What series would you suggest...

The Core The Anime Forum
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…for someone who is new to anime, such as me. I haven’t really given it a chance, and I’d like to. I used to shun anime because of stuff like Dragonball Z (no offense to those who like it) but then I realized that is like shunning American movies for stuff like “Zombie Ninja Gangbangers.” =p

So… uh… I like mostly serious stuff, but silliness is okay, as long as it’s clear that they aren’t taking it seriously. I don’t know if this post has been done before, and I don’t really care, I just want to try something new. shrugs

I’m looking for series more than movies- unless the movies stand alone. I’ve already been suggested Cowboy Bebop- which I’m looking into.

Thanks for the help.

2

Outlaw Star. :3

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SUGGESTION THREAD! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

In no particular order;

Hellsing
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Darkstalkers
Scrapped Princess
Excel Saga
Love Hina
Gundam SEED
X/1999

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neon genesis evangelion!

5

Cowboy Bebop ^^

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Samurai Champloo
Naruto
Hellsing
Excel Saga
Get Backers
Read or Die
R.O.D The TV

7

X/1999
Naruto
Excel Saga
FLCL

Maybe Final Fantasy: Unlimited?

8

Don’t forget Chobits and Tales of Eternia.

9

You’re tell me there’s a ToE anime and I HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET!?

EDIT: Holy crap, there is! I love you Manus.

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Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040.

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Umm… what ARE these things? I mean, rattling off titles is all well and good, and I suppose I could just look it up on the internet, but a genre would be helpful, at the very least. And isn’t Love Hina a hentai? Forgive me if I’m completely wrong. o_o;

Also, I’ve heard Pierson mention Full Metal Alchemist before- what is that? :3 (gratuitous smilie)

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Well Bubblegum Crisis is one of those chicks in armor types. But I think it’s very well done. Basicly robots malfuction or as they call it ‘go rouge’ and the Knight Sabers take care of it. It get’s deeper though. I like the AD Police officers in it mostly.

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I’m also fairly new to anime. The two series I enjoyed the most are X TV and Read or Die (and its sequel, R.O.D. TV). I also recommend Last Exile… it’s not as enjoyable as the other two I mentioned, but it’s extremely original, very creative, and has its own unique style.

I’ve written up some reviews of the few animes I’ve seen; go here: http://www.rpgclassics.com/staff/cidolfas/reviews.html#anime
The reviews do give you an overview of the content of the series, but no real spoilers.

14

Don’t even THINK this is exactly what they’re about, as they’re insanely rushed and short guidelines about the skin-and-bones plot.

Hellsing: Horror.
Vampire Hunters hunt Vampires. Blood and gunfire runs rampart.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Huge Robots.
Young boy pilots huge robot. Gets his head messed up so much in the process.

Love Hina: Romantic Comedy
Boy moves in as manager of dormitory/hotel full of hawt anime ladies. Hilarity ensues.

Darkstalkers: Fighting
Various mythical and fictional creatures duke it out over four episodes trying to defeat huge firey demon-beast. Based on the game by Capcom. Awesome.

Scrapped Princess: Fantasy Action-Adventure
Young girl proclaimed Enemy of Mankind. Runs. Is chased by various uber-warriors. Discovers various truths about the world. Has a sweet few ending eps.

Excel Saga: Comedy
Girl works for young organisation that tries to take over the world but instead accomplishes very little. Very random humour. Funny as hell.

Gundam SEED: Huge Robots.
Young boy pilos giant robot For Great Justice. Old childhood friend fights him as opposition with predictable results and arguing across the Void of Space. Angst and fighting happens. Well worth the 50-ep download.

X/1999: Fantasy/Thinly-disguised Shounen-Ai.
Boy comes to Tokyo to prevent end of world by fighint various individduals with either a) magical powers or b) swords. It’s a CLAMP-based series, so everyone’s a prettyboy and gay.

Naruto: Fighting Ninjas.
Think DBZ with ninjas. An awesome manga, and the anime can be awesome as well. Often it takes a while to GET to said awesome bits though.

Read or Die OVA: Spy(?) action-adventure
Group of spies who work for the British govt who deal in book-learning stuff. Chasing evil d00ds across world and shooting at historial figures high points of series.

Chobits: Romantic (yup) Comedy (barely)
Boy finds Persocon (girl-shaped robot) in allyway. Takes her home and teaches her stuff amidst huge amounts of innuendo. Evil series. Avoid.

15

Love Hina isn’t Hentai, unless you count the ocassional flash of nudity as porn. In reality it is a romantic comedy about a guy stuck managing a girl’s dormitory . It’s an example of one genre of Anime, in which several girls get a crush on the same guy. This sounds dumb, but can be fun and even moving, depending on the writing. I haven’t seen LH fully yet, so no opinion for the moment.

As I’ve been commenting on this board, Anime covers ALL genres, but more importantly, it presents different ATTITUDES; it’s not so much WHAT a series is about (and some are VERY bizarre) but WHAT their attutude is, and that can be anything from screwball comedy to utter gloom and doom. (Note, however, that japanese sensibilities are NOT exactly like ours: they don’t make THAT big a deal about nudity, but you notice that characters, even in deeply romantic stories, hardly ever KISS!)

Here are some synopses. You decide if you like them:

EVANGELION: Typical “Teens-pilot-Giant-Robots-versus-Alien-Invaders” plot- OR so it seems at first. It’s actually a dark -and VERY complicated!- conspiracy story. The aliens have something to do with Christianity (!!) and the organization that fights them has its own agenda, with the kids being nothing more than guinea pigs. The story focuses on the mental deterioration of the main characters. The ending was so confusing the fans protested and they made another version. Not recommended- most fans just think it’s "all that’ because of the way it broke the Giant Robot cliches.

OUTLAW STAR: Like Cowboy Bebop (mercenaries in space) but milder. Has a happy ending, for instance. I liked it better, but that’s me.

EXCEL SAGA: Totally screwy comedy (think Looney Toons) about a girl who wants to help her master conquer the world- and fails catastrophically every time. At least it is original in that the heroine is a villain!

Gundam: As mentioned in other threads here, there’s a LOT of Gundam series. They all have in common (besides their use of the Gundam giant robots -oh, excuse me, “mecha”- that they’re about conflicts between Earth and its colonies in the Solar System in the future. Seriousness varies: the original GUNDAM series (the “Universal Century” ones) were dramatic and well written; G-Gundam is POWER RANGERS in disguise. Gundam Wing had too many angsty teenagers for my taste. Haven’t seen much of the others.

X/1999: Teenage guy has the power to destroy the world (supposedly on the year 1999- outdated now, of course) and is being courted both by a good and an evil group. Not seen it yet.

FF Unlimited: Two kids get on an interdimensional train and visit many worlds looking for their parents. Despite having many FF elements (Summons, chocobos, etc.) not very good.

Chobits: Another boy-falls-in-love-with-inhuman-girl (android in this case.) Not seen it yet.

Bubblegum Crisis: All-female team of power-armor users battle cyborgs on the rampage in the near future. Basically Cyberpunk meets Power Rangers.

More reviews later.

16

Mazinkaiser (Giant Robots)

Basically, the third installment of the Mazinger Team series, no real knowledge of the Mazingers is needed to enjoy. Best Mazinger anime ever, great animation, and typically Go Nagai-esque (basically, everything you could ever find in a stereotyped anime parody, you’ll find it here). (OAV - 7 episodes)

Shin Getter Robo : Armageddon (Giant Robots)

Giant robots yet again, Go Nagai yet again, but FAR more serious than Mazinkaiser, and a whole series (26 episodes)

Space Pirate Captain Harlock (old series), Galaxy Express 999, Queen Emeraldas (OAV)

All of these are space operas written by Leiji Matsumoto, and quite frankly, they rock. They’re also what I call a “prelude” to what’s coming next.

Gun Frontier (Spaghetti Western)

AKA Leiji Matsumoto goes crazy and becomes a pervert. Imagine the characters from the above series (by Matsumoto, of course) in a western theme with blatant sex jokes (which end up funny), random musings about anything, six-shooters and midget bad-asses (TOCHIRO IS MY HERO!).

17

Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu
Description: Hale, a young boy, lives with his mother in a jungle village. One day his mother finds a girl, Guu, (I forget where) and Guu comes home with her. Guu turns out to be not a normal girl, but instead something else - possibly an alien, it doesn’t really matter - and really weird stuff happens. It’s pretty hilarious.

I’ve only seen about the first 6 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, but it’s a pretty cool anime from what I have seen. There are two brothers (I can’t quite remember their names, Al and Ed for short I think) about 15 who are alchemists. They are searching for a way to bring their mother, who died when they were about 10, back to life. There father was apparently also an alchemist, but they have never seen him and don’t know where he is. The problem is that human transfiguration is illegal, and for good reason: when they first try, just after their mother’s death, the older brother loses a leg, and than an arm when he transmutes his brother’s spirit into a suit of armor, since the younger brother loses his entire body. The older brother gets a metal arm and leg to replace the limbs he lost, and hence becomes known as the full metal alchemist.

I’d also suggest you try Get Backers. The main characters are Mido Ban and Amano Ginji who work as retrieval specialists. They are hired by various people to steal back, essentially, items that were stolen or lost. Nearly all of the characters have special abilities or powers. For instance, Ginji can generate lightening, and has a pair of gloves called the “gauntlets of invincibility”. Ban has an incredibly powerful grip, super speed, and the Evil Eye, which allows him to cause someone to have a minute-long hallucination of his creation. There are a number more characters, Weiila’s favorite being Akabane Kurodo (sp?), AKA Dr. Jackal. I’m sure she’d love to tell you more about him. Edit: And Kazuki is the sexiest person on the face of the earth. :kissy:

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Samurai Champloo-

Samurais, and Hip Hop music, Great mix, eh?

Naruto-

At the beginning, I thought it was shit, but then, the plot got really serious and all the main characters became really interessting.

Get Backers-

This one is quite interessting. Two guys, Ban and Ginji, are an organization, called the Get Backers. They get back stolen and missing stuff. They both have powers, Ban has a gripping power of 200 kg and Ginji can create electricity within his body. Really interessting anime.

19

Inuyasha is cool: A lot of violence and Miroku kicks ass. Kagome is kinda stupid though. Cowboy Bebop is kick ass too, but really short and the ending sucked. FLCL is cool too, but confusing sometimes, until the end. Also, it’s very, very, very weird.

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[ul]
[li]Record of Lodoss War OVA.
[/li][li]Record of Lodoss War TV.
[/li][li]FLCL.
[/li][li]Kare Kano.
[/li][li]Boogiepop Phantom.
[/li][li]Serial Experiments: Lain.
[/li][li]Escaflowne.
[/li][li]Cowboy Bebop.
[/li][/ul]
Been years since I watched the lot of them. Randomly listed.