Anime for people who hate anime

mad max fury road that is

fyi there's also this thread Animation Snob Thread (no Disney, no Pixar, no mainstream anime, mention Family Guy and you get kicked out a window), puppet films are allowed whihc i've had bookmarked forever

if strongo were still here he'd tell you to check out Mind game. he's not so I'm going to tell you to check out mind game.

Redline is really good in places but I don't think it has the momentum or overall quality of Fury Road. I felt the character development was unnecessary.

just finished Berserk which was enjoyable but it might be too "anime"

As to the question of the thread, it depends on what one hates about anime. I'm generally not a fan but I can deal with the things I don't like if there's enough other good things going on. But I can't pretend I haven't seen a lot of ecchi trash (a true guilty pleasure).
A lot of the better anime still has a lot of the things some people dislike about anime, like the drawing styles. I've always preferred far more textured animation and unusual expressive techniques.

The thing that impressed me about the Satoshi Kon stuff is how well the scenes are composed. Most of the anime I had seen was very sloppy and badly edited.
Paranoia Agent is actually my least favourite of his works. It's probably supposed to be confounding but I don't think it really carried off on the intrigue they built early on, I found a lot of it a tad boring and the animation quality drops in a few places.

Like I recommend in Animation Snob Thread, Keita Kurosaka is the least typical Japanese animator I know of but his work isn't easy to find. Angel's Egg is a lovely science fiction mood piece without much (any?) dialogue, with designs by Yoshitaka Amano.

Berserk (90s tv version) does an impressive job of telling the early best part of the comic saga despite clear time/budget constraints and even improving some parts of the story. Great soundtrack too.
The later film series version doesn't allow the story time to develope and breathe properly. It feels too much like a summary.

Satoshi Kon is definitely one of the go-to anime directors for people who aren't anime fans. Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers are all great movies in different ways. Paprika was a bit weak story-wise IMO, but is still worth a watch.

Paranoia Agent is pretty great too, although I think the series loses a lot of momentum once it abandons the initial set-up - those stand alone episodes in the middle are great, but the over-arching plot kinda gets lost.

I'll second the recommendations for Mushishi, Kino and Lain above, and add Haibane Renmei, which is intriguing and reflective in a similar way.

Planetes is a pretty solid sci-fi series with good characters and little in the way of anime cliches.

Haibane is excellent but I gotta disagree about Planetes, i watched the series after reading the manga and was super disappointed with the adaption, they really anime-ed it up by adding in lots of comedy sidekicks and useless drama. Don't even get me started about that last episode :(

haibane renmei is incidentally all on hulu plus

I liked Haibane Renmei too. I'll also throw Psycho Pass out there for anyone into Philip K Dick sort of themes. It's on Netflix for easy access.

thx for the many recs y'all, I need as much distraction as possible at present

Seconding Mind Game, and reposting from the Netflix thread to remind people that Studio 4C put up a batch of films a couple of weeks ago- Mind Game, Genius Party and Genius Party Beyond (which are both mixed, but each has a fairly lengthy short from respectively Masaaki Yuasa and Koji Morimoto that are among the best things either have ever done), and Princess Arete (which I haven't watched yet but is supposed to be a gentle, Ghibli-esque thing?).

I don't know how easy it is to get outside the kickstarter, but Yuasa's Kick-Heart is pretty fun. And the adaptation of Taiyo Matsumoto's Ping Pong is well worth your time- I love Michael Arias's Tekkonkinkreet movie, but Ping Pong is a much more faithful translation of Matsumoto's style to animation and it's gorgeous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcSuAhbtIFg

Crap, sorry, didn't see Ping Pong was already recommended twice >_<

Less than four minutes long, but this Ken Ishii video by Morimoto is kind of a classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6maVVFs0As

One last thing before I shut up about Morimoto:

NOISEMAN SOUND INSECT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOlYfHdpwU

Dumb qn from someone v.far outside but a lot of suggestions seem to be, say, post-PKD-ish ... is there much in the way of, IDK, George Eliot/Jane Austen-y stuff?

Josei anime would be the term, from a quick look at manga categories, I guess?

This was Google's first result, anyone want to comment on any of these? http://www.themarysue.com/josei-anime/

wow, that ping pong series looks amazing! excited to see it's on hulu.

From that Josei list:
Michiko & Hatchin stars two female characters but it's much closer to Black Lagoon/Tarantino territory, lots of action set pieces and stylish baddies. It's really well made but is twice as long as it needs to be tbh, towards the end you will be dreading yet another car chase. Which is rarely said about Jane Austen.
Princess Jellyfish is really good, lots of interesting characters although some can be a bit too one dimensional, particularly the one mentioned in the article.
A series that is currently airing called Snow White With The Red Hair caught me by surprise and might be the purest Josei show I've ever enjoyed. As you can guess from the title it has a fairytale like quality, with a commoner girl and a dashing young prince falling in love. What sets it apart though is the title character, a strong willed girl who feels like she's walked out of a Ghibli movie, you can't help but cheer her on.

etc, you might want to look into honey & clover (about a group of students at an art school), nana (about the friendship between two women, one a fashion student and one a rock musician), nodame cantabile (about the romantic relationship between a pianist and an aspiring conductor), his and her circumstances (the show hideaki anno made after evangelion, about the romantic relationship between two high school students), and revolutionary girl utena (hard to summarize?)

also, a lot of the shows mentioned itt originally aired as part of fuji tv's noitamina block, which is specifically dedicated to programming that appeals to ppl outside of the young male demographic. the noitamina lineup is a p good place to look for "mature" anime in a bunch of different genres

reporting back

PING PONG

Watched all of this one - the animation is obv incredible but what surprised me about it is the persistent and convincing bittersweetness, which helped offset how predictable many/most of the plot/character beats really are. Into it.

KIDS ON THE SLOPE

Also watched all of this, liked it less. The musical sequences are incredible and kept me going. As w/ many shows like this (regardless of genre) the relatively subtly homoerotic friendship >>>>>> the neverending tedium of the actual "romances." (Tho I admit that I have a problem w/ series wherein 100% of the long-running conflicts could be solved with one frank conversation.)

tried UTENA but it's just too mid-90s for me. a couple eps into MUSHI-SHI - animation's gorgeous, stories seem a bit intert? will keep trying.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-AHo-_XEV6E

Maybe most of you guys know all this stuff but its just a little video about the difficulties of making anime.

good timing on that as it frequently refers to Manglobe (Champloo, Michiko) who finally filed for bankruptcy the other day

Just finished watching Gosenzosama Banbanzai, a pretty bizarre and funny six-part OVA from the late 80s. It's one of Mamoru Oshii's more obscure efforts (like that odd "Twilight Q" short), about a girl who travels back in time to live with her ancestors. The whole thing is presented like a stage play, making it pretty unique.

I know Oshii made a big splash with Ghost in the Shell, but I actually think that was his last really good film (though I haven't seen his live action stuff, and discount Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, which he wrote but didn't direct).

so uh toonami is producing two new season of flcl

Nice!

brave new world

oops. didn't realize this was a 3 month revive

I've just started the new anime version of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, and it really defies description (although Merritt Kopas's phrase "Twink Peaks" is pretty apt, as long as you bear in mind that it also involves spectral combat and Gauguin-like color clashes): an escaped serial killer has just been fused into a living statue by a vengeful high school student after attempting to infiltrate the student's house as a malign spirit in rainwater, and this is two episodes in. Idk what kind of relation to anime the ideal viewer would have, but it's certainly distinctive.

Jojo is so batshit, i love it

Neo-Tokyo was really good

finishing up 'puella magi madoka magica' after reading that it rivals evangelion (it doesn't, but i still have a few eps left so maybe it will!)
it's on netflix with or without subs so check it out!

though in the spirit of this thread, i think people who hate anime would hate this one

yeh Madoka is hella anime. You have to put off watching the last two episodes for two months to get the authentic original release experience!

the crossover hit this year in Japan had been the new Shinkai (5cm/second, Garden Of Words) film Your Name.
It's already the 7th highest grossing film at the Japanese box office and looks like it's going to overhaul Howl and Mononoke soon.
Sounds like it became an anime for people who don't normally watch anime!
Looks like it's getting a very limited release in the West though.

Mamoru Hosada's latest The Boy and the Beast will be released in DK next month. Checking his stuff out, the plots are quite intriguing, and Summer Wars was in Locarno. I have no idea what is hatable and non-hatable anime, though. Are people mad at Miyazaki? Or Ghost in the Shell type stuff?

neither i think, just really specific genre stuff i'm guessing. madoka is magical girl for instance

incidentally i gotta see madoka, report back diamonddave

little witch academia y'all

been meaning to watch madoka for ages but the animation style really puts me off

cosign little witch academia. dennou coil is another good one

I loooove Mindgame! And as often as it veers into utterly silly and corny porny territory I find it really inspiring. The whole "live your life to the fullest" theme is for some reason really infectious (which for me translated to getting off Facebook for a few days and getting a jumpstart on errands and chores to free up time for making music and catching up with friends, not exactly an epic adventure but a net plus)

Has anyone here seen Ergo Proxy? It felt like some kind of cross between Book of the New Sun (not saying it's anywhere near the brilliance, just some similar vibes) and the hazy memories I have of Final Fantasy plots from countless hours I used to spend watching friends play while not totally knowing what was going on. It's probably my fav anime series after NGE.

I think the reason Madoka gets compared to Evangelion is that both shows approach their respective genre in unconventional ways; if Eva is a "deconstruction" of giant mecha shows, then Madoka is the same for magical girl stories.

And yes, the two Little Witch Academia films are great!

yall weren't kidding about Mind Game. that film was incredible.

finished madoka, the final episodes were excellent: poignant while also attempting to reach for the stars in those confusing and mind-bending ways that we love anime for

watched the first episode of kill la kill last night and i'm torn. on the one hand, it has the most over the top insane, funny, frantic animation i think i've ever seen. on the other hand, waay over the top fan-service to the point of absurdity

it's not fan service, it's a parody of it

I haven't seen it but according to fans it does at times fully embrace plain fanservice.

Can you call it a parody if it's indistinguishable from the thing it's supposedly parodying?
e.g. Nisioisin plays around a lot with tropes and stereotypes in the Monogatari series but sometimes falls flat on his face, leading to some incredibly gross scenes. I keep watching because there's some great stuff in there but goddamn it goes off the rails in awful ways sometimes.

See Xtreme 90s American comics doing affectionate parodies of their own work.

idk just watch it it's all explained and makes sense as a part of the plot (seriously)

yes it's ok, like a collection of short stories based around the customers of a bar.
the confusing bit is - there was an 11 episode series from 2004, then a 12 episode series from 2024. I much preferred the writing in the 2004 show.

Amazon are trialing AI Dubs on anime, needs to be heard to be believed
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3venpcgf47clyp4mmui3ciak/post/3m6pzmn6sok2e

I guess Amazon heard about Crunchyroll trying to ruin their subtitles and decided to outdo them.

I don't think I've put any anime on for several years now but this interview series is brilliant. So many funny situations in trying to sell anime to different audiences. I really like Jonathan Clements writing and commentaries he does outside of anime (usually about japanese and chinese prose SFF or live action films) but he's good talking about anything. I remember seeing some of these people talking on television over 20 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g59AsmwgRUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKAljpMpnj4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToXPQL1CDOs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdEMsTXKOVg

Amazing with that person saying they wouldn't give them an anime license until online piracy was defeated!
The parts with the manga uk company being involved in the making of the Ghost In The Shell anime were really interesting. And Andy Frain's meeting with Buichi Terasawa (Space Cobra)

was watching some of these the other day! so funny when the guy whipped out concept art from the proposed Spice Girls anime.

Frieren is back! I'm gonna wait for the English dub to come out as that's how I've watched it so far, though I think it's pretty cool that the animators seem to have referenced the "Frieren looking up" meme already. One of the very few cool and uplifting things to have happened on social media in recent memory.

i love this video series too
i saw a video somewhere taking apart mccarthy and clements' "anime encyclopedia", and i thought it was interesting, because first off the person who made it was clear that they weren't trashing mccarthy and clements. i think they were a little more judgemental than i would be - the gist is that the anime encyclopedia is not encyclopedic and in fact mccarthy and clements expressed strong opinions and howlingly bad takes on anime that they clearly hadn't actually atched. both of which are true... well, i'd kind of say it's the equivalent to dave marsh's old rolling stone record guide, which has very similar problems. i look at it as a historical artifact, a time capsule - what important historical figures in the development of uk anime thought about certain anime at various times. because there _are_ a lot of "anime lost to time", if you will - stuff that people rated and is now mostly unknown. this is true even in the MAL era - i don't know shit about 2011 anime, cuz i wasn't watching anime then. i see it as sort of a, and i don't mean this in a derogatory sense, grognard's take on anime. i do think of myself as a grognard, not an anime grognard (i did watch Star Blazers on WNEW as a kid and loved it, but that was about it) but an internet grognard certainly.

the thing that bugs me most is their decision to lump the hentai anime in with, uh... is there a better word than "non-h"? stuff. i'm trying to read about interesting anime and i genuinely do not give a shit about _anything_ pink pineapple _ever_ released. well, unless it has a particularly hilarious dub.

I quite enjoy reading random entries in the encyclopedia, it is very opinionated but the put downs and mini rants can be funny at times.
the amount of hentai in it is daft though, I guess it is part of anime history but does anyone really need to know about (looks up random entry) Mail Order Maiden 28, "an obscure porn title features Aiwa, a typical anime geek, who orders a sex doll and gets more than he bargained for."? I suppose someone out there does.

anyway watch Journal With Witch which is currently airing, it's a wonderful depiction of loss and depression with characters who act like real people shock horror!

the amount of hentai in it is daft though, I guess it is part of anime history but does anyone really need to know about (looks up random entry) Mail Order Maiden 28, "an obscure porn title features Aiwa, a typical anime geek, who orders a sex doll and gets more than he bargained for."? I suppose someone out there does.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Sunday, January 25, 2026 12:42 PM (two days ago)

i don't _need_ to know about it but sure some of that stuff can be interesting in some contexts, if i was writing an essay about, say, "air doll" i might keep it in mind. idk, 20th century hentai is one of those extremely fraught subjects - i am very much a history nerd and it is part of history, and i _also_ want to stay completely the fuck away from certain common aspects of those particular works. amelie doree's videos about VNs are super culturally and historically interesting and i really appreciate that she when she puts up the essays on YT the video consists pretty much entirely of black bars haha, i do _not_ want to actually see any of that stuff.

amelie doree sounds cool, will check out

I hate anime but started watching Utena, and it's so astonishingly charming! The theme song is also incredible.

A couple classics on 4K had me curious about weird 80s anime set in the USA. Mad Bull 34 is a lot of fun, but California Crisis is EXACTLY what I was hoping to find. To quote someone on letterboxd, it's like a whole movie of vaporwave gifs. Written/Directed by Mizuho Nishikubo who did assistant directing on both Ghost in the Shell movies, and the animated sequence from Kill Bill.

Xp to myself I forgot to mention that Utena is entirely on YouTube so that's been pretty handy, even though it keeps defaulting to a horrible AI dub.

Miss Nanami you utter psycho I love you.

To ask a serious question, I've never watched shojo, so have no idea how unique Utena is, but it seems like it's pretty singular as far as genre goes? Is there anything else like it?

it's pretty singular but you might like The Rose of Versailles as it has some similarities with the gender stuff and was a big influence on Utena
you can also give Ikuhara's other stuff a try, like Penguindrum and Yurikuma Arashi (Lesbian Bear Storm!)

yes and no? the most relevant prior anime are Sailor Moon (which the director/staff previously worked on) and the shoujo melodrama Dear Brother, it's kind of mashing up those things but also creating a lot of new stuff

oh yes and Rose of Versailles also, duh

I really should get around to watching Dear Brother ...

and then imo the best 'post-utena' anime are Penguindrum (same director), Star Driver (same writer), and Simoun (no direct relation to utena but likely inspired by the genderfuckery)

none of those are really taking from the shoujo side of utena though i guess, just watch shoujo dramas for that

i'd say it's "singular" in kind of the way a show like evangelion is "singular" - i mean sure there's nothing else really _like_ utena but it's also pretty hugely influential. basically any sapphic/wlw anime out there is likely to take some influence from utena. partly it's that utena is good and partly it's that, like, the stereotype that lesbians love swordfighting has some basis in reality.

Angel cop sounds pretty good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Cop

it's fun in an old school gross anime way, and then it takes a bizarre antisemitic turn

Sigh :-(

The anime club I attend did a showing of Angel Cop and yeah, that was a strange turn--as if all the right-wing stuff wasn't enough. The host mentioned the show has an extensive and lovingly detailed page on the Internet Movie Firearms Database. At least that crap made it memorable, I suppose--a lot of those action 80s anime featuring buff character designs and explosions blend together in my mind.

just started on City Hunter and wow, there is a lot of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abYdoXUSQ4s
Bonus videos are fun too

ok mostly i've been watching anime for people who love anime, i.e. the original "hokuto no ken". i love this because of how stupid it is. it's the apocalypse and ken is a total bruce lee knockoff who also, like, defeats his enemies with acupressure? i didn't realize this before, he's, like, shiatsuing these dudes to death. also, he can use his acupressure powers to, like, heal the lame and restore eyesight to the blind. literally he does both of those things in the first 13 episodes. so his jeet kune do acupressure techniques give him jesus powers. who needs fight scenes when you can have him sticking his finger up to a dude's head and saying "you're already dead"? and then five seconds later everything becomes shadow puppets so you can't see the blood and their head explodes. yeah i would've _loved_ to pretend to be ken as a kid, because god knows i can't actually fight. apparently there's a new one and apparently it also sucks, or at least, i haven't heard anybody gushing about how great it is, which i feel like people would if it didn't suck.

but i got sucked into watching a little of this show called "kirio fanclub". it's these two high school girls gushing about how much they love this guy kirio, and we never actually see kirio so we don't really have any idea what's so great about them except through what they say, and what they say doesn't really help much. i think it's a great take - there are a lot of these anime protag guys where all the girls want his dick and one can't help but be like, "why?", cuz he seems to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. idk why it is but removing the actual guy from the equation makes it so much more fun. my friend mara is like "are you sure they're not actually lesbians who are way way way overcompensating and in denial about how into each other they are" and it pisses me off because no, not everything with two girls talking to each other is lesbian.

the thing i love about it is that kirio seems like kind of a dork but the girls are also kind of dorks, like... just girls being friends and they can be dorky around each other without it being gay or anything. a lot of anime has this really idealized notion of particularly high school girls, everybody's a fuckin' waifu, and neither of the main characters in this anime are waifus, there's no question to me of calling any of them a "best girl" or whatever.

i've gotten used to anime where 15 year olds act like adults because you have, like, three anime featuring adults in any given season, and as an adult, i guess the closest i'm gonna get to stuff that reflects my needs is 15 year olds who somehow have the wisdom and maturity of people my age. of all the problems with an entire medium where most of the characters are younger than 20, to me it's them as _role models_ that gets to me. a show like this where kids get to act like kids and i have fun laughing while not thinking of them as role models, cuz they're _kids_ and i'm very much not... idk. it's a relief, somehow.

re: Kirio Fanclub have you seen See You Tomorrow at the Food Court? very similar setup, just two girls meeting up at the mall after school and talking about whatever, both letting loose with their real characters after putting up appearances at school (honor student & gyaru). a fun hang and occasionally quite funny.

I've been doing a deep dive on 80s/90s OVAs I hadn't seen before over the last couple of weeks and the collision of Deeply Problematic subject matter and incredible animation has been bracing to say the least.

re: Kirio Fanclub have you seen See You Tomorrow at the Food Court? very similar setup, just two girls meeting up at the mall after school and talking about whatever, both letting loose with their real characters after putting up appearances at school (honor student & gyaru). a fun hang and occasionally quite funny.

I've been doing a deep dive on 80s/90s OVAs I hadn't seen before over the last couple of weeks and the collision of Deeply Problematic subject matter and incredible animation has been bracing to say the least.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Saturday, April 25, 2026 3:59 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

re: food court - no! i'll have to check that out, it sounds really neat.

i'm with you on '80s/'90s "otaku" culture. it's difficult because i am a white american and i don't want to, like, do some fucking bullshit cultural imperialism, i just, like, know a _lot_ of people who _were_ CSA victims and it makes it _very difficult to navigate_ the culture sometimes, even some of the words they use in japan to talk about fashion can get extremely triggering to some people i know.

i feel like maybe i've talked about this before, but there's this seinen manga that had a really deep effect on me called "bokura no hentai". it's not a hentai, but it deals pretty unflinchingly and explicitly with some harsh material, including the sexual exploitation of "cross-dressing" kids. despite me being a white american i feel like some of the stuff it portrays are very relatable for me, having grown up with only these, like, really flawed labels to work with. but the only copy i've read is an old fanslation that uses some inaccurate derogatory language in the translation. i'm not sure you _could_ publish it in america. i think there is a lot of awful shit that's part of a lot of different cultures that one maybe wants to not confront directly. maybe it's for the best, idk. i mean i'd rather openly acknowledge this stuff, but it does get me into a lot of trouble, so....

mostly the old anime i know is from hazel's YT videos... i've mentioned her here before i think, she just has these amazing takes on weird, obscure, old stuff. like "california crisis", i think she did a video on that one. your description of "food court" makes me think of her amazing video ranking anime denny's. it's just... idk, i guess one of the things i think is cool about watching anime is that i have to come to it with a sort of "beginner's mind", let go of a lot of my ingrained cultural preconceptions, which is how i wind up watching something like the original "hokuto no ken" in the first place... it's not a show i ever thought i would willingly watch haha.

all that to say, i'd love to hear your take on some of the deep dive OVAs. even if it's Deeply Problematic there's a lot of _interesting_ stuff in there. particularly like... i want to get a firsthand historical perspective on this stuff, but a lot of it is stuff that i, uh, wouldn't really want to watch firsthand, _because_ of the subject matter and how it's portrayed.

Can I ask, do we have a J-Drama version of this thread?

I just watched a really entertaining one-and-done series called 'Rebooting' (possibly not too dissimilar in tone to the Food Court anime) and was wondering if there were any really great non-crime/action-based dramas that didn't involve schoolgirl romance or glacially slow unrequited love stories.

i say just put 'em in here! it's complicated. i'm on one discord and they spend all their time on the anime thread talking about manga. there's that great manga called "she loves to cook, she loves to eat", which was adapted to live-action... in korea! so i think there's room for flexibility.