Anime for people who hate anime

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

My understanding is that it’s all done on tablets now (and I’m assuming at least the tweening is handled by computers rather than jr. level interns)

i'm pretty sure most studios still use a big pool of poorly paid contractors for the tweening

everything's composited digitally now and you'll see CG being used for stuff like action shots of vehicles or mechas but by and large the characters are still traditionally animated afaik

following up on the horror thing, an adaption of Junji Ito's Uzumaki aka Spiral is coming next year
directed by Hiroshi Nagahama (Mushishi), who I trust will get the creepiness down

short teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDEQyK5ZH-E

A bunch of anime nerds just discovered Colin Stetson.

don't think anime nerds are the ito fans really, hence this being a cartoon network thing

I'm 10 episodes into Paranoia Agent and I'm kind of wondering now if we'll ever return from this orthogonal detour.

Just finished Watanabe's new Netflix series, Carol and Tuesday. It was enjoyable, but I lost a good deal of interest when it settled into being about a Martian talent show. The closing credits are fantastic though!

Pretty much my sentiments. The music has been pretty good too, and I was kind of ranking the songs in my head -- "The Loneliest Girl" is tops, but the songs from the fake FKA Twigs are up there for me. (Angela is overrated.)

Pow-pow!

I always knew that fan communities could be intense and there's obviously nasty bullying but I didn't realize that fan art that was deemed problematic could lead to immense harassment from large parts of the community and two Jojo fan artists have ended up in hospital over it.

People have been bullied out of jobs and more than one person has been bullied to suicide. A Japanese fanartist had someone put needles in cookies they’d baked for her.

That's horrible. I also heard about it happening among Steven Universe fans on tumblr.

Was that latter artist bullied by people inside and/or outside japan? I remember Falcoon (fan artist who turned pro, worked for SNK) got bullied about his weight but that was maybe too early for culture war stuff (and I don't know how much japan goes for that).

my partner and i have been burning through anime like it's our job during quarantine. here's my anime logg with ratings:

completed
* Arslan Senki - 6
* Death Note - 8
* Elfen Lied - 6
* Kill la Kill - 10
* Little Witch Academia - 8
* Ghost in the Shell: SAC - 8
* Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam - 9
* Steins;Gate - 9
* Gurren Lagann - 9

watching
* Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ - i like the goofiness but they made the argama crew seem completely inept. also where tf is quattro??
* Legend of the Galactic Heroes - watched the first 30 episodes a few years back and it was a solid 10
* Ghost in the Shell: SAC2 - more cyberpunk awesomeness, minus the creepy hotel scene

looking for some good 80s/90s deep cuts, any recommendations?

you can also probably tell that i'm a Trigger fanboy -- i've never seen more joyful, maximalist animation. their stuff is like a love letter to everything anime good, band, and in-between

revolutionary girl utena

I recently watched NANA and loved it and tbh I have no idea if it's super well known or a deep cut and it's also from the 2000s but basically my point is if you haven't watched NANA you gotta

i watched the first saga of utena a few years back and really liked it! no better time to go back and finish

I remember a fair amount of people loved Nana, or the comic at least.

there's gunbuster and diebuster if you haven't seen those, kind of the origin point of the gainax/trigger style along with flcl

Is Nana streaming anywhere right now in the US? Looks like it's not on Prime or Netflix anymore :/

i don't see it anywhere

a lot of 00s and even some early 10s stuff is in limbo these days

Utena is critical viewing, Gunbuster is also great. If you’re a total nerd and curious about anime history, I really loved Otaku no Video, a 2-ep OVA abt the creation of Gainax.

Here’s some 80s/90s stuff I liked:

Bubblegum Crisis
Riding Bean
Battle Angel
Armitage III
Serial Experiments Lain
The Big O
Excel Saga

Ppl seem to like Blue Submarine No. 6 but I thought it was boring.

If you want ultra graphic pulpy garbage, Mad Bull 34 and Genocyber are ridic to the point of being kinda entertaining, but I would feel guilty actually *recommending* them

oh yeah definitely need to watch gunbuster and flcl

as for streaming, there's a great android app called "AnYme" you can use depending on the copyright laws in your country

It's probably super dated, but I loved the Vision of Escaflowne TV series back then.
Lain is great. After that, check out Paranoia Agent.

escaflowne is still good other than the ugly character designs

turn a gundam is my favorite mecha anime from that era

i haven't really seen much from the 90s though other than the big names, need to do a deeper dive

would love to read a book about the 80s bubble economy OVA scene, where any huckster or madman seemingly could get an anime made.
e.g. watched Dragon's Heaven OVA from 1988 the other day.
it's not that great, the main pull being that it's a complete ripoff of Moebius artwork brought to life.
it's also 42 minutes long but only 24 minutes is animation. there's a 5 minute live action intro featuring closeups of a model of the main mecha/robot, and then an outro of about 12 minutes of the model being lovingly constructed and filmed. so indulgent!

Excel Saga

oh i'm glad this show holds up? i haven't seen it since high school but i was a huge fan

here are 80's and 90's OVAs i would add to the list ... most of them are on youtube

dallos
megazone 23
goku midnight eye
record of lodoss war
paradise dolls
cyber city odeo 808
spirit warrior
black lion
wizardry
captain herlock: the endless odyssey

definitely check out retrocrush.tv, they have a ton of stuff on there from the '80s/'90s
That said we're probably getting away from the topic of this thread - everything we're talking about here is generally beloved anime

I'm currently watching through Monster, all of which is up on Youtube (in my part of the world at least); it's a slow burn but I'm enjoying it. More or less a straight-up crime thriller, there'a a few cliches but it's written well.

I'm a bit surprised that it seems to be the only Naoki Urusawa series that's been adapted into anime.