What's Your Favorite Japanese Anime

[klute]

Ooohh... there's a question.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: A good deal of anime that first surfaced in the UK around the early 90s is becoming very difficult to find now.

I actually own a copy of the AD Police DVD which I nabbed from an Amazon Marketplace seller for just a couple of quid. That's your best bet. You may get REALLY lucky and find a seller who has a brand new copy for not much moolah. My advice, though, would be not to bother. In my opinion, it's really not very good, and hasn't aged at all well.

Cyber City Oedo 808, though, is a different kettle of fish. It's out of print in the UK, as Manga Entertainment lost the license. If playing region 1 DVDs isn't an issue for you, though, you can get the complete series on one DVD Stateside. BE WARNED, though, that the content of that release differs from the UK edition, which was given a new musical score. You may find that the US edition lacks the punch and atmosphere of the old Manga Entertainment release.

Have a look, and if you find anything that you're not sure about, feel free to lob me a PM  and I'll do my best to help out.

Actually i apologise for being lazy here....do either of the above have any GN release's that i can get hold of? or are they just as hard to come by?

[HdE]

Gah... not too sure about that.

I'm pretty sure there would have been manga / collected editions of AD Police and Bubblegum Crisis (from which AD Police spins off). Not so sure about Cyber City.

The bigger problem with officially licensed anime and manga tends to be that, once it's gone, it's gone. It sells in pretty low numbers - especially now - so print runs tend to be pretty conservative.

I know that Adam Warren did a great Bubblegum Crisis graphic novel for Dark Horse, titled 'Grand mal'. That's a whole pile of fun, and remarkably true to the source material.

[klute]

Can anyone recommend a website that deal's in readily available manga/anime GN's and Dvds?

And does anyone have any recommendations that would be simliar to AD Police,Cyber City Oedo 808 and bubblegun crisis as i'm really out of the loop on this subject.

[HdE]

Best bet is - depressingly - Amazon or Play.Com.

Be WARY of Ebay, as bootleggers and pirates abound there.

Anime On-Line are very good. They're basically the shop front for MVM (one of the UK's better distributors at the moment) and they hold regulr Friday deals where a complete series is available for a tenner or less.

If you want recommendations, you could do worse than to browse the reviews database on the Anime UK News website - I've even written a few reviews for 'em.

Off the top of my head, if you want some safe recommendations for shows to check out:

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex is THE superior cyberpunk anime. There are two seasons, both availabale through Manga Entertainment. It's 'kin ace!

You might also get a kick out of Heat Guy J, which is also available for less than a tenner in most places. It fits in the 'light entertainment' bracket, and it's a nice way to while away 26 blocks of 22 minutes.

It's quite possible you'll enjoy the Appleseed CG movies as well. Lotsa robot mashing action in those.

Do be prepared, though - anime has changed quite a bit since the days of BGC and Cyber City. You may be surprised at how the production values have come along.

[Van Dom]

US Netflix is like an Anime fan's dream. There is GAZILLIONS of it, ready to watch at the click of a button.
UK Netflix....not so much, yet. Though I am sure that will change, in time.

I had gotten out of the whole Anime scene until I found out how to access US Netflix (dont ask) and discovered how much of it there is. Now I'm hooked on about 10 different shows at once. Best I've come across is definitely Blood+. Damn that's some awesome shit. Can't get enough of it. And I've got 50 episodes to enjoy.

There was a movie of this out a couple of years ago I think, though I never caught it. Anyone know if its any good or not?

[Tombo]

The anime movie of "Blood: the Last Vampire" is excellent if a little short (about 50 minutes), I've heard mixed reviews about the live action version from a few years ago, keep meaning to pick it up.

[HdE]

Well I'll be!

I just found out that the entirety of the old Fist Of The North Star TV show is available stateside. So I'm now £120 lighter for the FOUR box sets that comprises.

For the uninitiated, Fist Of The North Star is a mid 1980s post apocalyptic martial arts show, featuring lashings and lashings of ultra violence. There was a 1986 feature length movie that got released over here in the early '90s, but I don't believe the TV show ever got a comprehensive release.

I'll be looking forward to watching this when it arrives.

[Roger Godpleton]

All anime is awful.

[Professor Bear]

Your mum is anime.

[JOE SOAP]

Your mum is anime.

That's mom. Modpleton would ban you for that.

[Professor Bear]

I just found out that the entirety of the old Fist Of The North Star TV show is available stateside. So I'm now £120 lighter for the FOUR box sets that comprises.

Here in the UK, you can get a collection of the first season (including the first episode of the second season, for some reason) for about a tenner if you look about.
Great fun, that show - one of the few anime dubs that was better than the Japanese soundtrack, particularly Mike Egan's theme.  The English dub changed the context of a lot of the dialogue into brash posturing and had mad dub music going through most scenes, resulting in an upbeat, fast-paced, and fun show - as long as you weren't some super-serious anime elitist who insisted on word-for-word translations to preserve the artistic integrity of a cartoon about a man who kickboxes tanks.  Naturally, the anime sponds of the time decried it as a travesty much as they decried Sailor Moon, Dragonball and any other anime which by sheer coincidence was popular and accessible.

Seriously, though: Fist of the North Star is a really fun show worth checking out, especially seeing as you can pick it up for buttons.

[HdE]

I do recall seeing some of the old Fist Of The North Star TV show waaaay back. It was aired by Channel 4 as part of their glorious Wednesday night schedule of late night fun.

As I recall, the show DID have a pretty good dub although, as you say, Prof, it tended to substitute gruff manliness and Chuck Norris-isms for some of the sparkier interplay of the Japanese language track.

Anyways, whatevs. It's in the post to me as we speak! Woohoo!

[judgefloyd]

My favourite anime is the first ten or so episodes of Ranma 1/2, which is all genius.  Starts as a kind of Taming of the Shrew and proceeds with very funny send ups of kung fu, Japanese school life, country people, Chinese accents, great Japanese literature....it's brilliant.  A fair bit of the humour is very local, but most of it is brilliant anyway.

[Cyberleader2000]

just thort I would share if theres any UK fans of dragonball Z they might want to see this link http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/news/2012-03-28/manga-uk-announces-u.k-dvd-release-of-dragonball-z-from-july-2

Ive only just started watching it so I sill have not got a opioun on it yet

[judgefloyd]

There was one old-ish anime I saw which was very good in a quiet sort of way.  It was set on another planet where everything was slightly different - the coins were rectangular, taps were a little different and so on.  The hero was a gormless young guy who was in the space program - itself a gormless effort whose members never really expected to get anywhere.  He has a romance with a girl who is a member of a harmless but kooky religious cult and gets inspired to try to really get somewhere, so he galvanises the other space program members and finally gets off the planet.  I can't remember the title, but I really liked it.  Does anyone know it?
  Oh and if Miyazake counts and hasn't been mentioned already, I should say that Spirited Away is my favourite anime movie, followed closely by Tottoro.