Tsyr
Explorer
A number of good books and anime titles have already been mentioned, but I'll chime in here...
For books:
Almost anything by C.J. Cherryh... A great one, specificly, is The Dreaming Tree, which is actualy two of her books put together. Its a book about an elf... Sound cliched? It's not. This elf is not at all what most DnD players have come to think of an elf as. This elf is immortal... truely alien in terms of thought process... Who is alergic to iron... IE, much like some old stories of elves. Be warned though... Cherryh writes in a different style for each book it seems sometimes... each time, since she is writing about a different culture with each book, she tries to make the books writing reflect the culture in some way. In The Dreaming Tree, for example, between one paragraph and the next, years can pass. Or centuries.
Bedlam's Bard, by Mercedes Lackey: A great book to read if you plan to run D20 modern... or a good book in general, take your pick.
For anime... *cracks his knuckles*
Many good series have been mentioned already, of course, but here are a few that havn't... and I'll give an extra nod to Escaflowne and Record of the Lodoss War:
Vampire Princess Miyu: Definetly an alternate take on vampires alltogether, and really the show isn't a "vampire flick"... it's main character is a "vampire", but only in name... she doesn't have any of the clasic vampire powers or restrictions. But a good story, if a bit... shockingly morbid. The thing is, you never EXPECT the show to get "dark", no matter how many times you see it happen, but it does... often times the ending of a show (In the TV series moreso than the OAV version) really leaves you on a depressed note... Not that the show is graphic (It's not, no worse than, say, Kenshin anyhow), it's just that there is rarely a very happy ending... People who were attacked by the assorted monsters don't often recover, for example.
And on that note, I can't believe there aren't more people mentioning the Kenshin OAVs (Called *shudder* Samurai X here in America... The stuff in America that we call Kenshin is the TV series). These are great... dramatic, powerful, moving, well animated. Epic, on a scale only a handful of anime ever achieve... Up there with Jin Roh, Metropolis, Akira...
The two Armitages, both Poly Matrix and Dual Matrix (The names of the two different movies) are good. You gotta watch 'em in order, you can't skip around, but these are two flicks that are under-rated in America. What do you get when you cross some of Azimov's robot stories (Specificly, The Positronic Man and I Robot) with some of the more traditional themes of Anime? You get Armitage.
Berserk: It's action, make no mistake... but its got some fantasy in it... and its got one of th cooler portrayals of "mideval" life that I've seen in Anime.
Now, for some that are a bit harder to get in America:
Noir: A story about a pair of assassins... but it goes so much deeper. Very interesting, with some real plot twists. Great music, too.
Hellsing: Vampires. Basicly, anyhow. This makes great fodder for a World of Darkness game, but it's just a blast to watch anyhow. To sum it up as best I can, without giving much away: Vampires are a big problem, so the British Government has the Royal Protestant Knights Orginisation, the Hellsing group, to deal with the problem. Said group has a vampire of immense power in their employment already, by the name of Alucard (Yes, cheesy vampire name, I know). Of course, this isn't the only strangeness... For another, the Knights are at a state of cold war with the Catholic Church's Paladin group, who are trying to do basicly the same thing but have, instead of a vampire as a partner, "resurectors"... people who regenerate from anything, up to and including bullets through the brain. A lot of fun.
.hack // sign: It's an anime about Everquest. Sorta anyhow. It's an anime about an online, virtual reality RPG game called The World. The question is, is there more to this World than most people (Even the sys admins) know? Amazing music, great artistic style, possibly a source of ideas for a DM too
.
Hikaru No Go: Ok, so, basicly, it's anime about a bunch of guys playing a board game? Then it's either going to turn into another Yu-Gi-Oh (An anime about guys who play a card game like Pokemon, but with "magic cards"), or it would be boring as mud, right? Wrong, on both acounts. It is about a bunch of guys playing a plain, ordinary board game, genuine earth board game. (Go, for the record) The only magic is the fact that one of the main characters, Hikaru, is sort of "haunted" by the spirit of a go player from the days of yor. No knowledge of the game is required to enjoy this show... but you might come out of watching it with a desire to play the game.
For books:
Almost anything by C.J. Cherryh... A great one, specificly, is The Dreaming Tree, which is actualy two of her books put together. Its a book about an elf... Sound cliched? It's not. This elf is not at all what most DnD players have come to think of an elf as. This elf is immortal... truely alien in terms of thought process... Who is alergic to iron... IE, much like some old stories of elves. Be warned though... Cherryh writes in a different style for each book it seems sometimes... each time, since she is writing about a different culture with each book, she tries to make the books writing reflect the culture in some way. In The Dreaming Tree, for example, between one paragraph and the next, years can pass. Or centuries.
Bedlam's Bard, by Mercedes Lackey: A great book to read if you plan to run D20 modern... or a good book in general, take your pick.
For anime... *cracks his knuckles*
Many good series have been mentioned already, of course, but here are a few that havn't... and I'll give an extra nod to Escaflowne and Record of the Lodoss War:
Vampire Princess Miyu: Definetly an alternate take on vampires alltogether, and really the show isn't a "vampire flick"... it's main character is a "vampire", but only in name... she doesn't have any of the clasic vampire powers or restrictions. But a good story, if a bit... shockingly morbid. The thing is, you never EXPECT the show to get "dark", no matter how many times you see it happen, but it does... often times the ending of a show (In the TV series moreso than the OAV version) really leaves you on a depressed note... Not that the show is graphic (It's not, no worse than, say, Kenshin anyhow), it's just that there is rarely a very happy ending... People who were attacked by the assorted monsters don't often recover, for example.
And on that note, I can't believe there aren't more people mentioning the Kenshin OAVs (Called *shudder* Samurai X here in America... The stuff in America that we call Kenshin is the TV series). These are great... dramatic, powerful, moving, well animated. Epic, on a scale only a handful of anime ever achieve... Up there with Jin Roh, Metropolis, Akira...
The two Armitages, both Poly Matrix and Dual Matrix (The names of the two different movies) are good. You gotta watch 'em in order, you can't skip around, but these are two flicks that are under-rated in America. What do you get when you cross some of Azimov's robot stories (Specificly, The Positronic Man and I Robot) with some of the more traditional themes of Anime? You get Armitage.
Berserk: It's action, make no mistake... but its got some fantasy in it... and its got one of th cooler portrayals of "mideval" life that I've seen in Anime.
Now, for some that are a bit harder to get in America:
Noir: A story about a pair of assassins... but it goes so much deeper. Very interesting, with some real plot twists. Great music, too.
Hellsing: Vampires. Basicly, anyhow. This makes great fodder for a World of Darkness game, but it's just a blast to watch anyhow. To sum it up as best I can, without giving much away: Vampires are a big problem, so the British Government has the Royal Protestant Knights Orginisation, the Hellsing group, to deal with the problem. Said group has a vampire of immense power in their employment already, by the name of Alucard (Yes, cheesy vampire name, I know). Of course, this isn't the only strangeness... For another, the Knights are at a state of cold war with the Catholic Church's Paladin group, who are trying to do basicly the same thing but have, instead of a vampire as a partner, "resurectors"... people who regenerate from anything, up to and including bullets through the brain. A lot of fun.
.hack // sign: It's an anime about Everquest. Sorta anyhow. It's an anime about an online, virtual reality RPG game called The World. The question is, is there more to this World than most people (Even the sys admins) know? Amazing music, great artistic style, possibly a source of ideas for a DM too
.Hikaru No Go: Ok, so, basicly, it's anime about a bunch of guys playing a board game? Then it's either going to turn into another Yu-Gi-Oh (An anime about guys who play a card game like Pokemon, but with "magic cards"), or it would be boring as mud, right? Wrong, on both acounts. It is about a bunch of guys playing a plain, ordinary board game, genuine earth board game. (Go, for the record) The only magic is the fact that one of the main characters, Hikaru, is sort of "haunted" by the spirit of a go player from the days of yor. No knowledge of the game is required to enjoy this show... but you might come out of watching it with a desire to play the game
.
