Anime/Manga

Friend of mine is trying to get me to watch some anime, and I'm kinda beyond a point where I can say I hate everything Japanese because I enjoyed watching the Catherine cinematics, been getting more into USF4 and my tumblr feed is WAAAY too anime.
No idea -what- though, half of what she suggested just doesn't look interesting for me, then stuff like SNK looks too bloody for me - only ended up watching that silly poyopoyo cat anime

Treat anime like you would any other media and just go for genres you like. What sort of western shows/movies do you like?

I just finished season one of Lolipalooza(Coffin Princess). I enjoyed it. It's not amazing, but it was good. All but one recurring female looks like a kid, although I'm pretty sure they're all adults.

That's the thing, I don't actually watch a lot of western shows or movies lately.

Well, then I suggest you try some weeaboo movies. It's easier to sit through the entirely of something when it's 2 1/2 hours or less. Kiki's Delivery Service is the best anime anything ever, so you can always start with that.

I'll also drop my list in here again. Mostly because I'm running out of things to binge on and I could use some advice myself.
http://myanimelist.net/animelist/arseface

I won't say you'd hate it...but I'd give a pass on Akuma no Riddle. Maybe if you go in with no expectations then you'd enjoy it more.

Boku no Pico...I never watched this, as such, I recommend you do for me

Outbreak Company, you listed No Game, No Life as a 7, I have a feeling this would be another "7" rating kind of show for you, if that means you'd like it, then definitely give this a go.

I detested Uchoten Kazoku but a lot of the "anime critic" kind of folks loved it, give it a shot. It isn't bad in any shape or form, it was just personally boring to me.

Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru., or OreGairu. Hard call...I can't tell based on the things you like whether it is worth it but if you like protagonists with a loner attitude with a bit of social commentary, this is a good pick.

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Side note for me, I suppose I haven't watched much this summer, been busy with other summer stuff and a LOT of random games. I've watched nothing past the third episode (not due to dropping yet), except for Majimoji Ruromo. Which is honestly the last show I should be up to date with lol...

Boku no Pico is a hard anime to watch legally.

Outbreak company was awesome. 7/10. Enjoyed immensely, thank you very much for the recommendation.

I've recently watched both Ixion Saga DT and Shiki. I liked both.

Ah I'm glad you managed to enjoy it after all.

And you only watch anime from legitimate sources? That's not a judgment question, just curious since that can be rather hard or impossible in some cases. Though I am glad in recent years it has been much easier to get legal access, they still have a lot of work to do.

It's a recent thing. It's becoming more possible to legitimately watch stuff, so I'm trying to do that.

I kinda miss fansubs though. The official subs leave out honorifics and some other stuff.

A combination of funimation and crunchyroll streaming can get me almost any non-adult series I want. It's harder with older series, but the better ones of those are still usually doable. It's a LOT better than it used to be.

oh yeah, crunchyroll is such a haven sent

It's better to have a bad company go good than to not have a good company. They have gone from bottom feeding scumbags to a legitimate business. They no longer blueball the free users and they pay the animation studios fairly.

I'll say it again, it's a LOT better than it used to be.

I didn't mean the ... to be an indicator of sarcasm. I really like crunchyroll for what it is, in fact I have an active premium subscription since February 2011, with a yearly payment cycle since 3 years and from how the amount of available shows per season grows and grows I doubt I'll cancel any time soon.
The only drawbacks is that it needs a bit of proxy "I am a totally american" and occasionally has a few lags.
Though the price of 5$ is totally fair for that, I mean it has like dozens of shows going on. In fact 5$ a month is outright cheap and any other streaming site like that can't compare at all.

Ah, my mistake. Crunchyroll gets a lot of hate for what it's done in the past.

But yeah, it's a good time to be an anime fan.

EDIT: Oh neat, MAL got hacked.

Crunchyroll is giving out 2 weeks premium again. Give me junk to binge on.

can't say I concur....

manga is better except in three cases imo : Evangelion, Cowboy Beebop, Wolf's Rain (those can be explained by the fact there was never an original manga for these. they came out with the intention of being artistic works and a story-told journey, mangas were made after them thereafter but never captured an once of what light the former work shone.)

other than that, animators have proven (with quite a lot of persistence and effort to this end) that anime must forever remain in the shadow of the mangas that inspired them.

during my teens I watched a ton of anime, but I also read a ton of manga.

now I'm incapable of savoring anime (though, I really do try) because of the seemingly unbreakable (taboo?) rules that:
A.) dialogues (especially with oneself, inanimate objects or a wall), conversation-puttied exposition and stalling or shock (that are all blended into a homogeneous goop) must ABSOLUTELY last a minimum of 15 to a maximum of a 100 times longer than what can be realistically acknowledged as the norm.
B.) No matter what the topic, no matter what degree of seriousness, no matter what mountains of suspense has been built up there must always be a "awkward" or "silly" moment or moments occupying anywhere from 20 to 50% of the screen time.

B wouldn't bother me so much and I could ignore it if it was't proudly sitting atop such a mountainous quantity of A.

I'm thinking of things like naruto looking like he could have has the time to take a **** and a shower in between two trees if the crapper and shower had been tossed up there with him.

I'm talking about in Gantz the natural reaction to finding yourself face to face with a monster with your gun drawn is gasp until you filled up your lungs so much they exploded ......and then kept gasping for about five more minutes....

I'm talking about in there being subtleties of storytelling and scenarism that anime makers don't understand and thusly don't give a damn about, like hey in Death note there being a real mind game played with the actual public around liking Light Yagami and watching him slowly turn mental and your love for him slowly seep away and barricade itself with whimsical excuses until finally caving into hate at the final episode with perfect timing.
In the Anime?

the internal debate begins and settles to insanity and you initiate hating him within the first episode.

I just wish more anime actually showed the quality displayed in :

• Evangelion
• Cowboy Beebop
• Wolf's Rain

which could be the beginning of a list of anime that I really REALLY like, btw :

• Gundam Wing (yes Gundam Wing, you heard me right, Gundam Wing not Mobile Suit Gundam, not Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, not Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, not Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, not Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, notMobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, notMobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, notMobile Suit Victory Gundam, not Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, not Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO: Apocalypse 0079, not Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO 2: The Gravity Front, not Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn but truely Gundam Wing)
• Planets (because it actually lived up to the manga)
• Dragon Ball Z (again yes Z, not dragonball nor GT) (only need one of those in the list that thing's a genre-phagocyte all by itself, that means Pokemon, Naruto, One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Yu-Yu Hakusho, Kenshin, Bleach, Battle Angel Alita, Hellsing, Trigun, Black Cat and all the "better-faster-stronger" fly out the window in favor of the one who coined it) (and yes I did read or watch (where applicable) all of these, this is an aftermath realization. ) (also naruto didn't need to turn into one of those, goddamit, so many tears, such a damn shame, all started out as a ninja apprentice in a ninja village, throwing kunai, using substitution tricks, illusions and fighting with nun-chucks, why'd it have to turn into DBZ meets pokemon).
• pilot candidate
• Fullmetal Alch (NOT Brotherhood yes it has A and B, but it was somewhat tolerable in FMA, maybe because the story originality made it all more tolerable)
• Outlaw Star (hands down my favorite anime and all's-end best space-western anime there is)(cowboy beepbop was there first by a year, taking nothing away from OS's beauty)
• Last Exile
• Lain
• there may be some that I'm forgetting

As for manga well there's plenty (too many) that I can recommend :
My number one recommendation to you all is Planetes (maybe save for last I think it only comes into it's own once you have acquired a massive culture) :
1.)


Gets the story told and the mind blow in a record-breaking 6 tomes.
2.)

(missing one here a battle-royale like one-shot set up like a game with criminals hunting each other down with GPS and the twist involves a dog)

3.)


just freaking read it. It's pretty short and it's NOT the same experience as the anime.

4.)


you want a lame excuse for nudity, action and gore all jam packed as much as humanly possible? well there ya go

maybe it's the effort in making it all feel real that brings it all together, I dunno quite how to place it, normally I'd condemn this manga but it just turns out it's really quite a blast.

5.)


in the red corner, in the category of "I'm trying to relive the glorydays of comics and astroboy all combined into one" iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's zeeetmaaaaaaaaaaaaann!

same deal as Gantz but way less of everything : butts, gore, action, immersion, realism. Making it overall less good.

6.)


If the Movie was that good, well you can't say the manga had no part in it.

But Really French comics called "Bande Dessiné", or "BD" for short, is where it's all at :
(a Duo of Scenarist and Comic Artist splitting the workload and working together to produce truly wondrous works)


an exception to the rule, this guy paints and works alone.


think surrogates came first? think again. this one is 10/10




this funny little trailer shows quite efficiently what BD series "The Incal" is like :




can a guys with no arms and one leg be a hero? find out :


actually anything scripted by Jodorowsky, hell he even worked with Manara!

I've read a butt load (i've bypassed the hundred different titles) of BD the above is a top 10.

Generally speaking, when a manga gets an anime adaptation that's decent that's usually a good sign the manga is better. Makes it easier to find good things to read.

A lot of my favorite anime titles are either movies, original anime, or inspired by books. In all of those cases there's no original manga to go to, and most of the books haven't been translated.

I also think you're downplaying the amount of monologue and fanservice that goes on in comics. Manga artists can get away with a lot more than animators in that respect.

thing is : story progression.

one tome of naruto gets him in and out of ninja middle school. in the anime one episode gets him from morning till lunch of the same day. nothing happens.

and as in all literature monologues work better in books then they do on the screen.

the butter's just spread too thin in anime.

You're generalizing pretty hard, and you keep referencing serial anime. Pick something that starts with an end in mind, like Madoka Magica, Shin Sekai Yori, Fate/Zero, or just about any movie and you get much better pacing.

And I'm going to have to disagree about monologues doing better in text. A proper visual media will have them doing things while monologing. In a pure text format, it's incredibly hard to have things happen while a person is continuously talking.

The only reason manga gets away with it is because they only have to show a single cell next to a boatload of text to imply that something is happening.

it's just my experience.

and I've watched A LOT of anime.

did you know naruto was originally supposed to be a short; approx. 6 tomes?

it's just the fans begging for it to go on longer that made it turn into what it is (in fact you'd be surprised as to how many elements of it are fan-decided).

lesson to be learnt? people don't know what they want.

did you read my whole post? I did quote a number of anime that I loved.

I love a whole lot more that are movies, but I didn't talk aobut them because that would've been of topic.

On anime planet I have 6 months of my life in anime...... that's 1/40th my life. Looking at a screen. That's not counting the volumes of light novels or manga I have ingested. I love this stuff

tatsu, have you ever watched Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood? It has a full english dub, and is one of the best animes I've ever watched. It doesn't focus on meaningless filler for a 5 episode long fight scene like Naruto does and they don't tell exactly what they're about to do before they attack -.-

It's very good and I suggest you try it!