Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > Four Anime DVDs for beginners.

Wasn't this why the general anime thread was more or less retired? And rightly so?

It was. The Primer Thread already contains any recommendations that myself and a few others would include here, the reasons why and where you can get hold of them, often for free or for cheap.

Boboss: there's the beginnings of some thinking as to narrative structure in the Primer thread too. And yes, I do give each my sales pitch. In fact, that's probably one of the weaknesses of my writing on anime on this site – it's almost all pitch.

There's definitely a stereotypical anime within that medium and from that I derive my usage of against-type.

If there *definitely* is then you won't mind naming enough examples to support your case. Because right now Daytripper is rather running rings around you on the evidence side of things.

By the way, Daytripper: I'm constantly stunned by how much you've seen. How much of this stuff do you have on DVD, can you burn discs, and can I pay you a lump sum every month to throw some of it my way?

Suggest four Manga DVDs that will appeal to both Manga fans and newcommers alike - think of it as a mini season of Manga.

My recommendations would be Gunbuster, FLCL (two very different OVA of six episodes each that have just been released as big packaging deluxe editions, but that you should be able to find in a one-DVD-per-series format on Ebay) and Paranoia Agent (thirteen episodes, possible to find in a two disc format on Ebay. If you can find Paranoia Agent on one disc then I'd either include Porco Rosso (a lesser seen Miyazaki Ghibli, his most underrated work and much more complex than most people give it credit) or Otaku no Video (if you're interested in the whole film studies/cultural studies angle, as it's part silly but informative story and part series of live action interviews, both investigating the otaku phenomenon). This is not a list, because all my reasoning and sales pitch is already given on the above linked Primer thread (I also give links to other places on Barbelith where each series is discussed in a lot more depth).

Yes, those recommendations lean too heavily on the output of Studio Gainax over a lot of other creators. That's partly because of my own familiarity with their work (I'm a novice compared to some here) and partly because Gainax are one of the most influential studios in the business and regularly seem to come out with work that comments on everything that has come before and influences much of what is to come.

I've chosen each of these series because they not only each involve excellent and thematically complex stories told in extremely interesting and often innovative ways, well portrayed characters, fantastic design, animation and voice acting, but also because each is like a miniature Rosetta Stone for anyone who is interested in finding out more about anime and the audience and culture that surrounds it. Each is a proving ground for experimental techniques, references many other series in ways that is not too intrusive for a newcomer and each are by influential creators and studios. From a film analysis point of view each is a goldmine. For full reasoning, please see linked thread.

Another reason why I have difficulty meeting sleaze' request: almost all of my favourite recent anime is in series form, which might typically span six, thirteen, twenty six or fifty episodes to tell a complete and self contained story. In the case of Bleach we're at one hundred and seventeen episodes with no end in sight. These longer form shows are what I consider to be the most rewarding, in that they typically feature the best characterisation, the most interesting concepts, the most emotional payoff the most idiosyncratic touches and the most interesting storytelling conventions. They almost invariably require a good deal of investment, especially considering how most of them start with deceptive and sometimes childish simplicity and build up to become something rich and complex in the second half. In Eureka Seven's case, for example, you won't even really have a sense of what it's actually about until you've seen around three quarters of its fifty episodes (don't even get me started on Evangelion. That show is even more hotly debated than The Prisoner in my neck of the woods). I mention this here as – along with Daytripper's superbly made argument – it's primarily why I have difficulty condensing a representative sample of the anime that I love into four DVDs. I haven't been able to find the entirety of Eureka Seven on anything fewer than five discs, but there's not a lot in the world of film and TV that I would recommend more than sitting yourself down and watching the lot regardless.

By the way, any time someone watches dubbed anime an Eva loses its creepy spider-leg wings. If you've only watched it dubbed then I imagine that will account for ninety percent of why you might have had an issue with it in the past. For full reasoning as to why subtitles are the only way to watch anime, see the Primer thread.

I don't mean to come across as unhelpful here. Myself and many others have already done all of the things that sleaze and Boboss are asking for elsewhere, at length, and in such an exhaustively linked way as to put myself at least in HTML overload.