Anime for people who hate anime

Just finished Watanabe's new Netflix series, Carol and Tuesday. It was enjoyable, but I lost a good deal of interest when it settled into being about a Martian talent show. The closing credits are fantastic though!

Pretty much my sentiments. The music has been pretty good too, and I was kind of ranking the songs in my head -- "The Loneliest Girl" is tops, but the songs from the fake FKA Twigs are up there for me. (Angela is overrated.)

Pow-pow!

I always knew that fan communities could be intense and there's obviously nasty bullying but I didn't realize that fan art that was deemed problematic could lead to immense harassment from large parts of the community and two Jojo fan artists have ended up in hospital over it.

People have been bullied out of jobs and more than one person has been bullied to suicide. A Japanese fanartist had someone put needles in cookies they’d baked for her.

That's horrible. I also heard about it happening among Steven Universe fans on tumblr.

Was that latter artist bullied by people inside and/or outside japan? I remember Falcoon (fan artist who turned pro, worked for SNK) got bullied about his weight but that was maybe too early for culture war stuff (and I don't know how much japan goes for that).

my partner and i have been burning through anime like it's our job during quarantine. here's my anime logg with ratings:

completed
* Arslan Senki - 6
* Death Note - 8
* Elfen Lied - 6
* Kill la Kill - 10
* Little Witch Academia - 8
* Ghost in the Shell: SAC - 8
* Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam - 9
* Steins;Gate - 9
* Gurren Lagann - 9

watching
* Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ - i like the goofiness but they made the argama crew seem completely inept. also where tf is quattro??
* Legend of the Galactic Heroes - watched the first 30 episodes a few years back and it was a solid 10
* Ghost in the Shell: SAC2 - more cyberpunk awesomeness, minus the creepy hotel scene

looking for some good 80s/90s deep cuts, any recommendations?

you can also probably tell that i'm a Trigger fanboy -- i've never seen more joyful, maximalist animation. their stuff is like a love letter to everything anime good, band, and in-between

revolutionary girl utena

I recently watched NANA and loved it and tbh I have no idea if it's super well known or a deep cut and it's also from the 2000s but basically my point is if you haven't watched NANA you gotta

i watched the first saga of utena a few years back and really liked it! no better time to go back and finish

I remember a fair amount of people loved Nana, or the comic at least.

there's gunbuster and diebuster if you haven't seen those, kind of the origin point of the gainax/trigger style along with flcl

Is Nana streaming anywhere right now in the US? Looks like it's not on Prime or Netflix anymore :/

i don't see it anywhere

a lot of 00s and even some early 10s stuff is in limbo these days

Utena is critical viewing, Gunbuster is also great. If you’re a total nerd and curious about anime history, I really loved Otaku no Video, a 2-ep OVA abt the creation of Gainax.

Here’s some 80s/90s stuff I liked:

Bubblegum Crisis
Riding Bean
Battle Angel
Armitage III
Serial Experiments Lain
The Big O
Excel Saga

Ppl seem to like Blue Submarine No. 6 but I thought it was boring.

If you want ultra graphic pulpy garbage, Mad Bull 34 and Genocyber are ridic to the point of being kinda entertaining, but I would feel guilty actually *recommending* them

oh yeah definitely need to watch gunbuster and flcl

as for streaming, there's a great android app called "AnYme" you can use depending on the copyright laws in your country

It's probably super dated, but I loved the Vision of Escaflowne TV series back then.
Lain is great. After that, check out Paranoia Agent.

escaflowne is still good other than the ugly character designs

turn a gundam is my favorite mecha anime from that era

i haven't really seen much from the 90s though other than the big names, need to do a deeper dive

would love to read a book about the 80s bubble economy OVA scene, where any huckster or madman seemingly could get an anime made.
e.g. watched Dragon's Heaven OVA from 1988 the other day.
it's not that great, the main pull being that it's a complete ripoff of Moebius artwork brought to life.
it's also 42 minutes long but only 24 minutes is animation. there's a 5 minute live action intro featuring closeups of a model of the main mecha/robot, and then an outro of about 12 minutes of the model being lovingly constructed and filmed. so indulgent!

Excel Saga

oh i'm glad this show holds up? i haven't seen it since high school but i was a huge fan

here are 80's and 90's OVAs i would add to the list ... most of them are on youtube

dallos
megazone 23
goku midnight eye
record of lodoss war
paradise dolls
cyber city odeo 808
spirit warrior
black lion
wizardry
captain herlock: the endless odyssey

definitely check out retrocrush.tv, they have a ton of stuff on there from the '80s/'90s
That said we're probably getting away from the topic of this thread - everything we're talking about here is generally beloved anime

I'm currently watching through Monster, all of which is up on Youtube (in my part of the world at least); it's a slow burn but I'm enjoying it. More or less a straight-up crime thriller, there'a a few cliches but it's written well.

I'm a bit surprised that it seems to be the only Naoki Urusawa series that's been adapted into anime.

oh yeah megazone 23 and cyber city oedo 808 are rad

excel saga is SO funny and wacky and i was #blessed enough to wind up with a subtitle track that has pop-up-video style explanations of all of the obscure references, which has added to my appreciateion of it

if you are down w torrenting, nyaa dot si is an incredibly comprehensive resource, sometimes TOO comprehensive (like way too many rips of the same thing), they also skew towards placebo-level encoding (like FLAC audio and some insanely high video bitrate) which can be annoying

the most annoying anime release group thing i've come across is where they use an obscure feature in MKV that isn't really widely supported to chop off the intros and outros into their own files to save space

I'm largely anime ignorant, but are Ghost In the Shell and Akira still considered the gold standard of classic anime? I need a new thing to obsess over to distract myself from the end of civilization and am looking for entertaining diversions to stave off total despair

from a western perspective they definitely are still considered god tier

mamoru oshii's best work is unparalleled in anime not to mention cinema

ghost in the shell is among that best work

Haven't seen the anime for Monster but the manga is one of my favorites. Love Urasawa.
GITS probably holds up? Akira is amazing landmark animation but as a film it's always been kinda rough - bear in mind the manga was still going when they made the movie so it ends strangely.

I would say Ghost in the Shell and Akira are god-tier but they are not the entire god tier, I would also throw in like Spirited Away and probably a Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue? Millennium Actress?)

millennium actress is the best satoshi kon by a mile imo

check out Metropolis as well if u haven't seen it -- based on a manga from 1949 by Osamu Tezuka, it's directed by Rintaro and written by the director of Akira.

the last episode of gunbuster is a work of art

it's only like 6 eps, right? I really should rewatch it. Or maybe just watch Diebuster. My understanding is that E1 of Gunbuster is a parody of, like, sports anime? but sadly the context is lost on me :(

my kids have gotten into anime in a big way, usually shitty high school stories like haikyu

they like attack on titan too, which is..... HORRIFIC

they also like my hero academia, and they want me to subscribe to crunchyroll, but the video quality on crunchyroll is SO BAD and almost nothing is dubbed either

the crunchyroll player defaults to 480p if you aren't subscribed but you can tick it up to 1080p even without a subscription iirc

they only paywall new/currently airing shows for the most part

Lol I liked the first series of attack on Titan, never watched the rest. Series loves its gore though.

the subs are an issue for them - just a little too much work.

My understanding is that E1 of Gunbuster is a parody of, like, sports anime? but sadly the context is lost on me :(

it kinda starts out as like a light parody of mecha/school anime but then turns into something incredible about halfway through. 6 episodes so it's an easy watch

they are now super into 'Food Wars'

haikyuu to attack on titan to food wars is quite the downward slide

lol

help me help them, they have no taste and no filter

i need to finish watching food wars. love the orgasmic depictions of flavor

yeah that's their favourite part :)