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[Bohandas]

Like Mechaphiles!

Mechaphiles sounds like an anime where there are registed sex offenders who transform into robots. Or at least that's what I think.

I'd watch that.

I'd watch it too.

In fact I wouldn't be suprised if something like that was already available on the internet somewhere. Unfortunately, due to an injuction by the forum moderators, I can't post a link if I find anything.

[Darkmere]

Rule 34. Or 35.

[Neonivek]

How about the fact that it has a STORY... a story anyone?

Enough of it doesn't that I'm not strikingly impressed.

Dang people who lived through the 90s... the pinacle of western story driven animation.

[Vector]

Dang people who lived through the 90s... the pinacle of western story driven animation.

I didn't watch cartoons as a kid, other than The Magic School Bus.  I managed to content myself with books.

[PsyberianHusky]

Dang people who lived through the 90s... the pinacle of western story driven animation.

I didn't watch cartoons as a kid, other than The Magic School Bus.  I managed to content myself with books.

The magic school bus was the pinacle of 90s animation so you are well educated on story driven animation.

[Footkerchief]

I didn't watch cartoons as a kid, other than The Magic School Bus.

Saturday morning PBS, hell yeah.  I credit that show for ~60% of my love of science.

[Darkmere]

The magic school bus was the pinacle of 90s animation so you are well educated on story driven animation.

You misspelled Darkwing Duck there.

[Neonivek]

Look we could get into a huge fight but lets face it... the vast majority of great cartoons came from the 90s.

Heck even some of the 90s junk was supperior to 2000 gold.

Mind you there was some good 80s cartoon... but the sheer awsome that was the 90s... nope.

[Max White]

You misspelled Darkwing Duck there.

I would fix this post, but it is just about flawless, so I'm going to have to quote for truth.

[SalmonGod]

I do find it refreshing that a larger variety of character types are portrayed positively in anime than they are over here, and that goes for both genders.  I get especially tired of western media portraying total dickhead alpha type males as attractive almost exclusively.

And on Max White's last point, it's not just the "unique powers" aspect in and of itself, it's the way it's described in such a crunchy fashion.  This is actually one thing I typically DON'T like about anime, is everything to do with "super powers" or the like is governed by rigidly structured rulesets that the show will devote lots of time to explaining and tinkering with.  I know lots of people that absolutely love this, and it's something I have never ever seen similarly in a western production.

And to add a couple more reasons

Anime/manga ignore genre boundaries and aim to be genuinely thought-provoking a hell of a lot more often than western media.

There is usually a greater emphasis on establishment and relation of setting to plot and character that is generally ignored in western media.  This doesn't just mean the invention of interesting worlds for a story to take place in.  It means devoting a few seconds in almost every scene to just observing some ambient noise and background imagery.  I find it incredibly enhances immersion, cohesion, and dramatic impact.

Almost forgot... relativistic morals are also a lot more common.  Things tend to be more black & white in western media, with villains who exist for no reason other than the good guys need someone to beat up and beating them up is usually the cue for happy ending even if it doesn't make any sense.

[Reelya]

I've been looking for a place to post this link.  It's actually from a year ago, but very fitting to the topic.  Y'know who doesn't like anime?  Sato Dai, the guy who wrote the scripts for Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, Ghost in the Shell, and basically the posterboy for anime Adult Swim would air.  And he's kinda ticked off about it.

Hmm not really wanting to necro this thread, but I hate it with everyone fanboying over someone and leaving out all the other people who added as much if not more, but I thought I'd point out that Sato Dai has scriptwriting credits for exactly 3 episodes of Cowboy Beebop, 5 episodes per season of Ghost in the shell, 7 episodes of Wolf's Rain, and 5 episodes of Samurai Champloo. Regardless of his skills as a writer, he was in no way the lead writer behind Cowboy Beebop as everyone posting in this thread seems to believe (many industry veteran writers and directors provided episode scripts for that) or any of those other earlier series. It was only about 2005 with Eureka 7 that he moved up the ranks to chief writer on a series.

Keiko Nobumoto, (a woman you probably never heard of) wrote a lot more episodes of Cowboy Beebop (9 to Sato Dai's 3), plus the script for the Cowboy Beebop movie, as well as coming up with the concept of Wolf's Rain, writing 9 episode scripts and authoring the Wolf's rain manga. Credit where credit is due. Funny that everyone remembers a guy who had a small input, and nobody remembers a woman who had a larger input, hey?

[Levi]

The more I watch anime, the more I hate it.  Also the more I watch it, the more japan disturbs me.

I suspect this is partly just because I've seen all the good stuff already, and so the only thing left for me to watch is the terrible tropey stuff.  I swear I've seen that stupid "shy guy falls and accidently grabs girls boob" gag like in 40 different animes.  Is it that hard to write original stuff? 

[Cthulhu]

I don't like anime, but I don't hate it either.  That can change pretty quickly depending on what's going on in a given anime.  It seems like every time I see an anime it's sexualizing young girls or doing something similarly terrible.  Being from the internet, I also have to deal with people fetishizing Japanese culture and that also starts to wear on you after a while.

Spoiler: I love this comic (click to show/hide)

[Flying Dice]

I don't like anime, but I don't hate it either.  That can change pretty quickly depending on what's going on in a given anime.  It seems like every time I see an anime it's sexualizing young girls or doing something similarly terrible.  Being from the internet, I also have to deal with people fetishizing Japanese culture and that also starts to wear on you after a while.

Spoiler: I love this comic (click to show/hide)

Funnyjunk links don't play nice with image tags, by the way.

[Reelya]

Don't hotlink funnyjunk, they seem to block it.

It's definitely true that a few good anime series come out per year, and a lot of crap ones. But the sheer number created dwarfs American cartoons (look at recent lists, ~30 new cartoons and about 80 new anime per year). I think if you upped the number of new American cartoons to 80 per year, that would definitely impact average levels quality and originality - which in no way says anything about specific individual works.

So if you just pick at random, or what the TV gives you (which is going to be 99% shonen, just about my least favorite genre) you're probably not going to get anything good.