Hopefully we know the drill by the now.

Last threads:
1995 - AotY: Golden Boy
1996 - AotY: Spring & Chaos

1997 was interesting. Similar to '96, there was a LOT of utter schlock to wade through, and I probably gave the same number of 1/10s and 2/10s overall, if not slightly more. But at the same time, I was able to scrounge up a decent amount (relatively speaking) of things worth watching, thanks to 1995 sort of opening the floodgates for more experimental artistry. These don't always turn out great, but they're always better to watch than yet another generic fucking mahou shoujo series, or a piece of shit mecha series.

Here's everything I didn't watch. If I don't watch something, it's either because I couldn't find a stream for it anywhere on the Internet (so it's PROBABLY not worth watching anyway), or because it's part of a larger franchise that I've already given up on. I'm not gonna watch Dragon Ball GT when I still haven't even finished DBZ, you dig?


With those formalities out of the way, let's move onto the list itself.

---

No number, since this is the only item on the entire "list," so calling it "#1" would be redundant. I had two items for 1995 and zero items for 1996, though, so I guess it balances out.

Noiseman Sound Insect is a short film by Kōji Morimoto—the same Kōji Morimoto who helped animate Akira and directed Magnetic Rose, which made my 1995 list. Suffice to say, he's definitely one of my new favorite anime directors, and despite having given Magnetic Rose the runner-up spot on that list under Golden Boy, I've actually been having second thoughts about that, because it's finally beginning to sink in just how talented this man is.

In general, Studio 4°C was killing it in 1997. The same year, Morimoto dropped a twenty-eight minute film called Eikyuu Kazoku (Eternal Family), which I didn't think was quite good enough to put on this list, but its strange combination of ideas from The Matrix and The Truman Show become all the more interesting when you realize that it actually predates both of those films. You also had Katsuhiro Otomo (the Akira guy) dropping some fucking weird shit like Gondora under this studio.


I don't even know what to make of this.

Given the studio's track record of producing these borderline shitpost art films that may not always say something profound, but are still wild, fun, and infectiously creative in their own right, it's very unfortunate that I only discovered Noiseman Sound Insect towards the tail-end of my trek through 1997, especially when it was animated by none other than Masaaki Yuasa (Devilman Crybaby, The Tatami Galaxy), who is my all-time favorite person working in the entire industry.

The story is pretty simple, albeit a little absurd. In the distant future, a mad scientist vies to steal ALL the world's music and then transmogrify it into a crystalline form to reduce all what we can hear to unmusical noise, just to deprive society of that basic pleasure. He creates the titular, triangular, and squeaky-voiced monster, the Noiseman (pictured above), to help enact his designs. The rest of the film follows Noiseman as it runs amok, sucking up music, causing all kinds of commotion, as a group of biker punks try to stop it.

If that doesn't sound interesting to you, don't worry—the story isn't really the primary appeal of this cartoon. Where the short truly strides is in its ability to inject a potent firestorm of sensory input directly into your ears and eyeballs. The colorful and gorgeous imagery combined with animation so crisp and fluid all add up to a visual rollercoaster. I've always been impressed by movies that always have something going on in every frame. On top of this, the hectic and cacophonous soundtrack by Yoko Kanno (of Cowboy Bebop fame) rather perfectly complements the overall theme of the movie, being the relationship between music vs. uncontrolled noise.

The city featured in this short is called Cahmpon, and that's pretty much all we know about it—other than that it's in a state of beautiful decadence. The short fifteen minute runtime lends us no time to ponder questions like "Where are we?" or "How did the world get like this?" which aren't really questions that the film is trying to answer anyway, so I wouldn't even worry about any of that stuff. The mystery and intrigue of the city is what keeps you wondering about it, and if any more information about it was revealed, it wouldn't have been as memorable for me.

Its short runtime also makes it easy to recommend to just about anyone, and though I usually leave just a small clip for you to watch to gauge interest, I see no harm in linking the entire thing here. It certainly left an impression on me, so I hope you'll be able to take something away from it as well.


That would be the end of the thread if I wasn't about to bring up some honorable mentions, and we actually have a pretty respectable number of them coming up—the first of which is very special to me, so let's dive into it.

---

I am ecstatic. This is the most floored I've been after watching an anime since Devilman Crybaby, and for that sort of thing to happen twice in a year for me is unprecedented across all media. This is some good fucking shit.

Before I even begin talking about this movie, I feel like I have to talk about the first time I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion. Or, no—back up—I should probably talk a little bit about what Evangelion is in the first place for the two people who don't know anything about it.

I'll keep it simple: NGE or EVA is the seminal mecha series made by Hideaki Anno in 1995. Part super robot, part psychological thriller, the show was unique for the time, because it deconstructed all the typical tropes you'd find in the prevailing mecha shows of the era. It starts out like a typical anime, and the basic premise itself is probably the least interesting thing about the series. Kids pilot giant robots to fight off giant aliens, sure whatever. It's more about the extremely intense and dark ways in which things begin to fall apart for the characters over the course of the series, the ways it subverts expectations and tired anime tropes, and for all the crazy gut punches it starts throwing towards the third act. The show proceeded to turn the industry on its head, redefining what a lot of people look for in their cartoons (for better or for worse), and is now considered by many to be the most important show of the '90s, if not ever.

I've known about this show for about as long as I've been on the Internet, and it was perhaps the first anime I've ever been exposed to that wasn't Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, or any of the other typical fare of the late '90s. It was through an old (now copyright claimed) video where someone re-edited the opening of Super Smash Bros. Melee to make it look like the OP for NGE, and I remember being very impressed by it.

The video is no more, which is kind of sad, because it's what exposed me to one of the coolest openings for anything that I had ever seen—whatever an "Evangelion" is—and still today, I do consider it to be the greatest anime OP of all time.


But even then, it would still be about ten years until I actually sat down to watch the show.

Just over a year ago, after I begun this whole anime thing, it was finally recommended to me by Ian, who gave me his express permission to shit all over it—making me assume that he hates the show and wanted me to validate him or something. So by the time I finished it, that's exactly what I did. Initially, I genuinely wasn't impressed—so much so that I decided to skip all of the supplemental material, even though I was specifically told not to. I just figured, since Ian wanted me to hate the show anyway, there's no real sense in bothering. I proceeded to exaggerate a lot of what I considered to be some of the show's biggest problems at the time to give him exactly what he wanted.

But it wasn't honest; not 100%, anyway. I was kinda just playing the role of that angry guy who hates anime indiscriminately, when the truth was, I didn't really think the show was as bad as I was making it out to be. I think I originally dropped a 4/10 on it, which is usually my "caution" rating—it's the rating I give to shows that I understand have a lot of good qualities about them, but for whatever reason, just never really clicked with me. In other words, I don't personally like them, but I can easily understand why it's considered good by others.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ian could probably tell that my given thoughts on the show were half-assed and reaching, because it wasn't until later that I found out that he doesn't hate the show at all. It's actually his favorite. I think he said that he only wanted me to shit on it so that he could finesse for himself new ways to enjoy it—which is unfortunate, because it only wound up coloring my perception of the show during my first viewing, causing me to destroy the experience for myself. If I were watching the show for any other reason than looking for reasons to hate it, I probably would've loved it right away. I realize I have a colossal fucking hate boner for anime and all, but I really do prefer to enjoy things, so it always sucks to have your expectations played around with.

I eventually gave the show a rewatch a few months ago while compiling my 1995 list, and I did so with the intention of opening my mind to it a lot more, while trying my best to wipe the initial viewing out from my memory.

Needless to say, it kinda worked.

There's a lot to unpack here. I'm going to avoid being exhaustive, but one of the bigger problems I had with the show at first that I honed in on—the fact that NONE of the characters are likable in any way, especially the main character Shinji—wound up becoming one of my favorite aspects of the story, because it suddenly occurred to me that I was looking at them the wrong way. It wasn't that the characters themselves are inherently unlikable; it's that their character flaws are so readily apparent that it makes me dislike them as people, as if they were real. That's actually a good thing. That's good writing, because it makes them feel real, which in turn causes them to become likable in their unlikableness. It's something that anime never does, and something I've wanted anime to do for ages.

They only become easy targets to criticize when you're looking at the characters from a lens of looking for things to hate, but then, of course, you'd be missing part of the point of the show.

The deconstruction of terrible super robot tropes are also fun and well-executed, and the philosophical themes—which I initially waved off as silly and pretentious nonsense, and nothing more than evidence of Hideaki Anno smelling his own farts—are actually not only incredibly poignant and thoughtful, but extremely relevant to somebody like me, who is not only able to sympathize A LOT with Shinji's general outlook of life, but whose teenage experiences parallel uncannily with his. I gave him a lot of flak for being whiny, for example, but I was a huge fucking whiner as a teenager, too (and in a lot of ways, I still am—just over more "mature" subjects, I guess). I also made fun of the religious symbolism and the general arthouse style of the last half of the show, but I'm someone who normally LOVES that shit, so that was just me reaching once again.

I can definitely own up to being a shithead about these aspects of the show. There are several other misgivings I had about the show that were corrected on my second watch, but I did say I was going to avoid being exhaustive.

The point is, my opinion improved. As a result, I decided to bump the score up to a 6/10, which is my way of saying "I like this," and after watching the Death & Rebirth cut, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't beginning to feel a 7/10 well up within the cockles of my heart. Because at this point, the show totally clicked with me. I'm no longer hesitant to admit that I genuinely and thoroughly enjoy it. It's still not perfect, and there's still several of these little niggling things about it that are holding me back from putting it up there with my all-time favorites—but when it comes to the things that I do love about it? It is an intense, burning love, on par with or stronger than what I feel for my top two.

So, after all that, I finally decided I was ready to watch the movie I've been neglecting to watch all this time: The End of Evangelion. The setup is over—I'm finally going to start talking about this movie now, thanks for bearing with me.

For those of you who aren't in the know about what this movie is, or why it exists, I'll try to wrap it up for you succinctly and without spoiling anything. If I get any of my facts wrong, I'm sure the weebs will be able to correct me.

The original 26-episode series ends on what could potentially be described as an artistically challenging note, and (as far as I'm aware) only really happened because the studio ran out of money and had no hope of creating something more immediately coherent or satisfying. I, for one, thought it was immediately coherent and satisfying, but regardless, fans of the show were not happy with it—and evidently, neither was Hideaki Anno—so with this movie, they intended to give it a "proper" ending, taking an approach that was less "confusing as hell" and more "absolutely fucking insane." It was completed about a year later, and...

Holy fucking shit. I cannot adequately express just how monumental of a mistake skipping this movie was.

This is it. This is the final piece of the puzzle I was looking for. I could stop watching anime RIGHT NOW, because I can now officially point to three different things—Devilman, Texhnolyze, and now this—as being tailor-made for me specifically, and I am so fucking thrilled about it. Where do I even begin? Well, I won't begin with spoilers, so that narrows it down. But I will be have to delve into some spoilers later, so I guess I'll warn you when that happens. Describing this film's appeal without discussing important plot details will be a challenge, but it'll be fun.

So what's the deal with this movie?

There are words in my vocabulary that I try to use sparingly, especially when I review things. The less you use a particular word, the more impact it has when you're finally able to find the right moment to use it. Whatever it is, it just gives the word a greater sense of value, power, meaning, and gravitas. Overuse a word, and it tends to lose all of those things. Among the words I try to avoid using, lest I deteriorate its value, is "beauty."

As many of you know, there's very little in the world that I would consider beautiful. On the contrary, everything is kind of horrible and disgusting to me. That's why I love art, because the power of art is that it represents the capacity for humans to inject meaning into the most dreadful aspects of life, allowing us to safely look upon it from a distance, shape perspectives, learn lessons, develop morals, and ponder. Feel. Experience. Enrich our lives with a small piece of something that we never really could, never really wanted to, or is otherwise too fantastic or absurd to really happen. Therefore, the most beautiful art to me is that which enriches my "soul" the highest degree. Something that makes me feel alive by stimulating the core of my being, or something the Romantics may have called "the sublime." That's beauty, and that's what I'm after when I consume art.


The End of Evangelion is a beautiful film. I'm fairly confident in declaring it Hideaki Anno's masterpiece, even though I haven't seen any of his other works—which I suppose I'll have to start catching up on now.

There comes a point during EVA's run where the basic plot kinda gets thrown out the window, and you realize as a viewer that you're no longer watching an ordinary mecha show. For me, this was practically instantaneous, because I already knew of all the show's intentions going into it. But shit didn't really start to feel like it was going in some weird place until the second half, during which it shifts from being a relatively standard mecha to become a much more heady, disturbing, and philosophical mind trip.

The darkness and tension compounds further and further and FURTHER, and End of Eva is where it finally reaches critical mass. Everything shatters all at once, as loudly and intensely as fucking possible. It is an experience that will rend your soul into a million glistening pieces with its visuals, both animation-wise and imagery-wise, and it will almost certainly make you feel extraordinary discomfort, and, depending on your disposition, existential depression in the same way that Devilman's ending would.

Final thing before I get into spoilers: the best part of all has to be the direction. My mouth was literally agape at some of the things I was seeing, and I'm struggling to think of a time where I've been as engrossed with an anime.

All right, spoiler time. Rather than use tags, I'm going to change the color of the text to red, because I don't want the tags to break my flow. Just don't read the red text if you want to avoid getting spoiled.

Anyone who thought the last two episodes of EVA sucked or were too confusing were definitely shown up in a big way with this movie. It's hard to know what people were expecting in those days, but I like to think they were expecting a relatively fanservice-y movie where everything comes together and resolves itself in a satisfying, if mildly bittersweet fashion. They probably weren't expecting the Third Impact to actually commence, or for it to result in a complete and utter mind fuck where virtually NONE of the characters made it out okay.

Shinji's crumbling mental state is at the forefront of the movie with the infamous first scene, where he's shown having pleasured himself to the naked body of his comatose friend, because he just wants to know what it's like to feel pleasure again. It's incredibly unsettling to watch a character, who we thought was actually starting to mature a little, regress to the absolute nadir of his existence. There's a lot of fucked up and depraved shit in this movie, but that scene will always be the most fucked up part of the entire thing for me, and people continue to meme about it to this day.

Beyond that, the film in general firmly establishes just how fucking psychotic each and every character really is. They all have reasons for it, but none of them are treated as excuses. Part of the film's theme is to scare otherwise weak-willed people into taking responsibility and initiative with their life choices, because in spite of how hard you try to justify your actions, everyone is secretly a self-serving piece of shit on the inside. The film plays with and explores the psychology of this depressing truism, and attempts to find a silver lining, which is ultimately left for the individual to decide for themselves. Life may be hell, people may be shit, but you can still try your best to make things better. Or you can run away; it's your life. But loneliness can be just as harmful to you psychologically as getting hurt by others.

And then there's the Impact itself. The moment the Third Impact finally commences, on top of being a visual feast and a prime example of spectacular filmmaking, is what really helps me cap off my love for this movie, and you can probably guess why if you've seen it already: This is my fucking dream apocalypse. It is everything that I want and everything that we deserve. Everyone in the world dies a relatively peaceful death (except for the ones who died scared or violently). In their final moments, they're embraced by the figment of a person they loved before they "return to nothingness," until the entire world is reduced to nothing more than primordial soup, from which they may return if they so choose. The moment Shinji decides to come back to give life another shot is excellent, because it's not like he's forcing anyone to come back—he gives them the choice, which is precisely how it should be. I've never seen a more properly executed end of the world scenario and I probably never will. You can only imagine how delighted I was.

That about scrapes the surface of how much I appreciated this, I think. I could go on and on.

So now, you might be wondering, "Well, if you love the movie so much, why isn't it on your list? Why is it just an honorable mention?" and I do have several reasons for that. For one thing, it's a movie that essentially requires you to watch 24 episodes of the original series, which is approximately nine hours of content. That's a lot for me to ask people to sit through, and I'm a guy who generally prefers movies to be able to stand up on their own. EoE does not. So if you find yourself in a position where you can't enjoy NGE for whatever reason, then you're probably never going to make it up to this movie, which is a major issue.

Another reason is that I'm trying my hardest not to be biased. As I said, this movie was practically tailor-made for me. It's as if Anno himself knew that I would eventually come across some day. So for me to give it a universal recommendation would be similar to buying you a pair of shoes without any regard for your preferred color, lace type, or even your size. The appeal of the movie is just heavily personalized, and I'm just trying to recognize that. Not everyone is going to enjoy a movie as soul-crushing as this, even if they're willing to watch the entire EVA series, so I'm not going to list something just because I found it so riveting.

If you want to try Eva yourself, and you don't like anime, I would only ask for you to be patient with it. It's not going to be apparent to you why I like the show so much until later, unless you're extremely attentive. Whatever the case may be, you're in for a real trip, so be sure to strap in.

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Here's the other batch of honorable mentions for '97. I had to put EoE in its own section, because the rest of these kinda pale in comparison to it, but they're still decent enough to try if you're desperate for more recommendations.

Princess Mononoke - Classic Miyazaki movie that failed to leave a lasting impression on me, but everyone else seems to love the shit out of it, so perhaps you will, too. I gave it a second watch while compiling this list, and I did end up enjoying it slightly more, but just not enough to put on the list. Perhaps my mind will change in the future. It's definitely one of the stronger contenders.

Revolutionary Girl Utena - Considered the Eva of the magical girl genre. Though I'm able to appreciate the deconstruction elements, I ultimately just don't care for it as much. Doesn't quite have the same effect on me, and visually, I think it's quite ugly. It's pretty popular, though.

The Dog of Flanders - The movie, not the series. It's decent, albeit very sad. I'm not really sure if you need to watch the series in order to enjoy the film more, but I didn't because it was 52 episodes and made in the '70s. Maybe that was my mistake.

A Chinese Ghost Story - Technically, this shouldn't even count as an anime, as it was made in Hong Kong. It's still listed on MyAnimeList, though, so if they count it, then I suppose I might as well. It comes across as poor man's Disney, but it's still decently entertaining, and it's a fun way to learn a little bit about Chinese mythology.

Pokémon - Gotta shout-out to the first anime I've ever seen. Obviously a huge part of my childhood, the first season is all I would "recommend," but even then, I can't fully recommend it because it's objectively understood to be a substandard show, all things considered. I still think it's fun, though, and I've been planning on making a thread where I review and rank every single Pokémon movie, of which there are twenty (which is why it's been taking awhile).

And finally:

This beer commercial - is awesome.


Don't drink, though.

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1998 is looking like it's gonna be a pretty exciting year. I'm already seeing tons of stuff that I might like.

Anime is pretty lame ngl

yeah

I hear wanime is good though, check out this niche definitely spies show

dogshit

It pays homage to American action movies though, also has quality characters and dialogue

wrong

Have you seen an episode

i've seen several

So you saw a few episodes a long time ago and you let your bias stain an entire career's worth of a show

it's more that i've never witnessed you enjoy anything worth watching except for A:TLA

everything else you seem to enjoy is abject garbage, so i have no reason to take your recs seriously

consistently entertaining

ehhhhhhhh

Jesus verb

you're a huge weeaboo

"pubg"

Quote from: Shhhhhh on May 11, 2018, 03:03:16 PM

Quote from: challengerX on May 11, 2018, 02:11:02 PM

"pubg"

enjoying anything that is even remotely Japanese should be punishable by death

i don't disagree

What a shitty hobby

inb4 verb starts to rate hentai

Nice to see you turn around on NGE. Anno was all kinds of fucked up mentally when he made it.

Also it seems like you dont remember but ive said in the past that NGE has a lot of themes you express, before your binge watching began.

hmm, yeah i have no recollection of that

thanks though, i guess—that would make you the first person to recommend me something that would resonate with me

i wanna record a music video of me dancing to komm süsser tod over footage of the world ending

Quote from: Solonoid on May 11, 2018, 11:25:47 AM

Jesus verb

you're a huge weeaboo

>watch 100 anime released in a single year
>enjoy 2 of them

wow such weeb

yeah that's how weebs feel about anime

theost advanced ones know it's all garbage and watch it anyway with the hopes of finding one good one

yeah that's how weebs feel about anime

theost advanced ones know it's all garbage and watch it anyway with the hopes of finding one good one

I wouldnt say its all garbage, most of it is low effort pandering and mediocre.

Youre kinda right about watching anime to find a good one.  Ever since NGE i jumped on the seasonal wagon in hopes of finding something that makes me feel like i did when i watched NGE.

Thats asking a lot though and i still havent found that feel.