shows that moved me
Films:
Cool Directors: Mamoru Hosada, Masaki Yuasa, Hiroyuki Imaishi, Shinichiro Watanabe, Rie Matsumoto, and Yuzuru Tachikawa.
Other anime I enjoyed (these ones are less thoughtful and more fun, most of these I love very much but in a different way than those above):
These shows also stood out 2 me but like, they have some pretty glaring problems and idk how I feel about reconciling the issues with the positives atm
ugh then it gets complicated... there are so many anime that are really cool but then there are like, 1-2 pretty problematic things about them, and... then what do you do? In a lot of cases it's okay to like something without accepting all of its flaws, if you only ever consume "safe" media it's going to get bland real fast and censorship isn't great. But at the same time, how can I tell someone I found something interesting or enjoyable without condoning its problems? It's a tough question... As a viewer it's easy for me to just skip ahead past any icky parts I don't like, but when I'm trying to be critical, sometimes then I forget there WERE parts that made me uncomfortable since I just skipped them, and it kinda skews my memory of shows I watched a long time ago. *BIG SHRUG* Maybe I just need to do some re-watches and re-evaluate...
For Example, would I still like Kaiba or Trapeze/Kuuchuu Buranko if I rewatched them? Maaaybe? I am kind of having a "is any anime actually good?" crisis right now and am almost certainly overthinking it. But yeah, take my recommendations on this page with a big grain of salt, lately I've been trying to think harder about how I feel about these shows.
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I should watch... Kimba... and Cardcaptor Sakura.. sailor moon yeehaw, rose of versailles
SO! Watching anime used to be a pretty regular hobby of mine, but uh... lately my tastes have changed and sadly, there aren't many shows I can stand to watch anymore. I don't know if I'm stuck in a rut and this will pass, or it's more like... when I was younger I could overlook the flaws in a show more easily, but nowadays I find these same flaws really upsetting and just too distasteful to keep watching. *shrug* It's like, there are so many shows I just can't stomach to rewatch today, even though I know I was able to sit through them a few years ago by like, scrolling away during fanservice scenes I guess? Also now that I'm older, there aren't many distasteful jokes that go over my head anymore, so those are harder to overlook now, too. Oof...
Really what this means is that I'm at a stage where I'm trying to re-watch and re-evaluate which shows I actually still like. *sigh* It kinda sucks. I don't want to give up this hobby, and I want to say anime is a really cool medium! Anime can be really creative and fun and focus on interesting ideas that are hard to depict in other mediums (which is true for animation in general, but what's special about anime is that it's often wonderfully over-the-top, can do a lot with a small budget, and isn't locked into the fully family-friendly or adults-only demographics that Western animation often has). And going to anime conventions is a really fun experience for me! (Pre-pandemic, anyway... *BIG SIGH*) But, yeah, many anime unfortunately also have, alongside all the cool and amazing stuff, weird gross distasteful parts that just feel SO out of place and questionable and I'm just a lot less tolerant of it lately. I'm not saying you should only consume pure, flawless content, if you can even define that. But OUGH do I wish there was no place for all the yuck in anime...