http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcDSZPVcjss Anime, I wish I knew how to quit you!
My recommendation for a good anime: Gurren Lagaan. It’s a great show, it gets really good after the first couple episodes.
I’d like to raise my own issues with manga/animae:
The first manga I ever saw was Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Actually, I saw the Amercian ver. Warriors of the Wind when I was 14 years old and it blew my mind! I propably saw it more than 20 times. And just recently I saw the English dubbed original (as it was meant to be) version of Hayao Miyazaki. Great stuff!
And then at University I was practically hooked - on all loads of shit as well. My own interests in traditional animation led me in my research into the really dark side of animae.
Almost all Japanese animators get paid next to nothing as they slave through those inhumane hours to complete a deadline. Only the lead animators really make a reasonable living. Compare this with the situation in the States (Disney) and it seems to be a situation caused by GREED.
Japanese animations run at between 8 and 14 fps. A typical traditional Disney animated movie will run between 24 and even as high as 30 fps. And they exploit almost every scene unlike Animae that uses static drama to fill-in extra time (some fans might disagree). so Disney Animation is very expensive, yes. But what really gets to me is the fact that some Japanese animations (movies) are priced $100 and up, years after release! Just recently a friend of mine bought Ninja Scroll for R850 (about $100). I could get a divine piece of animated artwork from Disney (although some of the stories can be lame) for $20 or less. For story and maturity in animations Manga wins hands-down. But when it comes to quality Disney leads… not always, but most of the time.
I love Animae, but I hate greedy Japanese MF’s that bleed Western fanboys for their hard-earned cash for weak pieces of artwork build on the backs of animation slaves. The Japs cheat their way to quick and easy riches by selling great stories (no denying that) for outrages prices and cutting on the animation work. And the addicted fools that we are, we pay.
Maybe I’m not too clued up on what really goes on, but this is just my take on the industry.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Tokyo Godfathers, FLCL and Cowboy Bebop. I also enjoyed Nausicaa and Steamboy.
Gungrave
Beserker (one of my favourites)
Wonderful Day (I think thats a Korean animation)
Valley of the Wind (classic)
Princess Mononoke (more for kids but still great)
Cowboy Beebop
FLCL (Crazy shit but I loved it!)
Planetes is another one you should catch.
Also, Dennou Coil is another one I liked.
I’m a little tired of anime. For example, Naruto Shippuuden, the quality of the animation sucks now. In Naruto it was, I thought good, but Shippuuden the quality doesn’t looks as good as the intro. It has the same quality as the filler episodes.
I agree with you Taco.
Planetes is the best Anime ever made - not that well known, though.
I second the recommendation.
Oh, and also: Ghost in The Shell. All the movies and shows (except for solid state society, which was horrible).
There is really amazing Anime out there, but you’ll never find it if you narrow your view to just the stuff that’s being put out in the mainstream.
Things to be generally avoided: shows starring kids in key roles ( < 18 yrs old - there are exceptions - Ed in Cowboy Bebop - but those are few and far between) - I don’t really know the details behind the Japanese and their obsession with children, but those shows usually lack substance, in the sense that they’re always about a boy discovering the world in some overly trite manner, or trying to deal with girls and goops of sexual tension ( it’s all played to death ).
I’m not a huge anime fan, but I’ve seen several anime shows/movies that I really enjoyed.
My personal recommendations:
Ergo Proxy (A futuristic, existential journey.)
Cowboy Bebop
Appleseed & Appleseed Ex Machina (Some people hate these, but I enjoyed them in particular because they were done with 3D graphics.)
Black Lagoon
Blood the Last Vampire (Movie)
The OP is funny - you should broaden your horizon before bashing an artform =)
What you describe is “seinen” with “ecchi” - a soft form of Hentai.
It is not the fault of anime you only seem to know this kind of anime.
“seinen” literally translates to “young man” and thats what those anime aim for: adolescent male fantasies with parts of “ecchi” which basically only means “sexy” and not “porn” as many suspect.
Thats stuff like:
Golden Boy, Ikki Tousen…
There´s also “shonen” which translates to child, adolescent which are meant for children, like My neighbour Totoro for instance.
And as opposite to seinen we got shojo which is for girls.
Stuff like Sailormoon and god knows what cutey fluffy stuff else.
As pointed out, there are many, many very good animes and anime series.
Studio Ghibli for instance even got oscars for their work, their most famous, yeh, pieces of art are:
Castle in the Sky
My neighbour Totoro
Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
Ponyo
And the average japanese anime series targeted to adults are rather dark, morbid, apocalyptic, brutal and mystic, not all rainbow sailormon seinen lolicon crap.
Take:
Elfen Lied
Deathnote
Cowboy Bebop
Ergo Proxy
Ghost in the Shell
Bleach
Claymore
Zombie Loan
Berserk
Or moviewise:
Ghost in the shell
Urotsukidoji
Blood the Last Vampire
All bloody, brutal, some end with the destruction of mankind, not exactly bedtime stories.
watching eden of the east and tokyo magnitude. Good stuff.
Planetes was good, but I think appeals more to people who like hard SF.
the dialogue generally sucks, it as if they get librarians never actually spoke english to translate it usually verbose to the point of feelin like “filler” I have seen very few, 1 or 2 maybe that had clever concise dialogue or didn’t leave u thinkin who the fuck says that shit…that having been said might be a difficult question but, does the dialogue in some these things sound clumsy in japanese too, or is it just lazy translations
I’m not an Anime geek. But i do get into some of them…
My favorite animes:
These two are psychological and not for kids
I found these funny…
About dragon ball z/gt:
The whole idea of super powerfull creatures and the dragon balls itself was good.
But the whole plot, i find it pretty terrible… Very repetetive, lots of plot holes… Lots of staring at each other instead of fighting just to stretch a fight scene to a few series…
"filler"just like the wordy dialogue
+1 Ghost In The Shell
Like everything there is good and bad anime, there is good and bad cartoons. Quite various tastes and some are just overboard. Now many Anime are just promotion stuff to encourage kids into crying to their parents to buy related products. Almost any popular japanese pocket monster/card games have an anime to it and they are all to save the world. No more originality there, they are just squeezing the money tree.
I haven’t seen that many animes yet, but I really liked Code Geass 
Try soul eater
http://www.animefreak.tv/watch/soul-eater-english-dubbed-online-free
and Fairy Tail
http://www.animefreak.tv/watch/fairy-tail-online