Looking for suggestions on books and anime

[Aaron L]

Tenchi Muyo.

 

[Cloudgatherer]

With a screen name of "Wolfwood" I certainly hope you have seen all of Trigun....

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

I'll second some of those recommendations... I'm not much of an anime fan, but I just got around to watching Record of Lodoss War the other day- and I must say, that is what the Dungeons and Dragons movie should have been (and could have been, had Courtney Solomon not had his head up his posterior... ahem).

As for literature- read Moorcock. The first volume of Eternal Champion didn't impress me much, but I skipped ahead to volume 9, "Dancers at the End of Time", and loved it to death. Best time-travel fantasy I've ever read... funny, beautiful, tragic... I'll need to read his Elric books next...

 

[ghettognome]

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention 'Urotsukidoji' or 'La Blue Girl' if you were looking for something a little more, well, err...extreme. .

Ummm, I would say so. The messed up thing is that there is actually a plot to La Blue Girl... not that I would know or anything.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Although they are excellent, DO NOT start the Books - A Song of Ice & Fire by George RR Martin until they are finished, which will not be for 3-5 years. I hate waiting years inbetween books.

 

[Zog]

Anime: Rouroni Kenshin - the first two arc. (Legendary Swordsmand and Legend of Kyoto)
Escaflowne - great stuff (first episode starts very slow, until the dragon appears!)

Books: Rhapsody trilogy by, um, author escapes me. Very good. And all out in paperback!

The Liveship Traders series by Robin Hobb

Both are fairly unique works - well written, complex stories that avoid many cliches and easy answers.

 

[Ashtal]

Gonna scoot this over to the SF/Fantasy forum.

Roger Zelanzy's Amber series is a great read, and compiled into big thick fun book.

 

[Helspar]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Ghost in The Shell or The Legend of Lemnear . Don't let your kids see the second one. If you are playing D&D and haven't read Tolkien you should be ashamed of yourself. I don't have to go on a tirade here do I? Good.

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott is pretty good reading, not to mention the classics The Illiad and The Oddessy

The Magic of Recluse by Modessit was pretty good too.

 

[Black Omega]

Favorite Anime...too many to count.

NGE has already been mentioned, it it -really- is best to watch begining to end instead of out of order.

For the classics, Ranma 1/2 and Bubblegun Crisis are good. El Hazard (OAV's, not TV) is excellent, very under rated. Possibly my favorite series with a definite begining, middle, and end.

For hentai, well, it's already been mentioned, but I'll comment Urotsukidoji's first OAV set is about the only hentai I've seen where you could remove the sex and still have a show worth watching. NOT for the squeemish though.

 

[Corinth]

Anime:

• Mobile Suit Gundam
• Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
• Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket
• Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory

This is one of the two juggernauts of Japanese science fiction. The first is the TV series that made giant robots into viable SF military hardware, instead of the superheroic robot shows that many of us first saw them as, and it paved the way for the other juggernaut of Japanese science fiction: Super Dimension Fortress Macross, better known in the US as the first (and the best) part of Robotech.

Watch the shows in the order I list them; a lot of the references made in the latter series make no sense until you've seen those prior in the continuity of the franchise, and the full appreciation of the series is impossible without the grounding that the original series provides. MSG is about giant robot action, but it is always grounded in the relationships of those caught up in it- often as not for the worse. (Tragedy is a big part of the Gundam series as a whole, and there is a decided anti-military theme.) For what it's worth, this is the foundation for the "Universal Century" timeline; this becomes important because there are Gundam series that do not use this timeline. Of those, only one is in commercial release:

• Gundam Wing
• Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

This is it. G-Wing marries military robot action with the sentai team that's so common in Japanese popular culture, and the hefty political riff can't be missed. (Anti-military, pacifist to a great extreme and globalist to the core.) Oh, and I guarantee that you will find one character to despise and another to hold as a hero; everyone else who's seen it has, and it's not the same choice for all. (I despise Relena and I think that Treize is awesome.)

And now, for the other juggernaut.

• Super Dimension Fortress Macross
• Macross Plus

If you've seen the first part of Robotech, and you've read the notes for the original series, then you've got a good idea of the original's presentation. That said, nothing beats actually seeing it; Animego did a good job with this project, despite the difficulties. Watching it all again reminds you just how grounded in the 1980s this series--and the franchise--really was, but that's a good thing at times.

Macross Plus can be enjoyed alone, but you miss a lot of the subtext without refreshing your memory by watching the original series first. OTOH, M+ is definately a great date outing; this is very much a relationship-oriented miniseries, not an action series, so there's plenty of emotional material for the girlfriend to chomp on. Also, until Macross 7 comes to North America this is the most recent Macross series to come out commercially. (No, the other Macross releases are part of an alternate timeline; they are fictional works within the Macross-M+-M7-M7F timeline.)

But that's a lot of material. Maybe you don't have a lot of time. In that case, I recommend any of the following:

• Akira (the re-release is better than the original)
• Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (Awesome thriller in an alternate 1960s Japan after the Axis wins WW2.)
• Geo-Armor a.k.a. Kishin Heidan (Alternate WW2 w/ aliens and Nazi-smashing fun!)
• Mononoke Hime a.k.a. Princess Mononoke. Just see it and know the holy brilliance of Hayao Miyazaki.
• Ninja Scroll Nothing brilliant, but it's solid fun that never fails to deliver.
• Ghost in the Shell Everyone should have it, see it and love it.
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust Simple incredible, even in the English voice acting.
• Patlabor/Patlabor II Good technothrillers with giant robots. See them in order, or you will get lost.
• Blood: The Last Vampire Short, moody, damned good all around. Great for when you've got less than a hour to kill, and you want to watching something that rocks the house.

As for books:

• The manga versions of all of the above, where available.
• Knights of the Dinner Table
• Dork Tower
• Nodwick
• Any Judge Dredd trade paperbacks that you can find
• Fist of the North Star
• Sanctuary
• Crying Freeman
• Samurai Crusader
• The Forever War (original text or graphic novel will do)
• Any of Tolkien's books, Middle-Earth or not.
• Usagi Yojimbo (Truly underrated!)

That's all that I could think of at the moment.