TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Well, I know I enjoy Gundam, a lot, and I have some movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke and I've got a few other series that I really like but I've been exposed to a whole bunch of other animes that I thought were either much too silly and immature for me to watch or I just didn't understand what the hell was going on and lost interest.

Now as a child I saw Voltron and Robotech and loved them, but I'm not sure they really count. They are so highly edited and reworked that I'm not sure you can say they are the same shows that they were in Japan. They've become an American cartoon at that point, IMO anyway.

After high school, late nineties, I saw a couple of the animes that were starting to trickle over from Japan like Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z and Pokemon and such.

Sailor Moon actually caught my interest. A show where the heroes are named after planets and each have a different set of powers. Sounded interesting. I managed to watch a half dozen consecutive episodes but it was all just too silly and nonsensical for me. I don't know if I could go back and try again with it. Maybe. Some people say it's good. I dunno but probably not.

Anyway, when videos changed over to DVDs I dabbled into anime again and discovered Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell and Zoids, all of which I loved, but I also watched a few other shows like Record of Lodoss War and GTO which I thought were awful.

I just kind of wrote off anime in general except for the handful of shows that I'd stumbled onto and liked.

Years later I decided for some reason to try Gundam. I had purchased the first two volumes of Gundam Wing years ago but they hadn't hooked me. I wasn't sure I was going to like it but I figured if nothing else it's got giant mecha and I love me some giant mecha. I got hooked into it quickly and I'm well on my way to having watched the entire metaseries.

Now the whole reason I'm on this rant is because a few weeks ago I discovered a podcast run by a trio of mecha anime fans called "Gundamn!" and I've been listening to their podcasts. They talk a lot about Gundam naturally but they also talk a lot about other mech shows too and occasionally they even talk about non mech animes.

I'm intrigued by the shows that they discuss and I think I want to branch out and discover these new shows. There's other Yoshiyuki Tomino made shows that I hear a lot of good things about. There's also Macross and Code Geass which I think I'd like.

Then there are shows that aren't about mecha that I've seen bits of but never really gave a chance that I think I could get into if I watched them from the beginning like Dragonball, Inuyasha and Cowboy Bebop. These are shows that I know are generally thought to be good anime.

I don't know if I'll like any of these other shows, but I'm about finished with Gundam and the only thing I really have on deck after that is Ideon. I'm going to need something new to watch after I'm done and I'm looking for it to be anime.

Hm, this totally reads like a blog post, and I suppose it is really. I guess what I want to discuss is what everyone thinks of some of these animes I'm thinking about watching and if there's any other animes that might be worth looking into that I didn't mention already.

WATCH IDEON!

High School of the Dead is worth a look too due to its' mix of fanservice, extreme violence and hilarious jokes.

Wings of Honneamise is a fantastic film too.

I only really watch mech stuff largely, though, and mainly old stuff at that. I generally enjoy it whenever I do, but 99% of the time I'm just too lazy for subs.

I'm trying to remember which super robot series Tomino was working on in the late 70's. Was it Raideen? Daltanious?

I don't really consider myself to be crazy about anime as is - I certainly don't follow the more mainstream otaku thing of watching whatever happens to be popular at the moment, instead I'm trying to get around to watch a lot of vintage shows (mostly involving giant robots) that I've heard of but never saw before, like all the Go Nagai super robot shows and a bunch of others, including Devilman and of course, the Gundams.

There was one anime in particular that made a huge impact on me as a child, way back in the 80's, Galaxy Express 999. I only saw the movies as an adult initially and I thought those were great, and finally got to watching the whole 100+ episode TV series earlier this year, which turned out to be quite a disappointment.

If you want recommendations, and looking back at all the stuff I've watched, one I think you might like in particular is Armored Trooper VOTOMS - you might've even heard of it.

Cliffjumper wrote:High School of the Dead is worth a look too due to its' mix of fanservice, extreme violence and hilarious jokes.

Wings of Honneamise is a fantastic film too.

I'm going to watch Ideon! As soon as I finish watching Gundam SEED and Destiny.

I don't know about fanservice and extreme violence. Never been much of a fan of that. Is it a series? Might give the 1st episode a look though and see how that goes.

Tetsuro wrote:I'm trying to remember which super robot series Tomino was working on in the late 70's. Was it Raideen? Daltanious?

Brave Raideen says his wiki filmography.

If you want recommendations, and looking back at all the stuff I've watched, one I think you might like in particular is Armored Trooper VOTOMS - you might've even heard of it.

I have, it's on the list of stuff to watch, along with Dunbine, GoGaiGar, Macross, Code Geass and of course Ideon

Hound wrote: Brave Raideen says his wiki filmography.

Apparently I was thinking of Voltes V myself.

For Tomino IIRC Raideen was pretty much work for hire and his episodes have no real difference from those that weren't his. Zambot V isn't bad, but it's very much a primitive version of Ideon.

HOTD is avaliable dubbed & subbed on Youtube if you want to try it. It's ridiculously OTT and knows it, and generally has enough brains to pull off its' stupidity.

The Patlabor films are very, very good. The first one's a bit of a slow-burner; the second is hands-down one of the best techno-thrillers I've ever seen. The series is a lot more lightweight.

Zipang I've been watching for a little while... it's very well done so far but will probably depend a lot on how interesting you find the premise (modern Japanese SDF naval unit end up in the middle of the Pacific in WW2); I'm a bit of an alt history junkie.

Most of the anime I enjoy have really bad dubs, so if you can track down fansubs it's usually better. I really like One Piece, and a long time ago I watched one called Fate Stay Night which was pretty good.
I see bits and pieces of a lot of anime on telly over here. It's like any other form of show, there's a few gems, a decent amount of perfectly watchable stuff, and tons of utter crap.
I'm not the best person to give recommendations these days though, because the anime I like has changed a lot over the last few years. I get most of the cultural and pop culture references that would have gone over my head before I moved here, and a lot of what I find fun is the speech patterns and wordplay, which only work if you have a decent understanding of the language (I still miss most of the jokes). I pretty much hated Naruto until I watch it recently and realised just how much humour was extracted from the American dubs.

ooh, minor rant. There's nothing wrong with liking good anime, but recently, I've been finding people who like any old crap just because it's anime more and more annoying.

Cliffjumper wrote:HOTD is avaliable dubbed & subbed on Youtube if you want to try it. It's ridiculously OTT and knows it, and generally has enough brains to pull off its' stupidity.

The Patlabor films are very, very good. The first one's a bit of a slow-burner; the second is hands-down one of the best techno-thrillers I've ever seen. The series is a lot more lightweight.

I've become such a Youtube junkie since I moved to Canada. I never used to spend even a tenth of the time on the internet that I do now. At least now I'll have something besides reviews to look at.

Sades' brothers have one of the Patlabor movies. I was going to ask if I could watch it. Don't know which one it is though.

I've also got to watch Space Battleship Yamato. I remember they had a version of it on TV when I was a child and thought it was amazing. I've only ever heard great things about the original version.

Hound wrote:
Sades' brothers have one of the Patlabor movies. I was going to ask if I could watch it. Don't know which one it is though.

Second works pretty well as a standalone, though a few subtleties will be lost (basically that the team from the first one are reassembled).

Hound wrote: I've also got to watch Space Battleship Yamato. I remember they had a version of it on TV when I was a child and thought it was amazing. I've only ever heard great things about the original version.

Well lucky for you, there's apparently a new fansub floating around that doesn't look like it was ripped from VCD (and I've already watched the first two series twice that way).

I wish I could say the same for the movies. I'm actually tempted to buy New Voyage/Be Forever/Final Yamato on the Japanese DVDs, subtitles be damned, just because even on the small resolution I've seen them I can tell they look beautiful.

I just wish someone who gave two shits about the series (ie. someone who isn't the current license holder) would release the whole thing stateside. While the movies are available with subtitles, the series is only available as Star Blazers and they all look like they were sourced from VHS.

Lately I've been, watching gainaix latest comedy masterpiece panty and stocking with garterbelt. I've watched both the subbed and English dubbed versions have their own charm but I have to say the dubbed version of the transformers parody was gold.

Here are my recommendations:

Macross: A wonderful series. Set so many tropes for the genre and helped define others. It's a must watch for Mecha anime fans in my book.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (or just Gurren Lagann): Another wonderful series, but in a totally different way. While Macross and Gundam might be gritty and serious, Gurren Lagann is insane, over the top, and a whole crap ton of fun. My wife, who HATES mecha anime, watched it all and by the end was rooting for the protagonists. It's worth the watch, just don't take it too seriously, because gods knows it doesn't.

Patlabor: As said before, well worth the watch.

Ghost in the Shell: I haven't seen the second movie, but I watched the show (Stand Alone Complex) and the first movie and thought they where damn good.

Bubblegum Crisis 2034/2040: Two mostly unrelated series (characters and locations are about the only thing that carries over) with a bunch of supplemental side series that are, over all, worth watching if you liked the main series. Boiled down to it's core it's basically a Magical Girls series without the magic but adding power armor and crazed robots.

Now, for some non-mecha anime.

Some of the classics outside of the mecha gene, at least in my humble opinion, that are worth watching:

The Slayers: Tongue in cheek fantasy. Usually good for a laugh or three.

Record of Lodoss War: Western Fantasy done in an Eastern art style. Worth it to do the research and get Record and Chronicles of the Heroic Knight and watch them together in order (leaving off the tail end of Record which Chronicle replaces). Skip the other stuff though. Not worth the time.

Desert Punk: Actually pretty funny and amusing. I enjoyed it.

Fist of the North Star: DBZ meets gritty post-apoc setting. An oldy but a goodie.

I'm sure I'll kick myself in the ass later if I forgot something.

Will expand on them later, hurriedly writing them down now.

Macross. All of it. Macross SDFM, then branch off to Macross Plus, go to Macross Seven, watch Macross DYRL, Zero and then Frontier.

Code Geass S1 and 2 are pretty good. Lots of bloodshed you don't expect.

Patlabor's first movie is also pretty good, second one so-so. First movie almost makes you forget you're watching anime.

Ideon. God Ideon. Episodes 1-30something are pretty meh, episodes 33 to end plus movie are godsent. Excellent stuff, way way ahead of its age.

Evangelion. Similar concept, sci-fi thriller for some. Movies are a different beast.

Knightdramon wrote: Evangelion. Similar concept, sci-fi thriller for some. Movies are a different beast.

This is iffy. I LOVED Evangelion, but some people have a hard time getting it. Plus there are...3 versions of the ending. The original, the redone, and then the Death and Rebirth/End of Evangelion ending (all of which have a different take, including who "wins").

The new Rebuild of Evangelion I'm enjoying a ton. It's a reworking of the original series in 4 movies rather then episodes. Worth a go on it's own, but doubly so if you've seen the original.

Evangelion is well made and written but it's hard work.

I like the remake of Guyver they did about 5 years ago, but annoyingly it's one of those series that didn't get to the end of the story.

Oh shit, I completely forgot about Desert Punk! I watched that.

It was aight. It didn't change my life or anything, but I didn't hate it.

Thunderwave wrote: Fist of the North Star: DBZ meets gritty post-apoc setting. An oldy but a goodie.

I was going to recommend this, but it's not everybody's cup of tea. There's not much of a story, but there's loads in the way of drama.

And fighting. Only unlike DBZ, they don't drag on for episode after episode, unless it's a major fight - and even then it rarely drags on for longer than two episodes.

I've seen some Fist of the Northstar when I was in High School and thought it was pretty awful. Not much for ultra-violent anime of the 80s.

I did, however, start watching Dragon Ball and am finding it hilarious. Watched 9 episodes in one night it was so good.

Sadie has been watching a lot of the Gundam and other stuff with me and when I told her that I was planning to watch Dragon Ball she said, "you're watching that by yourself." She'd seen some DBZ before and assumed that the first series was just like that. I put on the first episode a few nights ago and after it was over she was all like, "Put the next one on!"

I just find that funny...

Did a little bit of research and found out that when they did the original Dragon Ball, the manga that it's based on was completely finished but that with DBZ the anime and manga were being done at almost the exact same time. So the cartoon had to include lots more filler while they were waiting for more of the manga to be done. It's why you get fights that take several episodes to be completed and such. They've got Kai which is supposed to be an abridged version with all the filler cut out but I've heard that you also lose a lot of what makes DBZ good in the process so I'm probably going to stick with the full version like I usually do.

Really enjoying this show. Also, I started reading the Manga too and it is phenomenally entertaining. Really recommend this manga if you like some light comedy reading. Good stuff.

Haha, are you sure that's not hentai?