I had heard somewhere that NGE is like, the reason late-night anime is a thing, due to the backlash that happened after it ran in an after-school time slot.
Ghost in the Shell, both the 1995 movie and GitS 2: Innocence, are phenomenal. Stand Alone Complex is also very good but it's not on the same level as the films.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the best anime of all time.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is incredible, it uses the magical girl genre as an allegory for the military industrial complex. First couple epsisodes feel like a kids show and then the third episode takes an extreme turn. I recommend watching the series and then Rebellion, the sequel film. They cleaned up and edited the series into two feature length films but the color grading is harsh (everything is suddenly ULTRA ORANGE in any shots that are supposed to take place during sunset/golden hour) and the pacing suffers from the edits, so I'd avoid those.
Serial Experiments Lain is a little clunky at times but tackles a lot of interesting themes. It takes a pretty fantastical approach to technology so the 90's tech doesn't feel super dated.
Usagi Drop ends with the daughter and parent marrying, so theres some child grooming there and I wouldn't recommend watching it without letting people know to ignore the ending at least.
The anime doesn't have any of that. Also I've actually read the second part of the manga and while it wasn't especially good, it wasn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
Winry is sexualized a little, but it's not that bad. The one scene I can remember is when she takes off her shirt, but that actually has a funny conclusion, with all the people who didn't know the others were in the house pulling guns on each other before she throws them out.
Just started watching Fruits Baskets, it looks sweet.
Misfit of Demon Academy is “overpowered protagonist with heart of gold”, and yeah he’s got a harem but it’s not all girls and he seems asexual. Also he’s the reincarnation of the King of Demons, and can kill and reanimate his enemies instantly, but he’s a nice boy.
Tanaka-kun is Always Listless is a high school slice of life anime. Main guy and his best buddy are cute and affectionate, and the show does a casual lesbian love reveal in like the fourth episode.
BNA on Netflix is very pretty to look at, has a strong female lead who doesn’t get lewded or sexually assaulted, actually gets more powerful as the show progresses.
Case Closed is a serial anime with like a thousand episodes. It’s about a kid detective who solves gruesome murders.
Daily Lives of Highschool Boys is another slice of life show, with three dudes being dudes.
Cromartie High School is Bevis and Butthead meets Fist of the North Star.
The Disasterous Life of Saiki K is another Netflix show that is funny and charming.
Cromartie High School is Bevis and Butthead meets Fist of the North Star.
Slur warning on Cromartie, though. Teenage delinquents in the mid-2000's, uh, threw some words around pretty casually. It's doesn't happen often in the show but it does happen.
Revolutionary Girl Utena is a masterpiece. There are maybe 2 heterosexual characters in the show. Part of the reason it was made was that the last show Ikuhara worked on (Sailor Moon) had a creepy relationship between the middle school main character and her college boyfriend and he kept trying to get permission to kill him and he wasn't allowed to. It's got some of great villains, and some very subtle symbolism. (In one episode a hand shows up pointing to things that are happening in the background. Ironically, this is one of the harder to parse parts of the show and could just be meaningless making fun of the rest of the show. )You can watch it here, because the english publisher put it up for free on youtube.
Death Note is dumb, but a lot of fun. It's amazing to watch the hilariously overcomplicated plans the characters come up with to throw at each other. Fair warning, its creators have some issues with women that became clear in their second series together, but they mostly avoid that in Death Note by virtue of only having one female character.
Evangelion is great, though it's hornier than I'd like. It criticizes the horniness of anime, but also has a lot of horny stuff itself. It has some great characters, some fantastic moments, and provides a fascinating window into Hideaki Anno's mind. If you watch the movie, that gets into some real fucked up shit, but is still worth watching.
CW
The movie has the main character masturbating over his comatose friends body. It doesn't show it, nor does it really show the girl he's doing it to, but it's there. He immediately says "I'm so fucked up," and spends the rest of the movie sort of in shock about what he did till the end.
You can't go wrong with Satoshi Kon. Everything he did was pretty great. I'd put him up there with Miyazaki in terms of being necessary viewing.
The 2006 Higurashi Anime isn't great, but the Sound Novel is (if you ignore the goddamn pedophile doctor who's introduced in the middle of an otherwise well handled child abuse plotline.) To watch the excellent currently airing anime, you should probably watch or read it, though. CW for gore, various types of violence (with some stuff involving fingernails that made me feel sick to my stomach), and child abuse primarily. It has some good stuff politically. The backstory involves a small town coming together to protest a dam that would displace them, and more than one main character fondly reminisces about throwing bricks at cops. There are 2 cops in Higurashi. One is basically Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks and only appears to get a bunch of exposition and do karate, and the other is an asshole who makes every situation worse and thinks porn is an appropriate gift to give a teenager who's just been hospitalized. In addition,
spoiler
the villain of the original is a neo-nazi who wears an Iron Cross pin trying to orchestrate a right-wing military coup to protect the legacy of her war criminal grandfather. She's sort of redeemed, but only in the timeline where she didn't get the chance to try her plan.
Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun is a really fun comedy about a manga artist and his assistants, all of whom are in high school. It has some of my favorite characters in anything ever, and I think about some of the jokes every day of my life. I might never play a videogame with a friendly npc again without thinking about "TOMODAAA!"
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is a fun anime about the wonders of animation, with a female cast that isn't moe and isn't sexualized, which is sadly a rarity. It's just fun to watch.
If you don't mind currently airing stuff, Wonder Egg Priority is looking great. It had a character make some questionable comments about gender in the last episode without pushback, but the director clarified on twitter that it was supposed to be clear that the comments weren't to be agreed with. It's a beautiful anime that deals with varying forms of bullying and abuse extremely well. CW for bullying, abuse, sexual harrasment, and suicide, with potentially more to come.
Was going to recommend Utena, started Wonder Egg yesterday and i'm in the middle of a Higurashi frenzy because i finished the VN last month. (Also watching Hou).
I would have also recommended Otherside Picnic as a currently running anime, but figured I should stick to my favorite, especially since I also recommended Higurashi. Did you watch anything last year that you liked? I really enjoyed Talentless Nana and Hamefura, along with Eizouken which I recommended above.
Also, if I can recommend a manga that will probably become an anime soon, read Spy x Family. It's a very cute found family story with some great gags and a fantastic premise. Loid being a proud father to his handler in the latest chapter was adorable.
I will always suggest people watch Revue Starlight. Probably my favorite shows and it's soundtrack is amazing. Give it a blind go tho, definitely makes it really cool.
Yeah, Revue's director, Furakawa, worked with Ikuhara quite a bit. (Penguindrum comes to mind and I think there was one more) So it makes sense that Revue kind of resembles some of his work.
Kaiji is an anime about how the rich exploit the working class and leave them to fight eachother for scraps... also, extremely tense gambling I guess. Could count as coomer if you're into big, angular noses.
Shinsekai Yori is hard to explain without going into spoilers, but it features probably the best depiction of class struggle you can find in anime.
Berserk (the 1997 version) is a gay romance about dudes being bros in the middle ages. 10/10 would recommend
Kino no Tabi is a collection of philosophical parables of sorts, some of which definitely dip into leftist themes and interpretations.
Shiki is an anime about spooky vampires in rural japan, which can also be read as an allegory for
There's a lot of content warnings in Berserk. Just... over the top gratiutous violence at all times, but that scene, young Guts being sexually assaulted, god knows what else that I've just frogotten about. It is a bleak, bleak, bleak series.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Read the manga (it's only 7 volumes), then maybe watch the film. The film was released when only 2 volumes of the manga were done so it's completely different and not nearly as based as the manga.
Unironically, everything I've watched with an Adult Swim dub was really good. Dunno if I can recommend Space Dandy when they go to Space Hooters in the first episode, but some of the weirder episodes are the best I've ever watched.
Also seconding Ghost in the Shell. Older anime that are still remembered/popular tend to be really good and also have good dubs if you're into that.
Devil Man Crybaby - Nudity/sex stuff... and with the general tone of violence I'm pretty sure there was at least one scene of SV (but its been quite awhile since I've watched it.
Requiem for the Darkness - creepy folklore spooky stories in a feudal Japan era with some stylized art that can be pretty intense.
recommend some anime that isn't for children and/or coomers
edit: thank you I am actively taking notes
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IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FOR CHILDREN?
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I had heard somewhere that NGE is like, the reason late-night anime is a thing, due to the backlash that happened after it ran in an after-school time slot.
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That could be an"after-school time slot" in Japan.
I was like 15 when I watched it and that seems like a children to me now.
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It's not but Anno is a troll and made it seem like a normal mecha for the first 8 episodes or so.
Ghost in the Shell, both the 1995 movie and GitS 2: Innocence, are phenomenal. Stand Alone Complex is also very good but it's not on the same level as the films.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the best anime of all time.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is incredible, it uses the magical girl genre as an allegory for the military industrial complex. First couple epsisodes feel like a kids show and then the third episode takes an extreme turn. I recommend watching the series and then Rebellion, the sequel film. They cleaned up and edited the series into two feature length films but the color grading is harsh (everything is suddenly ULTRA ORANGE in any shots that are supposed to take place during sunset/golden hour) and the pacing suffers from the edits, so I'd avoid those.
Serial Experiments Lain is a little clunky at times but tackles a lot of interesting themes. It takes a pretty fantastical approach to technology so the 90's tech doesn't feel super dated.
Oh shit, I love that show and never clicked on the allegory. This makes so much sense.
What kind of shows do you like?
Monster - psychological crime thriller
Planetes - sci-fi drama about space garbage people
Usagi Drop - wholesome slice of life drama about parenthood
In This Corner of the World - slice of life war drama
Mushishi - episodic fantasy drama surrounding interactions between humans and spirit-like natural organisms
Legend of the Galactic Heroes - epic space opera
Nodame Cantabile - classical music romcom
Ghibli movies have universal appeal and are all pretty good (except Tales from Earthsea). A lesser known one that is more for adults is Only Yesterday
spoiler
Usagi Drop ends with the daughter and parent marrying, so theres some child grooming there and I wouldn't recommend watching it without letting people know to ignore the ending at least.
not in the anime
That does not happen in the anime which only adapted the first part of the manga. Also spoilers.
"There's weird weeaboo incest shit" is the kind of thing that should be spoiled in big block text on the front of the packaging.
The anime doesn't have any of that. Also I've actually read the second part of the manga and while it wasn't especially good, it wasn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
Whoa, you’re my anime taste twin; those are all my faves! What else do you recommend to someone who bailed on anime in like 2011?
Ayyy. I went with the critically acclaimed or at least generally well-regarded ones that are geared towards adults and have no fanservice.
For recs after 2011 in the same vein:
SoL/Comedy - Barakamon, Rilakkuma and Kaoru (not typical anime style but it's good and definitely geared more towards adults than kids)
Psychological Thriller - Death Parade
Historical Drama - Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
Sports - Run with the Wind (haven't seen it but folks whose opinions I trust tell me it's good)
Action/Adventure - Golden Kamuy, Dorohedoro, Legend of Hei (donghua technically)
Mushishi is good and soft and cozy.
The good animes from what I've gathered are, in no particular order: Akira, everything Ghibli, FLCL, psychopass, Cowboy Bebop, and Samurai Champloo
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I still listen to the intro song from time to time and I haven't watched Bubblegum Crisis since the late 90s.
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Hell yeah I'm clicking that link and listening to it right now. Anytime is a good time for Konya Wa Hurricane.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Patlabor 2: The Movie
Ghost in the Shell
Mob Psycho 100
FMA: B irks me. They really do up that mechanic girl as a sexual prospect and it's weird.
Just because she wears a tube top? There's a lot more to her character. Her behavior is not lewd. The creator is a woman.
Winry is sexualized a little, but it's not that bad. The one scene I can remember is when she takes off her shirt, but that actually has a funny conclusion, with all the people who didn't know the others were in the house pulling guns on each other before she throws them out.
Ping Pong the Animation
Demon Slayer is fun and scary and heartfelt.
Just started watching Fruits Baskets, it looks sweet.
Misfit of Demon Academy is “overpowered protagonist with heart of gold”, and yeah he’s got a harem but it’s not all girls and he seems asexual. Also he’s the reincarnation of the King of Demons, and can kill and reanimate his enemies instantly, but he’s a nice boy.
Tanaka-kun is Always Listless is a high school slice of life anime. Main guy and his best buddy are cute and affectionate, and the show does a casual lesbian love reveal in like the fourth episode.
BNA on Netflix is very pretty to look at, has a strong female lead who doesn’t get lewded or sexually assaulted, actually gets more powerful as the show progresses.
Case Closed is a serial anime with like a thousand episodes. It’s about a kid detective who solves gruesome murders.
Daily Lives of Highschool Boys is another slice of life show, with three dudes being dudes.
Cromartie High School is Bevis and Butthead meets Fist of the North Star.
The Disasterous Life of Saiki K is another Netflix show that is funny and charming.
That’s all I got for now. Check em out!
Seconded on Demon Slayer and BNA. They're both pretty recent animes but are now some of my all time favs.
Slur warning on Cromartie, though. Teenage delinquents in the mid-2000's, uh, threw some words around pretty casually. It's doesn't happen often in the show but it does happen.
Revolutionary Girl Utena
(Lots of content warnings but it handles them very well and is the best anime I’ve ever seen)
Revolutionary Girl Utena is a masterpiece. There are maybe 2 heterosexual characters in the show. Part of the reason it was made was that the last show Ikuhara worked on (Sailor Moon) had a creepy relationship between the middle school main character and her college boyfriend and he kept trying to get permission to kill him and he wasn't allowed to. It's got some of great villains, and some very subtle symbolism. (In one episode a hand shows up pointing to things that are happening in the background. Ironically, this is one of the harder to parse parts of the show and could just be meaningless making fun of the rest of the show. )You can watch it here, because the english publisher put it up for free on youtube.
Death Note is dumb, but a lot of fun. It's amazing to watch the hilariously overcomplicated plans the characters come up with to throw at each other. Fair warning, its creators have some issues with women that became clear in their second series together, but they mostly avoid that in Death Note by virtue of only having one female character.
Evangelion is great, though it's hornier than I'd like. It criticizes the horniness of anime, but also has a lot of horny stuff itself. It has some great characters, some fantastic moments, and provides a fascinating window into Hideaki Anno's mind. If you watch the movie, that gets into some real fucked up shit, but is still worth watching.
CW
The movie has the main character masturbating over his comatose friends body. It doesn't show it, nor does it really show the girl he's doing it to, but it's there. He immediately says "I'm so fucked up," and spends the rest of the movie sort of in shock about what he did till the end.
You can't go wrong with Satoshi Kon. Everything he did was pretty great. I'd put him up there with Miyazaki in terms of being necessary viewing.
The 2006 Higurashi Anime isn't great, but the Sound Novel is (if you ignore the goddamn pedophile doctor who's introduced in the middle of an otherwise well handled child abuse plotline.) To watch the excellent currently airing anime, you should probably watch or read it, though. CW for gore, various types of violence (with some stuff involving fingernails that made me feel sick to my stomach), and child abuse primarily. It has some good stuff politically. The backstory involves a small town coming together to protest a dam that would displace them, and more than one main character fondly reminisces about throwing bricks at cops. There are 2 cops in Higurashi. One is basically Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks and only appears to get a bunch of exposition and do karate, and the other is an asshole who makes every situation worse and thinks porn is an appropriate gift to give a teenager who's just been hospitalized. In addition,
spoiler
the villain of the original is a neo-nazi who wears an Iron Cross pin trying to orchestrate a right-wing military coup to protect the legacy of her war criminal grandfather. She's sort of redeemed, but only in the timeline where she didn't get the chance to try her plan.
Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun is a really fun comedy about a manga artist and his assistants, all of whom are in high school. It has some of my favorite characters in anything ever, and I think about some of the jokes every day of my life. I might never play a videogame with a friendly npc again without thinking about "TOMODAAA!"
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is a fun anime about the wonders of animation, with a female cast that isn't moe and isn't sexualized, which is sadly a rarity. It's just fun to watch.
If you don't mind currently airing stuff, Wonder Egg Priority is looking great. It had a character make some questionable comments about gender in the last episode without pushback, but the director clarified on twitter that it was supposed to be clear that the comments weren't to be agreed with. It's a beautiful anime that deals with varying forms of bullying and abuse extremely well. CW for bullying, abuse, sexual harrasment, and suicide, with potentially more to come.
Holy shit, are you me?!?!?
Was going to recommend Utena, started Wonder Egg yesterday and i'm in the middle of a Higurashi frenzy because i finished the VN last month. (Also watching Hou).
I would have also recommended Otherside Picnic as a currently running anime, but figured I should stick to my favorite, especially since I also recommended Higurashi. Did you watch anything last year that you liked? I really enjoyed Talentless Nana and Hamefura, along with Eizouken which I recommended above.
I've seen Eizouken and Evangelion and some of Miyazaki's stuff like Mononoke and Spirited Away. Will check out Utena, thank you.
Also, if I can recommend a manga that will probably become an anime soon, read Spy x Family. It's a very cute found family story with some great gags and a fantastic premise. Loid being a proud father to his handler in the latest chapter was adorable.
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The Made in Abyss anime is mostly fine, but the manga has definitely ruined it for me because the author is a literal, unironic pedophile lol
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personal fav is mob psycho 100, though it kinda lends into the children side
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Kino's Journey
The Devil Is A Part Timer
Thermae Romae
I will always suggest people watch Revue Starlight. Probably my favorite shows and it's soundtrack is amazing. Give it a blind go tho, definitely makes it really cool.
It's the closest an anime has got to Ikuhara without being Ikuhara, so that's pretty cool.
Yeah, Revue's director, Furakawa, worked with Ikuhara quite a bit. (Penguindrum comes to mind and I think there was one more) So it makes sense that Revue kind of resembles some of his work.
Kaiji is an anime about how the rich exploit the working class and leave them to fight eachother for scraps... also, extremely tense gambling I guess. Could count as coomer if you're into big, angular noses.
Shinsekai Yori is hard to explain without going into spoilers, but it features probably the best depiction of class struggle you can find in anime.
Berserk (the 1997 version) is a gay romance about dudes being bros in the middle ages. 10/10 would recommend
Kino no Tabi is a collection of philosophical parables of sorts, some of which definitely dip into leftist themes and interpretations.
Shiki is an anime about spooky vampires in rural japan, which can also be read as an allegory for
spoiler
the October Revolution
Does the 1997 version of Beserk end with THAT scene? Because uh. I would never recommend it because that scene is traumatizing
Oops, yeah it does end with that lol. Content warning for Berserk: everything
There's a lot of content warnings in Berserk. Just... over the top gratiutous violence at all times, but that scene, young Guts being sexually assaulted, god knows what else that I've just frogotten about. It is a bleak, bleak, bleak series.
Wonder Egg Priority: Currently airing surreal anime. Every episode is CW, but the show takes the issues seriously.
Akudama Drive: Recent heist anime. Based.
Haikyu! Watch Haikyu! It's very very good.
Someone else recommended Mushishi and I want to recommend that as well. Very chill and interesting show.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Read the manga (it's only 7 volumes), then maybe watch the film. The film was released when only 2 volumes of the manga were done so it's completely different and not nearly as based as the manga.
Unironically, everything I've watched with an Adult Swim dub was really good. Dunno if I can recommend Space Dandy when they go to Space Hooters in the first episode, but some of the weirder episodes are the best I've ever watched.
Also seconding Ghost in the Shell. Older anime that are still remembered/popular tend to be really good and also have good dubs if you're into that.
Devil Man Crybaby - Nudity/sex stuff... and with the general tone of violence I'm pretty sure there was at least one scene of SV (but its been quite awhile since I've watched it. Requiem for the Darkness - creepy folklore spooky stories in a feudal Japan era with some stylized art that can be pretty intense.
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Shingeki no Kyojin, best anime imo
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