Anime: General

I'm just going to make this my overall anime post. There will be further posts on it, definitely, but one to sort of set up my anime background is a good idea, so you all know where I'm coming from.

My freshman year roommate was the first guy to really get me started on anime. He'd check out anime dvds from the school library, and watch them in our room, and I'd watch about 1/4 of the episodes with him. Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell, Trigun, all good anime, but I hadn't really gotten hooked yet.

Once we get around to my senior year, I get interested again. I watch all Ghost in the Shell I can get my hands on, not just the first season. Tottoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Trigun, the Final Fantasy CG movies, Full Metal Alchemist and a lot more (can't remember all of them.) I was into anime now, I just didn't have enough money to really get my hands on many seasons of anime that weren't in the library.

Fast forward to now. Since graduation I have put a decent amount of money towards my collection of anime DVDs. The collection is as follows: Escaflowne, Jing: King of Bandits, Elfen Leid, Last Exile, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, Final Fantasy: Advent Children, Kino's Journey, Gantz, Princess Monoake, Spirited Away, .hack\roots, Bleach, Blood+, Samurai Champloo, Vampire Hunter Robin, Ghost in the Shell seasons 1 and 2, and Appleseed. I might be missing some, but I'm sure those will come up again later. For now, I'm just going to list my top 3 of the above series, and say a little about them.

Elfen Leid: Gory, and a bit over the top, this film is on this list predominantly for the overarching themes you find in it. The idea is that a disease has spread (fairly contained though) which causes people to be born with horns on their head, and invisible arms called vectors coming out of their back. The people studying the affected children consider them dangerous, and claim that while they can be normal up to about 4 years old, once they reach that age they will develope a hatred for humans, and will kill them without much hesitation (Including parents and siblings.) The show goes on to describe the situations in which the first of these affected people (called dyclonius) first came to attack people. And the story is all about her and how she was affected by that day. This anime is not for the faint of heart.

Last Exile: Absolutely amazing anime. The art is spectacular, the music even more so. The story focuses on two delivery pilots, and how they get involved in a war with "The Guild." The Guild is a society detached from those that live on land, and it is thanks to their technology that anyone on land is able to fly. They abuse this power, and this is the source of the majority of the conflict. Claus is your standard anime hero: young, reckless, ambitious, and perpetually guilt stricken, but he meshes incredibly well with all of the other characters, and the story builds very very well. I highly recommend this anime to almost all ages (There is some death, and some violence, but almost all of the combat is air combat, shit to ship, so there isn't too much up close, a few death scenes though.)

Kino's Journey: The best for last. This is one of the first anime I bought after college. I saw a cheap, $30 anime set that I could get, and I thought why not. I was hooked after the first episode. The premise for this show, which is based off of a book series, is that Kino, a young female traveler (though they make her gender somewhat ambiguous at first) is going from nation to nation traveling. Each nation she visits is in truth more of a city than a nation, but they each are so different and independent that nation is a better choice of words. Sometimes, though, the episode deals with people she meets while on the road, instead of people she meets in a town. Each nation she comes across has a different trait that is focused on. One city tries to come up with a tradition to call its own by trying out a new one on every traveller that comes by, and in the end that becomes a tradition of its own. Another town forces every traveler to either be imprisoned or fight in a tournament to the death. Another is a town that used to be at war with a neighboring nation, yet the two nations decided war was costing them too many lives so instead they turned their war into a competition to see who could kill more of the villagers in a neighboring town each year, their own people go unharmed because this little village is defenseless. The last town I'll mention is a town that has always been known for its hostility towards travelers, but when Kino visits she finds that they are a happy and friendly people, inviting her into their lives with open arms. This final mystery is a sad, but very touching one. You should definitely watch and find out what provoked that change in the townsfolk.

So I've gone on long enough. Any comments on the series I have mentioned are more than welcome, and I'm always interested in suggestions of new series to watch.

And for the love of god people, don't simply not watch anime because you think of it as just a cartoon. The hand-drawn medium is just that, another medium, and its simply a far more flexible story-telling device than real-life filming could ever be.

AAAAAH, almost forgot to mention Now and Then, Here and There, a series that definitely is one of my favorites. Don't know how I forgot about it. I'm done though, I'll write about it another time.