My faith in Anime is.....restored! Here's why.

[sextus the crazy]

Soooo....to make this into a discussion. What, if anything, has restored YOUR faith in Anime/ Manga? Or, if your faith hasn't been restored, what would be able to restore it?

Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Best anime I've seen in years.

Yes, Yes, and more yes. I'm not going to say that it made me regain my faith, but it certainly made me more invested in anime in general again. He'll it's the first (and only) anime I've bought non-DVD merch for.

 

[DeltaEdge]

I never really lost faith in anime as a whole, but I feel like Hunter x Hunter revitalized my interest in action shounen. It feels vastly different from other shonen titles like "The Big 3", although I like One Piece a lot, I feel like Hunter x Hunter is pretty much the best shounen there is at the moment, on going at least.

Unfortunately, the author goes on huge hiatuses, so even though it started in 1998, it only has 340 chapters out at the moment, and the latest hiatus has been going for over a year, due to health reasons if I remember correctly. The plus side to this though, is that since the original anime adaptation was cut short in around 2003-4, they started it over completely in 2011, but with higher quality, and a severe lack of filler like the first series had. There have only been 2 filler episodes so far if I recall correctly.

But yeah, I felt like I had found a real gem when I discovered Hunter x Hunter, and greatly recommend it to people who think the shounen genre has nothing to offer anymore to at least give it a try, althought it really picks up later, not at the beginning, not that the beginning is bad, but you don't really quite see the awesomeness of the series until later.

Spoiler: Some clips from the show

Oh, and I guess Sword Art Online brought me back to anime after what I felt was like 2 seasons of bland school life/ecchi anime, and dug up my .hack// nostalgia.

Uh, the original hunter x hunter series was pretty much filler free. As a matter of fact, the only filler was battleship island, which was AWESOME. HxH just got past the point where the original stopped, which means it's all new episodes.

Lately anime has been full of meh series. Sword art online got me pumped, but it's over now, but I hear it's coming back later this year with new episodes. I'll probably die of old age waiting for Hellsing: Ultimate to finish. Beserk the golden age gives me hope that we will see new stuff beyond the epic bummer of an ending that series got.

Huh, well I guess I should have watched more than the Greed Island OVAs before making that kind of baseless judgement (sorry). I just assumed it to be so because greed island seemed to move much more quickly in the 2011 version versus the 1999 version(Although I guess that's true for the entirety of the 2011 series), and I remember the fight between gon and genthru/gensuru taking around 2 episodes in the 1999 version, while the bulk of the fight really took place in about half an episode in the 2011 version, and there were some very long stare-downs which I considered to be filler in the 1999 version. Still, I guess I can't say about the other parts of the 1999 version though, but in any case, I love how quickly the 2011 version covers the story. Just to be clear though, when I say filler, I don't just mean outright filler episodes, I also mean scenes that are prolonged to help an episode fit a certain time-frame, which tends to happen when ongoing series like Naruto or One Piece release weekly episodes, and work off of a 1 chapter = 1 episode format.

As for beyond SAO's end, I got lucky in that there were quite a few anime that got new seasons that I became invested in when I was a bit younger, as well as some decent new stuff, so I wasn't bored with the selection. If I remember correctly, either the season right after SAO ended, or the one following that, I liked almost every ongoing anime available at the time, and could probably count on 1 hand the amount of stuff I'd consider bad.

This season, I haven't really been watching as much anime, studying for finals and what not, and playing more video games than spending time watching anime, so I'm pretty much covered this season with HxH 2011 and To aru Kagaku no Railgun. If I get bored, then I can go back and watch some stuff from last season that I stopped watching and didn't bother to catch up with after computer problems kept me from watching anime for a bit.

 

[Smeggs]

Restored by a one-two combo of Shingeki no Kyojin and Suisei no Gargantia. The first is a medieval fantasy, somewhat in the style of Berserk (IMO) about humanity trying to survive in a harsh world. The other is a variation on the "Avatar style" clash of civilizations; a sci-fi story.

Spoiler: Shingeki no Kyojin Opening

Spoiler: Suisei no Gargantia Opening

Both are, as of this moment, only 4 eps long (ongoing)...but the pacing is great, the characters are interesting, the settings immersive.

I'm really glad they exist...as I was getting really tired of the ubiquitous "school life" and "look at my ultra mega awesome asspull of a secret power/ technique" bull crap that gets made nowadays.

Soooo....to make this into a discussion. What, if anything, has restored YOUR faith in Anime/ Manga? Or, if your faith hasn't been restored, what would be able to restore it?

Oh yeah, also, Magi: the Labyrinth of Magic (although the first 15 eps or so are a real downer in terms of atmosphere and character interactions).

Huh. Odd. I literally just saw the first series as a manga at my public library the other week. It was called "Attack on Titan". Looks like these giant humanoid monsters called Titans just showed up and started totally wrecking Earth's shit, and the humans in the story are the last remnants of civilization.

 

[triggrhappy94]

If it's not Squid Girl or Siento Onii San, then I don't care.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

With Shingeki no Kyojin, it seems a bit more confusing and there's a lot of questions that don't rise a lot of interest. Is this the future, past, or an alternate reality or timeline? Are the swinging attached cables on their bodies a gimmick or central to the plot? Why are they fighting giants who seem to have no clue what's going on or are not harming anyone? What ARE the giants? I would probably want to check it out, but it's not that appealing to me.

As far as I can tell it's a alternate world that is similar to our own.

Also the cables are used to fight Titans, the Titans rampage through human villages, eating and killing anyone in their path with grins on their faces. They don't speak or have any sort of intelligence, they just eat and kill. The titans in the past nearly wiped out Humanity and are now getting closer to doing that again.

It's not even a matter of humans going into their territory, Humanity's territory is walled off and now the Titans are starting to break down the walls and move further in.

As for what the Titans are, no one really knows. It's still a mystery in the Manga which is further than the anime.

To elaborate on the cables, they're used to almost "climb" up to the giant, because without them killing them would be difficult.

Well that puts a lot of what's going on in the intro into context. If it's a manga, I'll definitely check that out first and if it still grabs my interest, I'll check out that anime. That usually how it works for me.

 

[Candidus]

I don't really see in any way how Valvrave is better than Gargantia. Valvrave has incredibly cliched characters and plot and Gargantia is anything but that.

What?

We're both talking about the Gargantia with a stoic soldier who's "gotta learn to feel" right? We're both talking about the Gargantia with the moe girl who's going to break his ice with uguu~, right? With the mother-of-all-anime-cliches on her shoulder, the improbably sapient squeeking pet mascot?

I guess we can't be. Or we'll just have to agree to disagree.

At least we're talking about the same MJP.

 

[Rafael Bronzatti]

I never really lost faith in anime as a whole, but I feel like Hunter x Hunter revitalized my interest in action shounen. It feels vastly different from other shonen titles like "The Big 3", although I like One Piece a lot, I feel like Hunter x Hunter is pretty much the best shounen there is at the moment, on going at least.

Unfortunately, the author goes on huge hiatuses, so even though it started in 1998, it only has 340 chapters out at the moment, and the latest hiatus has been going for over a year, due to health reasons if I remember correctly. The plus side to this though, is that since the original anime adaptation was cut short in around 2003-4, they started it over completely in 2011, but with higher quality, and a severe lack of filler like the first series had. There have only been 2 filler episodes so far if I recall correctly.

But yeah, I felt like I had found a real gem when I discovered Hunter x Hunter, and greatly recommend it to people who think the shounen genre has nothing to offer anymore to at least give it a try, althought it really picks up later, not at the beginning, not that the beginning is bad, but you don't really quite see the awesomeness of the series until later.

Spoiler: Some clips from the show

Oh, and I guess Sword Art Online brought me back to anime after what I felt was like 2 seasons of bland school life/ecchi anime, and dug up my .hack// nostalgia.

Uh, the original hunter x hunter series was pretty much filler free. As a matter of fact, the only filler was battleship island, which was AWESOME. HxH just got past the point where the original stopped, which means it's all new episodes.

Lately anime has been full of meh series. Sword art online got me pumped, but it's over now, but I hear it's coming back later this year with new episodes. I'll probably die of old age waiting for Hellsing: Ultimate to finish. Beserk the golden age gives me hope that we will see new stuff beyond the epic bummer of an ending that series got.

Huh, well I guess I should have watched more than the Greed Island OVAs before making that kind of baseless judgement (sorry). I just assumed it to be so because greed island seemed to move much more quickly in the 2011 version versus the 1999 version(Although I guess that's true for the entirety of the 2011 series), and I remember the fight between gon and genthru/gensuru taking around 2 episodes in the 1999 version, while the bulk of the fight really took place in about half an episode in the 2011 version, and there were some very long stare-downs which I considered to be filler in the 1999 version. Still, I guess I can't say about the other parts of the 1999 version though, but in any case, I love how quickly the 2011 version covers the story. Just to be clear though, when I say filler, I don't just mean outright filler episodes, I also mean scenes that are prolonged to help an episode fit a certain time-frame, which tends to happen when ongoing series like Naruto or One Piece release weekly episodes, and work off of a 1 chapter = 1 episode format.

As for beyond SAO's end, I got lucky in that there were quite a few anime that got new seasons that I became invested in when I was a bit younger, as well as some decent new stuff, so I wasn't bored with the selection. If I remember correctly, either the season right after SAO ended, or the one following that, I liked almost every ongoing anime available at the time, and could probably count on 1 hand the amount of stuff I'd consider bad.

This season, I haven't really been watching as much anime, studying for finals and what not, and playing more video games than spending time watching anime, so I'm pretty much covered this season with HxH 2011 and To aru Kagaku no Railgun. If I get bored, then I can go back and watch some stuff from last season that I stopped watching and didn't bother to catch up with after computer problems kept me from watching anime for a bit.

The new series cuts a lot that is on manga (Some events, characters toughts and so on.) While the first series moved at the smae pace the manga. Which is why I didn't whatch the new series until now. But now the series is going to make the Chimera Ant arch and I can't miss it. I do hope they slow down now.

 

[burymagnets]

As for the series that made me care again after years of watching no anime? JoJos Bizarre Adventure, of course. It's the best thing ever made.

So this.

I don't think that I can 'lose faith' in anime, I consider it a medium rather than a genre, but I don't think there have been as many great series recently as there used to be. For some reason all my favorite series came out between '98 and '05,even though I only got into anime fairly recently, that was just a great time for anime I guess.

That said, JBA, as an adaptation of the manga, is absolutely perfect.

 

[Vladimir Stamenov]

That's cause most modern anime is pantsu, lolicon, brocon, siscon, dumb fanservice... I mean LOOK at Highschool of the Dead, for fuck's sake. It's so bad it's actually bad! There aren't even animes of the "so bad it's good" anymore. They're fucking dumb, but they take themselves way too seriously.

 

[ninjapenguin1414]

I don't really see in any way how Valvrave is better than Gargantia. Valvrave has incredibly cliched characters and plot and Gargantia is anything but that.

What?

We're both talking about the Gargantia with a stoic soldier who's "gotta learn to feel" right? We're both talking about the Gargantia with the moe girl who's going to break his ice with uguu~, right? With the mother-of-all-anime-cliches on her shoulder, the improbably sapient squeeking pet mascot?

I guess we can't be. Or we'll just have to agree to disagree.

At least we're talking about the same MJP.

While you do have a point that doesn't change the fact that Valvrave has the more tired cliches. The love interest and "confession" that no one actually goes through with. The main character finds the "mega weapon/mecha/anything" which for some reason lets anyone pilot it. The sacrificing oneself for a "deal with the devil". And in my opinion (not that it's worth anything) the worst part is that for some reason this all takes place in a school when they could do a similar story with a more grown up cast if it was on some sort of military training base.

I also need to say that everything that has happened in Valvrave is concrete (except we don't know the actual reason the mecha is on that specific space station) and we don't know if the specific cliches will actually happen in Gargantia, given who it's written by anything could happen. Valvrave even had a great idea at first by killing off love interest girl but no that would be to crazy for people to comprehend cause apparently we the audience can't handle stories if they differ from the norm.

Once again this is all my opinion (and I was probably exaggerating by saying Gargantia had no cliches whatsoever), it's just the way I see these two shows when you compare them.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

It was never really broken, we just found that the grand majority are fairly generic and predictable in terms of character roles and formats (there must be more cute girl characters now than the total population of Japan). Ironic since the reason I got into it to start with watching it on YTV is that it was such a radically different style from any other show, and willing to do things that no American cartoon would dare ATT.

I still have difficulty believing that status honorifics are used to the degree portrayed in most Animes, even if it is endearing at times. I would say that I enjoyed Death Note the most along with Eureka Seven. If there was a new quality Shonen that reached Bleach-level popularity I might check it out, particularly if the protagonist was smarter/more genre savvy than what we're used to seeing.

That second one looks interesting though. Mecha set in a water world (I didn't see any land in the opening, just the massive barge city)?

 

[Karadalis]

The problem i have with Shingeki no Kyojin is the constant use of lengthy flashbacks... over and over and over again.. wich is really disrupting the flow.

Now in the anime so far it hasnt gotten to the point but after the latest episode the anime will constantly stop the main storyline for flashbacks if they stick to the manga.. wich till now they actually have pretty closely.

Anyways, Date a live is a fun little anime... its one of them harem anime that makes fun of all the "date games" that are popular in japan, throw in some final fantasy esque "spirit" girls and you have a nice fast food anime (easy to digest and just as easaly forgettable)

Then there is Hataraku Maou-sama! The story about a demon overlord who escaped to earth via portal from the angelic heroine... and now spends his time working as a "Mcronalds" employee trying to come by... but his old life kinda sorta followed him back to earth. Great humor in this one and even some serious bits here and there.

 

[8bitmaster]

For me it was the OVA Little Witch Academia. Its the length of any normal anime episode, plus the company that made it put it up on youtube (I'd embed it but embedding never works for me). It was interesting how it went from showing the main character's goal, to comedy to plot to overcoming the hero, to a satisfying conclusion all in just 30 minutes. Plus the art style to it was very well done The whole thing reminds me of something studio Gibli would do, but they didn't. I am just overall amazed with what was done with it, and I encourage everyone reading this to look for it on youtube. Its not that long, and its worth it, trust me. I'm watching quite a lot of animes currently, and little witch academia is still one of the best things in anime I've seen in ages.

edit: and I was beaten to mentioning it. Ah well, still go watch it. It's amazing! (or your internet money back)

 

[porous_shield]

It was never really broken, we just found that the grand majority are fairly generic and predictable in terms of character roles and formats (there must be more cute girl characters now than the total population of Japan). Ironic since the reason I got into it to start with watching it on YTV is that it was such a radically different style from any other show, and willing to do things that no American cartoon would dare ATT.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same YTV but I started watching anime because of that channel as well and for the same reasons. For me it was Inuyasha and Ghost in the Shell that blew me away.

The Big 3 and cutesy anime leave sour tastes in my mouth but there are so many that I haven't watched that that feeling doesn't last long.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Restored by a one-two combo of Shingeki no Kyojin and Suisei no Gargantia. The first is a medieval fantasy, somewhat in the style of Berserk (IMO) about humanity trying to survive in a harsh world. The other is a variation on the "Avatar style" clash of civilizations; a sci-fi story.

Spoiler: Shingeki no Kyojin Opening

Spoiler: Suisei no Gargantia Opening

Both are, as of this moment, only 4 eps long (ongoing)...but the pacing is great, the characters are interesting, the settings immersive.

I'm really glad they exist...as I was getting really tired of the ubiquitous "school life" and "look at my ultra mega awesome asspull of a secret power/ technique" bull crap that gets made nowadays.

Soooo....to make this into a discussion. What, if anything, has restored YOUR faith in Anime/ Manga? Or, if your faith hasn't been restored, what would be able to restore it?

Oh yeah, also, Magi: the Labyrinth of Magic (although the first 15 eps or so are a real downer in terms of atmosphere and character interactions).

Me too I grew up on trigun and cowboy bebop so school anime and cutesy anime dont do anything for me. Havent seen anything but shingeki no kyojin Ill check out the other two.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Based soley on the content provided on the openings of the two animes, I'm more interested in watching Suisei no Gargantia more so than Shingeki no Kyojin. The reason being is that Suisei no Gargantia reminds me of another anime that I am completely fond of: Eureka seveN.

They both seem to have a mecha centered plot, have characters that are soaring through the air with some form of tool/machine, the characters are stylized and appealing, the plot seems mysterious and intriguing, and there's a cast of diverse and hopefully interesting individuals.

With Shingeki no Kyojin, it seems a bit more confusing and there's a lot of questions that don't rise a lot of interest. Is this the future, past, or an alternate reality or timeline? Are the swinging attached cables on their bodies a gimmick or central to the plot? Why are they fighting giants who seem to have no clue what's going on or are not harming anyone? What ARE the giants? I would probably want to check it out, but it's not that appealing to me.

Taking way too much from an anime opening you really just need to watch the first episodekissanime.com) trust me the giants do more than just nothing.

 

[Ikasury]

personally i don't get why Shingeki no Kyojin is the new 'thing', i just see it turning into the next Naruto/Bleach thing, and quite honestly feel slightly insulted to have be compared anywhere NEAR Berserk -.-

the most interesting things i've seen in the last month? Berserk 3rd movie Descent, and Evangelion Rebuild 3.33... both full of mind!fuck, both made of awesome... both just a graphics upgrade for old series that were already fucking amazing... *sigh*

i think series-wise the 'latest' things i've seen that were decent/amusing/piqued my interest: Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi, Mirai Nikki, Medaka Box, Nurarihyon no Mago... they were interesting, the mangas hilarious, and the animes pretty good... Berserk/EVA level? no... but funny... really really funny XD

 

[Little Woodsman]

Detroit Metal City is the only anime you need to watch.
Maybe I just found it refreshing because all the characters are in their mid 20's and not middle/high school students.

Heh, give Legend of Black Heaven a try.
And of course, Lupin and City Hunter.
Oh, and come to think of it, You're Under Arrest!