Poll: What anime lover are you? [Spoilers, M18- May contain sexual preferences]

[Dark-San]

[color=chocolate][b][size=3] It had always been a habit. Every night, I had never failed to watch a minimum average of 3 anime episodes. The genre of the animes that I have caught so far? Well there is quite a lot. For gore and blood, there is Elfen Lied. For hentai, yaoi and yuri, there is School Days and probably the infamous Bible Black.

Of all the types of the genres as stated above, my collection consisted mostly of romance. I have a lot of those titles ranging from the 1995 Whisper of the Heart, 2002 Please Teacher, 2003 Saikano and the latest 2006 Hanbu No Tsuki Ga Noboru Sora.

From one glance into my collection, one could easily pointed out that I am a sucker when it comes to romance. True true, I have never fail to admit that. However what is it with romance genre that really fished me out from the rest? The below mentioned are the reasons that I have come up with over my 5 years of anime experience.

Reason #1 - The inclusion of fantasy.

The main difference between Japanese dramas and animes is that Japanese dramas have a touch of reality. This reality acts as a barrier that would hinder the development of romance plot. Look at Onegai Teacher, the producers included in the unrealistic technological factor that saves Kei's life. Not to mention Ayashi no Ceres, is it even scientifically possible for even a reincarnated soul to reside in a modern girl's conscious to fall in love? The fantasy element just makes the anime get more interesting.

Reason #2 - That eechi factor.

Being eechi is different from hentai. Hey lets see how can I explain this... Okay let say eechi would be a mild sexual scene while hentai would be full blown hardcore sexual act (Be it oral or intercourse)[color=chocolate][b][size=3]. I have to agree that not all romantic scenes should be eechi-lised. Take one example in Please Twins when Maiku had multiple times on accidental purposes caress Mina's breast on several ocassions. Hey these are eechi scenes, they are there in the first place for laughter (Jokes purposes) and also mild sexual tension.

Reason #3 - The 50 - 50 genre story plot.

Saikano, one of the animes, that well balances the action and romance plot well. One moment you would have Chise destroying war planes and enemies on the war front. Another moment, you would have her cludding at Shuuji's lap, sharing their love together. This kind of anime benefits those anime fans seeking for actions and thrills with minimum gore and also those like me. For Chise, her existence with Shuuji seems forever and to fans like me, this thought keeps running through my mind everytime I watches an episode. To the point that I really pity the female lead.

To the action fans, they would probably be fancinated by the explosives and the weapons that Chise possess [i](My apologies if this seems like sterotyping the action fans. Gomen! ^.^)[b][size=3].

These are the 3 main reasons that I have come up with. Is there any comments that my fellow TPMers would like to highlight? What is your favourite genre and what are your reasons?

[Roarkiller]

For want of choice of genre, may I suggest you add the usual list of suspects found in most anime sites? You forgot plain humor, after all ( Azumanga Daioh anyone?)

Romance makes up the bulk of my collection, but that's probably because they happen to make up most of the anime decent enough to watch. ALso, as an obsessed fan of realism, romance stories fit the bill most of the time. Imagine: no superpowers, no anime craziness, no action. Sounds about right. But the thing I like the best about this genre is EMOTIONS. To me, emotions play the biggest part in an anime, where the only real "physical" thing are the voices. More later.

Higher up my preference list (and #1 on my must-have list all the time), while covering a wide spectrum, can simply be called, for want of an umbrella term, the weird. Covers pretty much from heavy gore to psychos, ghosts to macabre. Includes Paranoia Agent, SEL, Elfen Lied, and Perfect Blue. Basically, I'm a sucker for anything not normal. Probably since I'm not normal up here in the first place.

Another genre I love is one that almost everyone else loath: slice-of-life genre. Anime like Aria, To Heart (1st season hardly has any romance), Kiki's Delivery Service, and the like. Apart from fitting the bill of my relalism fetish, I also like the laidback attitude these anime usually have. And more often than not, these anime are usually slow-paced and generally calm. In a word, relaxing.

I don't really watch hentai. Not because I'm a goody-two-shoes, but because of the EXTREMELY high unrealistic factor general to this genre. Plus, half, if not most, are not erotic; rather, they are sick. Recently though, I have been catching some hentai for the fun of it (or rather, the lack of anything else to watch, plus the XDCC bots are damn fast). Among the ones that I dump are Love Doll and Cool Devices. And yes, I have watched Bible Black 1st season. Not all it's hyped up to be though, I'm guessing it got its notoriety from the use of Satanism, and the title being Bible Black doesn't help it's cause. No spoilers, but honestly, I'm betting the rituals were inspired by books about Satanism rituals. Pretty much looks like the typical portrayal of small-group satanic worshippers.

Last mention on my list is a pretty small niche. Dunno what's it's called, but for simplicity I'll call it the Tragedy genre. Saikano fits the bill here, which btw is EXTREMELY recommended. There aren't many anime that fits this genre, so I don't really recall any other than Saikano and Grave of the Fireflies. This genre is usually, if not always, coupled with other genre, like romance or war genre.

I think everyone should've noticed by nor that I never mentioned anything about the usual action or humor. That's because to me these are simply cheap thrills, too widespread. It's not that I don't enjoy them, more like I'm indifferent about them, because there's nothing special about them.

Special Section (lol)
Good voice acting make or break an anime most of the time, and in romance anime, bad voice acting is a total disaster. Examples of great voice acting: parting of Van and Hitomi in Escaflowne ending; final outburst of Kaoru against Aoi's father in Ai Yori Aoshi. Bad acting, endless. Any dialogue where the speech is deliberately slow (Kanon's Sayuri) is, to me, unforgivable. High pitched voices are common, but too high and it spoils the show. That's why I never got pass ep2 of Hack Dusk.

Anyway, enough ranting. I need to go on already.

[Alucard]

I can't stand that romance shit or the kiddy crap. I hate anime of that kind, which is 90% of the anime out there.

I really don't see what the big fuss is about hentai/etc in anime. If it's tasteful then it doesn't bother me. If it's setting a mood or something along those lines then it's fine. If it's some hardcore tentical rape monster scene that lasts for 20 minutes with multiple girls getting involved, then chances are i'll either skip over it or just stop watching. I don't find things like that needed in anime ;/

As for what I like, I'd have to say Blood, Gore & Action. I do like a little perverted humour though. It's always amusing when a breast if fondles and there's a stream of blood from the nose lolz~ I did enjoy watching Burn Up Excess just for that reason. I thought that was a hilarious little series. Tasteful perverted humour~

[Pokemaster Ash]

Well I'm probably never going to be the otaku any of you will ever be, but I've seen my fair share of animes. I'm into all sorts of things, and that can easily be discerned by all the animes I've ever watched (be it just a few episodes on hard-to-find DVDs, shows that had only a couple of episodes aired before moved to timeslots I couldn't watch them at, or whole series aired on Toonami and/or Adult Swim). Trust me, it's a long list. Here's some examples so you get an idea, though:

Mega Man NT Warrior (the poor hacked up dub of Rockman.EXE and Axess)
Pokémon
FullMetal Alchemist
Inu-Yasha
Ranma ½
Sailor Moon
Gundam
Dragonball
Urusei Yatsura (only subbed series I've ever seen, and only a couple DVDs worth)
Evangelion
Yu-Gi-Oh (and GX)
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Some of the series I've only been lucky to catch glimpses of before going off-air or being moved to timeslots unable for me to view at have been .hack//sign (I bet I screwed that up), Escaflowne, and Outlaw Star.

Like I said, varied. Notice nothing's too extreme in one way or another, though (with the possible exception of Evangelion, which I've only seen about half of thus far). Not into that stuff much. In fact, all of FMA's angst almost made me stop watching after only a few eps, but I made it to the end of the series. Not too bad a look into my anime psyche. And I've seen lots more animes than this, I just didn't mention them for purpose of taking up too much space.

[Dark-San]

[b][size=3] It is no surprise, Jay. Often people have the concept of anime of being gory and bloodly in their mnd. I too once generalised anime after my first stint with anime besides humour is gore. Blood The Last Vampire was my first gore type anime movie. It was also what prompt me to follow up on it's latest anime series, Blood plus (Hint hint, Better watch this one if you are seriously into gore and blood besides Elfen Lied).

However for your case, Jay. I will still take it that you belong to the gore fan club instead of the ones that are just stero typing animes.

For humour, yes I did missed out on that. That was why the Other section in the poll was there for you dudes to vote for. Humour is a strong element genre in the recent modern animes. One would often linked up humour with the 2002 famous release, Azumanga Daioh (As pointed out by Roarkiller). I personally do not find Azumanga Daioh amusing and entertaining. Instead I found it annoying and silly. I threw the whole series out from my watching schedule after just merely five episodes.

In fact, I would nicely linked up homour with 2004 release Full Metal Panic Fummofu. It is pure classic. Even to humour seeking fans who hadn't watched the first series, they were just amused by the random stupidity displayed by Sagara and how Chidori would discipline him. Though with 12 episodes and 2 OVAs, the series was well worth to watch.

Another anime that would nicely parthner humour and romance would be the infamous Midori no Hibi. My guess is that besides me, ryan and perhaps Roarkiller, nobody else in the forum would have known of this anime.

[AntiAsh Superstar]

One shouldn't necessarily dismiss the violent animes out of hand tho... sure there's plenty of ones out there that go for shock value alone but there's also some damn fine pieces of story writing in there too... Elfen Lied and Cyber City Oedo spring immediately to mind for me (the third installment of the OVA for the latter remains for me one of the most absorbing things I've ever watched ever full stop).

My genre of choice... I guess for the most part I'll actually go with the horror/sci-fi/gore/other random genre that requires a 'no kids' certificate... simple reason being that I like a good, complex plot and believable chars which is hard to do if you're going for something family friendly (if you don't know what I mean let's look at my favourite non-anime films... it goes The Crow, Donnie Darko, Interview With The Vampire etc etc... things where there's no clearly defined good or evil that feature a really strong cast). Sure, I'll basically give anything a go for an episode or two and sure, sometimes my mood simply requires something random like Azumanga Daioh or Goldfish Warning but for the most part... yup, dark, sinister stuff is where it's at.

[Roarkiller]

Actually, Fumoffu would stand at 15 eps, with one unaired because the first half has a faked child abduction scene, and at that time, Japan was having more than a couple of child kidnapping cases.

Midori no Hibi isn't really humour, although there's a considerable dose of it. The anime sidetracked from the manga quite a bit in terms of plot and story flow. The title literally means "Midori Days", referring to the girl Midori, and the manga focuses more on their daily lives, with the drama climax only at the very end. The anime plants the drama throughout the entire series, as a set up for the ending. In a way, the manga is pure humour/romance, while the anime is drama/humour/romance.

There ain't that many gore anime out there, at least not those known in the mainstream. It's not a popular genre, and they are mostly OVAs and movies anyway. Would be nice to actually see more of these, but eh.

[midnightangel]

I like alot of different anime. Mostly I'm more into the anime shows with

• action and adventure
• sci-fi/futuristic
• comedy
• a human interest angle to it (person has a tragic or deep hidden past)
• romance---but not all that flowery girly stuff

The anime I watch is InuYasha, Blue Gender, Neon Genesis Evangelion, all the Dragonball series, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and 2nd Gig, FullMetal Alchemist, Sailor Moon, Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Lupin III, Big O, Card Captor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh! (original--NOT GX), and Pokemon I am fond of the little yellow rodent. Shoot me. :biggrin:

[Blademaster]

The anime I watch is... ...Card Captor Sakura

...They still air that?

[Dark-San]

[color=chocolate][b][size=3] Nah that anime was only aired sometime back. The current 'in- anime' of TPM from the looks of the numbers of fans we have would be the 2004 most watched anime, Full Metal Alchemist. To my surprise, what I found out from my end is that they are only just airing the early episodes of the anime in the free to air television network.

Full Metal Alchemist comes as a more rounded off anime that consists of almost of the genre you can find. From humour, action and to a mild bit of romantic hints between Winry and Edward. As complete it may seem to be by many critics, I would choose Chrno Crusade anytime over this one.

Partially the reason was the sad ending (Evil prevails)[b][size=3] and the sacrificial love between Chrno and Rosette was perhaps the most interesting point to note of.

For this one, Ryan can concur to that. And speaking of which, Roarkiller when are you going to get FMA from me?

[Roarkiller]

Don't suppose you'll be free sometime tomorrow then? Eheh :redface: Sorry, but when you're jobless and a manga scanlation as the only work available, you get too lazy to even leave the house. Or the computer, in my case.

I'll get it this week for sure.

In the meantime, watched Karin ep1-2, interest born from reading the manga. It's a pretty original theme; a vampire who, instead of sucking blood, injects blood into people. Or as they put it, not a blood-sucker, but a blood-maker. Manga's very good, but the anime has pacing problems. So far it follows the storyline close enough though.

Besides, I haven't watched a decent vampire show since Tsukihime. Too bad I can't find Tsukuyomi though, looked like it's a blast to watch (missed due to being in Thailand).

[Dark-San]

[b][size=3] Karin was pretty good or so to speak by some of my friends. However being released around the same timing as Blood plus, I was torn between the two vampire shows. I went for the latter taking into account that I've seen the introductory movie before.

So as not to move away from the topic, I would explain the reason on why would Blood plus likely belong to the gore/ action side. Firstly one should have seen the faces of the Chiroptearn. These are no ordinary vampires, Chiroptearn are beasts with the faces that bear resemblences of a vampire bat. Seconfly I do believe that there is one episode where by they show a Chiroptearn clearly sucking out the victim's blood till the victim was really dried up. Lastly would be the battle scenes between Saya and the Chiroptearns.