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Need a serious anime suggestion! Please!


beneath the sea
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Detective Conan. It's pretty cool... despite it being like 500+ episodes long. But once you get back to the intial character development, it's a great series for you to practice your deductive skills as well as an awesome opening theme that features saxomaphone. You can watch it off and on for who knows how long.

I'm going to second Code Geass and Deathnote. Very good.

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Wolf's Rain (easily fits everything you are looking for)

RahXephon

Elfen Lied

Black Lagoon

Blood the Last Vampire (it's a short move, prequel to Blood+)

Ghost in the Shell SAC

Samurai X Trust and Betrayal (prequel to Rurouni Kenshin...usually ranked #1 on any anime website)

Samurai X Reflection (ending to Kenshin)

Both of the Samurai X ones are movies, although the first one is very long.

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Most of the suggestions I have seen have been pretty good ones, but I suggest you avoid the animes like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece if you dont like seeing one fight stetched out over a few episodes. I would recommed a couple animes named Shingetsutan Tsukihime, and

Utawarerumono. Both of these probably have the best stories of all the anime I have seen, and I think you will enjoy them.

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Death Note. It's clever, and the main character is essentially the villain of the show. Very serious, a great show for all of us who enjoy our dark side.

Ditto that - this is what the pretzel is watching right now, and I'm lovin' it. Dostoevsky meets CLAMP meets Agatha Christie. There are VERY few holes in a plot that takes a lot of twists and turns but never feels cheap and always explains itself in detail but without feeling dumbed-down. Don't be fooled into thinking it's a supernatural show, either; while the premise necessitates many elements of the occult and the existence of "Death Gods", the episode-to-episode action is traditional murder-mystery detective/nemesis intrigue of the highest order.

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I'm actually reading the Death Note manga just now, Chapter 42. If you can get past some of the gaping plotholes, then its brilliant.

I'm suprided no-one mentioned Neo Genisis Evangelion yet (unless it's because its crap). I haven't watched it myself, but its pretty well known.

Beserk and Fist of The North Star are pretty awesome as well, but I doubt thats what you are looking for.

Studio Ghibli stuff and the Akira movie are pretty awesome as well, although if your just looking for series's then I can't really give you that much more help.

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Man, it took a long time for Trigun to be mentioned. Though I guess it isn't exactly new.

Please, for the sake of your mind, avoid Evangelion. That was the most overrated worthless piece of crap I've ever seen.

Another older one you could try if you haven't seen it is Martian Successor Nadesico. I liked it, anyway, at least when I saw it 4 years ago.

Edit: Oh, and I second Studio Ghibli. Actually, Hayao Miyazaki's son just finished his first movie: Tales of Earthsea. I haven't seen it, but it looked pretty good.

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-Death Note (however, it hits a decline after the first half)

Yeah, I'm a few episodes into the second half and its beginning to get a little tedious. At least 70% of each episode consists of this ATM:

L: *Implies Light is Kira"

Light: OMG, how could you say such a thing!?

L: But you are >.>

Light: *Intense split second reflection* O yeah.... I am... duh...

Everyone Else: OMFG!>!!>!!!?!?!?

L: *Pointless crazy analytical reasoning why Light is kira, which is in fact senseless and not all that analytical.*

Light: Let me prove my innocence even though I'm not innocent, but there is no evidence concluding to my guilt, yet you still believe I'm guilty likely due to that major man crush you have, which explains why you chained me to yourself. *out of breath*

L: *Eats cake* No

*Everyone forgets this ever happened* rinse, evil corporate plot, repeat.

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I second most of the recommendations here and would also like to recommend Texhnolyze.

Seconded. Although the series is short (only 22 episodes), TEXHNOLYZE is dense and compact. Every scene counts and it wastes no time with filler. The pacing is very odd though, since it can be incredibly slow at points, but tremendously fast at others. It really keeps you on your toes and going back to verify what you just saw. The English dub isn't bad either and I particularly like the voice actor for Ohnishi. Plus, the voice outakes add a little humor to the very heavy and pensive drama.

In addition to this, I've been hearing lots of good things about Zipang. It's adapted from the manga, pretty faithfully from what I understand.

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I loved the GANTZ series.

Synopsis: Random people die in reality, and wake up in a room with each other and a black sphere named Gantz. No one really has a clue what is going on until GAntz ( a black sphere ) tells this group of strangers their lives are now "his" and they must go play his game or DIE for real.

The Gantz series is surrreal, mature, action and depth in the characters personalities. The interplay between total stangers caught in this GANTZ phenomenon really is my favorite part.

minor spoilish stuff..

Ohh and when people die during GAntz's missions, he replaces them with new people who just died in the real world. Then you're left with half of the people sorta know whats going on, and people who are totally clueless.

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If you have an open mind I'd highly suggest One Piece. Not the absolutely shitty "translation" (LOL4KIDS), find it subbed or find the manga. It's probably the most...well creative anime's I've ever seen and if you can get past Oda's exaggerations and PCP-induced ideas the series itself is very much epic. It's probably not as serious as a lot of what's been previously mentioned, but you say "serious/epic" and "Haruhi" in the same sentence and I giggle slightly.

Don't expect to finish it anytime soon though. I think they're up to episode 302 and approaching the halfway point of the series.

Yes, great show. Possibly more solid than even some of the best Naruto or Bleach episodes.

People keep mentioning Death Note, but if they liked that, they might get into Hikaru no Go. It's made by the creator of Death Note and it has a similar mind game aspect. But instead of being based on noir style crime fighting, it is based on the Go board game. But apparently a lot of board/card game anime out there are great.

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Surprised nobody's mentioned this one so I'll pop it in:

Bartender - While it's not exactly a show you might expect, I'd almost call it a history show in anime.. It's only 11 episodes long, but I liked the simple development and various educational material within.

Code Geass - I'd pick this over Death Note personally, as mentioned before the latest story arc in DN kinda shot it to hell quality wise, the first part was brilliant. Geass on the other hand seems to be going strongly, looking forward to where this one's going.

Akira - While I didn't like it that much personally, it's still a solid oldskool anime that kickstarted the sci-fi anime area.

Tokyo Godfathers - Genius little movie, highly recommended for laughs, character development, and plot movement, it's just damn well refined. For those who tend to read a little deeper, it does address many contemporary issues regarding the social state of Japan and the homeless.

Anything Ghibli - duh, or at least by Hayao. Tales of Earthsea I havn't seen yet, although I did read an interview with Goro and LeQuin, I hear she didn't exactly fall in love with the movie so perhaps there were some adaptation errors. I still plan on seeing it sometime just to see how his first film went though.

Full Metal Alchemist - Just because it's genius. I know people may think this one overrated, but I personally don't think I've seen a show with the character and plot development so brilliantly well integrated and executed for quite some time, and even makes you contemplate some things in the metaphysical.

Full Metal Panic - avoid The Second Raid if you don't want to see the original action and humour soiled by overly emo scenes. Fumoffu is mainly for laughs, treat it as a bonus from the creators.

Planetes - An *amazing* little series that hardly nobody knows of; it's a story in the near future where preliminary space travel to our nearby planets brings about many questions regarding the state of humanity and what our longer term priorities need to be, great food for thought. Again, character and plot are amazingly well done.

Slam Dunk - Just because. I'm probably biased for this one since it was one of the first mangas and animes I saw and thought it was hilarious, mainly for laughs, otherwise a little development and the rest is DBZ.

I think everything else has been mentioned...

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