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[Reelya]

MagmaMcFry: what you described is about 90% of all peoples' reaction To SAO. Even amongst avid fans I rarely see many people supporting the 2nd season.

[IronyOwl]

Oh! If you've already seen SAO proper, you might want to check out the abridged version. Well, that abridged version. There's a few, and I'm not sure of the quality of the rest.

[Flying Dice]

SAO... well it is all over the place...

For starters, if you liked SAO, give Log Horizon a try.  It is similar-ish.

No, you're not supposed to recommend stuff because it's similar to SAO, I don't even have something to compare that to, so how can I know if SAO is good at all? How about if everyone just recommends me their favorite few anime, and I work myself through them all before I decide what I liked and what I didn't like.

In regards to this, SAO and Log Horizon actually have almost nothing in common, apart from both using "players trapped in MMO world" as the setup for the plot. They have completely different themes and take the initial idea in vastly different directions. LH is oriented more on planning, social dynamics, regional geopolitics, and interactions between the players and the now-sentient NPCs as opposed to fight scenes and (in the ALO part of SAO) creepy "we're not blood-related so it's okay" shipping (or, alternatively, the complete destruction of a character so that she can act as a plot coupon/archetype).

Log Horizon is pretty darned good, especially because it takes a fairly unique approach to the core idea, perhaps more so than any MMO-related series except Legendary Moonlight Sculptor.

[Draxis]

Ghost in the Shell.  Start with the old movie, it's an excellent cyberpunk action/art film.  If you like it, watch the TV series also, and maybe the other movies.  You may have read the manga already; the first movie sort of follows it, but none of the rest does except for some bits of SAC, as far as I remember.

Kill La Kill is great, if you don't mind silliness and (what appears at first to be) excessive fanservice.  It's the only show I've seen in which pretty much episode managed to be better than the last, from around episode five to almost the end (and to be fair, at that point there was really no better to go to.)  In any case, if you start it don't quit until after at least six episodes, even if you think it's really bad so far.

[Mr. Strange]

Nobody is going to suggest Mirai Nikki? I am dissapoint.
Speaking of fanservice and silliness, there's High School Of The Dead, because zombie apocalypse is always cool.
And one more time, Higurashi. I don't think I've watched half of any other series at one go just because I couldn't watching till I had it figured out.

[majikero]

I recommend Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei just to ease people to the SHAFT style of very weird animations before watching the Monogatari series and Nisekoi. Because if you're going to watch those two, you're gonna watch them because of the animation style.

I just love their style.

[Redzephyr01]

I heavily recommend Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

[IronyOwl]

Nobody is going to suggest Mirai Nikki? I am dissapoint.
And one more time, Higurashi. I don't think I've watched half of any other series at one go just because I couldn't watching till I had it figured out.

They're both on my list, but I can hardly recommend them without having seen them first. :x

Speaking of fanservice and silliness, there's High School Of The Dead, because zombie apocalypse is always cool.

Ew.

[Mattk50]

Nobody is going to suggest Mirai Nikki? I am dissapoint.
Speaking of fanservice and silliness, there's High School Of The Dead, because zombie apocalypse is always cool.
And one more time, Higurashi. I don't think I've watched half of any other series at one go just because I couldn't watching till I had it figured out.

All of these feature ridiculous over the top scenarios where everyone murders eachother for no reason. I've only seen higurashi and mirai nikki but god damn these are terrible, the plots are a joke, characters devolve into silly "ima murder you now" every episode... ugh. Then there's the torture porn episodes... I dont understand why anyone would recommend these shows to anybody let alone someone who hasnt seen anime before. I watched them with a friend and by the end of it we both wished we hadn't.

If you like mindmelts, good character design, and science (!!SCIENCE!!) check out steins gate. If think your up for a more typically based but far more expanded and interesting light fantasy anime go for fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood. Ghost in the shell or psycho pass for awesome futuristic special forces/cop show that take the idea of technology much further than anything else i've seen. Then there's the classics like cowboy bebop that everyone loves. just not higurashi :-(


Also gotta throw in my love for log horizon. Issue is, it's unfinished and the next season is coming in the fall so we have to wait.

[Orb]

Hm. I also started my anime adventures with SAO, and as per the norm season 2 did indeed disappoint.

SAO 2 seems to be better than the 2nd season, but I doubt it'll surpass the first season unless it has some crazy twist.

I recommend The Irregular at Magi- My Ordinary Life. It's my favorite comedy. Another vote for Log Horizon, though for me it had a slow start and wasn't enjoyable until some episodes in. A vote for Chaika - The Coffin Princess if you want some action comedy that's a bit different. If you want something that's current, Aldnoah Zero looks really promising.

Oh, and if you want a feelzy/comedy/action there's Angel Beats. If you want something relaxing(most of the time) and episodic there's Natsume Yujin-cho.

Since we're recommending things, I've been meaning to ask here if you guys have any recommendations for sci-fi animes. Preferably not mech, but I can live with it if the rest of the show is excellent.

[Leafsnail]

Higurashi is absolutely great but the anime adaptation has severe problems (because it is DEEN).  Everything should make sense at the end, but the anime is a bit baffling

My recommendation is Fate/Zero, it's a solid action series with interesting characters and themes.

[Flying Dice]

Nobody is going to suggest Mirai Nikki? I am dissapoint.
Speaking of fanservice and silliness, there's High School Of The Dead, because zombie apocalypse is always cool.
And one more time, Higurashi. I don't think I've watched half of any other series at one go just because I couldn't watching till I had it figured out.

-snip-

Did you actually bother to finish Higurashi? Because yes, I can see leaving it with that impression if you stopped after Onikakushi-hen or something. It's very firmly ensconced in 'earn your Good End' territory, and the mysteries that drive the plot make it initially appear to just be paranoid violence for the sake of paranoid violence. Or paranoid not-understanding-that-your-friends-are-helping-cover-you-for-murdering-Satoko's-abusing-bastard-of-an-uncle. Obvious spoilers are obvious, if it wasn't obvious enough already.

That said, Leafsnail is right on both counts; the anime adaption of Higurashi is confusing when it shouldn't be (and Fate/Zero is excellent, of course).

[Mattk50]

Since we're recommending things, I've been meaning to ask here if you guys have any recommendations for sci-fi animes. Preferably not mech, but I can live with it if the rest of the show is excellent.

non mecha: Ghost in the shell, psycho pass, steins gate, ergo proxy, akira if you havent seen are all good
mecha: code geass isnt really about mechs anyways
little broader than scifi but similar: planetes(garbage collectors in space), serial experiments lain, last exile(steampunk)

Did you actually bother to finish Higurashi? Because yes, I can see leaving it with that impression if you stopped after Onikakushi-hen or something. It's very firmly ensconced in 'earn your Good End' territory, and the mysteries that drive the plot make it initially appear to just be paranoid violence for the sake of paranoid violence. Or paranoid not-understanding-that-your-friends-are-helping-cover-you-for-murdering-Satoko's-abusing-bastard-of-an-uncle. Obvious spoilers are obvious, if it wasn't obvious enough already.

I think we finished it but im not certain... there might have been a movie or something, at the time we were too horrified to check. We did get to an end of some series of episodes where

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

someone tries to blow up the school and someone else does something i dont remember

, iirc that seemed like the end.

[Flying Dice]

Oh, no. You stopped watching at the end of the first season (which, incidentally, was supposed to be something of a hope spot). The vast majority of the revelations and work towards the good end in the anime adaption occurs within the second season. I do agree that the adaption is (again) confusing as all get-out if you don't know what to expect, because the first season ends and you still know virtually nothing about what's been going on behind the scenes to cause all of the deaths.

[Reelya]

The Higurashi franchise consists of 8 arcs. the first 4 arcs are the mysteries (the 'question' arcs), the last 4 arcs are the explanations of the mysteries (the 'solution' arcs) - but in reverse order .e.g. arc 5 explains what happened in arc 4, arcs 6 explains arc 3 etc, etc.

It's natural to ask "why is this happening" because it's a mystery series, but it's a mystery in the sense that everything you see has a concrete reason why it happened which is explained as the mystery is revealed. Shit only seems random because you don't know the backstory yet. There's almost no "random shit happened, just because" in Higurashi, even though it might seem that way at first.

Where this works best and is most apparent is from arc 4 to arc 5. Each of these arcs shows the exact same set of events, but from two different character's points of view, and in doing so, totally changes the meaning of what you see on screen.

They got up to arc 6 in the first 24 episode anime, so very little was explained at that point, the final two arcs explain what's actually going on in the town.

Overall, it's pretty much a 48 episode murder-mystery with lots of red herrings and violence. But in the sense you have to watch most of the 48 episodes to know why the people in episode 1 were murdered. Also there's no ass-pulling of characters partway through, all the suspects are actually right there all along through the series hint hint.

If you want the full deal though, you should check out the 8 visual novels they're based on, the anime did a poor job explaining some important plot points.