Recommended Anime/Manga?

[Raytrace]

I have watched two episodes of Triage X - it's greasy as fuck, but the overwhelming energy of it and style overrides those elements and makes it ok (well I tell myself that anyway :p).

[KAI]

Anyone watching Kekkai Sensen? It's anime of the season imo. Nightow's crazyness animated by Bones. Go watch it if you haven't.

[Ji-L87]

Watched this great little OVA yesterday called "The Samurai" (can be found on this youtube channel). Charming drawing style and fun animation. It's got a bit of that special enthusiastic feeling that some shows have, where you can tell someone really enjoyed making drawings move.

The story is cute but predictable but this was right up my alley.

[drauch]

Cool. Always wondered about that one. Just bought it for a whopping $3.99 shipped.

[Ji-L87]

Cool. Always wondered about that one. Just bought it for a whopping $3.99 shipped.

Do report back your thoughts when you get to watching it! *curious*

Speaking of good things:
I also recently watched another good OVA: To-Y. It felt a bit slow at first but I loved the music "battle" towards the end - had the song "Lemon no Yuuki" stuck in my head for almost a whole week afterwards.

Also, I can recommend the manga Living Game by Hoshisato Mochiru. I've been reading it on my phone during breaks at work and now on the PC when I'm home. I'm not finished yet, so I'm not sure how it will end, but right now it's still pretty good alebeit a bit soapy.

Edit: The premise is quite interesting: A guy buys an apartment and is overjoyed by his new large living space. At the same time, the company he works for is also about to move to a larger office. Except it doesn't turn out that way and they end up setting up the office is his new apartment. And then some more things happen like romance and stuff.
The visuals are also another reason for why I like it - it's 1990 vintage, so it's still got heaps of 80's feel to it. And it strikes a pleasant balance with simple character drawings and detailed surroundings.



Lastly, I stumbled over a scanlation of the first chapter of Ruin Explorer which was cool to read since I remember watching the OVA some year ago. Detailed and generally very well drawn though it's very 90s stylistically. Not the bad kind of 90s style, just very....fitting for that era. I quite like some of the 90s styles myself but I get the feeling that the 80s is generally more appreciated....

[Raytrace]

almost finished City Hunter - I really love it still - look at this great 'first person-y' angle scene:

[Ji-L87]

Yeah, that's a cool shot!
City Hunter never really stood out as technical masterpiece or so but it always had a few good looking key frames per episode and overall visual quality was decent enough with some impressive cuts here and there.

On a similar note, I've just started watching Zillion and it's actually really cool so far. Some unexpectedly great animation and I have to say I really like Apple's voice. The musics's good too! I've seen the spin-off Burning Night before but this seems like it could be more interesting.

[copy-paster]

Attack on Titan
Can't wait for season 2

[GaijinPunch]

On a similar note, I've just started watching Zillion and it's actually really cool so far. Some unexpectedly great animation and I have to say I really like Apple's voice. The musics's good too! I've seen the spin-off Burning Night before but this seems like it could be more interesting.

Zillion is cool.. I just need to find some time to go through it.

[Formless God]

Anyone watching Kekkai Sensen? It's anime of the season imo. Nightow's crazyness animated by Bones. Go watch it if you haven't.

Oh baby, this is Space Dandy all over again. The weaksauce first episode, the gay mushroom dating episode, the animation quality that gets better over time, the cuhrayzee. Fucking Bones, man. They did it again.

[Xyga]

Ghost in the Shell: Arise - Alternative Architecture

From ep 9 it's the follow up of the OVA's core plot, don't know how many episodes are planned but it will end with a feature film some time in the year.

Good ol' GitS formula can't go bad, love it.

[Raytrace]

watching Angel Cop - great stuff

[mamboFoxtrot]

Watched a few anime recently.

New Getter Robo.
It's pretty obvious to see how Gurren Lagann was inspired by this. I was a bit put off at the beginning, as I wasn't expecting the gore, semi-sociopathic heroes, and generally "edginess", but eventually warmed up to it. They also kinda drop a lot of that by the middle of the show and focus a lot more on the robot action. Ending was a bit abrupt, but overall a really fun show.


Baccano!
Interesting setting and premise, but the non-linear storytelling drove me batty. Despite cutting to a different scene every 5 minutes or less, the show still had glacial pacing, as most of the scenes were either reused to establish context, or scenes that didn't really advance the plot. I didn't like the show overall, not only because of the constant jumping around, but also because most of the characters were either really sparse or I just lacking in likable qualities. While there's this huge cast of named characters, in the end, I don't think the plot is actually so deep or complicated that we actually needed to see each event from all of their different perspectives, and many of the characters seem like they don't actually contribute much of anything anyways.
I dunno, maybe the novels are better and this anime is just a bad adaptation that cut too many important details.


Mononoke (the 2011 one, not Princess Mononoke)
A combo of Japanese mythology with ghost story / mystery kind of show such as Ghost Hunt, and some of the most psychedelic artwork I've seen in an anime. The mysteries and visuals were interesting, but the pacing was slightly drawn out and the main character is a pretty boring guy. I feel some of the "mind screw" effects like jump cuts and having people just pop in and out were a bit overused as well. The final arc was easily the worst, though. Extremely drawn out with predictable twists.
I'd still recommend trying it out, but if the first arc doesn't interest you, nothing else in the show will.


Anyways, playing a bit of Majora's Mask recently and looking at the official art for it has put me in the mood for a fantasy anime along those lines. I've seen all the Slayers and watched Magic Knight Rayearth. I tried watching Sword Art Online and Log Horizon, but couldn't get interested.
Anyone here have any recommendations they want to shoot my way?

[Pretas]

Record of Lodoss War was considered the gold standard of fantasy TV anime by many American fans in the nineties. Don't expect many connections to the Lodoss game on Dreamcast, which was instead based on the original tabletop RPG.

The Windaria movie probably defines eighties fantasy anime better than any other work outside Ghibli, and I'd consider it a must-watch. Not content with fucking up Macross, Harmony Gold localized Windaria in heavily bowdlerized form as "Once Upon a Time" - obviously, avoid this version.

Amon Saga is an exploitative one-shot fantasy OVA notable for including the most awesome wizard's duel in any anime.

Although there's a new anime now, the original Heroic Legend of Arslan OVAs are pretty damn good. And I mean the originals: there was a second, later OVA that's only meh.

The Weathering Continent is a pretty obscure 54-minute fantasy movie with some cool designs and elements, even if it isn't great.

Due to the games' exceptional popularity in Japan, Wizardry got an OVA that's worth a watch for curiosity's sake, and to see the liberties they took in adapting Sir-Tech's famous dungeon crawler.

[drauch]

^Those all rule. These are all more "traditional" fantasy, but there's still a bunch of cool stuff more along the lines of Japanese folklore and more sci-fi oriented like the Valis magical girl games. Legend of Crystania, Legend of Lemnear, Dragon Knight (super silly), Legend of Lyon Flare (hentai), Eiyuu Gaiden Mozaika, Onna Senshi Efe & Jeila Goude no Monsho, Arion, Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, Dragon Century, Bastard!!, the original Berserk series, and still a bunch more I've got written down somewhere or on discs buried in my bedroom. Those are primarily all 80-90s stuff, which I think really got the aesthetic down due to popularity of D&D and dungeon crawler games of the time.

Pretas listed my favorite ones: Windaria, Lodoss War, Amon Saga, and then the original Berserk adaptation.

[lilmanjs]

Finally able to get around to the slice of life anime that was recommended. Starting off with Usagi Drop and Hanasaku Iroha. Glad to be able to watch some more anime. Tis the mood I'm feeling.

[BryanM]

Was just gagoogling Valis the other day for reasons. It was kind of neat to see how far the franchise has fallen, though it was to be assumed.

On the topic of magical things, I saw Penguin Drum, an Utena-esque thing by its creator. There were parts I liked, especially how what appeared to be presented as a metaphor was actually a literal thing their society within this animu does, but it turns into a train wreck of endless flashbacks and threads no one cares about by the end.

The NEET monster hunting comic, Monster X Monster is starting to enter into its own lately. I give it about a year before I start hating it.

[juonryu2nd]

I finished watching the You Are Under Arrest TV series. Great stuff.

[KAI]

I don't care what people say, I'm loving Hibike Euphonium, Kyoani knows how to do this kind of shit perfectly.

[soprano1]

I don't care what people say, I'm loving Hibike Euphonium, Kyoani knows how to do this kind of shit perfectly.

What's it about?

[KAI]

It's about lesbians blowing stuff

I mean, it's a drama about a school brass band.

[soprano1]

I mean, it's a drama about a school brass band.

So it's like K-ON!, but with drama instead of cute girls doing cute things only?

[KAI]

Exactly, kinda like Hyouka. Hope to see more of these kind of series and less moeshit from Kyoani.

[Raytrace]

Just finished Zambot 3 - it was legit brilliant - I thought I was going to be watching it in a sort of 'educatioasl'/'looking for origins of things' kinda way - but it quickly turned into a 3 day marathon of excitement. I would put it up there with 0079 and Ideon as my favourite Tomino now. It is so nasty it is hard to believe it was watched in Japan as a kid's cartoon. Also, while people always talk of Ideon and Ultraman being a big influence on Evangelion, I think there can be no doubt when you watch Zambot 3 that Anno must have been a massive fan of it. It is also interesting how close the soundtrack is to the soundtrack of 0079 - it is REALLY similar at times

I thought it was going to be a 'normal' Super Robot monster of the week show, which it sorta was on the surface, but it was a sort of deconstruction (in much the same way Eva was) - i.e. having the effects on the people/cities if such stuff were to really happen constantly being examined. It was brilliant - I'll leave you with an example of how nasty some of it was:

[Raytrace]

emm sorry for the size o_O

[soprano1]

The first Kamen Rider series are like that as well, full of horrible and violent ideas in what is a MotW show. The first Super Sentai series are also the same.
What tones them down a bit is the fact that the villains costumes and voices look and sound goofy as shit.

[Raytrace]

Yeh Dairanger has some really dark bits too.

[soprano1]

Yeh Dairanger has some really dark bits too.

Yeah, and that one is from 93/94, go figure.

[mamboFoxtrot]

A lot of older shows have some pretty morbid shit in them.


@Pretas and Drauch: Thanks for all the recs! Slowly checking them out now.

Harmony Gold localized Windaria in heavily bowdlerized form as "Once Upon a Time" - obviously, avoid this version.

No kidding. I looked a little in to it after watching a sub of the original, and yeah, it sounds like it's practically a different movie!

The NEET monster hunting comic

So... is it the monsters or the hunters that are NEETs?


e: I suddenly remembered that Dragon Half and its ridiculous ending theme is something that exists. I might try rewatching that sometime soon, as I remember nothing else about it.

[BryanM]

So... is it the monsters or the hunters that are NEETs?

The main character primarily, only one or two monsters have been NEETs so far. His immense awkwardness, shame and not giving a crap is the source of much joy for this thing's intended audience.