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2 months agoHmm, I’ve been reading the manga since it started and I’m not super confident in its quality. But I am pretty confident about Kyoani. I wonder who will direct it…
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023
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5·3 months agoAttack on Titan opening?
FLCL is probably my overall favorite and I think this scene demonstrates a lot of its different styles with more silly and serious cuts. For just the best of the character animation, I think this scene is one of the best.
5 Centimeters Per Second is also one of my favorites and definitely my favorite of Shinkai Makoto’s stuff. People talk about visuals where “you could pause it on any frame and have a beautiful image” and I think that’s really true of this one. The honestly excessive use of really complex lighting gives it a really nice and unique vibe. The “ray racing on” of anime.
Kizumonogatari uses 2D animation on top of 3D backgrounds. Feels very unique, and on top of that, it’s just really tryhard good animation. Each of the three movies have their own strengths, too. 1 is the most aesthetically consistent, with the artstyle giving off a really specific and deliberate vibe. 2 is overall the best looking and includes the most diverse character animations. 3 has its iconic final fight and mixes up the artstyle for a really climactic moment.
The iDOLM@STER Movie: Kagayaki no Mukougawa e! has amazing quantity and quality of character animation, but the emphasis is honestly on quantity. Skip to any random scene in the movie (even outside of the performances)and chances are there’s an average of 4 moving characters on screen at any time. Really impressive, I kinda had my jaw dropped every time they do a wide cut of 20 characters, especially during the performances.
Quick bonus round: Kanon for the unique wintery aesthetic, Gunbuster for strong imagery, Evangelion also for strong imagery, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou for expressive animation, Omoide Poroporo for great style, Welcome to the NHK! for color design, You’re Under Arrest for great action cuts, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya for being overall beautiful in so many ways, Nichijou & CITY for style and animation, Soul Eater for the fight scenes, and I could maybe go on all day 😢 there’s so much good visuals in anime
edited to include more animation links
Endless Eight
Sports anime about things that can only vaguely be considered sports.
Hibike! Euphonium, Initial D, March comes in like a lion are more obvious ones but band anime like K-On!, Bocchi the Rock!, and Nana also have a similar appeal.
These all have some kind of competition or performance involved, so they are structurally similar to sports anime with character drama and training/practice leading up to a big climax that caps off both the drama and the training.Maybe this genre isn’t so niche as these shows are all very popular, but I don’t often see people consider them to be similar in any way.
Good pick. I would say Haruhi Suzumiya, Gamers!, B-Gata H-Kei, and The Tatami Galaxy also fit this description.
There are 8 anime that made me cry, in order from ~2019 to 2024:
- Sora yori mo Tooi Basho
- Hibike! Euphonium 2
- Mawaru Penguindrum
- March comes in like a lion
- Clannad: After Story
- March comes in like a lion 2nd Season
- Toradora!
- Spirited Away
Highly recommend all of these
The tl;dr is “Yui x Ritsu”
The slightly longer story is that if you watch K-On! while really trying to overinterpret every interaction and assume more stuff is happening off-screen, a few romantic dynamics develop, with Yui x Ritsu being the most obvious.
The full story is 13+ charts and an 8 page writeup that I did as a personal project to justify this overinterpretation. I may post it somewhere if I ever decide to clean it up and make it presentable to the public eye, but there’s a lot in there. Ui x Nodoka. The Azusa->Yui->Ui and Jun->Mio->Azusa parallel. Yui-Mugi breakup arc. The Azusa human instrumentality arc.
My friends have called me schizophrenic for making these charts and while I don’t agree with their non-clinical use of the word “schizophrenic”, you should know that when I say “speculative / non-obvious” for K-On! in particular, it’s at about that level of extreme interpretation.
Cardcaptor Sakura, Princess Tutu, Toradora!, Maison Ikkoku, Chuunibyou, and Kare Kano are all contenders. If I can expand to speculative / non-obvious romance, then K-On!, Hidamari Sketch, Hibike! Euphonium, and Bocchi the Rock! are also up there.
Overall, the main couple from Cardcaptor Sakura may be my favorite, just extremely cute and well-paced. Miya & Yuno from Hidamari Sketch are also a really great couple.
Also, shoutouts to this guy who did an extreme overanalysis of how gay Hidamari Sketch is.
As someone who actually did learn Japanese through watching anime, it took me about 3 years. I started watching anime regularly in 2018 and when I was watching Hori-san to Miyamura-kun in 2021, the last two episodes had not been subtitled, so I watched them raw and mostly understood it.
A lot of people will say that it’s impossible to learn just via watching anime, but have not actually tried it. Yes, if you have subtitles on, it’s easy to let yourself totally ignore the Japanese. But it’s not impossible, and if you are focused, you can still learn even with subs turned on.
Later on, I started taking classes in Japanese at college and started learning a lot more. But just knowledge from watching anime was enough to pass an oral placement test and skip the first 2 semesters. If you are serious about learning Japanese, I recommend taking classes or studying it seriously online. There’s also better input resources than anime such as streamers or even conversation analysis audio for linguistics research.
But I am convinced that anime is still a very good tool because many people like anime and are already very motivated to watch it. This is a very big strength because the biggest obstacle to learning language is giving up. This, combined with Japanese’s very very simple grammar and verb conjugations actually makes it a very easy language to learn, imo.
Imo, pre-2012. I think you could also argue that 2018 or 2020/2021 is the start of the modem era of anime, or even 2006.
I don’t believe it actually bans “Pikachu” when spelled as 光宙 because ピカチュウ is actually a pretty reasonable reading, although maybe not the #1 most obvious one. Based on a random Japanese article I read about it (link), I really don’t think 光宙/Pikachu will be technically illegal, although all the English articles will say so because it’s click fodder.
The law bans: things that are not related to the kanji reading at all, things that add unexpected extra stuff on the end of the obvious reading, or things that mean the opposite of what the kanji means.
I don’t believe any of this applies to Pikachu, and the examples they cite are not really comparable.
あのーヒトデと交換していただけませんでしょうか？
Text: Ummm, could I trade it for a starfish? (Spoken very formally)
Not 100% sure what she is talking about, maybe the popsicle.
Maybe should be interpreted more like “could I have that [popsicle] in exchange for a starfish?”
If someone has never really seen any anime before, I think Mushishi is a good one to recommend to people. It doesn’t contain any of the less-palatable anime tropes, can be enjoyed by any age group, and is just overall really chill and interesting. It’s also episodic, so if they watch 2 or 3 episodes and decide it’s not for them, they still get a full story without missing out on anything.
Little Witch Academia is what got me into anime, good pick.
Hibike! Euphonium was directed by Ishihara Tatsuya, who has also done a bunch of other must-watch anime.
Kanon 2006, Clannad, Haruhi Suzumiya, Nichijou, Dragon Maid S, and of course Hibike! Euphonium.
Mushishi is awesome and is one thing that I think you can recommend to any age group-- 5 years old or 105 years old.
The Evangelion rebuild movies have been untouched on my PTW for maybe 5 years now.
If anybody hasn’t heard of CITY, it’s essentially Nichijou 2. So excited that it’s getting an adaptation :)
Long rant:
spoiler
As someone who prefers the FMA 2003 series, I have to offer a counterargument to the notion that Brotherhood is the “canon” series. The manga published from 2001-2010.
FMA 2003 aired from 2003-2004.
FMA Brotherhood aired from 2009-2010.
I really consider the 2003 series to be the original story. From 2004 until 2010, there was no such thing as a “canon ending to FMA” other than what was in the 2003 series. It was finished and packed away years before the manga approached its ending. I don’t have a source for this, but I even remember reading somewhere that Hiromu Arakawa made changes to the manga inspired by some anime-original content that she liked. There’s not really a “standard set by the manga”. Rather, 2003 is what set that standard.
You could also question what “canon” even means. Like, the events of the 2009 anime are obviously canon within the 2009 anime; the events of the 2003 anime are canon within the 2003 anime; and the events of the manga are canon within the manga. You can search up a list of differences between Brotherhood and the manga pretty easily, and even find ways in which 2003 is a much more faithful adaptation of the early manga than Brotherhood. It’s not like there’s a single continuity of canon events that defines Fullmetal Alchemist, there’s clearly three. Arakawa also requested that the 2003 anime would have an original ending, so it’s not like it’s contrary to the vision of the author, either.
Last point, but I would also disagree that Brotherhood has higher production quality. FMA 2003 had much better background art, never resorted to cost-saving use of 3D models, and I prefer the character designs and lighting. Other than that, there’s not really any big differences in style/animation. I was going to paste in a bunch of sakugabooru links but really the series look pretty similar in action scenes. A lot of boring action lines, but a lot of good dynamic shots, too. Brotherhood never has anything really stunning though, like the ballroom scene from the end of 2003.
tl;dr, FMA 2003 is pretty good, too. It’s kinda misleading to call it non-canon when it was the original completed story. I’d also argue that the 2003 version had better production value in terms of visual style/animation. It’s definitely worth watching, at least.