So recently I had an anime watch party and we were browsing anime to watch and I came across Pluto. Admittedly I’m only 2 episodes in but so far it’s SO solid. And I’m just surprised I had never heard of it and it came out 3 years ago. Especially since it’s a reimagining of Astroboy and everyone’s heard of that…
Another one I had surprisingly never heard of but so far seems solid is Level E written by Yoshihiro Togashi. My favorite anime is YYH and I loved HxH so how come I hadn’t heard of Level E until now? Again, only 2 episodes in but seems legitimately good and it’s by a wildly successful creator.
What’s an anime you didn’t expect much of because it seems lesser known, but turns out to be very good? I mean like, not only do u like it but ur surprised the general public - casual anime fans aren’t aware of it.
Big O
It’s showtime!
I used to make fun of Big O for being bad when it was on adult swim (I literally never watched it). Maybe I should finally give it a shot.
the ending was rushed but make sure to watch all two seasons. the show is inspired heavily by Batman the animated series
it was show about giant mechs, and living in a biodome, due to “nuclear winter outside”
I read Pluto and really enjoyed it, will try to watch it in the near future for sure. It’s kind of stupid but “I parry everything” was excellent if you can get past the gag that the MC is just clueless.
I do hate when MC’s are clueless but I suppose it CAN be funny if done right.
Pluto was great! Have fun watching it and enjoy the plot unfolding and twisting :)
Flip Flappers!
I’m still reeling from that twist.
Sounds silly lol. Not a watcher of magical girl anime typically but perhaps I’ll choose this when I’m in the mood for it.
Dennoh Coil (2007), it’s basically if Studio Ghibli did Sci-Fi. Won a bunch of awards in Japan, but never got mainstream.
That’s good enough for me to look into it
Seconding it. And its spiritual successor The Orbital Children.
Shoutout for Pluto!
I thought YuYu Hakusho was way more popular than it actually was.
It WAS super popular when it came out as well as when it was on Toonami around 2003. I’d consider it mainstream. But lately, aside from the live action hype, it’s overshadowed more than it should be.
Yeah, like if you ask most people about the best OG shows of that era, it’s usually Dragonball, Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Gundam. Even Hunter x Hunter ended up becoming more well known.
FWIW, its getting the TFS abridged treatment, so maybe that’ll boost its popularity a little bit.
Oh that’s right. I hope it helps it out a bit. Honestly it would be amazing if YYH got the HxH treatment
seems like it got overshadowed by naruto/ bleach,etc.
DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION
This and Pluto are the best scifi anime we had in recent years.
Nice, This is actually on my anilist “plan to watch” already. So I’ll get to it eventually!
crunchyroll fumbled the marketing for this (i.e. there was none) and fucked up the subs. i fucking hate crunchyroll.
dint they start using AI translations.
I’m watching Hell’s Paradise right now. It’s clearly done on a decent budget, but the animators are pretty good at knowing where they need to focus that cash. Meanwhile, the story is actually pretty good. For something like a Shonen-style power-system story, there’s a lot more going on than just flashy martial arts. I’m enjoying this one, and am surprised I haven’t heard of it before last month.
Great show. I finished that a few months ago. Definitely underrated. I’ve seen it recommended on Reddit a few times so not underground at all, but definitely a bit under appreciated. Animation is gorgeous for most of it and the whole thing is so eerie.
I second Hell’s Paradise! Season 2 was fantastic.
Angel Beats was great but apparently not good enough to go mainstream. Only single season of like 13 episodes. I’ve watched it a few times. It’s funny and I recommend.
It was mainstream for its time. But yeah, great stuff!
Yeah, Angel Beats was very popular for a while when it aired. Previous commenter probably watched it much later
What more could they have done with that story? Ended kinda definitively, no?
Pretty much. I just enjoyed it and wanted more.
Definitely heard of angel beats, but never got around to watching it.
It was THE show everybody talked about when it aired. It even leaked into non-anime discourse. Ichbiban no takaramono hit the heavy rotation on JP radio stations and sold like hotcakes. The show was everywhere at the time. It was story-complete, though, so that’s why there is no second season.
I think Angel Beats lost some of its cultural momentum when every following Maeda Jun project turned out to be a flop.
Maybe it’s just because it hit me the right way at the right time, but besides the deau meme, rozen maiden’s first season hit me so hard I’m surprised it wasn’t way more popular
Added it. There seems to be a bunch of them?
Yeah, but it’s one of those shows where the further you get from the original, the more you wish you’d just watched the first season and left it there.
It wasn’t completely ignored, but I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder that Apocalypse Hotel didn’t get way more recognition than it got. Should’ve won all the awards.
Going back a little deeper, I can’t pretend to be surprised that Akagi isn’t mainstream, but Kaiji by the same mangaka deserves more popularity. It’s a tragedy that the anime ends at part 2 when part 3 was the peak.
Added them to my watchlist but I’m gonna be honest that art style for akagi/kaiji is unappealing to me
Warning, these are titty animes, so feel free to judge me if you want.
I have literally never heard anyone else talk about Sin: Nanatsu no Taiza/Seven Mortal Sins (this is NOT the Seven Deadly Sins show from Netflix), but I think it’s incredible and incredibly deep. It doesn’t totally beat you over the head with the themes, but it’s an excellent take on the message of automony, free will, and determinism, with Lucifer the falling angel taking center stage.
Beyond that, I think Sekirei is probably one of my overall top favorite anime, with some truly fascinating world-building. It’s Pokemon but big tiddy babes instead of little pocket monsters! That being said, there is one character that almost ruins the show with weird pedo bait and god I wish so very very much that character and her storyline just fully did not exist (Kuu).
Titty anime definitely used to be offputting for me tbh. But the older and lonelier I get, the more I can deal with it. So I’ll add them to my watchlist.
planetes… enjoyed the heck out of it. I’ve only met one other person irl who’s watched it… :|
The Toy Box is in my list of favorite fictional ships, right next to the Silvana and the Bebop
The Toy Box
yussss. so functional, something tells me we’ll see something like it one day.
There’s quite a few that I’m surprised I’ve never seen anyone talk about outside of dedicated forums.
Akudama Drive ruled start to finish. It’s worth watching for the animation alone.
Xam’d: Lost Memories feels like it’s only a few years old, but it came out less than a year after Gurren Lagann. In 2008. Bones makes real pretty shows.
Speaking of Bones, Carole and Tuesday was solid. My only issue was that it didn’t take a hard enough stance against AI, but also it came out before ChatGPT and long before AI generated music was a real issue so I can’t really blame them.
