OMG!!! I get to recommend Delicious in Dungeon!!! The show is a bit of a slow burn, but the early episodes set up the incredible world building and the basic plot points. Then as it starts churning it gets crazy. The story is strong enough on it’s own, but it’s animated by Studio Trigger so the anime is pure perfection.
Maybe not everyone cup of tea but to me Mr. Robot.
At first sight you may thinking the show is about "individual" hacker taking down corporate but once you understand it has longer lasting effect especially when you relate/something similar with Elliot. The cinematography, the score is chef kiss👌🏻, Season 2 slow burns on the first half but worth to not miss them.
The magical thing is this show on rewatch make more sense and definitely Sam Esmail planned everything from get go on writing.
Scavengers Reign is incredible, easily the best animated sci fi show made in the past few years IMO. It’s weird and emotional and deeply sincere in a way a lot of media isn’t anymore.
If you liked Fantastic Planet you’ll probably like Scavengers Reign.
Honestly, Cowboy Bebop. The universe it builds feels lived-in, and the animation style is incredibl, but the music is really the star.
Be aware, however, that while there are happy moments, it is an anime about bounty hunters, and there are very few happy endings. Beautiful endings, poetic endings, satisfying endings - but never happy.
Scavengers Reign. One of the best pieces of sci-fi I've ever seen. They managed to create a world that feels truly alien, and the environment has such complex cause/effect relationships. Highly recommend!
For anime, I highly suggest Serial Experiments Lain if you haven't seen it. Non-anime cartoons I'd recommend are Adventure Time and Lower Decks (its star trek and hilarious). For crude/absurd humor Rick and Morty and Human Resources. For non-animated tv I'd recommend Strange New Worlds (star trek again), Sandman, Fall of the House of Usher, Severance (I haven't seen season 2 yet but the 1st season was really good)
Pretty much anything by Trigger is going to be worth at least a watch through at least once, usually multiple times.
The League of Legends show, Arcane, is some of the best animation I think I've ever seen and season two comes out next month.
FLCL and FLCL Alternative are both amazing, I couldn't get into Progressive.
Mob Psycho and One Punch Man are wild rides. I think OPM is better, but that's because I'm bald.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is an absolute hoot if you can see the humor in all the over-explanations and goofiness
I'm about to start Dead Dead Demons Dedede Destruction tomorrow. I'm going in blind, but I really love Inio Asano's other works. Goodnight Punpun changed my life, but really, do not read it if you are already depressed.
I keep editing this because I keep remembering stuff.
Frieren is amazing and makes you feel incredibly close to these characters.
Delicious in Dungeon is Trigger, but a different Trigger than something like Kill la Kill or BNA. It's slower, comfier, and like Frieren, makes you feel SO close to these characters.
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. For me, it's the perfect anime. An amazing blend of action, narrative, great characters, and an extremely good and satisfying ending.
Archer is a great adult animation. I find it so goddamn funny.
Bojack Horseman is probably has the best fictional depiction of depression ever. Also has plenty of funny moments.
TV: Letterkenny immediately followed by Shoresy. Shoresy is a spinoff, so you really should watch Letterkenny first, although you don't necessarily have to
Seinfeld, probably no need to explain (Edit: how could I leave out Curb Your Enthusiasm here?)
Adult Cartoons: King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, Archer, Frisky Dingo. I could go on for a while about adult animation
Anime: Samurai Champloo, Baki the Grappler, Baki, Baki Hanma, Oshi No Ko, and Zombieland Saga. Plenty more, but I'll stop here for now
Summary: I like TV way more than movies. My favorites being Comedy/Sitcoms and Dragon Ball/Z/Super
Edit: Does professional wrestling count? I fucking love me some WWE
Jericho: A post apocalyptic show that isn't just mohawk bejeweled raiders roaming around. It is a show very much of the GWB era, with offbrand Blackwater as major villains and heavy Dick Cheney vibes when it comes to the larger plot.
Kings: A sort of retelling of David versus Goliath except set in the modern day. If you liked the weird esoteric spiritual stuff on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, you'll like this.
The Unit: A fictionalized adaptation of Delta Force missions, with at least early on heavy influence by the former Delta author of Inside Delta Force. Great early seasons. Later seasons become more Hollywood nonsense, you tolerance may vary, but season 1 and 2 have some gold.
The Wire: This was a huge show when it was on, but maybe zoomers don't know about it. This is the crime show for people who hate everything about modern "procedural" crime shows. It is nuanced, thoughtful, and engaging.
Columbo: Speaking of crime shows and procedurals, Columbo is both and neither. Columbo is entertaining and keeps you invested with its unique approach to murder mysteries. It really doesn't pretend to be a proper procedural, and you're best off thinking of Detective Columbo as a supernatural embodiment of karma and guilt rather than an actual member of a police force.
The original Legend of the Galactic Heroes. This is top tier sci fi, politics, and mitary drama that is more impactful today than when the original novel was written.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Wire. A TVshow taking place in Baltimore about intricate relationship between drug dealers, police and politics. Love every part of it!
It’s shot in 4:3 aspect ratio despite 16:9 starting to become the standard for tv at the time. It’s has since been “remastered” and adjusted to 16:9 aspect ratio. I was worried it would ruin an already perfect show but I actually liked it. It’s an HBO show.
Long episodes (60min?) and might take a few episodes to get into as there are many characters and storylines that interlace.
The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You - One of the zaniest, wackiest anime in recent history to turn your brain off to. (genre: comedy, romance)
86 - Too good for me to put into words. Just watch it. (genre: action, drama)
TV shows
Silicon Valley (HBO series) - As someone pointed out: it's not a satire; it's a documentary - for programmers at least. (genre: comedy)
The Night Manager - The showmakers made it look like either side could win till the very last few minutes, keeping me on the edge of my seat for the entire show. (genre: thriller)
Lots of philosophy on topics such as free will, determinism and AI mixed with action, in cyberpunk setting. Also nice end to end story in the first season.
Patriot, on Amazon streaming. I’ve been telling people for years—it’s the BEST show that NO ONE watched.
A depressed deep-cover operative sings bleak folk songs about his job at open mics. Stylistic elements (both visual and writing) from the Cohen brothers and Wes Anderson. Incredible cast. Funny. Sad. Two seasons, and both are great. 10/10
2007 anime. From a manga.
Women with gigantic swords , the Claymore, fight some sort of demons in a forsaken world. We follow Clare, the Claymore Number 47, the least powerful of them all.
Every episode has some sort of a twist, with new information about the incredible rich world and lore, and the power and origin of the Claymore.
Drawing is captivating, unique, gorgeous. The eyes!
Way better than Berserker, in the sense, that everything make sense and is foreshadow in Claymore.
Mr. Robot for live-action. definitely avoid looking anything up about it, there are spoilers everywhere and it's better to go in fresh. there's no good trailers for it really but if you watch the first six-minute opening scene... by the end of it you'll know whether or not the show is for you. and if you like it you will probably REALLY wanna keep watching. they go out of their way to get the tech stuff accurate and it's pretty much a cyberpunk story set in the present day. but also so much more deeper and psychological than you'd expect. my favorite show of all time, no contest. the whole thing was planned in advance and it SHOWS. it's more like one long very good movie than a television series quality-wise
and Bojack Horseman for animation. i'd also recommend avoiding spoilers for this. thematically, it gets off to a slow start pretending to be just another standard adult animation Family Guy-esque clone before it slowly morphs over the course of season 1 into a meta deconstruction of those sorts of shows and goes off the rails to truly hit its dramatic stride. and once it starts going it never lets up. it similarly hits very hard and gets pretty dark
Frieren — fantasy, drama about an elf dealing with feelings she didn’t think she had
Delicious in Dungeon — Fantasy, comedy/light drama about rescuing a party member and eating monsters along the way.
Kaguya Sama — rom-com about not losing the love war
Konosuba — Isekai comedy about… nothing really
That Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime — Isekai about being reincarnated as a slime monster, then building a wonderful found family community of monsters.
They’re all pretty light hearted but all are well made and fun.
Lots of great recommendations but I have not seen anyone mention the anime Made In Abyss or Dr. Stone.
Made In Abyss has some taboo content early in season 1, but it and season 2 story arcs are the best I've seen of any anime to date. You will also need to watch the third movie Dawn of the Deep Soul before season 2. Movies 1 and 2 are recaps of season 1.
Dr. Stone is also great as a zany "what if" modern civilization was sent back to the stone age. Similar to made in abyss, you need to watch the OVA between seasons 2 and 3.
Call out to Goblin Slayer season 1 as well. The series visuals and story deeply fall off after season 1.
Here are a couple that I didn't see mentioned here.
The Bear
Ted Lasso
Solo Levelling
Dirk Gently holistic detective
The Office
Attack on Titan
Code Geass Lelouch Rebellion
Severance
Bojack Horseman
I just finished Good Omens also, it's great but the first episode is not because it's all setup. It's a Terry Pratchett story that I think I'll recommend that one for a long time.
74 episodes. Psychological thriller. Serial murder mystery, but instead of "whodunit?" it's "whydunit?". Dramatic as an opera. No weird tropes. Superb character development. I love Magnificent Steiner.
Bojack Horseman and Violet Evergarden. If someone is a bit deeper into anime, Tatami Galaxy as well, since the subs go pretty fast. Ping Pong the Animation gets a nod if folks aren't super hung up on aesthetic.
The Last Ship: The crew of a US Navy destroyer is faced with a new reality as a deadly plague wipes out nearly all of humanity.
Basically, mix together the good parts of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead, and distill it down to 5 seasons with no filler. It's one of my favorite binge-watches.
Made in Abyss - really good but definitely not for the faint hearted and I only recommend this to people who ask me for dark anime with a disclaimer on the more questionable content. The version I watched was the heavily censored one. I was surprised to find out that the creator is Akihito Tsukushi, the same person who did the designs for the Elebits games! Of course, I'm separating the art from the artist here, but his name popping up made me nostalgic in a way.
Neon Genesis Evangelion - If you like biblically accurate angels, this is the anime for you!
Cowboy Bebop - has a very likeable main cast, an artstyle that I find very appealing, and it touches on themes that a lot of people can relate to despite the sci-fi setting!
Scavengers Reign - this one's pretty trippy and has some great creature designs! It only has one season so far (curse ye, Max!)
It's a boxing anime based on a manga (that's still going after decades!) where a school kid is beat up and rescued by a passing boxer, who takes him in to a boxing gym to fix his wounds. It turns out he's got some solid power from his family background in fishing, so he becomes a boxer and learns what it means to be strong.
If you like DBZ, you'll probably love this. Alongside this, it's refreshing in that it's an anime that praises hard work, rather than being "the chosen one" or being gifted power. What I love about it is that several characters go through huge growth in ways that are truly unexpected.
Little Witch Academia: a passion project and it shows, a witch school with a colorful cast of character and an even more colorful cast of villains, alternative name: lesbian hogwarts
Girls und panzer and its movie, while it does fall into the cute girls doing cute thing type of genre, GuP is one of the ones who really popularized it, its a series thats just plain old fun to watch how they fight their tank battles, especially the movie
Ben-to, another series thats just plain ol fun, people beat the snot out of each other for the privilege to buy price reduced food, animated by the people who went on to do jojo
I think nobody mentioned it yet. It's about someone who lost the love of his life, so the show is about those emotions and the struggle to continue. It's quite sad sometimes, but the show also has a lot of humour and I laughed my ass off multiple times.
Why watch a show about such a sad circumstance? I think we all lost someone or will lose very important persons / friends someday and it's important to learn how to deal with that and how it's important to continue. I can't emphasize that enough
Monogatari series. I must have watched that entire series like a dozen times already. I absolutely love the VA's performance. Finally reading through the Light Novels now.
Hajime No Ippo. Manga is still a blast and the anime was incredible too.
Tower of God is my absolute favorite anime and comic right now. Can't recommend it enough. Deeply interesting systems, amazing supporting cast, unique twists on old tropes.
Dai-guard, a somewhat obscure mecha anime. It's a comedy about what would realistically happen if you had a giant mecha fighting monsters from another dimension: bureaucracy, lawsuits, government interference, and physics.
Undone, it's created by the same guy who made Bojack Horseman.
I think most people haven't seen/heard of it because it's an amazon streaming exclusive, but you can watch it (and most other things) for free here: https://hydrahd.com/
Extraordinary Attorney Woo - A Netflix K-drama about an autistic savant lawyer. It's charming, funny, and has a really beautiful story overall.
Bofuri: I Don't Want To Get Hurt, So I'll Max Out My Defense - a cute and fun anime about Maple, who doesn't want to get hurt in a VR MMO so she maxes her defense and becomes a hero.
I like light-hearted shows, so I'll be checking out a few of the ones in this thread 🙂
Alchemy of Souls on Netflix. A mix of Kung Fu Theater, a comedy, a love story, and a horror all rolled into one great story. It ran two seasons and each episode is over an hour long.
10/10
I'll throw in my most recent guilty pleasure is Space Battleship Yamato. I didn't grow up with the original so I'm currently re-watching the 2012 remake. But for fun at the start I watched episode one of the original Yamato, Star Blazers (70s American localization) and the remake in the same day just to compare, which was a cooler experience than I expected it to be.
Great show if you think One Punch Man would be better if Saitama was a spaceship
But the one that I come closest to recommending everyone, without qualification, would be:
"Keep Your Hands off Eizouken"
It's basically a love letter to:
* joys and challenges in the process of creative collaboration
* how each success begets further goals
* how reflecting on details and oddities of the world adds to art
Really thoughtful and smart sci-fi animation. Don't want to spoil it so I'll be vague, it has the most realistic depiction of modern tech and how people interact with it than any other show I've seen. Really great commentary on big tech corporations and even a bit of geopolitics. Super ambitious yet it somehow pulls it off.
There is also a scene that still gives me nightmares (not even joking, I still dream about that shit) which is more than any horror movies or shows have done for me. Anyone who has watched it knows exactly what scene I'm talking about.
Berserk 1997. Berserk is my favorite thing of all time, but it is deff not for the faint hearted.
Highly recommend the manga too. Its a bit different, but same atmosphere and general story. It has more context as 1997 was only designed for one season, so it cut out a lot of things that would have become important later on.
Frieren for anime - It has everything I love about anime. MASH for TV show (version without laugh tracks) - Kind of old, but even now, the humor is not outdated.
Everybody kind of slept on it but I really like AppleTV's See. Really unfortunate name for a pretty interesting premise, and the fight scenes are brutal and very well shot.
Used to also recommend Bofuri but the last episode of season 2 implies heavily that season 3 is going to head way off in a completely different feel from 1+2
Lighter and did not end on a hard cliffhanger
Aristocrat's otherworldly adventures
Banished former hero lives as he pleases
Campfire cooking in another world
Level 2 super cheat powers
Reincarnated as the 7th prince
Parallel world pharmacy
Sleepy princess in the demon castle
Villainess level 99
The wrong way to use healing magic
Other suggestions offered based on the person's preferences:
Dungeon Meshi
Goblin Slayer
So I'm a spider, so what?
Solo leveling
That time I got reincarnated as a slime
Dan da Dan
The vexations of a shut-in vampire princess
Ya boy Kongming
Standalone complex
One punch man
Kill la kill
Dan da Dan is just coming out now. First episode animation looked really good and it is off the walls insane.
I watched a bit of in another world with my smartphone and it was peak garbage.
I also downloaded the wrong 7 deadly sins once, unforgivably awful.
I think I slogged through dog days while in my depressive always drunk phase.
actual recommendations:
bna and little witch academia are my fav trigger (after infern cop obv.)
I dunno aku no hana for some weird rotoscoped shit thats kinda disturbing and stressful. The character visuals are more convincing than the manga version.
suisei no gargantia is probably the most any audience friendly mecha anime, apart from the breasty pirate literally named rackage being maybe a bit much.
knights of sidonia was probably the first all 3d anime I actually liked. I ended up watching a bunch of other stuff by the same studio and they have a distinct animation style and facial expressions that are easy to recognize as being the same studio.
the promised neverland for some dark shit, but I only saw season 1 and don't know if there even were more seasons. The manga version became a slog for me after that point in the story but I was also working full time++ when the anime ended.
attack on titan also became a chore for me after season 1 but it was a novel experience watching it for the first time.