Favorite Anime

Bluebottle wrote:Nice, I like both of those. Whispers of the Heart is a strange artifact, considering what sadly happened to its director, but I enjoy it a lot. Did you see the recent Ghibli documentary on Miyazaki's recent work? Very interesting. Will be interesting to see what comes of it. Laputa is in the cinemas here now, if my gf was here I'd probably go see it, but I think I'm too lazy to do so on my own.

As for other anime, always up for recommendations.

Whisper of the Heart is probably my personal favorite anime film, though it's a close call with The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and I wouldn't argue with anyone saying the latter is better.* Hard not to wonder what might have been had Yoshifumi Kondo lived longer, though his death speaks to some unfortunate realities about Ghibli's inner workings (and those of the anime industry as a whole). I have not seen the most recent Ghibli/Miyazaki documentary, actually, though I'm very curious to see his new (last? ) feature film when that's released, hopefully next year.

*Giving both the number one and two positions on the list to Ghibli feels pretty unadventurous, but, well, they're great fuckin' films.


I sometimes find anime recommendations difficult to give since I think a lot depends on what genre(s) one is in the mood for in any given moment, but I've watched a lot of really great series so far this year as part of my final preparations for being able to cast a well-informed ballot in Anime of the Decade polling in six months' time. Though I need to get with it and make more progress on specifically 2019 anime unless I want to leave a big pile of shows for the very end of the year.

Probably the best series I've seen in the past year is Land of the Lustrous, which is hard to sum up briefly and has an admittedly strange-sounding premise, but is a phenomenally-executed work on basically every level. All the more remarkable for being largely 3D computer animation, which tends to look like ass in TV anime, though it'd be great even with a more traditional visual style. It has some great action scenes, but it tends more towards introspection and character interaction rather than digging into the details of its sci-fi/fantasy setting--until those moments of action arrive, or the body horror elements of the premise come into play.

By far my favorite comedy that I've seen lately is called Hinamatsuri, though in my experience anime comedies tend to be extremely subjective and I can't promise how well the humor will or won't land. Bloom Into You is a wonderfully character-focused, gradually unfolding same-sex romance which unfortunately stops in the middle of a story arc since it's based on an ongoing manga (which is also excellent), though there will hopefully be at least one additional season of the anime adaptation. And After the Rain, despite having an incredibly skeevy-sounding premise, is one of the best character dramas I've ever seen in this medium, and ultimately handles it's subject matter in a tasteful and mature manner.