Favorite Anime

I've followed anime since childhood, when my favorite television show was Battle of the Planets, a very edited and Americanized version of the Gatchaman series. Heck, I wanted to grow up to be a science ninja for the longest time after that...

Once anime fans in the States watched whatever they could get regardless of the quality, but today thousands of titles are available. Though I've watched only a small fraction (and far less than many an otaku), below are my favorites that I think any anime fan will enjoy.

Urusei Yatsura | Hellsing | Aa! Megami-Sama | Read Or Die | InuYasha

Urusei Yatsura

Rating: 10 (of 10)
Audience: PG-13 (Brief Partial Nudity, Cartoonish Violence, Minor Language)

My all-time favorite series is Urusei Yatsura, which translates roughly as "Those Obnoxious Aliens." The series is absolutely hilarious and got me interested in Japanese language and culture, since unlike most anime, UY includes translator's notes that help explain the puns and inside jokes (of which there are many).

Totally random things happen all the time to a hapless (but not blameless) group of high school students--students including a beautiful alien princess (Lum, pictured), the most lecherous man alive (her unfortunate "darling"), the scion of the richest family on earth, and the giant spirit of a cat that died when left out in the cold--not to mention the every-annoying monk Cherry and all of Lum's friends who drop by from outer space!

Urusei Yatsura is in my opinion the finest of the venerable and indominable Rumiko Takahashi's works--if you liked Ranma 1/2 or any of her other lighthearted works, you'll love UY.

Hellsing

Rating: 9 (of 10)
Audience: R (Adult Situations, Violence)

Hellsing is a series I had heard good things about but never gotten around to watching until recently. Boy had I been missing out!

Set in modern-day London, the series follows the action of the Hellsing Organization in their fight to defend God, Queen, and Country against the undead. What really makes the series, though, is the organization's secret weapon: super-cool vampire Alucard. Carrying huge guns and always in search of a worthy challenge, Alucard battles evil from man-made "freak" vampires and the Catholic chuch's regenerating Paladin Alexander Andersong.

Drawn beautifully (what else should one expect from Gonzo Studios?), the anime rarely flags off, though at times supporting characters could have been done a bit better. Overall, the series is definitely worth a watch, and as a bonus to the non Nihongo-philes out there, the English dub is actually really good and features lovely British accents.

Aa! Megami-Sama

Rating: 10 (of 10)
Audience: PG

My second-favorite anime series is Oh My Goddess! Based on a manga of the same name (Aa! Megami-sama for the Japanese literate), the anime is a touching romantic comedy where lonely Keiichi dials up a fast food joint and ends up ordering a goddess instead! Belldandy shows up and offers to grant him a wish--and the boy, thinking it a joke, wishes her to be his girlfriend forever.

Of course, a goddess for a girlfriend is sure to cause trouble--Keiichi gets kicked out of his dorm for "having a girl in his room," and he's always trying to work up the courage to kiss her, for instance. No action or mecha here, but AMG is still a fun series and one of my favorites.

Like Hellsing, Oh My Goddess! is one of the few anime where the dubbed version is as good as the subtitled.

Read Or Die

Rating: 9 (of 10)
Audience: PG-13 (Sexual Situations, Violence)

I first saw Read Or Die at an AnimeFest a couple of years ago; I had gone to see Metropolis and got "sucked in" to Read Or Die immediately afterwards.

R.O.D. focuses on the British Library Force's efforts to defend the world. Protagonist Yomiko Readman (Yomiko translating roughly as "reading-girl") is a demure bookworm with an interesting super power: the ability to manipulate paper, creating life-size paper airplanes or using playing cards as bulletproof shields! Her partner, the enigmatic (and fanservice-dressed) Ms. Deep are on the trail of a group of villians genetically cloned from historical figures, and their plot to kill the world with a suicide song.

The humorous moments that crop up throughout the series are really what makes R.O.D. for me. Absentminded and book-nosed Yomiko requires little post-it notes everywhere telling her to eat, shut the door, answer the phone... the American President continually wets his pants... and most of the jokes aren't nearly as inside as those of UY.

InuYasha

Rating: 8 (of 10)

InuYasha is a series only recently introduced to me; I caught the second movie at AnimeFest XXX and thought how familiar the characters seemed--which of course they were, as InuYasha is another of Rumiko Takahashi's many works!

Title character Inuyasha is a hanyou (half-demon) with a rather complex relationship to Kagome, a girl from modern-day Japan seemingly the reincarnation of Inuyasha's former love interest / slayer. The two (and their friends who glomp on over the course of the series) must recover the fragments of a sacred jewel lest they fall into evil hands and bring about all sorts of mayhem.

The series features Takahashi-sama character archetypes, from the Inuyasha-Kagome relationship to lustful monk Miroku or annoying tot Shippo; fans of other works (such as UY or Ranma) will quickly identify with the characters of InuYasha. Like the pun in UY's name, "InuYasha" is a combination of the words for "dog" (inu) and "female demon" (yasha)--and yes, I know Inuyasha's male, but I haven't made it far enough into the series to see if the name was given as an insult or if it's even more of a pun (or if my dictionary is wrong).

Overall, I still like UY better, but InuYasha is a lot of fun and is growing on me.