first but the first is still good. stick with it if it doesn't register immediately.

Just watched Liz and the Blue Bird. Beautiful film. I can't help but think it loses something if you haven't seen Sound! Euphonium beforehand but there's really no reason not to have watched that too tbh.

[RiderKick]

Cromartie High School is INSANE.

Yep...whatever happened to the sequel manga anyways?

They only translated one chapter of it as far as i can tell, which sucks, because it was going to follow the teachers and administration of Cromartie starting with a new yakuza looking vice principal who enters a classroom while driving a bike and declaring he will absolutely clean this school up and make every kid stop being a hoodlum, and he does mean cleaning the school:

And yes, he does go around in a bike because Cromartie:


But i haven't heard anything after that chapter came out, you'd think that the author coming back and making a sequel to Cromartie last year would have had people noticing it, but not really, i guess people here don't care about the teachers and administration of Cromartie High School?

EDIT: NEVER MIND, it seems there are other chapters, you even get the new Vice Principal going to meet the Principal and...well, remember that it's a sequel?


...Hell yes, God, i hope this gets an anime adaptation in the future.

[Udderdude]

Dead Heat - Yet another action OVA, with upright racing robot vehicular combat stuff going on. It's pretty well animated and has some good scenes. Note that despite some claims that it's "Japan's first 3D anime", there is no 3D to be seen anywhere here. It's all cell-shaded animation like usual. Which is prob. a good thing, given it's 1987 release date. lol

Genmu Senki Leda - It's isekai! Ok, not really. Girl gets sucked into a fantasy world, she turns into a warrior, etc. etc. This is mostly worth watching for the visuals and art style, which are well animated, pretty trippy and surreal at times.

Iria - Zeiram The Animation - 6 episode OVA about some galactic bounty hunters (no, not those ones). It's got some pretty good world building with a unique style to everything. The main antagonist, Zeiram, is an immortal monster that keeps showing up like some bastard from Resident Evil. Every time you think he's dead, he comes back. Definitely worth a watch.

Bastard!! - Ankoku no Hakaishin - This is one of those "so bad it's good" OVAs, where you know it's trash, it knows it's trash, but doesn't care and just keeps on going with it. Watch it if you want something stupid and cheezy to laugh at.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Bastard!! - Ankoku no Hakaishin - This is one of those "so bad it's good" OVAs, where you know it's trash, it knows it's trash, but doesn't care and just keeps on going with it. Watch it if you want something stupid and cheezy to laugh at.

Yeah sometimes you just wanna watch trash. Funny, I'm actually getting the JP LDs of this soon.

[Udderdude]

Bastard!! - Ankoku no Hakaishin - This is one of those "so bad it's good" OVAs, where you know it's trash, it knows it's trash, but doesn't care and just keeps on going with it. Watch it if you want something stupid and cheezy to laugh at.

Yeah sometimes you just wanna watch trash. Funny, I'm actually getting the JP LDs of this soon.

It's unfortunate it was never finished, but the plot doesn't really end on a total cliffhanger.

[FinalBaton]

I've read a bit of the Bastard!!! manga when I was a teen and I liked it. Maybe I'll pick it up again. So silly... the different generals all have great designs and cool abilities(and cool way of being defeated, just like the sub-bosses in Ninja Scroll). the manga had character design sketches which I adored. Dark Schneider is such a fucking goofball. and so full of himself. yet Yoko puts that god in his place like a little bitch, everytime. the downpoor of Heavy Metal references are a real treat for a metal fan like me. haven't seen the anime yet

Iria Zeiram is pretty cool, I have the dvd here. a good watch. gorgeous too
Good world building, as Udderdude said

[Steamflogger Boss]

Iria Zeiram is pretty cool, I have the dvd here. a good watch. gorgeous too

This is one I've been meaning to get. Kinda want to direct compare the old MB release to the new Discotek release as well. Both have remaster claims and I wonder if Discotek actually did anything of note. The Discotek runtime is 47 minutes longer as well, I'm guessing extras.

[FinalBaton]

This is one I've been meaning to get. Kinda want to direct compare the old MB release to the new Discotek release as well. Both have remaster claims and I wonder if Discotek actually did anything of note. The Discotek runtime is 47 minutes longer as well, I'm guessing extras.

That's a good question. I don't know what the differences are exactly. I have the Discotek release. it's a beautiful remaster. it looks sooooo good and clean, that I'm not lamenting for a Blu Ray release in this case

[Steamflogger Boss]

Well, that's good to hear. I'm pretty sure some of these old OAVs, the dvd releases were sourced from the LD instead of the original cels. I've ordered LDs of some I am highly suspicious of (Phantom Quest Corp, Project A-ko) and will be comparing them soon.

I'm like a kid in a candy store now that I have ANYDVD again...

[FinalBaton]

some of these old OAVs, the dvd releases were sourced from the LD instead of the original cels.

yeah that's annoying. Let me know if it's the case with your Project A-Ko DVD. which release do you have?.
(fortunately, this is a series which's color palette can take quite a beating and still look decent. I have a VHS retail copy here(the widescreen, subbed one) and even that looks allright. a better transfer is always welcomed though)

[WelshMegalodon]

Genmu Senki Leda - It's isekai! Ok, not really. Girl gets sucked into a fantasy world, she turns into a warrior, etc. etc. This is mostly worth watching for the visuals and art style, which are well animated, pretty trippy and surreal at times.

Also notable for being one of the few early examples of a magical girl with a sword. We've mentioned its influence on Valis and other bishoujo sidescrollers before.

Iria - Zeiram The Animation - 6 episode OVA about some galactic bounty hunters (no, not those ones). It's got some pretty good world building with a unique style to everything. The main antagonist, Zeiram, is an immortal monster that keeps showing up like some bastard from Resident Evil. Every time you think he's dead, he comes back. Definitely worth a watch.

I've been curious about this one since Hisakawa Aya voices the lead. Do you know if the original Zeiram was ever subbed? (EDIT: Scratch that, I found it.)

[Steamflogger Boss]

some of these old OAVs, the dvd releases were sourced from the LD instead of the original cels.

yeah that's annoying. Let me know if it's the case with your Project A-Ko DVD. which release do you have?.
(fortunately, this is a series which's color palette can take quite a beating and still look decent. I have a VHS retail copy here(the widescreen, subbed one) and even that looks allright. a better transfer is always welcomed though)

I have rips of the original DVD release which I passed on to a friend. I'll grab the Discotek release anyway, if that isn't any better, they are easy enough to resell.

[drauch]

Man, Bastard!! manga rules. Don't think it ever even got finished in manga form either, but I could be wrong on that. So many sick references and babes.

If you like Iria the animation, definitely check out the live-action Keita Amemiya stuff; I think it's even better, plus Amemiya goes crazy with practical FX stuff, and despite low-budget it's super impressive. All his stuff is rad.

[FinalBaton]

So many sick [...] babes.

Hell yeah

[null1024]

Gundam Unicorn.
Cool fights. Starts off promising enough, other than Banana being a fucking lunatic who jumps into the fucking abyss in a construction robot right out the gate. He seemed okay enough, kinda like Kamille and Judau rolled up into one big ball of stupid. There's also really goofy shit like them talking about war kinda like it's a serial killer out chasing them rather than an event.

and then the more we find out about the plot, the dumber it gets
and it doesn't stop getting dumb
also, lol newtypes -- in a series where the whole Zeta->ZZ->CC shit does down, Unicorn [both the series and the machine] still manages to be completely stupid when it comes to newtype hax bullshit

But honestly, it's a bit shit. It spends ages building up Laplace's Box, but... well... fuck.
I don't like the Unicorn's design either, and Full Frontal kinda just faffs around. In fact, nothing really felt like it had anything approaching a real reason beyond "lol Zeon is at it again" -- which would have been okay, but there was more afoot than just Neo-Zeon bullshit.
It has its moments, but it never had a strong foundation, and when the final piece was revealed... it fell apart utterly. I would have been fucking pissed if I was watching this as it was coming out.

Puru Twelve's mobile suit was fucking dope. Love it.

Spoiler

and she neither deserved to suffer as she did, nor to be in this particular shitshow

[Durandal]

also, lol newtypes

Spoiler

and she neither deserved to suffer as she did, nor to be in this particular shitshow

Spoiler

That was some of the dumbest plot devices I've ever seen, only after pointlessly killing her does Riddhe finally regain his senses and everyone then magically forgives him because muh understanding? She needed to die for that? That's nothing to say of Riddhe's completely contrived motivations to be the rival Gundam, which I believe can be best summed up with the following picture

[M.Knight]

Spoiler

That was some of the dumbest plot devices I've ever seen, only after pointlessly killing her does Riddhe finally regain his senses and everyone then magically forgives him because muh understanding? She needed to die for that?

Whoa I have totally forgotten this part, but yeah it didn't make a lot of sense.

The reason I don't even remember it was how even more goddawful the ending was. It's like they tried to outdo CCA in terms of newtype bullshit ruining everything:

Spoiler

You have a set-up for an incredibly satisfying fight, with the Unicorn and the Banshee facing off against the Neo Zeong, and you can only think that they'll all go down in a brutal fight to the death and end up completely destroyed, just like the climatic fights you can have at the end of 0079 or ZZ. But noooooo we time-travel or something, that bitch Lalah shows up again and the Neo Zeong just...melts on its own. WTF?! @_@ What an awful way to conclude the series. It's even more annoying when you realize that for once the bad guy's plan is intelligent and does not involve throwing stupid giant rocks or your own fucking hometowns at Earth like it's gonna solve anything, so you could expect the ending to also be more well thought out and satisfying, but as always, you can't have that with newtypes.

As for Laplace's Box, I think they overhyped it way too much, but what it is was not a bad idea :

Spoiler

At least it's not a "super duper ancien weapon" as if that alone would change the entire political landscape, but an actual political thing

I agree some of the fights were really cool. What pleasantly surprised me is how much of a fight some of the (friendly or not) grunt units put up. There was this one fight on a cruiser I think, where I noticed after a few minutes that there was this one unnamed pilot whose battle was given even more attention and care than the MC fights in the long-cour series, and that was pretty refreshing. Honestly TV Gundam battles have often been absolutely boring and pointless because it's just shooting zakos and you know there's zero actual threat. Here it didn't feel this way at all to me.