I'm just worried this is going to start some kind of Double Cargo Ship now like a certain famous incident from a memetastic series.
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Yeah, the opening to that chapter was something else. The second half of it promises lots and lots of hijinx.
And I see about Steins;Gate, Treayn. Going to watch it with my girlfriend tomorrow.
What if the adorably moe leaking optic fluid was my secret plan all along....
Something occured to me on further review:
SpoilerSo Negi is apparently now been on national television across Mars and approaching his father in popularity.
Should we consider the harem to now number in the millions?
If that was the case, Justin Bieber would already have about 20 series made about his life.
Also, I'm glad Negima finally has a chance to breathe again. That last fight was just nonstop pop-pop-pop surprises. I don't know how it managed to be both super-long and super-fast, but it pulled it off.
Geez, it's like there's a set amount of decent pacing in shonen manga, and Masashi Kishimoto's used up the whole stock.
Also, tsundere student rep is tsundere.
I don't know that I would have picked that as an example. I'm not sure there are any period. Shonen series have a sort of inverse relationship with pacing, the longer they are the worse the pacing.
So you can only hope to find it in 12/26 episode anime. Serial manga, not a chance.
On another I wonder what we are going to do if Ariadne's class rep and Mahora class rep are in the same scene. Duel to the death for the title? No wait this is Negima, something involving stripping.
One thing is certain, Emily will be claiming Yue for herself. Even if she's not quite willing to admit it yet.
I'm sure she and Nodoka can work out one of those, you know, arrangements.
Is the love dodecahedron that is Negima still expressible with 3 dimensional mathematics or do we need 5th dimensional non-Euclidean calculus now?
Here's the latest relationship chart. Of course, some of the relationships that are more implied than outright demonstrated aren't on there.
Well, there are tesseracts, so I guess enscribing post-three-dimensional structures into two dimensional field is doable...
And boobies have the best relationship
I remember that chart and its at the risk of becoming hopelessly incomplete.
Here's a more up-to-date one:
While that is both funny and true, the chart I linked isn't out of date. It just doesn't show the relationships that are merely implied rather than practically outright stated.
Examining it more closely to see what you were talking about, I see that he's only connected to Nekane and Nagi that way. I assume that two connections are missing as we don't know how close they are, but there's no excuse to not be connected to his mother. I should inform the chart creater.
EDIT: Okay, I spoke to him and he says that to avoid messiness, Ostian Royal family get different borders rather than having blue lines connecting them.
*squints hard* Yeah I guess that's, lord knows I don't really care.
I think the chart still establishes that 5th Dimensional non-Euclidean Calculus it needed to truly appreciate the relationships.
Can anyone recommend a good anime that's serious(ish) that has no Ecchi(or anything like ecchi) in it?
I need to show my brother that anime isn't all shortskirts and such.
Cowboy Bebop is the classic anime for persuading disbelievers. It should work well, unless you count Faye's outfit as ecchi.
Both Mushi-shi and Haibane Renmei have a very slow, thoughtful pace, present a world that is both down to earth and mythical and filled with wonder at the same time, and offer no fanservice whatsoever.
Eden of the East is a great combination of comedy, interpersonal drama, and suspense in just the right proportions. I don't recall any fanservice, and the only nudity in the whole thing is male (censored of course).
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is incredibly heart-wrenching and has no fanservice, unless you count costume porn. Don't let the first two episodes fool you - this anime shows its true colors in episode 3 and 4, and despite being a magical girl show, it's definitely not for young girls.
I'm watching Steins;Gate right now, and it seems to be very similar to Eden of the East. Perversion in this show is limited to comments the local otaku character gives from time to time to otherwise innocent situations. On the other hand, this anime is very heavy on references, so people who haven't seen a lot of other anime can still enjoy it and its interesting plot but miss out on some of the jokes.
I would echo all of tengu's recs except for Madoka and Steins;Gate. I think that to enjoy the first you have to be willing to enjoy a standard Mahou Shoujo already which most newbies won't, and I believe that the latter has more than just a few odd references and is in fact supersaturated with Otaku and imageboard culture and too many facets of the characters are lost without that context. That said let me add:
PLANETES is a show that starts as episodic comedy and then moves towards serious drama about space garbage men and their everyday life along with their hopes dreams and ambitions. It's cast is pitch perfect, its science and setting hard as a rock (lasers are invisible and space doesn't have sound), its drama believable, and its antagonists fully realized. Definitely give it a couple episodes to see if the cast can grow on you, because they're ways going to keep you coming back.
Nodame Cantabile is a show that's half about romance, and half about classical music. The leading couple are a pair of university music majors, Chiaki a talented musician and aspiring conductor stuck at a Japan university because of a plot device, and Nodame, a gifted piano player with no real aspirations. The show respects the music that its cast devotes their life to, at several points using nearly an entire episode to play a concert in its entirety (with the OST performed by the Tokyo symphony orchestra) and it feels like a very real look at what being an aspiring professional musician is like. If you like classical music, you should enjoy this.
Spice and Wolf is about a traveling merchant in a late Renaissance alternate Europe and the wolf god he picks up along the way. It's half economics and banking theory, and half flirtatious banter between the main characters. Chances are, that already sound either awesome or like a yawn fest to you, and you should probably trust your instincts on this one. Though I guess there is some ecchi with the at first naked wolf god but the characters quickly get past it and so should you.
The Tatami Galaxy is about an unnamed Tokyo university student and his attempts to find a "rose colored campus life" through joining various clubs around school and his interactions with a very unique and colorful cast. This show you'll really want to give two episodes to fully appreciate its premise, and does feature an alternate art style and a very fast first person narration so its definitely not for everyone.
I just realized that all 4 of my suggestions thus far are college or post college with a significant amount of romance, I figured I should break that trend. Kaiji is a show about a loser that manages to get himself in debt for an astronomical amount for an unemployed dropout. To try to dig himself out he takes part in the most ridiculous gambles you can think of. The show, despite its premise, manages to be very serious and some of the most psychologically gripping stuff I've watched and features over the top narration and an excellent soundtrack. And no ecchi because there are no female characters.
I'm not sure whether these are the best shows for your friend, but they are the shows closest to the top of my list that are both serious and non fanservicy/accessible to peoplnewish to anime.
I'd second strongly not recommending Madoka. As it is clearly not a show for little girls and therefore can only be for the perverted demographic like likes to watch girls run around after dancing around naked to get their super outfits on. Or at least that's a very easy bias to possess, as Madoka is clearly aimed at what is still strictly speaking the Magical Girl's peripheral demographic. Also while they are tame as you will get the transformation method is still standard stint of posing/dancing girl who's clothes just exploded off her.
If you can establish a tolerance for minimal cheesecake even then I would recomend getting the target through the first two parts of Nanoha. Since its easier to appreciate Madoka's NGE when familiar with Nanoha's Gundam.
Speaking of the Gundam series, thats a fairly good bet. The traditional old school gateway drug is Gundam Wing for more then its once convenient time-slot when showing. And aside from a dude taking a bath I don't recall anyone being less then dressed. For something more recent try Gundam Unicorn, while not fully appreciable is completely accessible to somebody unfamiliar with the UC setting.
I also might try a bit of counter programming. Point out that the Japanese both have less censoring and a certain more relaxed attitude to nudity. Noting that America isn't exactly on a moral high-horse, cite a comedy movie where the difference between PG-13 and R was a few irrelevant scenes with boobs in them. And American television is far from immune when outside the normal limits. (Looking at you HBO, was there an episode of Rome without tits?)
As an counter example of nudity or the like not used for enticement in anyway try My Neighbor Totoro. Which has a dad and his two daughters sharing bathing at one point. After-all he is functioning as a single parent with two young daughters in a house strictly speaking without running water.
More generally Studio Ghibli is a good bet another gateway drug. Also widely availible since its Disney that licensed them. Princess Monoke is probably the best bet of the bunch to start. (Warning: not Pompoko which is the final proof that no Ghibli movie is bad even without Miyazaki helming it because they made tanuki swinging their testicles around a reasonably sound movie but not for the uninitiated)
Stop recommending Gundam Wing. Seriously. All the show has going for it is nostalgia and the fact that the original American showing cut some of the worst plot cul-de-sacs and stupidity out. As it is it's one of the worst Gundam shows out there.
Anyway, I support Tengu's recommendations and don't really see a problem with them. For Steins;Gate you don't really need to know otaku culture that much to see that Daru is a pervy nerd or that Kurisu understands his nerdiness far more than she wants to show and that's really all you need in understanding otaku culture. The rest is purely extras.
Madoka is probably a bit harder, it does heavily relate to a rather inaccessible and often joked about genre. I don't think it is impossible though, as long as he's willing to accept the drama and let it pull him along, then the magical girl trappings will really just be a quirky visual style. Also, who can't love the music?
I can also second Spice and Wolf. It really is an excellent show with not only accurate economics, but also one of the most accurate portrayals of the European middle ages, something that makes me squee as a historian. The heart of it, Lawrence and Horo, also makes for one of the best sets of main characters I've seen.
Shame that it seems to need to be almost completely without anything dirty, otherwise Haruhi would be a good thing to show. Excellent plot and characterization and really, the parts with the girls being dressed far too little most serve to reveal character. It might be an option if you think he won't be liable to jump to conclusions immediately and try to read the situation of the pervier bits. It is also a lot more serious than when it looks at first, though there really are a lot of jokes flying around all the time.
For something completely different. Crest of the Stars and Banner of the Stars, which is basically serious space opera. Describing the setup would suggest a cheesy romantic comedy, but it is ultimately the story of galactic empires clashing and the troubles there comes with administrating such empires. Except for the final season of Banner of the Stars which is sort of a more personal episode for the main characters, but the series wasn't successful enough that later books got adapted, so it kinda ended there. Still a recommendations and basically free from anything remotely ecchi. Unless blue-haired space elves is inherently ecchi, I suppose.
I don't think if you have to be a magical girl fan to enjoy Madoka. I am not, unless you count Nanoha (a show that has much more fanservice than Madoka, not to mention all the mecha references), and still liked it a lot.
The main reason I didn't recommend Spice and Wolf is because of all the naked Horo at the beginning. If someone is rolling eyes at anime fanservice it won't help to change his mind, even if it pretty much never happens later.
Also, I forgot to mention Twelve Kingdoms. It starts like a cliche "high school girl gets spirited away to another world" anime, but it quickly turns into a socio-political tale about the responsibilities of a ruler and his relations with his vassals.
If movies and OVAs are okay, Macross: Do You Remember Love? is a very fun spectacle. It's not very deep and it stomps all over established Macross canon, but it's filled with high-quality eighties animation, is paced very well and is a good introduction to Macross.
Or you could watch Jin-Roh, which is a very somber anime movie without any fanservice or humour.
Its almost begging to be sterotyped. This is a slice of medieval life show about economics with light adventure elements and a romance.... opened by one of the main characters being naked for the pretty much the first episode.
Possibly a textbook example of how fanservice seems to almost be required. I can almost see an executive now: "You want to make a talky show about economics... oh there's naked girls well that will appeal to the otaku so go ahead"
Except of course that it was a series of books first and the nudity was meant to represent Horo not being human or part of civilization. The switch comes as a consequence of her joining human civilization.
Now all the shots of her wagging her tail on the other hand.
Spice and Wolf shares a lot of seiyuu with Code GeASS, so they probably use the same camera too.
I've recently started watching Lucky Star.
It started off really boring, but then I think I somehow got stoned or something and it was great.
Well, what are his tastes in entertainment beyond that? Let's see, I liked Honey and Clover, as well as Kimi ni Todoke, both of which are good romance/coming-of-age type stories in, respectively, college and high school. Straightforward josei, so he might not appreciate that.
Studio Ghibli generally makes good family movies, though I suppose that he's probably fallen into the "kiddie/fanservice" false dichotomy if you're talking about showing him that it isn't all pantie shots and fanservice, which means that family movies probably aren't a good bet.
Planetes is a good bet. Commonly referred to as "garbagemen in space", it's basically wage slaves working day to day in a near-future cleaning up debris so it doesn't hull other satellites or manned space flights. Space travel is around the same level as air flight today (civilian travel, cost restrictions low enough that even the middle class can take tourist flights), though the bulk of space exploitation is limited to the local Earth system and travel to outer planets like Mars or Jupiter both arduous and extremely rare. Politically, the wealth of space is generally locked up tight by those powers who have direct access to space, creating a new society of national "haves" and "have-nots" that provides the primary political dynamic behind the scenes of the stories. Very hard, compared to others in the genre, somewhat political, and very interesting.
Legend of Galactic Heroes, which is basically referred to as War and Peace In Space. Very, very long (110 episodes in the original OVA, two more OVAs of 24 and 28 episodes respectively, and two movies), very slow pacing, and a story very much tailored as a space epic, detailing the rise of two young military geniuses in an era of conflict between a relentless, but decadent and aristocratic empire and an egalitarian, but politically corrupt republic.
Haibane Renmei. A girl awakens in an unknown place without any memory in a walled town from which none ever leave, with people who have wings and halos. Another fairly sedate anime, focused on the characters rather than on the world around them. Don't expect too many answers about the walled town, why it exists, or what is beyond the wall; it's not in the scope of the story, and I know it's annoyed at least some people who watched it, but rather, if you like character-driven drama, it may be preferred.
Also, Spice and Wolf, if you can get past the nudity. It's a very good series. I'd also recommend Utena, save for sexy, sexy Akio lovin'.
So you're saying you want to go for a ride in his car, then?
Well, my brother really really loved Full Metal Alchemists. He watched both Brotherhood and the first series on his own after we watched the first few episodes together.
He's also watched an episode of Chobits(the first one) with me and was laughing throughout it...
Also, we watched the first episode of Pumpkin Scissors together and we both agreed we needed to watch more of it.
But I really want to make it so he doesn't associate anime with breasts and panty shots.