YES
good, or worth a try |
Azumanga Daioh (cute, random humour)
Bt'X (not great, by any means, but, I liked it. Mecchas.)
Doraemon (lives in the hearts of children forever! admittedly, might be boring if you're a grownup-at-heart)
Ghost in the Shell (fantastic art; you should watch it on that merit alone. plus it's partially set in Hong Kong! how can I not love that? the Hong Kong cityscape is beautifully rendered. the small streets in the old neighbourhoods were so detailed, and it really looks like that in real life. makes me homesick.)
Gokusen (similar to GTO, only with a female teacher. fun and funny.)
Grave of the Fireflies (saddest thing I've ever seen. I saw it when I was 8, and it traumatised me for life.)
Gundam Wing (can just as well go into the NO column, but I feel generous today.)
Fake (funny, sweet in a non-cloying way)
Hunter x Hunter [TV & 3 OVAs] (Togashi Yoshihiro's best work so far. genre: shounen, fantasy adventure. lots of interesting characters. has the unexpected plot twists you'd expect from TY.)
Kyou Kara Maou (uh huh.)
Maria-sama ga Miteru & Maria-sama ga Miteru ~Haru~ [2 seasons] (very shoujo. set in an all-girls Catholic high school, there's a student council, and older students take on younger ones as their 'petite soeurs'. the show is very romantic and there is little real plot, just relationship-type stuff, nice and peaceful. I LOVE-LOVE-LOVE this show but I know not everybody likes this genre. Even I don't, most of the time.)
Nausicaa of the Valley Wind (saw this when I was a kid, was freaked out.)
Neon Genesis Evangelion (conflicted. I mean, I kinda like it, but I also don't. Shinji is perhaps the most annoying character ever, and Rei annoyingly has no personality at all. as for the plot, WTF?)
Shoujo Kakumei Utena [TV] (not your typical shoujo anime, at all. completely metaphorical and full of "WTF is going on?!" moments, but that's why I love it so. the only complaint I have is the constant reuse of stock footage, like how the transformations are always shown in Sailor Moon. The animation is also kind of bad for 2004 standards.)
Adolescence of Utena [Utena movie] (gorgeous art and music direction. very different retelling of the TV series. if you like pretty art and pretty music, watch it. I love the story, too -- and I admit that I still don't know what the story is -- but just sit back and enjoy the ride.)
Rurouni Kenshin [TV] (I hate Kaoru. I HATE Kaoru. but if you like fighting/action anime, you need to watch the Kyoto story arc [eps ~20 to 50-something]. anything before or after is more or less disposable. and the way Kenshin never kills anyone gets very tiring after a while.)
Rurouni Kenshin OVA (very, very, good. serious, very very very sad, lots of bloodshed.)
School Rumble (very funny.)
Serial Experiments Lain (weird, surreal, good.)
Totoro (whee. watched it countless times in 4 different languages. I think every asian person's seen it, it's so steeped in the collective consciousness.)
Peach Girl (I don't know, I like it, even though the plot is a love square.)
Weiss Kreuz (am conflicted. on one hand, I fully recognise that this series is really bad. BUT! I still like it. genre: bishounen. only females need apply, I guess.)
Yakitate!! Japan (hilarious show about... baking! see manga review.)
Yu Yu Hakusho (Togashi Yoshihiro again. first half only recommended. The animation quality is also pretty dire. The Dark Tournament was the pinnacle, the Sensui arc was ok, and Makai arc was pretty tiring -- it was obvious that TY had gotten sick of it. genre: shounen action/adventure with a fantasy bent; you either like this sort of thing, or you don't. the plus side are the detailed backstories of the characters; Togashi is really good at creating memorable ones.) |
NO
bad, or can live w/o it
doesn't include shows where I only watched 1 ep.
notice a pattern yet? I have a low sugar tolerance.
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Angelic Layer (uninteresting)
Chobits (offensive; see DearS.)
DearS (if you liked Chobits and the idea of mindless, big-breasted slave girls [on leashes, dear god] catering to your every whim, you'll like this. sickening. women's rights? what's that?)
Fruits Basket (annoyingly nice, too-self-sacrificing main character; too sappy for me. everything annoying about shoujo anime rolled into one. but, ymmv. lots of people love FB. more power to them.)
Full Moon o Sagashite (really... boring... really. too shoujo for me. plus the songs suck. ymmv.)
Naruto (ok, I admit I only watched episodes up to the mid teens, but god it was so boring I couldn't bring myself to continue. sorry if it gets really good later on, as I've heard from various people.)
Pita Ten (WAY TOO CUTESY. I could not take another minute.)
Saiyuki (I tried to like this, I really did. it sounds great on paper: Journey to the West updated, but it's just so... ack. bland & boring. when they were playing mahjong onscreen, I wished I had 3 people to play mahjong w/ myself instead of watching the show.)
Tokyo Underground (boring.)
Ultimate Girl (too much fanservice -- ymmv, obviously. the girl puts on a superhero[ine] suit to fight a monster; alas, it starts to run out of energy and the suit shrinks, looking like the holes in that kind of holey-cheese... and she crawls away [feminine hysterics ...] and the camera angle is just so. etc.)
W-Wish (the teacher was so annoyingly young-looking and soft-voiced that I don't care what else the story is.)
X (beautiful art, interesting story, bad storytelling.)
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