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All-time Best▲▼
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Rating▲▼
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Comment▲▼
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| Air (TV) |
Masterpiece |
#4 - So, you think you're watching a pleasant dating-sim adaptation, right? A quiet town filled with beautiful moe girls, and nothing to do but enjoy yourself under the hot summer sun. Well, that's good, keep thinking that until you finish the series, then try and tell someone about it with a straight face. Air is pure drama, pure emotion, and I believe it'll always remain as my all-time "saddest anime ever". When a story can freeze your mind, pull you into your TV screen, and make you wish you could do something to prevent the inevitable, you KNOW the story is good. |
| Clannad (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 7 - If there's one thing a good shoujo romance does, it warms your heart. If there's one thing a good VN adaptation does, it drags emotion out of you by getting you attached to the characters and then mercilessly destroying those emotions with tragic plot twists. What happens when you combine the two? You get CLANNAD, that's what. Unlike a few infamous KEY titles, CLANNAD sets up for serious drama, and delivers - but not before making you honestly feel that the world is a wonderful place and that you're lucky to be alive. Really, now, how many shows let you do that? |
| ef: a tale of memories (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 6 - The visual novel adaptation genre (the good ones at least) have always specialized in two things; getting the viewer to like the characters, and tearing the viewer's heart apart when they realized things aren't as happy as they first appear. The interesting thing about ef is that, while it also contains some KEY-style "painful relationship that would need a miracle to end well", the story also proves to be a heartwarming and heartbreaking bittersweet experience. The animation is breathtaking, the surreal atmosphere fits the show perfectly, and the romance works as well as any famous shoujo or Makoto Shinkai movie; and yet, it also gets you feeling affection for the characters, and feeling the pain that they go through. What more can I say about an anime that not only crosses the boundary between "male-targeted moe" and "girly romance", but crosses it so well that it surpasses just about everything that was intended solely to accomplish one of the above goals? It's a masterpiece, that's what it is, and it's the best non-KEY ren'ai adaptation I'll ever see. |
| Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 10 - You know, it normally takes an anime with either a boatload of religious references and conspiracies-beneath-conspiracies or a melodramatic story and a bittersweet ending for me to give an anime the rating of Masterpiece. Normally. Honestly though, anything less than that would be an insult to the pure brilliance of the GitS universe. How else can I say it? It's the very epitome of sci-fi, it's flawless. |
| Honey and Clover (TV) |
Masterpiece |
#2 - Life can be painful, can't it? Even without mechs battling each other with the fate of the world on the line, or even a tragic romantic relationship where the girl is actually just a dream and will one day fade away in the guy's arms, real life can be painful. And it can also be happy. Romance anime is a funny thing sometimes: to one person, it might be an entertaining passtime of 26 episodes, and to another, a flawless representation of life and all of it's ups and downs. For me, H&C proved to be the latter, and it does everything it sets out to do with utmost perfection. Looking back, I can honestly say that everything that happened in the story felt real and believable; and the feeling the show gives you, from the heartwarming to the tearful, is the kind of thing I haven't found anywhere else, no matter how many KEY's or Shinkai's I watch. |
| Kanon (TV 2/2006) |
Masterpiece |
#3 - "Sad girls in snow." That old line says it all. While Kanon fails to break any new ground, it succeded in defining (or redefining in the case of this remake) the VN adaptation genre and proving that eroge doesn't have to be shallow. Like with every good drama visual novel, the story is written to engross the viewer with the plot and characters so that when the tragedy hits, it hits you as hard as if you were Yuuichi himself; and this show accomplished that flawlessly. From the subtle developments to the tear-jerking tragedy, from the cheerful high school romance to the fruitless longing for the impossible, Kanon will drag every conceivable emotion out of you until you're left at the edge of your seat crying like the characters on screen. It does what it was meant to do - nothing more, nothing less - but it does it with perfection. And remember: it's called a miracle because it doesn't happen. |
| Lucky Star (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 12 - Before you say it, yes, I do indeed feel bad about including a simple comedy anime about virtually nothing in a favourites list. Putting that aside, Lucky Star is one of those anime that nails the target audience so well that it leaves you crying with laughter. Yes, I nearly cried during the ED of ep 14, but not at the ending of Air >_> |
| (The) Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (TV) |
Masterpiece |
#1 - It's the anime that made me an otaku. The anime I'll look fondly back upon years and years from now as a memory of my real introduction to the medium and just how brilliant it can be. To be honest, I still can't really tell you what this show is about, nor what it is about it that makes it so special; maybe that's why it'll always hold it's number 1 spot. It isn't just a "tragic love story" or a "deep, twisting plot", it's just something that sticks out in your memory, something that makes you love it, something that makes you crave more. And if anything is clear, it's this: I'm not the only person who feels this way. Just type Haruhiism on google. |
| Neon Genesis Evangelion (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 8 - NGE's dark, twisting story and realistic (though excessively pesimistic) characters are what make people both love and hate it; either way though, ten years later, the impact it made on the world of anime is clear. Even now, it's praised as one of the best anime ever made, and I consider it to be a step above the rest of it's genre as well. Filled with religious references, there's no doubting the sheer depth of the story, not to mention the thought-provoking concepts. The characters were also a huge part of the story, changing it from the typical mecha "save the world from invaders" theme. In the end, what was once a classic will always be a classic. |
| Serial Experiments Lain (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 9 - It's weird, I'll give you that much. At first glance, Lain appears to be a random collection of creepy and unsettling events that hint at - let's face it - nothing. However, looking back, the eerie journey, if you will, was filled with some of the best philosophy, symbolism, and story I've seen. The depth of plot reaches the level of the likes of NGE and Xenogears, and despite my initial reaction of "strange but interesting", it left me with the lasting impression of "this is the best story I've seen in years." |
| She, The Ultimate Weapon (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 5 - Love and war. Hope and peace. Pain and sadness. Life and death. In a broken world, in a quiet town, on a snowy balcony. The mark they left behind; the people they once knew. What must be done in such a world to find happiness? What is the cost of staying by the side of the one you care the most for? It's about the fate of a man that fell in love with the ultimate weapon. It's about the pain and sadness of war, and the inevitable loss of those you hold dear. It's about an innocent romance that struggles to hold through in a shattered country. It's about the last love song on this little planet. |
| Sola (TV) |
Masterpiece |
# 10 - I admit, I have a soft spot for romance/drama stories that start out bright and happy, making you love the characters and their own little world, and then end up revealing things you wish you never found out. Sola is one of those anime that makes you love it, hate it, and just wish you were the one writing the script so you could change the future all at the same time. For a story to make an emotional impact on the viewer, I give it a lot of credit, but for it to pull you in to the extent that you feel the pain of each character and wish you could do something to change the outcome, it deserves a Masterpiece. |
| Texhnolyze (TV) |
Masterpiece |
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