Are there any animes or TV shows you can’t stop recommending?
Scavengers Reign. One of the best pieces of sci-fi I’ve ever seen. They managed to create a world that feels truly alien, and the environment has such complex cause/effect relationships. Highly recommend!
I only opened this thread to make sure someone mentioned this show. My husband keeps saying “I wish we could find another like that one we watched, with the alien really alien planet, what was it called?” It is impressive.
The Good Place
Season 1 is just setting up the story
Holy motherforking shirtballs… someone stole my post idea!
Steins;Gate, can’t believe I haven’t seen anyone mention it yet. It’s good, but do watch at least halfway before you judge it.
Yeah this one takes several episodes to set the hook and understand some behaviors. But once it does it’s binge worthy
This one happened during a period when moe was more brain-dead than cute, and the sister character who is supposed to be his motivation for everything just ruins the whole show for me she acts so stupid.
There’s definitely a bit of untasteful moe stuff but it’s not a big part of the show. But yea it would be better without it.
Mayushii acting stupid I cannot recognise at all. She’s just extremely genuine and she’s probably way more emotionally intelligent than any other character in the show.
It’s been a very long time since I watched it, but I distinctly recall being very annoyed by her character. I just checked out the Wiki, and the very first line on her personality is “[she] possesses an extremely childish and naïve attitude for her age.” While not stupid exactly , is just about what I recall hating about her.
Honestly, Cowboy Bebop. The universe it builds feels lived-in, and the animation style is incredibl, but the music is really the star.
Be aware, however, that while there are happy moments, it is an anime about bounty hunters, and there are very few happy endings. Beautiful endings, poetic endings, satisfying endings - but never happy.
Bang.
See you space cowboy…
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
- Death Note
- The Apothecary Diaries
- Ranking of Kings
All of these animes have a fantastic story that even people who don’t regularly watch anime’s will love.
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This is what I did, would also recommend. I don’t even think Brotherhood is better, the original has some really strong points.
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Because the ending to the original is so unsatisfactory?
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Brotherhood intentionally skipped over a bit in the start, since people most likely had seen it. Not enough for me to recommend watching the entire older anime though. Maybe up to a certain rain moment.
I see what you mean. The original used 25 episodes to cover the part of the manga Brotherhood did in like 12. Still, season 1 of Brotherhood is my least favorite so I don’t recommend the original myself.
I RECOMMEND EVERYBODY LOVES HYPNOTOAD. IT IS A GREAT SHOW.
ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD.
Gurren Lagan
Fucken watch it
Also,
Log Horizon is what SAO wishes it was
Yeah absolutely clicked on this to spout my spiel about Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. It’s my favorite anime ever.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is up there too, but I like TTGL more.
Fuck i forgot about Gurren Lagan. What am I doing with my life
Gurren Lagan
What is so great about this? Just watched the first couple of eps. First impression is not good: It seems like the classical mindless shonen fighting anime alongside pretty childish humor and a distastefully sexualized main female character. Her outfit is literally a bikini and she’s sexualized in the very first scene and in basically every scene she’s in since that one, wtf?
Watch until episode 9 at least.
I just didn’t have the patience for that honestly. I doubt it will make a difference.
You can fully skip episode 4, if it matters at all. The first two episodes are pretty strong but after that it kind of rambles a bit until around episode 6 or so.
Scavengers Reign is incredible, easily the best animated sci fi show made in the past few years IMO. It’s weird and emotional and deeply sincere in a way a lot of media isn’t anymore.
If you liked Fantastic Planet you’ll probably like Scavengers Reign.
Delicious in Dungeon!
I recommend this to non-anime fans too! The episodes are so good and non-anime tropey.
Another one that I found gave a kinda similar feel is Dr Stone.
Though instead of diving deep into fantasy mechanics, that one is based on real world physics (well, other than some characters having super-human levels of skill) and rebuilding a modern society from scratch.
I find them similar due to their attention to detail and using their environment to build up their capabilities. The overall plot is very different and DinD has a bit more charm. Not that Dr Stone doesn’t have charm.
If I could choose which one I want to see one more season of right now, I’d pick DinD. If I could choose which one gets seen through to the end, I’d pick Dr Stone.
I just couldn’t get into the groove with Dr. Stone. I felt it required a much greater degree of suspension of disbelief since the setting is rooted in our reality, but they hand-wave over a lot of infrastructure needed to create the technologies they produce. When they got to cell phones/radios I just had to stop.
Tap for spoiler
Yeah, I think they shouldn’t have called them cell phones, they looked like just AM radios, which aren’t that complicated. Just need a microphone (membrane attached to a magnet), amplifier (they used vacuum tubes), and an antenna (whose length would determine the frequency). Receiver is the same thing but backwards (with adjusted geometry on the mic/speaker, but they are electrically the same). If they had the vacuum tubes, copper wire, and magnets (which they could make more of once they had one), then I don’t think that part was that far fetched (though I could be missing something big tbf). But a cell phone is a lot more than a 2-way AM radio, even if you’re talking about a simple phone with no display.
Biggest issue I had with suspension of disbelief was when they used a vehicle without a road system. Roads came before cars in our history and had to be good enough for horses to pull carts. Using a two stroke steam engine to generate enough torque for offroading with those basic tires was a big hand wave IMO.
Oh also the whole using a celebrity impersonation to convince some of the other side that the US was back up and running was a weak tactic. Like I’m glad they had it immediately get noticed, but a better way to do that bluff would have been to just have other “radio chatter” going on to make it sound like they had joined up with others, at which point they could have talked about all kinds of technologies that might have taken the fight out of people from the modern era.
Anime:
- Pluto (Dark alternative story of Astro Boy)
- Banana Fish (heartbreaking, hard to forget. Don’t get spoiled too much looking it up)
- Heavenly Delusion (brother gets brain transplanted into dead sisters body; interesting plot and characters but only one season so far)
Cartoon:
- Bojack Horseman (great mix of realistic depiction of depression and comedy)
- Arcane (almost makes one want to play League)
TV:
- Atlanta (surrealism and critique of society, also I just love Donald Glover)
- Dark (the one German show that is not ass)
- The Expanse (great sci-fi and politics, only gets weaker in the later seasons)
- Severance (one big black mirror episode, I am so hyped for season 2)
I recommend watching Undone especially if you liked Bojack Horseman; it’s created by the same guy.
You can stream it for free here: https://hydrahd.com/ or check out the c/piracy wiki for one that suits you.
Heavenly Delusion was a trip. I enjoyed it a lot
Little Witch Academia: a passion project and it shows, a witch school with a colorful cast of character and an even more colorful cast of villains, alternative name: lesbian hogwarts
Girls und panzer and its movie, while it does fall into the cute girls doing cute thing type of genre, GuP is one of the ones who really popularized it, its a series thats just plain old fun to watch how they fight their tank battles, especially the movie
Ben-to, another series thats just plain ol fun, people beat the snot out of each other for the privilege to buy price reduced food, animated by the people who went on to do jojo
that just be my top 3 to show everyone
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Frieren was awesome but it’s so fresh I’m not absolutely sure it’ll keep being that
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Severance season 1 (follow-up seasons upcoming, not sure if they can keep up with the extremely high quality of S1)
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True Detective season 1
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Madoka was great, thanks to tight storytelling and the best soundtrack I’ve ever heard
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Kino’s Journey – somewhat similar to Frieren but 20 years prior
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Chernobyl (2019)
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Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
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Firefly
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Twin Peaks, especially seasons 1 and 3, but season 2 and the movie might be needed to fully appreciate
Having pushed past season 2, I think the rest of True Detective is worth watching, although they’re still very different from the first.
I’ve been wanting to re-watch firefly lately. It’s short but there’s just so much in it. It’s one of two shows I’ve watched start-to-finish more than once.
And since we’re here for recommendations…the other show I’ve watched more than once is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Based on a book by Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) it’s charming and insane in ways you might expect if you’re familiar with Hitchhiker’s Guide but it’s absolutely not predictable either. So much fun. (Available on Netflix (in Canada…last I checked))
Twin peaks has a third season?
Yes and it’s awesome.
- Frieren was awesome but it’s so fresh I’m not absolutely sure it’ll keep being that.
Oh but it does (imo), I mainly read but I think Frieren and Atelier Witch Hat is the strongest running fantasy series currently.
Thats only because bookworm just ended. Idk if you’re into light novels but its the best piece of media i might have even consumed three and a half times.
Are you referring to Ascendance of a Bookworm? If so, would you recommend I keep watching the anime whenever a new season comes out, or jump into the manga?
You are right on the series, but its not the manga. The manga(s) are covering the first 3 parts, but none of them are complete. The anime is going in order but its only decent. Read the bookworm books, i personally have read over a 1000 books. This will be the best you ever read if you pick it up
For a different recommendation, im currently on book 11 of wheel of time and its also a masterpiece with plenty of flaws.
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Monster
74 episodes. Psychological thriller. Serial murder mystery, but instead of “whodunit?” it’s “whydunit?”. Dramatic as an opera. No weird tropes. Superb character development. I love Magnificent Steiner.
OMG!!! I get to recommend Delicious in Dungeon!!! The show is a bit of a slow burn, but the early episodes set up the incredible world building and the basic plot points. Then as it starts churning it gets crazy. The story is strong enough on it’s own, but it’s animated by Studio Trigger so the anime is pure perfection.
I keep hearing it’s amazing but I bounced off hard on the first couple episodes. I wish anime didn’t need the 5 episodes rule, things should sell themselves from the start. Maybe I’ll give it another go. My wife is keen to watch it.
I was hooked by the second episode.
I was also watching a lot of cooking shows while playing Elden Ring. So maybe it was right fit right time.
I powered through as I kept hearing everyone recommend this. It felt pointless because I didn’t get watching a cooking show about stuff you could never eat because it isn’t real.
The comments I read said it took a tonal shift when they finally got back to the red dragon. It’s about halfway through, which took me weeks to get to.
The second half is awesome! If this is what it was like all along, it would have been amazing. The first half gives you nothing to expect what the second half is, which makes it feel more intense, but I still feel is kinda terrible pacing.
I want more now because the characters really are good, which is probably why they used that first half the way they did, but it was tough before seeing where it was going. Frieren had a much better buildup before it really started getting serious for example.
Drag liked the first half better. Drag came for the cooking. Drag thinks the second half has too much drama. Drag likes the kitty, though.
anon does not judge Drag negatively for having different preferences. anon understands why a dragon person may not enjoy the second half. anon also approves of the kitty. anon and drag find common ground.
Alchemy of Souls on Netflix. A mix of Kung Fu Theater, a comedy, a love story, and a horror all rolled into one great story. It ran two seasons and each episode is over an hour long. 10/10
