Anime (Medium & Genre)

Yes, but if you're out of high school, you're only allowed to like Miyazaki and Cowboy Bebop. Anything more than that is undeniably creepy. (Granted, anime fans have only gotten more creepy in the last decade or so.)

In the meantime, you should read some picture books about dudes in tights punching each other because that's what adults with distinguished taste do.

Not an anime stan, but on the subject of the AV Club's Gateways To Geekery, I've always found that they go overboard on the whole "let's be accessible" thing; they just give you one or two reccomendations per piece. While the average enthusiast might exagerate by reccomeding dozens and dozens of books/movies/albums, I think that to give someone a decent grasp of a genre (or even an artist, if they're prolific enough to merit inclusion in such a feature), you should at least go top5.

I still think Akira is the pinnacle, but what do I know?

There's just so much anime that it's hard to know where to begin, and like ANY artform(or in this case animation from a certain country), 95% of it is shitty rubbish or total fluff. I'm also a huge fan or Wings of Honneamise and yes, Cowboy Bebop has something for everyone.

Read my CHUD blogpost on Eyeshield 21. Football anime. It's dorky and nerdy but also very charming and addictive.

Most televised anime are based on Manga. Many serialized manga are like soap operas. Once you accept that, you can enjoy it a lot more.

But yes, you still need to weed out all the creepy stuff. If you have anime on demand, I say start there, there is a wide diverse selection of anime to watch for free.

There's a shot in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream that's a direct lift and tip of the hat to Perfect Blue. That's about as great an endorsement of that film as I can conjure. That film is still one of the best psychological suspense stories of the last decade and a half, let alone animated. The first two films Kon followed up with, Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress, come just short of that benchmark, which still makes them damn good.

Akira and Ghost In The Shell are the Citizen Kane and Casablanca of the medium. Not as much from a storytelling/writing standpoint, but theyre the ones that push the envelope in several ways, ways that have yet to be topped even though we're 20 and 15 years removed from them, respectively. Ghost In The Shell's film sequel pushes even further, but its literary to a fault. The TV series, on the other hand, is perfection from dramatic, action, and philosophical standpoints.

I believe I made this point in another thread, but generally, the anime titles that stand out are the ones that part company with what we usually conceive of as anime.

Please tell me you're a Miyazaki fan too, JC, or I may have to hurt you. Don't get me wrong, Kon, Akira and GITS are great, but Miyazaki is GOD, or at least shares that title with Tezuka.

My thoughts on the subject: I love anime, but there is definitely a lot of creepy stuff, and JC's last point is indeed a good one. A show I would personally recommend that follows that rule of thumb is Wolf's Rain: it's contemplative, beautifully animated and scored (Yoko Kanno FTW), and it has one of the greatest English dubs of all time. It's slow at times, and it doesn't answer all the questions of its world/mythology, but the characters all grow wonderfully and the world, if occasionally murky, is quite an intriguing, troubling setting.

Also, even some of the formulaic stuff can be fun or even great. Take Fullmetal Alchemist (the first one, not Brotherhood, which is fine but seems more derivative), which gets surprisingly dark, moody and morally gray for what appears to be a action-adventure kids' show at first.

The first half of the show Blue Gender is an EXCELLENT sci-fi anime, really well paced and made. After they get off the planet, though, it slowly deteriorates into the same "You have super power spirit power wind power with your powers" bullshit that kills all other anime for me.

If you can rent the first couple discs, though, I reccomend it. Hell, the second half may not even bother you as much as me.

Might as well ask this here, what do you guys think about Neon Genesis Evangelion? I read the synopsis for the show, which made it seem interesting (philosophical questions, large-scale mythology, etc.), but before I purchase it, I thought I'd ask for your thoughts. If it is overrated or something of that nature, I'd like to know. Thanks.

There's something ineffable and perfect about this scene from WHISPER OF THE HEART that moves me deeply, almost to tears*, every time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_rlJbwsbs4

Maybe it comes from being armed with the poignant foreknowledge that this was the director's only complete film for Ghibli before suddenly dying of an aneurysm at age 48. He could have become as great as Miyazaki, I think.

It's by far my favorite non-Miyazaki Studio Ghibli film.

If you want something genre, follow Justin's advice. The two TV series iterations of Ghost in the Shell are, well, perfect. Look them up:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Second Gig

*I cried the first time. Big, goofy, smile on my face tears. And I'm choking 'em back right now.

This is the conclusion I've come to with anime both as a medium and as a genre. And this is from someone who has gone to anime cons and was into it during highschool/etc.

Anime as a genre doesn't really work. Just as there is in film and television, there are romantic comedies, childrens, science fiction, horror, fantasy. You can't lump all of that as one genre. Perhaps as folks that aren't Japanese, we aren't exposed to it in such a great amount and still consider it a niche genre as a whole. As a medium, it is used to explore various aforementioned genres.

So I don't like anime as a whole, because there is just so much that qualifies as it.

But!
Neon Genesis Evangelion is.....interesting. Unique. The ambitious story has made it a benchmark for the medium..but I never cared for it. And always check out the series as opposed to the film. The film is just awful.

For those interested in decent fantasy/horror stuff, I'll throw Ninja Scroll at you (it really is a beautiful film, but the series is awful...ish), Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and...hrm. Records of Lodoss War (original) is pretty good as fantasy series goes. Outlaw Star is a more pulpy version of Cowboy Bepop.

You can't go wrong with Miyazaki. He's the Disney of the medium.

Really? I got a 3rd of the way through and thought it was just a bunch of sci-fi tropes thrown together. Maybe I didn't get far enough into it, but it seemed to me that the most developed characters were those robots.

Berserk, on the other hand, has some of the best character development I've seen in an anime series.

By no means would I consider myself an anime fan (most of what I love is the Ghibli output and other stuff that, as Justin Clark pointed out, diverges from "typical" anime), but I wanted to add to the love for Whisper of the Heart, particularly that scene. For me, it's right up there with the musical self-discovery scenes from Almost Famous and Hustle and Flow.

I have always love anime, from when I was young and watched Japanimation such as Gachaman/G-Force, Galaxy Train 999, Battleship Yamato, and Macross, to present-day with series like Full Metal Alchemist, and movies like Ninja Scroll. I've watched just about every genre of anime (yes, even hantei), except the girl romance ones tailored for female audience. To me, watching anime is like watching live-action series and movies, except it exists in hand-drawn (or computerized) universe, but because of this medium the stories aren't inhibited by budget, cast, or scale, only imagination. I understand that it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but as a fan there is nothing better, even in Hollywood.

Add to the fact these days more and more anime are being based on "light novels"(almost pocket sized books perfect for the long train commutes in Japan) which lifts the storytelling a bit more. While most of those novels can be considered pulp, there are a surprising number of them with depth.

This is an understandable opinion, but it highlights the currently woeful state of international distribution for Japanese animated feature films made before AKIRA. That film and GHOST IN THE SHELL are certainly important and influential, but if I had to pick a Japanese animated film to correspond to CITIZEN KANE off the top of my head, I'd go with 1968's HORUS, PRINCE OF THE SUN aka THE LITTLE NORSE PRINCE VALIANT.

HORUS went well over budget and years over its original schedule and was never actually completed - a couple of key sequences are presented as still drawings due to the expense and time it would have taken to animate them. It was prematurely pulled from release by Toei Animation, who wanted a simple children's film all along and considered what they got instead to be an embarrassing failure - but not before it was embraced by college students and the young generation of artists coming up in comics and animation. Within a few years, the Japanese audience's ideas of what sort of stories could be told in animation, and the manner in which they could be told, had fundamentally shifted as a result, making the eventual production of films like GHOST IN THE SHELL and AKIRA viable.

HORUS was the directorial debut of Isao Takahata, with key animator and "scene designer" Hayao Miyazaki serving as his right-hand man. It's fair to consider it a cornerstone of what eventually became Studio Ghibli - but as big a deal as that is, it's of lesser importance compared to the film's broader influence on the Japanese animation industry.

I got into anime back in high school. I was nursing a magnificently enormous crush on Gillian Anderson and thus went and saw the dub of Princess Mononoke. Then I started up a Hotline server (40 whole gigabytes!) and absorbed waaaaay too much anime through the rest of high school and into college. So suggesting Miyazaki as a gateway makes perfect sense to me. But I'd go a step further and say most of Studio Ghibli's output will work as a gateway. Grave of the Fireflies is one of the best war films period.

What's both neat and frustrating about anime (that's films, television and webseries) is the sheer QUANTITY. There's maybe 15 new shows and/or seasons every three months. That's a lot of something to sift through and because there's so much there's a lot of crap.

And I mean A LOT.

Also where our animated shows are geared exclusively towards children a lot of anime is geared towards teens and early twenty somethings. And remember that the bulk of anime is based on mangas and light novels, and those are meant for a wide swath of people (no really you will actually see 70 year old women reading manga on the train).

So with all that in mind let's delve into the anime.

It seems like just talking about how anime is more then tentacle rape wouldn't work, so I'll just put up some examples of shows that aren't tentacle rapey. I'm excluding films because there never seem to be any good ones now a days. They're all Bleach and Naruto and Pokemon.

Neon Genesis Evangelion and Escaflowne were THE go to shows back in high school, but they were also only a few years old. It's been fifteen years since these shows came out and they've aged. I don't think I would recommend either now. The latter is full of anime tropes and irritating characters and odd character designs and the former is such a bugfuck of a show. Seriously. F Evangelion and it's big ol' F you ending.

As already mentioned, Cowboy Bebop is solid entertainment and very popular on both sides of the ocean, but I tend to prefer shows that have happy endings, because if I'm going to invest 13 hours in a story I don't want to be depressed for days.

Honestly if I were to recommend an anime tv show to an anime beginner it would have to be Nodame Cantabile. It's based on a manga and was also adapted into a solid live action show (starring the girl from Swing Girls). The animated style isn't too jarring for American audiences, it has a lot of traditional anime dramatic beats and it has a cover of Gershwin on a melodica. A melodica man. That's just awesome. Also it's all about 20-somethings at a musical conservatory.

Another fun show would be Welcome to the NHK. It is VERY steeped in modern Japanese culture, but it's also very funny, and any nerd who's ever had to deal with creepy anime fans will appreciate the show as it spends 99% of it's time viciously ridiculing creepy anime fans. Here's a scene where the main character discovers internet porn.

The two above are what an American audience wouldn't necessarily think of when talking about anime. There's no tentacle rape and no creepy creep fan service, just solid storytelling in a pretty package.

A show that's a bit more "fantastic" would be The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimaya. It's wildly popular in Japan and is now known for doing one of the most awesome pranks ever. (They did a time loop episode but repeated it for over a month instead of showing new episodes.) If you have even a passing familiarity with anime you'll get the jokes, and again, it's a comedy. (The link for it is to the first episode which is purposely animated to look like a shitty home video.)

Those are all some newer shows, and not stuck in 2000 like the rest of the stuff recommended in this thread.

I have been a fan of anime since...Speed Racer. My fave anime are...
1) Ufo Robot Grendizer (Grandizer-US)
2) Getter Robo G ( Force Five Starvengers-US)
3) Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers-US)
4) Gatchaman (Battle Of The Planets/ G-Force/Eagle Riders-US
5) Fist Of The North Star (Series + Film)
6) Gaiking
7) Getter Robo-Armageddon
8) GoDannar
9) Dirty Pair
10) Street Fighter II V
11) Dominion Tank Police
12) Speed Racer
13) Ninja Scroll (series and film)
14) Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
15) New Getter Robo
As all can see I Love...Super Robot series, Leiji Matsumoto's Best Space Opera (to Me), and over the top Martial Arts...Extravaganzas etc! I...Finally got my first...36 episodes of...Fist Of The North Star! Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, and several other stores only had it for order online. I finally found it in...NYC!

The gynoids, you mean? I recommend finishing. There's a horrifying twist to those things. Also, a sequence in a ghost hacker's mansion that kinda raises the bar on mind-fuckery.

More suggestions: The Metropolis anime does some wonderful stuff with Fritz Lang's ideas.

The Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal movies are very classical samurai stories, but still very well done. I'd almost say the annoyance of wading through the juvenile Rurouni Kenshin series is worthwhile only because the utterly brilliant Reflection movie caps it all off, and it sadly makes no sense without watching the series. It's also utterly heartbreaking.

I think Anime is a medium that involves a lot of genres, to be honest.
Ive grown distant from it in the last years, though.
The last series i followed to the end was "Black Lagoon" (a sequel is coming soon, i believe), which was by far the best action ive seen onscreen in years, since its essentially an ongoing homage to action films and its stars.
"Neon Genesis Evangelion" is a great series, but the last episodes, the movies and the new remake OVAs show that its development was a messy process, to say the least.
Also, I think some here will agree that the "Metropolis" anime movie is easily one of the best pieces of animation ever done, and a good show of how the medium can achieve many genres to perfection.
Hell, "Perfect Blue" is one of the most horrifying thrillers ever made as well.

EDIT:Missed the bit about Metropolis that. Justin posted above; sorry Justin!

Fleed mentioned the Ninja Scroll series above. I was really surprised at how much I liked that, preferred it quite a bit over the movie, actually.

I own maybe 30 anime movies and one series(Bebop). I need to rewatch some to see if they're even worth a shit. I may be wrong, but I think he's referring to the series.
This one is really neat. Parts are rather clunky, and the art style is love it or hate it(very "cartoony" for a mostly serious cartoon), but the animation(both CG and hand drawn) is spectacular, and it's got a killer use of Ray Charles.

Its quite faithful to Tezuka´s art style, to be honest; one of the wonders of his work was that despite his "cartoony" style, he tackled very mature themes and plots; hell, his "Black jack" super doctor manga series is absolutely fantastic, since Tezuka was actually a physician.

That actually makes more sense, and thats another one I'd say continuing on is a good idea. It definitely picks up steam with time, especially once the Laughing Man has more of a presence.

Also, I'm assuming the robots he's referring to are the Tachikoma. In which case. yeah, there's way more character development thrown at them than they deserve in theory, being excuses for typical anime cuteness most episodes and all. But holy shit, does that series go amazing, fascinating places with those little guys. That episode-long discussion late in season 1 about possibly wiping out their sentience is god damned harrowing, and the fact that they make the Major into the villain for an episode as a result is ballsy.

I just thought it was worth a mention because I could see it as being a turn-off to some.

It was a good call, actually.
Hell, i watched that one with my dad, and it took 15 minutes for him to realize it wasnt a kids movie.

Agreed
Is everyone missing that point besides us? When people say they don't like anime, it's saying like you don't like movies. Or you don't like books.

If you're interested in a particular genre, check out anime in that particular genre. You're not going to like Love Hina if you like something like Wicked City or Ninja Scroll. If you like Excel Saga, you may not dig grave of the Fireflies (Which I find vastly overrated. It may be because I have no soul.) And that's okay!

And Nexus? The Ninja Scroll series pales in comparison to the movie. God, that series sucked.

The problem is the people who assign higher value to something because it's anime, not just those who say they don't like it.

Yeah, the series. I almost never stop watching a movie part of the way through. However, with a TV series I usually give it about 5-6 episodes because 13 hours is a lot more of a time investment than 2.

Yeah, the Tachiokma are what I'm referring to (once you supplied the name I remembered it). Maybe it gets better later on, but that series is pretty much everything I hate about anime thrown into one package. "Deep" ideas for anime nerds who have never seen Blade Runner to navel-gaze and exclaim "That's so deep" about, a main character who is pretty much total fan-service, awesome visuals for the sake of awesome visuals without relating to the bare-bones story at all, anime cuteness for no reason like you mentioned.

Or maybe I just hate most anime nerds and viewing the series brought all that to the forefront. It just seems like most of the people I've met who are really into anime are like hard-core comic geeks, permanently stuck in a 14-year-old mindset. The reason I brought up Berserk earlier is because it's got some actual good storytelling, but the comment I've heard about it most from anime fans is "It would be good if they ever finished it". They don't look at it as a complete story because the manga it's based on kept going. That's like saying "The Dark Knight was good, but in the comics Batman and the Joker fought a bunch, so it's not a complete movie."

Or maybe judging an entire art form based on the worst of its fans is unfair. I don't know, maybe I'll have to finish the show.

Yeah, those kind of people.

Saying "I hate anime" isn't so much like saying "I hate movies" as it is like saying, for instance, "I hate american movies", which is a pretty stupid position to hold, but you're actually quite likely to find people who would actually say that. Which is not to justify anime's dismissal, but you can't make it as broad as "it's a medium", either - it's a certain country's contribuition to a medium, and wildly different as its products will be there are still tropes and elements of style that are likely to show up almost across the board, and if you dislike those you really have to dig deeper.

I watched a couple episodes of a batshit insane anime called Paranoia Agent, and IT WAS AWESOME. Anyone familiar with this?

I really liked Paranoia Agent a lot. If you've only watched a couple of episodes you haven't even experienced the weird yet.

I recently rented the first of those new Neon Genesis movies with low expectations and was very satisfied. It's amazing what cutting hours of Shinji moping does for the pace.

As a teenager, I used to watch alot of Anime, Akira, GITS, Ninja Scroll etc. Me and my brother used to watch Evangelion every week on TV, I'm in the minority of thinking that ending took balls. I haven't seen the series recently so my opinion might've changed. I'll check out that re-edited version sometime.

Of course, Cowboy Bebop is the barometer for most and I love that show, I even love the movie spin-off. Samurai Champloo is another fantastic anime series from the same crew, I can't recommend that one highly enough.