It’s the thread you’ve been searching for!!
Talk about animes you are watching and animes you have loved or maybe just found interesting in some way.
Here are five of my favourite films, OVAs and shows:
- Patlabor: The Early Days
- Natsume’s Book of Friends
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
- Princess Jellyfish
- and of course Tokyo Godfathers
And here are five more!!!
- O Maidens in Your Savage Season
- Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture
- Azumanga Daioh
- Kiznaiver
- Mushi-Shi
And five more because I’m so worried about leaving out something important and taste-defining for me, under a cut because I don’t want to arrive all the way at insufferable in the opening post for a thread about anime:
- Cromartie High School
- Summer Wars
- Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
- March Comes in Like a Lion
- Samurai Champloo
In trying to compose this introduction, I’ve come to the conclusion that: I’ve seen a lot of anime. Far from “the most” but definitely “a few.”
Like a lot of people, I started watching anime without realizing it, with shows like Sailor Moon and Pokémon airing in the nineties dubbed and scrubbed of their Japaneseness (among other things). Much later in high school I would both watch what anime did make it undisguised to Canadian TV while also dipping my toe into whatever I could find at Blockbuster or HMV: things like two out-of-context episodes of Evangelion and Akira (on DVD!). It wouldn’t be until spring of 2005 when I would use the power of P2P to download and watch in its entirety my first fansubbed television series: the 2003 adaptation of FMA, one episode a day, for 51 days. I couldn’t have picked a more perfect series to dive in on, with its profound ups and downs, heavy themes and delayed payoff. I’d not to that moment seen a cartoon like it, and I wanted more. Others such as Honey and Clover (doesn’t really hold up!!) and Samurai Champloo (not only better than you remember, but better than Cowboy Bebop at his computer) also featured early in my internet-enabled exposure.
I’ve been so mesmerized by what’s been accomplished through the medium of animation by in large part Japanese animators that I was even moved to take 2D animation in college… but then dropped out in fourth semester due to serious life dysfunction haha. It’s been a struggle to keep in touch with art-making since then and animating in particular has fallen by the wayside, but I have managed to keep somewhat up on new releases and dig into older ones too. Currently I’m watching Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury season 2 as well as the series it draws so heavily from: Revolutionary Girl Utena, and I’m liking them both a lot!!
On the subject of “what counts as anime?”: I 100% welcome animation from regions other than Japan, whether you think something merits inclusion by its cultural proximity (whatever that means to you—that probably has an academic definition that I wasn’t aware of before typing out the words, I’m sorry I didn’t complete my BFA either!) to Japan or because it shares a visual language (not necessarily or limited to: big round eyes and sweat drops etc). So much of the workload is often outsourced that it would be crass to exclude something like Aachi & Ssipak, but does Avatar TLA belong in this thread? I dunno, who cares! Chill out lol. Come to me and post, you anime-niacs!!