ANIMATION – Top Ten Anime Worth Watching

I’ve made a few videos about anime. I’ve done my top ten Miyazaki movies, I’ve done my top ten anime TV series, and I don’t want to do a top ten anime movies because pretty much Miyazaki is it.

So I’ve already done my top ten Miyazaki movies, which basically is the best anime movies out there. But I did want to recognize, there’s other TV series and other made-for-video movies in anime that are worth watching.

This is the best of the rest, I guess I should say.

You can either watch the video or read the transcription below.  Below, you’ll also find links to these shows and videos so you can get a taste of what they’re like:

I’ve watched a lot of anime over the years. Some of it just doesn’t quite fit my categories of these top ten lists, so I’m just going to point them out to you as far as the stuff that I really, really like, and I recommend.

You may disagree with me violently, especially with the first one, number ten, but hear me out.

My number ten. Okay, you ready for this?

Some the links below are affiliate links. Thanks for your support.

10. Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic

Yes, Yu-Gi-Oh!, you read right. That show that everybody hates, that everybody, every single time somebody says, oh yeah, Yu-Gi-Oh!. And you see someone playing that, it’s just like,

“Oh that’s an awful anime. That’s an awful cartoon. How awful!”

I love Yu-Gi-Oh!, and one of the reasons why I love Yu-Gi-Oh! is, I play the card game. Yes, I go and I look at the cards and I play them and it’s a fun, fun game.

I actually like it more than playing Magic: The Gathering, and, yes I also play that game by the way. And hey, I also play the Pokémon Card Game with my daughter.

So, yeah, I like the trading card games and I do like Yu-Gi-Oh!. I think Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the very best trading card games. And because I like the game, when I watch the show, it literally feels like playing the game.

You know, if you watch the show, you’re seeing this over the top—okay, first of all, let me remark, one really quick thing about Yu-Gi-Oh!, and that is the character designs are terrible. They’re just ugly, ugly, ugly. I personally don’t like the character designs.

But I do enjoy the over the top melodrama of the show and that’s what really keeps me involved. And I like how they’re just playing a card game, but they make it so melodramatic and over the top and there’s always all these stakes, it just makes it a lot of fun to watch.

So I highly recommend watching Yu-Gi-Oh!, okay. It’s great. I like it.

9. Gunsmith Cats

Gunsmith Cats is basically about two gunsmiths, but they also get hired out to do bounties and different things like that.

They’re very good, one’s an expert shot, one’s an explosive expert. And this is just about guns, cars, and girls.

Emphasis on the cars and the guns. I mean, they lovingly reproduced the sound effects and all the research on all these guns, and there’s something about just the feel of these things.

I don’t know what it is about the show. Maybe it’s just the muscle cars in it, I don’t know. It’s fun, it’s beautiful to look at, and the intro music, very, very cool, kind of very retro, jazzy. It’s great.

I highly recommend watching Gunsmith Cats.

8. Neon Genesis Evangelion

My number eight is very popular and I haven’t talked about it, it didn’t make my top ten anime TV series but it’s very highly regarded, and that is Neon Genesis Evangelion.

This is a giant robot show, where the one difference between this and many other giant robot shows is that even though it still follows the formula of the boy getting his grandfather’s or father’s robot, fairly formulaic, saving the earth from alien invasions, but the aliens are a little bit vague and there is a lot of psychological melodrama that goes on with these characters.

The robots are unique because they’re organic and the characters go into these capsules. So the thing that makes this unique is when the character actually goes into the robot, they feel what the robot feels.

That’s the extra step that this show took that made it go a little bit further. My number one anime TV show, if you look at my other list, was Vision of Escaflowne, and they kind of do that a little bit too, but this is the one that kind of invented it.

There’s a lot of other things in it. It’s super melodramatic, it’s very beautifully drawn, it’s frustratingly opaque, and the reason why it’s not even in my top ten AnimeTV series is because the character Shinji, is the most annoying main character ever written.

He is such a wuss, and he’s so whiny, and all he does is whine, and he never actually grows. This is taking the idea of Amuro Ray from Mobile Suit Gundam, the original 79, and Amuro Ray was a little bit whiny, but he grew up and became a man.

This guy never has that happen, and it’s so irritating, but it’s still worth watching.

It’s a very, very unique, very beautifully done anime. I highly recommend it. Neon Genesis Evangelion.

7. Ranma 1/2

Ranma 1/2 is about this guy who, when he gets hit by water, turns into a girl. Yeah, it’s very, very strange.

It’s under what’s called the harem genre of anime where it’s one guy and a bunch of girls like him, so he’s basically got this harem of girls who are actually madly in love with him, and he has no interest in almost any of them.

In this show, the two main characters of Ranma and Akane are betrothed, so it’s kind of a romantic comedy about these people who, everything they do is martial arts. Everything they do is martial arts.  Anything goes, martial arts.

Whatever it is, it has to have martial arts in it. So if it’s cooking, it’s martial arts cooking. If it’s ballet, it’s martial arts ballet. If it’s chess, it’s martial arts chess. Everything involves fighting.

So it’s ridiculous, crazy, weird stuff.

Ranma’s father, when he gets hit by water becomes a panda, and then there’s this other character who gets hit by water and becomes a pig, this other girl gets hit by water and she becomes a cat, and it’s all curses because they went to China and they fell in the spring that cursed them forever for doing that.

It’s just wacky, crazy, and it’s a romantic comedy, and the best bits are when these characters kind of almost admit that they like each other and then don’t really, and it’s full of crazy, wacky, fantastic characters.

There’s a bazillion, bazillion episodes of this show and I’ve got almost all, every single one of them, and I was addicted because it’s so funny, and I really liked it. Highly recommend it. Ranma 1/2.

6. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is actually much better than the original Vampire Hunter D.

This is a supernatural horror action-adventure movie with, characters with superpowers. But very supernatural, werewolves, vampires, that sort of thing.

Madhouse produced it. It’s fantastic. I can’t say enough good things.

Well drawn, it’s just got—I don’t know what else to say except you should watch it.

It’s one of the best animes you could possibly watch. My number six is Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

5. Ninja Scroll

Same company, same producers, same director. It’s samurai stuff, let’s see, but there’s nudity, it’s rated R. It’s rated R, heavily rated R. It’s got stuff in it that maybe you don’t want to watch with your kids around.

But again, another one of these things where it’s like, bad guys have all these superpowers and it’s just super powered martial arts coolness action. It’s just action, action, action, with characters with incredible superpowers, and it’s so fun to watch.

This is a great show. Ninja Scroll.

4. Cowboy Bebop

This is a series that is stylistically fantastic. Science fiction. It’s just, this is one of the best shows out there, and it is Cowboy Bebop.

Cowboy Bebop is about bounty hunters looking for work in outer space, and the adventures that they have in this very science fiction world. Characters are fantastic, storylines are great.

There’s a general overarching storyline in between all these adventures that these characters have. There’s elements of Lupin the Third, very reminiscent of Lupin.

The kind of guy, the Lupin archetypes, and they just kind of set them up and recreate them in a more space setting.

So I highly recommend watching Cowboy Bebop. It is fantastic.

3. Samurai Champloo

My number three is from the same producers and directors and writers of Cowboy Bebop and that would be Samurai Champloo. Samurai Champloo is actually beautiful, beautiful art.

The thing that makes this interesting, it’s a samurai show and it’s kind of a historical samurai show, but the way it’s shot, it’s shot like it’s got a hip-hop rhythm to it, in a way they’re trying to direct it in a very hip-hop way.

It’s a lot more lighthearted, it’s a comedy with a lot of action in it. The artwork is incredible, the characters feel a teeny-tiny bit like the characters in Cowboy Bebop, but definitely, definitely, definitely take them to a much more comedic level.

The characters are very archetypical, but if you watch it with an eye towards comedy and action, then you’re going to really, really enjoy it. On top of that, you know the rhythm thing with the hip-hop is really, really interesting.

And I’m going to mention the artwork again, I can’t not mention it because it’s beautiful, it’s really well-drawn. Samurai Champloo.

2. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

My number two is another one that I don’t own, I watched it all on Hulu. Oh wait, yes I do, I have the first DVD. And that is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, I bought the first DVD, I watched it, I watched the first four episodes, and I was not, not, not impressed at all.

I was like,

“Really? This is the most boring show I’ve ever seen, the characters are sitting around talking. It is boring,”  okay, so I’m like, “this is terrible.”

But one day I was desperate to watch some cyber-punk, so I started watching the rest of the show on Hulu, and I’m like,

“I’m just going to keep it in the background while I work,” right? So that’s exactly what I did, and I started watching it and watching it and watching it, and then little by little I started realizing how good the show was, but it really took a long time for it to get going.

Once it got going, it was incredible and it was so good. And then the way in which the first season ended was really well done. And then the second season, the way the second season started, it was one of the best episodes.

It was beautiful and it was exciting and it was amazing and it was incredible cyber-punk.

I highly, highly recommend going and watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the TV series.

1. Giant Robo

My number one, I’m not going to talk too much about it, I already dedicated an entire video to it, and that is Giant Robo.

Giant Robo is basically an over the top action-adventure, beautifully drawn series with a giant robot in it and a bunch of characters who are just over the top super powered.

In a lot of ways, very reminiscent of both Vampire Hunter D and Ninja Scroll with the crazy super powered characters, and I’m a sucker for that stuff. I love it, I love that stuff.

So I highly recommend you go watch Giant Robo. That is my number one.

Done and Done

So what do you think? Am I crazy, including what I included in my list?

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