Anime recs?
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@NotSanni You out here reccing dandadan to heal someone’s soul when THAT ONE EP just hits out of nowhere?!
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@tsar Space Dandy! Futuristic adventures of a bounty hunter who chases alien criminals (and boobies). He’s an idiot with a pompadour. Happens in the same broader universe as Cowboy Bebop.
And it’s the funniest unintentional Mage: the Ascension story I’ve ever seen.
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This is too sad to heal your soul but I want more people to watch The Summer Hikaru Died.
But actual more soul-healing answer would be SPYxFAMILY.
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@Tez said in Anime recs?:
@NotSanni You out here reccing dandadan to heal someone’s soul when THAT ONE EP just hits out of nowhere?!
I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.
My rec still stands. Sometimes you gotta get a lil hurt to enjoy the good even more. They do a good job of following the hurt up with the healing.
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@NotSanni said in Anime recs?:
I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.
I guess I’m a glutton for trauma. To the list!
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@tsar said in Anime recs?:
@NotSanni said in Anime recs?:
I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.
I guess I’m a glutton for trauma. To the list!
jokes and bits aside - there’s definitely some sad stuff in Dandadan, but (so far at least, I haven’t read the manga so I can’t speak to the future) it feels overall wholesome to me, and the sad/trauma related and adjacent stuff feels poignant and impactful.
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Agree. I actually like Dandadan quite a bit. We watched it on a friend’s rec when she was visiting. She’d already seen it. When THAT ONE EP hit the rest of us were all staring at the screen crying while she was like
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@tsar JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. I can’t tell you why, or describe this show to you in any way other than, it’s fucking BIZARRE.
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I will second @Pavel’s recommendation of Cells At Work. It’s educational and fun!
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
Rundown: My significant other hates anime (a combination of a dislike of the art style and certain aspects of Japanese culture) and she watches this one. She likes the theme of friendship combined with the Fellowship of the Ring vibe. It’s a cozy fantasy with slice of life with occasional shonen elements (fighting demons, a sort-of tournament across kind of thing) that becomes more frequent as the series progress, but it still keeps the cozy episodes.
Frieren is a Tolkein-esque (extremely long-lived, only dies to disease and trauma) elf mage who was one of the four members of the hero’s party that slayed the demon king and brought peace to demi/human-kind. The show starts with said party returning to the capital city they originally set off from to celebrate their victory and have a few episodes set 50 years after that. Then we skip ahead 80 years after the defeat of the demon king which is where the meat of the show is, which is how this elf woman comes to terms with losing her friends, missing out on romance because she failed to realize the hero had romantic feelings for her, making new friends, helping the next generation of adventurers come into their own, and dealing with keeping up with a world that keeps changing.
Pros: There is slice of life, heartwarming moments, heart wrenching moments, shonen action, and some really good humor (Mimics have Frieren’s number. She will die by Mimic, and it will be deserved.) This is an anime that can hit different between age groups. It might be a little slow to start for those under 30, but, if you sit with it, you get to the shonen action. For those of us who qualify as “olds” and have experienced some life and loss, it resonates on an emotional level, and you get some funny bits and shonen action to break it up. Also Frieren tends to be interpreted as being somewhat autistic and people like the inclusion of neurodiversity.
Cons: Loss, grief, the memories of those who we have lost, and dealing with the world changing around us is a central theme of this. If you’re currently in the midst of similar emotions, it could be cathartic for you, or it could be very much not. You said you are coming off of Jujutsu Kaizen and are currently watching Chainsaw Man, so this show may be lacking the action you are wanting from anime.
Apothecary Diaries
Rundown: Do you like Sherlock Holmes? Do you like House M.D? Do you like Game of Thrones, Shogun, or Chinese palace dramas full of intrigue? Then this is the show for you! This is a historical fantasy intrigue/drama, mystery solver, shoujo romance show.
The protagonist, Maomao, is a medicine woman that works in the red light district of the capital of similar to but legally distinct from (seriously every episode has a “this is a work of fiction and any similarities are pure coincidence” line at the beginning) Tang and Quing dynasty not-China, when she gets kidnapped and sold to the imperial palace as a maid (“families” who send their “daughters” to the imperial palace get 20% of the money they earn). She proceeds to figure out why the concubines in the rear palace (the 2,000 woman and 1,000 eunuch strong, walled off area of the palace where the Emperor’s concubines are kept) are getting sick and the recently born crown prince just died. Recognizing her awesomeness, she becomes the unofficial medicine woman/detective for the rear palace, solving medical mysteries, murder mysteries, and thwarting sinister political intrigue, while also having a slow burn romance with that eunuch who runs everything and is so beautiful that even some lesbian woman and straight men would be willing to let him do whatever he wanted with them, if he, you know, wasn’t a eunuch. Unfortunately for him, because he is intrigued by her, Maomao is one of the few that is immune to his charms.
Pros: This show has another strong female protagonist who also tends to get interpreted as being slightly autistic. This one sucked me on, even if my girlfriend hates it for reasons in the cons. The mysteries are solvable by the audience, meaning there are no ass pulls or ridiculous deductions or inferences that no one but Sherlock Holmes would make and only after snorting his entire supply. Only a couple of the mysteries kept me guessing, which is great, because if I solved all of them I would probably get bored. The romance is nice too. It doesn’t dominate the show, as the maga author isn’t trying to write a romance manga but her family members who read her work keep pushing for more romance, and it’s a slow burn. The palace intrigue is really good, too. They leave clues for plots in motion in early episodes, tying in previous mysteries to overarching plots. It’s well paced, intelligent, and the art is fantastic. The setting and the intrigue is influencing a lot of my ideas on the silly MU* server I suggested a few months ago. It also deals with gender roles, sexual exploitation, and other such themes in a mature manner rather than handling it like a bull in a china shop like a lot of other anime and American shows do.
Cons: Did you read that last sentence? Yeah, all sorts of trigger warnings on this one. This is pseudo Tang/Quing dynasty China. A progressive, egalitarian setting it is not. If women and the lower classes being exploited sexually and economically doesn’t squick you out of this anime, maybe the fact that suicide is discussed, threatened, and occurs will. Oh, and the previous Emperor was a pedophile. That’s not me calling him one; that is what the characters in the show refer to him as with disgust. The mother of the current Emperor was 10 when she became pregnant. Yeah. These things aren’t the focus of the show (well, the gender roles and sexual exploitation are because it’s set in a harem), but they are a part of the setting and so come up occasionally.
I recommend Mother’s Basement and Gigguk for covering the anime released in a season:
