I saw FLCL a while a go and I really liked it. It's just so ridiculous, but I think it's even quite disturbing in some ways. It involves stuff like paedophilia, insanity, arson, and whatever the hell was going on between the main character's dad and the weird alien girl. That didn't put me off though, it's just part of the whole unbridled ludicrousness of it. Very few things make me think "wait, they just did WHAT?" any more, but FLCL managed it. It never hangs around long enough for you to work out quite what the hell was going on either. It goes at a million miles an hour and I love how it keeps changing style. By the end of it I was left feeling like I had no idea what I had just seen, but I knew and liked it. It actually has a reasonably understandable sci-fi sub-plot to it though. Some of the things that don't make sense or seem to have no attachment to anything else earlier in the series suddenly becomes relevant around the last half of the last episode when you get that awesome action sequence. It was a great way to end it. The series has such a huge sense of cool about it too.
Recently I saw a film called
Children Who Chase Lost Voices. Apparently it's also got the alternate name in the UK of Journey to Agartha, but I haven't found anywhere that actually lists the film as that outside of Wikipedia. It's a pretty good fantasy movie which is kind of in the vein of more recent Studio Ghibli works, and it looks gorgeous. The art and scenery in it are amazing, and the designs of the creatures are really great too. They're also pretty reminiscent of Ghibli stuff. It has a similar feel to it as Tales From Earthsea, although I'd say it's a better film than that. It lacks that Ghibli magic though, but no-one else can capture that so that's not necessarily a mark against the film. The plot is kind of morally ambiguous, which I thought was pretty cool. Although it's in a big grand fantasy setting the story is focused around character motivations that are pretty personal, even selfish to some extent, and there isn't really an antagonist to it, except perhaps in the last scene. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a fantasy/adventure anime but you're bored of the clichéd plots about vanquishing evil and stuff.
Ergo Proxy is a series I'd recommend too. It's one of my favourite animes ever. It's very thoughtful and throws around a lot of esoteric topics. Although it's got a cyberpunk setting you don't really get to see much of the "cyber" part. A lot of the series is in a very bleak setting away from the technological metropolis, and it's mostly only a few characters talking, or even just one monologuing and perhaps coming to some sort of revelation. Although that may make the series sound very dull, it's anything but. It's always making you think, and pretty hard too. There are many mysteries that fit in to the over-arching plot and it does a great job of keeping you interested and keeping you guessing. The ending brings this to a peak too. Everything suddenly falls in to place, but things also get pretty chaotic. It's not badly handled, it just throws a lot at you at a pace you're not really used to from the rest of the series. It leaves you thinking about it a long time after you've seen it, in a good way. The characters themselves aren't really too interesting (apart from maybe the metrosexual robot, Iggy) but the enjoyment isn't really about them, it's about the mysteries and the world it's set in.
It also brings up philosophical themes like personhood and free will. It's a great watch if you're in to that kind of stuff. They reference famous philosophers who have had involvement in those topics. Despite the aforementioned bleak setting of the series, it looks amazing. The aesthetic of it is really well presented, the animation it top notch, and the sharpness is brilliant. That is, on things that should look sharp, like characters and such. In fact it looks so good it looked like HD to me even though I was watching it on normal DVD. It also has some of the best
opening and
closing credits of any anime I've ever seen. They give you a pretty good idea of the tone of the series too. I'd recommend it to someone who liked Death Note, but is also prepared to deal with a fairly dense plot. It also has some of the trappings of other cyberpunk animes, like Ghost in the Shell and such.
