GITS is amazing as a design universe. The more you dig into the manga or movies (even the SACs) the deeper you get sucked in to what could be. From the vision of mind interfaces to the dream of mind across the net. It was WAY ahead of it's time and still stands up today.
Every crevasse of the original Manga contains deep thought out design on what digital life could become. What constructs we become once we crossed that digital/biological line.
In addition to being a bit of a digital hoarder, I have a decent collection of enlarged anime background paintings on the walls at my office. My tastes in subject matter are pretty wide ranging, but I don’t have a specific collection of the 80s anime film megacities paintings. This book seems to fill a gap I didn’t even think I had in what I display.
I was super impressed by the price point of this book. All the reviews say the print quality is excellent. $45 for a ~250 page hardcover is a great deal even if you just want it to sit on a coffee table or book shelf. Thanks for the tip, I ordered immediately, and it’s going on the small desk in my office.
My grandparents owned a print shop as their retirement plan, so when I was in my early 20s I got them to do some high quality, faux-canvas prints for about 15 of my favorite at that time (the early 2000’s). If I wanted to do some now I’d have to go suck up to the manager of my local phototek (and given the business my firm gives him I think I may be able to make it work).
I don't usually buy books 5mins after I see their title posted somewhere.. but seeing some of the drawings (and the topic) of the book, it is already on its way to me, and thank you for bringing it up!
The SAC series were also intensely thoughtful and well-written, with softly stated political intrigue and philosophical musing that somehow doesn't ever devolve into navel gazing.
Really a must watch anime series if you like anime or even just sci fi at all.
I saw a member of the SAC team speak at a con. The big point was that the team were all big fans of American cop dramas. So, they set out to make a cop drama that happened to feature cyborgs instead of the other way around.
90s cyperpunk existential anime produced with an eye for western markets could also describe Serial Experiments Lain and I am surprised to see no mention of this absolute classic.
I hadn't realised Jin-Roh was from the same creator. And I can see why it wasn't a success: Jin-Roh is dark, properly dystopian, confusing, and unforgiving. But underneath there is a retold story of the little red riding-hood, in the original Grimm fashion.
I found Jin-Roh's use of the Red Riding-Hood narrative to be much more subversive than a mere retelling. Both lead characters alternately play the role of red riding-hood and the wolf, luring each other in and betraying each others' trust at differing stages in the story. At the same time, neither truly wants to harm the other, but it's the human society they exist in which compels them to.
The last shot of the movie is the Rotkaeppchen storybook lying in tatters in a puddle.
Jin-Roh is but part of Oshii's other magnum opus, The Kerberos Saga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_Saga . I haven't read the second half, which wasn't available in english when I first saw Jin Roh, but I've heard that The Red Spectacles and StrayDog are great if you liked it, but hard to find. I should retry that search one of these days.
Ghost In The Shell suffers from really dragging in the middle.
There's a bunch a bunch of sequences which go on just way too long for the total amount of plot in the film, and there's a lot of missing context for the main character's motivation: we just kind of get a couple big exposition dumps, but no real feel for who the Major is or why the core conceit of the plot matters to her.
The Stand Alone Complex series, conversely, is amazing.
Now this is a matter of taste, but I love the slow moments where the film just pans over city scenes with no dialogue. Just a little time to breathe and look at the art in the middle of the action. It's a film that posits a bunch of questions about human vs machine and then declines to answer them in favor of letting you think about them.
Those periods of "Ma"[0] really make the film for me, and their absence was a big part of of why I didn't like the 2017 Scarlett Johanssen version (I walked out of the theater I was so disappointed). They give you time to think & reflect on the implications of the scene that just ended, and how it will affect the forthcoming actions of the characters.
I didn’t get SAC back when it was on Adult Swim. Seeing it randomly and out of order it seemed stale, slow, and too dense. But watched in sequence it is a fantastic bit of scifi.
I remember enjoying the episodes who were outside of the central plot from SAC and SAC2. That episode when they explain the past of the sniper character and how he got recruited by the major was amazing and I watched it over and over.
I kind of like that we’re thrown headfirst into this world without a ton of exposition around motivations and whatnot. It feels _a lot_ like Blade Runner that way (my favorite film) — sort of confounding and urgent. And you’re teased with these glances and sprinkles of a very intriguing world.
All of this is to say I think the movie is just fantastic and I regularly find new things to love about it on each rewatch.
> I kind of like that we’re thrown headfirst into this world without a ton of exposition around motivations and whatnot. It feels _a lot_ like Blade Runner that way (my favorite film) — sort of confounding and urgent.
I really like this part of fiction and media as well, because it forces you to do some work piecing everything together, so you feel a bit like a detective as well. Way better than superhero movies where you are spoonfed everything. It's a common narrative device found in Phillip K. Dick books, one of which Blade Runner is based off of. I really like the way it builds suspense.
I don't agree with you, but it's really sad that you're getting downvoted for having an opinion and explaining it. I'd understand it on Reddit, but this is HN, and it's supposed to be better here.
GITS is highly relevant today, but I can understand why the Hollywood remake gutted the original story, because GITS is a highly subversive work that directly attacks the authoritarian state's bureaucratic power structure. It's also the story of the transformation of a loyal servant of one of the state agencies, Major Kusangi, into an independent rogue agent who abandons that power structure in alliance with some form of synthetic intelligence, Project 2501.
What sets it apart from similar rogue spy stories is the heavy emphasis on philosophical concepts - the Ship of Theseus in the context of a cyborg human whose every part has been replaced over time, the nature of self and other in the context of the merger of the Major's identity with that of P2501, the point at which obedience to the authoritarian state is abandoned and the rationale for that choice - all notions that make established power structures uneasy, and which accounts for the atrocious garbled plot line of the Hollywood remake.
They botched the remake since it was done by incompetent people. That was (still is?) the time where Netflix was trying to build a library so they threw random people at random projects.
Death Note Remake / live action film was botched too
Oh it's nice to see Animation Obsessive here. Their blog https://animationobsessive.substack.com/ is worthy of a subscription - most of their articles are both informative and very well written.
I'm seeing quite a few recommendations for good shows in the comments, under an article about GITS and Mamoru Oshii, but surprisingly no one has brought up the two other fairly well-known (?) works: Angel's Egg and Urusei Yatsura 2. The first one just got the news about a 4k upgrade next year and first time Western release, while the other has few reasons to be a stand-alone movie of the same manga besides the main cast. Both are sometimes incredibly trippy and heady with the hypnotic 90s look, which seem to be much fewer in the modern anime but I haven't really kept up with new stuff these days as well as animation styles certainly evolve over time.
I'm a fan of most of Oshii's work, and Angel's Egg is a particular favourite, but it's not hard to see why it's rarely recommended. The film has very little narrative and it leans heavily on visual symbolism.
It's usually my first thing to watch on a new monitor or projector or whatever device I might want to see how well it shows a film. Another typical "test watch" is Vampire Hunter D. That and GitS are amazing anime films, IMO.
Years ago I had a band (electronic/industrial style) and at one show we played, the venue staff were projecting stuff onto the stage and ceiling. I was super happy when I realized they were projecting GitS during my band's performance. Perfect choice! I think I thanked them afterward haha :)
> That story started in the early ‘90s, in London. A local businessman saw Akira at an art film screening.
Exhibit A on why I looooove movie screenings
Imaging seeing a bunch of quirky short film misses from amateur producers that at least take initiative, to seeing Akira. in the early 90s. an advanced style in a medium nobody had really explored with a cohesive well thought out message. And you’re like “and this story and director came out of where? Japan?”
today that would share similarities to the idea of something wholly unexpected in the entertainment world came out of Iraq, but without any fanfare just an exhibit at a small industry event in your town
> an advanced style in a medium nobody had really explored with a cohesive well thought out message.
Only of you ignore Miyazaki. Nausicaa and to a lesser extent Castle in the Sky aren’t cyberpunk, but definitely pushed the state of the art and storytelling forward with universally applicable narratives. I’m not saying Akira isn’t good or that the viewing wasn’t serendipitous, but it certainly wasn’t alone in what was happening in Japan at the time.
I’m a fan of the ‘95 movie but one funny thing I always notice when rewatching it is how many different Human Computer interfaces exist in the movie’s world. There’re the robot secretaries, humans with extra mechanical fingers similar to the secretaries, three or four different neck and head and maybe eye(?) jacks, and others I can’t remember now. Makes for a fun drinking game.
As far as I'm aware, France was a relative outlier in Europe in regards to popularity of Japanese media with it preceding more widespread adoption in popular European culture.
I find it quite amusing what many people (including myself sometimes) have a pretty blurry memory about when we moved from VHS.
But I think it mostly contributes on what for some people VHS were a dominant media for quite a while, because they didn't had the means to see the digital media.
It's easier to understand what the first [commercially] successful DVD player was PlayStation 2, which became available ~2001. Before that DVDs were quite a costly[0] endeavour.
But at the same time people with the access to a computer (and a local 'everything for $15' totally-legit-shop) had the benefits of DivX ;) releases on a plain CD-ROMs, which every home computer had.
Some anecdata: I first seen Blade (1998) on VHS, but The Matrix (1999) on DivX rip, yet (I think) Spirited Away (2001) on VHS. I frequented a local VHS rental (because a friend worked there and so it places it up to 2002? 2001?) so I had seen a lot of films on VHS, but again, by 2002 it was a meme how people searching for XXX on DC++ got XXX (2002) instead.
Perhaps the only anime where the voice actor for one of the Dutch characters actually speaks proper Dutch (as opposed to e.g. German or very broken Dutch). Although they picked a weird translation for the concept of boss/chief/ranking officer, and they chose “opperhoofd”; which as a Dutch person is something you associate as a person that is the head of a tribe, not ranking officer.
The author fails in their understanding of Animé’s history in North America.
While certain series such as The White Lion, Astroboy, Space Battleship Yamato (marketed over here as Starblazors) and Captain Harlock did see airtime first, it was Robotech - the Harmony Gold Frankenstein of three completely unrelated Animé series - that kicked off the process in 1984. It was Robotech that threw rocket fuel onto the burning embers of fandom in North America. Akira just helped the process along.
As a member of the underground anime scene, starting in the late 70s, I have a different perspective.
Harmony Gold did nothing to actually promote anime, beyond hyping their own products. Robotech was the English translated anime that happened to be on air in the US when the necessary conditions for the anime explosion were in place.
Those conditions were:
Affordable VCRs (in the 70s, they cost as much as a small car).
The Usenet / internet (for coordinating, sharing information, and creating tape sharing networks).
Low cost computer video platforms for subtitling (e.g. Amiga + Video Toaster).
In terms of popularity, people forget that Speed Racer, Kimba, etc were broadcast on network television, and had far more impact on popular culture than Robotech, which was syndicated.
Captain Harlock ironically what got me interested in anime in the late '70s. It was not widely broadcast in the continental US, until Harmony Gold's despicable hack job which came after Robotech.
One source of subtitled anime in the 70s was from Hawaii, which has a significant Japanese population. But to get that required having contacts with one of those very expensive VCRs.
> Harmony Gold did nothing to actually promote anime, beyond hyping their own products. Robotech was the English translated anime that happened to be on air in the US
And because it was in syndication, smack-dab in the centre of at least one major TV network that had Saturday morning cartoons, it was in front of _tens of millions_ of young children.
That is why I highlight Robotech, instead of all the other series that came before it. Yes, Astro Boy and The White Lion came earlier, but they mostly showed on PBS and in non-standard time slots. I don’t recall them ever showing in the 0800-1100hrs Saturday morning time slots on any regular channel. But Robotech did.
Captain Harlock was available in Canada, but only in Québecois, and again - not in a standard time slot. You had to wake up at 0630hrs on Saturday morning to catch it on channel 12, which few kids did.
So yeah, I don’t dispute that the other factors you mentioned helped, but it was the time slot on Saturday morning which was the rocket fuel that made all the difference.
I too was surprised that Robotech didn't appear in the article.
It played during my school summer vacation (U.S.), and I was rivetted. It's nearly [0] the first Japanese animation I ever saw, and I was absolutely rivetted.
I have no idea what viewership numbers were like at the period, but I was certainly hooked. And I was entering my high-school years where I'd have spending money from part-time jobs, so I was definitely an untapped market.
[0] Another commenter mentioned Battle of the Planets, which I'd forgotten about. I liked that too.
Just a notice that all Blu-Rays of the 95 GITS are completely and hopelessly mangled (cropped, blurred and black crushed). The only "good" version is an old HDTV rip that was hand-remastered by Judgment; but with heavy smoothing in the process, a film grain shader to mask this is recommended.
That's beyond heartbreaking. Everything is somehow getting worse but I'd held out hope that something universally considered a masterpiece might get better treatment. Do you know if a better release exists in Japan?
Yeah exactly that. I had a crunchy roll subscription but shitcanned it in the end because the quality of the releases is an order of magnitude better from the pirates.
Eh, we lost the original moon tapes and George Lucas suppressed the theatrical Star Wars cut. Very common even in the modern era for this sort of thing to happen.
At least for the theatrical Star Wars cut there's an excellent fan restoration 4k77 based on a 35mm IB technicolor film scan. The amount of work fans do to restore work they care about more than the corporate owners is always both amazing and heartwarming.
Still some cropping and way too much DNR, but not as bad as the 1080p BDs indeed. Some people recommend it over the HDTV source (which was a bitstarved WMV3 encode) for its better handling of action sequences (i.e. without horrible macroblocking).
I feel like I haven't seen an anime in years that's been in the same league as Akira or the great Miyazakis (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Totoro). Yes i'd be brutal and include Miyazakis following works in that list, from Howls Moving Castle to The Boy and the Heron. Ive seen lots of incredible animation, sure, but nothing like the cinematic depth.
What am I missing? What should an old fart who's becoming convinced things were better in the old days put myself infront of?
Tokyo Godfathers is an amazing and deeply human christmas comedy about homeless people in the Tokyo streets, filled with magical moments of cinematography.
Paprika is a less lighthearted story about inner lives, dreams and ambitions set across a sci fi backdrop where people are learning to enter each other's dreams and link them together. It has gorgeous dreamscapes and an amazing soundtrack as well as a fascinating plot and interesting characters.
Thre's also Makoto Shinkai's movies, which have good cinematography and interesting themes and soundtrack, as well as somewhat interesting characters (though a bit samey). Your Name is excellent, with Weathering with You and Suzume being good but not great. 5 Centimeters per second is nice as well. Children who chase lost voices underground is his most Ghibli movie and I'd say it definitely gets the tone and aesthetics right for the Nausica/Mononoke era of Ghibli.
On the Ghibli side, I quite enjoyed Studio Ponoc's Modest Heroes, which was a collection of shorts by Studio Ponoc (which has some Ghibli Veterans in it as well as younger talent I believe). Kanini and Kanino has the adventure elements and aesthetics, Life ain't gonna lose has the small child PoV element, Invisible has the social elements.
Seconding: Paprika was amazing (and hard to avoid comparing to Inception, which came out a few years later). Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue are burning a hole in my bookshelf - still haven't got to them.
Also seconding Your Name - hits the whole emotional spectrum, even on second and third watch when you know what's happening.
As lesser-known recommendations from Ghibli, I think Porco Rosso and From Up On Poppy Hill are both underrated-and-good in their own way, though they don't quite leave the impact that some of the others do.
On Kon, Paranoia Agent is also excellent. And if we're taking 2000s shows into account, I also have to mention Kuuchuu Buranko in that category of Paranoia Agent-reminiscent sociologically interesting shows.
All these people giving recs are doing it wrong. You can determine if an anime is worth your time by merely looking at the title and what the source material is and the following simple system:
Candidates start with 5 points. If they have a positive score after applying the system, they're at least worth checking out (although they will not necessarily be good). If not, you are likely wasting your time.
1) Every word in the title past the third is worth -1 point. This includes particles and abbreviations.
2) Each word in the subtitle is worth -0.5 points.
3) Any of the following words or close synonyms are worth -2 points on top of any other penalties:
Academy, Ability, Cheat, Dungeon, Elf, Game, Goblin, Harem, Hero, Idol, Isekai, Level, Loop, Maou, MMO, Mob, Online, Overlord, Party, Player, Re(used as a prefix), Reincarnation, "The Animation"(verbatim only), Vampire, Villainess, Virtual, VR, VTuber, Wizard
4) Subtract an additional point for every word that implies this is a remake, spinoff, adaptation or sequel, such as "Kai", "Gaiden", "2nd" (3rd, etc.), "New", et cetera.
5) Even though you already subtracted a point for "Isekai" in step 3. If the title contains the word "Isekai", subtract an additional 5 points.
6) Apply the following adjustment based on the source material:
History: +3 (Applying only to direct adaptations of historical events, not merely using historical theming)
Literary Fiction: +2
Original Work: +1
Other: +1
OVA: +0.5
Live Action: +0
Web Animation/Motion Comic/Music Video: +0
Comic: +0
Video Game: -1
Light Novel: -1
Writeup of someone's D&D session: -1
CCG: -2
Web Novel: -5
Mobile Game: -10
"Multimedia Project" (This is just a mobile game that doesn't exist yet): -10
Social Media Post: -100
So basically you're steering us away from all the series based on mangas based in turn on "light novels" based on fans writing on the website
Shōsetsuka ni Narō, "Let's Become a Novelist":
Fair enough, I guess, they're silly and unabashedly cliched and are not Miyazaki. But I watched a few and kind of liked them: How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, I'm in Love with the Villainess, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Parallel World Pharmacy. (That's four different titles, to be clear.)
I could comfortably watch another right now, I'm tempted by Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon. But I would not like to watch GITS, which exists in my mind as a vague painful memory of a self-important plot about cyborgs and a lot of characters jumping around on rooftops and shooting at each other. It's a "neo-noir cyberpunk action thriller", as Wikipedia puts it, or in my terms "not any fun". But I guess it was seminal and genuinely important at the time.
Ha. Stuff like this is entertaining but it is not what I would call good. It’s like the reality tv of anime. Cheap wish fulfillment fan service.
There have been some legit good series recently that play with these fantasy genres, have solid writing and animation.
* Friern: Beyond Journey’s End - an extremely sentimental coming of age tale that explorers children raising parents, loyalty, and platonic love.
* Delicious in Dungeon - a really silly story that subverts the dungeon crawling genre by crossing over with the food/cooking genre and playing with all kinds of genre/tropes.
* Pluto - a classic scifi morality tale on what it means to be human. This series tried really hard to be a modern Ghost in the Shell. It was successful in some ways and fell flat in others. Definitely worth watching though.
There are lots of entertaining anime out now, but so little of it is well made or written. Maybe that’s ok though. I still watch lots of the low quality stuff because it’s like popcorn/candy and is easy to watch.
I’ll echo the titles you recommended, but given what the MC goes through in Re:Zero I’m not sure that it falls into the bucket of wish fulfillment nearly as much as most shows of its genre do. I can’t think of many people who’d want to be the MC.
If you hadn't seen Now and Then, Here and There, or Twelve Kingdoms, or read Red River, then maybe it'd seem fresh and interesting, but I dropped Re:Zero pretty early. Good genre fiction still has something to say about the real world, and Re:Zero felt like it was trying so hard to subvert genre expectations set by other fiction that it forgot that.
Ok, as someone who both loved Now and Then, Here and There and Twelve Kingdoms, I want some recommendations from you :) Those two series were really great.
But I do agree with you, they were great because they actually had something to say about the real world.
There's not a lot else like them in anime, so none of the shows I'm about to list are good for the same reasons that those two were good.
Shinsekai Yori was great, and a rare case of high-effort worldbuilding that actually delivers on its premise. Highly spoilable.
If Akiba Maid Sensou is not my anime-of-the-decade for this decade, I will be very surprised, but it assumes you understand both yakuza culture and maid cafe culture and I'm not sure what someone who doesn't would get out of it.
Hana to Alice, Satsujin Jiken might not even be anime, since it relies extremely heavily on 1:1 rotoscoping, but it is short and doesn't really look like anything else.
Gankutsuou also gets a ton of points for being visually distinctive, and (at least at the time of release, maybe that's not true anymore) being the most faithful adaptation of Dumas' original to video despite casting a blue-skinned space vampire as the Count.
Princess Tutu is a fantastic use of popular ballet as a framing device that was doing the whole 'meta-narrative' thing long before it was cool.
Mononoke (not the Ghibli film Mononoke-hime) is a good-looking take on the classic supernatural detective genre.
Id:Invaded is also a supernatural detective story, which manages to be entertainingly audacious without ever really feeling like it was just going for cheap shock value.
I'm not into anime, but I would like to see some recent series. But! I want an anime with adult MC, no power levels, no schools, not about magic, no mechas, no overtly sexual (inuendos, jokes). No exaggerated facial gestures. Something like the overall tone of Legend of the Galactic Heroes but more recent.
Give Vinland Saga a go, for some gripping historical drama.
Or Bartender: Glass of God (the ongoing 2024 series), for stories in a real-world setting.
For something more fantastical, To Your Eternity, an adventure that makes you feel and hurt. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End for an adventure that's both young and grown-up - it only came out recently, but has instantly been acclaimed as a modern classic.
For something more childlike yet endlessly creative, Delicious in Dungeon or even Ranking of Kings.
For proper literary sci-fi (despite featuring young protagonists), From the New World (Shinsekai Yori).
For true artistic cinema despite a Japanese high-school setting, Ping Pong The Animation.
Other gems mentioned that I second: ODDTAXI (a tightly written mystery-drama despite its art) and Pluto (serious thinking sci-fi with gravitas).
There are always a few upper-tier shows coming out each year that retain an artistic, mature bent. Not very many but at least they're there.
More seriously, no, you can't "determine if an anime is worth your time by merely looking at the title and what the source material is". Especially if you don't have anything to watch, and all the false positives (plenty!) have infinite negative value.
I have not. I have a completely different set of criteria for choosing manga because their production process is so different than for anime. I have a tendency to only buy physical copies, so if something never catches my eye in a book shop, or never makes it into a book shop, I will probably never even know it exists if it's not by an author I already know.
However both Scavenger's Reign and Pantheon feel distinctly different from Japanese anime. They have a much more Western aesthetic eye visually, narratively, and especially in terms of music I feel.
Having just watched Scavenger's Reign, it differs from both Lem novels in an important way.
Lem uses characters as an excuse to tell something about the portrayed worlds. Scavenger's Reign uses the world as a backdrop to tell the story of the characters.
(Same goes for Solaris, although Tarkovsky's adaptation reverses that.)
Frieren is a modern classic, with some of the best animation I've ever seen & deals with the themes of companionship and regret in a surprisingly mature way. It would be my recommendation for sure!
Strangely (maybe), but Attack on Titan I can't stand, and I didn't care much for any of the Full metal Alchemist ones, but Frieren is one of the absolutely best shows I've ever watched.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I haven't yet watched the 3rd season of Made in Abyss. Have been hesitant to do so due to its reputation. ;)
---
Hai to Gensou no Grimgar has both manga, and light novels, that stretch on for many more chapters past the anime. The Manga was good and continues on well from the anime. After reaching the end of that I picked up the light novels to continue on further.
Unfortunately (around novel 13 I think?) the author clearly didn't know what to do with the story and it turned silly and boring, so I moved on to other stuff. :(
Somehow I never got into reading manga, probably a good thing too - I checked my MAL stats and I says I have watched 330+ shows and I know I have been lazy and not rating all of them ...
Everything that is not in “Studio Ghibli” wide angle fairy tale style? A number of external films have imitated it, some of them better than the other.
As a side note, “Studio Ghibli” is also not at all equal to “Hayao Miyazaki”.
Say, “Madoka Magica” is certainly large scale, but in totally different style. “Denno Coil” and “Eizouken” has that sense of adventure you can't really describe. And “Drifting Home” is magical, nostalgic, and colourful in its own manner.
I you need some “respected opinion”, here's a list:
It's… okay. Everyone — for a certain definition of attentive viewers — knows most of those.
It is not wise to limit yourself to movies. As mentioned, animated movie is a big investment that can flop at once, while series can be steered somehow in a different production/financing direction, or can become a good merchandise source. Therefore, a lot of movies are more or less straightforward derivatives of existing hit works which rely on the fan crowd. Those make money for more experimental original works.
Your Name (2016, Makoto Shinkai) and Ping Pong the Animation (2014, Masaaki Yuasa) are both IMO top notch (and the creators are active and have extensive oeuvres). The Shape of Voice (2016, Kyoto Animation (RIP)) was also much acclaimed. Of these, I recommend Ping Pong the most (and Yuasa's other works as well).
I suppose for more sci-fi/fantasy, Rebuild of Evangelion (2007-2021) might be interesting, although to me, its popularity in Japan and why the retelling was made is actually more interesting to me than the works themselves. It didn't win any particular awards or acclaim, but I was a fan of the incredibly stylish manga series, and I personally enjoyed the Blame! (2017, Hiroyuki Shesita) CGI anime film for those into the Japanese post-cyber-apocalypse sci-fi aesthetic.
I think these days, the economics of anime has driven more interesting work into series rather than features. Recently some memorable ones I've enjoyed are Steins;Gate (2011-2015, White Fox), Devilman: Crybaby (2018, Studio SARU), Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022, Trigger), Pluto (2023, M2), and Frieren (2023, Madhouse).
I didn't understand why people kept recommending this until I spotted that the director is Mamoru Oshii, director of GitS. It's perfectly reasonable as a standalone film without having seen 1. And it's good in the same ways as GitS; mix of action, political thriller, and lingering artistic set piece.
If we're specifically talking stuff from the last few years, and if shows count, I gotta put in a word for ODDTAXI. Feels like a mashup of the best parts of Yuasa Masaaki and Kon Satoshi works.
If you're referring to series then among the best Seinen classics are shows like:
Berzerk (1997)
Monster (2004) [My personal favorite]
Cowboy Bebop
Steins:Gate
Vinland Saga (newer)
Frieren (newer)
There's a lot of Shounen classics as well, my favorite probably being
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
granted there's several tropes in it that aren't going to be as enjoyable to watch on repeat for older folks. But the storytelling and plot is practically like Breaking Bad but in anime form.
EVA should not be missed, regardless of how weird and gross it can be for some. I watched it for the first time a year ago after hearing so much about it.
The first five or six episodes are an awful slog, and then there's an exponential curve up through 'quite good' into 'great' then 'I understand why this will print money forever'.
If you're sold but confused how to watch: start with the original release and then watch End of Evangelion; both on netflix.
Paprika is good, but I wouldn't elevate it to greatness. Whereas, for me, Perfect Blue makes the cut. The odd thing is, they both essentially explore aspects of the same theme: subjective reality and what happens when those of different individuals' collide. But they do that in very different ways...
And thank you for bringing up Metropolis, that film tends to be underrated.
Here's a list of some old and new ones, that an old fart might enjoy
Monster (Chasing a serial killer)
Ergo Proxy (Can't describe it)
Samurai 7 (Sci-fi variant off 7 samurai)
Last Exile (Post appocapltic world with lots of flying
machines)
Kino's Journey
Mushishi
Time of Eve
Gargantia
Baccano
Durarara
Psycho Pass
Arslan Senki
Sunaboju (Desert Punk)
Witch Hunter Robin
Hunter x Hunter (old not new)
Texnolyze
Darker than Black
Black Lagoon
Great Teach Onizuka (One of the old and best)
Gintama (Comedy, It's at the level One Piece and Naruto
disgusing as Comedy, you have to get past 30 episodes)
Kabaneri of Iron Fortress (Just for animation quality)
Beck (Music career)
Golden Kamui
Terror in Resonance
Ping Pong Animation (Don't let the animation fool you, it's
one of the best stories)
Area 88 (Story ends abruptly, watch at your own risk)
Ashita no Joe (Old anime, boxing genre)
Valkyria Chronicles (War story)
Scissor Seven (Comedy, Chinese, assassin, in a strange
world)
Shura no Toki (Martial arts, 3 generations)
A Record of Mortal's Journey to Immortality (Chinese
cultivation genre, 3D good animation, faithful adaptation of
one of the good novels in this genre)
Swallowed Star (Chinese cultivation genre Sci-fi variant, great 3D animation)
There are some questionable parts of this anime as it's old and a lot of anime from that time is like that, however, it's one of those anime that got what being a hero is about. Only one that I can think of in recent times is My Hero Academia. If that doesn't sway you to watch it, I think Gigguk included Onizuka as one of the top 20 most badass characters in anime a few years ago.
It's a fun anime if the slapstick comedy resonates with you and don't take everything seriously. If slapstick isn't your cup of tea, then no point forcing yourself to watch it.
I highly recommend "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!" It's an anime that's a love letter to anime about making anime where the anime-making becomes part of the anime. It's quite a trip, and it's got great energy and love for the medium.
It isn't exactly obvious. They're set two decades apart, and the only character from Dennou Coil who shows up is Michiko, inside Second Seven somehow. Which does at least make me suspect that the Yuukos have been busy.
Though once I noticed the space station was getting entirely covered in Isako's scribblings, that was... a moment.
"A Silent Voice" is the best anime film of the 2010s in my opinion and comes closer to matching Miyazaki than anything else I've seen, in terms of the power of storytelling. Miyazaki is still better, but it's extremely good.
I also enjoyed "Wolf Children" a lot. As others have said, "Your Name" is stellar too, and "5cm/sec" is pretty damn excellent.
>What am I missing? What should an old fart who's becoming convinced things were better in the old days put myself infront of?
I think no reply are really getting at this question.
If you consider the two latter Miyazaki movies not being included, I think "greats" to you must be something that is "very unique and distinct from the western (animated) movie but also distinct enough from its own (anime) peers".
If you see it that is way, Howl's was not distinct at all (based on a UK book & doing what worked in spirited away) and boy and the heron (essentially reusing expressions from all the works of Miyazaki).
I think you're just looking for that "wow" factor again. Something that put your mind at edge because your brain couldn't predict what will happen next, because they don't follow usual (selling) clichés in story telling or cinematography.
I don't think many anime of today really have that. The only one I can think of is the original Evangelion but that's quite old now too. Maybe Attack of Titan, Pluto, but that's a bit subjective.
I can think of multiple Mangas that would fall in to that. Mangas allow more artistic freedom because it's made by a smaller team, and requires smaller fan base so can be bold in trying new expressions. But might lose its charm when (if) adapted to animation. Ghost in the shell mentioned in the original post too, is Very different from the Manga. (source material) and to people that really got intrigued by the deeper theme about consciousness they might prefer the Manga more.
I haven't watched it myself but maybe the recent adaptation of Junji Itos horror might fall under that "wow" category. His style (in writing) is very unique.
You need to see Samurai Champloo if you haven't. It's twenty years old but absolutely timeless.
Reposting my comment from elsewhere here:
For something more fantastical, To Your Eternity, an adventure that makes you feel and hurt. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End for an adventure that's both young and grown-up - it only came out recently, but has instantly been acclaimed as a modern classic.
For something more childlike yet endlessly creative, Delicious in Dungeon or even Ranking of Kings.
For proper literary sci-fi (despite featuring young protagonists), From the New World (Shinsekai Yori).
For true artistic cinema despite a Japanese high-school setting, Ping Pong The Animation.
Other gems mentioned that I second: ODDTAXI (a tightly written mystery-drama despite its art) and Pluto (serious thinking sci-fi with gravitas).
There are always a few upper-tier shows coming out each year that retain an artistic, mature bent. Not very many but at least they're there.
On the ODDTAXI front, I can recommend the currently running "Roots of Odd Taxi (RoOT)" series. Its a nice side-story that adds a lot of texture without making the original worse. Also, the "ODDTAXI in the Woods" movie version definitely added a lot and tied things up in a way that the series didn't.
I'll give two series and a movie, since everyone has mentioned Kon. I think these are also going to appeal more to someone who hasn't been intimately involved in anime fandom.
-Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
It single-handedly revived interest in the game for a reason; it's excellent, particularly as a foil to GITS and a spiritual successor to FLCL (which I'm sure you've heard of). The animation style is VERY different from GITS, but no less technically impressive, and while the story is not quite as philosophical, it's still no less complete and satisfying.
-Sonny Boy
Tinges of Nolan, Kurosawa, Carroll, Cheever's The Swimmer. May seem like a slog at some points, but hang on for the sequence during the last episode. You'll know it when you see it. I don't want to give too much away.
-Mind Game
Again, don't want to spoil. I recommend watching late at night, Adult Swim-style. A prime example of anime that can't exist in any other medium.
I strongly recommend Wolf Children. It's on par with Miyazaki's best. A really moving and heartwarming film.
On the flipside of the spectrum, Grave of the Fireflies and In This Corner of the World are excellent but tragic WW2 films told from the Japanese civilian perspective. Grave of the Fireflies in particular is a difficult watch, but worth seeing once.
Patema Inverted is in the league there, graphics wise. It's crazy how nobody had ever tried the idea of the character pov of falling towards the sky. The immersive feeling is real and genius.
Browse some ranked lists (series and OVAs) over at MyAnimeList.net. Tons of good stuff out there. Though, things were better in the old days. No arguing that.
Watch Redline, Demon City Shinjuku, Ergo Proxy, Psycho Pass, GITS series (not the netflix animated crap), Berserk, Ninja Scroll, Jormungandr, Black Lagoon.
I rewatched Ghost in the Shell recently and I was struck by how poorly it aged. Its animation holds up but its story felt weaker than I remembered. Like the director reached for something deep, couldn't get ahold of it, and then covered his tracks behind wordy philosophy.
>director reached for something deep, couldn't get ahold of it
Translation/writing/dub wasn't very strong at the time, I can see how ppl feel now (and felt at the time) the headiness/philosophizng was filler for robot tanks and augment porn, but it was all there in the source manga by Shirow. IMO reaching for something deep about is what the series is all about, just explored more competently in shows like SAC where they had many hours to deep dwelve into many subjects.
To watch some classic in anything but original language is proper insult to the source and always subpar experience. Would you watch say Bicycle thieves with some yeager-speak variant too?
I know 0 japanese but never ever watched any of their produce in anything but japanese with eng subs. Even though EN is not my primary language but one I grok easily without subs needed.
Sure, people are lazy and have tons of excuses, but they are just that. If you(anybody) couldnt otherwise as a kid, do yourself a favor and re-experience it again in better form.
Ghost in the Shell was one of the first animes I saw, but while I quickly switched from dubs to subs, I only rewatched GitS subbed fairly recently. The subtitles are far better than the dubbed audio, and I'd encourage anyone who has only seen it dubbed to attempt watching it subbed instead
SAC/Second GIG were a rare case of the entire production firing on all cylinders. Even its English dub was leagues better than the average (and IME, somewhat necessary for those who can’t understand Japanese; even as a subtitle watcher of 20+ years I sometimes have trouble following subs in SAC because the dialogue is so dense and technical). Shows like that don’t show up often.
I know when I go back to movies that "blew my mind" when I was a teenager or in my early 20s, now 30 years later, they're rarely as incredible as I remember them being..
I'm older, wiser and with more life experience, and it's therefore much harder to "blow my mind" as they say..
For this reason, I prefer not to rewatch movies that really touched me when I was younger. I would rather they hold that place in my heart unchallenged. I'm sort of defending my younger, wide-eyed self.
I'm not sure what others are saying, I re-watched Ghost in the Shell again recently and I had forgotten just how brilliant it is. There is something pure about it that you just don't find in modern anime, something that really resonated.
Every part of GiS has been, per article "endlessly ripped off, referenced and remixed". Whatever one liked about original GiS, there's a derivation out there that turns dial to 11 and makes the original feel basic in retrospect. But that's testimony to GiS greatness.
I watched The Shining for the first time in around 2012 and when commenting to an older friend about it I said something to the effect of "It's good, but I didn't feel it was exceptional." to which he replied saying that "Yes, but consider that it was the first real film of that genre, it only seems "okay" today because you're comparing to all the films of the same genre which came after and were largely influenced by it."
I don't know enough about films to know that if he said was accurate, but it's stuck with me.
I was about 16 when The Matrix came out and I find it interesting asking people who were born after it came out what they think about it, if they've seen it their reaction is typically (much like me with The Shining) "seemed alright", while for me at the time the movie was phenomenal and in terms of many of its special effects, unlike anything I had ever seen before.
There are a number of films: The Matrix, the original Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Avatar, I’m sure many others that were just so different and jaw-dropping in many ways when they first came out—in those cases because of effects of various types mostly—that it can be hard to appreciate their novelty at the time.
Those are two of my favorite films. But Citizen Kane was largely unique as opposed to a precursor of a type. And Casablanca just put everything together in a package that really wasn’t that distinct from plenty of other love stories set against a WWII backdrop on the surface.
To me, both Citizen Kane and Casablanca feel pretty revolutionary in editing, compared to what was prevalent at the time. But this has intrigued me to do some '41/42 comparisons.
The "Lord of the Rings" novel is that way too to anyone not steeped in fantasy. It might be hard to imagine for many people these days that "elves" and "dwarves" strictly meant children's fairytales before Tolkien. Magical rings, wizards, dragons with tunnels of gold ... seems so cliche now it is easy to see why someone would wonder what the big deal about Tolkien is.
Elves and dwarves didn't strictly mean children's fairy tales prior to Tolkien. There's plenty of semi-popular prior art where they feature, like the Worm Ouroboros or The King of Elfland's Daughter. Poul Anderson also published The Broken Sword the same year as LOTR, which shows a lot of the same influences as written by a very different author.
Tolkien's importance is that the specific kinds of creatures he wrote became the default for virtually all subsequent authors and the popularity/quality of the works were pivotal in establishing fantasy as a "proper" genre.
I have to disagree with both. I help a colleague teach a class in which students often read necromancer, and it often has a deep impact on them. The cloned ninjas and laser weapons are uninteresting to them for the reasons mentioned above, but the Necromancer + Wintermute dynamic and central plot is fascinating to them.
I think it’s slightly different. Tolkein made fairy tales grow up, but people already had some familiarity with these things. Tolkien gave them a new way to think about those things.
Gibson’s strength was that he could describe—in an accessible way—concepts that were quite foreign to most people at the time.
Not the original GIS, but GIS: Standalone Complex is still one of the best examples out there of "realistic" special forces action scenes. A lot of screen time spent getting all the pieces into position, culminating in just a couple seconds of fast-paced action.
This is why I think Akira can't be surpassed. Not just because it was done on acetate, but because of the level of skill and consideration required to animate that way. You can't just undo that brush stroke onto the cel and try something else.
As much as technology has democratized the field, I think it also lowers the heights. I desperately hope I'm wrong and just old, but I haven't met someone who puts up something that they think is better. Maybe it's just because we're in the transitory phase - but digital animation has been around for decades at this point. Maybe it's Ikea versus handcrafting, and the shift is in the expected quality rather than the art elevating itself to meet priors.
Akira was a big budget corporate thing though. It's technical excellence came from having the budget to employ multiple highly skilled animation leads and hundreds of animators drawing hundreds of thousands of cells.
I think animation done in computers can be excellent, but is disadvantaged because computers make it easier to do thinks quick and cheap and the economics of animation incentivises taking that direction.
Redline is a rare example where I think it's done well.
Akira is a cult classic and a pivotal point in anime - much more in the US than in Japan. If you don't know of a film surpassing it in skill and consideration in the thirty years since it was made it probably says more about your exposure to anime. Maybe it's just that Cyberpunk is less popular now and the big genres are of less interest to you.
The big genres of modern anime seem to predominantly be pandering to base weebs. Waifu shit meant to sell body pillows. Where is all the serious animation like Magnetic Rose at?
anime is a completely pointless topic in my opinion. i honestly feel like it has no future because of AI. even if there is something that resembles anime in the future, it will all be drawn and probably written by AI. what is the point of that? and looking back, the only thing that made anime so good was that it was niche. GITS for example, while touching on interesting concepts and being beautifully drawn, doesnt have a very good story. it was niche enough, small enough and nimble enough to touch on cool, ahead-of-their-time concepts that hadnt yet broken through to mainstream. but beyond that, it doesnt really do much. most anime that ive seen is extremely violent, has meandering dis-jointed writing, etc. not of much value to anyone above the age of 16.
watching GITS now is even more disappointing because all of the transhumanist, cyberpunk themes that are touched upon arent cool anymore. they are reality now. AI is here and its a real thing that we have to deal with. soon we really will have to deal with the concepts seen in GITS. and its just tired and disappointing because it wont be like a cool anime, it will be horrible and dangerous and disgusting. society will be shattered..
Every crevasse of the original Manga contains deep thought out design on what digital life could become. What constructs we become once we crossed that digital/biological line.
Love it. Happy to buy into the sell.