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Recommendations for Anime from 1985-1992?


Meteo Xavier
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Essentially, anything under Gainax's banner is typically good, from Wings of Honneamise, Aim for the Top! Gunbuster, up to the mid 90's with Shin Seki Evangelion, and FLCL, to our more recent Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The last thing they did was assist with animating someone else's show, I think A-1 took over after that? I forget the title, but it debuted in the recent Fall season...

Speaking of Sakamoto, wouldn't Escaflowne be near the tail end of the timescale we're in? If you don't like a show size it also comes in a darker, movie version.

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I was going to recommend Noir because it feels so much like it is from that era. When I looked it up however, it aired in 2001, which really surprised me. It feels like it is coming straight out of the early 90's. I like this anime because the characters' lack of... something... is quite refreshing. It reminds me of a time when anime characters weren't plagued by a sense of "can't hurt people, and can't kill them, even if they are trying to kill you at the moment."

And one more thing that you probably weren't looking for exactly, is an anime movie called Millennium Actress. Once again, not exactly in your timeline, but an older feeling one as well. This is actually a drama I believe, and is one of the 3 or 4 movies/shows I have EVER seen that have made me cry... and not in a sad or bad way. The Japanese for it is Sennen Joyu. Here is a link to the IMDB page. This movie is on my "absolute favorites" list.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291350/

Edit: Oh and as far as subs/dubs go, I would recommend the subs for Noir, and I haven't seen Millenium Actress in anything but Japanese with subs, so I can't say. My general rule is that unless the Japanese is painful to listen to, I go with subs.

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And one more thing that you probably weren't looking for exactly, is an anime movie called Millennium Actress.

S-S-S-SECONDED. (Surprisingly, Millennium Actress came out 2001, but it feels like it's older than that.)

A lot of the movies directed by Satoshi Kon are amazing. Along with Millennium Actress, consider watching Perfect Blue and DEFINITELY Paprika. Some of the trippiest shit you'll ever see, but that's because that's how Mr. Kon rolls; you never can be sure of what's "real" and what's not in his movies.

Tokyo Godfathers is a bit of a warm fuzzies kinda movie so I'm not sure if you'd wanna try that.

Because Paprika is so amazing, here's a trailer:

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I just finished New Dominion Tank Police and... I gotta recommend that one too :D

I'm also getting the soundtrack for it, and the original Tank Police. You know who wrote most of the songs? Yoichiro Yoshikawa, the same guy who did the music for IRIA: Zeiram the Animation. Who knew?

The uhhh, place I'm getting the music from also has the awesome dub music :D hooray!

Speaking of different dub music, I wonder why no one does that anymore. See this clip of the UK Manga version of Fist of the North Star:

Yeah, that's right, fucking awesome DRUM AND BASS, holy shit! also: HOKUTO STINKIN' MY ASS!

also also: the hilariously drawn-in eyes at 7:14

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Speaking of different dub music, I wonder why no one does that anymore. See this clip of the UK Manga version of Fist of the North Star:

Yeah, that's right, fucking awesome DRUM AND BASS, holy shit! also: HOKUTO STINKIN' MY ASS!

also also: the hilariously drawn-in eyes at 7:14

I loved that dub. I couldn't wait for them to air new episodes every friday on the Action Channel. I was sad to find out they only did the first 36 episodes :(, but I did find a group that recently finished subbing all 152 episodes :3

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Speaking of different dub music, I wonder why no one does that anymore.

Original Tank Police had great replacement tunes, but generally speaking I'm kinda glad they don't do that a lot. Some of the canned stuff on older series can get on your nerves. Teknoman did it too, right? ("Let's just play nothing but generic techno! Genius!") How about G-Force? ("doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-dooooo-do-doooo-doooo-do-doooo-doo-doo-doo-doo...") In Street Fighter Movie the change was a lateral move; however, Chun-Li vs. Claw worked a lot better without "YOU CAN-NOT HURT MEEEEEEE!!!!"

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Come on you guys, let's keep the fighting out of this nice thread ._.

This is a nice thread, but gurrenn laggan is just another compilation of giant robots, stupid over-stylized character designs and hyper teenagers, with a special emphasis on women's tits. Nothing good about that. Granted, Ive only watched the first three episodes, but Im sure that everything I mentioned above just gets worse as the series goes on.

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Gurren Lagann follows Gainax's tried and true standard of offering fanservice and srs-bizness at the same time. While not in as even dosage as some other works they've done. GL is jsut a good show, the production, the animation quality, the writing, the acting, the pacing and characters are also good.

So what part of it is ~bad~? Just because you don't like it doesn't make it bad, especially when nearly ever individual aspect of the show is at the top of its game.

Also, am I one of few who watches even a bad show from start to finish to make sure I know the whole deal?

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Just because you don't like it doesn't make it bad

Does to me. I couldn't stand Gurren Lagann. It was just a pile of anime cliches piled together until it reached critical mass and became a black hole of super robot tropes. I could hardly stand watching it because it was so cliche that I felt like I knew what was going to happen well before it ever happened, and despite all my desperate hopes that they would do something original (read: interesting) instead, they never did.

But yeah. '85-'92 anime? Gundam ZZ was from '88 and it's a fun one, though it's sort of the bastard child of the Gundam franchise -- most Gundam fans hate it because it's such a departure from Zeta Gundam (which was '87). Char's Counterattack is another good Gundam from that era, though it's only a movie and it probably won't mean much to you unless you've seen Mobile Suit Gundam already (and Gundam Zeta would help too).

Yu Yu Hakusho is another good one that just makes it into the dates you've listed; it began in October '92 and ran until January '95 (or so Wikipedia tells me). Yu Yu Hakusho is an entertaining if basic beat-em-up anime, though it does tend to run into a bit of DBZ-style power-level penis-waving ("my spirit energy is three times yours, and I'm only at 12% of my full strength!") in the later half of the series.

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Gundam ZZ was from '88 and it's a fun one, though it's sort of the bastard child of the Gundam franchise -- most Gundam fans hate it because it's such a departure from Zeta Gundam (which was '87). Char's Counterattack is another good Gundam from that era, though it's only a movie and it probably won't mean much to you unless you've seen Mobile Suit Gundam already (and Gundam Zeta would help too).

Zeta was '85. Double Zeta was not nearly as bad, and there's even worse in the UC timeline alone. The weakest Gundam series is probably SEED/Destiny. The first half of ZZ was such a radical departure, the 2nd half was a closer return to the Zeta stylings, and I found it more enjoyable by that point.

As for Gurren Lagann's 'tropes' (common story element themes/elements) I can say one thing: Every genre has its stupid common themes. I got into an arguement once and had to point this out, that any genre of anime you go into has horribly stupid commonalities. And so there was nothing good about GL then? The mecha weren't unique in design? very few shows had a better eyecatch, the opening and its variations were also very well done, the animation ws clean and smoothe as well, there was little 3rd-rate animation in the whole thing.

I mean, we're watching anime because we also like animation and voice acting I assume? If we wanted raw story there are books after all. GL is faaaaaaaaaar from bad. Check out actually bad shows before slamming one of the best in its genre.

Note: If you hate the mecha genre...I mean, even the real robot genre is usually a cluster of "That new model is fast!" and "I'm out of ammo!" Still enjoyable of course, hardly makes them bad. (and yes even non-mecha anime ahs 'tropes'.)

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I'm aware that tropes are universal and tropes in and of themselves are not bad. But when I can basically predict the whole damn episode within the first five minutes because it's nothing but a mass of tropes used exactly and played perfectly straight (as opposed to blending multiple tropes into one, or occasionally subverting/inverting/avoiding an obvious trope), then that's what I have issues with.

No work is perfectly original, Hero With 1,000 Faces, yeah yeah yeah. I know. But that doesn't make Gurren Lagann any more interesting to watch.

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MD Giest is short, though I didn't walk away with anything other than a fear of trying any amazing physical feats for fear of harm.

Votoms is a rather nice addition to the mecha genre, same designer for MSG I think. The machines are actually, you know, machines, and expendable. Not some big secret weapon or beam-spam. Its a nice watch so far. (Haven't completed)

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