40 Days of Anime - Day 11

[jennaria]

11: What is your favorite drama anime?

How are we defining drama again? Google gives me lists that includes everything from ATTACK ON TITAN (which I have not watched, as I know just enough spoilers to know it's really, really Not To My Taste) to ANGEL BEATS (which I also haven't watched, because it's also Not To My Taste, albeit on the other end of the spectrum). On the other hand, it also tells me that Drama includes PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA (which I loved, although I haven't watched any of the other series or movies), COWBOY BEBOP (of which I have only seen the movie, and damn it's depressing, but I can respect the craft involved), AKIRA (I can understand why it's a classic but I never want to watch it again), and damn near everything Studio Ghibli ever made.

Having been reminded that I can totally pick movies, though, I'm going to go for SUMMER WARS. I first encountered the movie via an AMV that entirely focused on the Virtual Reality side of the movie, which is a big part but not nearly all of it. Also it's beautiful, and allows all its (large!) cast of characters a moment in the sun, and its Wikipedia entry doesn't nearly give it enough credit.

Comments

[the_rck]

I was going to say that the Cowboy Bebop series isn't as depressing as the movie, but... Parts of it are. Parts of it-- entire episodes even-- are very funny, and the dog doesn't die, but none of the adult characters get actual happy endings.

[jennaria]

I believe you! Also I am /mostly/ sure that, in the series, I wouldn't spend like an hour wondering how the fuck Spike is still /alive/, he should have been dead literally three times over, what the fuck. This is in part because I'm sure the series episodes are shorter than an hour. :rueful:

(I know Cowboy Bebop also via AMVs, which admittedly are a chancy way to know a series - sometimes they give you a really good feel for a series, and sometimes they lie and it turns out that the AMV contains the only good five minutes in the entire series. On the other hand, my friend Kay - she who was responsible for my proper introduction to anime - chose the AMVs, so I'm willing to trust them.)

[the_rck]

I believe there's a fan theory that all of canon is a dying hallucination for Spike and thus that none of it actually happened at all. I don't subscribe to it, but it would explain him generally not dying.

[kalloway]

Oooh, Summer Wars is great. I don't have my own copy, but now I want to watch it again.

[jennaria]

I don't have my own copy either, sadly. We have WOLF CHILDREN, which is directed by the same guy, but not SUMMER WARS. (Both my wife and I have the bad habit of buying off 'oh, hey, we /might/ like this,' and forgetting to buy things that we know we /do/ like.)