Hardcore anime fans

[Gota]

This is meant only for hardcore anime viewers..
Please recommended good anime series and movies.
No kiddie stuff or comedy...
I'm looking for top notch writing,adult themed anime.

Some of the stuff I'v seen already and respect:
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Armitage
Cowboy Beebop
Grave of the fireflies
Miyazaki films(this is an exception to what i have stated above i guess)...
ghost in the shell
Ninja scroll
Memories
patlabor
akira..

[knorke]

i am a huge fan of adult themed hardcore anime.
rape tentacles from outta space part I to III are my favorites.

[Pxtl]

Yeah, Gota, you might want to rephrase that before you get people talking about Overfiend and La Bleu Girl.

[HectorMeyer]

Monster, a series from 2004, is great.

Ghost in the shell also has two TV series worth watching.

[KaiserJ]

hmm, some good ones there...

im no expert with anime, i havent seen much, but i did enjoy some from your list

Appleseed (movie 2004) i really enjoyed; had read the manga previously

Macross... movies, series, many to choose from. i enjoyed this stuff around 1995, havent looked at any of it since, except for the "macross plus" miniseries which i saw within the last few years and enjoyed. basically big gundam-esque robots that can turn into planes.

Gundam Wing was a series i really got into, but really any gundam stuff is entertaining... i guess i liked wing because it had a fair amount of action in it rather than just full episodes of people standing around and arguing about stuff.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind... great flick from 1984, probably the first anime i ever saw... somewhat of a "kids movie" due to the lack of tentacle rape but really is a gem of a movie IMO. if i ever have kids, they will be forced to watch it. (valley of the wind, not tentacle rape)

tried some other series of stuff on people insistence, like naruto and bleach, and found them to be a bit of a waste of time for me. maybe aimed at a younger audience, maybe just crap, i dont know. didn't work for me at all though

edit : for valley of the wind, make SURE you don't watch the north american version Warriors of the Wind. its shortened and generally fail

[Gota]

THX for the replies.
Someone recommended to me a series called "deathnote"...is that any good?worth watching?

[KaiserJ]

Vampire Hunter D is also pretty cool (albiet a basic story)

never heard of deathnote

[Pxtl]

Monster, a series from 2004, is great.

Ghost in the shell also has two TV series worth watching.

I tried watching GITS:SAC and found it was like watching paint dry. It had all the glacial pacing of the movie but with none of the artistry that kept me from getting bored when I watched the movie.

[HectorMeyer]

I agree. It really lacks polish and atmosphere, which is actually the main appeal of gits. 2nd gig is better though.

tbh i only watched a few episodes of both shows each yet

[oksnoop2]

THX for the replies.
Someone recommended to me a series called "deathnote"...is that any good?worth watching?

It's ok, i missed the last three shows of it *grumble grumble* so i don't feel like i can make a solid recommendation.

[Pxtl]

@ KaiserJ

Nausicaa is good, but Ghibli recycled all of the themes from it for later, better movies. So now, Nausicaa looks like a dated mash-up of Howl's Moving Castle and Mononoke Hime. Not much point in seeing it now unless you're a big Ghibli fan.

Macross Plus is definitely recommended.

Also, the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs. Good story about a samurai assasin, produced as an origin-story prequel to the long-running TV series.

Oh, and Lupin III: Castle Cagliostro. Most modern Ghibli fans only pay attention to the ones Disney imported stuff - Cagliostro was made before Miyazaki formed Ghibli. It's the big film adaptation of an anime TV series called Lupin III, which was the story of the Japanese grandson of Maurice LeBlanc's infamous French thief Arsen Lupin. It's a comedy, but a good one - kind of the Japanese answer to The Sting. It's one of those films you see referenced in other Anime a fair bit - Lupin was the obvious inspiration for Spike from Cowboy Bebop, for example.

[Otherside]

Gundam Wing
Deathnote
Full Metal Alchemist

[SwiftSpear]

Elven Leid.

I liked Berserk and Helsing. There's some really good Comedies out there, why the hate?

[Pxtl]

Elven Leid.

Approves. Elfenlied is a fantastic and viciously dark satire of Harem anime tropes... basically reformatted into a Horror. It has some real depth and love in the characters too... but there's only so much underage nudity you can stand before you start feeling really disgusted with yourself for watching it.

[Master-Athmos]

If you want something very strange watch Jin Roh. Some people seem to really like this movie - I don't tend to do that while not saying it's a bad movie. It's just a bit weird and demands a lot of interpretation to fully understand everything...

Apart from that Record of Lodoss War in my opinion is a great (fantasy) series. I also was told the quite new The Sky Crawlers is a good movie but I didn't watch it myself yet. Something I did watch and like is Paprika. That one is about messing around with dreams leading to a very creative movie...

[Gota]

@ KaiserJ

Nausicaa is good, but Ghibli recycled all of the themes from it for later, better movies. So now, Nausicaa looks like a dated mash-up of Howl's Moving Castle and Mononoke Hime. Not much point in seeing it now unless you're a big Ghibli fan.

Macross Plus is definitely recommended.

Also, the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs. Good story about a samurai assasin, produced as an origin-story prequel to the long-running TV series.

Oh, and Lupin III: Castle Cagliostro. Most modern Ghibli fans only pay attention to the ones Disney imported stuff - Cagliostro was made before Miyazaki formed Ghibli. It's the big film adaptation of an anime TV series called Lupin III, which was the story of the Japanese grandson of Maurice LeBlanc's infamous French thief Arsen Lupin. It's a comedy, but a good one - kind of the Japanese answer to The Sting. It's one of those films you see referenced in other Anime a fair bit - Lupin was the obvious inspiration for Spike from Cowboy Bebop, for example.

Yeah I'v seen the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs,good stuff,way better than the lame series :)

[KDR_11k]

Armored Trooper VOTOMS is fun.

[SanadaUjiosan]

Athmos dipped into it with Paprika, but I absolutely love the works of Satoshi Kon. Most of his stuff are movies, with the exception of one short series. Of particular note:

Paprika
Tokyo Godfathers
Paranoia Agent (The series)
Millenium Actress

They're all pretty good at screwing with your mind, with the exception of Tokyo Godfathers, which is just all-out entertaining.

[Andrej]

Underrated yuri mecha animu from 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simoun_(anime)

Quoting from "Reception" section:

praised the story for not having to rely on its yuri content

earlier in "Plot" section:

The main weapon of the Simoun is a large glowing green gem, positioned between the cockpits. The Simoun Gem is activated before takeoff when the two Sibyllae kiss it after kissing each other.

LOL JAPAN

Also people suggesting Gundam Wing stop trying to troll smoth he left already >.>

[luckywaldo7]

I like action stuff, not really anything with like magic or superpowers or giant robots, nothing with definitive good and bad, and definitely nothing cutesy.

Just really serious down-to-earth guns or swords, with lots of blood, real death, and a world defined by moral ambiguity.

So my suggestions, in order of recommendation starting with most highly recommended:

Samurai Champloo: Its the "spiritual successor" to Cowboy Bebop, made by the same guy. It manages to be completely different, and yet, just as good as Bebop. It meshes a traditional Japan style along with hip-hop, and wierdly, it just works. No real weak points, just a great show all around.

Black Lagoon: Awesome, awesome badass psycho chick. The opening is here, it just sets the mood perfectly. Really, all you need to do is watch the opening to know if you will like it or not. There are currently two seasons, but the second one offered no kind of ending or finality so there is probably more coming, eventually.

Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~: About brainwashing children into becoming killers. The the two original ones develop a really sweet but kind of demented and ill-fated relationship. I think it gets a bit tedious near the middle-end, but it starts and ends quite strongly.

Darker than Black: I kind of break one of my rules here, as this one explores what happens when a bunch of people get superpowers. Mostly, they get used by governments and criminal organizations as weapons :D. While not without its flaws plot-wise and character-wise (tries too hard to be Bebop but fails), it develops a nice creepy atmosphere and a mythos that really adds to that (like the costs at which those powers come.)

The Book of Bantorra: When people die they are turned into 'books' which are basically stone tablets that you can touch to experience their life. This seemingly simple plot element along with some good characters makes for some great storytelling, which is the strong point of this series. Unfortunately in only 27 episodes, it tries to tell a story so epic that the plot eventually crushes itself under its own weight, and leaves a kind of unsatisfactory ending. That and main characters tend to die off before you feel like they get the screen time they deserve. Still a worthwhile watch though.