Post your favorite anime

[rtc3]

Bleach has got to be my all time favorite anime. It was the first anime I seriously followed, and well first impressions last I guess. I know it gets a lot of flak for not being quite up to par with other series (such as Bebop and Baccano) despite its popularity, but I seriously can't stop watching it. I even avoid the manga just so the anime won't be spoiled for me, though the current opening kinda screwed me over I guess.

I'd also like to give Hajime no Ippo a mention. Amazing anime imo, and about boxing too no less. I seriously love all the main characters, and there were no dull moments at all for me. It's got great action, humor, and romance, what else could you need? Well actually the story's kinda predictable, but hey it's a sports anime after all.

 

[WeGotTheJazz]

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is definitely my favourite. Death Note and Monster are close seconds (mostly the latter)

EDIT: Ah shit, completely forgot about Cromartie High School. Classic.

 

[roberto22]

My favorite anime is hands down, One Piece. I love every aspect of it: the characters, the story, the crazy abilities of the characters. Also, i have fond memories of when i was younger, watching digimon and yugioh. Those shows were the coolest in those days.

 

[Maketsu]

OH MY GOSH. I started go watch FMA Brotherhood, man that's a great anime! Definintely it shares first place with Code Geass. <3____<3

 

[DropTheNuke]

I would like to get you started. The first anime gets worse as it goes, but it still beats the hell out of the new glossy art, poorly animated second series. The action and pacing is much better in the first one too before the degeneration, so Brotherhood has jack shit on the first one except a possibly better overall plot (but so what, I can get that in the manga, a much better work than the second anime).

Alright man, you got me started.

First, like you said, the overall plot of Brotherhood is better than the original since it is based on the manga. I'm not gonna dig too deeply into that. I also don't want to argue character that much, because again, it is more about original anime vs manga as opposed to original anime vs Brotherhood.

Action-wise and pace-wise, the first anime does it better from episode 1-30~ish. From there, the whole thing dragged on and towards the end, pretty much grinded to a halt. The pacing in Brotherhood's first 13 episodes was quite hazardous, but afterwords it settled down and smoothed itself out. Action-wise, I wasn't impressed by the first anime. Can you name me one fight in the first anime that was good? Ed vs Dante sucked, as did Mustang vs Bradley. Envy was a joke, as was that brat Wrath.

Also, please explain why Brotherhood is poorly animated. This is more of an objective argument, but Brotherhood's animation was more related to the manga. The visual gags work for some, but not for others.

 

[CaptKirby]

I cannot show you my examples because youtube took them down just today actually (not making an excuse, I have an account of anime criticism). First of all, the animation was always bad (glossy, new age, lazy), but then they started using every cop out in the book - lots of pointless and extremely slow pans, pointless zooms, people not moving when it makes no sense for them not to be moving (like when shot in the leg and screen, or purposely zooming in on smoke rising from the city, staying on the shot, with the smoke unmoving the entire time, nothing moving at all). This stuff was all over the place by episode 40 or so, I had to stop watching the series because of it at episode 52.

The visual gags bothered me, but that was more of a subjective thing and they toned it down after the first 15 episodes, or maybe I just stopped noticing it as much as I got used to it.

Brotherhood never fixed its pace because of the things I just mentioned - when you are wasting several seconds showing something to fill time without actually showing anything, shit is going to slow down.

As far as pacing goes, I still cannot believe that they somehow managed to rush so badly that Hughes death lacked any impact.

I have no idea if any particular fight was good or great in Fullmetal, it has been a while, but I am sure a lot were enjoyable for me, even the minor ones like the "sector 5" stuff stick out in my mind as enjoyable still. What fight in Brotherhood was good enough to stick out? Nothing seemed notable to me. It was generally nice, never exciting.

 

[moot]

there's already been significant love for FMA in this thread so i'm gonna post the only other anime i actually enjoyed

durarara!!, which is fantastic and concise. you can easily get through it in a week or two if you're not doing much. only around 30 episodes. the plot is intuitive, the voice acting is amazing (for a dub, usually i can't stand japanese voice actors for the sole reason of female voicing, but this has a greatly diverse cast), and it just sucks you the fuck in. i highly recommend it to anyone i meet.

snip

i didn't read through the thread all the way so i just now saw this. yea!!!! i'm cosplaying Celty at pax this year.

 

[Yanfly]

Mine's got to be Black Butler or Tsubasa, no particular reason I just enjoy them quite a bit!

 

[Hobo Joe]

Hmm I can't really pick one so I'll just post my top 3:


Digimon Tamers:
This is without a doubt the best season of Digimon. The main characters (Takato, Jenrya, and Ruki) all have an even amount of development and none of them are left in the dust, unlike Adventure or Frontier. It starts out like a normal season of Digimon. Here's the kids, here's the evil Digimon, kids win. Then it becomes more darker and has more thought in it especially at the end of the Beezlebumon arc and throughout the D-Reaper arc. There's also some flaws, like having useless side characters that do almost nothing (I'm looking at you Marineangemon), but I enjoyed it.


Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00:
I'm going to be honest, I haven't seen any other Gundam series other than a few episodes of SEED, and this was my first time actually watching a Gundam series. Anyways, I loved the animation in this. It's just beautiful. The plot is interesting to think about. Eliminating war via armed interventions. I don't really see much character development from Setsuna though and he seems to be a bit bland. Allelujah, on the other hand, is very fun to watch due to the multiple personality disorder. One minute he's calm, the next he batshit insane. But this is only for Season 1 as he turns into a whiny bitch in Season 2. Now while I loved Season 1, I didn't enjoy Season 2 as much. The only thing that I can say about Season 2 is that they made Saji and Louise something more than just civilian points of view and made them active parts of the storyline, instead of a little subplot.


Tenga Toppen Gurren Laggan:
The style of art is different than what I was used to, so it was a bit of a surprise when I started watching it. I'm not saying that the animation is bad. The whole art style is unique, but sometimes it does become a bit erratic during a few fight scenes. This anime balances humour, action, and character pretty much perfectly. Simon has some of the best character development that I've seen in an anime, particularly during episodes 9-11. Scale-wise, the end of TTGL is bordering insane. Throwing galazies and combining them into an attack with the energy of the Big Bang is something that even DBZ didn't even touch (even though they both did tamper with space-time rips). The only gripe that I have with this anime is during the final arc, when Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren was in the space-ocean that was made of compressed space, because compressed space is an oxymoron as space cannot be compressed. But once you enter galaxy throwing, you can ease the laws of physics.


Anyways that's just my two cents about my favorite 3 animes.

 

[vonFiedler]

My favorite television series, outranking my favorite American animated series (Batman) and my favorite live action series (arguable, but Quantum Leap is a good choice), is G Gundam. I remember picking up the soundtrack and being stunned at the fact that there's over 100 hundred unique orchestral tracks, that's at least two per episode. Cowboy Bebop also has a comparable score, but music is a feature of that series. G Gundam's soundtrack is comparable to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I just like it that much.

The animation is dated now, but what they did what it back then was mind-blowing. The show was made a year before Gundam Wing, and unlike Wing which constantly recycled animation, G Gundam was always alive and energetic. It was filled with symbolism and was just beautiful to watch.

There's this campy concept to the show, that fighters truly communicate through their fists. But it's pulled off so well, anyone who isn't dismissive of the giant robots kung fu fighting will find a show that's about as artistic as anything I've ever seen. I'd compare it to Sandman, Princess Mononoke, Okami, to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and West Side Story.

In music, direction, and thematic elements, I don't think it has parallel in anime. I can think of better action and character development, better plots, but that's not to say that G Gundam isn't 5/5 on these counts either. It achieves in good fun what Gundam has always tried too hard to strive for (an anti-war message) while simultaneously criticizing its predecessors and the series to follow (that humans, no matter how destructive, are a part of nature to be protected).

It's one of the few things in this world that I just can't praise more highly.

 

[Bynine]

Detective Conan.

There's just something about this show. I really don't know what.

 

[DropTheNuke]

stuff about animation and pacing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T3KKHEYsgY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytUoT1VNX1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-HPkC2uJHI

Are you saying that this animation is considered bad? I'll admit, the art quality fluctuates throughout the series, but the above are IMO examples of damn fine animation.

Pacing-wise, yes, Brotherhood did have some major issues up to episode 13-14, but afterwords, the pacing smoothed out considerably. There were scenes that took up unnecessary screen-time, but this occurred very frequently in the original anime aswell. And while the pacing in the original series went from good to crap (slow as Bleach), the pacing in Brotherhood went from crap (almost as crazy as Geass) to good. Definitely and improvement IMO.

Btw, Youtube seriously lacks good FMA clips.

 

[moot]

youtube hosts a good chunk of the episodes themselves is why ^__^

 

[CaptKirby]

nah moot, it is because corporations are suicidal...taking down full episodes is one thing, but they are against their show being so much as promoted/criticized under fair use

the hand at the very start of the clip is poorly drawn; alphonse standing still is bad immediately after; Lusts face at :19 is atrocious; the band from :20 to :23 is awful, then it turns into a bunch of shaky shit, then the pan at :35 to :38 is even worse; Roys eyes at :50 are godawfully drawn; the zoom at 1:15-1:17 is ACTUALLY NONSENSICAL - it is the one place in the scene a pan would finally be appropriate, and instead they choose a dinky ass noninformative zoom!

the camera movement at the start of the next clip is atrocious/pointless, the rest was pretty good

in the third clip all of the movement of Envy at the start is completely wrong, Mustangs eyes are completely wrong, they go back to Envy and the face is actually MORE POORLY DRAWN, then they go full body and even get THAT movement wrong (with an awkward movement and pointless angle, nothing here is that surreal stop trying so hard guys); not really watching past this, but skimming a few seconds each at random the movement in this clip is incredibly clunky and plain wrong, not sure why you picked it, the first one had good movement whereas this one is exactly what I cited, that is the anime having turned to shit so extremely by episode 53 I had to drop it!

Yeah the animation is pretty sweet in some ways, but it spends time doing so much bullshit and the core art degrades so rapidly and randomly that it is really frustrating.

 

[BIG loven]

I don't watch or read anime much anymore, but my top 4 from back in the day would be

1. Deathnote
2. Fullmetal alchemist
3. Naruto
4. Bleach

 

[Cshadow]

I'm gonna pop in and say that the original FMA series looks badly drawn by comparison to Brotherhood; and the animation in Brotherhood is wayyyy better; but I totally agree with the comment on Hughes. It just wasn't as dramatic or intense, the original FMA series did it way better. But thats the only thing they did better d: (at least; imo)

As an example of why I the originals animation a little lacking;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlFMcaa3aCE
22:50~ the train's smoke is just animated horribly. The characters are really static in some scenes and Riza looked really off in the minute before it.

EDIT: Not saying the original FMA was bad or anything like that; I'm just making comparisons; I loved the original FMA but I find the Brotherhood series superior to it in overall quality.

 

[Sooth]

1. One Piece. This is the absolutely greatest piece of ART I have ever experienced. Its a magnificent story, with a load of memorable characters, crazy powers(that in a weird way makes sence and fits all together) and the most godlike storytelling. Some of the scenes were the most moving scenes i have seen, the manga actually made me cry at some points Oo. One of the most amazing thing about it is that it constantly manages to improve in quality.
Aaaaany way, seeing as Oda actually made me so hooked into the whole thing that I actually bought a damn strawhat wich I cant live without, he really should be called Goda.

2. Haruhi Suzumiya. Oh dear lord. Brilliant. Lovely. Comical. I would so want to have a girlfriend like Haruhi.

3.Naruto part 1. I have to admit that i was absolutely hooked into the first part of Naruto. Now a days with shippuden its just real meh, and reading the manga isn't much better(It have taken a good turn the latest chapters though, hope that Kishimoto can keep it up). And I have to praise Kishimoto for coming up with one of the greatest villains ever imo, Orochimaru.

I think I got more, but thats what I came up with right from the top of my head. School Days was good, since it actually made me feel bad after watching it(wich was its purpose).
Haven't watched Bleach yet, but im working through the manga, right now its just a huge yawn/meh. It DOES have cool fighting scenes wich will be nice to see animated though.

 

[vonFiedler]

I think the worst part about this is that people are actually badmouthing the original FMA as a counter argument against whiny bullshit. FMA was one of the finest anime of the last ten years, you aren't proving a point by degrading it.

 

[Tooned]

After watching a music video, I got hooked on Azumanga Diaoh. It's pretty funny, but looses the comedy around the last few episodes. Regardless, it's still one of my favorites!!~

 

[DropTheNuke]

Manga
Brotherhood
Manga
Brotherhood

See the similarities? The "core art" of Brotherhood bases itself around the manga. So when Mustang or Envy look batshit crazy in the manga, that's the way Brotherhood portrays them. It may not be the best way, but its overall consistent with the manga.

Animation in Brotherhood isn't very consistent, that's true. However, when the animation is good, its good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x321s2LT-lM
Take a look at the scene where Envy and friends come out of Gluttony's belly. It's fluid and terrifying, and the lighting is great.

By the way, I'm in no way saying the original series is bad. It was gripping for the first 30 or so episodes, the BGM was beautiful, and Lust's character was handled quite well. It just started to lack motion after the plot separated from the manga.

 

[Mr. Hadwick]

Alright, some more anime I've recently watched and loved

kyou no go no ni (today in 5-2) - a really great anime revolving around a class of 5th graders and their exploits and everyday lives, absolutely hilarious and about 100x better than lucky star

ghost hunt - haven't finished it yet but so far it's totally rad, pretty much high school girl working on paranormal cases and shit, has a cool opening.

spice and wolf - I came into this anime cautiously, thinking it'd be a stupid debacle like inugami, but was surprised to find a great show with fun dialogue and very interesting medieval buisness and trading.

I can't remember if I mentioned it in my other post but...

mushi shi - everyone has to watch this anime I'm not kidding it's the best show I have ever seen and it gets no recognition.

 

[CaptKirby]

Neither of the Brotherhood pictures work! The manga "crazy" drawings work, the anime ones do not though. In the manga it looks cool even if it might technically have some "flaws", but in the anime it just plainly looks like shit, like Envy as Hughes wife was seriously 100% unforgivable. They either did not try at all (more likely, animation studios usually take the lazy way out) or tried and failed with the crazy looks as the anime went on.

I'm gonna pop in and say that the original FMA series looks badly drawn by comparison to Brotherhood; and the animation in Brotherhood is wayyyy better; but I totally agree with the comment on Hughes. It just wasn't as dramatic or intense, the original FMA series did it way better. But thats the only thing they did better d: (at least; imo)

As an example of why I the originals animation a little lacking;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlFMcaa3aCE
22:50~ the train's smoke is just animated horribly. The characters are really static in some scenes and Riza looked really off in the minute before it.

EDIT: Not saying the original FMA was bad or anything like that; I'm just making comparisons; I loved the original FMA but I find the Brotherhood series superior to it in overall quality.

The smoke looks freaking fine, not sure what your deal is, and unlike in Brotherhood at least it fucking moves. I will say that the lack of details in the zoom at 22:00 bothered the fuck out of me, although the actual zoom outs potentially served a kind of purpose in a funeral scene

 

[KatamariLovesSpock]

My favorite as of late has been Desert Punk as I just watched through the whole series last week. But honestly I'm not much of an Anime guy, I much prefer manga, I just feel like something is lost when It's put into Anime form, but thats just personal opinion. As far as manga is concerned my favorite ongoing series is Sundome at the moment, an older one being Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

 

[Cshadow]

Neither of the Brotherhood pictures work! The manga "crazy" drawings work, the anime ones do not though. In the manga it looks cool even if it might technically have some "flaws", but in the anime it just plainly looks like shit, like Envy as Hughes wife was seriously 100% unforgivable. They either did not try at all (more likely, animation studios usually take the lazy way out) or tried and failed with the crazy looks as the anime went on.



The smoke looks freaking fine, not sure what your deal is, and unlike in Brotherhood at least it fucking moves. I will say that the lack of details in the zoom at 22:00 bothered the fuck out of me, although the actual zoom outs potentially served a kind of purpose in a funeral scene

If you notice the smoke is just a few frames long (very few frames long) with a short choppy motion meant to make it look like smoke is moving but it does not have enough motion to create this illusion. At least; not in the front (the portion coming out, not the one trailing behind said portion, as that looks fine) which kinda bugs me d:

Both shows have animation issues/drawing issues though so it really doesn't make a difference, as I/you/anyone could point out a million flaws in both more than likely and still enjoy both just as thoroughly as I/you/anyone did before noticing them.

I like both series; I just like Brotherhood a bit more; it's really no big deal tbh. Most of Brotherhood's improvements come from the actual manga though; and the original FMA series has a disadvantage because it ended up having to make up a lot of things.

However; FMA (original) made Lust and Gluttony way more interesting (which is something I really would have liked to see, for Lust a bit more, she was just there and, well, poof), (and although I love both OST's) I really really enjoy the original's a bit more. Especially this one.

Oh; and can someone tell me where the inconsistency in Brotherhood's animation is? I mean; I really don't notice it that much. I know it was extremely fast paced in the beginning of the show, but where does the animations inconsistency lie? The show stylistically has choppy motions and motions which are extra super smooth (like funny motions or fight scenes ie Wrath and Scar), the original show did the same as well; so where is the big difference in the animation? The show is extremely smooth outside these scenes/animations as well. Overall I find Brotherhood more well animated. I'm genuinely curious, as I haven't noticed any real inconsistency.

I know there is some inconsistency though (ie with Envy; and how he switches back and forth between 3d and 2d, which, really pisses me off actually :E).

 

[CaptKirby]

My entire point was that I could not enjoy Brotherhood because specific flaws are so grating, so incredibly out of line (like the Envy in that clip you showed), that I just could not stand it anymore. The anime industry shifted rapidly toward new cheap tricks in the last two years, and Brotherhood absorbed all of them as the show went on and they were tired of putting out a good product.