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Originally Posted by arkangel
I'm a complete anime / manga noob. My last roomate laughed hard when I picked up his copy of Claymore and attempted to read it from the front cover.
His anime advice for me was to start off with Ghost in a Shell and Akira so I'm guessing these are two of the better known ones in the western world?
I'm not much for franchises that resemble robotech, zelda, pokeman, sailor moon. Excuse my ignorance, but did I just eliminate everything or is there a lot more manga/anime that someone could recommend ?  |
Hey, nothing wrong with being a noob; we all start out as noobs at some point! There's definitely a lot out there; particularly when you're first starting, as you don't know at that stage which genres you're into - so it's basically a process of trying some of the more well-known stuff and going from there.
If you think there's any chance at all that you'd like horror anime, I can't recommend Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust enough. There are two VHD flicks, but I feel that Bloodlust is the best film.
For more recent stuff, you could check out the Cowboy Bebop movie - you don't need to know anything about the series to enjoy it and if you do like it, you can could get into the Cowboy Bebop series from there.
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Originally Posted by JamieH
As for NGE, the biggest problem is Shinji. No wonder they can't get their **** together when their so called ace pilot whines about every damn thing. And then there's the emotionless stone that is Rei. Not to forget one of the biggest ****s in all of anime, Asuka. Argue that they all have mental illness to some degree, but it doesn't completely absolve them of their actions, or inaction. There not a single character on the show that isn't ****ed in the head some how or another. Eventually you find out each one of them has some sort of hang up. Yet, these are the people put in charge and expected to save humanity? There had to be one hell of a curve on the psych evaluation tests.
Then there's the religious overtones people say NGE has. To some degree, yeah, but not every cross in NGE has meaning. It just seems like more shock and awe put there to grab your attention. And the way they "built" the mechs is so ****ing nuts you'd think it was the Russian government that made the decisions at Nerv. Which, considering how Gendo acts and runs things he might as well be a crooked Russian polititician.
People take NGE way too seriously too. I mean really, those skin tight plug suits are the uniforms for piloting the units? They even had Shinji wear the girls' plug suit before his was made. There's no grey area with the two leading young ladies either. It's either a raging, dominating **** or a soulless, submissive doll.
It's been a long while since I've watched NGE. Every time I've tried going back to watch it again I end up dropping it from annoyance. I first watched it on VHS as each tape came out from the now defunct ADV. That's some 15 or so years ago. I did watch it a few time on tape just to make sure I saw what I saw. Then again when it was released on DVD. But it has been some time since I watched it. Yet Shinji's moaning and crying like a little bitch can't be forgotten, unfortunately.
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Yeah look, Shinji was a watchable character when I was 16 and in love with my own angst, but as an adult I just want to slap him. Asuka I don't mind - I've actually got a fair bit of time for her since she at least gives Shinji a serve every now and then, but I don't see the appeal of Rei at all. Then you add in the scene with Shinji over the hospital bed, and the movie that they did for the ending... nygh.
Despite all that, I feel like maybe I should give Rebuild Of Evangelion a chance... if for no other reason than the idea of Asuka with an eye-patch intrigues me!
Oh and hey, I should clarify, when I said keep it non-bashy, I just meant non-bashy of anime culture (as we already have a thread for that, haha j/k). It's totes ok to talk about what we don't like about certain series.
I really like anime, but if I had to pick one thing I wish they'd do less of, it'd be that so many series have such completely soul-crushingly depressing endings. It's kind of a love/hate thing with me; they do such a great job with emotionally dark scenes, but at the same time there's some series where I deliberately avoid watching the endings because of it being such a downer.