Oldtaku: Anime for Grownups

This post is the ‘payoff’ for this entire blog/database. It’s a list of anime that I can point people to when they ask ‘What anime should I watch?’ Right now it’s just a big list, but I hope to expand the details.

The Ghibli Catalog - these movies are good for the entire family and deserve their own spot. There is plenty of info about most of these out on the web and they’re easy to find except for I Can Hear the Sea:

• The Cat Returns – not Miyazaki, but still wonderfully done, co-starring Baron from Whisper of the Heart.
• I Can Hear the Sea (Umi ga Kikoeru)
• Kiki’s Delivery Service
• Laputa: Castle in the Sky
• Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
  
• My Neighbor Totoro
• Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
• Princess Mononoke
• Spirited Away
• Whisper of the Heart

You’ll notice Pon Poko, Porco Rosso, Tales from Earthsea, Howl’s Moving Castle, Panda! Go Panda! aren’t on here, and that’s on purpose. By all means watch them, but they all have shortcomings I think keep them from the must see list.

Other movies:

• Graveyard of the Fireflies – Very touching story about two young children in the aftermath of World War Two. Touching and extremely depressing, so watch with caution.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – Best anime of 2006. What happens when you can alter time? An old theme, but handled well here.
• Macross Plus
• Paprika – probably the best of Satoshi Kon’s mind[bleep]s.
• Tekkonkinkreet
• Tokyo Godfathers
• Wings of Honneamise (The Royal Space Force) - slow paced, but beautiful and powerful. Possibly the first anime to demonstrate that anime doesn’t have to mean a stunted story.

Anime Series:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender – “But this isn’t even really anime!” you say. No it’s not, but it’s extremely well done, and by the second season it surpasses itself and it is better than most Japanese anime. The only caveat is that due to the writers’ strike it’s still unfinished in season 3.
• Cowboy Bebop – You’ve probably already heard of or even already seen this one, but it remains a stylish classic.
• Dennou Coil – Ten years in the making, so the virtual world themes are a little dated, but this anime is still sensitively and excellently done, touching and funny.
• FLCL – If you don’t mind a little style over substance. This one appears more incoherent than it is, but it’s beautifully executed. Warning: do not watch this until you have many series under your belt and are starting to feel jaded.
• Gankutsuo – a futuristic ‘reinterpretation’ of The Count of Monte Cristo that somehow manages to stay somewhat close to the source material yet go wildly insane with it.
• Haibane Renmei - A beautiful little tale about a strange afterlife where nothing really happens but you don’t care because the characters are so wonderfully done.
• Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni – Probably the most disturbing, violent, and adult themed anime in the guise of a cute school harem anime I’ve ever seen.
• Last Exile – A somewhat disappointing ending, but this fanciful steampunk air combat series is still well worth the watch.
• Mononoke – not to be confused with Princess Mononoke, this tale about a traveling medicine salesman is stylish, gorgeous, and smart. It will demand a lot from you as a viewer.
• Mushi-shi – This is actually the series that convinced me I needed to start a list like this. An episodic show about another type of life that lives unseen with us and a traveler who can see them. It may be a bit slow for some, but we devoured every episode.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion – Okay, fair warning, as an adult there is far too much whiny teen angst in this, and the TV ending is hokey crap. But if you take the End of Evangelion movie as the real ending and can persevere through the emo bits this is fairly satisfying, and something you should at least watch for historical reasons. This is one of the ‘phase change’ anime which affects everything afterwards.
• Noein: To Your Other Self – A scifi anime about quantum parallel worlds. it suffers hideously from padding in the middle, and from a bit of technogibberish but still manages to stand out.
• Paranoia Agent – Satoshi Kon is up to his usual games with your mind. The ’suicide club’ episode is one of the best episodes of any anime.
• Planetes – A few adult anime cliches, but still a great series about space garbage collectors.
• Princess Tutu – This utterly charming little magical girl series manages to almost completely surpass the shoujo cliche while technically still adhering to it.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena – too much padding and scene reuse mars this otherwise revolutionary series, but if you can live with that you’ll see why it has such a fanatic following.
• Samurai Champloo – Very nice style, but also some substance. Two wandering swordsmen and a naive girl. The baseball episode is one of the funniest anime I’ve ever seen. The hip hop sensibility is already dated, but it generally still holds up.
• Samurai 7- An improbable modernization of Kurosawa’s classic movie that came out better than it had any right to. It’s thematic rather than plot adaptation, so doesn’t tread on the toes of the classic.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – This is the most entertaining collection of giant robot cliches you will ever see. Gainax finally delivers from start to finish with a series of arcs that cleverly follow the entire history of giant robot anime, and just when you think it can’t get any more ridiculous it does. If you don’t realize just how self-aware it is you will be losing a lot. For men only due to the testosterone overload.
• Trigun (first half only) – a funny, action packed anime about a (too?) kind-hearted gunslinger. Unfortunately after the halfway mark it goes right down the toilet, turning into fight fight fight.