Tempy wrote:

Rattled through a few more Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood This is the one that generally sits comfortably atop the best of lists, seemingly indestructible. Hiromu Arakawa's defining work, a shounen written by (gasp!) a woman, that manages to sidestep a bunch of the inevitable crassness of most shounen, and is also fairly condensed and well paced to boot. Brotherhood is a direct adaptation of the manga, as opposed to the original 2003 FMA, which goes really bizarre after the first third and does its own thing. There are pros and cons to this - Brotherhood is definitely well thought through from beginning to end, but the pacing means that the earlier stuff isn't given time to properly settle and it can feel a bit breakneck. What I really liked about this, beyond the smart use of setting and theme to reinforce its messages, are how it refused to just be about the to central characters. By the end its about a lot of different people, a real ensemble cast of good folk, villains, people caught in between with their own issues and feelings. It feels like a great companion piece to Avatar/Korra, not just in the elemental magic, but in the way it neatly deals with some adult ideas and serious themes without ever becoming too grim or nasty. It's not the best thing I've ever watched, but I happily chewed through all 60 odd episodes without ever feeling bored. Dennou Coil - Now this is a good one. An anime i'd recommend to anyone, which is high praise. Directed and written by Mitsuo Iso, who has had a long, long career in animation, it's a blindingly well made program that spends a long time setting up the rules and laws of its world, to deliver a really neat and well packaged story that touches on some interesting and culturally relevant themes. Essentially a mystery story following a bunch of kids as they live their life in a city that has fully given itself over to AR technology. Everyone wears glasses and people own AR pets. The world is made to look better by the inclusion of AR assets in real life, and the line between reality and technology is blurred. It feels in many ways like a more straightforward and less meditative follow up to Serial Experiments Lain. That may sell the ruminations it has on modern technology short, but it always feels very accessible. Aired on NHK in a traditional children's programming slot, it builds a complex world and reinforces its ideas quite a lot, but it definitely isn't just for children. Unlike a lot of anime the quality of animation is incredible from start to finish. It looks and feels like a Ghibli film, but is 26 episodes long. It also has a wonderful standout episode called "Daichi's Hair Begins to Grow" which may just be one of the best episodes of an anime I can care to name. The Tatami Galaxy - an adaptation of a campus novel by Masaaki Yuasa, the director behind the brilliant Mind Games (and Ping-Pong, which I haven't seen) The Tatami Galaxy follows the trials and tribulations of a freshman student as they try to navigate the social milieu of University life, and figure out their social standing amongst a weird group of individuals. It's really refreshingly animated and oscillates between heartfelt and hilarious without skipping a beat. There's a very obvious twist to the story in episode one that sets up the subsequent story quite nicely, but its resolution is even better, and the penultimate episode is a fantastic mixed media exploration of animation which is so nice to see in Anime which can often seem quite generic and static. Thumbs up for all.

Tempy wrote:

don’t