Anime that flew under the radar... and just plain underrated anime

[Jazoni89]

Ergo Proxy has not received enough love, that's for sure. Not that anyone's unduly trashed it, It's just that I'm the only person I know who's even heard of it.

I watched about halfway through Ergo Proxy.
I stopped after the 'Book Store' episode, because, quite frankly, it's the most poorly paced anime I've seen. The writing, beyond being horrifically confusing, is also just heavy with pseudo-intellectual philosophy, and the story was barely holding any semblance of coherency.

I mean, I basically 'got' what was going on, but they presented it in a terrible way.
The animation itself was just awesome. The characters, the movement, the environments: Just fantastic.
The writing? Awful. Just terrible. Everyone has a ridiculous soliloquy that they have to go into about life and death and love and hate and every other black and white emotion, not to mention that Vincent is probably the most annoying character since Shinji from Evangelion.

I went from watching that into watching 'Darker Than Black', and what a breath of fresh air that was. Coherent stories, much more organically written, far more interesting characters...I just wish I could combine the animation of 'Ergo' with the story of 'Darker'. That would be sweet.

This is all subjective, of course. It's just how I felt about it.

More on topic: I'll have to wind my way through this thread to find something else to watch!
I've only got 4 episodes left for 'Darker Than Black'!

Im in the same camp as you baby tea, i couldn't even watch ergo proxy for five minutes without being mindfucked, it's way too confusing for my liking.

On the other hand, I totally agree with you on Darker than black. The story even manages to avoid many clitche's, and tropes that plague anime as a whole. One example of this is being that one of the main characters is a old man, and him being a fully fleshed out character with his own back story and story arc. Most anime's don't have that, as they tend to have main characters that are either whiny teenagers, or moody twenty something's, it was a great change of tone, and was one of the things that made it stand out in my mind.

 

[Silentghost]

I belong to an anime club for my local college, about 20~25 members, and we vote on what we want to watch every week. It's really sad when we have about 100 different series on the club harddrive and most of them get ignored in favor of mainstream stuff. Outlaw Star, FLCL, YuYu Hakusho, Trigun, ect... are all great anime, but I already OWN the collectors edition of those. I go to club to see new things I missed!

The biggest reason why I find some anime go "under the radar" is because people are just afraid anything that's not mainstream, aka "televised in america", is going to be bad, creepy, or both. Recently we did start watching Uwaremono (sp?) but that is just sneaking past the vote. Currently Kiachou Wa Maid-Sama is dominating, along with a few other popular Highschool Comedy/Romance anime.

People are comfortable with those anime and dont feel... challenged by them I guess. We watched Higurashi for awhile and now it gets voted down every time. The murder/mystery theme was too far out of most members comfort zone. Princess Tutu did get voted up at one point, but that was only so half the group could troll it. (They do the same with Digimon >.>)

I know certian genre like giant robot/mecha anime (my personal favorite) do get a bad rap from the really bad ones that just ooze with fanservice/whathaveyou. Currently I'm trying to get Gun/Diebuster voted up so people will stop raving/hating on Gurren-Lagann for that reason. If that ever goes through I may someday get the group to watch some of the Brave Series. GaoGaiGar only chumped out a bit on fanservice for Final, and Dagwon was eyecandy for girls half the time.

 

[scorptatious]

I'm pretty sure not many people have actually heard of Kare Kano. Currently watching it right now.

It's a pretty funny and light-hearted anime. Just be prepared for synopsizes of the of ALL the episodes before it at the beginning of each and every episode though.

 

[Impluse_101]

I've looked through all the pages of this thread. Not one of you shameless people has even mentioned Aria.

Aria has ended as an anime, and I would say it's the best ending of any anime I've ever seen or wanted!

If you actually wanna try and find it. The anime is in three seasons.

Aria the Animation.
Aria the Natural.
Aria the Organization.

I will say this since I know one of you would go on blindly expecting something like idk what I usually expect from humans of the internet.

It is about this girl who's name is Mizunashi Akari. Who travels from Man Home (Earth) to the new Mars which has been renamed Aqua. Her wish is to become a Prima Undine, an official gondolier, and works at Aria Company, one of the three gondolier companies of Aqua.

Edit: Btw, I've only seen one person on the espacist even have anything relating to Aria, and that was the Avatar that was on the profile.

 

[ckam]

I've mentioned this before but I like Now and Then, Here and There. It's a beautiful anime that isn't afraid of tackling some pretty harsh subjects.

 

[Flying Pilgrim]

Desert Punk, it is just so awesome, but they never continued it. Both the manga and the anime had that horrible cliffhanger ending.

 

[steam_marc]

Almost certainly Bacanno, it seems to have gone way under the radar, which is a damn shame, as it's one of the best animes I've ever seen.

It's set in 1930's america, and focuses on a wide group of people, with no real main character. It flits back and forth between 1930, 1931 and 1932, as well as a brief detour in 1711, which spices up the plot considerably. I can't really give much more of the plot away with getting into spoilers, given that it's largely mystery drien, but suffice to say, most of the characters paths interlink on a train ride, and the events that follows. There's immortals, a hilariously psychotic hitman, and some of the best comic relief I've ever seen. (they ended up being my favourite characters in fact.)

Oh, and don't read the wiki description of the plot overview. It goes through it chronologically, revealing a lot immediately, as well as ruining half the fun of seeing it all slot together piece by piece. It stands up really well to repeat viewings because of this too.

Anyway to sum it up: Why the hell aren't you watching this already?

Edit: 2 more things. Firstly: Watch the dub. It's fantastic, and it feels a lot more authentic given that it's set in america, and gangster era at that.

secondly, you can watch the first few dubbed episodes for free on youtube. (it gets better after the first by the way, which is a bit too chaotic.)

Agree wholeheartedly, except instead of being "one of the best", it becomes "the best"!

 

[Marik2]

I'll throw in "Le chevalier D'eon" and possibly Black Lagoon, though Bl is pretty well known.

Yeah there really needs to be more anime like D'eon, Im tired of the usual fanservice and over the top expressions.

And this on fits that description well.
Shigofumi

 

[gigastar]

Mahou Sensei Negima-
There is an anime adaptation of the only series to break the character page system on TvTropes, currently the character page has seven [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/MahouSenseiNegima] subpages.

Theres actually two adaptations, an anime of the same name as the manga which follows a couple of the first story arcs before going off into its own plot and ending. Then Negima!? which is much, much more hilarious and has its own story. As well as the only anime intro and outro ive ever bothered to watch on a marathon, which ive done three times.

Oh then theres an OVA series based on the events of the latest story arc, and an upcoming movie later this year which picks up where the OVA's left off.

Both animes and the OVA's can be found on any decent anime website. As far as I know at least.

 

[WayOutThere]

Kurau Phantom Memory, as the OP said, is very good. Actually I consider it the best anime I've ever seen, reaching into the sublime. As the point of this thread is to bring attention to sadly overlooked/underrated shows, I'd like to point out the show is available in full on Hulu until the 19th of this month. You'd do well to give it a shot.

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

I don't know if it counts but I'm gonna say Time of Eve,everything about it is just beautiful.

I really liked Time of Eve. I stumbled on it completely by accident and really enjoyed it. I recommended it to a few of my friends.

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

Forgive me if I misspell this. XD

Utawaremono. I think that's how it's spelled. It's not super OMG level great, but I liked it and thought it was pretty good.

Golden Boy, Berserk, mostly because those two are older and have a less refined style than the stuff we tend to see today.

I like Bakamonotagari. I haven't seen a lot of people mention it or many who even know what it is, but I liked the style of it and I thought it was really well done.

Claymore and Black Lagoon, although those two seem to be semi-popular, they're not as widely known as others. Gantz as well, although I'd recommend the manga.

Toradora! was also good, along with Clannad and Shuffle!.

I'll probably think of more later. XD

 

[Ladette]

As far as most underrated, Wolf's Rain. I've met maybe 5 people who've seen it.

I'm a bit suprised that so few people have heard of Baccano! It's a bit off the wall, but I figured the insanity and violence would appeal to a wider audience.

Another one is Digimon Tamers. A lot of people don't give it a chance because the first two seasons of Digimon were really goofy, and the second season was kinda crappy. I remember watching some of Tamers when I was younger, but it didn't really sink in. I watched it again a few weeks ago and holy crap it's awesome!

Lastly, Chobits. I. Love. Chobits.

 

[PhoenixKing]

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE! How could you hate Air? The ending was so perfect and so sad, it's amazing. But, as you had said, Digimon is the mutual series between us, and I applaud you for liking it. Tamers was sthe best in terms of everything, from character development to action to plot, although season 1 was a really close second.

Okay, all I ever saw was the TV series (plus the 3 extra episodes) and I have to admit that I was pretty intrigued. But then it reached that third arc with the crow and it's like everything crumbled. For me, it seemed like all the time I had invested in what was going on was wasted because (again, in my opinion) nothing was resolved; nothing changed. Everybody involved is still screwed, sorta like if the Death Star succeeded in blowing up the Rebel Base in Star Wars (IV). Okay, I admit that I was looking for a happy ending to some extent only to later learn that Key Studio games usually don't have happy endings and stuff. Not that I must have some kind of perfect "happily ever after" but I still feel that it could have left something for the efforts of the heroes.

Oh I see, it's a problem of expectation. I went in to the show expecting a super depressing show where everybody dies, and i got something pretty close to it so I was realy happy while being depressingly sad.

 

[bj_waters]

Oh I see, it's a problem of expectation. I went in to the show expecting a super depressing show where everybody dies, and i got something pretty close to it so I was realy happy while being depressingly sad.

So then you already knew the plot? Played the game or read about it or something like that before you ever saw it? I see. Yeah, I just went in blind, not expecting that kind of ending at all.

 

[RadicalDreamer90]

Liar Game nuff said.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Great Teacher Onizuka

I barely hear anything about this from people.

 

[PhoenixKing]

Oh I see, it's a problem of expectation. I went in to the show expecting a super depressing show where everybody dies, and i got something pretty close to it so I was realy happy while being depressingly sad.

So then you already knew the plot? Played the game or read about it or something like that before you ever saw it? I see. Yeah, I just went in blind, not expecting that kind of ending at all.

I didn't really know anything about the series. I asked my anime-loving friend what it's about, and he told me it's really depressing. So I kinda prepared myself for everyone dying in the end. And I got that in a very epic way.

 

[Gnarynhar]

I adored Ayatsuri Sakon. A slow paced murder mystery series.

A for those who have mentioned it, I loved Plantes, despite never having seen the last few eps.
And Yakitake! Japan is just pure fun.