what’s the etiquette? where do i start? there are so many niches and such that i’m not sure.
i have watched some anime, but mostly things like dragon ball. i am looking to get more involved with the community to help discover anime and get more into the trends, etc.
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As a newer anime fan myself, I figured I’d throw my two cents in here. What started my interest in anime was actually going to an anime convention with some friends a couple of years ago. From there I began watching YouTube reviews like Mothers Basement and Glass Reflections and took their recommendations to find new stuff to watch. I eventually found that I actually prefer watching the seasonals as they come out, so I began doing that as well (and in doing so have really upped my number of watched shows). Beyond YouTube, I also listen to several podcasts (Anime out of Context and Quest for the Best, for example). I’ve hopped into several Discord servers, though I don’t comment very often, if at all. I think there’s no real wrong way to be “in the anime community”. Just find the stuff you like to participate in and do that, though don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. You just might find another part of the community that you really like.
its kinda the same for me! i have always been around people who were in to anime and manga series, but i was never in to anything myself.
i really would like to be up to date on the seasonal stuff, and watch those as well as some of the longer running favorites. watching as they come out sounds so fun!
It is fun! I enjoy reading up on what everyone else is thinking of the episodes as they come out. I use AniChart to follow what’s coming up and AniList for tracking what I watch as well as reading threads on new episodes. I also recommend the MAL-Sync extension, which can automatically track what you watch as you watch it.
I’m a huge fan of isekai - anime where the protagonist is transported to another world to become a hero, or at least live a more important life than the one he had in the “real world”
Examples include:
- Overlord
- Saga of Tanya the Evil
- GATE
- Mushoku Tensei
- Ascension of a Bookworm
- The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious
- Konosuba
- So I’m a Spider, So What?
- Re: Zero
- How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom
There are lots of others, too. Give a few of them a watch and maybe you find out if you like them. A lot of people don’t and think isekai are slop, and that’s fine. I can’t get enough of them.
i like the premise too! though from others it seems they can get redundant. i guess that applies to everything, right?
thank you for your recommendations :) i will check them out for sure!
Someone told me that 70% of animes released last year were Isekais. I’m not sure that’s exactly right but it’s a justifiable number. It’s still a good concept but dramatically over saturated, stick to the top picks and things that have made it to season 2/3/etc to start.
It’s not like isekai stories are inherently bad or anything, it’s just that there have been a few very very successful ones and so a lot of substandard stories get greenlit for animation in this genre because executives are desperate to recapture that lightning in a bottle. There were 59 stories released last year alone with the isekai tag on anilist. Most of them are slop that can barely be distinguished from one another.
One of the big problems that the genre has is that most of them take place in the same western RPG fantasy world. As Geoff from Mother’s Basement pointed out in his recent video, a lot of Japanese people were introduced to western fantasy through games like Wizardry rather than through books like The Fellowship of the Ring or The Wizard of Earthsea. As a result, the worlds of these isekai anime (almost) all feel very same-ish the way the worlds of those RPGs often feel very same-ish. When you watch an isekai anime, you’re not watching someone get sent to a mysterious world full of strange magical creatures and dangerous roads. You’re watching them get sent to go play Dragon Quest some more but in-person this time. There are exceptions of course; I’m quite fond of the world of Vision of Escaflowne for example, but the majority of these shows just feel exactly the same as all the other isekai slop out there because they can’t be bothered to do anything at all to even try to feel different.
what a great insight!! thank you so much, i’m queuing up that Youtube video now!
Are you gonna play the truck-chan game?
Other than weekly discussion, and episode releases there are couple type of post that you could make.
- Looking for recommendations - self explanatory. You provide what genre of a show you are looking for and people will recommend the best ones. (More abstract and crazy requirements it’s more fun to interact with)
- Reviews - If you watched the show and you have opinions you could share them as a post
- Hosting/participate in a rewatch - If you want to (re)watch a show that isn’t airing currently you could make a chain of posts for each episode, and invite people to watch with you. Usually host prepares some deeper episode analysis but that’s not required.
awesome!
i tried to avoid the “what should i watch” type of post because i feel like those are… low effort? might be the wrong descriptor, but it doesn’t feel like that is the kinda info im looking for at the moment.
i defintely want to find out about more of the community stuff, like the watch together thing, thats is so fun!!
hello!
There’s a site called anilist.co you’ll find practically any anime series out there.
Since anime is a medium, don’t be surprised if someone loves a series you hate or vice versa. It’s like books, you know? And for recommendations it’s often useful if you list some series or genres you enjoy.
Unboxious’ recommendations look fairly good IMO. I’ll add a few ones:
- Suspense: Uzumaki
- “Innocent” fantasy: any movie from Studio Ghibli, specially Sen to Chihiro (Spirited Away), Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka (The Boy and the Heron), and Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro)
- Darker fantasy: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer)
- Mecha (big robots): Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
- Isekai (transported into another world): Log Horizon
- Mystery/“detective”: Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries)
Remember to have fun. Watching anime is supposed to be enjoyable; if for some reason you aren’t enjoying a certain series, there’s no shame on dropping it.
Usually it’s said three episodes is enough to know if you’ll like a show, but sometimes a single one does it.
Also, watch out for people shitting on the others’ tastes in social media, it’s simply better to block those.
In some cases you enjoy the story and characters of a series, but the production sucks really bad. In those cases, it’s worth to check the manga or light novel series the anime is adapted from. (Hoshi no Samidare, I’m looking at you. Such amazing manga series deserved a better animation.)
It’s worthy to dig into Japanese culture. It makes you enjoy what you see more. And if you’re into cooking, making the dishes you see in anime at home can be a really fun way to experience a bit of that culture.
The “no life weeb” stereotype doesn’t hold true any more. A lot of us have jobs, children, social life etc.
Some people flip the shit out if you use a plural -s in “anime”, “manga”, or “pokemon”. You can either avoid this or to pre-emptively use it to detect and block pass-aggro people from social media. (I never did the later in Lemmy, but it works).
i use anilist now to help me find stuff to watch, it’s really helpful.
thank you for the other info! it’s hard not to feel like a poser nowadays, with anything, and especially with something as complex as anime.
as for japan culture, etc. do you have anything you like? i’d like to learn more about the actual culture and such, rather than just a textbook history (which i’m more familiar with)
Culture: I mentioned cooking because it’s one of the things I enjoy the most, and it gives you a rather good grasp on a culture. Which ingredients do they use? Are dishes typically made for small or large groups? Are techniques intended for everyday cooking, or for more laborious festive events? What about culinary influences? etc.
Depending on where you live, if there’s a Japanese descendants community, odds are they celebrate some festivals, and they’re often open for outsiders. It’s a great way to interact directly with some of that culture.
That said, textbook history helps a lot. As well as Wikipedia; sometimes you learn a lot by stumbling upon some page about lacquer pictures, pottery repair or even cherry trees. It’s all about how you “parse” it together.
unfortunately i dont live near any sort of ‘ethnically different from the masses’ group, but i appreciate the suggestion and will be on the look out for those types of things when i travel!
Definitions, according to me:
isekai - someone, usually the protagonist, got transferred to another world
trash isekai - there are about a dozen of extremely similar anime released each year, each being isekai or adjacent
if you watch one, you’ve seen all of them
their defining traits are:- nice protagonist with “useless” power that is actually overpowered that they unleash when angry
- (hyperbole) protagonist is the greatest, noblest, and fairest creature walking on that world, everyone else is wrong or evil
- harem of archetypes (authors don’t even try to make their characters different) the protagonist is usually not be aware of
- plot where protagonist solves problems on his own in max three episodes
- (often) rpg mechanics that just go “his power is over 9000” with no people planning builds or significant effects on the world or…
Examples include: Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu, Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki
While they are called this way, I know a person who watches them because they don’t have to focus and still have some dumb fun.battler - anime focused on battles, I’m pretty sure Dragon Ball: Z falls into this territory, but I’m basing that on two random episodes I’ve seen and everything I’ve heard over the years
season - most anime air in 12 or 24 episode parts, 1 episode per week, starting and ending within 2 weeks of each other, hence they are grouped into 4 seasons per year
VN - visual novel, basically a book with pictures and sound; you’d be surprised how many get adaptedI’ll begin with where NOT to start:
- Gintama - it’s a parody referring a lot to anime, manga, and japanese culture from its age, although it has a Donald Zuramp joke too; well worth trying once you get to know some classics, don’t even need to finish them
- KonoSuba, Isekai Ojisan, Meikyuu Black Company, Shinchou Yuusha - they parody specifically trash isekai, watch one or two before jumping in
- Mushoku Tensei - perverted 40 year old mind in child’s body, even I had problems watching the first two seasons with over 150 titles (counting seasons individually) watched back then
Decent starts:
- Black Clover - good, long battler (170 episodes and counting); share my pain of waiting for continuation
- Dr. Stone - finished last season, mostly kept the same level throughout, but over time we got less science stuff; whole thing is about speedrunning from stone age to space age
- Dungeon Meshi - extremely good worldbuilding and the story gets better over time
- Helck - comedy and dark fantasy
- Shiguang Dailiren - the best anime about time travel
- Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor - two seasons of extreme gambling, CW: self-harm, torture
- Re: Zero - going back in time after you die isn’t the most pleasant experience when you have no other powers; CW: gore
- Ansatsu Kyoushitsu - comedy with good plot, some action and drama
- Initial D - fear not the ass 3D and potato faces, for you come for the music and racing, then stay for the story
- Mairimashita! Iruma-kun - good for calming yourself down, 4th season currently on air
- Paripi Koumei - grand strategist acts like a grand strategist to help a random girl with her musical career
Comedies, the weirder the better:
- parodies from the first section
- Asobi Asobase - you’d think that it’s a slice of life; what a fool you are
- Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu - the vampire dies in no time, then comes back to life, then dies again because a dog barked too loud
- Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara - just watch the trailer; slight focus on parodying detective stories, unless I’m an ignorant and missed too many jokes
- Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan - super powers are such a hassle to have
- Seto no Hanayome - my bride is a mermaid, and her mafia family wants me dead
- Youkai Gakkou no Sensei Hajimemashita! - guy who is scared of mere thought of human hooligans is forced to teach in a ghost school
- Detroit Metal City - Metalocalypse: Deathclock, but anime; very american adult cartoon humor, budget of a 6-pack of instant noodles per episode
Other recommendations:
- Mob Psycho 100 - three seasons of absolute cinema where super powers don’t make you super happy; give me back the evil kazoo theme
- One Punch Man - as above, it’s even by the same author, but uhh… hope for a remake of the third season… and maybe second (I like them anyway, 'cause I’m a fanboy). First is the best it could be, though.
- Hellsing Ultimate - BLOOD
- Teogonia - battler with an interesting world, isekai element shoved in to justify protag’s overpowered ability
- Steins;Gate - another good anime about time travel; I’ve played the remake, but anime is generally praised; avoid Chaos;Child like fire, once again only played the VN, but others say anime is bad compared to VN, and I say VN is shit for all the unnecessary gore and annoying protagonist, even if the concept itself was interesting
- Undead Unluck - once again a battler with an interesting world, this time without isekai
- Sonny Boy - you watch an episode, then spend a week trying to understand WTF did you just see
- JoJo - it really is its own thing among battlers, personally didn’t like it, but it’s popular for a reason
- Under Ninja - battler where weapons are actually lethal
- Ragna Crimson - high highs and low lows, battler with interesting pair of main characters
- Monster - it’s similar to western media, even the events start in Germany
- The Fable - assassin needs to hide for some time, goes to work for the lowest wage, problems arise in the neighborhood; very well paced, has some really tense moments
- Gachiakuta, Jigokuraku Jujutsu Kaisen, Kimetsu no Yaiba - good battlers
- Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu - best attempt at fantasy grand politics I’ve seen to date; still too simplified
- Code Geass - best grand politics I know, this one is deeper, only watched the main series consisting of two seasons
my hero! thank you SO much!
i think once i get more knowledge under my belt, the parodies will be great. i think now i wouldn’t know that they’re even parodies lmao
based on your reccomendations and notes, it seems lke we have very similar taste when it comes to “serious” anime. thank you for your detailed response, i will defintely check some of these out!
Every sunday night (from my perspective in Mountain Time anyways) there’s a discussion thread posted to /c/anime where people talk about what they’re watching and whether they’re liking it. You can go there and post a comment or reply to someone else. Of course you can do the same in other threads as well, but I bring it up as a good place to start.
As for what to watch, there are a few ways to find stuff. One option is to just look at the highest rated stuff out there and just pick some random thing that looks interesting. Another option, especially if you want to keep up-to-date with stuff that’s being currently discussed, is to watch videos from channels like Mother’s Basement and Gigguk. Right now at the start of a new season a bunch of new shows are just starting to air, and so in a week or two both of those channels will have videos out pitching their favorites to viewers.
If you just want something to watch without needing to do any research here are my favorites:
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood for action/adventure
- Kaguya-sama: Love is War for romcom
- Redline for a sick movie about a deadly car-racing tournament on alien worlds
- LOOK BACK or Journal with Witch for something more emotional
thank you for the info! i will have to check out those youtube channels for sure.
all i’m doing now is just looking through the top rated on AniList and such.
i finished Vinland Saga, and thought it was very good. i’m watching mob psycho now.
Nice! I forgot to mention it because there are just too many great anime out there, but Mob Psycho is also one of my favorites.
im really liking it so far!
i think i have figured out that i have 2 modes; serious anime and not so serious, and i cant watch the same kind back to back lmao
i loved vinland saga, but it was so heavy i just think another one like it right after wouldnt be enjoyable
There isn’t really much ettiquette that would be nonstandard (such as be nice to people). But not everyone follows it anyway.
Its unclear what exactly you want from this. “Joining the community” is very vague and kind of not possible. There isn’t just one anime community. There are many groups, and while they may all share anime in common that doesn’t mean they all get along with each other. For example, some language groups don’t like others (and sometimes it’s justified, sometimes its not the language groups fault because the translators did a bad job or changed words from the original creator’s work usually without them explicitly knowing, etc). Its kinda like saying you want to join the Lemmy community. What exactly do you mean by that, or better, what are you looking for? Some instances dont get along, some communities on the same instance dont get along, some people in the same community dont get along and form their own on the same or different instance.
So what is it you want? You say to “discover anime and get more into the trends, etc.” Well the first part is simple enough, but what does the second part mean? You want to know what the current trends are? Past trends? You just want a sampler suggestion of different kinds of anime that showcase different trends? This is unclear.
I am happy to make suggestions (though my suggestions skew older and more cultured than modern offerings tend to have, but I do like some modern stuff), but without clarity on what you want I wouldn’t want to offer something you don’t need or care about.
Its kinda like saying you want to join the Lemmy community. What exactly do you mean by that, or better, what are you looking for?
this is the kinda thing i meant in my post! i simply dont know what i dont know!
You say to “discover anime and get more into the trends, etc.” Well the first part is simple enough, but what does the second part mean?
the second part means to become more involved in the community that surrounds the anime. several times in this post people mention spaces where others gather to discuss their favorites, discuss what theyre watching now or excited to watch in the future, or watch along and break down episodes together. thats the kind of stuff im looking for, the community of people who share an interest with me and aren’t going to be mean because i say something wrong or dont know something yet.
Sadly, the community died a long time ago. Nowadays there are just isolated camps throwing shit at each other and normie tourists
i don’t have a frame of reference for that, so i don’t know what you mean. it looks like a community to me
Just stay away from the isekai trash or anything that has title longer than 3 words and you’ll do fine.
i don’t know what “isekai trash” means lmao
Subgenre of fantasy, where the protag goes to another world. Extremely popular, and extremely diverse, so this leads to a lot of less-than-inspired authors writing isekai. It’s really fun, though, at least in my opinion. [Disclaimer: I watch a lot of isekai.]
The Log Horizon series I recommended is IMO really good; a bunch of players of a game are trapped inside the game they were playing, and trying to come back to Earth. Other popular isekai series are:
JP/EN title: Overlord
It’s a single person reincarnated into the game. As the undead that used to be his player. It’s a mix of kingdom building and slowly watching someone’s morals fading away, as the habit makes the monk
JP title: Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken
EN title: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
Common short name: TenSuraAlso “kingdom building” like the above, but there’s no game. Just some guy reincarnated as a slime. Mostly uplifting
JP title: **Otome Geimu no Hametsu Furagu Shika Nai Akuyaku Reijou ni Tensei Shite Shimatta
EN title: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Common short names: HameFura, BakarinaThe protagonist got reincarnated as the villainess of a game series she loved, and is trying to avoid the bad ending. Except she isn’t very smart.
JP title: Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu
EN name: Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World
Common short name: Re:ZeroThe protag goes buy food late night, and suddenly another world, and he doesn’t know why. He has a weird “gimmick” though, he can return from death. The traumas pile up.
JP title: Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o!
EN title: KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!
Common short name: KonoSubaSlapstick comedy. Protag kicks the bucket, and as he’s getting reincarnated the goddess can’t stop mocking him. He forces her to go to the other world with him. They build a dysfunctional adventurer party: he’s mediocre, she’s dumb, and they got a masochist and a mage who only knows a single wide-area spell in the party. [Note: not recommended as an introductory series for isekai, given it relies a lot on poking fun at common tropes of the subgenre.]
JP title: Honzuki no Gekokujou
EN title: Ascendance of a BookwormProtag is a bookworm, dies crushed by books, and reincarnates in a world where books are extremely expensive and she’s dirty poor and has poor health, but she’s still obsessed with books at the expense of everything else.
JP title: Saihate no Paladin
EN title: The Faraway PaladinProtag dies as a shut-in, and gets abandoned when reincarnated as a baby. A ghost, a skeleton and a mummy raise him. Solid adventure, and rather good worldbuilding.
some of those sounds so fun!! thank you for the info!
ive watched the first season of re:zero, and a few episodes in the 2nd, but am having a hard time continuing because it all seems so… neverending. its really really good, and i love the characters, but to have the story be replayed, or issues resurface, so many times is draining!
i think another issue i didn’t know i would have is the titles! for example:
Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! (aka KonoSuba)
is
Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! ← This part
the real title?
Regarding titles, a lot of anime end up with really long official titles because they originate from a Japanese web-novel site where due to the design of the site people have to distinguish their works by the title alone.
I love Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! but that’s a bit of a mouthful so I (along with everyone else) just call it KonoSuba.
Incidentally, this is probably related to the reason SailorFuzz suggested avoiding anime with long titles. Anime that originated from that site on average have more amateurish writing since it’s a site for self-publishing. I wouldn’t go so far as to discount everything there though; there have certainly been some good stories that originated from that site. In addition to KonoSuba I also really liked The Apothecary Diaries, Log Horizon, and Re:Zero for example. There are also plenty of great anime with longer titles that don’t originate from that site, such as Kaguya-sama: Love is War or Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
oo i didnt know that! so its people who write and draw their own web novels, and then sometimes they get picked up by a studio and made in to anime? thats actually really cool!
Many anime viewers (understandably) complain about the results, but it’s certainly nice that amateur writers have a place to publish and read each others’ works. The normal pipeline there is that something will start as a web novel, and then if it’s really successful it’ll get picked up by a publisher like Kodansha to be sold as a light novel and then if that’s successful it’ll eventually get animated. There will often also be a manga adaptation. I’m not certain how different the web novel and light novel usually are; my impression is not very! There is some editing that goes in though, and the light novels also have a bunch of included illustrations. This is both a good thing and a bad one. The web novel will usually have no art at all, just text. When those illustrations are made for the light novel adaptation, they’re locking in character designs that they’ll have to stick with later if those books ever get animated. But at the light novel stage it’s still relatively low-budget so the amount of talent and effort that goes into making those character designs usually (in my opinion) doesn’t measure up to the talent and effort that goes into making character designs for manga-original or anime-original stories. So in addition to a generic RPG fantasy world, you (often) end up with generic RPG fantasy character designs.
“Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o!” is the real title. “KonoSuba” is a really common fan nickname. I’ll reformat the list to be a bit clearer.
About Re:Zero, the story being replayed is part of its gimmick. Like trial and error. Other series aren’t so “repetitive”.
i know like the whole point of re:zero is the replaying of time thing, but it gets draining i guess because ::: spoiler spoiler he has to die and its always so violent or traumatic, which of course, is also part of the point. :::
Yeah, it gets worse over time. Way worse. I love the series but I must admit it’s the sort of stuff I only watch if I’m really in the mood to do it. (Like Evangelion [inb4 not isekai]. Amazing series, one of the classics, but it weights a bit on your psyche.)
There’s stuff like Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi and Isekai Nonbiri Nouka to flush out the bad feelings. Those are mostly slice of life fluff: in one it’s a guy cooking for a giant wolf and a slime, in another it’s some guy farming and building a settlement in the middle of nowhere.
oh man im def checking out the farming one, that sounds perfect to just chill with!
Re:Zero is great but if you don’t want to watch the main character have a horrible time you probably are good to stop watching. It is definitely gonna keep happening more in the future.
thats good to know thank you! :)
“isekai” is “another world”.
The protagonist ends up leaving our world and is transported/reincarnated into another – usually JRPG-like medieval fantasy themed – early in the show. The stereotypical mechanism is that the protagonist gets run over by a truck… Usually they end up in some sort of power fantasy story taking advantage of either their knowledge/technology from our world or special skills they got via the reincarnation or whatever.
There’s, uh, a lot of them… of varying quality.
Some popular examples are Konosuba, Re-Zero, and Mushoku Tensei. Which shows qualify as trash is, of course, a matter of taste. 🙃️
i see! thank you :) i have heard from more than one person now that these are hit or miss, so i will have to be careful!
i have heard from more than one person now that these are hit or miss
When they hit, they hit like a truck.
I’ll see myself out.
hehehe
