I have a standing anime/movie night with several friends (if you’re local, remember: it’s Friday nights, and we don’t always do anime, so you’re welcome to join in and we’ll decide the week before what we’ll watch the next week; email me for details).
We’ve watched a lot of great stuff in the last year or so–the stuff coming out in the last few years is just plain brilliant:
- Vampire Knight (if you liked Twilight, you’ll LOVE VK–6 or 7 volumes of the manga is out here in the States, and the anime just got licensed)
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- Saiunkoku (OH so good–I would really love to be the one to bring over the light novels through Tu Publishing, but if someone got there first, I’d be all over getting them; I wish I could find the full second season on DVD)
- Gundam 00
- Ouran High School Host Club (very fun, and a great look at gender roles)
- Fruits Basket
- Code Geass
- Witch Hunter Robin (this stands out among a bunch of standouts–so good)
- Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex
- Emma: A Victorian Romance
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumya
- Kuroshitsuji (we have to finish this one sometime) (also: this one is very hard to pronounce!)
- Wolf’s Rain (good, but very sad ending)
- Twelve Kingdoms (80s cheese, including a very whiny main character at first, but if you stick with it, it’s pretty fun)
- Cele-something (dang, forgot the name; helpful, aren’t I?)
- Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit (wow, what a show. And there’s a great book it’s based on, edited by Cheryl Klein)
… and many others that I’m forgetting. I should make a complete list to help me remember & help lead me to ones I like.
This has led me to many a good anime on my own (including older ones that I never saw when they were new), often because the friend who hosted anime night–who sadly just moved away–is so in touch with it and makes great recommendations:
- Tsubasa
- Samurai 7
- xxxHolic
- Last Exile
- The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye (so good I want to add this one to my collection)
- Ghost Hunt
- Trigun
- .hack//SIGN (and just as I got into it somehow all the discs became unavailable)
- Death Note
- Scrapped Princess
- Noein
- R.O.D the TV
- Fushigi Yugi: The Mysterious Play (90s cheese, but fun)
- Read or Die
…and so on.
Anyway, I make this list right now because I want to eventually break it down and review some of them, and also because I’d like to hear if any of you have suggestions–given that I’ve liked pretty much all of this list, and given that if you’re a reader of this blog you probably know the kind of fantasy and science fiction I’m into (there are some great YA-oriented school stories on there, too, that aren’t speculative at all, but absolutely entertaining, like Ouran), perhaps you’ll be able to recommend some I haven’t heard of. What am I missing? You can probably tell that my tastes tend to run shojo–I love the bishis, when it’s not too overdone!–but I’m also open to brilliant stories that aren’t terribly violent.
What would you guys recommend? What new anime coming out is a must-see?
**Oh, and a few I want to see but haven’t gotten to yet:
- Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
- Shonen Onmyoji
- Darker than Black
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