Why do you watch anime? ( I usually don't) and what is it about it you like?

[Faux Furry]

I watch anime because there is much more variety to them than kids' action shows and crudely drawn pop-culture reference regurgitating comedies for adults(mostly variants on Wait Till Your Father Gets Home)unlike its Western counter-parts...unless its on Adult Swim. It's better than waiting forever on new seasons of The Venture Brothers and The Boondocks(which is an American written and commissioned anime itself...like a more Independent version of Super Book and The Flying House)!
I also tend to watch only the ones that I find interesting, the same as I do with live-action TV/movies/stage plays, CGI animation or puppetry.

Golgo 13, Rinaughters of Mnemosyne, Berserk or even Bubblegum Crisis are not even close to the likes of InuYasha, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Ah! My Goddess, Baki the Grappler,Casshern, Mobile Suit Gundam,Shin Chan, Hamtaro or Astro Boy(not just because they are in different genres but because they are made for separate audiences).

 

[Dr. wonderful]

I watch anime because there is much more variety to them than kids' action shows and crudely drawn pop-culture reference regurgitating comedies for adults(mostly variants on Wait Till Your Father Gets Home)unlike its Western counter-parts...unless its on Adult Swim. It's better than waiting forever on new seasons of The Venture Brothers and The Boondocks(which is an American written and commissioned anime itself...like a more Independent version of Super Book and The Flying House)!
I also tend to watch only the ones that I find interesting, the same as I do with live-action TV/movies/stage plays, CGI animation or puppetry.

Golgo 13, Rinaughters of Mnemosyne, Berserk or even Bubblegum Crisis are not even close to the likes of InuYasha, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Ah! My Goddess, Baki the Grappler,Casshern, Mobile Suit Gundam,Shin Chan, Hamtaro or Astro Boy(not just because they are in different genres but because they are made for separate audiences).

Whoah, you like Rin too? You all right with me.

Anyway, I grew up on Anime and comics. It's just something I like. The most I like is the music. The Honest to goodness music.

Also, Sailor Moon was a confusing and amazing show.

SING WITH ME!

 

[nothingspringstomind]

Anime is the best medium EVER for hardcore sci fi nuts like me.

Planetes; Hard science showing commercial spaceflight for what it will probably be.
Evangelion; Bio-synthetic lifeforms, evolution, philosophy, dude, go watch it.
Patlabor; Equal parts political intrigue and mech awesomeness.
Code Geass; Immortality, mind control, mecha.
Trigun; SPACE COWBOYS! SPACE COWBOYS!

A million and one other shows that i can't think of right now.

But i have to thank you; because now i'm going to dig out my anime collection and get to watching them all again.

 

[arsenicCatnip]

I enjoy anime because it's such a diverse medium. When people say 'anime', it isn't just one thing. There's everything from magical schoolgirls to space battles to talking animals!

I don't watch much anime lately, but I especially love a few shows:

Cowboy Bebop: Enthralling story, compelling characters, and FANTASTIC music.
Trigun: Lots of thought-provoking philosophy, a very unique setting, and a heart-breaking hero.
Baccano!: Story-telling taken to its limit with a crazy twist or two!
Gundam Wing: Who doesn't love mecha in SPAAAAACE?

 

[Vandenberg1]

Now I was never into anime. I found the vast majority of what kids threw at me in Jr.High to be boring, depressing and meaningless with hypocritical views or none-sense diolouge. Then there was DB and DBZ... Changed my outlook and I relized there was GOOD anime from Japan. I searched the land far and wide, looking to catch glimpses of other good anime. pokemon had long ended in my life, (thanks to another 150 pokemon coming out, I said screw it and sold ALL my cards for 20 bucks) and I was looking for something else to enjoy in anime.

Now I grew up with mostly cheesy action movies from Schwarzennegger, Van Damn, Seagal; Horror movies of classic slahers wereand still my numberone love. History channel and WW2 shows in general (Now I wanted to teach ancient and classical era history of pagan GERMANIA and GAUL) and all this was before the age of 13!... Anime was a curiosity I needed to satisfy but it was all.. DUMBBBBB.... Deathnote is boring, and gets terrible towards the end as the main character just goes crazy. Bleach goes NOOWWHHEERREEE fast, but some of the fights are intresting. Naruto..uhgggg..Believe it!.. Nothing was intresting besides DBZ..Luckiliy Yu yu Hakusho kept me searching since that WAS A BAD ASS SHOW. It didnt drag itself out ever or had fights more then one episode long or even too much cheesy diolouge NO ONE WOULD EVER SAY IN REAL LIFE. Then I found HELLSING..what a badd ass shbowthat is. Recently one of my anime friends showed me ITALIA. Its dumb as hell but the history background kinda makes it funny, but its still utter none-sense..

So what anime do you watch and WHY?

Just wondering -- have you been watching all of those series dubbed into English? Because Naruto, while not exactly the best anime out there, is a lot less annoying in Japanese. He has this little vocal tic where he says "Datte Bayo" at the end of most sentences, and it does translate to "believe it," but the voice actor does it in a much less bombastic manner than the English voice actor did it, and the translation of that specific phrase is generally left out of the subtitles. In other words, it's nowhere near as annoying. The cheesy dialogue problem in general is the result of taking Japanese, a language where saying "goodbye" takes four syllables, translating it into English, and then adding enough words that the lips on the animation match up to what the characters are saying in the audio. It's almost always better to watch an anime series -- or any other foreign language production, for that matter -- in it's original language, with subtitles if you don't speak said language.

Getting more on topic, everything you listed aside from Hellsing, Hetalia, and Deathnote are weekly shonen series, meaning they're the Japanese equivalent of our Y-7 rated Saturday morning action cartoons. There's a whole world of anime out there that's nothing like those shows.

Some good series:

The UC timeline Gundam shows (Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, Etc.)
Ruroni Kenshin
Outlaw Star
Cowboy Bebop

Some good movies:

Akira
Anything by Hayao Miyazaki (these include Castle in the Sky, Spirited Away, KiKi's Delivery Service, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, and quite a few others)
The original Ghost in the Shell movie is supposed to be pretty good (I haven't seen it)
The Venus Wars
Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack

Edit: As for why I watch it and what I like about it, I watch Anime because in Japan, animation is treated as a medium worthy of just as much respect as live action film. As a result, you get stories of pretty much every type that you can imagine. I'm also a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy, and animation is an incredible media for telling that type of story. Reason being, special effects are extremely expensive and difficult to make believable in live action, but in animation, they cost just as much as drawing anything else, and they are just as believable as anything else in the piece. Of course, I'm more of a general animation fan than I am an anime fan, but the same reasons hold true for all of animation that hold true for anime -- it's just a wonderfully diverse medium.

Actually I did like and watch Ruroni Kenshin, Kenshi Myuo*sp was lame in all its incarnations

Also kindaaa liked A wind Named Amnesia, Howls Moving Castle, However my Neighbor Tortoro was cute but really effiinnggg pointlessss.

Cowboy Bebop was hella good, just finished it. I tried watching Fist of the North starm but it got repetitive QUICKK..
Full Metal was dumb at first but it got better, from what I seen the second remade series is better.

I just never dug the over emotional kind of anime where "If you belive in yourself and the power of friendship your power will be stronger and your 15 year old person will defeat the evil power!" kind of crap.

 

[Vandenberg1]

Why do you watch anime?

Because apart from game of Throne,s there ain't all that much on telly that's any good at the moment.

And the characters tend to find love and it makes me feel like there's hope for me yet.
Love or massive mecha. Both would be some sort of wonderful dream come true.

Speaking of dreams and colors watch...'What Dreams May come" with Robin Williams. Movie will make you cry. Its about a man and wife who's kids die in car crash, his wife commits suicide after his death. His "heaven" begins in her paintings, beforehe enters real heaven. He decides to go to hell (DANTE INFERNOS 14TH CENTURY HELL!) to rescue her. Its better then ANY emotional animne and beautiful movie.

 

[spartan231490]

Now I was never into anime. I found the vast majority of what kids threw at me in Jr.High to be boring, depressing and meaningless with hypocritical views or none-sense diolouge. Then there was DB and DBZ... Changed my outlook and I relized there was GOOD anime from Japan. I searched the land far and wide, looking to catch glimpses of other good anime. pokemon had long ended in my life, (thanks to another 150 pokemon coming out, I said screw it and sold ALL my cards for 20 bucks) and I was looking for something else to enjoy in anime.

Now I grew up with mostly cheesy action movies from Schwarzennegger, Van Damn, Seagal; Horror movies of classic slahers wereand still my numberone love. History channel and WW2 shows in general (Now I wanted to teach ancient and classical era history of pagan GERMANIA and GAUL) and all this was before the age of 13!... Anime was a curiosity I needed to satisfy but it was all.. DUMBBBBB.... Deathnote is boring, and gets terrible towards the end as the main character just goes crazy. Bleach goes NOOWWHHEERREEE fast, but some of the fights are intresting. Naruto..uhgggg..Believe it!.. Nothing was intresting besides DBZ..Luckiliy Yu yu Hakusho kept me searching since that WAS A BAD ASS SHOW. It didnt drag itself out ever or had fights more then one episode long or even too much cheesy diolouge NO ONE WOULD EVER SAY IN REAL LIFE. Then I found HELLSING..what a badd ass shbowthat is. Recently one of my anime friends showed me ITALIA. Its dumb as hell but the history background kinda makes it funny, but its still utter none-sense..

So what anime do you watch and WHY?

Can't resist, I have to suggest three anime that I think you will like. Busou Renkin, Full Metal Alchemist(and brotherhood), and Code Geass.

OT: I watch anime that I like, just like I watch any show or movie that I like. I watch it because what I watch entertains me with action, humor, story, or any combo of those three and hundreds of other things. Just because something is anime doesn't make it special, it's just like the rest of entertainment. Some is amazing, some is horrible, but the vast majority is just meh. That said, I think the length of the narrative gives anime options that no other entertainment media has truly explored, and that is the one thing that I think makes anime truly worth exploring as a genre itself, and not just as an art style.(It's also one of the big reasons I can't stand anime that has no real connecting plot between episodes, like the vast majority of cowboy bebop)

 

[Evaheist666]

I watch it because I love it.

I grew up with anime (Dragon Ball and Robotech!) and I love the sleek visuals. They express emotions like anger, comedy, horror, melancholy, love, hate etc. so beautifully and expressively.

for me, there's simply no competition between a good (even a semi-good) anime and any of those Bruce Timm inspired animations or even the newer DC animated movies.

 

[Josh Horton]

If you really want some good anime to watch, you have to watch Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Gurren Lagaan, Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya, Clannad, Clannad After Story, Kanon, and good lord the list goes on...

Basically you have to learn from mistakes about which anime to watch and which ones to avoid.

 

[tzimize]

First off, I like Naruto

I used to watch a LOT of anime. Mainly in my late teens. I (re-)discovered anime with Naruto and was hooked. I watched a LOT of anime...but eventually I grew tired of it.

Positive stuff about anime:
-Different cultural background (since anime is made by japanese) makes a lot of anime stories...quite different from a lot of western stuff. Very refreshing at first...but I grew tired of it.
-Zero problems visualizing fantastical stuff because of budget restrains. Its easier and a LOT cheaper to draw fantastic stuff than it is to make CG. So anime series can be whatever they like without worrying too much about money.
-Willingness to tackle obscure and sometimes downright impossibly complex and odd stories. Animes can be about ANYTHING.

Negative stuff:
-After a while...persons in anime often seem to just act stupid...and I get really tired of the pre-teen attitude towards a lot of romance.
-Crazy stories just dont make up for a lack of excitement and/or poor characterization

In the end, there is some anime I like but I'm just tired of a big part of anime. It seems pre-pubescent or downright stupid, so I dont watch a lot anymore. I still catch the Naruto shows, not because they are overly mature...but because people usually act at least halfway natural and because I think it kicks ass in a lot of ways.

If I'm gonna watch a TV-series today I'd rather it be something like Dexter, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, Burn Notice...or something like that.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

Neon Genesis evangelion, and akira.

When you say the word anime, those two and DBZ should be the ones that pop in your head. Argueably ghost in the shell, too.

Fun fact: Ghost in the shell was inspired by an early Bungie game called Oni.

Nah, it's the other way round. Oni was inspired by GITS.

 

[Super G]

I watch anime because I find some of it to be genuinely entertaining.

My favorite anime is probably Lupin III, hell he's even in my avatar. It's just a ton of fun to watch, whether you are watching it alone or with others.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Actually I did like and watch Ruroni Kenshin, Kenshi Myuo*sp was lame in all its incarnations

Also kindaaa liked A wind Named Amnesia, Howls Moving Castle, However my Neighbor Tortoro was cute but really effiinnggg pointlessss.

Cowboy Bebop was hella good, just finished it. I tried watching Fist of the North starm but it got repetitive QUICKK..
Full Metal was dumb at first but it got better, from what I seen the second remade series is better.

I just never dug the over emotional kind of anime where "If you belive in yourself and the power of friendship your power will be stronger and your 15 year old person will defeat the evil power!" kind of crap.

Well, that power of friendship crap, as you aptly called it, is mostly confined to the anime series that are aimed at a younger audience in Japan. Full Metal Alchemist, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto and the like all fit into the genre of Shonen, which means "boy's comics" -- or more specifically, little boys comics. While they're generally treated in a way that older people can unplug their brains and enjoy as well, writing off anime because of those series would be like writing off western (as in, from the west, not the genre) movies because you didn't like Kung Fu Panda.

If you liked Cowboy Bebop, I heartily recommend you try out Outlaw Star. You may also like Trigun, but I've never watched it, so I don't know how similar it is to Cowboy Bebop in terms of the maturity level of the writing. I do, however, know that it's incredibly popular with the kind of anime fan who actually knows something about anime, and not just the weaboos who watch Inuyasha and Naruto and think they know everything about Japanese culture because of it.

One final thing: you never did say whether you were watching these series dubbed or subbed. English dubbed anime was never particularly good, and it took a nosedive somewhere in the mid 2000's -- you're much better off watching it subbed, for the reasons I listed in my earlier post.

 

[Adultism]

I love the fan service, lots and lots of fan service.

On a more serious note, I'm not exactly sure why I watch anime.

 

[Xirema]

Just wondering -- have you been watching all of those series dubbed into English? Because Naruto, while not exactly the best anime out there, is a lot less annoying in Japanese. He has this little vocal tic where he says "Datte Bayo" at the end of most sentences, and it does translate to "believe it," but the voice actor does it in a much less bombastic manner than the English voice actor did it, and the translation of that specific phrase is generally left out of the subtitles. In other words, it's nowhere near as annoying. The cheesy dialogue problem in general is the result of taking Japanese, a language where saying "goodbye" takes four syllables, translating it into English, and then adding enough words that the lips on the animation match up to what the characters are saying in the audio. It's almost always better to watch an anime series -- or any other foreign language production, for that matter -- in it's original language, with subtitles if you don't speak said language.

This, in spades.

 

[ddrfr33k]

I started following anime around 2000/2001, when American airwaves saw a dearth of reality TV and other pointless blabbering. When you compare that buffet of scheist with the offerings from the other side of the pacific (Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, InuYasha, Love Hina, Escaflowne), it was a far better alternative to hearing about some bachelor cheating on one of the contestants while Monica Lewinsky comments on how nasty the guy is. Yes, there was a love and marriage reality tv show with Monica Lewinsky as the host. Apparently she doesn't know the definition of irony.

As for why I watch anime now, it's still a relevant medium. With series like Samurai 7 and Baccano! coming out, it's hard not to like it.

Neon Genesis evangelion, and akira.

When you say the word anime, those two and DBZ should be the ones that pop in your head. Argueably ghost in the shell, too.

Fun fact: Ghost in the shell was inspired by an early Bungie game called Oni.

Nah, it's the other way round. Oni was inspired by GITS.

GITS also inspired the Wachowski brothers to make The Matrix movies. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

Neon Genesis evangelion, and akira.

When you say the word anime, those two and DBZ should be the ones that pop in your head. Argueably ghost in the shell, too.

Fun fact: Ghost in the shell was inspired by an early Bungie game called Oni.

Nah, it's the other way round. Oni was inspired by GITS.

My mistake. >.>

 

[Rooster893]

F-Zero Falcon Densetsu. All I can say is...

FREAKING EPIC!

 

[Vandenberg1]

Actually I did like and watch Ruroni Kenshin, Kenshi Myuo*sp was lame in all its incarnations

Also kindaaa liked A wind Named Amnesia, Howls Moving Castle, However my Neighbor Tortoro was cute but really effiinnggg pointlessss.

Cowboy Bebop was hella good, just finished it. I tried watching Fist of the North starm but it got repetitive QUICKK..
Full Metal was dumb at first but it got better, from what I seen the second remade series is better.

I just never dug the over emotional kind of anime where "If you belive in yourself and the power of friendship your power will be stronger and your 15 year old person will defeat the evil power!" kind of crap.

Well, that power of friendship crap, as you aptly called it, is mostly confined to the anime series that are aimed at a younger audience in Japan. Full Metal Alchemist, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto and the like all fit into the genre of Shonen, which means "boy's comics" -- or more specifically, little boys comics. While they're generally treated in a way that older people can unplug their brains and enjoy as well, writing off anime because of those series would be like writing off western (as in, from the west, not the genre) movies because you didn't like Kung Fu Panda.


If you liked Cowboy Bebop, I heartily recommend you try out Outlaw Star. You may also like Trigun, but I've never watched it, so I don't know how similar it is to Cowboy Bebop in terms of the maturity level of the writing. I do, however, know that it's incredibly popular with the kind of anime fan who actually knows something about anime, and not just the weaboos who watch Inuyasha and Naruto and think they know everything about Japanese culture because of it.

One final thing: you never did say whether you were watching these series dubbed or subbed. English dubbed anime was never particularly good, and it took a nosedive somewhere in the mid 2000's -- you're much better off watching it subbed, for the reasons I listed in my earlier post.

I usually watch in English if I can. Japanese voice actors tend to be terrible... Hellsing ova IS AN EXAMPLE... The only thing good about origional is that they are often uncencored or unedited.