Top 10 Favorite Anime/Movies


Shinmaru

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It's been a couple of years since we had this topic, so I figure it is fair game. Everyone's lists have to have changed at least a bit -- I know mine is drastically different now.

Feel free to mix series and movies in your list. I'm going to make separate lists, because it would take me forever to compile a mixed list, haha.

Favorite anime:

1. Revolutionary Girl Utena

2. Monster

3. Eureka Seven

4. RahXephon

5. Ouran High School Host Club

6. Cowboy Bebop

7. Clannad

8. Saikano

9. Gurren Lagann

10. Boogiepop Phantom

Utena is my favorite because it is the most daring, off-kilter series I have ever seen. It's quite bizarre, and it doesn't always work, but when it does, Utena is magic. Monster is an excellent thriller and has my favorite protagonist and antagonist in all of anime. Eureka Seven is just wonderful -- excellent character development, brilliant action and one of the most positive experiences I've had watching anime. Can't imagine anyone being unhappy after finishing it. RahXephon has dropped a bit for me, but I still appreciate it for being an excellent, human story. Ouran is just friggin' hilarious and has great characters.

Cowboy Bebop is what hooked me onto anime; I'll always have love for it. Clannad is a great mix of drama and humor, and it is gorgeous to boot. Saikano, well, I think that the very act of making my top 10 is a testament to how superb the second half of the anime is, especially since I didn't enjoy the first few episodes quite as much as I would have liked. Gurren Lagann is just crazy, over the top fun. Been a while since I watched Boogiepop Phantom, but thinking about it still gives me the creeps, haha.

Favorite movies:

1. Grave of the Fireflies

2. 5 Centimeters Per Second

3. The Place Promised in Our Early Days

4. The Girl Who Leapt through Time

5. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

6. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

7. Spirited Away

8. The Castle of Cagliostro

9. Perfect Blue

10. Voices of a Distant Star

Grave of the Fireflies is still one of the most painful, moving movies I have ever seen, animated or not. 5 Centimeters Per Second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days and Voices of a Distant Star are all wonderful, gorgeous movies from Makoto Shinkai. If you love animation, even if you are not fond of anime, you need to see these movies, if only to be floored by the visuals (although I think the stories are solid or better in all of them). I am a mark for time travel stories, and The Girl Who Leapt through Time is one of the more fun, joyous time travel stories I can remember.

Jin-Roh is excellent -- Kazuki Fuse is one of the best characters I've seen in an anime movie. Nausicaa and Spirited Away are both high quality movies from Hayao Miyazaki; I think I prefer Nausicaa because the title character is a good, inspiring heroine. The Castle of Cagliostro is just a boatload of fun, as expected from Lupin III. Perfect Blue is the kind of mindscrew movie I enjoy when it is done right.

So there you go. How about everyone else?

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  • 1 month later...

Excellent choices.

My favorites fall out something like this:

Favorite Series:

1. Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo - This series has it all; amazing and unique art style, interesting and involved plot, intriguing, well-developed characters.

2. Revolutionary Girl Utena - An absolutely amazingly written and acted series with lots of depth, heavy character development, stylization, symbolism and allegories, and people with lots of issues, that has a lot of details you'll notice on subsequent watchthroughs.

3. Baccano! - This series manages and develops thirty characters in three different times/storylines that all intersect with each other, and manages to wrap it all up and do it well, all in the space of thirteen episodes.

4. Paranoia Agent - Classic Kon mindfuck, with interesting incidental characters who end up all linking to each other, and a crazily convoluted plot.

5. Victorian Romance Emma - This is far from your standard shoujo series. The historical accuracy, which adds in a defiance of typical shoujo standards, and the way it invests you in every one of its characters make it shine. The slower pacing of the episodes and the romance feels just right, and the faithfulness to the manga source in story and art style are a real treat.

Favorite Movies:

1. Grave of the Fireflies - An absolutely heartbreaking film; just be sure to keep anything you can hurt yourself with far far away.

2. Adolescence of Utena - Best described as the TV series retold in two hours or less with different plot elements bought up or discarded, with some characters absent, and lots and lots of symbolism and, some would argue, a heavy dose of crack.

3. Paprika - Another classic Kon mindfuck, based in the line between dreams and reality and how they can blur, with a beautifully convoluted plot and interesting characters.

4. Howl's Moving Castle - Excellent retelling of the Diana Wynne Jones novel, absolutely beautifully animated.

5. Pom Poko - satire + the Japanese financial boom and its environmental effects + Japanese folklore = xD

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  • 1 month later...

Ooh, good choice at No. 1. I recently watched Gankutsuou and loved it. The plot and characters had me gripped from scene one, and the visuals are outstanding.

Baccano! is fun, too. Episode one is so insanely confusing on first watch that I wasn't sure how well I could keep track of everything, but the series does a remarkable job of juggling a crapload of characters, plots and timelines.

Adolescence of Utena just barely missed my top 10 movies. My favorite part is

Shiori playing Chessmaster the entire movie, and then getting royally fucked by Utena and Anthy in, like, five seconds. That is hysterical.

My top 10 anime has updated since I posted. It now looks like this:

1. Revolutionary Girl Utena

2. Monster

3. Eureka Seven

4. RahXephon

5. Gankutsuou

6. Ouran High School Host Club

7. Cowboy Bebop

8. Clannad

9. Honey and Clover

10. Saikano

Honey and Clover is a wonderful, surprisingly mature romantic comedy. It never takes the easy way out with the characters or romance, and the emotional payoffs in the end are (mostly) excellent because of that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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