Since Hadaka seems to be into it and I've started watching it, I thought I'd see who else watches it.
I've been very surprised by what I've seen so far. I've found some really great, in-depth stories. Yea, there can be some silliness from time to time depending on the style of the series, but the writing for the most part has been top notch.
I'm currently in Season 4 of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and it's by far my favorite series I've seen so far. It's so good that my wife got hooked on it and won't let me watch it without her. I watched the original series first and loved it! The Brotherhood series starts off slow and has a different pacing, but after season 1, it really starts to diverge from the original and sucked me right in.
Hadaka mentioned Bleach. I have a buddy who is big into Anime and he talked me out of watching Bleach. He said it was good, but kind of dry.
Is Space Battleship Yamato anime?
If so - that.
I love bleach, but it suffers from what most Manga based TV Series call "Filler".
This is when the Manga is released with the good writers and story, but the TV show catches up with the Manga, so they have to go a while with 3rd party writers and story arcs to fill in the gap to allow the manga story to progress so they can jump back in to the manga story arc.
Naruto also suffers badly from fillers.
The first filler in bleach is aweful...the story was slow, and it was just terrible, wasted 2 seasons (40ish episodes) on it. This may be what caused your friend to call bleach "dry". There is a tremendous difference between Filler Arc's and the Main Manga Arc.
The main story is epic.
I have not watched Full Metal Alchemist, so I plan to grab that once I get caught up on Bleach. I have only recently gotten into anime so I am by no means an "expert" but I have seen some.
Princess Mononoke - Excellent Movie
Ghost in the Shell - Excellent Movie
Cowboy Bebop - One of the best TV Series Anime ever made IMO (it's only 1 season) Think Firefly as an Anime.
Evangelion - Awesome miniseries, till the writer goes psycho and drifts off into some huge philisophical crap that burned me bad. It was great till the end though. I may re-watch this one as the later movies supposedly are really good.
Supernatural - Based on the US TV series, I haven't watched it but I am intrigued as I really enjoy the CW TV series.
Ninja Scroll - Classic movie, haven't seen it in a long time
Akira - Classic movie, haven't seen it in a long time.
Both by far...
But I was trying to stay on topic with just Bebop... I derail too many threads as it is 🙂
Favorite quote: "You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with until you understand who's in ruttin' command here." ―Jayne Cobb
Duck, in the US that was known as Star Blazers and it was the first Anime I ever watched. They played it when I was a kid and I don't remember crap about it other than I loved it. I have it in my Netflix queue, but I'm afraid to watch it because I don't want to ruin the nostalgia.
Ok, I love Firefly, so I'll give Cowboy Bebop a try.
Hadaka, here is the rundown on Fullmetal Alchemist.
Fullmetal Alchmemist, The original series was hit by the catching up to the magna problem. However, the writers were really good and the story was engaging until the end. It was very in-depth and had a great deep feel to the story. About half way through it diverges greatly from the magna. The ending may have been a bit cheesy, but I still loved it.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is based exactly on the magna. The first season is based largely in part on the original series, with a few changes to set up the changes later in the series. Watching season 1 right after finishing the original felt cheap and underwhelming. The pace of the story was faster and felt more like I was watching the cliff notes version of the first series. I almost stopped watching because of this. But, after reading others reviews, I decided to keep watching. About half way through season 2 it started getting really interesting because it was new material and I no longer minded that it had a different, more shallow feel to it than the original. By season 3 I was like, hell yeah, this is awesome! This is when my wife got hooked too.
I watched GiTS and the sequel movies a long time ago and liked them, but I don't remember being blown away.
Another show I really liked was Trinity Blood. But I dig the whole Vampires vs The Vatican with a Vampire that feeds on other Vampires who is a agent of the Vatican storyline. If I gave Fullmetal Alchemist a 5, this would get a 4.
High School of the Dead is another show I enjoyed. I love post-apocalyptic story lines and this was a good one with zombie intensity. I'm still waiting for a season 2 and I hope it comes out soon. I'd give this a 4 as well. Disclaimer, there was a lot of silliness and blatant female sexuality in this show. At times it was a bit annoying, but I think that's because I felt like a dirty old man watching naked cartoon teenage girls obsess over boobs.
Now and Then, Here and There is an older Anime show I watched that I wanted to like, but in the end, I rated it a 2. It fit the post-apocolyptic story line I like, but it was really, really slow. I kept waiting for it to pick up and since it was only 13 episodes, I watched it until the end. I wish I hadn't.
I have a ton of shows lined up in Netflix with about 20 shows in my streaming queue. I'm always on the lookout for new stuff that I may have overlooked and I'll definitely go through your list. Just added Cowboy Bebop, but it's DVD only. Drats. I was hoping it was available via streaming.