The anime discussion and recommendations thread

[DarthCuddles]

watched all of the DMC series on netflix, it was fine enough, I enjoyed it but wouldn't say it was good rather just perfectly average

[LaikaMuttnik]

Nice seeing everyone's recommendations!

Tekkonkinkreet is pretty cool, I'm kind of interested in checking out that Tokyo Godfathers now though, thanks for the suggestion!

Glad my post got you interested! Hope you like it as much as I do. Seeing Golgo 13 in your post put a big smile on my face, as I didn't know it was that known outside Japan - Duke Togo's cool, yeah!

Planetes (26-episode series, 2003-2004)
Sci-Fi set in 2075, but very believable great human drama about people who clean up space debris around the earth.

REALLY wanted to see this, loved the look and the concept back when I first saw the trailer. I rented volume 1 of the DVDs from Blockbuster as soon as it came out over here but (for whatever reason) there was no Japanese audio available and I couldn't stand the English dub Planning to give it another go asap.

I'm surprised to hear the one you rented only had the English dub - How bizarre. Hope you find ones with Japanese audio - Wish you were in Brighton, then I could lend you the DVDs of the whole series!
I too usually prefer original Japanese voices. It's just that I find it such a shame nowadays that lots of anime (mostly movies) now too easily use non-voice-actor celebrities (popular TV/movie actors, comedians, etc). I wouldn't mind as long as they are really properly auditioned (some are surprisingly good - e.g. the cast of Tekkonkinkreet, Summer Wars and Tokyo Godfathers were mostly actors but spot-on), but some are chosen obviously for promotional reasons despite the fact that they can't voice act (even if they are good actors, voice acting is a different thing), and it really puts me off when poor voice acting ruins the whole movie Typical examples are recent Studio Ghibli movies - Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki says he likes "natural voice acting", but it's rather "wooden" than "natural" to me...
Funny thing is, I find most good western actors are also good at voice acting - Wonder if their acting career also naturally gets them trained to be good voice actors, I don't know, but in Japan quite a few great actors unfortunately turn out to be terrible at voice acting I also know how it feels when the English dub just sounds so wrong though, especially when they over voice act or put on an awful accent
Sorry for my ramble; I get passionate when it comes to voice acting!

Summer Wars (movie, 2009)
Sweet and moving story about a warm old-fashioned big family in the country side, brilliantly combined with the modern cyber world crisis.

Saw this one at the cinema and loved it. Was previously a fan of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time by the same director, which I think was a little more immediately satisfying but doesn't quite have the staying power and warmth of Summer Wars. His new film Wolf Children is showing in Edinburgh next week (alongside Goro Miyazaki's new one) and I'm completely gutted I won't be able to get through there to see it.

I agree with you about Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time though both brilliant. What a shame you have to miss the opportunity to see Wolf Children - I too can't wait to eventually see it!

I should have a lot to add to this due to the upcoming scottish anime festival. Although oddly the first film is not really anime but the live action phoenix wright film.

I honestly cannot add much to what has been mentioned above, most if not all great great series. The only addition, unless i have missed it, is ghost in the shell stand alone complex season 1 and 2. Great stories and characters that has time to grow through the 26 episode run.

Pressesc i will give you an update on the films once i have seen them as i have tickets for both currently.

Oh yeah, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is like classic of classic! I love it to bits too!
I'm jealous of you and DarthCuddles for going to the anime festival! I look forward to hearing about it here

[DarthCuddles]

kinda gutted Wolf Children and Nerawareta Gakuen are sold out, wish I'd got my finger out and booked as soon as I heard about it but least I know for next year, did get tickets for both the Berserk films, Blood-C:the last dark, ninja scroll and Anime Mirai Project

[The Sonic Mole]

Wow! So much interesting stuff being recommended here. Keep it up!

[Roy42]

I'll be hanging out with some people on the 27th, watching movies and TV, mostly anime, I believe. If I see anything interesting that hasn't been mentioned yet I'll shout it out.

[JaySevenZero]

Here are a few of my recommendations;

Metropolis (2001)



Anyone interested in anime or manga would have come across the name of Osamu Tezuka - this anime, based on his manga of the same name which in turn is based on the 1927 Fritz Lang film, is definitely worth a viewing. I've read that some people found the character design too cartoonish and were put off by it but that is classic Tezuka and belies a mature, dark and at times violent (not necessarily in terms of graphicness, but a lot of characters die) story that I've watched many times. A shame this has never got a BD release, that I'm aware of, as I think it would look particularly good in HD.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)



Unfortunately, the character and storyline of the Blood franchise has been diminished by the amateurish, borderline pornographic manga, the wishy-washy convoluted Blood+ anime and the utterly abysmal live action film, but despite these travesties Hiroyuki Kitakubo & Kenji Kamiyama's original work is still a tight, impressively animated and very watchable short with some superb sound design and scoring.

Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999)



Produced by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), this mature, serious tale set in a 1950's Germany conquered Japan is quite different to almost everything else I had seen at the time. Due in no small part to its subject matter involving political machinations and the loss of innocence. If you're looking for something more heavyweight than the usual fare then this comes highly recommended.

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (2002)



As a counterpoint to the solemn Jin Roh, I quite enjoyed this anarchic, comedic story of two kids, a time traveling love story and a magical shopping arcade. At times, utterly insane but yet imbued with a lot of heart, with the story becoming quite moving at times.

WXIII: Patlabor the movie 3 (2003)



As a big fan of the previous Patlabor films this undoubtedly comes with a recommendation despite it being missed by many (due to at the time, a US only release). Impressively animated (both this and Jin Roh were made by Production I.G.). However, if you are familiar with the previous films this comes as a bit of curveball since the story centers around two cops (one of whom featured in Patlabor 2) - not the members of Section 2 - and their hunt for answers in a case that involves the US military and a biological weapon. I found the best way to watch this is not to read up about it first as it came as a pleasant surprise when the story took an unexpected turn. There's some great character work between the two cops - it's the classic grizzled, weary veteran detective and the younger, eager detective pairing but it works well.

Gurren Lagann (2007)



This is one of the best series we've seen in recent years - hysterically funny, action packed, whilst at times, heartbreakingly tragic - yet surprisingly, always managing to maintain a positive vibe throughout. Like many of the best shows, there's a real sense of the characters evolving through the series - very highly recommended.

[link6616]

Ah, this is my element!

So where to start...

Revolutionary Girl Utena -
Don't let the Sailor Moon rip off draw you away, the first few episodes are almost trying to make you go away from it. But give it some time, and you'll run into some frightfully interesting characters and even some 90s exploration of sexuality. Very melodramatic, also some insane lyrics in the songs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3e2GwpZ7ug
There are some better ones later which just throw in science terms.

Won an award the year after Evangellion won it, it is worth your time.

Welcome to the N.H.K
I think this is particularly interesting for those already in nerd cultures especially gaming. It's about someone who has shut themselves off from the outside world, a hikikomori. Something that's been happening a lot more in Japan over the last decade. And looks at him trying to deal with the problem and/or live with it. Deals with issues such as online game addiction, otaku culture, pyramid schemes, group suicide (and online groups), and general issues of antisocialness. Amazingly well realised characters, a strong balance of humour and powerful dark scenes, one of the best animes I've ever watched. If you are interested in some of the issues in Japanese culture right now, there isn't really a better anime I can think of.

Clannad:
It's hard to talk about why clannad is amazing without spoiling exactly how it is just so good, especially as it goes on. However, at it's core, it's a slice of life anime centred around Okazaki who helps a girl start up a theatre club, despite no interest in it. Each of the girls who end up joining the club have their own issue that is usually really interesting and well explained... Sometimes seems a little bizarre as well, but are also issues you can empathise with often. It's one of the only anime's to make me cry, despite my aversion to the idea of ANOTHER HIGH SCHOOL ANIME.

.hack//sign
About a boy trapped in an MMO, and what goes on. For a show set inside an MMO there are only about 6 fight scenes for the entire series. Which can drag down the pacing sometimes as it seems nothing ever happens. However... Something about this always just clicked with me, and I still want an MMO like this one.

Kara no Kyokai
An adaptation of Nasu's first popular novel IIRC. Grim, slow, overly expository, and somehow, incredibly compelling. If ever a man could convince you all the sins of good writing could make something great, it's Nasu and his works.

Ouran Club High School Host club.
Silly, silly fun. Loveable characters though.

Hetalia
Ignore the fan base and just enjoy this almost horrifyingly light hearted explanation of world war 2 and Italy being conquered.

Lucky Star:
This is very much a Love or Hate. I imagine most people here have decided by now... It's very clear this is a 4 panel comic book series adapted to a TV series by just very loosely combining the skits together... Not much the way of an overarching story here, the moe factor might be too much for some aswell, and I am way too deep into the fandom (currently playing/struggling with the Visual novel for the series in Japanese....). But at least watch an episode, and ignore the lucky channel at the end... If you don't like it after 3 episodes, don't bother.

[The Sonic Mole]

.hack//sign
About a boy trapped in an MMO, and what goes on. For a show set inside an MMO there are only about 6 fight scenes for the entire series. Which can drag down the pacing sometimes as it seems nothing ever happens. However... Something about this always just clicked with me, and I still want an MMO like this one.

How do these fit in with the JRPGs? - which themselves came with a disc of .hack anime.

[JaySevenZero]

Here's another series that I thought was interesting for several reasons.

Xam'd: Lost Memories (2008)



Whilst the story may tread somewhat familiar ground to other past series such as Guyver (boy given the ability to transform into powerful creature etc.), it's setting, characters and the overall story help elevate this to something more interesting. Original character design by Kenichi Yoshida (Eureka Seven) and animation handled by Bones (Wolf's Rain, Eureka Seven) certainly adds to the overall quality of this show.

What's also fascinating is how this anime was first delivered, being initially exclusive via the newly unveiled PlayStation Network video download service in both the US and Japan (although sadly, not the UK) as it was co-financed by Sony. Since the anime industry is struggling these days due to declining sales and the apparent lack of understanding of 21st Century digital media and an insistence of keeping to ridiculous, outdated business practices, it's a shame that we don't see more of these kind of collaborations.

[link6616]

.hack//sign
About a boy trapped in an MMO, and what goes on. For a show set inside an MMO there are only about 6 fight scenes for the entire series. Which can drag down the pacing sometimes as it seems nothing ever happens. However... Something about this always just clicked with me, and I still want an MMO like this one.

How do these fit in with the JRPGs? - which themselves came with a disc of .hack anime.

So the .hack// series is a super duper HUGE universe....

So, I think sign is the start of the series, the games follow and Luminality (comes with the games) is concurrent? I must admit I've never gone beyond Hack//sign though as I keep trying and nothing quite holds up.

[RoboticMonk3y]

...it really puts me off when poor voice acting ruins the whole movie Typical examples are recent Studio Ghibli movies - Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki says he likes "natural voice acting", but it's rather "wooden" than "natural" to me...

I bought Arrietty to watch with my daughter, and I thought there was something wrong with my speakers. The voice acting was ok, but the sound quality of the speech was terrible. Everyone sounded like they were talking through a tube!

After the film ended, I changed the sound to Japanese with subtitles, and the sound quality was miles better!

I was introduced to Ghibli films by watching them in Japanese with subtitles. The English dubbed versions just don't really feel the same somehow.

[The Sonic Mole]

Excuse my ignorance but how do subs work on DVDs/BDs? When I tried watching my copy of Spirited Away it seemed as though a lot of subs were missing. Annoying if so as I prefer having the Japanese with English subs - same with RPGs for that matter.

[JaySevenZero]

I was introduced to Ghibli films by watching them in Japanese with subtitles. The English dubbed versions just don't really feel the same somehow.

On the whole I'd agree that the Japanese dubs are always much better. However, with some of the earlier Ghibli dubs I think the English language dub is pretty reasonable. In the case of Princess Mononoke, it also comes down in part to also having some of the adaptation reworked by Neil Gaiman.

Excuse my ignorance but how do subs work on DVDs/BDs? When I tried watching my copy of Spirited Away it seemed as though a lot of subs were missing. Annoying if so as I prefer having the Japanese with English subs - same with RPGs for that matter.

Not quite sure what you mean, why do you think some of the subs were missing?

[The Sonic Mole]

Sorry, I mean that there was a lot of dialogue in Japanese without accompanying English subtitles.

[JaySevenZero]

Sorry, I mean that there was a lot of dialogue in Japanese without accompanying English subtitles.

I guess there could be several possibilities for this;

The timing could be off for the subs, but as this is Spirited Away I doubt they would be so sloppy - this is something that occasionally happens with the fan-subbed stuff.

Multi-layered audio - if it's a scene with a lot of characters chattering it's nigh-on impossible to adequately sub everything so they only go for the most relevant.

This is the one that angers me no end - The subs could be taken from the English dub script rather than a more accurate translation of the original Japanese. The reason it bugs me so much is that quite often the English dub has to be considerably reworked so that it fits the animation mouth movement - meaning that some dialog is completely different to that of the original. Subtitles are only limited to the original timing of the speech (this can be quite flexible too) so they can offer a closer adaptation to the original dialog, which is what I have come to expect from subtitles these days.

I have a copy of Spirited Away (US import) myself but have not noticed any issues with the subs though.

[LaikaMuttnik]

...it really puts me off when poor voice acting ruins the whole movie Typical examples are recent Studio Ghibli movies - Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki says he likes "natural voice acting", but it's rather "wooden" than "natural" to me...

I bought Arrietty to watch with my daughter, and I thought there was something wrong with my speakers. The voice acting was ok, but the sound quality of the speech was terrible. Everyone sounded like they were talking through a tube!

After the film ended, I changed the sound to Japanese with subtitles, and the sound quality was miles better!

I was introduced to Ghibli films by watching them in Japanese with subtitles. The English dubbed versions just don't really feel the same somehow.

Please don't get me wrong; I too basically prefer watching a film in its original language (with subtitles if necessary) because I want to appreciate it in its very original form including the sound and feel of the original language

It's just that, when it's a Japanese film, it bugs me if someone in the voice cast is not doing a good job because I am a native Japanese speaker and can tell what's wrong (poor voice acting, wrong accent, etc).
An extreme example's just come into my mind although it's not anime - the American TV series "Heroes" - If you've seen it, you know the Japanese character Hiro and his colleague? The colleague guy was supposed to be a Japanese businessman, but the actor was actually Korean and his Japanese was so elementary like a joke, I couldn't take it seriously. I'm not slagging off the actor, as I know he was trying his best to do his job, but I just couldn't believe whoever was responsible for casting thought it was okay, but obviously it didn't matter for non-Japanese-speaking audience.

The same thing applies the other way round. When Jay and I watch an English film with the actors speaking in certain regional accents, he could say "Her accent is wrong" when an Australian actress is acting as a lady from North-West England, for example, but it might not bug me at all because it's hard for me to tell

Anyway I am rather glad with the fact that you prefer watching a Japanese film in Japanese and appreciate the feel of the beautiful sound of my mother language!

[PressEscToExit]

This is the one that angers me no end - The subs could be taken from the English dub script rather than a more accurate translation of the original Japanese. The reason it bugs me so much is that quite often the English dub has to be considerably reworked so that it fits the animation mouth movement - meaning that some dialog is completely different to that of the original.

YES ^^

And worse, in some films (see the Buena Vista releases of Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke) the English dub adds in extra expositional dialogue in the background or in shots where you can't see the characters' mouths - presumably because the people doing the translation don't think kids can pick up on subtext - so you end up with pointless subtitles where there's just silence.

I have to say that stuff happens a lot less than it used to though, at least in UK releases. Seems like the majority of the companies releasing anime over here know their audience well enough to give us a reasonably faithful translation of the original Japanese, beyond the odd "senpai!" getting changed to a character's name etc.

[link6616]

Sorry, I mean that there was a lot of dialogue in Japanese without accompanying English subtitles.

Very rarely as well, this can also happen when there is a lot of honorifics that extend out the sentence despite the subs having conveyed the issue. This doesn't happen too often though.

On the note of Subs/Dubs, I almost always watch stuff in subs, and use that as part of my Japanese study to pick up some nice odd words. However, there is one anime I only ever watch in English: Code Geass. Since Britain has conquered the world and the Japanese are being discriminated against it makes very little sense that all the invaders speak fluent Japanese.

[JaySevenZero]

The thing that amazes me these days are some the fan-subbed anime you can find online. The speed in which they work, with the shows appearing online only a day or two after they have been shown in Japan, and the general accuracy of their subtitling makes me wonder if they are professionals? It also amazes me how the general anime industry prefers to attempt to throttle this stuff outright rather than potentially learn from them, still insisting on tired formats such as overpriced DVDs and having to whore themselves out to American production for utter garbage anime adaptation shows like the recent Marvel collaborations and the awful Supernatural series, rather than making the most of this digital age.

[JaySevenZero]

We've just watched Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars again for the umpteenth time - such a bloody good film. The Blu-ray carries a quote on the box stating "Rivals the work of Ghibli" and whilst we are huge fans of Ghibli films in this household I'd have to say that this film surpasses anything I've seen from them, due in no small part because of the emotional response this film has gotten from us every time we watch it.