Recommended Anime (Post your suggestions here)

Hello There. Thought I might take this opportunity to create a thread for people to recomend a few good anime's to watch. Mainly series' but if there's a particularly good feature length which isn't available on DVD then feel free to say.
I predominantly use Animefreak for watching them, but if you know a better site post that too.
Please DO NOT simply use this thread to say "ooh i love that one, one of my fav's", Looking for some genuine recomendations as well.
Without further adieu, Here's a list of some that I can Recomend:

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni - fantastic mystery thriller with killer lolis, plenty violent, but with some very cute characters. Presented in different charcter arcs, the first series acts as more of an introduction, with the second series (Higurashi no naku koro ni Kai) fills in the blanks. There's also an OVA mini-series (Rei) which provides a nice epilogue / intro to the other part of the when they cry series, but that's for another post.

Trigun - Yeah it's an old one, but still pretty good. Funny and full of ridiculous gunmanship, this one's worth a look.

Basilisk - set in feudal japan, this is a sort of Romeo + Juliet story, but with brutal ninja combat. kind of dark in places, but a truly excellent story with fantastic characters. Do Not miss this one. (full name is Basilisk: book of Kouga ninja arts).

That's all for now, will post more later. Enjoy!

WARNING: Extreme wall of text, no idea how that happened I only intended to write a little recommendation but since I spent so long writing it out I thought I'd just leave it as is (theres a TL:DR at the bottom if you can't be bothered reading my wittering.)

Well since we've been watching more or less the same shows recently I can't offer much by the way of recommendations to you personally (although as resident obsessive fanboy I feel the need to second your recommendation of Higurashi).

Some recommendations for stuff you haven't watched:

Umineko No Naku Koro ni: Sequal of sorts to Higurashi, as an anime in itself not quite as good but as part of the When They Cry series as a whole its prety interesting, unfortunately it follows a similar story structure to Higurashi but due to less than positive reactions from the fans of the original work (Visual novel) and poor sales its unlikely that the answer arcs (Umineko Chiru) will ever be animated which leaves the anime with no proper conclusion and no answer to the mystery. Still worth a watch though although I'd recommend watching Higurashi first since they share a canon of sorts.

Welcome to the NHK: A slice of life (dark) comedy / drama series following the exploits of a Hikikomori named Sato, his pervy next door neigbour Yamazaki, depressive conspiricy theorist friend from school Hitomi and a mysterious young girl named Misaki who promises to "cure" Sato of his Hiki ways. The characterisation in this show is astoundingly well done and definately one of the series' strong points. The humour can be a bit off at times although how much of that is down to cultural differences remains to be seen but the show treats it's characters with respect and you're always invited to laugh with them not at them.

You've seen this one but for others who haven't I'd heartily recommend it.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica (AKA Mahou Shoujou Madoka Magica): Madoka is a deconstruction of sorts of the Magical Girl genre (think Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura etceturah). Starts out with a fairly typical plot; "Ordinary high school girl" meets mysterious animal companion who offers to grant any one wish for her by magic, in exchange the girl must make a contract with him and fight "Witches" which are a sort of personification of humanity's grief and sorrow and responsible for accidents and suicides. The main character Madoka and her best friend Sayaka encounter a mysterious transfer student by the name of Homura attempting to kill the magical beast Kyubey for reasons unknown, after rescuing him and fleeing they end up trapped inside a Witch's "Barrier" (a sort of pocket dimenson that a Witch projects around herself as a defence mechanism) and are rescued by an older magical girl called Mami. At this point the plot begins to become less typical.

I won't explain why for reasons of spoilers (this is one show you do NOT want spoilers for) but from episode 3 onwards it becomes less of a traditional Magical Girl show and more of a straight subversion of one. The plot manages to keep a steady stream of holy crap moments and unexpected twists right through to the end.

Characters are well done and believable, sticking to their established personalities for the most part although at least one event takes place because someone does something completely out of character which is stated later to have been completely impossible for them.

The art style is a bit off kilter (this being the first original series created by studio SHAFT (the studio who animated the utterly batdroppings insane "Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei") With the character designs being fairly flat. the backgrounds on the other hand are an architecture fan's dream with the distinctly post modern backgrounds that make up the setting of Mitakihara city clearly having had a lot of time and effort put into them by the animators. It's when the characters enter a Witch's Barrier that things get really crazy with the art style shifting to become utterly insane, its hard to describe but for example theres a Witch who's Barrier appears to be made up entirely of paper cutouts. This serves to show just how different and outlandish the Witches are.

This is the kind of Anime that needs to be watched more than once really, its good on its own and visually spectacular (especially the Witch fights, some of which are astounding) but it takes a second viewing to notice just how much thought the writers put into it with lots of subtle and at first glance unnoticable foreshadowing. Then theres the hidden references, the show is packed full of them, from parallels with Goethe's "Faust" to hidden symbolilism and subtle hints about untold parts of the story (witches are especially prone to this with cypher language names and runes poping up all over the Barriers)

Whilst it could have benafited from a longer run (being only 12 episodes from start to finish) allowing for more character development and the use of some more witches (perhaps some less one sided fights since the girls usually banish the creatures with little or no difficulty or get utterly kerbstomped with no real in between). I'd highly recommend this show to anyone.

I guess I just have a thing for shows that let you come up with your own theories and conclusions (*cough* Higurashi *cough *cough*)

(Jeez what a wall of text this was only meant to be a 10 minute or so reply XD)

TL:DR: Seconding recommendation of Higurashi (Oh and Basilisk IS prety excelent if a bit obscure) also recommending Umineko for some more similar stuff to Higurashi, NHK for some excelent slice of life and Madoka for some gritty Magical girl based Awesomesauce.

(Brief side note Higurashi isn't ACTUALLY "Killer Lolis" since the only one of the younger cast members who ever actually does any killing is from a manga exclusive side arc (although technically you could count one other but this post has gone on long enough and debating Higurashi is completely off topic =p)

Wow, that really was a wall of text. I too can recommend Madoka, though probably not at such length.

Ok another one for the thread:

Nichijou - slice of life, school life, comedy. Follows a couple groups of characters with their everyday lives. However, compared to how normal it may sound, The comedy for this Series is completely off the walls bonkers. If you enjoy very happy and cute feel good anime, then this is perfect.

The stories are a bit random to start with, but it mainly follows the wish of a robot girl to be a normal teenager and attend school. Loveable characters, Laugh out loud ridiculousness, if you need some cheering up give this one a watch.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica sounds awesome!

One I'd reccomend would be Genshiken, as well as its OVA and second series. Its about an anime club at a university and their various fanboyish-otaku tendencies. Not going to go wall of text in depth like Lapster, but its a really funny and relateable series.

*Requests index for lapster's post* xD ... I'm watching higurashi atm, its amazing ;D

Meths wrote:

*Requests index for lapster's post* xD

But adding an Index would make it even LONGER! D=

Putting forward the ones I've seen or are watching:

Black Lagoon:

Revolves around a office assistant that gets kidnapped by modern pirates, The Lagoon company. He starts to like them and when his captors free him, he develops Stockholm syndrome, (Feelings for your captors), after all, his company decided it better if he died so he joined Lagoon company.

Then it develops into his relationships with the characters and what they're like, as well as plently of violence, guns and blood along these adventures they find themselves in, including: 2 killer Loli's, A crazy housemaid with a Spas 12, A Russian mob that used to be an army, and a mute gothic chick called Nina who favours a chainsaw.

Needless to say it's epic, I haven't revealed everything however as I highly suggest you watch it.

Outlaw Star:

About a guy called Gene Starwind and his friend Jim are pretty much freelancers that do any job given to them, but good circumstances come across them and they find themselves with a ship, (Called the Outlaw Star, ), the ship is set to find the "Galactic Layline" where untold treasures await.

Pretty awesome for old anime, it's got some epic characters in it, my favourite is Aisha Clan Clan, (Watch it and you'll see why ;D), it's got a love story, it's got action, what more could you want.

Death Note: If you watch anime or read manga I'd be very surprised if you haven't seen this, but anyways, Death Note is about a man named Light Yagami, (Lol Lights last name backwards), who finds a book called a Death Note that a Shinigami called Ryuuk has dropped into the human world because he is bored. The Death Note kills anyone whose name is written into it.

Light gets said book, and plans to become a god. Many people die and others get involved, including L, (Hottie Hot Hottie!! ), but I won't reveal errythang.

Gonna watch Madoka ep 1 tonight, will post my thoughts tomorrow

Finished watching Macross Frontier today. It's part of the long running Macross series which combines Mechs and Idol singers with surprisingly good results. The plot centers around a love triangle between Alto Saotome (a pilot for private military contractor SMS) an extremely famous Idol called Sheryl Nome and aspiring Idol Ranka Lee. Whilst technically a Mecha show its often more of a straight up Space Opera which just happens to have mechs. This is all set to the backdrop of the 55th large scale colonisation fleet "Macross Frontier" (A gargantuam colony ship containing over 10 million humans and Zentradi (the race of giants who invaded earth in the original Macross) as the fleet comes into contact with the insectiod race known as the Vajra.

Some excelent fight scenes synched to the singing of the aforementioned Idols (The final battle to a medley of every song from the series thus far is absolutely spectacular), likeable characters and some fairly decent plot twists make this one absolutely worth a watch.
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