- Fate/Stay Night
- Mushishi
- xxxHOLiC
- Negima reboot
- Witch Hunter Robin
- Hellsing Ultimate
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles
Fate/Stay Night - couldn’t say - it’s never interested me. Note that it’s not “forgotten” by any stretch of the imagination.
Mushishi - very, very good. And entirely the opposite of “forgotten” - hardly a week goes by that I don’t see it mentioned in some context.
xxxHOLiC - Clamp. I can sort of see what I guess the appeal must be, but have no interest in investing the necessary time and effort.
Negima reboot - important to stipulate “reboot,” since the first series was ridiculously awful - like they actually went out of their way to try to make it as bad as possible awful. The second series is okay. The manga’s better.
Witch Hunter Robin - I’ve bounced off of it three times now. It looks intriguing, but for some reason…
Hellsing Ultimate - I prefer the original.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles - Clamp^2
All in all, a pretty awful list. Here’s a better one, just off the top of my head:
- Scrapped Princess
- Casshern Sins
- Trinity Blood
- Now and Then, Here and There
- Ghost Hound
- Solty Rei
- Last Exile
This is a clear case of rage bait and I realize I knowingly contribute to the proliferation of this tactic by leaving a comment thus increasing traffic metric to this post. Good thing we are all too lazy to click the link and read the post.
edit: everyone who wants to enjoy good contemplative slow-paced episodic anime should watch Mushishi.
“Some of the best anime of a given era is better than average anime of today”
No shit? Let’s call Scotland yard and give them this amazing clue!
Nobody has forgotten about the Fate franchise, nor Hellsing Ultimate. Plus, xxxHOLIC was terrible.
This is like one of those crappy Buzzfeed articled from 15 years ago. They came up with a title, then scrolled through Wikipedia and picked anime at random
Like, half of those are not forgotten at all, at least two are in the otaku canon that everyone needs to learn about. This is like going up to your gamer friend and talking about that cool obscure title you found called Skyrim.
Forgotten Anime
Fate/Stay Night
Come on
Who the hell forgot about Hellsing?
I think I’d be hard-pressed to think of 7 2000s anime with worse worldbuilding than most isekai.
Hellsing Ultimate isn’t even really doing very much original worldbuilding. It retreads Helsing (2001) but adds Nazis and Klansmen. Yeah really incredible work.
Forgotten? I watched Mushishi last year.
Someone mentioned it in a post not long ago and I am currently watching it on that recommendation. What a well paced, heart warming journey so far (season 1). Great stuff.
Mushishi was legit. I’d love more like it
While Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles has its own rich lore, it is made even more enticing by its connection to the series xxxHOLiC. Both series were developed by Clamp and are set in the same multiverse. Characters are shared between the two series, and the interdimensional witch Yūko Ichihara plays an important role in both stories.
This. So much this.
You can enjoy them individually, but once you enjoy them together, both become far richer. It isn’t just about the TRC gang visiting the witch, everything is connected.
Two examples (heavy TRC+xxxHolic spoilers)
- TRC’s main antagonist Fei Wang Reed was created by Clow Reed. Who apparently was a lover of Yuuko, the witch of xxxHolic; or at least really close to her. Fei Wang wants the feathers for the power to revive Yuuko, who’s not-quite-alive-or-dead, her time was frozen by Clow.
- xxxHolic Watanuki is an alternate existence for the Syaoran who you see travelling in TRC. He had to go back in time to save the Sakura you also see travelling; but he needed to leave “someone” to take his place in the world, so Watanuki was born. In fact everything in xxxHolic boils down to giving that alternate existence of Syaoran some place in the world, so he doesn’t disappear and fuck with causality.
Mushishi and Hellsing also have great worldbuilding, but TRC/xxxHolic is more like a fractal of worlds tied together.
Can’t say about the other series, as I didn’t watch them.
With that out of the way, for people who want an isekai series with good worldbuilding, I’d recommend Log Horizon. AFAIK it was one of the first “trapped in a game” isekai series, and it goes great lengths to explore how game logic interacts with reality. Such as food only having a taste when made by people with a cooking skill, or where the money from loot comes from, or what it means to “die” in the world, etc.
And if you don’t want isekai, there’s The Ancient Magus’ Bride. Sure, younger than things mentioned in the list (the first season is from 2013), but worldbuilding is top notch.
