Jeesh, seems like everybody’s still cranky from a long, bad week.
I know the word “anime” acts upon certain hip individuals as an emetic, but for those of you who enjoyed Spirited Away and/or Howl’s Moving Castle, I want to recommend the short (16 episodes, 4 DVDs) series Kamichu!. It’s the tale of a middle-school girl from a backwater town who wakes up one morning and discovers she’s a god… just another one of the thousands of insignificant local godlings “of whom there are as many as there are created things”… while still having all the problems inherent to being a 13-year-old girl in 1980s Japan. There are no giant robots, or mecha, or even panty shots; it’s just a gentle, droll little slice of life-plus-slightly-more, and the most Miyazaki-esque anime series I’ve seen.
In this clip, our heroine Yurie has been forced to transfer to a strange school for a month (dreadful enough for a middle schooler) so that she can attend the annual Business Convention of the Gods:
(Only in Japan would the gods not only have an annual conference, but a conference where getting your attendance card stamped at a sufficient number of educational seminars entitles one to a door prize!)
arguingwithsignposts
So I’m expecting a Japan troll any minute now.
TenguPhule
One of Us. One of Us.
freelancer (itouch)
I love Miyazaki, as well as the Ghost in the Shell films. Other notable worthwhile endeavors include Akira, Read or Die!, and Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555. Outside of that, japan and asian animation strikes me as impenetrable and completely alien.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I like GITS, Moribito, TriGun, Fullmetal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, Inuyasha, Eureka Seven and am currently into Bleach.
Whoever created FLCL should be shot out of a cannon and into the sun. Same with Deathnote. When those shows are on you can connect a hose to your TV and vacuum your floors with the suck.
Fencedude
I never did watch all of Kamichu! I should do that at some point.
Also I loled heartily at “Kamicon”.
MNPundit
Japan. The only country that can go from WTF to FTW in the space of a sentence.
Also it’s kind of amazing. DougL is the only person in existence who hates FLCL. They do exist!
Fencedude
Lots of people hate FLCL, actually.
I personally like it, though its not an absolute favorite. Fantastic music though.
Cerberus
Cool. I’ll have to check it out. There’s almost a genre of youths who are also gods series with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, and Fruits Basket.
Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok is fun in that it includes Thor as a constantly broke lower-class worker drifting from entry-level job to entry-level job and Freyr as a savvy shopper, as well as Loki as an elementary school age detective. The ending collapses a bit owing to their ambition overreaching how much time they had to finish, but the concept was fun.
R-Jud
What about comics? You know, the Sunday Not-Funnies? I like both of Brooke McEldowney’s: 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn.
Fencedude
@Cerberus:
Hah!
The eternal curse of being an anime fan, Japan’s almost patholigical inability to either end the fucking show (DBZ, Naruto, Bleach, etc) or not budgeting their time properly (at least half of every other show ever).
Ah well.
Cerberus
@MNPundit:
It’s fully imaginable. I love FLCL, but it’s sort of like Serial Experiments Lain or Excel Saga in that it’s designed to break your brain a little.
Luckily I like my brain a little broken.
Cerberus
@Fencedude:
And let’s not forget the series that were following a manga series that hasn’t actually ended leaving them to sort of “wrap up” smack in the middle of an overarching story because they ran out of manga to adapt.
Still for cartoons, they reliably put out the best sort of works, though I’m not one of those Japanophiles who turns their nose at anything American and thus miss things like The Batman Animated Series or Freakazoid.
Fencedude
@Cerberus:
Oh yes, that is the number one culprit. I have noticed, somewhat, an improvement in recent years, but it will always be a problem.
I have noticed that anime based on “Light Novels” (somewhat akin to Young Adult novels, though with a target audience that skews into certain adult segments) tend to work out much better when it comes to conclusions (or at least less crappy cut off points).
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@MNPundit:
As Fencedude stated, I ain’t alone. I would say that whoever came up with FLCL was on some nasty drug but I would think the result would still be better than that abortion.
The ending song is good, I’ll give it that. Maybe it’s good because that’s when the show is over? ;)
Fencedude, while I like Bleach I think they sure as hell drag every bit of it out for as long as they can. Our daughter and I love to watch it and give our own hilarious running commentary as it plays out.
Ok, we do that with every bit of anime we watch.
Oh look, it’s generic little girl voice number 17!
You know, if I ever met anyone in real life that had eyes that large I would turn and run away as fast as I can. When your eyes are over half of your face you have to be an alien.
Robert Sneddon
I could bore for Britain on the subject of Kamichu!…
I think I was the first Western downloader to figure out the series was set in the town of Onomichi down on the Seto Inland Sea. I’ve actually visited there a few times — Onomichi still looks pretty much as it appears in the anime (which is actually set in 1984 with no cellphones or Internet, just clunky old telephones and teevees). The ferries still run, 100 yen for a trip across the Pacific… It’s a delightful town, very much not a big-city sort of place. I’m going back again next year, stopping off there to relax for a day or two during a longer tour around Japan at Easter.
If you liked Kamichu! you might also like ARIA which has a similar laid-back feel to it plus beautiful music and animation. That show is being released on DVD by RightStuf but you might find the first series (ARIA the Animation) on Netflix or similar.
Fencedude
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
I gave up on Bleach at the end of the Soul Society arc. Long running shonen fighting shows just aren’t my thing. I generally prefer the shorter 13~26 episode series more than most any other format.
@Robert Sneddon:
Aria is amazing. One of my absolute favorite series. Right Stuff/Nozomi just finally announced the release date for the third season (The Origination), along with the Arietta OVA.
Now if they’d just announce when they are releasing the fourth season of Marimite…
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Fencedude:
I don’t usually like the long ones but this one has grabbed my interest. One of my favorite characters is ‘Kenny’. When he show up you know things are going to happen. I hear that the Captain of Squad 13 (Dixie Cup Man) revives his Lieutenant in a very unconventional manner…lol! I don’t like the stuffed critter parts but I hear that they do have bigger roles down the road. All in all it is a good story and they mix up the events in a way that it doesn’t seem to drag on too bad. At least Adult Swim was showing two episodes every weekend, that helps too.
The only other long-running show I like is Inuyasha. Still waiting for them to release the next batch of dubs.
Fencedude
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
As such shows go, Bleach is better than most (certainly better than DBZ or Naruto), but even ones I really like (such as One Piece) I eventually end up dropping. I watch too much anime to follow something that periodically drops into long stretches of wretched filler episodes.
And oh god Inuyasha. I think I stopped that one somewhere around episode 100, and not even the currently airing concluding episodes would make me go back to it.
Not that everything I do watch ends up being great, but at least they tend to be over quicker (LOL Kampfer)
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Fencedude:
You mean ‘One Piece’ of shit? ;) That is another one that I can’t stand to even leave on TV as background noise. As far as Inuyasha goes, my wife loves it so I have to watch it too. In this case it’s better to like it and watch it than not and suffer through it. I ain’t st00pid. :)
Another good one is The Big O. Dorothy is one heavy chick! I like the cop Dastun (Datsun!), he likes shooting at things alot.
One of our running jokes here regarding anime is the amount of ordnance they unload that destroys everything around them but their target. That and usually nobody gets killed.
Damn they are lousy shots!
Fencedude
One Piece had its ups and downs, but by and large I enjoyed it (though not enough to keep watching, dropped it in the middle of the Alabasta arc…episode 100 or so).
I heard the version first aired on US TV was pretty terrible, but never saw it. Heck, I haven’t even seen any of Funimation’s uncut release. I stopped watching it before it was even licensed.
Big O was good stuff, rewatched it a year or so back in preparation for its appearance in Super Robot Wars Z.
BIG O! SHOWTIME!
One of the few shows where the dub doesn’t just equal the Japanese track, it well and truly surpasses it. Roger just isn’t the same in Japanese.
Roger Moore
@Cerberus:
In that case, you should definitely try Paranoia Agent, and the works of Satoshi Kon generally. The danger is that he’ll break your brain more than a little.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Fencedude:
Big O! Final Stage!
We are all tomatoes. Got barcode? ;)
Another one I like is Blood. It has a good storyline that keeps you interested.
Fencedude
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Hell yeah Final Stage!
Comrade Scrutinizer
If it doesn’t have tentacles, it can’t be good.
Cerberus
@Roger Moore:
Seen it, loved it, broke my mom’s brain a little with it (but it must have made some impact, because we both went to the US opening of Paprika and loved it)
Comrade Scrutinizer
Ergo Proxy is stunning. And I enjoy the Full Metal Panic series. It can be funny, tragic, dramatic, and touching, sometimes all at the same time.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Fencedude:
Talk about a phallic overload in that shot…lol!
The damned thing is so big that I have to anchor my ass to the ground before I fire it!
Robert Sneddon
Brain-breaker anime — “Serial Experiments Lain” is a good example of reality distortion storytelling although like any anime which is based on computer technology and communication it looks dated today. It’s still one of the better anime series out there although it drags somewhat in the middle. It’s worth noting the same team (Nakamura, Kanaka and ABe) that created Lain are making a new series, Despera, which should hit the torrents next year.
My all-time favourite anime series is Haibane Renmei, also by ABe. This is not quite a brain-breaker, more a head-scratcher of a series, very slow to start with. ABe never explains anything, you just have to go with the flow of his quirky plotting and world-building (dirty angels with wings and halos wake as amnesiacs in a middle-European walled city as a metaphor for Purgatory…)
Another anime creator I’m enjoying is Shinkai Makoto, whose 5 Centimeters per Second trilogy is a superior piece of storytelling and imagery — he has a thing about trains and separation and the extinction of first loves through ageing and maturity. Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) was his first short piece that brought him to my attention. His longer followup piece, The Place Promised To Us In Our Younger Days drags in comparison and is somewhat incoherent but the imagery is stunning.
Alien-Radio
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
This.
One of my great irritations with japanese anime & videogame storytelling is the high degree of formalisation of characters and dialogue, especially when the archetypes involved are specifically japanese, I feel often that the writers are just assembling storytelling lego. I’m happier when there’s genre fucking and surrealism, because it shakes things up.
Needs Moar Tentacles.
debit
My favorite anime ever is Monster . It’s set around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, none of the characters have any super powers and no one has huge, face devouring eyes. Sorry, no tentacles either.
It was licensed by Viz , so I’m guessing it’s available on DVD here. No idea what kind of job they did on the dub or translation, since I’m perfectly happy with my fansubs.
Avias
Well, this is an unexpected bit of crossover.
Personally, I felt that the manga adaptation of Kamichu was better than the actual anime. It managed to distill down the charm and appeal of the series while skipping over some of the more annoying parts of the anime, like the entirety of the ‘Innocent Space Alien vs. Japan’s Dick Cheney’ episode.
Then I found out that the guy who did the adaptation is mostly known for porno manga, and Japan managed to break my brain a little bit more.
RedKitten
My brother would haz such a happee over this thread, whereas the only anime I’ve ever seen is Sailor Moon and online hentai. I might check out Death Note someday, just because I adore Alessandro Juliani.
Keith G
@arguingwithsignposts: hee hee
A fitting comment.
Anyway besides the Sunday Morning O Thread, I love getting ready to face the day by listening to With Heart & Voice.
http://www.wxxi.org/whv/
The music is wonderful and Mr. Richard Gladwell (RIP) is the epitome of geniality. A great morning starter even for this non-believer.
aliasofwestgate
4tehlulz
The lack of old-school space opera makes me sad, so let me recommend Crest of the Stars and Space Battleship Yamato.
And Macross (inb4 Robotech). And Infinite Ryvius.
Sorry no tentacles. Also, unbelievably, inb4 Evangelion.
drew42
I don’t consider myself a hipster. But the reason I hate anime is that choppy animation does physically make me ill. Not in a “flashing lights may cause seizures” kind of sick — more like motion sickness.
Back in the 80’s, before my parents got cable TV, one of my friends was talking about how great Voltron was. So I went to his house once to watch it. And I just didn’t get it. I thought he was messing with me.
And judging by the clip above, after 25 years that style of animation is as unwatchable as ever. I honestly can’t understand why so many people like this.
MikeJ
It was my hope when they changed it that the fans would simply refuse en masse. Don’t give google any examples of their stupid trademark being used in the wild and eventually they may decide they prefer a nice generic word to the stupidity of their new name.
I do like to pronounce the new name, but using short “i”s. Like short for syphilis.
debit
@aliasofwestgate: 74 episodes is a lot. I’m a pretty fickle fan; something has to grab me hard to keep me with it. I was hard core for this show and probably killed a large part of Ani-Kraze’s bandwidth from hitting refresh while waiting for updates.
I really can’t recommend it enough; tight pacing, plot twists, characters that you’ll hate one minute and be weeping for the next. And Tenma, the main character, just breaks my fucking heart.
Frenetic Muppet
Hard to get good puppets these days. Bob Gates visited Afghanistan this week.
At a joint press conference Tuesday at the presidential palace in Kabul, Hamid Karzai surprised the usually unflappable Gates when he knocked down President Obama’s attempt to get out of Dodge.
Needling his American sugar daddy, the Afghan peacock observed: “For another 15 to 20 years, Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and capability with its own resources.”
At this rate before we get out of Afghanistan we’ll be burying Dick Cheney – well at least there’s THAT to look forward to.
aliasofwestgate
@debit:
That’s why i love it too. It was stunning in 2004, its still stunning now. I have my fansubs too, but i’m glad its getting real attention over here. It’s one of those low key pieces of perfection that can’t be recommended enough.
MikeJ. I haven’t watched anything on that channel since they axed Stargate: Atlantis when it still had a steady fanbase watching! Then they proceeded to insult the slightly older fans (30s and up or so) on top of it. Meanwhile, you’d think they WANT that fanbase. We tend to have more disposable funds to spend on merch than 18 year olds. *rolls her eyes*
I don’t bother spending money on cable now myself. Too much money for only watching maybe 3 channels with any consistence.
I’m off to work, but its been fun talking here.
Fox Lose
Because in my opinion you don’t get to see Fox on the receiving end of a bit of Whup Ass often enough.
http://wonkette.com/412694/whoa-wait-dont-foxes-eat-kitties#comments
Svensker
@drew42:
I’m with you. Can not stand anime and don’t “get” it at all. But maybe for me it’s cuz I’m old.
Off the anime topic (please!) —
A few weeks ago someone posted a link to a Medieval Metal band, German, I think. Can’t remember the band, can’t remember the poster. Lost the link. The song was a really ancient folk song that…..can’t remember. Can you help?
MR Bill
Dang, hadn’t thought of “spaceship Yamamoto” in years..
The best thing about FLCL was that it was willing to be silly, and take silly metaphors over the top: of course adolescence is kinda like having a giant robot inside your head, making an enormous hornlike pimple before squirting out in a spasm of rock and roll..
or something..
And the music by the Pillows was great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbvSLvn2cOg
me
OT: Thune gets fluffed, then immediately is on the sunday morning shows. Go feedback loop!
Ash Can
@me: Looks like Thune is the Republican establishment’s pet, all right. I’m wondering if he’s Limblow’s pick, and, if not, how the establishment will handle the party boss if and when he decides to fight back.
General Winfield Stuck
From the little known facts file.
Just heard Professor Smokin” Joe Barton on cspan tell us why the polar ice cap is melting. Well, he didn’t know why, but it wasn’t our fault because hardly anyone lives up there, so humans could not be causing it.
Swear to Gawd/
J
Thanks for the tip!
Haven’t seen this one, but must try. In what sounds like a similar vein I’d recommend:
Only yesterday, by Isao Takahata, Miyazaki’s collaborator at Studio Ghibli. No robots; a young woman at loose ends goes to the country and remembers her childhood.
Whisper of the Heart, directed by Yoshifumi Kondo, who, if I have the story right, was being groomed as a successor by Miyazaki and Takahata when, alas, he died of cancer. It’s a lovely story with a real world setting.
gnomedad
@Frenetic Muppet:
WTF!? I hope there’s video of this. If Obama wants political cover for an exit strategy, he should see to it that this is all over the place.
Steeplejack
@Svensker:
I think this is what you’re looking for: “Palästinalied.”
Roger Moore
@Cerberus:
If you liked Paprika for its brain melting properties, you should see Perfect Blue. Definite brain puddle material.
Roger Moore
@J:
You should look for Grave of the Fireflies, also by Takahata. It’s as close to the exact opposite of Americans’ stereotype of anime as it’s possible to get.
daryljfontaine
@Roger Moore: That one made the short list for a Depression Film Festival some friends and I theorized a while back — 24 hours of the gloomiest, most downer films, where the true test of endurance was whether you could watch all 24 hours without slitting your wrists or swallowing a fistful of sleeping pills.
D
Morbo
Not to be confused with Epichu. Haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard things; I’ve heard things. For some reason I get anime in the first banner ad for Anne Laurie’s posts… :) Let me recommend Paranoia Agent in the brain-breaker category.
And as for the shounens, hey now, One Piece is damn good; it was the highest selling manga in Japan this year IIRC. It does take a pretty sizable attention span to keep up for 400 episodes though. Now the first time it ran here in the states, it was dubbed by 4kids. And the series was pretty much eviscerated outside of the overarching story arcs; yes, it was practically unwatchable. Thankfully Funimation is redubbing it, and I’d recommend giving it another chance under new management.
@Svensker: Yup, Palastinalied. The specific band was In Extremo.
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: HaHaHaHaHa
There’s advantages to doing xmas shopping at 9 on a Sunday. No crowds, pretty good service and no TV.
freelancer (itouch)
Good morning all.
I just woke up in a cold sweat from the most vivid political nightmare.
For one reason (GOP obstructionism) or another (establishment strong-arming him to avoid meaningful bank reform), obama quit effective immediately. And my brain decided to give me a front row seat to the aftermath. It was unnerving, to say the least.
J
Roger Moore,
Fully share your esteem for Grave of the fireflies.
Chaz
Nicely done, guys. Google’s already pasting ads for Anime box sets at the top of my page. (Not sarcasm – actually nicely done.)
matt
Does anybody here like Nodame Cantabile, in either anime or drama form? Recommended for those whole like classical music.
Doctor Science
Wow, do I usually run with a different crowd. Pretty much *none* of my usual anime suspects are in this thread.
IMHO one of the best anime series ever is “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. Note:
1. not to be confused with James Cameron’s “Avatar”.
2. not to be confused with the movie currently in production, allegedly based on the series, in which the cast is whitewashed very nearly to the Mickey-Rooney-in-Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s level.
3. It’s by Americans. But there are no non-Asian (or “Asian”) characters. Because, contra freelancer @3, anime is *not* impenetrable and completely alien, it’s becoming a key component of world culture, including the culture of younger Americans.
4. Miyazaki’s animators, Studio Ghibli, did the animation and a lot of the character design, and it shows.
5. the fact that it never won an Emmy for “Outstanding Animated Series” is scientific proof (were any needed) that the Emmys are bogus. A:TLA is the best American animated series *ever*, on multiple levels: style, substance, characterization, design.
Morbo
@matt: Gyabo! That is my answer to that question.
AhabTRuler
@Doctor Science: The pacing of the last half of Book 3 was poorly executed. The writers tried to do too much while remaining within the (arbitrary and self-imposed) confines of a three season show.
However, still a great series overall.
Brachiator
If there are no giant robots, then what’s the point?
What I liked most about this clip was not the stuff about “all the problems inherent to being a 13-year-old girl in 1980s Japan” (I got no patience for adolescent angst) but the humorous little details about the god and goddess business, and the gentle homage to the actual Japanese community which inspired the setting of the story.
grumpy realist
To everyone–don’t watch Grave of the Fireflies unless you want to be really, really depressed. It’s about the afterward of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Great film (I’d insist anyone who thinks that dropping nukes is sensible foreign policy should watch it), but not something that leaves you in a cheerful mood.
Spirited Away has a lot of sly touches that are very funny if you have been exposed to enough Japanese culture/traditional stories. I especially liked the Daikon-spirit.
General Winfield Stuck
@freelancer (itouch):
See now, it’s different for me. I sleep like a baby and it is when I wake up that the political nightmare begins.
debit
@Doctor Science: I watched most of the first season and enjoyed it, but didn’t find it compelling enough to seek out when it started up again. Like I said before, I’m a fickle fan. And when you add in how Nickelodeon later jerked around the fanbase and my revulsion for the behavior of most vocal part of the fandom (the dreaded shippers), any interest I might have had in picking it up again was gone.
I do agree about the Emmys, and to a certain extent, with an above comment about the lack of respect American animation gets. For sheer brilliance masquerading as kid’s entertainment there’s very little that could top Freakaziod, Earthworm Jim, Animaniacs and Pink and the Brain. And for serious shows, I’ll even add the Paul Dini Batman series. You’d have to go back to Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog or even further to the old Warner Bros days to find the like. (With the caveat that I don’t really watch television anymore, so could be missing current quality shows.)
El Cruzado
@Morbo:
Bummer, I was hoping to be the first one to mention it.
Still, anything by Satoshi Kon strikes me as legal acid in my book. Paprika will serve well those who want a single-shot dose of Paranoia Agent-style bizarreness, and the list goes on, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress (and others I might be missing) are worth checking out too.
Roger Moore
@grumpy realist:
Minor nit: Grave of the Fireflies is about the aftermath of the firebombing if Kobe, not of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. It’s still an incredibly powerful indictment of warfare, and probably the saddest movie I’ve ever seen.
Svensker
@Steeplejack:
”
Yes! Thank you!
JScott
Any anime theme favorites? I really like composer Yoko Kanno, e.g. Tank! (Cowboy Bebop), Inner Universe (Ghost In The Shell), quite a few others. Some daze, only *Asterisk by Orange Range (Bleach) will get me out of the recliner – fingers twitch on the air bass with Miyamori Yoh.
Fencedude
@Doctor Science:
Nothing against the show itself, but Avatar is not anime. At all.
Ruemara
@Doctor Science: Must second this. It’s a great example of what Americans can do with Anime styles. Coherent script (good american trait), excellent action (anime trait) all together in fudgey peanut butter goodness combo. I hope one day to do at least half as well. We’ll see.
FLCL is hard to stomach if you want coherence but it’s like eating all your halloween candy then going to a rave after 5 straight espressos. Some of it is meh, but most of it is hopped up fun. Love Habane Renmai mostly because I love ABE. I’m surprised no one has mentioned Read or Die-movie only, the series has nearly no connection to the movie that made it possible. It’s kickass. Liked Bleach but damn baby, that shit had to end after 2 seasons. Still like Inuyasha but I can miss 5 episodes and still not miss anything like…a plot point. In this house, we used to skip DBZ episodes in sequence, so we’d watch 7, 9, 11, etc. Why? most of it was filler. Still like it, but I can’t watch it ever again.
His & Her Circumstances is good, love Paranoia Agent, Perfect Blue, Tokoyo Godfathers, Only Yesterday is good and sweet….I had no idea I’d watched so much cartoons.
Edit: apologies freelancer, I just noticed you had mentioned Read Or Die.
Seebach
I have to plug Eden: It’s an Endless World! manga here again. It’s really good!
Fencedude
@Ruemara:
Not to sound like I’m just being contrary, but ROD the TV is a direct sequel to the Read or Die OVA.
debit
@JScott: Heh. Most of my biking music is from anime soundtracks, with some game soundtracks (mostly from Square) to round things out. I wanted high energy, but not things I would be tempted to sing along with.
TenguPhule
Wrong Anime. You’re thinking about Barefoot Gen.
MikeF
Haibane Renmei is one of my favorites as well. Beautifully animated and paced, and very affecting. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, I’ll recommend Legend of the Galactic Heroes. 110 episodes of politics, warfare, and intrigue in space, with a strong emphasis on the characters and what makes them tick. There are fansubs, but I don’t think it’s ever actually been released in the US.
Daniel
I love anime because they are still willing to try new things. There are so many of them out there, so you can always find something new and interesting to watch.
Chaz
Thanks for the suggestion of Kamichu! I’m about halfway through and enjoying it so far.
Persia
Descendants of Darkness/Yami no Matseui is not actually a very good show (though it’s miles better than the comic that inspired it), but it always cracks me up that the Afterlife is a typical Japanese bureaucracy.
I love Read or Die too. Millennium Actress is really good– another Japanese animated movie for people who don’t like Japanese animated movies, with the bonus of not being as depressing as Grave of the Fireflies.
sunsin
Completely wrong. The background to Grave of the Fireflies is the conventional firebombing of Kobe, and what happens to the two protagonists is what would have happened to most of the Japanese population if the atomic bombs had not been dropped and the United States had instead decided to blockade Japan. That is, both of them die of starvation.
Anyone who thinks that starving a whole country would have been better than destroying two cities needs to rethink the matter a bit.
By the way, anyone here watch Witch Hunter Robin?
lol
@RedKitten:
Death Note is pretty awesome. My girlfriend, who isn’t into anime, really liked it.