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 – still the best Macross, and short and relatively coherent.
• 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:

• Aria – one of the best series for young girls ever made (except possibly Princess Tutu).  Nothing happens, but that’s okay. Stylish, warm, charming, suitable for the whole family.
• Azumanga Daioh – This is the best ‘high school girls’ anime, period.  Nothing really happens, but it’s funny,  and it’s one of the few of these shows that doesn’t succumb to the buffet of girls problem. He obvious cares about the characters, they’re not just there to emit moe.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender – But this isn’t even really anime! No it’s not, but it’s extremely well done, and while the first season is a bit cliche, by the second season it’s better than most Japanese anime. It’s targeted at kids, but adults should enjoy it too.
• Bakemonogatari – Beautiful and subversive, excellent writing.
• 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.
• Kaiba – Incredible acid-drenched Tezuka-flashback-style space romance. Definitely not for kids.
• Kekkaishi – this one is a lot deeper than it seems at first. It’s also one of my favorite manga. This is the anime to go to if you want something like Inu Yasha or Naruto that actually goes somewhere.
• 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.
• Moyashimon – a boy who can see microbes. This is another ridiculous premise pulled off fantastically. Unfortunately there are only 11 eps, but it keeps winning awards so there’s hope for more.
• 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.
• Natsume Yujin-cho – Natsume’s grandmother was a powerful spirit medium who made a hobby of beating up all the monsters in the area and forcing them to write their names in her ‘Book of Friends’. Now they’ve mistaken Natsume for his grandmother, and everyone wants the book back. This may be my favorite supernatural series ever.
• 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. Also, some will find the Bill Plympton meets Windy Tales style ugly, but it’s different.
• 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.
• Read or Die – Just the 3-ep OVA series, not the too formulaic TV series.  Stylish Victorian action.
• 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.