Anime series everyone should watch at least once!

Similarly to my last blog, I'll be giving some recommendations, but this time anime ones. I won't list OVA/OAV/movie-exclusive anime though, as those are for another blog (I have a LOT of them)! This time, I'm focusing more on lesser known (or almost completely unknown) anime series that are a good or great watch, but will list some more recent ones that went completely under the radar.


Aoi Sekai no Chuushin De
Starting with a pretty average one, but for people on this forum it can prove to be a fun watch. Imagine a medieval world with two kingdoms based on Nintendo and Sega fighting for supremacy, with characters being based on characters from the respective company's games and having superpowers, with the added bonus of seeing hotties getting their clothes blasted away every so often!:P

.hack//Roots , .hack//SIGN , .hack//Versus - The Thanatos Report , .hack//Liminality , .hack//Gift , .hack//G.U. Returner , .hack//Legend of the Twilight , .hack//Quantum
Yeah yeah, I know, expected considering it was in my last blog (hell, if I make a game suggestion blog you can expect these to be in there:rofl2:), but as a huge fan of the series that started almost as many cliches as Akira, it's a must watch for everyone who's interested in game-based anime or anime that blend computers with the real world! If you aren't feeling like watching them all, give SIGN, Liminality and Roots a try in that order. Expect some of the most amazing music you will ever get to hear in an anime when watching these too, so fitting ("GOD Diva" for example is EPIC)!

Grenadier
Sexy busty blonde chick kicks ass with a revolver in a medieval-Japan-like world AND has kinda interesting characters and plot, so what else could you ask for?

Bokurano
Fight to save the Earth from getting cleansed with different Earths getting pitted against one another and being represented by a giant mecha, with home and away fights. While the main premise isn't that interesting, DEFINITELY give this a watch, as it has some of the best character development out of all anime out there, despite having a huge variety of characters with deep backgrounds! This anime mainly revolves around a certain group of early-teen kids, with greatly varying backstories and can get pretty damn dark at times!

K (aka K Project)
Plenty people know of this, but most of the new generation of weebs doesn't know it, so give it a watch. It's edginess overload, with interesting characters and a sort of comical hook which keeps you along until the very end. I'm referring to the original series though, not the second one (which is decent at best).

Mnemosyne: Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi (aka RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne)
First off, heads up, this is an R-rated show as it contains a pretty damn nice amount of nudity, but also it can get VERY gruesome! This anime takes place around 1990 (but can vary a LOT throughout), in a real world-like place, but one where angels exist among the population. Angels are created from regular people seemingly randomly, with female ones gaining immortality (lucky them... except for all the torture in this show, lol:rofl2:), while males one gain immense strength and other abilities but can only live for a single week. The show follows the stories of two females and can get really interesting!

Rinne no Lagrange
A classic story that takes elements from mecha shows like Evangelion, about a schoolgirl ending up piloting a mecha and protecting her city against enormous aliens, so really cliche, but this one is good! And while this isn't a comedy or anything, whatever humor it has in it is actually funny compared to the cringey humor other shows like it have. On top of everything, it has some beautiful visuals if you are into that kind of anime watching, with a touch of fanservice...

Rozen Maiden (Seasons 1-3 and Zurückspulen)
A show about dolls that have been imbued with life by their creator for the purpose of finding a master to draw power from and fight until only one remains, who will turn into a girl that goes by the name of "Alice", a supposedly perfect girl that their creator has been longing for. A really fun show to watch, an interesting plot, beautiful visuals despite being outdated, AMAZING soundtracks (all 3 openings and especially "Kamp":bow: among others) and the two most important dolls being gorgeous, especially the "evil ones" (with Suigintou being by far one of my favorite characters of all time)!

Togainu no Chi
Here we have an anime with everything it needed to be epic, but falling really short because of bad production. However, it's still a great watch, despite the bad character development and even worse animation! It's about a guy getting framed for something and as means out, he gets sent to a secluded city of undesirables, where people murder one another without a second thought and tries to find a way out of it all. If you decide to watch this series, watch it through to the end, even if it starts losing you, as the towards the climax you will see that awesome powers can make even a badly animated series look incredible!:P

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Welp, I'm tired, so I'll leave it at this for now... I mainly got tired trying to decide what series to recommend as I have HUNDREDS of them I want to, but I'm too lazy to write descriptions of...;-; I'll probably make a part 2 sometime soon, but don't count on it, may instead do the OVA/OAV/movie one first! Anyway, let me know what you think about these recommendation blogs of mine down in the comments and also whether you have watched these or what you thought of them after you watched them due to this blog!
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I feel that Toei Yu-Gi-Oh is a hidden gem and hardly anyone watched it. It is way darker than the other entries in the franchise and it never got a dub. The Duel Monsters series became branded as Yu-Gi-Oh! So no one really knew about the original. Now some people have actually wanted to watch it and call it season Zero. It focused on how Yugi built the Millennium Puzzle, and how another being takes over his body when he is needed. A common occurrence in the anime is a Yami No Game, where players play a game which turns their own sins against them. If they cheat the door of darkness opens and their own sins consume them, say, being lit on fire alive, being vain and losing your beauty, or literally dying. Yami Yugi usually did stuff like this, but he later began to know the meaning of friendship and toned it down a bit. Still this is a must watch because it's so good. Only 25 episodes were made though.
 
The Pet girl of Sakurasou
Not complete compared to the light novel. The light novel ends pretty much how you expect it.

High school DxD

Elfen Lied

Trinity Seven

Toradora
 
dark realistic, maybe
series : Aku no hana (title means "Les fleurs du mal", like Baudelaire's book), it's about bullying at school.
movie : Gyo, it's about fighting unknown creatures/life form.
not sure that's what you asked, and not sure those are relaxing haha.

edit: dark with messages, maybe Death parade? or if you never watched, Attack on titan, Psycho pass, Ajin,

I didn't watch a lot of anime (not only mecha) for the last 2 years. I watched only Natsume Yuujinchou and tales of zestiria. And on netflix last year I watched attack on titan2, castlevania, Kuro mukuro (mecha), and gargantia. I used to watch a lot more, but I do it by period. I'm on my TV Shows period, I watch too much to follow anything else.

I used to find most anime from torrent, but apparently there have been a lot of changes and tracker went private or closed. not sure it would be easy to get back to it now to find hidden gems that nobody is officially broadcasting (netflix, etc.)
mylist, maybe it can give you ideas : anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=mylist&uid=48425&pass=guest
 
Every time I see these lists, I get so disappointed when there is barely any mention of any of the currently airing stuff.
I think I saw one person mention Made in Abyss (good) and Flip Flappers (garbage), which are fairly recent, but everything else is a million years old.


I've watched nearly everything on most top 100 lists, so I think around late 2015 I started watching EVERY currently airing anime. Though I needed to drop a few series after the 3 episode rule, I've watched more than 90% of every show from start to finish. Exceptions are super long running franchise series (Pokemon, BeyBlade, etc) or sequels to stuff I haven't watched the first/2nd/third season of.


Cyan There are a million streaming sites that offer 720p - 1080p that list nearly every single airing anime for the current season, and a massive library of old stuff.

If I were to recommend anything, I would only state stuff from the previous season. There is just way too much.
Personal favorite from Fall 2017 season is Houseki no Kuni.
 
@SANIC True, not many people know of Duel Monsters's season 0, but anyone who watched it in Japanese should have encountered it... But that Red Eyes movie was great, Metal Red Eyes Black Dragon vs Blue Eyes White Dragon!:D

@linuxares As I've been constantly saying, all those shows are pretty well known. Also, only list anime with the English names if you are suggesting the dub and the dub for Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo was terrible!:P

@Cyan I've watched all those you listed (except Ajin which I'm halfway through). By dark I meant something along the lines of Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze or, like I said, The Big O. What you listed as dark is more kiddy anime and not dark whatsoever, lol:rofl2:

@GameSystem For the last time, this blog is NOT about recommending random anime, but recommending lesser known series that are mainly old and have been buried by other newer shows or the mountain of trash! I want to keep things organized, so for new shows, I intent to make a separate blog.
 
@ThoD I'm to lazy to write the japanese names. And yes, dubs are mostly terrible, that's why all of these series have JPN talk with ENG sub. I should know, I got the blurays of them :P
 
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@Futurdreamz Toradora is great, but when it's already so famous, why would it be in a "hidden gems"-sort-of list?:P But yeah, Taiga is love!
 
Those two are great watches, forgot to even put them on my main list where I picked stuff from unfortunately, thanks for reminding me Daggot!
 
G
Neon Genesis Evangelion

Outlaw Star
 
M
Man I like anime and havent heard of any of this stuff. Where is berserk,death note,Neon genesis,welcome to the NHK,FMA brotherhood.
 
Monster...
Oh wait, who could've guessed someone with my avatar would suggest Monster?

Also, Master Keaton, because today I want to suggest Urasawa.
 
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Seeing how many people don't get the concept of "lesser known" shows, I'm actually thinking of making an ACTUAL list (only titles rather than title+a comment about it) with every anime worth watching in the history of the media, but probably will hit the word limit and will have to split it up in like 7 parts... But oh well, may or may not happen, no guarantees:P
 
I actually like your brief synopsis of each though. If someone doesn't like mecha, they can skip all the shows where you mention that word. A list has no soul.
 
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I know, reason I do recommendations like this. However, I get kinda tired having to remember a show fully first, then writing a synopsis or something short about it all while trying to choose which ones to put, on top of getting unbelievably bored when I'm typing, as the most I can do while I make the blog is play a game with one hand or listen to music, but even that gets old fast, reason I only put like 8-10 per blog... I wish I didn't get bored so easily:sad: I'll try to make one sometime soon with about 30 or so though, too bad there's no saving temporarily so I can do it in a few goes rather than all at once (saving it to a text editor and pasting back in temp's editor really ruins the formatting and setting it as a future blog (meaning to be posted after a certain date) would require me to finish it soon so I won't have to keep moving the date forward. On top of that, exam season starts very soon in uni so I doubt I'll even have the time to make a huge blog!
 
That's sort of the reason I will only recommend stuff that aired in the last season or two. They are still somewhat fresh in my memory. Besides, not everything ages well.
 
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That's not the problem. I clearly remember every anime I've seen that I enjoyed (got partial hyperthymesia so I can thankfully control it to remember the things I enjoy and discard the rest), but the issue is having to decide which one will fit the widest audience, all the while trying to suggest things I know the majority of people in the community haven't heard of or have heard but weren't given any incentive to watch. For next blog I guess I'll pick a random folder with anime from my PC (got about 59 folders containing 50 different random anime each (I keep them like that for the fun of it) and will take alphabetically any I intent to recommend... For this one, I simply picked them at random from an actual list I keep to know which anime series I got downloaded and where I have it stored (many hard drives).
 
D Gray MAN (this is and has been my fav show for very long now).

edit : and JoJo (all of the series).

Prince of Tennis is good too.
 

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