40 Days of Anime - Day 5

[jennaria]

I choose kalloway's version of this question:

05 -- list five anime you'd show to someone new to anime.

Back in the day, when my friend Kay sat me down and Introduced Me To Anime, we spent an entire weekend and watched at least one disc of 14 different anime. That seems a little more complicated than the meme wants, so instead, I'm going for trope/sub-genre, because All People Have Individual Tastes, and anyway too-generic 'hook people on anime!' lists don't work. (Seriously: Funimation comes out with lists, every Christmas, which conveniently include recently released Funimation titles, and half of them I just side-eye because really?) So!

MAGICAL GIRL - The easy answer is SAILOR MOON (of whichever vintage, Classic or Diamond - I've watched all of one episode, so I can't comment), or CARD CAPTOR SAKURA (my personal choice, although it does create false expectations vis-a-vis CLAMP and how fond they actually are of ripping your heart out). But really, there are lots and lots (and lots) of choices here. ...although probably not PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA. Heh.

SHONEN FIGHTING - Wife suggests RURONI KENSHIN (which qualifies!), but I was thinking more one of those ridiculously huge shows that go on forever and feature a boy who Finds Friendship and Achieves His Goals with the Purity of his Heart and incidentally the Strength of his Fists. Y'know, NARUTO, ONE PIECE, BLEACH, DRAGONBALL/DRAGONBALL Z...I think technically KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN counts, and maybe FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, and probably lots more that aren't occurring to me right now.

(An ex tried DRAGONBALL to persuade me that anime was worth watching. It was not super-effective.)

I admit to having a soft spot for BLEACH - back when I lived with thesilentpoet and Kay, we spent a good few months watching it regularly, and getting hopelessly confused over who of the Shinigami was who (seriously, I still think of two of the characters as 'Creepy Fuck #1' and 'Creepy Fuck #2'). We skipped the Bount arc entirely, and finally bogged down somewhere in the Arrancar arc, due to increasing annoyance at the Shiny New Characters.

SPORTS - I seriously hesitated here, because two of my totally favorite anime are technically sports anime (HIKARU NO GO, and of course YURI!!! ON ICE) - but they also both subvert the tropes of sports anime, so I'm not sure they're necessarily a good starter. Maybe KUROKO NO BASUKE, which I enjoyed but tapped out after episode 6 or 7 due to the fact that I just could not care about basketball. :wince: Then Wife reminded me that FREE!! is also a sports anime, and has all the important elements (beautiful boys being ambiguously gay at each other, True Friendship being (nearly) as important as actual talent, The Main Character Who Only Cares About [Sport], The Rival Who Only Wants To Defeat The Main Character, and everything being resolved by a match of [sport]).

(Hmm. By that description, INITIAL D - a 90s anime about street car racing, which I love with a deep and shameful love - technically counts as a sports anime too. I suspect this says more about me and my taste in anime than anything else.)

ROBOT - Pick a flavor of GUNDAM, any flavor. GUNDAM WING was my actual entry point into anime fandom, but I'm not sure it actually stands up for anyone who hasn't been exposed to innumerable slash-fics featuring various combinations of its pretty, pretty pilots. A few years back I attended a panel on robot anime, and they also recommended GUNDAM - specifically, one of the various single-season not-connected-to-the-main-universe GUNDAMs - as a good entry point, so I'm not entirely on crack.

BLANK ENTRY - which is sorta deliberate (tailor this list to the person you're trying to introduce to anime!) and sorta because I ran out of sub-tropes that I'd want to specifically introduce a newbie to. Wife says she was hooked via WITCH HUNTER ROBIN and READ OR DIE. My sister introduced me to SHINGU: SECRET OF THE STELLAR WARS (which everyone should watch, seriously, I feel like the only people who have seen this show are the one I've shown it to). My best friend Stef remembers WEISS KREUZ fondly. The anime that succeeds in hooking you on anime is such an ideosyncratic thing that trying to recommend something is nearly impossible. It depends on you knowing your friend.

Comments

[branchandroot]

Of course, there's also the questions of who this new to anime person is. I mean, a lot of my friends, I'd show Utena to with utter glee, knowing it would hook them like whoa. But there are also people I'd start out with something less heavy on the YAY SYMBOLISM WHOOHOO PSYCHODRAMA DID WE MENTION METAPHORS. There are people I'd show Prince of Tennis to (at least for a while) because they'd be amused by the crackiness, and then there are those I'd give something more like Giant Killing (or, indeed, IniD).

And then there are the people who enjoy pain, and I'd pull out all the Urobuchi for them and go away to make popcorn while they enjoyed themselves.

[jennaria]

Those are also true (and the other-other reason why I kept the fifth slot as a blank). It comes down to knowing both the person's taste, and the anime you're recommending. And also resisting the urge to be all THIS ANIME IS THE SHINIEST OF SHINY THINGS, EVERYONE WOULD LOVE IT (she says, wincing at some of her own past attempts).

Also I know three out of five of those anime. :hits up Google: Wait, is that last the author of PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA? And PSYCHO-PASS and GARGANTIA ON THE VERDUOUS PLANET - Never mind, make that four out of five.