My top 30 anime

I had a sud­den shock­ing real­isa­tion: In the 19 months that I’ve been blab­bing away about anime I’ve never made a post where I spe­cific­ally out­line my favour­ite ones. Gen­er­ally that’s one of the first things I do when I talk to any­one who’s an anime fan or the first thing I look for on an anime blog. It gives you an instant insight into what that per­sons taste and pref­er­ences are. Quite often you don’t even read what they have to say about each anime (which is why I’ve left each descrip­tion rel­at­ively shot). So here we go, here’s my top 30 anime.

Some notes before I start: I’m includ­ing anime that I’ve seen enough of to know where they’re pos­i­tion in this list is. Obvi­ously this will change with time as I watch more and also rewatch those in my top 30. Finally, an hon­our­able men­tion goes out to Seto no Hanayome, Kino’s Jour­ney, Bake­monogatari, Haibane Rem­nei and Grave of the Fire­flies, who both just missed out on mak­ing this list.

30: Dur­arara

While not as good as its spir­itual pre­de­cessor, Bac­cano, Dur­arara is still a massive romp and huge fun through­out. The way the city of Ikebukero is por­trayed is fant­astic. We have sev­eral dif­fer­ent demi-gods, deit­ies and demons wan­der­ing around as humans, inter­act­ing and com­pet­ing with one another as mere humans walk amongst them. Heaven for­bid should these humans get ideas above their sta­tion and com­pete with them on level terms.

29: Nodame Can­tabile (first season)

Mukya~! The whole series is such fun but what I love about it is the way Nodame and Chiaki are drawn to each other des­pite being total opposites…no, because they’re total oppos­ites. The total hon­esty and goof­ing about of Nodame con­trast­ing with the hard­work­ing tsun­dere atti­tude of Chiaki. They play off each other fant­ast­ic­ally. I love ‘em to bits, Gyabo~!

28: Moy­ashi­mon

Fic­tion never quite por­trays life real­ist­ic­ally. In my exper­i­ence, real life is a lot weirder with more wilder char­ac­ters with more unusual thoughts going through their head. It may be an odd to call Moy­ashi­mon a real­istic look at uni­ver­sity life when there are cute bac­teria fly­ing all over the place, but it’s the accept­ance of the unusual in Moy­ashi­mon that really drew me in. That, and it’s really, really funny.

27: Hell­sing

Yep, the ori­ginal, manga-mangled ver­sion of Hell­sing. I can cer­tainly see why people may not like this but I say fuck them, this show is one of the most ass-kickingly piece of con­cen­trated awe­some­ness in anime his­tory. Bril­liantly vicious dia­logue, hot hard-line Brit­ish women (WATCH THE DUB), and the Vam­pire to end all Vam­pires. Alu­card you sad­istic freak. You made that show.

26: Pale Cocoon

Nor­mally when it comes to anime shorts, I’m a harsh grader. Unless they do some­thing truly unique and mind­blow­ing then I’ll give it a crap score. Maybe part of that reason why is because of Pale Cocoon. Every short I watch from now on always get that unfor­tu­nate label of being ‘nowhere near as good as Pale Cocoon’. Holds the record for the single best short in anime his­tory. That very last frame as the real­isa­tion sets in. Just…watch it.

25: Black Lagoon: Second Barrage

Not that the first sea­son wasn’t awe­some or any­thing, it’s just it was totally swept away by the second. Everything the first did the second did bet­ter. A bet­ter focus of the true hor­rors of Roanapur, a greater cast of the true wild­cards that inhabit that devil city. OK, the first sea­son man­aged the Rock/Revy rela­tion­ship bet­ter, but Roanapur is the real reason to watch this anime. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

24: Neon Gen­esis Evangelion

Evan­gelion is an odd one. It wasn’t until the end that I real­ised how little I under­stood about the plot and that never under­stood the sym­bol­ism. Yet, as you can see from its inclu­sion in here, I loved the thing. A true sense of cine­ma­to­graphy epicry (I made that word up) com­bined with that ever-growing sense of fear and mind­fuck­ery endured by the main char­ac­ters was what I truly enjoyed about this classic.

23: Full Metal Panic (first season)

Full Metal Panic is a great to use to intro­duce a friend to the world of anime. Not only is it hugely enter­tain­ing, very access­ible, well-written and all-round fun, it’s the most fun­da­ment­ally ‘anime’ title out there. The mecha, the aqua­mar­ine hair, the tsun­dere, the wacky com­edy, and all of these things are done bet­ter here than you’ll find pretty much any­where else. If your friend doesn’t like Full Metal Panic, chances are anime is not for them.

22: Ghost in the Shell:

Stand Alone Complex

Pro­duc­tion IG, you sure are cap­able of some amaz­ing work when you put your mind to it. While the Ghost in the Shell Movie may have been all about human­ity and so on, it was the intrec­ate plot­ting of Stand Alone Com­plex that I loved. I would spend just as long dis­cuss­ing the pos­sibile plot dir­ec­tions as I did watch­ing the actual epis­odes them­selves. Laugh­ing Man, how bloody long did I spend the­or­iz­ing over your existance I’d prefer not to remember.

21: Arakawa Under the Bridge

Arakawa is a com­edy I can get behind but the true genius isn’t in the com­edy. Oh sure, it’s funny. End­lessly so. It has Sis­ter, a trig­ger happy, war vet­eran dressed as a nun. But what really makes this show is the intel­li­gence behind its con­struc­tion. The story is so per­fectly done and the way it wraps in on itself, col­lapsing Recruit’s world in on him­self and build­ing up the new world as he learns what he really wants in life might not be what com­mon sense tells him what he needs. Besides, what’s com­mon sense anyway.

20: Detroit Metal City

God­dam you DMC. You do real­ise that you’ve ruined music for me forever? I mean, it’s under­stand­able why I can no longer take heavy metal music ser­i­ously, and any rock music by asso­ci­ation, but now I can’t take that happy music ser­i­ously either. I’m expect­ing halfway through the chorus for the main singer to sud­denly stop jig­gling his tam­bour­ine and start rap­ing it. GO TO DMC!

19: Ten­gen Toppa Gur­ren Lagann

If there’s a wall in our way, we’ll des­troy it! If there’s no road, we’ll pave it with our own hands! Your drill is the drill that will pierce the heav­ens! Don’t believe in the me who believes in you. Don’t believe in the you who believes in me, believe in your­self! Go bey­ond the impossible and kick reason to the curb! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!!!

18: Full Metal Alchemist

After delib­er­a­tion, I’ve decided to simply lump both the ori­ginal and Broth­er­hood together. Broth­er­hood has reminded me, both through its strengths and through its faults, why the ori­ginal Full Metal Alchem­ist was such a good story. This is shounen at its finest. Well, it would be if you could com­bine the pacing of the first series with the sense of epic tim­ing (like comedic tim­ing, except with *phwoar* instead of laughs) then you’d have the per­fect shounen.

17: Eden of the East

Mar­gin­ally super­ior to his efforts on Ghost in the Shell, Kam­iyama really knows how to set my mind in motion. No other anime made me con­coct such wild the­or­ies for pos­sible dir­ec­tions in the plot only to later shove it in my face that I’d picked up a red her­ring. Noblesse Oblige. Please get me one of those mes­siah phones with Juiz’s voice.

16: Cow­boy Bebop

For what is con­sidered in many quar­ters to be the greatest anime ever cre­ated, it sure does start of very slow. The first epis­odes, while still good, were nowhere near as good as I anti­cip­ated it would be. It star­ted to turn around epis­ode 8 but it wasn’t until epis­ode 13 when it finally hit me. As the cred­its rolled down the screen with the song ‘Space Lion’ play­ing, it finally dawned on me why. This truly is one of the greatest anime of all time.

15: Kaiba

Quite often when it comes to these poncy, artsy anime I just find myself rolling my eyes at the des­per­ate attempts to prove that they are dif­fer­ent from the norm. In fact, I did that in Kaiba some­times too. But what I was treated to bey­ond the Dr.Seass style art­work was a mas­ter­class in storytelling and ima­gin­a­tion. Power­ful and beau­ti­ful, this turned me into an instant Yuasa fan.

14: Akira

You know, they don’t make anime like they used to. Where is that level of viol­ence and depth and dis­sect­able fea­tures that was pre­val­ent in anime back in the good old days. When is the last time we’ve seen a truly adult anime take the west­ern world by storm. When was…what am I say­ing, I wasn’t even alive when that happened. So shut up you old­f­ags, stop scar­ing away the new­f­ags and let them enjoy Akira for what it is.

13: Love Hina

Yes, I did just go from Cow­boy Bebop, Kaiba and Akira to Love Hina. I’ll admit, there is more than just a touch of nos­tal­gia for my gate­way to anime. But there’s more than that. When the moun­tains of harems that came after tried copy­ing his loser arche­type, they for­got to take the real aspect that makes him easy to relate to: hon­esty. Often to my det­ri­ment, I believe in the good­will in human­kind and Keit­aro is that per­son­i­fied. Chiv­alry is alive and well.

12: Cro­martie High School

The abso­lute fun­ni­est fuck­ing thing in exist­ence. When writ­ing about Cro­martie High School, even the memory of the show sets me into a fit of giggles. Argu­ably the single greatest first epis­ode (and final epis­ode, by asso­ci­ation) in anime his­tory, I knew I would love this show as soon as that ran­dom thug placed that pen­cil inside his mouth. He.…ate.…my.…pencil.…HE ATE MY PENCIL!

11: Samurai Champloo

It’s not often that you can pin down the exact moment you were sold on a par­tic­u­lar anime. Often it’s just a gradual feel­ing but when it does hap­pen, usu­ally it’s sev­eral epis­ode in (in Bebop, Champloo’s sis­ter series, it took until epis­ode 13). For Samurai Champloo, it was about 4 minutes into the first epis­ode with that timeskip scene. This was a show try­ing to be the coolest thing ever and suc­ceed­ing spectacularly.

10: Last Exile

This is why I miss Gonzo. They were cap­able of glor­i­ous cre­ations like Last Exile. This was one of those per­fect adven­ture anime in which everything seemed to be tailored to my tastes. Never stayed too long on a cer­tain plot point, fant­astic ima­gin­a­tion to cre­ate that world of Anat­oray and Disith, a fant­astic open­ing song and CGI incor­por­ated prop­erly. This is why I watch anime. Because the make series like Last Exile.

9: Hare + Guu

It leaves me a rather depressed guy to see this show get so little love. On the other hand if every­one else loved it, I wouldn’t be able to use this as my token series to use pic­tures of for my forum and pro­file pic­tures. So why do I love this anime? Guu. Guu is a comedic queen, not just in her own right, but how she can twist any situ­ation to her lik­ing. Some­times it takes noth­ing more than a grin to warp the mind of poor Hare.

8: School Rumble

Greatest cast of char­ac­ters ever. If I was ever to make a true my dream harem post, it would con­sist of about half the cast of this series (but not Temna). It must have been such an easy thing to write this series once the char­ac­ters were formed. All you needed was for some­thing to hap­pen and then think ‘ok, who would be the fun­ni­est out of our extens­ive cast of fant­astic char­ac­ters to place in this scene?’. And so you get Har­ima being hit in the face with a mop.

7: Ber­serk

Ber­serk is flaw­less. There’s not one mis­step through­out the entire series. No scene is shown without it hav­ing mean­ing. No twist is intro­duced without prior fore­shad­ow­ing. Never once did the pacing drop or get too fast. Not once did a someone act out of char­ac­ter and their devel­op­ment all worked nat­ur­ally. It all wraps in on itself to cre­ate one bril­liant story. Ber­serk is perfect.

6: Mushishi

Mushishi is a rare beast. It’s one of those very few times where prac­tic­ally every­one in anime fan­dom has stood back in col­lect­ive admir­a­tion for a single cre­ation. It’s one of those times where, while watch­ing it, you real­ise that you are watch­ing a mas­ter­piece. It’s a hard feel­ing to con­vey but there’s so many scenes, such as stand­ing under the rain­bow, the goopy-eye scene, the entirety of one-eyed fish, that it really hits you. This is the closest to per­fec­tion anime has ever achieved.

5: Gankut­suou

Want to show some­body what anime is truly cap­able of that no other medium of enter­tain­ment can prop­erly con­vey? Shove a copy of Gankut­suou in their faces and let them watch and be amazed. Like the rest of my top 10, this is one of those shows in which everything clicks. Topped off by our favour­ite homo­erotic Count, this para­graph is yet another let­ter mourn­ing the loss of Gonzo in the anime world.

4: Chob­its

For ages after watch­ing Love Hina I searched for a series that was able to mir­ror that exper­i­ence of my first anime but all those com­pared to it were shitty fanser­vice harem knock-offs. I might have even stopped watch­ing anime until Chob­its came along. Chob­its ignited what before was a near non-existent romantic side to me. It made me believe. It made me believe that, even in the most extraordin­ary of cir­cum­stances, love over­comes all boundaries.

3: Code Geass

Are you not enter­tained? Is this not why you are here? This is Code Geass, the series with the hon­our of giv­ing the name to this glor­i­ous web­site, yet even this site is but a small shrine to a single second char­ac­ter in the almighty encom­passing cre­ation of the Code Geass uni­verse. Do not be fooled, this anime will not be for­got­ten in the com­ing years. A mod­ern clas­sic in every sense of the word, I’ll make sure of that myself.

2: Bac­cano

Bac­cano is dis­tilled enter­tain­ment. This was 16 epis­odes of pure, unadul­ter­ated and migh­tily viol­ent enter­tain­ment. Psy­chos boun­cing off other psy­chos while the lesser nut­ters get out-nutted by the wilder folks as the crazed kids fight the sud­den her­oes and mass destruc­tion on a small scale. There is no good and evil. Only nut­ters, and that’s how I like it.

1: Death Note

Yeah, this is a really bor­ing choice as num­ber one isn’t it. It’s the most pop­u­lar series on MAL and the most com­mon one to rank inside peoples top 5. So why is it my num­ber 1? Because it gave me the rush. It gave me a feel­ing of sheer energy and enthu­si­asm, as though there was noth­ing in my life that could pos­sibly be more exhil­ar­at­ing than watch­ing what was on my screen.

::Update No.1 on 19\7\10:: Seto no Hanayome, Kino’s Jour­ney and Bake­monogatari dropped out to be replaced by Ber­serk, Arakawa Under the Bridge and Durarara