Best Anime?

[Kionon]

My favorite anime series:

1. Kimagure Orange Road
2. Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers
3. Shoujo Kakumei Utena/Revolutionary Girl Utena

If you I could get you to watch any anime, these three would be it.

Kimagure Orange Road has literally no bigger advocate in the world than me. I worked as an interpreter and assistant to the creator for a weekend, have a massive amount of KOR merchandise, and even my Japanese name (as in an actual real, legal, used-in-Japan name) is related to this manga/anime. To call me a fan would be an understatement. Otaku in the actual Japanese sense perhaps works, without some of the anti-social under (over?) tones. It's really hard to overstate just how much this series has impacted my life.

It should be right up your alley. It is a school life romantic comedy about a boy with special powers (but they're mostly used for comedy effect, and they're ultimately "window dressing" having only a small part in the overall plot), a juvenile delinquent rich girl with a complicated family life and mysterious past, and her best friend, a younger, seemingly immature and childish girl. Boy loves girl, best friend loves boy, girl secretly loves boy but doesn't want to hurt best friend, boy is too wishy-washy to refuse best friend's advances... It isn't just the trope, KOR created the trope with one-boy, two-girls, from the boy's perspective.

My own experiences with Japanese schools (nearly ten years of either being in the front of a class teaching or in a seat in the class learning from other teachers), I can assure you, if you can get past the animation style (if you're a youngin'), the world it depicts is still very much Japanese school life today. Clothing styles have changed a bit. Students have cell phones now. The music is pretty different. But school architecture was created around 60 years ago and hasn't changed. Classroom furniture is identical. Teachers' room desks are identical. Subjects are roughly still covered the same way. School uniforms are still identical (my school's uniforms, the gakuran for boys, and the sailor uniform for girls, haven't changed much in decades, a friend of mine's uniform was slightly different in color, because it was her twenty years older half sister's hand me down, but that was the only difference). Also KOR does two things which may be useful for someone who wants to learn more about Japanese culture and Japanese history/traditions: it has several episodes which cover normal rituals/holidays/events in Japan, and a number of episodes where the focus is on famous Japanese folk stories or legends. The Tanabata episode is one of my favorites.

While KOR is realistic "enough" in a the way that most "slice of life" anime is (which is to say, it's a good representation, but still has plenty of unrealistic slapstick happenings besides the special powers), Aoi Hana is realistic in a very different way. It serves to explore the tropes of "yuri" (girl/girl romance) and consider these tropes in the context of a far more realistic approach to LGBT experiences, specifically adolescent lesbian experiences, in Japan, and while it does take a few liberties, I think it serves as a successful critique to yuri portrayals and the manga (since the anime is only the first third of the manga) serves to quite accurately portray just how difficult it can to be "one of those people like that" in Japan. It is by far one of the most beautiful anime I have ever seen, and as a fan of the manga, I am beyond thrilled at how well the animation turns out. It is also very underrated, as it is exceedingly slow, because it really does keep pace with life... and frankly, most of life is rather boring. This is as real life as slice of life gets, and it's about an extremely important topic, as I know plenty of LGBT individuals here in Japan. My favorite of my AMVs, and the only AMV for which I have won multiple major awards, is the AMV I made for this series. I'm also a fan of the creator's other work, Hourou Musuko, which is about two transgender children, but I find it a bit too painful to easily watch, and honestly, as beautiful as the animation is, it constitutes such a teeny, tiny percentage of the manga, that the anime really doesn't do it justice at all. I'd recommend you read the manga, translated by Matt Thorn, rather than watch the anime series.

Shoujo Kakumei Utena really defies any attempt at summation that doesn't constitute spoiling. It's about a rescued princess who is so amazed by her prince that she wants to become a prince herself one day... But is that really such a good idea? Anything more, and spoilers. Utena is that intricate, that twisted, that deep. Suffice it to say, watch this one at least twice. You'll be amazed at what you missed the first time around. I've seen it multiple times and I still see things I didn't notice before.

A lot of my other favorite anime series are from the 1970s or 1980s. I have liked a few KyoAni works like Haruhi and Lucky Star, but a lot of the jokes didn't make much sense to me, especially in Lucky Star, until well after I had immigrated to Japan and started speaking Japanese as a daily language. Lucky Star especially makes me often wonder how much international fans are truly missing.

[Tigrin]

I second Toradora and Monthly Girl's Nozaki-kun, and also want to recommend Anohana and Your Lie in April for school kid drama/romance. The latter two can be tear-jerkers though, fair warning; Anohana is about a boy haunted by the ghost of a girl he loved, who has to bring his old group of friends back together to send her to heaven; Your Lie in April is about a boy who is a piano prodigy but loses the ability to play after his mother dies. He meets a girl who plays violin who encourages him to play again, etc.

In terms of just "you have to watch this if you like anime", I'd recommend Cowboy Bebop and Akira. I'd also recommend basically anything by Mamoru Hosoda (Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, The Boy and the Beast).

[Kionon]

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is awesome, but I really suggest you watch the original prequel live action too. The anime stands alone, of course, but there are references to the original prequel that can make the viewing a far deeper and richer experience. There are a number of live action adaptions now, but the original is from 1983, and that's the one you want to watch to understand how the anime Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (or TokiKake) is actually a sequel and not a "modern day" remake.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk3W5tLEm0w[/youtube]

[Dragonrider1227]

I can never recommend the 2003 Astro Boy enough. Especially if you find the japanese version. Terribly underrated IMHO