Xerxys

No seriously ... anime is boring. They have nearly not enough fight scenes and terrible, terrible story line plots.

I tried bleach and Naruto and I simply can't find good anime that is PROPERLY drawn and can hold my attention for longer than 10 mins. Who can recommend a good anime flick to watch?

Shauk

lol, most anime makes me go "wtf, why does this even have a fanbase?" (see Dragonball)

Only good ones I like are Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop, mebbie some Ghost in the Shell, Iria, Vamp Hunter D for the old schoolness.

SSJTWIZTA

ever watch FLCL (fooly cooly)?

only 6 episode were made, and its just fucking strange. one of the few animes that has ever sucked me in.
some of the animation stunned me. its mostly hand-drawn, but they spice it up with the some fancy computer work.

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m0rpheus

I've enjoyed a couple anime movies over the years but thats it. I have friends who keep trying to get me into anime but it's just not for me.

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Baraka_Guru

I second the FLCL.

But watch the classics: Fist of the North Star, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc. (These are feature films, not series.)

Also try Full Metal Alchemist.

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snowy

Full Metal Alchemist is good. Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex is good, if you want a Ghost in the Shell series to watch. Samurai Champloo is good. I like all three of these a lot.

What of Naruto did you watch? There are sections of the anime that do not follow the manga, and I do not recommend them. Quite frankly, all the filler is stupid. It's slow to get started but interesting once you get into subsequent story lines, though the anime does tend to drag them out to create more episodes, and if you don't like big story arcs, it is not for you. Personally, I like the stuff post-timeskip: Naruto: Shippuuden.

It took me a long time to get into anime. Admittedly, the only thing that kept me going on Naruto for a while was the idea of ninjas. I like ninjas.

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Halx

I think the Cowboy Bebop series has some universal appeal that can make skeptics reconsider their opinions.

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biznatch

Cowboy Bebop is simply amazing. The characters, the context, the music... It's all there.
Samurai Champloo was also great.
Ghost in The Shell has a lot about cyborg life and identity, and it's certainly interesting.
And I usually hate anime. Adult Swim has shown me there can be good anime.

Count me out from Dragon Ball Z, Inuyasha, and Naruto, though. Not my thing.

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SSJTWIZTA

oh, if you dont mind reading subtitles, give paprika a shot.

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Fremen

Don't know if you can find it, but Star Blazers was awesome back in the 70's.
It was originally Space Battleship Yamato from Japan, but dubbed and edited over for the US.

It might not be up to today's standards, but back then it was cool as hell.

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genuinegirly

I'm a Bleach fanatic.
The new version of Fullmetal Alchemist is excellent.
Have you tried out the classics like Evangelion and Kira?

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KellyC

Not liking Bleach and Naruto??? You are dead to me.

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dlish

whats anime?

ok..i know what it is, im just showing my discontent

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Willravel

To be fair, an area where a lot of Anime movies and series fall short is in execution of a solid plot. Take Evangelion, for example. The stand-alone episodes worked—yay, we're fighting a new Angel today—but the end of the series was an epic mess.

If it's a decent and consistent plot you want, look no further than Ghost in the Shell (1995).

SSJTWIZTA

liking bleach and naruto? you're dead to me.

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Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me.
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LoganSnake

FLCL, Full Metal Alchemist, Samurai Champloo, Afro Samurai (with Sam Jackson doing the voice over, no less), Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star.

Those are the ones that usually interest people who have no interest in anime. However, I don't recommend going into Full Metal Alchemist first. It uses a lot of the anime specific art styles which people who are not used to anime might find off-putting. Naruto is the same.

The opening fight scene from Afro Samurai:

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Pogue Mahone

I used to be an anime fan when I was younger, but I eventually grew out of it. There are a few hat I still like - like the aforementioned Cowboy Bebop. And there's a series my roommate got me into called "Ghost Stories". Basically, the original Japanese script was so horrible and nonsensical that when it was brought to America, the writers completely redid it and made it intentionally funny. It's super twisted. Here's a small example.

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wooÐs

Never understood the fascination with anime. All of it reminds me of Speed Racer. Stupid.

LoganSnake

You know, anime has come a long way since Speed Racer...

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SSJTWIZTA

i loved speed racer when i was a child, damn-it.

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Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
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Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me.
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Esoteric

NO U.

FLCL is the shit. I'm kinda surprised no one has mentioned Trigun yet. Cowboy Bebop is possibly the greatest anime series I've ever seen, period. I really suggest watching it.

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wooÐs

Ok, a post I made is no longer here.

Mods?

Halx

I think I need to repeat myself.

Everyone seems to be mentioning their favorite animes like some anti-anime person will appreciate them. I'm sorry, but nobody is going to like Naruto if they don't like anime already. FLCL is just TOO FUCKING WEIRD to grasp. Evangelion takes a great leap of faith to understand how Japanese culture influences the behavior of the characters. Trigun is not going to cut it either.

Cowboy Bebop, as I said, transcends all the Japanese weirdness that makes anime dumb for most Americans. It is the perfect starter if you SAY you don't like anime.

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Baraka_Guru

I support Halx's recommendation of Cowboy Bebop. But I didn't see the series; I saw the motion picture. But, man, what an awesome soundtrack.

Also, good introductions to anime would pretty much be anything produced by Studio Ghibli. But Xerxys seems to be after violence and fighting, so I'm not sure there would be enough of that in these films. But...they are accessible and some I would call masterpieces.



As for violence, one only has to watch Fist of the North Star to see how good it gets.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Jetée

I actually love the resurrected discussion of this in a new thread; most of my innate sentiments have already been covered, and Halx's addendum is a great analysis. Cowboy Bebop is indeed exactly what it states itself as: The work which will become a genre unto itself will be called...

Bebop is a loosely-termed compact anime series, which itself bases alot of its visuals and overall feel towards Western culture, particularly American counter-culture. The series revolves very much around the music score as much as it does the each of characters' history and their struggle to regain what each of them has lost. Yoko Kanno is unequivocally the best Japanese music composer, and with her prevalent work in anime, especially the work she supplied for Cowboy Bebop, helped propel the overall stellar success of this landmark anime syndication.


Also to note, most serialized anime, I'd say a fair 90% of it, were all originally conceived as weekly/monthly manga chapters (Japanese comics). It is important and sometimes overlooked at how much manga pervades the Japanese culture, but more often than not, a manga comic tries to combine a variety of themes, story, drama, and comedy within each individual story arc, so much so that it can be very much lost in translation from print to screen, and then again, from Eastern culture to Western culture. The nuances of what is written on a page and what is implied to be via dialogue and speech on the TV can be either minimal or totally drastic.
(A good example of this is the manga "One Piece": a very good manga from what I hear, and I read the first two or three graphic novels about six years ago and thought it was top-notch, but from all accounts I've compiled, the Americanized anime production of the title is nothing short of dreck.)

To put it simply, Japanese comics, pushers, and the audience at large love "wacky"; think Daffy Duck and the Dodo bird combined & transmorphed to appeal to Japanese adolescents, and depending on your tastes, add a fair amount of "ero" and dollops of blood and violence, and you have a starting formula for a good comic. If your comic succeeds well enough, it will be colorized, animated, and set to become a TV show.

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Lasereth

I have to admit that I loved Naruto. I've only seen up to episode 130ish (good God, 130 episodes...I just realized how long that is) but I did enjoy a lot of the show. The characters are great, the music is great, and Naruto is one of the most likable main characters I've seen in anime. The filler episodes aren't as bad as everyone says (this coming from someone who hasn't read the manga) but they definitely aren't as good as the main plot. BTW I'm talking about the subtitled version, not the dubbed.

Cowboy Bebop is good. I guess anime is so huge that within the actual medium are differences in style and presentation. Some of it is silly and light hearted while some of it is so off the deep end that it makes a Kubrick movie look like amateur night. It's a lot like television in general -- there are shows that some people like and shows that some people hate. Anime is the same, you just have to find what you like.

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dd3953

I just watched this movie, the art work is great, and the story had a pretty good plot ... it was kinda hard to follow for the third of the movie.

Howl's Moving Castle was pretty good. Made more sense than Spirited Away, in my opinion. But from what I've seen most amine is pretty out there. I've only seen a few movies and none of the TV shows, but my sister loves Dragon Ball Z.

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LoganSnake

If you liked How's Moving Castle and Spirited Away, see Princess Mononoke. It's a classic.

Thanks for that. I checked the show out from that clip you posted and I love it.

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Xerxys

So, cowboy bebop is good. It doesn't have the stupid drawings regular anime cartoons do. And I am enjoying it.

robot_parade

I can only second the recommendations of Cowboy Beebop and anything by Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli. Pretty much everything they produce is a masterpiece.

LoganSnake

Check out Samurai Champloo next. It's like Cowboy Bebop, only instead of the future setting and a jazz soundtrack, you have samurai in the past and a hip hop soundtrack.

Directed by Watanabe, the director of Bebop.

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