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havocthecat mentioned at one point that it'd be nice to have a rec list for various anime. Since I've fallen way back into my old modes of operation, I thought this was a great idea, and went overboard.Here's Vol. 1, with Vol. 2 to come at some point in the future where I think straight again. They're divided up into categories by length.
Films
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo) : Award-winning 2006 film directed by Mamoru Hosoda and produced by Madhouse. Makoto Kanno is a normal high school student having a very bad day. Pretty much anything that can go wrong, does go wrong, up to crashing into a woman on her way back from school on her bike and getting yelled at, after finding out her brakes don't work and getting killed by a train. Wait, what? Turns out Makoto gained the strange ability to, well, leap through time. Which she promptly uses to redo all the crappy parts of her day and decides that this is the Best Thing Ever. Except, as she uses this power, she realizes that it might have a detrimental effect on everybody else...
Adaptation/sequel of a well-known and popular Japanese novel of the same name.
My Neighbor Totoro : 1988 film by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. A small family, consisting of Dad and two girls, Satsuki and Mai, move out to rural Japan in order to be closer to the hospital where Mom is a long-term patient. Trying to deal with all the normal hardships of moving out into what to a kid is the middle of nowhere and trying to deal with being the new kid at school, Satsuki's got it rough already. But when 4-year-old Mai discovers a magical creature living in the forest near their house, life starts looking a whole lot better for everyone. But when a sudden complication cancels Mom's much-awaited visit home, well, things get a lot more dramatic and desperate.
Possibly one of the greatest family films. (I am unashamed in my praise)
Was my own personal introduction to anime.
Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime) : Film by Hayao Miyazaki. Set in 14th or 15th century Japan, it tells the story of Ashitaka, a young man from the Emishi tribe (possibly modeled after the Ainu, the indigenous people the Japanese drove to the northernmost island), who in an attempt to save his villiage from a rampaging boar god, got cursed and was subsequently reluctantly exiled so he could go West and search for a cure. Ashitaka's journey to find the source of the iron ball that caused the boar god's pain leads him to Irontown, a small settlement on the edge of the wilderness, and involved in a three-way battle between Lady Eboshi and the workers of Irontown she protects, a samurai lord who wants the wealth of Irontown for himself, and the gods/spirits of the forest who want to destroy the human settlement to protect their home, who are also accompanied by San, a girl who was literally raised by wolves after being abandoned in the forest as an infant. Ashitaka's task, in addition to removing the curse, seems to be somehow mediating a peace.
Possibly Miyazaki's darkest film. The English release has a rating of PG-13. It means it. (Mostly for violence and gore. It is a war.)
Spirited Away : Yet another film by Hayao Miyazaki. Chihiro is a sullen and spoiled little girl traveling with her parents to their new home in a new town. Strangely, she finds herself stranded in the spirit world and her parents turned to pigs after they eat mounds of food at what appears to be an abandoned amusment park. Chihiro's only choice, then, after meeting Haku, is to work at a bathhouse (so she also doesn't disappear) and try to find a way not only to get back to the human world before she forgets her name but also to turn her parents back to normal. And that's just the first half-hour.
Topped Princess Mononoke in the box office, and won an Oscar for Best Animated Film (against Ice Age and Lilo & Stich in 2002), the only foreign-language and traditionally-animated film to do so.
The Place Promised to Us in Our Early Days : In an alternate universe where the island of Hokkaido is held by the USSR and the rest of Japan is occupied by the US, two teenage boys, Hiroki and Takuya, become friends with a girl named Sayuri. On Hokkaido, there's a giant tower reaching to the sky, and the boys promise Sayuri that they'll take her there some day in the airplane they're building out of scrap parts. However, when she disappears, the boys drift apart, until years later, when it becomes clear that Sayuri's disappearance had more implications than they realized.
Has been known to make people cry. A lot.
Grave of the Fireflies : The story of two Japanese war orphans trying to survive, and failing, in war-torn Japan after the Allied firebombing of Kobe in 1945 kills their mother (their father died on an Imperial naval ship). It's one of the most powerful statements on war, its effects on civilians, and the price at putting pride before responsibility.
It's based on a semi-autobiographical novel. Easily one of the most haunting, heartwrenching films ever, animated or not. If you do not cry during this, you possibly have no soul. (In my freshman year of high school, I mentioned to my history teacher I had a VHS of this film, and she showed it during our WW2 unit. You never saw a quieter class of 30+ 14-year-olds, who walked out of class on the two days it took to show it slightly shell-shocked. Schindler's List did not even provoke this reaction, when it was shown to us 3 years later.)
Summer Wars : Film directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Socially-awkward math prodigy Keiji is invited by his upperclassman crush Natsuki to her family's house in the country to help her with a birthday party for the matriarch of the clan. While there, he is falsely implicated in hacking OZ (OZ = what happens if Google, Second Life, and Facebook take over the Internet), and with the help of the clan, must somehow save both the virtual world and the real world from the actual hacker, an AI that got loose. Instead of painting technology as a bad thing, Hosoda puts both the problem and the solution in the virtual world, and it's the bonds between people, both analog and digital, that are the only chance to save the world.
Won the Japanese Academy Prize for Animation of the Year in 2010.
US release date is September 2010.
Shorter Anime (~13 episodes or less)
Kino's Journey (Kino no Tabi) : It's about Kino the traveler and the talking motorcycle Hermes. Fairly episodic in nature, it's a very episodic and philosophical series. Each place Kino and Hermes visit is generally characterized by one thing and has some sort of point to make about human nature (the first episode, for example, deals with the Land of Visible Pain, where the inhabitants thought it'd be a great idea if everyone were telepathic so that people couldn't lie and wouldn't have to talk things out. This did not work so well). Kino survives by a combination of wits, a mean quick draw, and a rule to only stay for three days.
Based on a series of light novels, most of which are sadly untranslated.
Serial Experiments Lain : If you like trippy, highly intelligent shows. Lain Iwakura is a normal, not particularly computer-savvy, reclusive 14 year old girl. A classmate of hers commits suicide, and a few days later, Lain receives an email from the dead girl. Deciding to not write it off as a prank, Lain's computer-obsessed father gladly gets her a top-of-the-line computer, which Lain uses to delve deeper for answers in "the Wired" (super-cool internet). And the answers she finds destabilizes not only her sense of self, but possibly the rest of the world and the fabric of reality itself.
Epic Mindscew Anime. Did I mention trippy and intelligent? The creators are phenominally well-read. Vannevar Bush, Schumann Resonance, the works of Cordwainer Smith and Lewis Carrol, Majestic-12, Knights of Lambda Calculus, esoteric computing systems and the history of computing, and a hundred other little references are somewhere between background foundation and plot points. Knowledge of any/all of these is not required to watch the anime, but it might make your head hurt less. Don't be surprised to find yourself looking things up on Wikipedia.
Character design by Yoshitoshi ABe, one of my favorite artists.
Haibane Renmei : A series about a group of mysterious children (called Haibane) who live in the walled city of Glie, which only has one entrance and from which the inhabitants cannot leave. The Haibane differ from normal inhabitants in that they have small, charcoal-colored wings and halos, and are also born from cocoons (as young children to teens, not as infants). No one, not even the Haibane themselves, know why they exist. Most have memories of lives outside the walls, although nothing concrete, save for the mysterious and possibly symbolic dreams they had in their cocoons. The heroine of the series is Rakka, a newborn Haibane who's trying to acclimate to her new life in Glie.
The series is low-action and gently-paced. It's almost completely character driven, focusing on the Haibane living in Old Home and their lives, as well as gently teasing you about what the nature of the Haibane might be.
Concept from a doujinshi series by Yoshitoshi ABe. Is very pretty.
Gunslinger Girl : This is what happens when the government (Italy's, in this case) decides that while saving critically injured or dying little orphan girls is all well and good, it'd be even better if they could make them stronger, faster, better...and turns them into elite assassins to do the dirty work. The anime mostly focuses on the relationships between the girls and their handlers, and oh boy, there is absolutely no glamorization of the girls' reality. It's tragic (how the girls got to this state might leave you screaming, because it is brutal and horrific in a lot of cases. On the other hand, the show isn't saying that it's a good thing at all.)
Read or Die OVA : three-episode OVA series featuring Yomiko Readman, an eccentric bibliomaniac who's a part-time substitute teacher. Her other job is being a top-level agent for the British Library's Secret Intelligence Division, codenamed "The Paper". Yomiko has the incredible, well, papermancy works, powers. She can do everything from stopping bullets to making giant planes capable of carrying people out of paper with her will. The cost is that she's pretty much addicted to books and must read thousands of dollars worth of 'em every week. Anyway, there's been a rash of crimes perpetrated by a group of villains calling themselves "I-jin", who remarkably resemble several famous historical figures, who are trying to possibly end the world. Or something. Saying much more would spoil.
Spawned a sequel TV series.
Longer Anime (25+ episodes)
Darker than Black : Ten years ago, a strange phenomenon appeared in Tokyo called Hell's Gate. (A matching Heaven's Gate appeared in South America at some point) With it came an altered sky and a giant swath of destruction in the middle of the city. Not only that, but suddenly, certain people started developing supernatural abilities. Abilities to manipulate water, the weather, electricity, gravity. However, the price paid for these powers was their emotions, turning these people, known as Contractors, cold-blooded killers. They're hidden from society, used by governments and secret agencies to do their dirty work. The anime follows one crew which contains Hei (a Contractor), Huang (his handler), Yin (a Doll: an emotionless person who's almost unable to take care of themselves, seen only as tools, but when in contact with their medium, practically walking military spy satellites), and Mao (a talking cat, played completely serious).
High action, bloody, strong characters, and dealing with some serious moral and ethical questions.
Available on Hulu (English dub, I believe).
Ergo Proxy : Post-apocalyptic philosophical fistfight. And mind screw. And a production staff who really, really likes to show off their research. (Did you know about the 400 Drunken Rabbit gods/spirits of Aztec mythology? Neither did I.) Humanity has retreated to dome cities and the outside world is a barren wasteland. Enter immigrant Vincent Law and intelligence operative Re-l Mayer who end up trying to figure out just what the hell is going on with the domes, the utopia of Romdeau, and these mysterious monsters known as Proxies.
Neon Genesis Evangelion / The Rebuild of Evangelion : The former is an extremely well-known deconstruction of the giant mecha genre. It's one of the defining anime of the 90s, and heavily inspired many series that came after it. Half of Earth got obliterated in Second Impact on September 13, 2000. 15 years later, Shinji Ikari arrives in Tokyo-3, at the behest of his estranged father, Director of NERV, a para-military/science branch of the UN. He is told, in no uncertain terms, that he will pilot a giant biomechanical robot called an Evangelion against beings known as "Angels", who are intent on destroying humanity. If he doesn't his father will throw him aside again, oh and all humanity will perish in Third Impact. Shinji...reacts about as well as an emotionally-crippled and self-loathing 14 year old boy is expected to. And the rest of the cast ain't no traditional mecha cast (hot-blooded and full of inspirational speeches) either; all of them have severe psychological issues. It's also highly, highly mind screwy, with significant references to obscure Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic texts, Jungian philosophy, and a whole host of other things.
"Rebuild of Evangelion" is the remake, currently coming out now. It has been described as "Evangelion on its meds, out of therapy, married, and living in the suburbs". One of the main differences is that Shinji isn't so utterly broken from the get-go.
If nothing else, watch it for the huge impact (no pun intended) it had on the anime industry. Made by Studio GAINAX (well-known for fanservice, mind screws, and some really impressive visuals).
Tengen Toppa Gurran Lagann: If NGE was a deconstruction of the mecha genre, TTGL is it's reconstruction. TTGL is what happens when Studio GAINAX is asked to make a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Simon is an orphan living in an underground village. He's really good at digging. He finds this weird glowing mini-drill. One day, his idol and "big brother" Kamina convinces him to help make a break for the surface. They fail, but wouldn't you know, that same day a giant robot crashes through the ceiling, followed by Yoko, a scantily-clad teenage girl with a very large sniper rifle. That weird glowing mini-drill that Simon found? Turns out to be the key to a pint-sized mecha. They save the village, and then Simon, Kamina, and Yoko head off to the surface, and onto one of the craziest, most awesome adventures ever. Oh hell, I'll quote TVTropes at you:
"Thus begins a rollercoaster ride of Fanservice, over-the-top fight scenes between mecha, hot-bloodedness, epic sunglasses, massive Badassitude, and mind-blowing heroism. Great fun, and doesn't take itself seriously at all."
Has an awesome soundtrack to boot. If you want pure fun and awesome without having to think much at all (although, as it is GAINAX, there is a pretty good message in there too), well, kick reason to the curb and go beyond the impossible.
Available (legally!) on YouTube and Hulu in North America.
Martian Successor Nadesico : Yet another giant mecha anime. Technically. It's also a space opera and affectionate parody at times of the entire mecha and space show genre. Several centuries into the future, Earth has been at war for a long time with an alien species, called the "lizards", sent from somewhere around Jupiter. The war's going badly for Earth, so defense contractor Nergal Industries decides to just build their own space battleship, called the Nadesico. Except, since it's not exactly military, the crew is one of the most ragtag bunch of genius misfits ever, headed by the genius ditz Yurika Misumaru, daughter of Earth's head admiral. And then, their ace pilot ends up being Yurika's old, burnt-out and traumatized childhood friend, Akito Tenkawa, who actually just wants to be a cook on the ship and let the all-female team of mecha pilots fight while he stays in the kitchen. Hilarity ensues.
It is a show with a definite sense of humor about itself, but also a very good space opera show in it's own right.
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Oh lord, I would never suggest that anyone watch Grave of the Fireflies twice. I mean, I did, and it very nearly broke me, and that was in two sittings. As a general rule, I Do Not Cry During Movies. Grave of the Fireflies had me weeping.