Trix’s Anime Reccomendations

The following shows I’ll call the prerequisite pillars for anime in general. These are shows you should do your best to watch as soon as possible. Even if you can’t watch the entire show, watch at least an entire story arc. These are not neccessarily the ‘Best Shows’, but serve as a reference and foundation for many anime afterwards.

Dragon Ball Z
Mobile Suit Gundam (The original)
Neon Genesis Evangelion

Those are probably the three pillars of modern anime. Cowboy Bebop is another show you should watch ASAP, but it is not as important overall as those three shows.

It’s fine for you to think that “Naruto is the Best Thing EVER”, but if you’ve never watched DBZ you’re really missing out on a lot. A good number of today’s action shows are inspired by DBZ, in fact the creator of Naruto directly credits DBZ and its creator for inspiring him. While I wouldn’t argue that Naruto may be a better show, once you see DBZ you can draw a lot of similarities to the core elements.

Mobile Suit Gundam/First Gundam is undoubtedly the single most popular franchise in Japan. The Big Mech genre existed before Gundam of course, but Gundam really made it explode. The Gundam series is still going strong today, with many different seasons and spinoffs of the show with varying themes, some better than others. Still, it is best to go back to the original, and see where it all began.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is much more recent than Gundam, but it serves as a significant milestone in anime. (In fact, the creator of Evangelion actually worked on a Gundam series). Eva was a very different kind of action/mech show, and it dove much more into the psychological thinking and behaviours of the characters, and humanity itself. After Evangelion, there were many more ‘psychological thriller’ types of shows about. While many of them may not have been directly inspired by it, Eva created a clear path for those shows to reach a wide audience.

Ultimately, you cannot deny that there have been shows since DBZ, Gundam and Eva who have surpassed them in terms of overall quality. But you also cannot deny that they had to start somewhere. Without DBZ, there may not have been a Naruto or a Bleach. Without Gundam, there may not have even been an Evangelion. Without Evangelion, we may have never seen Serial Experiments Lain or Paranoia Agent. These three shows all have their own culture around them that has been ingrained with the anime community. Ask any casual fan of anime what a Kamehameha is, and he could probably tell you. Go to anime discussions and you’ll inevitably see some whiny, sissy hero be compared to “Shinji”. Find out why one blonde man with a mask fetish goes by at least three different names.

Now, on to the list.

Trix is here.

I’m just a guy living in the middle of nowhere (Bermuda), who loves video games and anime. I’m also into technology related stuff, but games and anime are more of my expertise.

It was in late 2001 when I really started getting deep into video games and anime: I had some income so I bought a Gamecube, and I started downloading unlicensed fansubs of some anime. I’ve actually missed most things gaming-and-anime-related that happened before 2001.

Gaming-wise, I like to say that the NES came out the same year I did. My dad got one a few months after I was born, for himself, and that was the only console I had up until 2001, when I bought myself a Gamecube. I have had all of the gameboys, but no SNES, Genesis, PS1… you get the deal. So this means I had never played any Final Fantasy, never played Zelda, or most other big old-school games.

On the anime front, I had *seen* anime before, but didn’t know what exactly it was. There was a religious program called ‘Superbook’, that was probably my first anime. My parents didn’t let me get into Transformers, because at the time there was a big stink about Evolution and religion, and Transformers were the devil. Later on in life, I saw Dragon Ball Z on Cartoon Network, and that is what sparked my true interest in anime. It wasn’t until 2001 that my world was blasted open by the internet, and digital fansubs became a part of my life.

Still, before 2001 all I had was what was on Cartoon Network. To put into perspective how much stuff I missed, I only watched Evangelion for the first time in November of 2006.

My game/anime fandom is stronger than ever now. I actually went to Japan, by myself, in September 2006. I participated in the Tokyo Game Show (there were more people in those 3 warehouses than there were in my entire country), watched some raw anime on local TV, and took in a few of the historical sites in and around Tokyo. A few highlights were: visiting Toshogu Shrine, meeting Hideo Kojima, and beating some Japanese people in Virtua Fighter 5.
So there’s a brief history of my history. Please pardon any future comments on stuff that I may think is the newest, most innovative best-thing-ever, but has actually been around for a long time. Because I probably missed it. Your comments will definitely be appreciated, and will aid in my own education in these fields as well.