Where can I find better anime?

[Elheru Aran]

I have to say that when I found Elfen Lied on Amazon, I watched a couple of episodes. That first one though. Bear in mind I'd just come off a FMA: Brotherhood binge. While FMA has its moments... they aren't naked-psychic-lady-killing-people-messily-with-her-mind moments.

Compared to that... I'd say Silver Spoon falls quite handily into the 'brain bleach' category along with kitty pictures and the cute doggo memes.

[Majin Gojira]

I finally got the chance to finish up Devilman. Yea, it had a pretty hard shift, but setup really well so it wasn't like they blind-sided you. Americans think they know "grimdark." Hell, this isn't even that, it's just grim. Not even grim really. It's a singularity of "how can we make you feel MORE shitty after watching this?" I haven't got much. I mean, had they shown someone strangle a Golden Retriever to death.... or beat a toddler to death with a shovel and take their time doing it.

That could have made the ending mildly more depressing that it was. And the toddler/shovel thing, as shocking as that would be, I mean the show already had it beat. Fucking. Bravo. 9/10 anime. Would NOT watch again. Because it would ruin the impact. There's a few annoyances, the info dump at the end, the feeling of "oh man, we have to wrap this whole thing up in 2 episodes." But still really solid.

I fucking LOVE Devilman. Read the manga ages ago and it really hits still. Especially when you remember that it came out in 1978, and went on to influence things like Evangelion and Berserk. Most Horror and Action-Horror owe a debt to it, as does the entire archetype of the mysterious white-haired pretty boy villain.

Crybaby is a great update for it, mostly because it preserves some of that original impact the manga had back in the day, and then went and made it look absolutely beautiful in all its horror.

Some things I think were pulled off better in the Manga (Jinmen), but overall, this is one of the best adaptations I've seen (as well as one of the best anime of the year).

But I have a bias and really wanted to gush about Devilman.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Something I discovered recently is Knights of Sidonia, a cross between Mobile Suit Gundam, Battlestar Galactica, and Blue Gender, set a thousand years after space kaiju destroyed Earth.

Watching it, one almost forgets It's a mishmash of three other shows; It's that good.

[Q99]

Knights is good- and based on a manga *not* as unusual as the author's other manga serieses. Blame! most notably- which I gather has anime, which I don't know the quality of and is based on one of the more filmable arcs of the series.

[TheFeniX]

Knights was worth 2 watches for me. My only complaints, as I've mentioned before, is all the Japanese names combined with the "sameness" the animation style and cel shading brings to the characters which makes it difficult at times to determine who is who and/or who is talking about who else..... that and the whole implied "I wanna bang that tentacle rape monster."

It's heavy though. I usually have to watch something 100% comedy after taking a couple episodes. Show can bum me the fuck out, much like Neo-BSG did.

SwordGai..... what... the... fuck.... There's nothing I can say that Googling "SwordGai Review" won't say better. This show is 100% (I dare say) objectively terrible. I would watch Sword Art Online over this. The only salvageable part is Blonde Guy meeting back up with his girlfriend because it has this entire Highlander + Davey Jones (from the Pirates of the Carbibean movie, where he can only see his woman every X years) vibe and it hits hard. It's so well done it makes me wonder how it even made it into the show. Imagine your heart had a groin and the show spent 15 minutes kicking it in the dick. The entire rest of the show is completely nonsensical but also a complete shotgun spread of characters and plots that go nowhere or end the exact way. It's like..... 80% filler and not even "bottle episode" filler. They managed to find a worse form of filler episode.

If I had to give an example: imagine Star Wars: ANH went into the backstory of every character in the Mos Eisley Cantina, and they were all just about murdering each other, but they still tried to have a main story about Luke Skywalker and the rest of the crew within the original run time.

The animation is pretty good, except the CGI "Sword-demon Mecha Samurai" (don't ask....) clashes badly with the style. The audio isn't great and the soundtrack is forgettable. It's "mature" because of Gore... so it's basically "Anime Fallout 4" in both the themes and the storytelling.

I fucking LOVE Devilman. Read the manga ages ago and it really hits still. Especially when you remember that it came out in 1978, and went on to influence things like Evangelion and Berserk. Most Horror and Action-Horror owe a debt to it, as does the entire archetype of the mysterious white-haired pretty boy villain.

I know next to nothing about Devilman (well, I know about it now). I didn't realize until after watching that this was a retelling of the story, not a continuation. Was the original manga this graphic? Because this comes off to me like Todd's Spawn on HBO: essentially making the show/comic he always wanted to but NEVER could have found a publisher for.

Man.... I would have loved to see Angela in the show. Don't know why McFarlane had to be a dick about it... whatever.

[Majin Gojira]

I know next to nothing about Devilman (well, I know about it now). I didn't realize until after watching that this was a retelling of the story, not a continuation. Was the original manga this graphic? Because this comes off to me like Todd's Spawn on HBO: essentially making the show/comic he always wanted to but NEVER could have found a publisher for.

If I may?

Go Nagai is well known for pushing the boundaries of expression (and good taste). He's sort of like a combination Stan Lee and Loyd Koffman (founder of Troma Pictures). One of his early works, Harenchi Gakuen, got a lot of complaints about its sexual content (in a series that ran from 1968 through 1972).

Yeah, this is the guy who basically invented "Hentai".

He also invented anime Mecha as we know them today.

Anyway, Devilman at the time of its publication . . . was SUPER violent and bloody.

And, of course, had nudity too. Not as openly sexual as Crybaby is, but about as violent.

Which, for the 1970s, was SUPER extreme.

A lot of the violence is mitigated because it's a black and white manga with an older style to it, but it's still there.

And the big plot points from the new series are lifted right from the original. They added a great theme using the relay race thing, but mostly, the big stuff is right from the manga. Jinmen, the panic of the revelation, Miki's ultimate fate . . . all from the original source.

The main differences being it's a little rougher, cheesier, and things go in a slightly different order/way due to it being set in the 1980s rather than today.

A better comparison would be comparing the original Spider-Man comics to the cartoon Spectacular Spider-Man.

Also, Spoiler

It is technically a continuation too. The story of Devilman repeats itself over and over again. It's retold and redone, and twisted, but the core of it: Satan falling in love with Akira and ending up killing him, is basically Satan's punishment for rebelling against God. Over and over again, almost every iteration ends the same way and starts anew. Sometimes with another series or two twisted into being revealed as continuations. It's crazy, and sometimes hard to follow in a metatextual sense, but that's the basics of it.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Gargantia of the Verdant Planet is a pretty interesting series. A young mech pilot and his sentient machine find themselves crashed on a watery world, far from their battlefield. They end up on a huge flotilla of ships sailing the endless ocean, and find themselves having to make a life in a world that doesn't have much use for their skills.

SO seeing it having the words "Mech" in it, I looked up.
And then watched it last night... ALL Of it. like, the whole 13 episodes...

THANK YOU!
By far one of the best new Anime I have seen...AND Enjoyed in a while.

[TheFeniX]

Gargantia was pretty good. Could have afforded to be a bit longer and expand out the themes and relationships a bit more. It suffers IMO because there's a lot of world-building in early episodes, then the plot kicks into high-gear and the series wraps itself up really quickly. That's not exactly exclusive to that show. Knights of Sidonia is much better in this regard (though it has gone on longer). The show is as fast and slow as it "needs" to be and I find they do a really good job with the pacing.

A better comparison would be comparing the original Spider-Man comics to the cartoon Spectacular Spider-Man.

To be fair, I don't read comics. Never have. I have copies of the Collaboration "books" of Spawn (where other authors did work for the series) because the quality was incredible. But that's about it. Manga in general is a rather huge turn off to me. Some specific artwork aside, I'd much rather read the One Punch Man webcomic (and have) than bother with the Manga. I'm weird like that.

Did watch Cyborg 009 vs Devilman. Was a preeeeety hard cut going back to more PG-13 stuff. A decent watch, but as I know nothing about the Cyborg 009 stuff, I was lost for those portions. I thought, at the start, 009 was actually fighting a Greek God and was macking on the "real" Helena.

Anime be weird.

Also, Spoiler

It is technically a continuation too. The story of Devilman repeats itself over and over again. It's retold and redone, and twisted, but the core of it: Satan falling in love with Akira and ending up killing him, is basically Satan's punishment for rebelling against God. Over and over again, almost every iteration ends the same way and starts anew. Sometimes with another series or two twisted into being revealed as continuations. It's crazy, and sometimes hard to follow in a metatextual sense, but that's the basics of it.

Honestly, one of the easier anime to understand, coming from a Christian background and making the leap into a Japanese take. I know I beat it to death, but FLCL has set a bar so high in "near-incomprehensible anime bullshit, but still manages to be great," Devilman can't even rate here.

Either way, really good show.

[Q99]

If I may?

Go Nagai is well known for pushing the boundaries of expression (and good taste). He's sort of like a combination Stan Lee and Loyd Koffman (founder of Troma Pictures). One of his early works, Harenchi Gakuen, got a lot of complaints about its sexual content (in a series that ran from 1968 through 1972).

Yeah, this is the guy who basically invented "Hentai".

Harenchi Gakuen is *incredibly* tame by modern standards, but is the acknowledged precursor of 'ecchi' series as it were.

[Majin Gojira]

If I may?

Go Nagai is well known for pushing the boundaries of expression (and good taste). He's sort of like a combination Stan Lee and Loyd Koffman (founder of Troma Pictures). One of his early works, Harenchi Gakuen, got a lot of complaints about its sexual content (in a series that ran from 1968 through 1972).

Yeah, this is the guy who basically invented "Hentai".

Harenchi Gakuen is *incredibly* tame by modern standards, but is the acknowledged precursor of 'ecchi' series as it were.

It also got the Japanese version of the PTA on his ass something hard, and he wrote a grand finale where they went after his creations in an all-out war where the ENTIRE cast is brutally killed.

Also, sometimes, he can STILL do things that push the boundaries of what's acceptable.

[Dominus Atheos]

I know I beat it to death, but FLCL has set a bar so high in "near-incomprehensible anime bullshit, but still manages to be great,"

Did you know that there's a sequel airing on toonami/adult swim in two weeks?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I do now. Thanks for the heads up.

[TheFeniX]

Blue Exorcist season 2 kind of fell flat. They have it subbed on Amazon Prime. I have to assume the Evil Pope and giant Hell Gate arc (that I think was U.S. only) is totally out of continuity. BE S1 had issues, but pacing and plot retread wasn't really one of them. Season 2 is abysmal by comparison. Not bad, but not all that good either. It's just "there" and I don't feel it adds much, if anything, to the characters. It basically spent 12 episodes mostly retreading character development that happened in S1.

Literally, whole character plots repeat. The most cliche one is "Rin is destined to be executed (again), but with help from his friends he busts out and saves the day.... so they just put him back to 'mess up and we'll execute you.'"

Rin and Yukio's dad gets the most development that I can recall and he's been dead since the first couple episodes of S1. I think the best part of the season was Shura in Diasy Dukes that would make the lady the garment is named after blush. But she's just as flat and boring as everyone else.... as a character, mind you.

I know I beat it to death, but FLCL has set a bar so high in "near-incomprehensible anime bullshit, but still manages to be great,"

Did you know that there's a sequel airing on toonami/adult swim in two weeks?

No... no, I did not. Now I'm torn between a bit of excitement... and preparing for massive disappointment because it occurs to me FLCL is a bit like Seinfield in that the sequel might end up being derivative of itself or a lot of other mainstream anime. As in, "a show of it's time." Oh well, need to find a way to watch on Toonami.

[Bernkastel]

I know I beat it to death, but FLCL has set a bar so high in "near-incomprehensible anime bullshit, but still manages to be great,"

Did you know that there's a sequel airing on toonami/adult swim in two weeks?

No... no, I did not. Now I'm torn between a bit of excitement... and preparing for massive disappointment because it occurs to me FLCL is a bit like Seinfield in that the sequel might end up being derivative of itself or a lot of other mainstream anime. As in, "a show of it's time." Oh well, need to find a way to watch on Toonami.

Well, there's a season 2 (FLCL Progressive) and season 3 (FLCL Alternative). FLCL Alternative had it's first episode be given a surprise airing on April 1st and I think it's still floating around on the web. So, you could check that out and get an idea of what to expect if you want.

[Q99]

Blue Exorcist the manga was one I *loved* at first, thought was gonna be huge, then the pacing slowed down a ton and it imo softballed some plot arc resolutions that made things feel lesser stakes imo.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Gargantia was pretty good. Could have afforded to be a bit longer and expand out the themes and relationships a bit more. It suffers IMO because there's a lot of world-building in early episodes, then the plot kicks into high-gear and the series wraps itself up really quickly. That's not exactly exclusive to that show. Knights of Sidonia is much better in this regard (though it has gone on longer). The show is as fast and slow as it "needs" to be and I find they do a really good job with the pacing.

Yeah I completely concur. Without spoiling too much, around the point the plot and action seems to get moving... It ends just as fast. I am not sure you could have stretched it from a standard 13episode show into a 24 episode one, So I am not sure how to have fixed it. But perhaps it is for the best, it ends abruptly, but it is a very satisfying resolution IMHO

[TheFeniX]

I mean, I'm not going to ask for a huge arcing wrap-up happy-happy ending. But Gargantia was like "Ok, bad guy's dead. Show's over, I'm tired." With FLCL it made sense since everything (that a lowly mortal could even understand) is actually neatly wrapped up at the end. But there's so many unanswered questions in Gargantia, especially with asking "what happened with all the wack-jobs after the BOOM!?"

Both shows are (assuming) about growing up and puberty. FLCL ended the show just as abruptly but it worked.


CRAAAAA-Z Suuuuuun-shine has been stuck in my head the entire weekend. Not the worst thing to have happened. And oh yea, the English dub is just... terrible. God damn. I get they were trying to capture the Japanese VAs style for the English dub. But dude.... bad is bad. I didn't even know either since I've only watched in Japanese.

Well, there's a season 2 (FLCL Progressive) and season 3 (FLCL Alternative). FLCL Alternative had it's first episode be given a surprise airing on April 1st and I think it's still floating around on the web. So, you could check that out and get an idea of what to expect if you want.

Ok, you got me. I'll look into them. The soundtrack better deliver though.

Unrelated sidenote: I checked out one of the Magi series with Aladdin and other guys. So, I'm kind of about to fall over the fence on a TV-14 show with slavery and OVERT implications of rape and brood-sow stuff. Then an old lady gets shot in the back with an arrow and just drops dead right as my kid walks in and I'm like "Whelp, time for mama-shark do do do do do do mama-shark."

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Unrelated sidenote: I checked out one of the Magi series with Aladdin and other guys. So, I'm kind of about to fall over the fence on a TV-14 show with slavery and OVERT implications of rape and brood-sow stuff. Then an old lady gets shot in the back with an arrow and just drops dead right as my kid walks in and I'm like "Whelp, time for mama-shark do do do do do do mama-shark."

Oh, an average episode of GATE, then?

Now, if graphic violence to rival an average issue of Judge Dredd's your thing, and if you're a fan of Samuel L. Muthafuckin' Jackson, then you should check out Afro Samurai.

Or, for some decent dieselpunk and magic girl fare, there's The Valkyria Chronicles.

[TheFeniX]

Now, if graphic violence to rival an average issue of Judge Dredd's your thing, and if you're a fan of Samuel L. Muthafuckin' Jackson, then you should check out Afro Samurai.

Afro-Samurai kind of crosses all borders unless you just don't like cartoons. It's pretty much "Anime Red Meat." The video game adaptation was insanely good as well.

My beef with Magi is more the implications. It's a bit bloody, but it's not all that gory. It's this Nomadic "Plains Tribe" that's been dealing with slavers for a while anyway. Ignoring how some slavers busted into their camp and walked off with well over a dozen women with no resistance (must have been Ramsey Bolton), these people don't train their women to fight? And the slavers want these women for breeding because "something something they breed strong warriors." The precedent to not train women is obviously a thing, but there's already women who kick ass in this show, like one slave girl whose people have "strong legs" (or whatever) that let them leap 20 feet in the air, run up walls, and kick through solid rock.

So, in that situation, when someone is going creepy rapist, it really doesn't sit well with me because if feels like a cheap emotional get without the legwork to give me a good reason to care, outside my base instinct of "I'm not a fan of women being kidnapped and threatened with rape." Like, Elder Scrolls is a pretty violent and sexist setting, but not in the way you'd think. Women do slutty things, they catfight, etc. Men whore around, call women "harpies" when angry. But I can't recall a single instance of "this woman is a poor fighter because she's a woman." You find instances of someone's parents saying "no, you aren't training to fight or use magic because your job is to marry someone rich and pop out kids." That's a pretty important distinction for me. So, if in another game or the lore I got "X woman can't fight a man because she's a woman" that would grate like Hell.

Way more than if they hadn't established shit like "a reasonably fit Nord woman could tear your goddamn head off with one arm while pounding brew with the other." So... the show wants to establish that women can get shit done, then use a group of women who have every reason to be in that group, and turn them into plot coupons.

[Dominus Atheos]

Stuff

So you like action-comedies generally aimed at teens and young adults, not too mature and not too childish.

Try RWBY, technically not an anime, but close enough:

[Q99]

RWBY's got some anime tropes, a more western flavor*, fairy tale inspiration, and memorable characters. It's also pretty rough around the edges since it started so small-time and such, and they do lose the best choreographer partway so need to refind themselves a bit. Flipside, there's a definite charm and earnestness to the roughness, and it has a lot of love for good reason.


*One descriptor I heard is 'get it if you want something that's not anime but like anime.'

[Majin Gojira]

I'm generally of the opinion that Anime is best defined as an artistic movement more than any of the other definitions I've seen bandied about. So, I guess that means RBWY is Anime under that umbrella.

But definitions in art are always somewhat loose.

[TheFeniX]

So you like action-comedies generally aimed at teens and young adults, not too mature and not too childish.

Yea, that'll work. I guess basically it just needs to be good. Over the past year, because Shonen fight fight fight shit seems to have some competition, there's been more than a few shows I've picked up and watched that are just good. It can't be all Gore, laughs, titilation, and grim. I get REAL tired of the "plots over, I'm tired, everyone go home." Robotech/Macross is kind of a standard on how it should be done. You got all this pew pew and there's still time for tons of character development.

Some American shows have delivered here in the past, but they are pretty sparse and/or just recreations of things I've seen 1000 times. Like, Wolverine and the X-men, pretty solid. But I am about X-Mened out. But I recall shows from the past: Exosquad, Starship Troopers CGI, even Halo where they got away with a lot more adult themes (Exosquad* tackled multiple themes of racism, slavery, the horrors of war, etc).

There was a time in the late-90s and early-2000s where American animation was breaking out from the "kids show" area, where they could do more than just hide some adult themes in the TV-Y show. But now it seems you have to watch really..... poorly drawn shows to get it. Teen Titans gave way to stuff like... whatever, Rick and Morty or Adventure Time. And all I can think of is Amy's comment from Futurama: "And their ironic hipster parents will "love" it."

Try RWBY, technically not an anime, but close enough:

It's not bad so far. I'll keep at it. As Majin said, the definition and my desire for "traditional" anime is loose. I only go to animation because the Japanese will hammer more adult themes and you can generally just DO MORE with animation without spending millions on CGI and special effects. Like the wizard battle between Gandalf and Saruman being a magic wrestling match versus something like EXPLOSIONS and shit from Fairytail.

Also, while tiring at times, I've always liked the Japanese obsession with merging magic and technology. While Shadowrun does this, Magic (while studied scientifically) exist separate from technology and suffers in the presence of it. Magic is always at odds with science/technology. This is a pretty well-defined and over-used Western cliche. In Japan, even with video games such as Final Fantasy, magic supplements technology and vice versa. It's just not something you see much at all in Western writing.

That said, there's been enough American/Western animation that delivers. They're just kind of behind when it comes to shit outside Disney bullshit. The list is small and included gems from decades ago like The Last Unicorn. Meanwhile, there's just a lot of anime to choose from and thankfully a lot of the more modern stuff is at least enjoyable.

*If you've never seen Exosquad: I HIGHLY recommend finding a way to watch it.

[Q99]

There was a time in the late-90s and early-2000s where American animation was breaking out from the "kids show" area, where they could do more than just hide some adult themes in the TV-Y show. But now it seems you have to watch really..... poorly drawn shows to get it. Teen Titans gave way to stuff like... whatever, Rick and Morty or Adventure Time. And all I can think of is Amy's comment from Futurama: "And their ironic hipster parents will "love" it."

Apparently right now it's a hard time for young-adult animation marketing wise. A number of attempts didn't sell toys like hoped, and Laura Faust has relayed that right now most execs think "If kids want action, they'll go to video games."

On the bright side, Young Justice is being revived. Netflix has Voltron.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

FLCL Progressive is on Toonami, and there's always the Project A'ko series, if you want to reach back to the 80s, early 90s. And, of course, Naussica Of the Valley Of Wind.

Don't watch the English-dubbed hackjob version, Warriors Of the Wind