2008 anime recommendations thread

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PARANOiA

Veteran
I'm just starting Death Note, on the second episode. The premise is absolutely wonderful - a boy finds a demonic book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. He of course intends to cleanse the world of evil.

I also finished watching The Eternity You Desire the other week for the third time. Lovely series which breaks my heart. I like a good short series that tells a complete story.

What are you watching?
 
PARANOiA said:
I'm just starting Death Note, on the second episode. The premise is absolutely wonderful - a boy finds a demonic book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. He of course intends to cleanse the world of evil.

I also finished watching The Eternity You Desire the other week for the third time. Lovely series which breaks my heart. I like a good short series that tells a complete story.

What are you watching?
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Death Note was good. Very few that came out in the past year that grabbed me.
The last one I enjoyed was Darker Than Black. Currently I'm rewatching all my One Piece episodes. :D

As for recommendations, for laughs check out Gintama, and my all time favourite is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. :cool:
 
epicstruggle said:
avatar: the last airbender. My guilty pleasure for the year.
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That aint a freaking anime, its a cartoon for kids. Oke, its beats your average cartoon but its not even close to something like ghost in a shell (which imo could rival, and probably beat your average big dollar prime time tv series) or even more average anime.

Hell, can you even call it anime as its not made by Japanese? (oke oke I know anime isnt something strictly japanese but avatar does lack that anime ''thing'').

As for new anime, wouldnt know, havnt watched anything for ages. The only anime I watch is old stuff I rip to my DS to watch in the Bus when I get back from work. I'm currently watching saikano for like the 3th or 4th time and I still love it. Its just so sad, one of the few things I watched that really makes you feel depressed.
 
GitS SAC was okay, but the action a little thin and the philosophy a bit overbearing (especially the 2nd Gig, nice ending though).

I enjoyed Darker than Black too. As for 2008, I'll probably watch Code Geass 2nd season and the new Macross series.
 
I never liked GitS:SAC much because of how freaking seriously the series took itself(although I do like the movies).

I'm finishing up Ergo Proxy. It's a methodical cyberpunk series with lots of exposition. It's complex so if you get frustrated from all the answers not being explained to you simply and clearly avoid.

And of course I have to mention Lain(more cyberpunk) and Berserk(very mature dark fantasy) in every anime recommendation thread. My two favorite anime series. If you like Lain also check out Texhnolyze(yup, cyberpunk again) which is a sort of spiritual successor due to the same creative talent from Lain working on it.
 
vazel said:
It's complex so if you get frustrated from all the answers not being explained to you simply and clearly avoid.
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That's a rather tendentious statement.

There are some people who love intentional ambiguity (look at the success of Lost) and those who don't. Me, I simply don't like the characters enough in Ergo Proxy to keep watching it. I also dread it will fall into the "a good ending is too easy and not sophisticated" camp, which tends to annoy me. For a slightly newer series which isn't in a hurry to explain itself in the beginning (and which is quite frankly self contradictory) I did like Noein.

In the end though I prefer lots of action, focus on basic human emotions and a happy ending :) (Bitter sweet is good enough.) Darker than Black was perfect.
 
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Just got done watching the movie "Vexille" and quite liked it, fun sci-fi anime with more CGI than you can shake a stick at. (Looked more like a cell-shaded CGI movie than animation, but it was good)

I'm currently doing "Project Arms" which I'm only on the 15th or so episode so I can't tell if it's good or not. I'm liking it so far.

Gunslinger Girls has a new season this year and while the animation isn't quite as good, the story is solid and follows up where the last season left off so I'm hooked.

Naruto Shippuden has been rocking too. I've been looking forward to every new episode.

But the big winner for me this year is Shakugan no Shana II. I loved the first series and this one is better than the original. 22 was just released out of a 24 season run.

More laters when I have time, these were just off the top of me head. :)
 
Thanks for the mention of Vexille, dunno how I managed to miss that. Shakugan no Shana looks nice ... if it weren't for the pre-teen star and loli companions, which just put me off :/

Project Arms starts out nicely, but the latter part of the series lets it down IMO.
Ends in a hurdle race of ever more powerful opponents to the finish line of the BBEG base with the kidnapped damsel in distress ... and a poor finale.
 
Shana is another high school show I'll admit and that it always starts off fluffy, but it gets VERY dark and intense near the end of the series. I like it. :p

I'm tempted to look at your Project Arms spoiler, but I'm resisting. I'm still liking it.

I got done watching Nighthead Genesis a bit ago and would have recommended it also up until the last 4 episodes...I'm still trying to figure out exactly how it ended or if I liked it. :LOL:

I think the show I'm most looking forward to this year is the new Haruhi....
 
The Shana movie is just a recap/interpretation of the first season. Take it for what it is. ;)

Shows I have lined up to watch:

EF - A tale of memories
Simoun
Tokyo Underground
Onegai Teacher (I watched Onegai Twins and sort of liked :oops: )
Today in Class 5-2
Bamboo Blade

After Project Arms and those I'll need some fresh recommends, say about a week? ;)

EDITED BITS: I just saw "The Girl Who Lept Through Time" and liked it too. :)
 
Onegai twins/teacher is fun!

Some other series worth watching are green green for the ecchi stuff. I also liked great teacher onizuka. Twelve kingdoms is also very good, I didnt like the beginning because how it looks and all with the talking animals but once you get into it its very good. Maria sama ga miteru was also nice to watch, basically nothing happens for the whole series but for some reason I didnt mind. Infinite ryvius is another series I liked. Dont know why, if you count things up its not to special but for some reason it appealed to me alot.

And something you should defenitly watch (if you can find it) is princess tutu. Yes you read that right. But its so different that you just have to watch in, its not bad either, you just have to get over it that you are watching a anime about ballet.

Now here than and there is also very good, very sad story.
 
Full Metal Panic
Gundam00
Code Geass Season 1 & 2
Naruto Shippuden
Death Note
Trinity Blood
Ergo Proxy
Appleseed Ex Machina
Macross Frontier
D.Gray Man
 
People already mentioned a lot of others that I might have included, so I'll skip over those for the most part. Among the newer series this year, I'm getting to like True Tears a lot, as well as Spice and Wolf. The second season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (preceded by the heading "Zoku" for the second season) is approaching the level of the first season -- see ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NheYjFElRno ) -- and part of it is just how much more random it is. Though, it's a little harder to find, and AFAIK, no one has been subbing it since episode 4.

To cover certain caveats about aforementioned shows in the thread... Gundam 00 and the second season of Shakugan no Shana are both very good, though I have to add that both shows took a few episodes to get there. Similarly, Naruto Shippuuden is sometimes good, sometimes very disappointing. It smacks that the producers are terrified of drawing too close to the manga's story position so they pace it very slowly to avoid the danger. While this is still better than having 2 years of pointless fillers about finding insects and such, it's somewhat paining to have all the good episodes separated by several episodes of endless chatter (and the worst part is that if you read the manga, you'd know that it's not entirely *pointless* chatter)

Hayate no Gotoku is hilarious, though with all the outside anime references, some of the punchlines may be easy to miss. Other truly hilarious shows with loads of game and anime references include Lucky Star and Clannad. Clannad being overall carrying themes like those of Air or Kanon, but with a great deal more comedy interjected into it -- see http://youtube.com/watch?v=9d_UknfiKMI or http://youtube.com/watch?v=WcD4o8w0U1U

Among the older series of crazed hilarity include Jungle Ha Itsumo Hale nochi Guu. Another of my favorites from the olden days is Kodomo no Omocha (aka Kodocha), which covers the entire gamut from outright craziness to tear-jerker in one sweep. Hilarious in a more "Seinfeld"-ish way would be Azumanga Daioh.

Something of a surprise for me this season was Shion no Ou -- I figured it would be something like Hikaru no Go, except for Shougi instead of Go (and I did enjoy Hikaru no Go, after all). Turns out that the Shougi is sort of backdrop for a sort of murder mystery storyline. I'm generally not a fan of mystery series because so many of them follow in the vein of Detective Conan (aka "Case Closed" in the US). But one rather old (though subbing was long in coming so subbers only recently finished the series) mystery series that I liked was Karakuri Zoushi Ayatsuri Sakon (usually just shortened to Ayatsuri Sakon), which exudes an overall darker atmosphere that I happen to like.

I'm surprised, though, that for all the series mentioned thus far in the thread that no one has mentioned Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
 
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