Densetsu Kyojin Ideon: Hatsudou-hen

This is a part of a series of stacks that are about artistic tendencies in anime (and that border the fine line between sophisticated and pretentious).

This stack is a work in progress.

Bibliography:
Broderick, Michael. “Superflat Eschatology: Renewal and Religion in anime.” Animation Studies: Animated Dialogues. 2007. 29-36.
Napier, Susan J. “Waiting for the End of the World: Apocalypctic Identity.” Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 249-263.
Tanaka, Motoko. "Apocalypticism in Postwar Japanese Fiction." 2011. University of British Columbia, PhD thesis. 16-33.

Choujin Densetsu Urotsukidouji Movie should be included here, but is tagged as hentai on MAL, so otherwise this list couldn't be public.

Anime that has been in the Super Robot Wars Series that debut in the 80's

Note:
I couldn't get all entries into one list

These are the anime that appear in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 for PlayStation 2.

Anime that are heavily overlooked on MAL (at the time of writing, under 20k members). Most, if not all of them are also underrated. Will likely add stuff in the future as I watch them.

These are all of the anime on which the great mad genius Yoshiyuki Tomino served as lead director.

These anime have strong & dark depictions of suffering, mental illness, trauma violence, sex and various sociopolitical and economic problems in a grounded way and without sugarcoating it, although in fiction it is often impossible to completely avoid the distorting lense of epicness or melodrama when portraying reality.

When I say that these shows portray reality, I don't mean to say that they are necessarily based in material reality, as some are sci-fi or fantasy. What I mean, is that these shows portray the bleak and harrowing aspects of human condition without pulling any punches, and without romanticizing it (to some extent).

These shows often have a positive and hopeful overall message and/or ending sometimes, so I wouldn't call this a list of "depressing" shows. However, they have in common that they revolve around brutal and mature depictions of psychological, physical and spiritual pain of individuals and society, while also having a haunting and opressive feel to them.

Since Mecha/Space animes is somewhat not appreciated nowadays by the general people, i'm making a list to someone who want to see more than the surface of what it offers.

So my list will be filled unpopular Mecha/Space that is worth watching.

These are films that may appeal to an otaku with an ENFJ or INFJ-type personality.

Not including films. The seasons added are subjectively the best to me. These are not in order.

That's what I remember at the moment.

Basically a Letterboxd vs MAL comparison for 2023.
It's an interesting look into how normal people view anime.

no recaps no short films basically
"Most Popular Anime Film" aka more than 100k watched and how popular it is right now (March 2023) on Letterboxd (as that's how sorting by Film Popularity works and I'm lazy)
I've also labelled movies with less than 5k ratings as "niche" so now you can blend in with normal people.

11 (22%) of the movies were produced by Studio Ghibli.

The only entry you wouldn't expect is Comet in Moominvalley.

Shoutout to the bunch of movies I had to remove when I realized I missed a few stuff (Redline and Aria the Benedizione)

Anime Movies from the 70s & 80s.
Other Movies: Doraemon Movie 07: Nobita to Tetsujin Heidan, Saint Seiya: Shinku no Shounen Densetsu, Little Nemo, Penguin's Memory: Shiawase Monogatari.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is widely considered one of the most influential anime ever made, and a multitude of series were created to follow the leader, copying from its premise, characters, aesthetics, themes, and any combination of the previous. Here's some anime that can be considered to be EVA clones. Note: Some series that, in contrast, inspired EVA are included at the end.

From 1977 to 1985, Sanrio produced movies through their Sanrio Films label. After A Journey Through Fairyland, Sanrio switched gears and started doing short films, OVAs, and TV shows based on their characters. In 2006, Sanrio announced they are again going to do feature-length films.

The intent of this stack is to provide a complete history of Sunrise animation in a single course, meant to fit inside the framework of a 3 credit class with an expectation of 90 hours of out-of-class material over the period of a 15 week semester.

Adaptions of manga, or novels will be mostly excluded unless the creators themselves worked at Sunrise like in the case of Dunbine, or Arion. This means extremely notable, and historically important series, such as Cyborg 009, Ultraman, City Hunter, Inuyasha, Planetes, Sgt. Frog, and Gintama will all be excluded, despite the critical artistic contribution of this works on Sunrise's style. A truly dedicated academic would, at the minimum, watch some of the City Hunter, Inuyasha, Sgt Frog and Gintama side content since they were incredibly important on influencing Sunrise studio direction.

This course would ideally be taken alongside a thrice per week hour long lecture, breaking down the lineage of Sunrise's works, and how they influenced one another to build what we have today. As a result, there may be a series you feel is critical, or exceptionally great, but it will be excluded in favor of discussing the series role and relationship to the studio due to the limitations watching long form weekly series made for weekly broadcast. Sunrise is unique in that many of their major series have movies, or OVAs that summarize or recap the main franchise to give viewers a soft entry to understanding the work. However, there are of course serious works like Giant Gorg, Vifam, Pazer World Galient, Ronin Warriors, Jushin Liger, the entirety of the critically influencial Brave Series, most alternative Gundam series (which would be left to their own "Gundam" course), Garasaki, Infinite Ryvius, s-CRY-ed, Big O, Tiger & Bunny or even Love, Live! that would be discussed in class even if they aren't going to be watched.

This is a developing experiment, so please contact me if you have any suggestions, or questions.