Anime for people who hate anime

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)

kill la kill is one of the most stunning anime series ever imo

fanservice isn't any less fanservice if it's explained or justified by the plot—the plot and setting of a given piece of fictional media aren't givens that exist outside of the control of the creator

No, you see these upskirts are ironic

Anyway I've watched all of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure up to the current point over the last couple of months or so and all I can really say is that it's probably the most accurately named thing I've seen in my life. I don't think this series has been as good as the one before it but now that shit's getting real it's seriously compelling

i've been meaning to read jjba for years and years but could never bring myself to get into a series with decades' worth of plot. i should probably just watch the show

wow, the golgo 13 manga has been going for 48 years

I don't read manga (not out of principle, just never got round to it I guess) but I can definitely recommend the JJBA anime as long as you can get past the first ten or so episodes (not bad but the prequel is very different in tone from the rest of it).

Jojo has separate parts that can mostly be taken separately. And unless you're going to go for fan unauthorized versions, there's only three parts available so it's not overwhelming at all. The third part is where it really gets going, you might even start there.
I was never interested in any of the anime versions because they don't come close to Araki's drawing, which is sometimes really brilliant.

Check out those house keyrings
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/jjba/images/e/e1/Jojo6251.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110530230310

I've never read Golgo 13 but isn't it only short self-contained stories featuring the same guy?

idk i haven't read it either, i was just looking at a list of the longest-running manga

Yes Golgo 13 is episodic and as it's long running some stories are good, some terrible, some are hilariously weird - usually when they intersect with real life events - Golgo gets hired to assassinate Princess Diana, was in prison with Mandela and cost Al Gore the 2000 election.

Knights of Sidonia S1 is for people who hate anime; S2 is... not.

Unless you can dig a pervert's spin on the tiredest of anime romcom cliches, and why would you, as an anime hater.

ahahaha yeah that was a weird one

apparently in the manga they get married

I could handle a romance between a human and a foul-smelling mutant with a talking dick, but the mutant having the personality of a little girl crossed a line imo.

In other news, an adaptation of Nihei Tsutomu’s opus magnum Blame is coming to Netflix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q

There's a decent discussion of this thread's subject in a comment thread here:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/11/wot-i-think-recettear-an-item-shops-tale/#comment-508137

I downloaded the first episode of pretty much all of them and.. have to get back to that project. But Akagi, a nerves-of-steel thriller about games of Mahjongg, is absolutely amazing.

Paranoia Agent is very good - one note is that the first episode contains an awful lot of people refusing to believe a young woman's account of events.

I have gotten somewhat more into anime over the past year or two, and really into anime over the past month or two. Here are my thoughts on everything I've watched lately:

Serial Experiments Lain: this was fun and everything I hoped it would be (stylized, super 90s, v cyberpunk, confusing). I felt like it was one of those shows where I could just take it all in and appreciate it aesthetically and not pay SUPER DUPER close attn to what was going on bcz even if you do it's still confusing as hell.

Genocyber: This was bad. I saw this mentioned a lot when I was researching cyberpunk anime, it is hyper violent which also intrigued me but the violence is sparse and really clunky, everything about it is poorly executed (animation, acting, writing, etc), and it quickly offset the novelty of the whole thing. It's a slog to watch and not even worth it for the shock value.

Battle Angel/Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm: This was cute, I liked this a lot. I wish it was longer than 2 episodes and I suppose I could read the manga (or a summary of the manga) but I'm fine just leaving it at this nice little 50-minute adventure. This def scratched my cyberpunk itch more than Genocyber did

Sekko Boys: The premise of this is that this woman is a manager for an idol group but all the members are marble busts, I thought this was the funniest thing ever and I laughed out loud a lot for the first few episodes but then the joke kinda wore off. I expected it to be more of a pointed commentary than it actually is.

OjiSan and Marshmallow: This is a series of 3 minute episodes about this adorable daddybear-looking dude who loves this one brand of marshmallow and this weird coworker who has a crush on him who keeps taunting him w them. It is super adorable but also the woman is like REALLY thirsty for him and it's a little wacky at times, but I'm really enjoying it

Polar Bear Cafe: I just started watching this yesterday and I am hooked so hard, it is about this anthropomorphic polar bear who runs a cafe and his regular customers who come in, set in a world where people and animals coexist w/o question, one of the characters is a panda and gets a job at the local zoo to just be their panda??? it's very humdrum slice of life and it is very soothing and SOOOO charming. I can't believe how in love with this show I am.

Ping Pong: Wow this is gorgeous!! I appreciate the simplicity of it bcz most of the anime I've watched is full of like ACTION or MYSTERY or INTRIGUE and this is just abt some students who play ping pong.

Next on my to-do list, in no real order:
Armitage III
Bubblegum Crisis
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Cowboy Bebop (I've seen the first 1/4 or so but never finished it)
Mononoke (just Mononoke, not Princess Mononoke)

I think I used to have it in my head that most anime was shounen and that I liked the exceptions to the rule that were not shounen, but I have come to realize that sooooo much anime is not shounen, and I actually like a lot of it??? I don't like meandering 100+ episode-of-the-week type stuff that doesn't really go anywhere, fan service, romance/excessive sentimentality, but I think I am open to most everything else, especially stranger weirder stuff.

Ping Pong really is incredible, a modern classic
don't know Armitage III but the others on your to-do list are all solid picks

Katsuhiro Otomo announced he is making a movie, "Orbital Era", only his third after "Akira" in 1988 and "Steamboy" in 2004.
Akira is getting a 4K remaster next year, good timing to tie in with the Olympics I guess.
More controversially there is also a new Akira "project" in the works covering the whole manga story, no word if it's TV or movies.

now I'm trying to think what a real Modern Classic Anime list would look like

yurucamp

the new akira thing is gonna be a tv series not a movie

stevie pls check out urusei yatsura: beautiful dreamer, did i already insist you watch this movie

Stevie, IIRC Bubblegum Crisis (I'm just going off the original OAV series here) may disappoint you - there's some cool robots-run-amok stuff but most of what's cyberpunky is just nakedly lifted from Blade Runner. It filled a niche at the time, and I was into it, but I don't think it really has any questions or answers of its own.

oh mannnnnnnn i love Beautiful Dreamer, high five to BN

it sorta depends on you knowing the show (which is a show worth at least dipping into), but i imagine you could get most of what it's doing if you just walk in with "this is based on a popular sitcom about a womanizing teenager who got technically engaged to an alien but won't admit he loves her, hijinks ensue with huge support cast."

i've never seen the show and i did spend like half the movie trying to figure out everyone's relationships to each other, also the whole "building a nazi-themed bar for the school festival" plotline is... weird, otherwise: a perfect movie

I rewatched Bubblegum Crisis last year and really enjoyed it, yes it is heavily influenced by Bladerunner but there was some nice body horror stuff going on in there and some beautiful animation. Plus it has some of the greatest "using random English as part of computer screens" in anime, one screen I didn't recognize turned out to be the lyrics to a David Sylvian song lol

https://i.imgur.com/7la8oVO.jpg

i do love "konya wa hurricane" and back in the day i had a soft spot for "bye bye my crisis" after taping it off a night when the college radio station played nothing but anime music for three hours.

oh yes Beautiful Dreamer is on my list!

tbh I kinda expect Bubblegum Crisis to not be excellent but I also love cyberpunk enough that I will watch derivative mediocre shit if it's cool looking enough (e.g. Johnny Mnemonic, which I love)

ahhhh cool, yeah, you should def watch it then!

I saw the spinoff Bubblegum Crash many years ago it wasn't that interesting but the poor slave robot was memorable. Looking up this series, I had no idea AD Police was set in the same universe but that makes a lot of sense, but it had a lot more sex, violence and perhaps immature seriousness.

I finished FLCL, it's a lot of fun but the music is the highlight by a wide margin. I'm still curious about the two new seasons, though.

I'm watching Kill La Kill now (fanservice caveats of course), it starts off great (fanservice aside) but I may have hit an anime saturation point because the wacky anime face faults are losing their shine.

frieren is really good

ok so this is the exact opposite of anime for people who hate anime but god damn i can see "gushing over magical girls" becoming my favorite dark magical girl anime of all time

yall utena is just a REALLY REALLY BIG FAN OF MAGICAL GIRLS!!!!!!!!

an anime dub but it's just a dub remix of the original episode soundtrack

preferably "cowboy bebop", i wanna hear the mad professor or someone remix yoko kanno and the seatbelts

but i guess like flcl or something would work