Anime for people who hate anime

I feel like Kill la Kill is at once perfect for ppl who both love and don’t love anime

also i mostly think of this thread more as 'anime with crossover appeal outside of anime fandom' which trigger stuff definitely is. imaishi's even making the cyberpunk 2077 tie-in netflix series lol

I've been working my way through the original Patlabor OVA and it's interesting, it's slower in pace that what I would have expected from a mecha anime, like more of a drama with robots than an ACTION!!! series. The characters are well developed and it also has a timelessness about it, like it doesn't really lean into pop culture or era-specific tropes too much? I like it! It doesn't feel groundbreaking or mind-blowing but it's sturdy and pleasant. I'm almost done and then I'm going to watch the first 2 movies.

the 1st movie is my fav anime movie

I decided to watch some anime again this year after a long time of not watching it. I don't hate anime but I often feel underwhelmed. But figured there must be something worth watching from the past fifteen years

Mob Psycho 100 is funny and enjoyable and visually interesting for such a well-trodden genre. Several friends also recommended Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which was not bad but felt very standard for its genre (never saw the original series). I know there are much longer series but it still felt overly long. At least the ending was sufficiently epic

oh shit i should watch patlabor

Yes do it, it’s only 7 eps and then 2 movies! Somehow I only just the other day realized it was Mamoru Oahii

my bf and i have been going through jojo's bizarre adventure: stardust crusaders and have been loving it

second patlabor movie is my fav oshii but I haven't seen the first one for at least a decade

kenji kawai score is excellent too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmlwhaEEgE

it's probably been even longer for the OVAs, but if memory serves, oshii directs some of the moodier ones there too

first movie is more like the ovas, 2nd is off doing its own thing

That's a beautiful piece of music.

As a young anime watcher the Patlabor movie totally confounded me with how little action there was. But then Wings Of Honneamise was similarly uncommercial for such a big production.
Then I remember even the Fist Of The North Star feature length turned all the outrageous fantasy violence into a horrible disempowering downer of an ending and the very commercial seeming Street Fighter Alpha mortified me by having my favorite characters brutalized in such a depressing fashion by some schmuck who isn't even in the games.

It's weird looking back on all that and I wonder if anime is still doing this to kids these days.

I was 9 or 10 years old when the school janitor loaned me Akira and it made me feel really sick but I mostly liked it.

the body horror stuff in akira still ooks me out

can't remember if i said this here but my kids' mother-in-law bought them the entire series of tokyo ghoul

they are 11 and 9 years old

i think it's....... a bit fucking much

yeahhhhhhh probably not age-appropriate

i was still watching pokemon when i was 12. it was brand new at the time though and thus probably cooler than it is to tweens now

my 9-y-o is dunzo with pokemon

they are HUGE fans of carole and tuesday. need 200 more episodes ASAP to wash the taste of tokyo ghoul out of my mouth

11-y-o is also starting to read assassination classroom, which i feel like would probably be actually illegal in the united states

i would say the age i saw akira at, 13, is the perfect age to see akira

pokemon/sailor moon/dragon ball z were my world at ages 11-12 but they were all airing "new" episodes at that time. evangelion broke open the rest of the anime world for me but i didn't see it in full until i was 14. i definitely watched ninja scroll not long after akira and i liked it but i was def 1) too young to be watching it 2) ninja scroll is the fucking worst trash. i think if my parents were at all interested in what i was watching they would've probably have not let me see a lot of these, but they had checked out of controlling the media i consumed by the time i was 7 or so? i grew up watching robocop and schwarzenegger and james bond movies, ultraviolence was my bag until psychologically and metaphysically deep art were my bag lol

in fact, anime basically conducted that transition

mtv and the simpsons were the last battles my parents waged and they lost both

my dad shunned the simpsons ever since they went up against the cosby show. 'i don't watch cartoons' was his line.

my mom was really strict about that stuff until i hit high school and then she went back to work and stopped caring much. so i basically went straight from pokemon to cowboy bebop

though bebop wasn't nearly as violent as i remembered on a rewatch, it probably just seemed that way at the time due to that jump lol

xps Ass Class is actually pretty wholesome for the most part (except for the sexy honeypot teacher)

ultraviolence was my bag until psychologically and metaphysically deep art were my bag

"evangelion was my bag but then evangelion was my bag"

lol

Just finished the two Devilman OVA’s from 1987/1990 and W O W, these were fucking amazing. The monster design was WILD, like so creepy and grotesque, and it had a lot of v filmy touches to it. Super fun to watch.

I am quite fond of them, I thought they were genuinely spooky at times but the fight with the demon bird lady in the second one didn't do much for me and it goes on a long time.

Always found it tad troubling that the blonde guy is perfectly happy to kill people to become a demon.

Fiiiinally finished Bubblegum Crisis and started the 3-episode AD Police Files OVA and it’s incredible, it’s a lot darker grittier trashier then Bubblegum Crisis, as someone w a soft spot for both cyberpunk and sleazy 90s OVAs this is perfect

Tatami Galaxy, episode 1: this guy talks way too fucking fast

Cat Soup: I tried to watch this a few months ago but I rewatched it last night and I like it a lot more, prob bcz I already knew it was kinda dark. Weird and fun!

Megazone 23, Part I: hahaha this is ridic and I love it so much, it is SOOO distinctively 80s and there is even a mall montage w pop music over it and I really enjoyed the direction it went in

i finished the patlabor ova and it was quite nice even though, in this particular year, watching a show about the police clashing with environmental activists was... hm. last episode did have a quite funny joke and the expense of commies tbf

gotta log back into hidive and watch the movies now

i'm also glad that the ova ultimately did not deal too much with them apprehending "criminals" or "environmental terrorists" and kinda ended up being a cops vs. the military story

the movies are incredible, enjoy

I liked that the OVA was a drama with robots instead of like ACTION anime!

Brad I think you might really love Megazone 23

xp wait I literally just said that upthread

anyway incidentally enough I had the first Patlabor queued up and was abt to start watching (and am now 5 minutes in, the animation is stellar) and I just want to point out that every time I watch Patlabor in my head I hear Erykah Badu singing “Paaatlabor, you gon’ hurt your back”

tatami galaxy is worth sticking with-- the rest of the episodes aren't nearly as fast as the first one

still pretty fast though

made a rare attempt to watch an anime for people who like anime (Kill La Kill) and deeply regretted my decision within an hour, save for the enjoyable overkill of the animation style

like I get that it's making a meta statement about anime but still....not for me, oof.

but, yknow, it's good to test yr limits of taste now and again

okay yeah wow the Patlabor movie is in a league of its own, like the OVA is really great but the movie is next-level and I can clearly see why it gets the praise that it does

Simon, what specifically did you hate about Kill la Kill?

I really don't know if there was anything I liked about it lol

aaaahahaha okay fair, I enjoyed its frenetic energy and its twisty turny batshit plot and send-ups of lots of diff anime tropes and conventions but ya it is def not for everyone

what have you watched lately that you've enjoyed?

Japan’s most evil yakuza makes its cutest househusband! Follow Tatsu’s journey from underworld legend to domestic bliss when the anime adaptation of Kousuke Oono’s hit comedy manga The Way of the Househusband premieres in 2021. pic.twitter.com/V7tdVIaYVc

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) October 27, 2020

have you read the comic?

No, I just thought it sounded funny.

I read a bit and it's ok, but not as funny as Hinamatsuri tho

ok so the first patlabor movie was several orders better than the ova, and the second patlabor movie was.... a godlike masterpiece?????

they're the best anime movies