November 12, 2010

The best animes



My favorites!


It always comes down to this. Which anime to recommend? Which type of anime do I enjoy most? It is really difficult to recommend anime as it's so much based on opinion. I've watched around 3000 episodes of anime, over 150ish unique animes and out of all those there are but a few I really would recommend to anyone.

Firstly I'll just mention this first. For me to give a 10/10 it would have to be an incredible anime in all perspectives, so here's a few things I would give points for:

Overall it's a simple 10 point system, without almost perfectly filling all the following categories, a 9-10 is impossible.
Voiceacting/music/songs: 2-3 points
Artwork/graphics: 2-3 points
Plot: 2-3 points.

Remaining points would be what I feel about the anime. Do I feel like I have to see it to the end? Strong feelings are also important. Does it make me feel sad if it's supposed to be a sad seen? Only a few animes have ever made me almost cry over how sad it is. Does it make me feel happy when it's going well? Can I really immerse myself in the anime? It's all really hard to describe but this is one ofthe most important parts, probably 3-5 points here in general.

So which animes are my favorites? It varies. But some animes stand out among all others. Here are a few of my all-time favorites:

Ouran Highschool Host Club 10
Tsubasa Chronicles 9
Code Geass 10
Fullmetal Alchemist 10
Pokemon (until Johto) 8


Favorite shoujo:
Vampire Knight 10
Nana 9

Favorite Shounen:
Major 9
HunterXHunter 8
Naruto 8


All of these are personal opinions obviously. Some are based on nostalgia or being the inspiration to countless animes.


HunterXHunter

It's a pretty old anime and one of the first I ever watched. It aired 1999, that's 3 years before Naruto. To be that old it's incredibly cool and have inspired many animes. The power of "nen" that exists in HunterXHunter is exactly like chakra in Naruto. Nen can be used to protect yourself, a bit like a shield/forcefield that reduces damage you take from a hit. It can also be used to make a weapon or punch hit that much harder by focusing your "aura" there.

Overall, Nen being a really cool thing that opens up a lot of possibilities.There are also amazing characters. I just love Hisoka, a mass murderer who seeks to fight only the strongest. He is a joker who uses playing cards as weapons mostly and is a really funny character, yet also dark and scary.
Kurapica is also an incredibly cool character who uses chains reinforced with Nen to attack his opponents. As the last remaining Kuruta clan he is obsessed with revenge against the ones who wiped out his clan. Sasuke, anyone? He is incredibly powerful and does anything he can to gain power, at the cost of almost loosing his life. If he uses his powers against anyone who isn't his nemesis, he dies immediately.

Despite not including romance nor cutting edge artwork possible now 11 years after the release of the anime, I'd still recommend anyone who loves shounen to watch this anime. It's amazing, the OVA, Greed Island OVA and Greed Island Final OVA (all taking part after the anime) are the best parts of it.

Pokemon





The anime revolves around the card game/ game boy games where you are a young trainer who just started out. In this world trainers are people who catch monsters, pokemon, and trains them to be partners for life. Trainers sometimes fight with eachothers monsters or compete in contests but most of all, they love pokemon! But to the despair of the world.. The evil Team Rocket is trying to ruin it all, and catch all everyone's pokemon!

This is the first anime I ever saw. Pokemon then digimon but I didn't enjoy digimon as much so I'll ignore that for now! Pokemon is the root to a lot of anime too. There are so many animes where you have monsters as pets or have monsters fighting for you. It's a common theme. But what made pokemon so amazing? It was original. Ash Ketchum fighting for what he really liked and those weird monsters he ended up with were pretty cool.

Though after the pokemon league and maybe orange league.. It kind of went out of hand. Each and every time he fail the pokemon league he would throw away all his pokemons and pikachu which should be incredibly powerful after 1000 episodes worth of fighting, still looses to a trainer who just recieved their first pokemon, lvl 4. Really? Please. . . . ..

But it's still a good anime. I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone. It's aimed at pretty young people. Pokemon will always be that nostalgic anime that started my anime interest and I'll always love it for that.


Ouran Highschool Host Club





The story revolves around the poor girl Haruhi Fujioka who somehow attends the famous and amazing school Ouran Highschool - well known for it's well performing students and high standards. But Haruhi can't even afford the school uniform, if it was damaged, she could never replace it. She wears an old shirt, vest and trousers and together with her unkept hair... Noone knows she's a girl. One day she enters the clubroom to a strange club.. A host club! It's a club that tries to fill every need of the higher class ladies in school. They are very rich, pretty and princesslike and needs charming princes to serve them coffee and talk to them on their breaks.

By accident, Haruhi crashed an item belonging to the club and is asked to pay up or join the club and work until she's no longer in dept. Tamaki and the twins Hikaru and Kaoru eventually finds out that she's a girl and all falls in love with her - an extremely funny and great plot follows.

Out of all animes that I've ever watched - after thousands of episodes and hundreds of animes - this is the one I'd always recommend to anyone. It's such an amazing anime. There's nothing in it that is bad. I can't find a flaw that could be improved. Beautiful characters and artwork, great voiceactors and awesome plot. It is the best comedy out there and includes enough romance to make it interesting to just about anyone.


Code Geass

The child and prince Lelouch Li Britannia gets to witness his mother being brutally murdered but his father did not care. He sent Lelouch and his sister Nunally to Japan to basically be political hostages.

But Lelouch is incredibly intelligent and hides his true name and starts to lead a new life, while tending to his sister who is blind. Suddenly he gets into a tight spot and meets up with the beautiful C2/shi-tsu/C.C. who boasts a power unmatched to anyone. It strengthens the wearer by giving powers reflecting the deepest desires in ones heart. C2 makes magical contract with Lelouch, thus saving him and seemingly herself. Lelouch now gets the mystical power of "Geass" that makes him able to command anyone to do anything, if he is able to get eye-contact with them.

Apart from being pretty tragic and angsty from time to time, this is one of the best animes I've ever watched. The artwork is made by clamp so it's safe to say.. beautiful characters and artwork everywhere. All the costumes people are wearing looks good and "realistic". The music is also pretty good and the voiceacting really great. One of the best animes ever made.

The only downside of this anime is that it is pretty dark. People die and not just the enemies. The story is also very deep with psychological questions being put forth frequently. Is Lelouch evil for wanting to bring down the horrible Britannian empire that invaded Japan? Is his "Geass" powers really safe to use? Are his friends trustworthy? A lot of things happen in the anime but it is amazing and definately has to be seen.

Anime season fall/winter 2010

There is not much happening on the cosplay front until june next year. It's so far away. So I got an interesting idea. Why don't I blog a little bit on ongoing animes which I usually end up checking out anyway.


Currently ongoing anime

Star Driver
Bakuman
Yosuga no Sora
Fortune Arterial
Amagami SS
Shiki
Kami nomi zo shiru sekai/ The World God Only Knows
-
Sora no Otoshimono:
Mm!
Otome Yokai Zakuro
Shinra! Ika Musume

These are the ongoing animes I've atleast seen 1-2 episodes of. The ones below the "-" are the ones I simply cannot watch.. They contain little interesting plot, ridiculous ammounts of fanservice or are not interesting, hence I won't comment those at all.
The 7 others really are great - in general there is only 2-3 animes I can stand watching, the rest are just fanservice filled nonsense. They might not be 10/10, but atleast 6-9/10.

Bakuman is an interesting lovestory about a boy who aspires to be a manga artist, he's in love with a girl whom probably loves him too but neither of them dare even talk to eachother. The main character and his best friend is desperately trying to make an amazing manga.. Somehow he ended up promising to marry his crush if he made a successful manga, and she agreed to it.









Shiki is the best horror anime I've ever watched, but seriously, don't watch it alone in a dark house at the dead of night. It's quite scary from time to time. The story is about a strange and deadly epidemic spreading in a small town deep in the mountains. Very well drawn and interesting plot. Definately give it a shot if you'd like to watch something somewhat original and a bit scary.










Yosuga no Sora is a love story, while not my favorite this season it's the one with the best art. It's very well drawn and has some really interesting parts and some really cliché parts. I can't really decide wheither to drop it or not. Something keeps me from dropping it, so it's atleast a 6/10 way above average yet not that amazing.

On a sidenote, if you plan to watch this I hope you don't mind ecchi.








Amagami SS: Suffers from being really annoying. It's made from a dating sim, meaning there are like 8 different girls that all (might come to) love the main character. Now they decided to make 8 different endings for it, each volume with 3-4 chapters per girl... So basically the story is screwed up. Other than that, it's a pretty cute story and has a lot of comedy in it. Some fanservice, some ecchi but on a moderately "alright" level, not way over the top.








Fortune Arterial: Apart from the cliché accident of the main character being tricked into a girls bathroom and getting beat up for it, it seems to be a really cool anime. A very interesting story about a shady student council ruling the school. The incredibly popular vice-president loves the main character.. Or would she love to eerm. "eat him"? Either way, it's beautiful and sports a lot of comedy so far. I bet the shady student council will be revealed later in the series, because there's a lot going on..

Probably one of the best this season. 8-9/10.





The World God Only Knows: A weird story of the gamer of all gamers who's cleared EVERY dating sim/ visual novel in the whole world. Someone from heaven definately must have been struck by lightning, because one man had to get the task of saving young girls by making them fall in love with that chosen one man.

The anime is really fun, though it is a bit repetitive and I have a hard time seeing how the story will progress with all the.. lets call it backtracking to not spoil anything.






Star Driver is a somewhat ridiculous mecha anime which is my current wild card. I'm watching it hoping that it'll be worth it after a while. I'm no fan of mecha and the plot is a bit poor but the artwork is alright and the main character is interesting, or I should say entertaining... 6/10, hoping for improvement later in the series.

As can be seen on the image, it looks a bit weird, not to mention childish. It seems like a shounen, mecha. But it does not have the same cool art as some other mecha animes. It does have the tag romance though I think, maybe it will turn out to be a good story somewhere in the shounen plot.