King Chozo said:
Oh good, I was almost afraid to assume this myself. I've been looking around for some new (well new to me) anime to get into and haven't had much luck. I like things like Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Ghost in the Shell, Trigun, Fullmetal Alchemist, Tenchi (Muyo, Universe, etc) and things like that. Can you guys shoot some recommendations my way? I'm pretty open to genre despite how it may look from my list here. I keep seeing Claymore on blu ray in stores whenever I go out and I'm tempted to buy it but I don't want to spend $30 on something that I don't even know if I'll like. Thanks in advance.
Oh, and to the guy I quoted:
Big O is pretty sweet.
Well, IMO, sadly, you'll probably not get any great recommendations in those specific genres, those are what I really liked and these last few years the only thing I've liked were comedies and slice of life shit, some will probably float "Eden of the East" or "Eden of East," forget the actual title, it's sorta like GiTS's universe but not near as much action, I didn't care for it to be honest.
If you expand to include comedy, slice of life, or mystical shit there's some decent shows, but sadly anything that started out as looking like it'd be a mature title kinda fell flat.
Now one show that was pretty mature that I liked was Kurenai, basically about a kid in high school who does violent work protecting people, he ends up looking after a little girl that ran away from her crazy family, he was in high school in the show but school is such a little part of the show, really about him, the girl, their relationship and the people around him as he struggles to protect her, it was pretty decent, short and to the point. I liked it. It's not really bloody but it's also not fan service, cliched characters or anything of the sort, just a decent mature storyline with some fighting and a resolution with very little wasted space. It does seem slow moving though because the characters and their interpersonal relationships is more the theme than the actual act of protecting the girl but there are fights in it.
Another show I liked that doesn't fit your genre's though is Spice and Wolf. Fuck the haters, some looked at it is some kind of merchant training or some shit but I just looked at it as a slow moving romance story, he could have been anything and it wouldn't change the show that much(well I guess he needs to travel so he can't be anything but whatever). Basically about a traveling merchant who picks up a female Wolf God as his traveling partner and they slowly start heading towards her homeland.
I'm a sucker for shamanistic shit though, kinda how I wish the Earth really was, a place filled with wonder and superstition so I'm predisposed to liking stuff like that. Religions that were before the God/Gods were perfect or pure good and evil, I like the gray moral reality and the "humanesque" struggle that non-Abrahamic Gods had, they were essentially as flawed as people, good/evil/scared/happy, just had powers/abilities that made them outsiders to people and I like shit that. I never see shit like that too often in the US so Japan's the only place that really makes something like that, although some of Europe also has some similar religious aspects that may be explored in their respective countries but the only time I see this explored in the US is with Greek or Norse mythology when I really like the natural Shamanistic stuff. Maybe Native American legends would be interesting to me?
Similarly, I liked Natsume Yuujinchou and it's sequel as well. It's about a boy who finds his mother(or was it grandmother, it's been awhile) book of names, the book of names is a list of all the demons who she befriended or defeated and Natsume starts running into these demons one after another, some violent, some not but it's a pretty personal episodic show that I really liked.
But I don't think there's been anything good futuristic wise since Bepop/GiTS.
