Recommended Anime/Manga?

[Bloodreign]

Picked my pacing back up on Ruronin Kenshin, after a random 1st season, the second season, aka the Kyoto arc, has been very riveting, though there's a lot of blah blah, and some backstory on the bad guys, which might make you sympathize for them. Currently on episode 57, so near the end of the arc.

[BIL]

The TV anime's adaptation of the Kyoto arc is great - pretty much 1:1, IIRC, with none of the first season's sometimes grating filler. Superb soundtrack. AFAIK, basically everything afterward is filler, though. I never bothered with it from that point.

I like the manga a lot - went back and read it from the beginning after finishing the anime's Kyoto episodes. Watsuki has a real gift for facial expressions. Typical shonen fighting manga in many ways, but I'm ok with those if they're done with enough intensity and at least some degree of consequence.

This week I decided to go back and finish the first season of JoJo's TV anime (2012). I loved the first half some years back (manga Part 1/Phantom Blood), but drifted off for some reason. Certainly wasn't for any dip in quality, or fidelity to the manga... its take on my old favourite Part 2/Battle Tendency has been a goddamn riot. Equal parts fabulous couture, incendiary shonen hot-bloodedness and balls-out B-horror/sci-fi gore.

Spoiler

"Jackass! No real woman is built like a brick shithouse!"

[soprano1]

Battle Tendency anime was amazing, but i wished it had the "It's a Nazi!" scene just like the manga. It's understandable why it didn't, though.
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/ori ... 96/6ce.png

[BIL]

Yeah, I love Part 2's manga.

***

Finished JoJo's first season. Excellent from start to finish - I'm happy to see this project has kept going strong. Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency were always overlooked in favour of Stardust Crusaders, in earlier attempts at JoJo anime. As an old fan of Parts 1 & 2, I admire how seriously they went about redressing this.

Spoilers

Spoiler

Hoooly fuck was Wham v Caesar and the latter's sendoff intense. Exactly as I'd always visualised it on the page.

But at the same time, WAMMU DID NOTHING WRONG ;-; no for real I love Wammu, he's Raoh-calibre imo. What a colossally intimidating yet soulful enemy!

Halfway through Stardust Crusaders now. Much like the manga, it is moreish like crack. Funny, creative, brutal, breakneck. I'm so tempted to roar "HOREHHH SHEEEEEEIT" along with Joseph's VA whenever things take an inexplicable turn for the unfortunate. Some luxuriant visuals, too. The 3D modeling can intrude, but I really dig the vistas and colours. The rolling, breezy nightscape throughout Polnareff v Cameo was a perfectly moving accent to one of the series' best melodramas, and that second ending sequence is an ephemeral beauty.

Sanaba biiichu! Oh.mai.GAWWWD! 7.5mb giffu

Spoiler

"Now, let us engage in the timeless ritual of male bonding, and take a piss together!"

[KAI]

Gunbuster part 3 in development
Gainax pls stop.


The current anime season is full of boring shit, but the next one seems to be more than decent (Sangatsu no Lion, Drifters, Lesbonium 2, Fune wo Amu, Tiger Mask W).
What series are you guys picking for the next season?

[BryanM]

I was okay with Saiki Kusuo. Light 4-koma thing, sometimes amusing. Compared to Handa-kun, a masterpiece. (That first episode of Handa.. They kept repeating the same joke for six minutes. That's not how jokes work, guys!)

Next season, I'm interested in Drifters since it's a pretty popular thing I haven't gotten around to yet. Occultic;Nine, too. That's a series with a very average batting record, that often has some very good bits. Will they have a really good hook and then flush everything down the toilet with another shōnen swerve, yet again? Can't wait to find out!

In the world of mangoos, Dungeon Seeker has to be the comedy series of the year. Every single page, eminently mockable. I want to be Sakamoto666 when I grow up! (Yes, that is his real pen name. What'd I tell ya?)

[null1024]

Decided to watch Space Patrol Luluco.
That was short and fun, probably my favorite thing from Trigger so far.

also, I made an attempt to watch Yuru Yuri, and dropped it really quickly
how the fuck does shit like this run for three seasons and Nichijou's anime fucking tanked

[Bitter Almonds]

Holy fucking shit! It's irredeemable garbage like Yuru Yuri that made me quit watching and collecting animu.

[Xyga]

I'm watching Kidou Senkan Nadesico and so far (ep 6) enjoying it, to my surprise.

Is it me or this Gai character featured for a few episodes is like 99% the same as the Gai from Radiant Silvergun ?

[null1024]

Currently watching Symphogear, a few episodes into the 2nd season now.

It's okay. Just okay. Has a few pretty hype moments here and there.
Everyone is kind of stupid in some way that's making it kind of difficult to really enjoy it [what the fuck is with some of these reactions, who acts like that], and you can see the budget falling to pieces pretty often.
Tempted to drop it, but I probably won't, it still has its moments.

Holy fucking shit! It's irredeemable garbage like Yuru Yuri that made me quit watching and collecting animu.

See, it's kind of dumb just how lame it was. With really, really minor changes, it seemed like it could be an okay SOL.
but what I saw was so one-note and stupid and showed no signs of getting better that I couldn't reasonably keep going

[Bloodreign]

The TV anime's adaptation of the Kyoto arc is great - pretty much 1:1, IIRC, with none of the first season's sometimes grating filler. Superb soundtrack. AFAIK, basically everything afterward is filler, though. I never bothered with it from that point.

I like the manga a lot - went back and read it from the beginning after finishing the anime's Kyoto episodes. Watsuki has a real gift for facial expressions. Typical shonen fighting manga in many ways, but I'm ok with those if they're done with enough intensity and at least some degree of consequence.

This week I decided to go back and finish the first season of JoJo's TV anime (2012). I loved the first half some years back (manga Part 1/Phantom Blood), but drifted off for some reason. Certainly wasn't for any dip in quality, or fidelity to the manga... its take on my old favourite Part 2/Battle Tendency has been a goddamn riot. Equal parts fabulous couture, incendiary shonen hot-bloodedness and balls-out B-horror/sci-fi gore.

Spoiler

Yeah I pretty much stopped watching after I heard there was nothing but filler left. The manga does has at least 1 more arc.

"Jackass! No real woman is built like a brick shithouse!"

Yeah I pretty much stopped watching after I heard there was nothing but filler left. The manga does has at least 1 more arc.

[ShamefurDispray]

Just finished all three series of Hajime No Ippo. Freaking fantastic. Any recs for something similar?

[soprano1]

Just finished all three series of Hajime No Ippo. Freaking fantastic. Any recs for something similar?

For boxing manga/series, Ring ni Kakero by the Saint Seiya mangaka, and the classic Ashita no Joe.

[Bitter Almonds]

Ashita No Joe! That's a famous Dezaki series.

[Durandal]

Oh boy, Farnese and Schierke are in for some fun, BUT NOT IN THIS YEAR

[soprano1]

I'm loving Digimon Adventure tri, but the way they are airing it is pissing me off.

[null1024]

continuing my random modern anime kick

Still watching Symphogear, now on the third season [GX], it still feels like more of the same, but with like 4x the budget it used to have [which isn't much, considering how jank the prior seasons looked]. I still wish the people would act more like people.
I'll probably keep watching, even into the fourth and fifth seasons when those air.
Hibiki is super endearing.

Teekyu is completely retarded, but makes me smile. Each episode is less than two minutes long and feels like it's been played at 3x speed.
I'm willing to bet most people here might hate it -- it throws attempts at comedy at the viewer at maximum speed and hopes any of it sticks. A stupid amount of it is a miss. A worrying amount of it is a hit.
The best episode of them all is probably Episode 9, where Marimo tries out for a job. The whole episode felt like a properly constructed joke with a decent punchline, even if it still throws shit rapid fire like the rest of 'em.

I also started Sabagebu, which is proving to be tons of fun. Bit wacky, loads of little [and not so little] action movie nods, as long as it doesn't get too stupid, I'd say it's great.
The MC's an awful person, but endearingly so.

one of these ages, I'll go and watch some of the shit that's actually in my backlog

[soprano1]

Ashita No Joe! That's a famous Dezaki series.

Oh yeah, but not with the eye glitter from Rose of Versailles and that tennis anime that inspired Gunbuster's training arc.

[Ji-L87]

I'm slowly working my way through the first season of Cat's Eye I picked up some year back, just popped in the last disc.

It's very...okay. As a time capsule it's fun, but I can't help but to wish I was watching City Hunter again instead, as it just seems to work so much better. They both have a similar feel but Cat's Eye ends up feeling much more repetitive and...shallow?

The animation is about as good as it needs to be to work, nothing really stands out. Character drawings rarely stand out either.
Unsure if I will be getting season 2 to complete the half-empty box I got with season 1...

[Durandal]

Just caught up to Hunter x Hunter and GODDAMN is it great.
Especially around the end of the Chimera Ant arc I had to look around me in the bus if nobody was looking at my stupidly excited face. It's a manga with the structure of a shonen but characters and conflicts with actual complexity where everything isn't just a repeating build-up to the MC powering up in the heat of battle over and over. That kinda happens, but not just for the sake of it. The nature of the battles in HxH make everything unpredictable yet incredibly interesting to follow. It might be too talkative for some, but I like the constant trickery which somehow manages to not enter asspull territory. It's also refreshing to see a story where the world doesn't revolve around the main characters and/or their superpowers. A bomb works just as fine too.
I guess now that we had an entire Gon+Killua arc, a Leorio+Kurapika arc will be up next. It's a shame that a manga this great has to suffer constant hiatuses.

I feel compelled to watch the anime now, even if I found the pacing to be sloooooooow compared to the manga when I first tried watching it (to be honest, I tend to read faster than I can grasp the text), though that's kind of inevitable in an anime where a lot of things need to be explained. I'd say 100 episodes is worth it if it lets me see the Chimera Ant arc animated.

[Durandal]

Thunderbolt Fantasy is the fucking shit.
What starts off as a seemingly generic wuxia adventure with advanced puppet fighting choreography becomes an interesting mystery where the motivations of everyone in the group are seemingly unclear and at odds with eachother, which all comes down to an awesome finale. It's a puppet show where the dumbfounded straightforward MC is somehow the most enigmatic of them all instead of being Generic MC #7777777, so you know you're in for something good. Apparently puppet shows are the fucking shit in Taiwan, who knew.

[Ghegs]

Thunderbolt Fantasy is the fucking shit.
What starts off as a seemingly generic wuxia adventure with advanced puppet fighting choreography becomes an interesting mystery where the motivations of everyone in the group are seemingly unclear and at odds with eachother, which all comes down to an awesome finale. It's a puppet show where the dumbfounded straightforward MC is somehow the most enigmatic of them all instead of being Generic MC #7777777, so you know you're in for something good. Apparently puppet shows are the fucking shit in Taiwan, who knew.

I started watching it around episode #3 and just finished the finale, very good stuff indeed. I may have let out a "Woop!" when I saw that a sequel is already being made.

One thing I did wonder about is the left-handedness of every character. I understand the mechanical reasons for it (explained in the show's Wikipedia page), yet they could've easily mirrored the footage to have right-handed characters. But I guess they wanted to retain the authenticity of puppeteering and not do that.

[FinalBaton]

Re-watched Megazone 23 for the 10th time.

It think it wins the crown for the prettiest anime I have ever seen.
The color work is excellent : vibrant colors co-exist with neutral/pastel ones on every frame in what are very solid compositions (the shading on characters are particularly exquisite). And the character designs are great examples of that era of anime that I like so, so much.




Once again, a super rad work by my boys at AIC

[soprano1]

Damn, that looks gorgeous! I'll take a look at it as well.

[Skykid]

When Anime actually had personality. Looks perfect even in stills.

[soprano1]

When Anime actually had personality. Looks perfect even in stills.

And cute girls could have boyfriends/lovers without worrying about otaku's waifu fantasies. Remember what happened to the K-On manga's college arc?

[lilmanjs]

So I got into anime in the 90s of course. Anything out there on dvd from the 80s and early 90s that I should watch, like right now.

[BIL]

I will never not respond Motherfucking Ninja Scroll to such enquiries.

[Frenetic]

Kimetsu no Yaiba is pretty good!

"Tanjiro is the eldest son in a family that has lost its father. Tanjiro visits another town one day to sell charcoal but ends up staying the night at someone else's house instead of going home because of a rumor about a demon that stalks a nearby mountain at night. When he goes home the next day, tragedy is waiting for him."

[FinalBaton]

So I got into anime in the 90s of course. Anything out there on dvd from the 80s and early 90s that I should watch, like right now.

These are my favourites of that era (I've stretched a bit to include some mid-nineties stuff that looks good and still has some charm) :


MOVIES
Akira
Patlabor
The Wings Of Honneamise
Dirty Pair : Project Eden
Ninja Scroll
Vampire Hunter D



OVA
Bubblegum Crisis
Gunbuster : Aim for the Top!
Dangaioh
Megazone 23
Vampire Princess Miyu
Gunsmith Cats
Project A-Ko
Gal Force (Earth Chapter Arc only)
Dirty Pair 2 (or "Original Dirty Pair" depending on the release)



TV SERIES
Evangelion
You're Under Arrest!
Fist Of The North Stars


I've bolded the "must see". Everything in the list is very good to me, but the ones I highlighted are my personnal favourites

I could name a ton more that I also enjoy, but I'm trying to keep the list succint here. Tell me if you want me to list some more.

Enjoy!