Your Fav 5!

[Stoopider]

strange enough, i didn't find any thread that was more than just "favorite current anime"... (that wasn't 2+ years old...) so i suppose this topic stays.

Yup thanks. I just wanted to know some good anime's recently and what they think about it. We haven't had a thread like this for a while. And no point sticky-ing it. Because it will change from time to time.

Top 5 Anime for me (No particular Order)
1)One Piece
2)Berserk
3)Hajime No Ippo
4)Hoshi No Koe (though doesn't quite count as a series)
5)Azumanga Diaoh

I've dropped Naruto from my top 5 every since the fillers started. Bastards

Top 3 currently watchin.
1) One Piece (as always)
2) Utewaremono
3) Honey and Clover 2.

[Styles]

Top Five All-Time Series: (Not in any type of order)

Rurouni Kenshin (didn’t really enjoy the anime until I saw it uncut)
Outlaw Star (Classic and I still re-watch it when there is nothing else out)
Shuffle! (I wasn’t into anime like this until this show came along)
Tenjou Tenge (even though it was a rush job, I still enjoyed the show)
Yu Yu Hakusho (got a little DBZ-ish towards the end but still a good series)

Top 5 Watching: (Not in any type of order)

Zegapain
Ergo Proxy
Welcome to the NHK!
Ouran High School Host Club
Inukami!

Top 5 Manga: (Reading or other wise)

Megatokyo (yep)
Bleach
Naruto
Trigun Maximum
Blade of Heaven

[Lucifus]

Top 5 anime:

GTO
Yu Yu Hakusho
One Piece
Hunter x Hunter
Elfen Lied

Honorable Mentions: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Naruto, Samurai X, Samurai Champloo
Top 5 Current:

Ergo Proxy
Air Gear
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Utawarerumono
Black Lagoon

Oh, and rep to Bud, Dark Dragon, And DragonRage for recommending me a few of the best anime of all time! Woot!

Well, in the last 2 and a half days I just caught up with School Rumble. Must be put into my top 5! Great series..... Adding Elfen Lied to Honorable mentions and SR to my fav.

Top 5 anime:

GTO
Yu Yu Hakusho
One Piece
Hunter x Hunter
School Rumble

Honorable Mentions: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Naruto, Samurai X, Samurai Champloo, Elfen Lied, Fate Stay/Night
Top 5 Current:

Ergo Proxy
Air Gear
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Utawarerumono
Black Lagoon

[Zinobi]

Top 5 of all time:

FMA
Elfen Lied
Cowboy Bebop
Golden Boy
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

as i dont usually watch all that much anime a the same time ive been watching Utawarerumo and the generic Naruto and Bleach....

[Nai]

... In no particular order...

Berserk
Gundam SEED
Monster
Full Metal Alchemist
Hellsing Ultimate ( already, yes! )

Hellsing Ultimate
Bleach
Ergo Proxy
Blood+
Witchblade

[YaGaMi]

In no particular order:

Top 5 Anime

Legend of the 4 Kings
Hunter X Hunter
Berserk
Rurouni Kenshin 1st OVA
Hajime No Ippo

Top 5 Anime Movies

Grave of the Fireflies
Ninja Scroll
Street Fighter 2 Animated Movie
Fist of the North Star
Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust

Honourable Mentions:

Monster, Full Metal Alchemist, Gungrave, Cowboy Bebop, Bleach, Rurouni Kenshin Series, Akira

[Mizuchi]

Top 5 fave anime:

Naruto
FMA
Prince of Tennis
Bleach
Samurai Deeper Kyo

[kooshi]

Top 5 favorite anime:
1. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
2. Cowboy Bebop
2. Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid
4. Honey & Clover
5. Planetes
(Cowboy Bebop and FMP: TSR are tied for me)

Top 4 current anime:
1. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan
2. Hayate no Gotoku!
3. Lucky Star
4. Seirei no Moribito
(It would be 5, but I'm only watching these 4 at the moment. I'll be checking out Higurashi 2 and Sky Girls soon enough)

[Lucifus]

Well, since the threads been revived.

Top 5 anime:

Great Teacher Onizuka
School Rumble
One Piece
Fate Stay/Night
Code Geass


Top 5 Current:

Darker Than Black
Nodame Cantabile
Herioc Age
Claymore
Bokurano


Honorable Mentions:

Black Lagoon, TMHS, Samurai X, VDS, Samurai Champloo, BTC, Mushishi, KPM, EP

Updated Above.

[Board of Command]

Now that this is revived, I'm obligated to post again...

Top 5 all-time: (no particular order)

Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi
Elfen Lied
Gungrave
Death Note
Welcome to the NHK

Top 5 ongoing:

Code Geass
Darker Than Black
Combat Butler Hayate
Claymore
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

[Zati]

Top 5 all time :

One Piece
Gungrave
PlanetES
Hunter X Hunter
Monster
(Elfen Lied, GTO, and Ippo right behind)

Top 5 current animes :

Darker Than Black
Claymore
Code Geass
Seirei no Moribito
Bokurano

[kenren]

Top 5!
I'll go with my all time favourite anime. no order though..

FMP (<3 tessa)
Azumanga Daioh (Osaka!)
Code Geass
School Rumble (I can't wait for season 3!)
Gensoumaden Saiyuki (IMO, only the first season is watchable.)

[Foomanchew24]

Top 5 all time
1.One Piece
2.Monster
3.Great Teacher Onizuka
4.Bleach
5.Naruto

Currently airing top 5
1.One Piece
2.Bleach
3.Naruto
4.Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann
5. Darker than Black

Honorable mention:
Fullmetal Alchamist, Hikaru No Go, Trigun, Cowboy Beebop, Ruroni Kenshin, Hunter x Hunter, Yuu Yuu Hakashu, Samurai Champloo and others I forget

[Augury]

Top 5 anime:
1. Hikaru no Go
2. Rurouni Kenshin: Reminiscence (Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal)
3. Twelve Kingdoms
4. Honey & Clover
5. Kimi Ga Nozumu Eien

Currently: only watching Claymore

[Psyke]

My top 10 in no particular order:

1. Deathnote
2. Elfen Lied
3. Ghost in the Shell
4. Gunslinger Girl
5. G Gundam
6. Basilisk
7. Gundam Seed
8. Monster
9. Shurato
10. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi

Current:

1. Claymore

Downloading Bleach and Naruto but not watching anymore. Keeping Darker than Black till the series ends.

[TruthofMistake]

Top Five:
-Gungrave
-FLCL
-FMP
-Cowboy Bebop
-Onegai Teacher

Top 3 (current):
-Kaze no Stigma
-Bleach
-Black Lagoon

Manga
-Beck

[complich8]

I'm going to digress here a little bit.

This sort of thread is a bit odd. You look at it, you read the title, maybe the first post or two, and the post right before your own, but however many there are in between, have you read them all? Do you care?

I mean ... it's a good concept and all, but in practice, with a prompt like "list your favorites", there's no real discussion to be had. Just "oh, I like these" "oh, I like these" over and over again.

So instead, I'm going to toss out a couple of my favorites with reasons why they're my favorites. Maybe we can turn this shambling corpse of a thread into something that's not a collection of soliloquies before an otherwise-empty theater.

I loved The Melancholy of Suzimiya Haruhi because it was an incredibly hard narrative style to pull off and they did a great job of it, managing to tell something of a "school"/"romance" genre story while simultaneously embracing and shattering the cliches of school/romance as genres. It was insane, it was consistently funny and intriguing, and the art and animation were top notch.

I also have to say, Read or Die (the OVA in particular) has to be one of my favorites. Excellent animation, amazing art, an ambitious fast-paced story and absolutely incredible music made it one of the most enjoyable pieces of animation I can think of. It's also notable for its extensive and very direct use of a lot of the literary influences that other stories try to mask.

Ghost in the Shell isn't getting a whole lot of love around here. I enjoyed both movies and Stand Alone Complex (at least, the 17 eps of Stand Alone Complex I helped sub and got around to watching ... I should really get back to that show). The first movie was great for being jam-packed with fast-paced eye-popping action, from the very first scene all the way to the museum battle with the tank, and still managed to get in a healthy dose of metaphysics, talking about the blurring borders between humanity and machinery and dancing on the ethical implications of that. The series, while slower-paced, manages to be more nuanced in its treatment of philosophical themes, while consistently producing episodes that are interesting on their own and that often advance a larger story. The series' treatments of those themes offers a lot of food for thought, without necessarily doing all the thinking for the audience -- something that other shows dealing with deeper themes often do. GitS is, if anything, an invitation to ruminate and to examine your own ideas in a new light. And it's also got a lot of sexy cyberpunk cyborg-on-cyborg hawtness. And tanks.

So why do you love your favorites?

[TruthofMistake]

I love Gungrave because it had an amazing plot, even with it telling you the outcome in the very begining the way they told the story throughout the remaining 23 episodes kept me coming back for more. In very few animes do I come to care about the characters at all but I was really, really sad when they got to the very end of Gungrave and played out the deaths of everyone.

I really like FLCL because it will bring me out of my darkest moods, i'm not sure why. When I first started watching it I was having a less then stellar summer, but could watch that show and forget about it. It's just a lot of fun, and I love the music.

There's not a single bad thing I can say about FMP, I like the plot, art, music, and characters. Everything in that anime added to the whole experience and it was entertaining from start to finish. I usually skip through bits of the animes I watch, when they're just going over stuff that I already know, but I didn't touch my mouse at all watching this show. Cowboy Bebop was the same way, although I liked the music in this show a lot more.

Onegai Teacher was the first romantic-comedy I watched and my gateway into that genre. The art was good, and it had some really funny parts while dealing with a "serious" problem. It was fun to watch the characters, namely Kei, Mizuho, and Hyosuke for me, work out their problems and watch them progress as people.

[Ryllharu]

Explanations are always better.

Aria and Aria -the Natural: It's hard to describe why I love this series so much. Nothing really ever happens. You really can't get any more slice of life than this. But, over time, each of the girls get a quick boost in character development, all while learning to love their work and the city they live in more and more. The music meshes so perfectly with the atmosphere of the series and I've even read that the female characters' names all start with the letter 'A' because it gives it a more gentle feeling. As a result, that's exactly how the series feels, it's like a gentle breeze flowing over the water, relieving all your stress. It would be really boring to some, but I've never seen another series come even close to the effect this one accomplishes.

Slayers [the entire franchise]: Even more disturbing than the lack of GiTS overall in this thread, is the lack of Slayers. This is the franchise I will never tire of watching for the rest of my life. Yes, the art is lackluster in the movies, and pretty terrible in the series, but it's from 1996. However, so few series give a great blend of action and comedy. Slayers has a little bit of everything. The series have all the action and drama you could want, mixed in with a very liberal dose of comedy. The films take the comedy a step further, forcing Lina Inverse into even more stupid situations that others take dead serious. It's not quite a children's show, since a good portion of the humor tends to be more mature. What it is a great franchise to watch with your family, your girlfriend newer to anime, you little cousins, or your own children. Light enough for everyone to enjoy, but has just enough depth to keep everyone else watching. When I first started watching anime, I found myself watching a lot of depressing anime (because I heard they were some of the best) and Slayers was the perfect panacea.

Voices of a Distant Star: Consider first for a moment, that this entire film (about 30 minutes) was done by a single person. When that wow factor wears off, you still have a really emotional film about the separation of two lovers and the connection that still exists between them across enormous distances. I still consider this Makoto Shinkai's greatest work (I haven't seen 5cm yet), as it says everything it needs to in a short time, all with excellent animation and a true mastery of the animation of light and lighting effects. I really felt everything you feel when you're separated from someone you truly love. The desperation to meet once more, the desire to communicate, and the hope that one day, you will be reunited. It is his first major work, but it is both an excellent display of his skill at writing and directing while still being a more complete story than several 12 episode series (and the occasional 52 eps series).

Compy couldn't have talked about Ghost in the Shell better. Hawtness, and tanks. ...And the philosophical ruminations left to the audience. The two series and two other movies are no different.

I could elaborate more on Cowboy Bebop, but it's generally the same reason I love Aria, the flawless executed atmosphere of the series.

Instead, I'll explain my love/hate relationship with Onegai Teacher. What I really can't stand about it is the constant reuse of one or two lines. (Not Mizuho's "Sai yu-sen jikou"). Several of the side characters are flat-out unbearably stupid. But that aside, for some reason, I can't help but watch the series once a year or so. The (now classic) premise of a student marrying his teacher due to a misunderstanding. But it goes beyond that and how nice Mizuho looks in a swimsuit. It goes through the emotions of a husband and wife forced together in an arranged marriage, something more commonplace in Japan. It not only goes through the emotions of those two, but everyone close to them as they slowly learn to love each other. It's an old saying that love grows with time, and the idea is illustrated pretty well here. It has comedy, it's got all the drama you could ever ask for, and it's ecchi (at times). It never asks a lot of it's audience (other than patience to endure repeated lines and annoying characters), but the harder you look at it, the deeper a series it becomes. Every time I swear I'll never watch it again, around a year, I get the urge to watch it once more.

[isso]

Top 5 anime (no order)

FMP
Neon Genesis Evangelion (my first anime)
Samurai X
Basilisk
Gundam Seed


Top 3 current (no order)

Naruto
Bleach
Elfen Lied (finally started it)