Anime for people who hate anime

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.

my sister told me to watch fairy tail wow what garbage i told her to watch evangelion and she had about the same reaction lol

yayy Stevie I'm so glad you liked Polar Bear Cafe, it really is such a cute show

if you liked that you should seek out Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-San, it's a slice-of-life anime based around the staff of a bookstore and essential if you've ever worked in customer service with awful people

awful news, 13+ dead at Kyoto Animation studio after arson attack
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49027178

yeah this is fucked

33 dead, 36 injured

what a nightmare

There’s never any sense to attacks like this, but firebombing an animation studio seems even more fucked up.

clouds, Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san is so up my alley and my dude + I have had a v fun time watching it

I just finished Revolutionary Girl Utena and WOW, it was wild, perhaps a little too convoluted for its own good, it felt like there were a lot of superfluous twists and turns and it got hard to follow at times. I still v much loved it

Does anyone have recommendations for legitimately creepy/horror-y anime that's effective and not corny?

I think next on my list is The Big O, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Mononoke (the ghost one, not the Studio Ghibli one)

i haven't seen mononoke but it's the thing i most often see recommended for your above question so it seems like you're on the right track

I’m sure I didn’t see Yuri On Ice mentioned here? Anyway this thread reminded me to look at where that film is, answer still ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ should’ve done a second series

Does anyone have recommendations for legitimately creepy/horror-y anime that's effective and not corny?

the answer to this should have been the recent TV series "Junji Ito Collection" but unfortunately the adaption was garbage, stay away :(

"Ghost Hound" has a creepy vibe and amazing sound design iirc. The writing in the latter half loses steam, but it's still worth watching. There was a superstar team behind it including the creator of Ghost in the Shell and some of the Lain & Texhnolyze staff, both of which also had a similarly creepy vibe now I think of it, so also watch those as well if you haven't already (although Texhnolyze is also depressing as fuuuuuuuck)

lol funny, this was inspired by my boyf sending me a link to the Junji Ito Collection this morning like "omg did you know about this?!?!?!" and then me reading up on it and seeing that it got very middling reviews

I LOOOOVE Ghost in the Shell and Lain but have never seen Texhnolyze, I will add it to my list along w Ghost Hound

Re: horror, Petit Cossette is supposed to be very good but as with most stuff I cant get along with the drawing style.

yay stevie i'm glad you liked honda-san!

you've seen pop team epic right?

what's the most impressive anime in the past decade would you say from just a purely technical perspective?

probably mob psycho for tv anime? but the actual answer will be a movie which i havent seen much of from this decade

Yeh some movie as they have more time & budget to animate with (Redline maybe?)
In terms of TV Kyoani have probably been the most consistent studio over the last 10 years, but there are individual scenes from the likes of Mob, Space Dandy, 1st season of One Punch etc that stand out in the memory. Also probably PA Works but outside of Eccentric Family I can't stand their stuff >.<

I have NOT seen pop team epic!

wait yes I have, I watched an episode or 2, it was cute but it felt a bit like it was trying too hard to be weird for the sake of being weird

i didn't notice they made an anime of it, i just know it via people reposting the comics all the time

it's only 12 episodes, I should just watch it probably

I went on a rampage this weekend and downloaded the following:

Blue Submarine No. 6
Chi's Sweet Home
Genius PartyGiant Robo
Memories
Neo Tokyo
Panda Kopanda
Riding Bean
Robot Carnival
Tatami Galaxy
Texhnolyze

Neo Tokyo has the amazing “Running Man” short which I haven’t seen surpassed in terms of pure visual satisfaction, and I wonder if the death of cel-based animation is to blame. From a cost perspective, we should be able to have CG counterparts that are much more beautiful and fluid (a lot of shots in Running Man are static and cyclicly twitchy which lend it a very effectively unsettling atmosphere, but at the same time is obviously a cost/time-saving move) but I’ve yet to see anything like that outside of the Pixar paradigm. For something as highly packed with digital signs and readouts as “Running Man”, it’s doubly ironic that no one seems to be able to make something as good or better using a digital workflow.

i don't hate anime? but i just don't have a lot of time for it

so i just watch anime named after records i like

so far i have seen "angel's egg" and "pale cocoon" and they are both great

fuuuck i completely forgot about blue submarine no. 6, i remember loving it

angel's egg is a masterpiece

"running man" was nice but it could use more james taylor

xp most anime is still hand drawn though, not CG