Anime to Watch (Animania)

This is Animania's "Anime to Watch" list.  He sent me a list of 10 anime but I haven't seen enough of 3 of them and already placed 2 of them on a list of my own so I'll only be talking about 5 of ones on the list.  They're all good anime and you should at least give them a shot.


Log Horizon - It seems like Sword Art Online at first sight but once you watch it, you realize that it is quite different.  Of course, they all get teleported into their favorite MMO-type game.  However, absolutely no one has any idea of what's going on and there are a lot more than just sword skills being used.  Shiroe, (someone who made it onto my smart shounen protagonist post) is the main character.  He finds a few friends along the way and decides to create order in the game world with them until they figure out how to get back to the real world.  Oh, and to make it even better, season 2 just started up not too long ago.





Magical Warfare - This is actually one of, if not the best magic anime I have seen.  Takeshi Nanase is at school during break (poor guy) and he finds a strange girl unconscious on the ground.  He picks her up and carries her into the infirmary as any gentleman would.  Still, she improperly assumes he has malicious intentions and shoots him.  The bullet does not kill him but transforms him into a magician, for which she apologizes.  Now, he must figure out just what is going on and what to do with his new powers


Akame ga Kill - A very untypical story of a small town boy striking out and going into the big city.  For one, there are gigantic monsters he has to fight to get there.  Secondly, he ends up on a team of assassins rebelling against the corrupt capital.  This anime has a lot of unique weaponry and great fight scenes; watching this is definitely a must for any action lovers.







Black Bullet - Black Bullet is set in a near future where humanity has been driven into a corner by giant, virus carrying monsters called gastrea. As its counter attack, humanity sets up a special civil security force dedicated to eliminating gastrea. The story follows civil security officer Rentaro and his partner Enju as they take on assignments as well as deadly adversaries.


Soul Eater - The world is one where the Grim Reaper has created a school to teach kids how to collect souls from heinous criminals and witches (sounds crazy huh?).  The story follows a girl named Maka and her partner (which means literally human weapon in this world) Soul Eater as they complete various missions, make allies, and get caught up in dire situations.

Anime to Watch

This is a short list of some of the anime that I have really enjoyed.  I will not include what I like to call the Four Kings (Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Fairy Tail).


Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) - The setting is a world where the vast majority of humanity has been eaten alive by monsters called titans.  The rest of humanity escaped by building a giant wall around their cities.  The story and openings are very well done and the artwork is beautiful.  If you haven't watched this yet, I highly recommend giving it a try.  The story will surprise you time and time again.

Hamatora - This anime takes place in modern day Japan.  However, there are people with special powers called "minimums".  The story follows the minimum holding detective duo Hamatora and their friends.  The story is very nicely written and there are some awesome fights.  Just like with Attack on Titan, it has some really unexpected events occur in its story.

Un-Go - Un-Go is a detective anime that follows a young man and his partner as they take on truly difficult cases and uncovers the truth behind them all.  There aren't really any fight scenes but the mystery involved in each case is more than enough to make up for it.  The setting is a modern but post-war Japan that is still dealing with effects of the war.  Also, this anime has only 11 episodes so it doesn't take long to finish.

The Irregular at Magic High School
I started watching this anime as research for my smart shounen protagonist post.  I soon fell in love with it though.  The main character alone had me deeply intrigued.  In the not so far off future, magic is common place but as technology instead of archaic spells and enchantments.  Shiba Tatsuya is a new student attending First Magic High School with his sister.  However, he gets placed into the "weed" program for students lacking in talent and his younger sister is placed into the "bloom" program for students with high levels of talent.

Steins;Gate - I found this anime to be so much better than I expected.  The basic story is that an eccentric and  self proclaimed "mad scientist" experiences irregularities that cause him to research time travel.  Okabe Rintarou, (he refers to himself as Hououin Kyouma) the scientist in question, ends up involving people in his research and experiments referring to them as members of Future Gadgets Laboratory.  This is a highly plot driven anime with a lot of humorous interactions between characters.  If you absolutely vehemently loath reading a good deal of subtitles with a passion you may want to avoid this one.

Smart Shounen Protagonists

Every shounen anime/manga has a complete and total moron for the main character right? WRONG!  Yes, some of the most popular ones are incorrigibly unintelligent, (I'm talking about you Luffy) but these main characters are possibly the smartest or most knowledgeable character in their show.  Or at least, the smartest guy in every room they enter.  I did not add any female characters to the list because I felt the stereotype only applied to male characters.

Toriko (Toriko) -  Toriko is extremely knowledgeable on topics concerning food and their ingredients.  On top of this, he has a large amount of biological and behavioral knowledge about many of the countless animals on the planet.  He is also well versed in methods of capturing and killing these animals. 

Yoshino Takigawa (Blast of Tempest/Zetsuen no Tempest) 
Yoshino is cold and practically heartless.  Of course, like most cold heartless anime characters, he is extremely intelligent as well.  He outwitted the evil mastermind of the series in an intense, stressful situation where the fate of the planet literally hung in the balance.  He did this without even having an ample amount of working knowledge on the subject matter. 

Lelouch vi Britannia (Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion)
This high school student is a master of chess.  Most if not all of us know that chess is a highly strategic board game where the person with the higher intellect is more than likely going to win.  He easily wins matches where he is given handicaps that are impossible to overcome.  He also outsmarts high ranking military leaders on the battlefield and treats as nothing more than an extremely easy game of chess.

Shiba Tatsuya (The Irregular at Magic High School/Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei)
In a world where magic exists through technology and each spell is akin to a computer program, Shiba Tatsuya is able to not only create new spells, but read the various sequences others put into casting them.  Because of the nature of magic, this can be seen as reading the entire coding for Notepad in the blink of an eye.  On top of this, he invented a way to negate the magic sequences of others with extreme efficacy.

Shiroe (Log Horizon) 
As far as can be told from the 25 episodes of Log Horizon, Shiroe is by far the best strategist in the anime.  He quickly formulated multiple plans that worked without a single flaw and even outsmarted all the plans of others.  Often doing so with relative ease.  He was even able to comprehend the new physical laws of the game and figure out how to create a new magic that would rewrite one of those laws on a moment's notice.  He is also capable of predicting the next 30 seconds in a battle with only a 1% error margin through sheer intellect.

 

Light Yagami (Death Note)

 

Light Yagami is a student that got the 100% of questions on the college entrance exam correct.  He is also able to have a battle of wits with someone who is arguably the world's greatest detective and read through several of his plans to expose Kira.  Light Yagami has outstanding skills of deduction as shown when he was able to deduce with amazing speed that not only was his bedroom entered, but it was likely bugged as well.  He shows these skills again when he is able to figure out whether or not he should win a game a tennis to keep his identity as Kira a secret.

Most Ruthless Anime Protagonists

These guys don't play.  They mercilessly slaughter just about any of their opponents.  Somehow despite all this, they are still the good guys in the anime.  This is a list of most ruthless protagonists I've seen in anime.

5. Kenshiro (First of the North Star) - Probably the only good person on this list.  He's on a mission to rescue his fiancée from his former friend and rival.  He used to have mercy for every opponent he faced.  That is, until it caused him to have a near death experience.  Now, he literally makes them explode with mere punches and kicks.  He happens to do this while screaming like Bruce Lee which makes it so much more awesome of course. 

4. Lelouch vi Britannia (Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion) - This high school student gained the power to control people's will.  And with this power, he plans to not just overthrow, but to destroy the country of Britannia.  His first use of his power was to make an entire squad of soldiers shoot themselves in the head.  He then proceeded to go into the embassy and (MINOR SPOILER) kill his own brother (END MINOR SPOILER) after playing chess without about 50 people's lives.

3. Mahiro Fuwa (Zetsuen no Tempest) - This guy is literally willing to destroy the entire world to meet his goal.  He has even stated it at least a dozen times and even came extremely close to agreeing to do so.  His sister was murdered in a break-in and the killer was never found.  Now, Mahiro will do anything it takes to track down the person responsible and end their life even if it means betraying his one and only friend. 

2. Revy (Black Lagoon) - She's a mercenary who kills dozens of people at a time with a smile on her face. This sadistic, gun toting psychopath will even kill civilians if she feels like it and takes a great amount of pleasure filling people with bullet holes.

1. Lucy (Elfin Lied) - If you have ever seen Elfin Lied then you know exactly how Lucy ended up in 1st place.  In just the first episode alone I saw more blood than ever before in my life.  From the whole series, probably equal to if not more than the summation of all the blood I've seen in my life.  I think about 90% of this blood came from her mercilessly slaughtering anyone who got in her way or annoyed her.  Actually, some of them were just in the wrong place minding their own business.

Single Season Anime to Watch

Time is money.  People say that phrase so much that it was eventually made into a movie (it was a pretty good movie too).  One of the biggest reasons why I have watched only about 30 episodes of bleach (I just read the manga online) is because of time. That and the fillers, which take up more time.  These anime though, have but a single season so you get plenty of enjoyment but spend a fraction of the time you would watching the entire series of say, Dragon Ball Z.

To kick this list off, I'm going to start with an anime my friend recommended.  Kaze no Stigma is shounen action with a lot of magic battles and some comedy (those are really becoming popular...).  It was about twice as good as I expected it to be.  The story is basically about a guy who was booted from his clan of fire magic users for having no fire magic coming back into town after a few years.

Next, we have MEKAKUCTIY ACTORS.  It's about a group of people with ocular powers trying to solve the mystery of how they got them.  It has a pretty confusing beginning.  Some people just cannot get past that.  But those who can get past those first few episodes, will love it.  It was produced by the company Shaft which also produced the monogatari series.

Blast of Tempest (Zetsuen no Tempest) is about two teenagers who are trying to stop the destruction of the world.  A clan of magic users decide to resurrect an the Tree of Exodus and doing so will destroy the world.  I would say more but I don't want to give any spoilers.

Cowboy Bebop is an amazing anime.  It's fairly old but extremely good.  The story follows a bounty hunter named Spike in his adventures.  Oh and it has got the best instrumental opening I have ever heard in my life.  I decided forever ago to skip over it because of the name but I found out that was a huge mistake when I started watching it after seeing it on a YouTube anime list.

Elfin Lied is another "oldie but goodie".  The story follows a young woman who is a Diclonius.  A human being with horns and large invisible arms called vectors.  This is not an anime for the faint of heart.  I have never seen so much blood before in my life.  The story is a bit dark as well.  That only makes it even better to me though.

Black Cat is another bounty hunter anime.  It's somewhat similar to Cowboy Bebop but about 10 years newer.  So it has better animation quality and more intense fight scenes.  It follows Train Heartnet after he quits an assassins' syndicate and decides to become a bounty hunter.

Another is one of my all time favorite anime.  It was so good that it was actually a problem for me when it was over.  The level of mystery in it was so deep that you just get hooked on the story alone.  Also, it's a horror with lots of death.  The story follows a middle school student who moved to a small town to live with his grandparents while his father is on a business trip.  He meets a girl about his age that no one else seems to be able to see and tries to figure out what exactly is going on in that town.