Anime#2

[Lucifer]

Right-o.
As horribly as the previous topic ended, I did notice lots of people here enjoy anime, so lets try to have a civilized non-bias topic then shall we? No reason to ditch the subject because of one little mishap, heck feel free to just copypasta from the other topic.

I'm no Anime Fanatic, haven't watched too many yet, but the ones I do get into I usually watch from beginning to end non-stop, >.<. These are the animes I've watched so far, not really in any order of favorites, I can't say I have one. (Maybe .hack, if I was forced to choose.) By the way, I watched all of these in japanese with subtitles, I personally dislike dubs, they sounds cheesy to me  :-X.

(F)Deathnote
Great characters, great plot, great anime. Pulled me in the entire time, it was sorta like watching two geniuses play chess. I lost a LITTLE interest when my favorite character died so suddenly, but I still loved it until the end and would highly recommend it to anyone. Btw, anyone seen the Live Action Deathnote? Lmfao... friend showed it to me, so horrible xD.

(U)Code Geass
Speaking of Chess, this anime is simular to Deathnote in that way. The entire first season he plays everyone like they're chess pieces in his game, which makes it very fun to watch as he manipulates everyone while concealing his identity at the same time. The odd thing is, I usually really dislike shows that focus on those Mech-Warrior suits, but this one somehow pulled me in. I still have yet to watch season 2, but I will soon.  

(F).Hack//Roots, .Hack//Sign, .Hack//Dusk(Legend of the Twilight Bracelet)
All 3 of these are pretty damn awesome, but Roots was by far my favorite, so I'll focus on it. Very confusing anime, I still need to buy the rest of the games so the plot makes some damn sense, but the mystery of it all keeps you interested. Would HIGHLY recommend at least Roots, and if you enjoy it, Sign and Dusk. Would also recommend the games if you liked Roots, as it continues the story, whereas Sign and Dusk are different stories.

(U)GURREN LAGANN!!!
I have no idea why I haven't finished this awesome anime yet, but I plan to. Again I usually hate Mech-Warrior shows, but this one is just full of comedy and awesome, xD. Can't really give an in-depth opinion, as I'm not too far yet.
"Don't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you!"

(F so far)Bleach
As much as I dislike bleach, it's still fun to watch. If Orihime would learn more words than "IIICHIIGOOO", Rukia would stop her constant need to be the damsel in distress, and Ichigo would just stop being such a thickheaded hero-complex dumbass, I'd probably like it a lot more. Bleach does have some pretty awesome characters, Hichigo, Grimmjow, Zaraki, to name a few. Hichigo being the unnamed weirdo in Ichigo's head, btw. Anyways, if you haven't seen it, I recommend just skipping the shatload of fillers. Or just read the manga, from what I've heard, it's a fun read.

(U)Hellsing
Pretty fuggin awesome. Sadly I'm only a few episodes into it, I meant to watch it a while ago but got sidetracked. <3 Alucard so much.

(F)Full Metal Alchemist
This anime competes with .Hack for favorite. Incredibly in depth plot, that pulls you in the entire what, 50 episodes? Can't remember now. Anyways, I don't think theres any other anime I've gotten so in to. Would highly recommend it to anyone, in subs or dubs, I heard the dubs for this was pretty good. Would also recommend the movie, I watched it on netflix right after the show, ties everything together pretty well >.<.

(U)Yugioh 5ds
Chaos showed me this, and I was actually impressed. At first look, one might say, "Yugioh dueling on motorcycles? What the !@#$?", but it's actually pretty friggin awesome xD. Unlike other yugiohs this one generally tries to stick to the actual rules of the game... lol. So don't judge it when you see motorcycle dueling, as cheesy as it sounds, they do it very well.

(U)Those Who Hunt Elves
One of my friends showed me this, and it's pretty dang fun to watch. Oh the endless enjoyment of watching female elves get stripped, it just never gets old. I've only seen season one so far, as we've been watching it with her DVDs.

(F)Soul Eater
Gah! How could I forget? Soul Eater! This was a fan-!@#$ing-tastic anime, in my opinion. It was a little childish sometimes, with Maka getting upset at practically everything. But it made up for that with the awesome plot and epic fight scenes. The end was pretty friggin hilarious, it ended so damn abruptly. FRRRIIIEENNDDSHIPP PAAAUNCCCHH! lol.. Anyways, good anime.

[Lingus]

Awesome. Glad someone decided to "reset" this topic. Here's the portion of my post from the earlier topic which I would like to share here:

I didn't grow up with Dragonball as I was a bit old at the time of watching it, but that has been my old favorite for a long time. It is just the epitome of anime for me. A good blend of funny comedy and serious story telling.

Another anime that I really liked is FLCL (pronounced fooly cooly). It is a 6 episode series, but it was done really well. I recommend it to anyone. In a similar vain of animes that most people don't know about is Utawarerumono. Beautifully done, compelling story, great character development. This one is longer, but if you like good stories, watch this.

Cowboy Bebop of course must be mentioned. This is probably by far the greatest anime show. It reaches beyond just die hard anime fans, beyond casual anime fans, to people who wouldn't normally watch anime at all. I know people who either don't particularly watch anime, or flat out hate it, that love Cowboy Bebop. I don't know any other anime show that can claim this.

If we can discuss non-series anime, I'd like to mention anything by Hayao Miyazaki such as Princess Mononoke, perhaps the most beautifully animated piece ever, as well as Nausica? of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away. This man directs the most gorgeous and epic anime films there are.

There are so many others that I can't think of atm. I'll have to get back to you...

I'm also currently watching Bleach. It's the only anime I'm watching right now as I have so many other shows I watch regularly so I don't have much time. I like it. It's good action and decent story telling. Not the greatest show of all time, but I think it's fun.

Other animes that have been mentioned that I watched include Gurren Lagann, and Code Geass. I wasn't too fond of Code Geass. I watched the whole thing, but I guess it just didn't have as much draw for me. It was certainly interesting, but for some reason I didn't enjoy it all that much. I really liked Gurren Lagann. I thought the premise was cool. All the humans living underground thinking that is the only world there is until one day they emerge and find this whole other world. The goofiness was a bit overbearing for me. The brother character (forget the names atm) was just over the top cheesy. Which isn't necessarily bad, it just got to me at times.

Some animes that I have seen bits of but would like to see more would be .hack (especially after Lucifer's posts), Full Metal Alchemist, Inuyasha (I'm sure some will disagree here, but I thought it was an interesting show), and I've always heard good things about Hellsing.

Has anyone seen Samurai Champloo? What about Afro Samurai? Different shows, but a sort of similar feel. They both kind of have an urban style to them while mixing in the samurai type era. It's really interesting. I really like shows set in that time period. Inuyasha and Utawarerumono are also in that era I believe.

[Red October]

I asked on the other topic, where would be a good place to obtain (download), Full Metal Alchemist.

[Torch]

Death Note: I'm going to go against the flow and say that Death Note did not get any worse with SPOILERS! the death of L. Loved the entire show, hated misa amane. She was the Jar Jar Binks of death note.

Code Geass: Great show, similar to death note. The first season ends abruptly and the second season is slow paced and has an extremely satisfying ending.

Full Metal Panic: Part comedy and part action, this is a great show to watch. Season 1 will get you into the plot. I recommend skipping the Fumoffu season (a season of useless filler) and going straight to "The Second Raid". The Second Raid is so incredibly good, you'll be hooked the whole way through. It's really a masterpiece of anime and has quite a few very emotional moments.

Elfen Lied: While this show is quite good, it's also very "!@#$ed up". The first scene is of a naked girl with only a helmet on, walking through a building and "telepathically" (no spoiling) ripping apart peoples limbs and organs. It's all very gruesome, but the plot is entertaining and I still recommend this show highly.

Full Metal Alchemist: It's one of the better popular animes out there and while it seems to be a somewhat childish anime at times, it isn't afraid to darken the plot or kill off a character.

[Lingus]

I asked on the other topic, where would be a good place to obtain (download), Full Metal Alchemist.

I'm kind of out of the "downloading stuff off the internet" market. I tend to want to either purchase something or rent it given that it is less hassle, and most of the time better quality. I would rather order something on Netflix and, watch it on my DVD player on my 40+ inch wide screen TV, than spend an hour searching, downloading, and potentially having to redownload because of bad file format or whatever, and then watching a poor quality video on my computer monitor (and even if it's decent quality, it's still not as good as DVD on a widescreen TV). I say try Netflix (or similar, not sure what service you have where you are). If that's not an option, there's plenty of anime sites you can search for videos. I've even used Youtube once or twice when I missed an episode here or there. But that's really a last resort I'd say. It's just easier to search and more accessible.

[Lucifer]

Death Note: I'm going to go against the flow and say that Death Note did not get any worse with SPOILERS! the death of L. Loved the entire show, hated misa amane. She was the Jar Jar Binks of death note.

But I loved Jar Jar Binks D:.

@Red October, Download it? Well if you want to downloaded it I'm sure you'd find something on a torrent website, like Piratebay or Mininova. I personally just watched it online, mostly on www.anime-sub.com.

Oh shoot, that reminds me, forgot to add Soul Eater to my list.

[Scotty]

I asked on the other topic, where would be a good place to obtain (download), Full Metal Alchemist.

To maintain the peace, I would highly recommend staying away from "downloading" topics around these parts, as that is illegal (at least how you are making it sound).  Unless you want purchase it before downloading, as that is perfectly acceptable, and helpful to the company that produces it!  They would be glad to accept your money and give you the product!

As far as anime goes, I haven't watched anime in almost a decade.  It just got cheesy to me, everything was the same awful drawings with awful shaped heads and mouths that open up wide enough to take up 3/4 of the face with big exaggerated eyes, and awful AWFUL squeaky voices.  That's the general stereotype I see anime as today.

BUT, in fairness, I will go over some of the anime I watched as a kid.  I wasn't for all the joking sitcom type anime where there's more humor than a blue collar comedy tour in it.  I was more into the serious storyline animes.  For instance, I always thought that the mini-series "Record of Lodoss War" Was FANTASTIC, and in fact, I could probably watch that again today, ignore the cheesy voice acting that took on the roles, and actually enjoy the storyline quite a bit.  For anyone who enjoys a more serious non-humor anime, that might hit the spot, I just don't recall how bad the voice acting was, so take it with a grain of salt, it's been a long time since I've seen that.

A more modern anime that REALLY got me was Samurai X.  I'm not talking about the Rurourni Kenshin (apologize for misspelling that) series, as that falls back into the annoying anime that I described above, but there was a mini-series of like 4 or 6 episodes (I don't recall exactly, been a while) that had a story to boot in it.  I loved the action, there was more gore than most anime, and I never felt so "holy crap" at the end of it as I have with most other animes I watched.

In fact, I was so desperate to stay away from the modern Sailor Moon'esque animes that I actually resorted to watching awful old animes that were just as bad, only in the voice acting rather than the cheesy humor.  I can't recall the name of this particular one, but it definitely looked like an early 90's - late 80's ninja anime where I guy showed up to a cursed village and had to ninja his way up to a house in the woods to kill the demon who was a spider, yadda yadda yadda.  I'm sure that didn't spoil anything, because I highly doubt anyone's seen it, and since I can't produce a name, I'm free!

Other animes that ring a bell as being good were Macross Plus, the Gundam Wing series, Princess Mononoke (as Lingus suggested, BEAUTIFUL), uhhh... hrmmm... That's about all that comes to mind.

Please don't beat me up, like I said, I gave up on anime long ago with all the shows that just annoyed me.  Hopefully some people recognize some of those animes, would be glad to discuss them, even though i can't really remember too much of them.

[Lingus]

I just remembered. Last Exile. Watch. This. Anime. It had an awesome steampunk/airship thing going on. The characters are loveable and well developed, the story is extremely amazing and intriguing. It was kind of short (maybe around 20 episodes) so it's not too big a deal to watch the whole thing.

Oh, and I wanted to bring up the whole dubbed vs. subbed thing. I don't want to get into an argument. To each their own. I just want to say that I have always watched dubbed anime. The reason is not because I am lazy. I want to be able to see the action on screen and understand what is being said at the same time. While this can be done, it's not as easy with subtitles.

The other aspect of this that is important is that tones of voice and types of voices differ between language and mean completely different things depending on cultural subtext. There's two things there. One is the tone of voice the person is using. Effectively, when watching a subtitled version, you are reading text and get very little clues from the speakers voice as to how they are speaking the line, because it is difficult to associate their speaking voice with what you are reading. As well, even if you can do that, tones of voice in Japanese mean something different than in English. They use different inflections for different meanings. And the other part of this is the type of voice. While in America a certain type of voice might give a certain impression, it would give a completely different impression to someone from Japan. So hearing the Japanese voice actor's voice gives me an entirely different, and probably unintended, impression of the character. (Btw, this is not just based on my assumptions. I regularly read a blog written by a linguist/anthropologist. So this info is pretty valid.) Anyways, just my two cents. Obviously if you like subtitled for the authenticity, go for it.

[Torch]

Pirating is not illegal in Canada. They officially gave up on trying to enforce it and made it legal.

[Scotty]

Pirating is not illegal in Canada. They officially gave up on trying to enforce it and made it legal.

That is F&!@*#^ AWESOME!  I hope there aren't any Canada based media corporations.  They just lost ALL their business!

[ARTgames]

Pirating is not illegal in Canada. They officially gave up on trying to enforce it and made it legal.

Well it should be. At least if you like something buy it.

Back on topic for me:

When i was in 2-3 grade i watched DBZ. I liked it then but i don't remember much of anything about it.

Sherlock Hound: I saw it on you tube shows thingy with the ads. Its not that bad and i like the look and feel of the cartoon. But it gets repetitive and boring after a while. Its ok when it started.

That is the only anime shows i really watched. (but i feel like im missing something big i did see)

[Torch]

Pirating is not illegal in Canada. They officially gave up on trying to enforce it and made it legal.

That is F&!@*#^ AWESOME!  I hope there aren't any Canada based media corporations.  They just lost ALL their business!

Not that Canadian media corporations were ever successful back when pirating wasn't legal >.>.

[DarkTrinity]

Some animes that I enjoyed were:

~SuperGals!- I got my friend hooked on this one. She had never watched anime before and she loved this one, and of course, I did too. lol.
~Vandread- Very interesting story line, where drama and hilarity ensue. Probably my favorite anime I've seen so far.
~Tokyo MewMew- american version sucked ass. The high pitched voices didn't help.. made me wanna scrape my brains out with a spoon. But I read the manga, sooo much better.
~Inuyasha- even though it felt like there was alot of filler, I did like it.
~Tsubasa- Kind of similar to Inuyasha in that in both, they're traveling everywhere to find pieces of something (inuyasha-looking for shards of a jewel. Tsubasa-pieces of Sakura's memory) And an enemy usualy posseses one of the pieces and it makes them strong. They both seem to have a lot of filler epidsodes, but even in their similarities, they're both enjoyable to watch in my opinion.
~Digimon(4th season)- it's been awhile since I've seen it, but I remember I did really love this one. I'll have to watch it again soon.
~Hell Girl- Very morbid anime.. lol. I've watched a few episodes, so I can't really recommend it yet.

I feel like I'm missing a bunch... so I'll edit later.


Yeah, I recall Linugs saying something about Cowboy Bebop in the other topic, that people who wouldn't really watch anime have loved cowboy bebop. I personally have never seen it, but my sister really liked this anime, and she's only watched a few animes to my knowledge.

[Chaos]

Reposting from other topic:

Imma go ahead and name the anime I've watched (to completion or released to date, unless otherwise noted) and enjoyed-

Yugioh (Especially the 5d series.  Easily the best one)
Naruto (Mostly just read the manga, and mostly Shippuden more than original)
Bleach (Mostly just read the manga)
One Piece (Have ONLY read the manga)
Shakugan no Shana
Vandread
Full Metal Panic
Pokemon (seasons 1 and 2, anyway.  Shit went downhill after that.  Also, has some pretty sweet manga.)
Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
Outlaw Star
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed
Gurren Lagann
Yu Yu Hakusho (Have ONLY read the manga)
GetBackers (partially)
Ravemaster (manga, partially)
.Hack (An odd series, to say the least)
Rosario + Vampire (manga)
Tegami Bachi (manga)
Chobits
Tsubasa Chronicles (partially)

And probably a bunch more that don't come to mind.  And these are just the ones I liked.  I've seen more anime/manga than I realized, lol.  I got a subscription to Shonen Jump, so that kinda helps, haha.

[Cactuscat222]

Interesting - I've read the Vandread manga (it was very short, but I quite enjoyed it), but apparently it is very different from the anime, I guess I'll have to watch it.