What Anime are you Currently Watching?/Anime Recommendations

[samsonlonghair]

Somehow Macross II and Macross Plus managed to get uncut US releases and are still easy to find. I'll say that Macross II is extremely skippable (and considered non-canon). Macross Plus on the other hand is excellent; most of the staff went on to make Cowboy Bebop and there's a decent amount of similarities between those shows.

Macross Plus was actually the first Macross media I ever watched. I taped it off of Showtime Beyond some time around 2002~ish. I had this on the same VHS I taped Ghost in the Shell. I used to rewatch it all the time. This was when I fell in love with the music of Yoko Kanno.

Shoji Kawamori, co-director of Macross Plus, was instrumental to the creation of the original Macross and has been involved as creator and in many other roles of every Macross property except Macross II. And Watanabe's co-director role on Macross Plus appears to have been his first directorial role. So yeah, Macross Plus was this bizarre thing that set a lot of creative types on the road together. Not only did Kawamori, Watanabe, and Kanno go on to make Cowboy Bebop, Kawamori and Kanno did Escaflowne together, which I thought was also fantastic.

Macross Plus was the early work that first truly showcased the depth and breadth of Kanno's musical muscle. I have all 4 soundtrack albums and most of it is pure gold. I discovered the series on video accidentally and Macross Plus remains one of my favorite anime works of all time. It's relatively straight-forward for anime, with characters who are pretty easy to understand and identify with, even for westerners, and a plot that is relatively philosophy and mysticism-free.

Funny you should mention Escaflowne. I watched that back in February. I talked about it in this very thread.
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... start=2730

[marurun]

Funny you should mention Escaflowne. I watched that back in February. I talked about it in this very thread.
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... start=2730

When talking about anime, it is often difficult to get me to STOP talking about Escaflowne (and Macross Plus). I'll go read that post-haste.

OK, read it. I largely agree with your thoughts. I first saw it via fan subbed VHS tapes, and when I graduated from college I bought the Bandai release one DVD at a time. I even own the promo tarot deck from sending in all the UPC codes, because I sent them all in to get it. I think Escaflowne is one of the best shows to come out of the 90s, right up there with Cowboy Bebop, though for very different reasons. Even the ending is pretty good.

[samsonlonghair]

I first saw Escaflowne on Fox Kids. I was a teenager at the time. I remember liking it a lot, but I initially had a hard time suspending disbelief. Why are there giant robots in a medieval sword-and-sorcery high fantasy? I really enjoyed the world-building aspects. I liked planet Gaia and the characters and kingdoms therein. I liked the imagery of planet earth as a moon in orbit over Gaia, but it also gave me a hard time suspending disbelief. We know from astronomy that's impossible. I have no problems with cat girls or flying castles, but astronomy issues bothered me for some reason.

Still Escaflowne made an impression on me. Fox Kids never finished showing the series, and I never forgot it. I couldn't do much about it in 2000, but by 2002 I had figured out how to use KaZaA Lite to connect to the fasttrack network. The first Anime I downloaded was the movie version of Escaflowne. Escaflowne the movie is a retelling of Escaflowne set in a feudal samurai theme rather than medieval European style. There was no English dub of the movie at the time. This was the first time I watched subtitled anime - a practice I came to enjoy, and even prefer when given the option. Though nowadays I'm more ambivalent, at the time I became greatly enamored with subs over dubs.

It wasn't until this year that I finally got to re-watch the series in its entirety. The later half of the series diverges from the movie - especially in regard to the villains.

[Sano]

It has probably been talked about already, but there are 300 pages to go through to find out. In any case, who else is a Dragon Ball fan? Do you like the new Dragon Ball Super? Do you think GT is any good? I personally like all of them but the original Dragon Ball. I just couldn't get into it. It isn't bad by any means, I just prefer Z, Super, and GT. I know GT isn't really considered canon, but I enjoy it. What are your guys opinion on Dragon Ball?

[Xeogred]

It has probably been talked about already, but there are 300 pages to go through to find out. In any case, who else is a Dragon Ball fan? Do you like the new Dragon Ball Super? Do you think GT is any good? I personally like all of them but the original Dragon Ball. I just couldn't get into it. It isn't bad by any means, I just prefer Z, Super, and GT. I know GT isn't really considered canon, but I enjoy it. What are your guys opinion on Dragon Ball?

After seeing the whole series in Japanese, and Z twice that way now, it is my #1 favorite anime. At 28 years old I can confidently say that. It is a magical experience to me and so much better in Japanese. I'm loving Super, it had a shaky first handful of episodes and the Gold Freeza arc wasn't that great (the movie version was a little better), but otherwise it blows GT out of the water to me and I'm glad it's washing that away.

There is actually a lot of character to the characters in the series. Vegeta for example goes through so much subtle growth it's phenomenal. I love how it is purely character driven. As someone who has seen most of the shounens, rarely do major villains even begin to compare to Toriyama's villains. I believe that is because he focuses solely on them and they become ultra iconic. The only other series I've seen that I think is similar in design is Hokuto no Ken / Fist of the Northstar. But yeah, like as much as I love One Piece and some others, there is usually a ton of garbage villains. Freeza is just flatout one of the greatest villains in the history of everything to me.

Toriyama is an accidental genius since he kind of just laughs it all off and had so many places where he was originally planning to end it, even after the first wish with the dragon balls when Oolong got the panties.
http://www.kanzenshuu.com/intended-end/

DB is more a comical martial arts adventure with awesome tournaments and creative battles. It's a different vibe but you should love it. To me the Buu saga and Super have taken it back full circle, with it being a bit more fun and light hearted which is fine with me. Though this current Trunks arc is shaping up to be pretty serious.

I could talk this threads ears off about it. lol, but what I wish is for more awareness around this series, that it is the Funimation dub that created it's "constipated" legacy. It's the dub that probably triples the script, throwing in so much painful and useless dialogue around every corner, then everyone is constipated, Goku comes off as a pacifist bitch when in Japanese he's actually just as much, if not more selfish than Vegeta and LIVES TO FIGHT. How could they mess that up so bad haha. I can never go back.

[MrPopo]

To be fair, you can't blame Funimation for the planet exploding in 5 minutes taking hours worth of episodes.

At some point I do plan on snagging all the Dragon Ball manga volumes and reading through those. I've read the first volume (my brother had it) but I've never gotten around to getting the whole thing. And my reading backlog, while not as large as my game backlog, is pretty big.

[Xeogred]

The current arc in One Piece makes me want to say nobody is ever allowed to make fun of Namek and the Freeza battle again.

Think Dressrosa is close to like 200 episodes...

[Sano]

It has probably been talked about already, but there are 300 pages to go through to find out. In any case, who else is a Dragon Ball fan? Do you like the new Dragon Ball Super? Do you think GT is any good? I personally like all of them but the original Dragon Ball. I just couldn't get into it. It isn't bad by any means, I just prefer Z, Super, and GT. I know GT isn't really considered canon, but I enjoy it. What are your guys opinion on Dragon Ball?

After seeing the whole series in Japanese, and Z twice that way now, it is my #1 favorite anime. At 28 years old I can confidently say that. It is a magical experience to me and so much better in Japanese. I'm loving Super, it had a shaky first handful of episodes and the Gold Freeza arc wasn't that great (the movie version was a little better), but otherwise it blows GT out of the water to me and I'm glad it's washing that away.

There is actually a lot of character to the characters in the series. Vegeta for example goes through so much subtle growth it's phenomenal. I love how it is purely character driven. As someone who has seen most of the shounens, rarely do major villains even begin to compare to Toriyama's villains. I believe that is because he focuses solely on them and they become ultra iconic. The only other series I've seen that I think is similar in design is Hokuto no Ken / Fist of the Northstar. But yeah, like as much as I love One Piece and some others, there is usually a ton of garbage villains. Freeza is just flatout one of the greatest villains in the history of everything to me.

Toriyama is an accidental genius since he kind of just laughs it all off and had so many places where he was originally planning to end it, even after the first wish with the dragon balls when Oolong got the panties.
http://www.kanzenshuu.com/intended-end/

DB is more a comical martial arts adventure with awesome tournaments and creative battles. It's a different vibe but you should love it. To me the Buu saga and Super have taken it back full circle, with it being a bit more fun and light hearted which is fine with me. Though this current Trunks arc is shaping up to be pretty serious.

I could talk this threads ears off about it. lol, but what I wish is for more awareness around this series, that it is the Funimation dub that created it's "constipated" legacy. It's the dub that probably triples the script, throwing in so much painful and useless dialogue around every corner, then everyone is constipated, Goku comes off as a pacifist bitch when in Japanese he's actually just as much, if not more selfish than Vegeta and LIVES TO FIGHT. How could they mess that up so bad haha. I can never go back.

Totally agree man. I am 30 and I can also confidently say that DBZ is my favorite anime series. I will admit that I am a bit of a moonie too (Sailor Moon fan) ^_^

[Xeogred]

Anyways, I've been wanting to give GT a rewatch sometime, by jumping over the first 20 episodes (the "lost" ones that Toonami didn't even air originally I think, with young Goku and Pan doing random crap). That portion was really bad and maybe soured the rest. Hmmm guess I'll find out.

[Fragems]

The current arc in One Piece makes me want to say nobody is ever allowed to make fun of Namek and the Freeza battle again.

Think Dressrosa is close to like 200 episodes...

It's 118 if you just count the Dressrosa arc. However the "Dressrosa Saga" which includes the punk hazard arc is 168 episodes total. Really the arc is way way to fucking long if my calculations are correct it took them literally over 2 years to air it. So glad it's finally wrapping up and I really hope they fluffed it enough that we won't see another super padded arc for another year or so.