Hmm, I didn't know that. Looks interesting!

true tears: a very good drama with an excellent animation.

音響生命体ノイスマン, a short animation I watched on a channel over here called Locomotion that blew my mind when I was about 10 years old and many years later found out about in youtube:

+1 for Kemonozume

and everything Studio 4ºC

also ノエインもうひとりの君へ AMAZING BATTLE SCENES:

casshern sins, furi kuri, evangelion (THE END OF EVANGELION IS AMAZING), etc etc.

dizmox Wrote:

astendra Wrote:+1 for 空の境界。

Also, I kinda like ABe's style. Haibane is pretty beautiful and Lain is just awesomely trippy.

I think Despera should be coming out soon? Hopefully that'll be good.

Unfortunately the Despera anime is on hold, possibly even cancelled.

Talking about anime (slightly off topic), I was wondering if somebody has a vocabulary list or a tag in his or her anki deck covering special words used in anime (especially, I mean.) Is there a list somewhere/spreadsheet? Could not localise one yet~

Tori-kun Wrote:Talking about anime (slightly off topic), I was wondering if somebody has a vocabulary list or a tag in his or her anki deck covering special words used in anime (especially, I mean.) Is there a list somewhere/spreadsheet? Could not localise one yet~

This is probably the most complete one, but it's in romaji unfortunately.

Sankaku had a list, at the top was Time of Eve. Really hard to top that one.

Some new stuff, in vein with the OP: 星を追う子ども
This is also by 新海誠 (Shinkai Makoto), and was released on BD a couple of weeks ago. If you've seen 秒速５センチメートル (5 Centimeters per Second), you pretty much know what kind of quality to expect. It is stunning.

Also, this is a PV but I think it counts: Perfect Day
Not sure I'd normally listen to this, but I find it hard not to like the overall composition.

I have to second the love for Satoshi Kon and the End of Evangelion. The Rebuild of Evangelion movies so far have really good visuals too, especially the second one.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Puella Magi Madoka Magica yet. On the surface, it looks like a standard magical girl series. The animation is really strange, psychedelic, and experimental at times. As for the story, let's just say the concept art and trailer are deceiving.
Another one with really good animation and story is Paradise Kiss. The clothing designs alone are a good reason to watch it.

Edit: I nearly forgot - it's really old, so the animation is quite dated, however I highly recommend 少女革命ウテナ. It flips old fairy tale tropes on their head, and also has a lot of strange sequences.

Ah, I second Madoka. It takes three episodes to show its twisted nature, but it's worth it, and some of the art is very surreal.

Bokusenou Wrote:Ah, I second Madoka. It takes three episodes to show its twisted nature, but it's worth it, and some of the art is very surreal.

This is SHAFT's style though (surreal and strange). If you watch some of their other stuff like Zetsubou Sensei, Bakemonogatari, and to a lesser extent Negima!? (TV reboot), you can see it there as well. They out did themselves with Madoka though I think, its almost required that you watch the Bluray version though. The TV side release was rushed considerably. The BD has entire scenes that are completely different and more fleshed out.

I know it's a very well-known anime, but as for shows my favorite animation would go to フリクリ.

In fact, on your first run-through of フリクリ it's almost best to just pay attention to the animation and the music rather than the story. I think people get turned off on the story pretty easily, since it's pretty confusing on the first run through. If you watch two or three times the story actually starts to make perfect sense and is quite interesting, but the first run through there is too much going on so it's easy to get confused.

The animation of each episode is done in a different style, and if you pause you can often find very interesting things going on in the animation (silly pictures, sexual innuendo, impossible but humurous movements). Sometimes the strange animation is even made obvious--such as Haruko reaching out to touch Naota's bandage even when she's across the room, or the strange scene where she is holding a decapitated head and trying to convince Naota to take baseball lessons from her.

The show is nice for Japanese learners because there are so many puns and jokes with language that you won't get with a translation--so it makes you feel good when you are getting something extra out of your Japanese knowledge.

One of only about five anime shows that I enjoy. Note that it was called FLCL in English.

I'd have to say Macross Frontier. I watch a lot of anime, but every so often I come back to Macross Frontier, watch another episode of it and am awed at how high-quality the animation and cgi are.

edit: Now that I've taken another look, I don't know if it's really the animation that makes it look great. The colors are just intense and make it look visually impressive somehow.

apirx Wrote:I'd have to say Macross Frontier. I watch a lot of anime, but every so often I come back to Macross Frontier, watch another episode of it and am awed at how high-quality the animation and cgi are.

edit: Now that I've taken another look, I don't know if it's really the animation that makes it look great. The colors are just intense and make it look visually impressive somehow.

A quick wiki search on the TV series shows that many of the mechanical objects in MC:F are cel-shaded. If you are use to the common CG these days and haven't ever seen that many cel-shaded stuff, then it can be a different experience.

Hey Bokusenou thanks for recommending Mononoke... that show is amazing!!

I'm a big fan of 電脳コイル
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5u3u6_...el-page-10

and ノエイン is one of the most visually stunning animations I've ever seen. If you don't know you MUST watch this anime!
http://www.animecrazy.net/noein-episode-1/

dtcamero Wrote:Hey Bokusenou thanks for recommending Mononoke... that show is amazing!!

I'm a big fan of 電脳コイル
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5u3u6_...el-page-10

and ノエイン is one of the most visually stunning animations I've ever seen. If you don't know you MUST watch this anime!
http://www.animecrazy.net/noein-episode-1/

I second these choices but its worth pointing out that Noein's animation style is crude compared to most styles. This was always its unique point to me and why its a favorite of mine, but nonetheless, I think its worth mentioning to people before they go to watch it. The hand drawn stuff is crude, while the CG is pretty interesting. And the story is unique.

ya i guess what they have in common is the combination of CG and hand-animation looking very different yet working together smoothly.

that was the only flaw I could ever find with the Ghost in the Shell SAC series... I didn't think the CG and animation worked well together. the rounded cars' shading always kind of floated on top of the cell-animation, looking a little awkward...

One of my guilty pleasures re anime is Naruto. I've watched the whole 230+ ep shippuden series (couldn't watch the first 200 episodes, non-shippuuden regular naruto... their high-pitch voices grated too much). One of the awesome things about Naruto is how they somehow got the CG to work in the animation so smoothly that it doesn't even seem like there is a transition... the Naruto CG is obviously CG, and yet somehow looks like it's also just a natural extension of the hand-animated parts. It's really the only anime that I think I could say that about...
http://www.animecrazy.net/naruto-shippuu...isode-167/

I'd say of all the anime mentioned so far, Kanon (the new one) is probably closest in to 5cm in pure image quality and animation detail (beside of course, Makoto Shinkai's other works). Time of Eve is also very impressive.

astendra Wrote:Some new stuff, in vein with the OP: 星を追う子ども

thank you astendra i had to go through so many irrelevant posts and you were the only one to really answer to the OP as soon as i saw the first seconds on youtube i was like OMG now THAT is really worth watching ^^

although i want to thank damicore too because 音響生命体ノイスマン sounds really good and peculiar ^^

One more vote for フリクリ FLCL here.

'cat soup' is visually one of the most interesting:

i love cat soup too!!

i finally got round to watching モノノ怪 that was suggested earlier in the thread, and at least visually, i am absolutely loving every second of it, it is amazing. I could watch it all day.

I just wanted to add 銀河鉄道の夜 (Night on the Galactic Railroad) to the list. It's based on the famous 宮沢賢治 story. Although it's really old now, (1985), it has some really beautiful surreal scenes. If you download it from asiatorrents, it comes with Japanese subtitles too.

Nice thread. I'll definitely check some of these out. I like Mushishi as well.
I hope no one minds if I mention Æon Flux. It was on MTV in the 90s. It is non-J 'anime-influenced'.
...if Egon Schiele had watched Rugrats and Ghost in the Shell and then made a show.

mrbryce Wrote:thank you astendra i had to go through so many irrelevant posts and you were the only one to really answer to the OP as soon as i saw the first seconds on youtube i was like OMG now THAT is really worth watching ^^

I think 5cm has better animation, personally. Though, his new anime is coming out (or is out not sure). Anything by Makoto Shinkai is awesome in the animation department.

5 Centimetres Per Second

The Garden of Words (new)

two recent very cool short animations:

Futon 布団

and latest by koji yamamura, The Hyuga Episode of Kojiki

http://vimeo.com/channels/660823/84271545