Uuu~ Manga? ANIME!?, Any good anime or manga? Options

[Sparrow]

So, I've been wondering if anyone here reads or watches amime or manga.. I've seen some good ones such as Vampire Knight,Pandora Harts,Special A, Death Note,Full Moon,Maid Sama,etc
I'm just curious if anyone can give me any good mana or anime to watch. I really have alot of free time since School is over.

[Jennifer Darknig...]

I'm probably the odd one out (or just the Old Lady), since most of the stuff on my list are shows from the mid-90s.

Fushigi Yuugi is probably the very top. It's the show that InuYasha tried and absolutely failed to be, though if you don't like romance, drama, and teenage angst, you should probably run. Far away. This show is also not for you if you like to judge 15 year old girls by the standards of adults, because the main character is a kid to the core...which is what I think makes this show so enjoyable. It has the Shoujo anime staple of a single girl saving a fantasy world with a bunch of sexy young men, but each character is unique and very flawed (though granted, they each have their definite personality types, but then again, if you want to categorize every character known to man by their given base archetype, no matter how well-crafted, you might as well do it to real people too), and the storyline is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time, with enough twists and turns to keep you interested (except with the first OVA. That was sort of weird). The dub for this is ABOMINABLE, though. It is legendary in its amount of suck. Only watch it dubbed if you have a complete aversion to subtitles...seriously. The actors in the English version are way inferior to the Japanese originals, and even if you watch the dub without seeing the Japanese version first, your ears will bleed. It's THAT bad.

Second on the list is Senkaiden Houshin Engi (Called "Soul Hunter" in the US, if you can manage to grab a copy). It's a sort of parody of the story of the terrible Queen Da Ji (called 'Dakki') in Chinese History/Legends (I put a slash there, since she appears in both), with a major Shounen twist, giving out the whole image of friendship, family, etc...while still keeping a good plot going and a political sense about it that isn't arbitrary, and even some fingers in Historical Pies (the 'torture Devices' that Dakki makes, for example, are based on ones Da Ji actually used back in the day).

Third would be Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Basically this anime is 20,000 Leages Under the Sea with an anime twist, and what starts out as a simple kids' anime turns rather interesting and dark by about episode 6 (which is when it starts getting good), and, the Infamous Island Arc (a serious of filler episodes that are not popular amongst fans--me included)aside, STAYS good until the end. It's hard to classify this...it's more of a Seinen series than anything else, though it's very much not everyone's cup of tea. The dub is actually quite good for this one, and I found myself enjoying it despite the Japanese version having more 'professional' actors (the fact that the English actors tried to use the proper accents, and that the lead child characters were played by actual CHILD ACTORS, was a major plus for me).

Then we get into the magical girl anime...Sailor Moon's more romantic (and creepy, if you think about the fact that 12 year old girls are well-endowed and running around in wedding dresses and skimpy dresses, respectively) counterpart, Wedding Peach, is my favorite, though it's a major turnoff to most. I guess girls wearing wedding dresses, fighting evil with Magical Girly Accessories and Lipliner, and preaching about the values of love and marriage is just not everyone's thing. Though despite that, it actually has a deceptively complex storyline that actually bucks some of the traditional Magical Girl Cliches. Okay, so it's complex for a MAGICAL GIRL ANIME, but seeing as it's a show aimed at very young girls, I think the storyline ignoring norms and doing its own thing is actually pretty cool. That, and I'm biased--Momoko Hanasaki is way more likeable than Usagi Tsukino / Serena / Bunny to me, namely because she actually has a talent and does something other than cry: she's a photographer for the school newspaper!

And for the more modern stuff, Kanon, Clannad, Air, Ef: A Tale of memories/Melodies, and Shakugan no Shana are titles that can't really be beat, though I sort of wish that they had more of a fanbase...or at the very least, more of a fanbase that is above the radar. I can't seem to find many fans of these series who actually talk about them...it's pretty sad.

...um. So yeah. There's my ramble for the day (Holy crud, that was long!)