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Be sure to check out .hack//Sign, currently the best video game isekai. As a psychological drama it's more focused on character issues than the gaming aspect but at least the game setting is properly integrated into the story. Amazing soundtrack and good characters are the highlights. Slow as molasses and leaves some plotlines hanging for future instalments though.

By the time the mcdonalds arc hits. Around halfway I'd say? What stood out to me about Log Horizon was that it explored the game mechanics to a higher degree than other video game isekai, but after a while it kinda abandons that to become more of a period piece instead. The video game aspect of the setting becomes redundant when the story might as well have been a regular fantasy setting where the story is about settling an unexplored continent or something. Would've worked better for the characters too since they act more like natives to the setting rather than the larping geeks and gamers they supposedly are.

Wow i love you so much for linking me this song, you just fixed half of my problems

Thank God! I feel so much better right now, maybe when she was my age she did nothing all day too... I bet she did, since she didn't have to work... So i'm the same as queen Elizabeth, how nice

Subs all the way, I never watched the eng dub (why would I, haha).

Best subs are from [Some-Stuffs], don't watch on Crunchyroll.

Here you see the right order.

Glad you enjoyed it that much. And I agree, it's a phenomenal show with a plethora of qualities to like it for. Not completely flawless of course, but it's easily one of the most well-rounded pieces of fiction I've ever encountered.

Now hold your horses there buddy, it would seem you're in need of a history lesson! TTGL and Eva does not draw inspiration from Gundam in any meaningful way (perhaps Amuro had some influence on the respective leads but little beyond that) and Gundam is not exactly a super robot show in that sense. You see, before Gundam aired in 1979 there had already been over a decade of super robot shows. Going as far back as the show that kickstarted the entire medium properly in 1963, "Astro Boy", was heavily centred around robots and machinery, and the same year the first giant robot "Tetsujin 28-go" or "Gigantor" was aired. The show which popularized super robots as a genre was Mazinger Z in the early 70s alongside other Go Nagai productions. The thing with these shows is that they treated the robots as superheroes, giant power rangers whom each episode battle an enemy of the week, which could include monsters, aliens, robots, evil scientists, dinosaurs and what have you. There were tons of these shows which played out rather similarly. Mazinger, Getter Robo, Daimos, Combattler V, Voltes V, Grendizier, Gaiking etc.

The thing which made Gundam such a big deal in 1979 was that it treated mechas as tools of war instead of as superheroes, and it had humans on both sides of the conflict instead of monsters. Gundam is therefore more aptly seen as the grandfather of the real robot genre, a genre which began proper and peaked in the 80s. Despite transcending the genre, both TTGL and Eva are much more rooted the traditional type of super robot shows where powerful mechs defends earth from alien invasions.

The super robot genre in the 80s become less episodic and more emotionally complex while keeping their silliness. Macross, Gunbuster and Giant Gorg are good examples of this period of super robot shows. The early 90s had little worth noting in the mecha department aside from the Yuusha series which were annual throwbacks to 70s super robot shows. Then in 1995 everything changed with Evangelion which made the super robot genre psychological, thematically complex and avant garde in execution. There was tons of copycats, many of which I've already mentioned, all the way into the early 2000s where all manner of mecha shows saw the light of day. Lots of space-centric ones especially.

TTGL came out in 2007, and was created primarily as a tribute to the legacy of Gainax but also partly the super robot genre as a whole. The three main influences are Getter Robo from the 70s, Gunbuster from the 80s and Evangelion from the 90s. You can kinda see how the show tonally changes to reflect these eras. It starts off simple, silly and semi-episodic, becomes more emotionally involving while still remaining silly, then becomes darker, more complex and psychological after the time skip and finally a little bit of all three in the last few space-centric episodes, eventually culminating in itself in the grand finale, in big shining letters.

Point being, if you want to see where the influences for Eva and especially TTGL were invented, then the early 70s Toei robot shows is where you should look. But yes, Gainax has indeed perfected the genre.

Wow, thanks a lot mate!

Thanks for the recs.

You can go for HxH 2011 right away. Any advantage the original has over 2011 is purely superficial and there's no additional/different content in the original that would make it worth it to watch both. Meanwhile 2011 covers two additional arcs from the manga and generally has better pacing and presentation.

Merry Christmas!

I was aware of the production issues but didn't think it was particularly noticeable besides that last episode. If you feel the show becomes better by ignoring it then go for it I say. I'm in favour of being selective of what counts as canon and not, all too often studios will produce additional content besides what the original vision of the creators was and fucking up the whole thing (not that I think 08th MS did that though), so pretending the good entries is all there is works fine by me, as long as it's all discounted. Ie. if you choose to ignore the last ep of 08th MS Team then not only the bad content but also the good, such as any characterization, clarifications or resolutions, goes with it as I see it.

For me the appeal wasn't that 08th MS is particularly gritty in any real sense but rather that it was more grounded and down to earth than its counterparts, with less focus on larger than life heroes, overpowered mechs & space magic and more on the boots on the ground, feasible mechs that needs actual maintenance, combat & movement with weight to it and actual field tactics. That rape scene just sounds so hopelessly edgy and out of place in Gundam, it never needed to be that gratuitous to prove itself. The way the annihilation of Australia was handled, the way War in the Pocket ends and tons of "blink and you miss it" moments like a civilian being squashed under an empty shell from a mech gun in F91 sprinkled throughout the various entries is more than enough.

So space opera is mostly too corny but Star Wars is fine huh? I'll try to make the best of that knowledge lol...
Actually, just because of that I want you to check out Gunbuster which I consider one of the best blends of serious and silly in the entire medium, just to see what you make of it.

Got anything good for TV (non-cartoons)? I'm not as well versed there.
For lists I recommend the ones I'm using. Goodreads for books, letterboxd for movies, simkl for TV (it does TV, movies and anime all in one if you want that, I only bother with the TV section though), MyVideoGameList for games and leagueofcomicgeeks for comics if you read those.

I actually finished Lastman a while ago and thought it was pretty good. We don't get too many adult-oriented rule of cool type of shows, especially in cartoons. The main appeal for me was watching the charismatic lead bumble his way through one crazy situation to the next. The overt plot and themes weren't much to write home about, but it's rule of cool so it's all about the fun! I wouldn't say the animation itself is particularly good, it's noticeably low budget with lots and lots of still-frames, but excellent editing and shot composition more than makes up for it. Music was fine. The way the title "Lastman" is written like a compound word annoys me to no end. XD

I'll be sure to check out Bob and Margaret. Have a recommendation for Dilbert in return. It's basically Office Space: The Animated Series.

Which version of Fullmetal Alchemist you should start with depends on whether you're gonna watch both or not. They both have their ups and downs, with Brotherhood being the more consistent version while the original is more mature which could be a plus for you. If you're only gonna watch one then go with Brotherhood, but if you're gonna watch both then start with the original since that one is slower paced and could become a drag to watch the other way around. Brotherhood kinda assumes you've already watched the original and rushes through the material they share in common. I watched the original first and Brotherhood second and was pleased with that arrangement.

I think you're asking for two different types of "complementary" shows. The first type, watching two types of shows that enhance enjoyment for each other, I can't really help you with since I for most of my time as an anime fan has viewed such a high amount of ongoing titles at once that I never got a sense of which two shows definitely works well together like that, I always varied my viewing too much. Best I can do is recommend you watch at most 1-2 episodes of slow and atmospheric shows like Mushishi, Aria and .hack//Sign per day and then watch literally whatever besides that. If you feel you need variety then just mix serious and silly shows. Like Monster and Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, those probably work well together, I guess.

The second type, watching two similar shows for analytical reasons, I can help with. I never felt the need to watch two similar works side by side for comparisons sake, since as you watch and increase your viewing experience you'll be able to connect various dots and see which show did what better anyway, but here are a few that could be worth a shot.

- Haibane Renmei / Angel Beats --- Handling of the afterlife
- Mind Game / Tatami Galaxy --- Carpe Diem
- .Hack//Sign / Log Horizon / Sword Art Online --- Trapped in videogame
- Planetes / Space Brothers --- Astronauts and space
- Welcome to the NHK / Genshiken --- Otaku culture
- Bakuman / Shirobako --- Manga production and anime production
- Basilisk / Fate/Zero --- Battle Royale
- Escaflowne / Code Geass / Brigadoon --- Multi-genre shows by Sunrise
- Grave of the Fireflies / Barefoot Gen / In This Corner of the World --- Movies about wartime Japan
- Once Upon A Time... Life / Cells at Work --- Inner workings of the human body
- Gankutsuou / Hakugei Densetsu --- Sci-fi adaptations of classic literature
- Pom Poko / Uchouten Kazoku --- Tanuki in modern day japan
- Pop Team Epic / Inferno Cop --- Memes 'n Dreams
- Animatrix / Batman: Gotham Knight / Halo Legends --- Collections of shorts by various creators based on western franchises
- Spice and Wolf / Crest of the Stars (Space and Elf) --- Tonally similar romance/adventure shows, one with economics and the other with space politics
- Getter Robo -> Gunbuster -> Evangelion -> Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann --- Evolution of the super robot genre

I guess the AoT / FMA:B connections could work, though neither are really focused on that aspect.

A word of advice for One Punch Man and My Hero Academia; the former is above all else a general shounen parody, basically "yeah yeah we all know the protagonist is gonna win in the end so let's just cut to the case" as its one gag, and the later is mostly a conga line of shounen tropes with superheroes as window dressing, much like Naruto, One Piece, Hitman Reborn and Fairy Tail aren't really about ninjas, pirates, mafias or magicians.

TBH I don't mind these types of long-winded profile conversations taking some time between responses, they just aren't structured for the kind of immediate back and forth of other types of communication and typically spans several days anyway.

Hope you get good use of the recs. Just leave a comment anytime you're in need of more.

Next up for you when it comes to Eva is End of Evangelion which is the "true" ending to the show. They're both canon, with the show's ending being internal and the movie being external, sort of. While the show wraps up the character arcs nicely there's still more to the overt plot which End of Eva covers. The movie is a masterpiece and you should watch it ASAP. Death & Rebirth is pure recap and contains the first 20 minutes of End of Eva and is therefore not really worth watching unless you're a completist. Petit Eve are just some dumb irrelevant parody specials, again not really worth it. The Rebuild movies are remakes where the story diverges in the second movie and are therefore best saved for after End of Eva. I'd restructure your sequence as follows: The End of Evangelion -> Rebuild 1.0 -> Rebuild 2.0 -> Rebuild 3.0 -> (Optional) Death & Rebirth -> (Optional) Petit Eva: Evangelion@School.

The main issue for me with 08th MS Team is that it actually is a rather simple show overall. As a stand-alone I'd deem it a 7.5/10 or so. The way I view it though is that as a spin-off of a megafranchise like Gundam the bulk of the technicalities are already established elsewhere. The nature of the war, various types of world building, the philosophy of each side, theme-exploration etc. are already covered to some degree. Gundam: 'nam edition then serves as a better presented extension of what the main shows have provided, bumping it up to 8.5/10 (I really wish MAL had decimal points, because that's what I'd give it). I think a Romeo & Juliet type plot works quite fine for a Gundam show, giving more credence to the "neither side are truly the bad guys" theme that made Gundam so groundbreaking to begin with. A darker ending would've worked for me, but I don't think an optimistic and forward-looking ending is necessarily is a bad thing either.

So mostly serious or mostly silly then? I won't lie, that will severely limit the amount of shows you'd find appealing since many anime tries to do a bit of both, usually seguing from comedic or camp content into something more serious. I'll keep that in mind. Excel Saga is a similar type of parody show as Space Dandy, SD is more polished though.

Say, do you have any experience from some other medium? From my experience people doesn't become critical-minded like you from just casual viewing. Are you active on other list-sites? Goodreads, letterboxd or such?

BTW I'm half-way through Lastman. It's good so far!

And gritty sci-fi he shall have!

For Gundam your best bet would be "War in the Pocket", another realistic and down to earth spin-off. Zeta could be viable, it has the same type of writing and themes as the original but with a more serious tone, and if you watch that then you can cap it off with the movie "Char's Counterattack". Skip ZZ, it isn't very good nor important. The Origin and Turn A Gundam are some of the better entries in the franchise but are similar in tone to the original.

Votoms has plenty of OVA spin-offs, though I found most of them disposable. I can recommend Armor Hunter Mellowlink which is pretty neat. There aren't many, but other notable real robot entries would be the two Patlabor movies (not the series or OVA's, they're comedy), Gasaraki (too dry for my liking but could be viable for you), Flag (photography in a war-zone, not much focus on mechs) and Blue Comet SPT Layzner (from the Votoms guy). There's also Full Metal Panic which is a hybrid show where S1 is mech war drama/high school comedy, S2 is pure comedy and S3 & S4 are pure serious mech drama. S3 - "The Second Raid" is particularly good if you can stand the comedic earlier seasons.

For Evangelion there is plenty of knock-offs and tonally similar works, some good ones being Raxephon, Betterman, Bokurano, Fafner, Blue Gender, Argento Soma, Mugen no Ryvious and Zegapain. None of which are as great as Eva but still good. There's also Space Runaway Ideon which serves as a precursor to Eva. Ideon is made by Tomino (the Gundam guy) though it isn't very good outside a few highlights, try the two compilation movies if you're interested in this.

I don't think there's much for you to get out of Macross with that in mind, it's very cheesy and has gotten more so with each new instalment. Macross Plus is the most serious entry and is fairly stand-alone so you could give that a watch. There's a compilation movie of the original series called "Do You Remember Love?" which actually is really good for a change and which you could watch to get a sense of the rest of the franchise if you want.

You say you prefer serious and gritty sci-fi, yet you rated Space Dandy quite high. If you motivate that one I could formulate some more recommendations based on what you found appealing there.

I'm surprised you like Ghost in the Shell so much yet hasn't seen any other instalment in the franchise. The two seasons of Stand Alone Complex are about on par with the movie. Innocence is a very pretty but hollower follow-up to the movie, not as good but not disposable either. The Arise spin-offs can be skipped though.

Let's continue the Parasyte discussion when you've read the manga then. A lot of your complaints are based in "the military should've done this, the police would've done that" and I want to hear your thoughts on how the military eventually deals with the situation before we continue. Likewise for where the themes and character arcs ends up. I'll see if I can fit in a rewatch to get caught up on the details as well.

Thanks for the recs. I've already seen Gravity Falls and Archer. Bob's Burgers always looked too much like yet another Simpsons variant for me to bother, but if it's good I can give it a try. I haven't seen Animals or Lastman but both look good so I'm gonna try either of them after I'm done with Gummi Bears.

I don't have q62BttH6 written out. Let's remedy that. Left to right, top to bottom.


Since you like GitS you might like Ergo proxy, Serial Experiments Lain, Mardock Scramble and Texhnolyze. But you're already watching a bunch of really great shows so I don't feel there's anything you need to watch ASAP. You're so new that you haven't even watched the usual newbie suspects such as Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist and so on. And only one Ghibli movie so far. Just watch whatever you feel like at your own pace for now.

Also stay the everloving fuck away from the other Berserk series and movies until after you've read the manga. You've been warned.

Crybaby is good actually, I was thinking more of the original manga and the other adaptations.

As for Parasyte...

Hi! How nice that you liked my discussions. Those must've been years ago by now. Kinda wish I'd went on longer with some of them since I had more to say, but oh well. If you're using my recommendation chart then check out the one at the top of my profile since that is the most up to date version.

Is Parasyte really that overhyped though? When it aired there was a fair amount of criticism toward Murano being nagging, dubstep, cgi crowds and what have you. Fans don't treat it as the be all, end all of the medium either. It has some annoyances but is solid all in all I'd say, especially next to what shows like Tokyo Ghoul and Devilman managed with similar premises.