So, because no forum is complete without a requisite amount of Weeb Shit™, I figured I'd start us off with a classic - Give me your top 5 anime that you'd recommend to others. Feel free to spice it up with more specific stuff, like "Top 5 hidden gems", "Top 5 90's anime", "Top 5 Anime you could watch with your parents in the room without being too weird", etc.

Just be prepared for your garbage taste to be thoroughly judged.

Top 5 Anime I think are just neat™

1. Spice and Wolf - Drama/Romance/ECONOMICS BABY - Anime is a bit older (10+ years at this point, wew lad), but is generally a refreshing setting, story, and set of characters that feel like actual people, with emotions and thoughts (most of the time). Tale of a traveling merchant set in medieval <Not Italy>, who finds a local town's harvest god in his cart one evening, asking him to take her back to her home in the north. Romance, economics, and the trouble of hiding a pagan deity from the not-christian church in medieval times ensue. 10/10, Season 3 Never 🥲

2. Drifters - Action/History/I Can't Believe it's not Fate™ - Fate, but isekai'd into a fantasy world's war between god and the devil, and written & produced by the same guy who wrote and produced Hellsing/Hellsing Ultimate. Very dark fantasy at times, but a good time if you enjoy that kinda stuff. 8/10, would learn how to make gunpowder out of piss and dead bodies again.

3. Bocchi the Rock - Music/Comedy/every other weeb's Discord avatar for the next 6 months - This show should not be this good, though maybe recency bias is a thing here. Good comedy about an extremely talented guitarist learning how to have social skills that would slightly outclass that of a mildly soggy piece of bread and play in a band. the animators/staff of the show flex way to goddamn hard and way to goddamn often for what is based off a 4-koma source, and puts it squarely in the same realm as One Punch Man and Nichijou in terms of love and care by the animation studio. 8/10, would feel personally attacked again.

4. ACCA: 13th Territory Inspection Department - Political/Slow Burn/Making smoking sexy again, somehow - This is one I fully would categorize as "slept on", being a visually stunning, slow burn political drama. I won't say the twists aren't sometimes a bit predicable, but its still a really good time, the characters are interesting and the setting is always super vibrant and just a treat fall into. 7/10, would consider lung cancer if it made me look that good, too.

5. Dimension W - Scifi/Action/God I wish I could drive like that - grumpy future ninja man paired with cyborg waifu fighting to stop humanity using technology they can't control. Sick car chases, OP slaps and the main character can fully dance better than you. 7/10 please give me more of the quirked up white boy, busting it down sexual style.

Think my taste is shit? Good, yours is too. fight me, nerd.

Fucking weeb

Parasyte, death note, death parade, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

maou jou de oyasumi, aka sleepy princess in the demon castle. Its a fun anime about a princess captured in a demon castle and her whole goal is just to get good sleep, to the bewilderment of her captors. Its cute and funny.

1. Sword Art Online (IMDB) - Wasn't expecting this one to be as good as it was but I was engrossed in the story and character development (as much as can happen in anime). This one is about people logging into a new online game that is 100% immersed (body is comatose while you are 'in' the game). Of course the creator set it up so if you died in the game you died in real life and locked everyone in. After the 'first' seasons it moves into other stories with mostly the same main character and there is a one-off I think about Guns Online but didn't watch it. Available on Netflix currently.

2. Record of Lodoss War (Wiki) - This was an old one I recall watching when I was a teenager. If I recall this one had the whole dubbed vs captioned debate (along with many others) at the time. Sure it is still going on though. Reading about it now, it looks like it took off from a DnD game? I don't remember the story very well (pre-90s when I watched) but I recall enjoying it.

3. Vampire Hunter D (IMDB) - Think this was my first or second ever anime show (movie) I watched and loved it. A vampire who kills other vampires is the most basic of plots, but I loved the artwork (reminds me of final fantasy artwork) and enjoyed the story.

4. Akira (IMDB) - Almost any list needs to include Akira because hey, it's Akira.

5. Heavy Metal (IMDB - Same as Akira, gotta have Heavy Metal included, but not the second one.

Optional mentions: Fantastic Planet, MD Geist, La Blue Girl (if you like tentacles, the package doesn't tell you that), all Studio Ghibli, Ronin Warriors. I honestly think I have forgotten most of the old school anime I used to watch.

There was one anime movie I watched a long time ago and I have not been able to find it since but it was about a trainee assassin/bounty hunter, she was tiny and had a set of beads in her hair that marked her job and training level I think. Been so long, so if you recall it let me know. There was also an older one that was named something like 8Eyes, but was a very dark (gore) anime.

WEEBUS REVIVUS, SHEEBUS SURVIVEUS, I RESURRECT THIS THREAD!!!

Assassination Classroom (47 Episodes / 2015-2016) - Students are hired by the government to kill their teacher. Who is a giant, yellow, octopus who can fly at mach 12 speed. Please keep in mind that this is actually one of the more sane things that happens in this show. The show bounces between being another anime high school comedy while also being a thriller with assassins and biological creatures galore. The show is so over the top and absurd but it knows when it should play things for laughs and when it should start taking things seriously, and its this edge the show constantly tightropes over without ever falling off the edge. Every character in Assclass is both visually and personality stand out from each other, and while some characters get more focus than others you get to spend enough time with each character to understand their general gist, and your likely to find a character that you relate to in class 3-E. As the show progresses the students of Class 3-E grown not just as assassins but as young men and women as well and they start to become more close to their teacher and target, Koro-Sensei, who is the beating heart of this show. Koro-sensei is probably one of the best depictions of a teacher i have seen in any form of media to an almost unrealistic degree (not referring to the fact that hes a giant talking octopus who moves at mach 12). He's tragic, he's funny, he's heartwarming, and he's intense, and he's one of my favorite characters in fiction personally. Overall, assclass is a masterclass in how to be wacky without falling into complete absurdity, and I highly recommend it.

GunBuster (6 episodes / 1988-1989) - Underrated mecha series by Hideaki Anno, who later went on to make Evangelion. Looking back at this show you can see some of the threads that he would later revisit in EVA, but where that show uses mecha robots as a means of analyzing themes like depression and the human condition and whatnot, GB is your standard mecha show that is average in every way except for its animation. The Buster machines (the giant robots they pilot) are filled with plenty of little mechanical dials and switches that flash in the background, characters fiddle with switches, levers and other mecha doohickery, and the buster machines themselves move extremely slowly because of how heavy they are, all of which lead to making the show feel like a more grounded mecha show than most that i've seen. Gunbuster takes place in S P A C E, and unlike most shows where they just slap in a black void and call it a day, gunbuster's space is filled to the brim with stars, spaceships, space stations, and many other sights in space which give the show a sense of scale, which especially works its magic during the space battle scenes where these epic confrontations between the aliens and the humans happen. As mentioned earlier, the story isn't too impressive as most of it is the standard "Protagonist gets called to a higher destiny and rises to become the greatest" that you see often in most anime, but the characters still manage to be compelling enough that you can get invested in them. The show is pretty short (6 episodes) and is a pretty good recommendation if you want a good mecha to start with. Shigurui: Death Frenzy (12 episodes / 2007) - Also known as "Feudal Japan Berserk". Shigerui is probably the most bleakest anime I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Everything from the muted grey color palette, the haunting soundtrack, and the sheer brutality of the setting makes this show feel more like a horror show then your usual samurai fare. Sword Duels in most samurai anime consists of either long drawn out fights of characters constantly blocking every attack or quick fights where characters mow through multiple enemies in seconds, but shigerui fights ring more closely to classic samurai films or cowboy quick draws where more time is focused on building up to the attack before the deadly blow is drawn. The soundtrack ramps up as characters sweat and shiver, and when the music stops and characters swing their sword its always the most gruesomely satisfying thing to witness. Characters don't simply die in shigerui, they get fucking OBLITERATED, and the mad-lads at madhouse do a good job at making these characters feel less like swordsmen and more like monsters. This extends far beyond just the fights scenes though, since the story of Shigerui is about a school of swordsmen who dedicate themselves fully to their psychopathic leader who seeks power at any cost, and watching the two protagonists of the show as they slowly fall into this cycle of power at any cost is compelling. The show is very slow burn, and it only adapts like 2 or 3 fourths of the manga so you have to read the rest on your own, but I think its one of the better samurai shows and I highly recommend it if you want a Samurai show with a bit more edge to it. BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad (26 episodes / 2004-2005) - This show is a bit of a blend between musical drama and coming of age story that manages to effectively juggle both. Beck is the name of the band in the show, but the focus mainly falls on Koyuki, a singer and guitarist in the band who navigates through both school life and the rocker life. As you progress through the show you watch both the band and koyuki start to grow as he begins to foster a passion for both music and the people around him, and while I wasn't the biggest fan of him at first, I really began to come around to him later in the series. There are plenty of other characters as well like the chill bass player ryusuke or the hot headed secondary singer/rapper chiba whose personalities bounce off of each other and make for some fun/interesting interactions. The soundtrack is composed of songs that are played by characters in the show, and most of them are absolute bops!!! Lost melody and Full Moon Sways are some of my personal favorites, although sadly most songs only play 1/4 of the actual song before getting cut out for pacing I assume? Watching this show feels like entering a time capsule back to the early 2000s rock scene, with plenty of references verbal and visual to popular musicians. This show is 26 eps long, so It kills a good chunk of time.

Nier automata anime finished airing last week. It's nothing spectacular, just a fun watch for people that haven't played the game / dropped playing and can't get around finishing it

No. Pls. GOD, N-O. NOT MY POWER LEVEL!

1. Hunter x Hunter ~ Now the anime is a bit long at 148 episodes, so no shame in reading the manga (it'd definitely be faster). But the creator is INFAMOUS for suffering from pain and his art suffering as a result (i.e. pretty shiddy pages / chapters). But you can't go wrong either way. Though the anime also ends perfectly as the manga is INFAMOUSLY unfinished (see: Hiatus x Hiatus)

2. Fate / Stay Night ~ If you like visual novels, read the visual novel. If not, then... damn. I guess watch Unlimited Blade Works first? But you're basically ruining 1/3 of the VN, which is a shame. Anyways, after that its Fate / Zero. And if you really can't get enough, you can watch Heaven's Feel (I, II & III). We're talking ~50 episodes here.

3. Toradora! ~ This is my... guilty pleasure, I'm sorry. It's a... romcom. T_T I like it a lot, ok? Possibly the one I've re-watched the most because it's short (25? episodes), and feel-good. And even then I haven't seen it in years cause I like to forget. Look, trust me on the first 2, this one's more personal.

And yes, I like DB(Z), but not enough to recommend it for so many reasons: length / variations / popularity. The nod suffices.