Well, I just finished rewatching Koe no Katachi and I am a literal wreck right now. I think it's my favorite anime movie. It's not as subtle as some but it really punches you in the feels.
Yeah, it's my favorite anime film too. It's funny, all my favorite anime movies actually aren't Ghibli: Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, End of Evangelion, Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22, Your Name, The Night is Short Walk on Girl. Don't get me wrong, I generally enjoy Ghibli films, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke in particular I think are excellent, but they just aren't any among my absolute favorites like most anime fans seem to do.
Jroderton: yeah, Eva's my 2nd favorite anime series after Cowboy Bebop (3-5 being FMA 03/Brotherhood, FLCL, and Gurren Lagann. I know it's kinda cheating to put both FMAs in the #3 spot, but I admire what both bring to the table and I get annoyed when people don't simply say they don't like the 03 anime but flat out say it's "worthless" or "unimportant". Like, guys, the 2003 FMA got me, AND PLENTY OF OTHERS, really into anime in the first place, you can dislike it but don't be mean about it. I actually checked it out due to the show X-play, Adam and Morgan would make fun of the FMA fans who were mad at the two of them for giving the FMA video games low scores even though Adam and Morgan pointed out they were reviewing the games not the actual anime, and I was like, "this is a funny overreaction by this fanbase, but what actually is Fullmetal Alchemist?" Checked it out and the rest was history.
I mean, earlier in life, I had seen Pokemon, Digimon, Dragonball Z, Monster Rancher and one other series (which I'll get to in a bit), but I just thought of them as Japanese cartoons/animation not having any clue how big the industry was. The next three anime I saw after FMA 03 were:
- Naruto (due to everyone going nuts over it online so checked it out)
- Evangelion (I literally had no idea what I was in for. After seeing FMA 03 and Naruto, I went to my Best Buy to see if they sold anime DVDs. After realizing I had no idea what would be good, I bought the complete DVD boxset of Eva on the basis of, "well, it looks sci-fi and this girl with the blue hair and girl with the brown hair look cute". I'd say that was a pretty lucky blind buy)
- Betterman (I'm curious how many even have ever heard of this one. This was the other series I mentioned I had seen some of before FMA 03, years ago I had a friend over and he was like, "dude, we gotta watch Sci Fi Channel tonight, they show these cool anime on Saturday nights!" and I was like, "err, okay." So we turned it on and this show Betterman was on, a mecha series with elements of horror and just weirdness (most likely took a little inspiration from Eva). We got up to about 3-4 AM (as they were just marathoning the whole series) and couldn't stay awake anymore but were mad as the last episode we caught ended on a tragic note. Plus this one scientist lady talked heavily in science lingo that it confused our early high school minds. So after never getting to see the rest of it, I saw the DVD boxset and bought it along with Eva, and hey now that I was older I could (mostly) understand what the scientist lady was saying! But it just makes me laugh, I wonder how many people can say when they started getting into anime that among their first five anime was something as weird and obscure as Betterman)
