30DAC – Day 16: Anime with the Best Animation

To start this off, I’ll give a shoutout to the Animatrix. That sequence with the sword fighting simulation is the only time that I have ever been completely confused as to whether or not a CGI animation was real or not. I am not kidding. I first saw it on Adult Swim several years ago and I thought they had accidentally put on a live-action movie. Live action on Cartoon Network? Like that’d ever happen.

However, since that sequence was non-anime styled CGI, I’m discounting it. The traditional animated segments have great animation too, but I’m choosing a different candidate; Cowboy Bebop.

This show offers animation that is fluid, retains its art quality throughout, and actually makes me believe that these characters are physical beings, especially in conjunction with the Foley artists, which I don’t really get to bring up very often.

This is especially prominent when Spike is showing off his martial arts capabilities. He compares his fighting style to being like water in controlling excessive force through fluid motion, and his fights always do feel like they have such a graceful flow to them that it is like watching constantly-changing water.

Not to mention the great space battles and gun fights that suck you in like a straw.

From the art to the animation to the sound effects and the voices, all of them come together perfectly to create a feeling of animated and fabricated reality; people you could actually meet and places that could actually exist.

30DAC – Day 2: Favorite Anime You’ve Watched So Far

Urgh, this one’s really difficult. I really don’t like making favorites lists since I know they’ll get changed in months maybe weeks, but since the qualifier of ‘so far’ is included, that makes things a little easier anyway. Still really hard to decide, but still.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is topping my list here. While I really am baffled by how quickly they decided to do a remake simply because they wanted to be more loyal to the manga, I won’t deny that this series does trump the original in certain ways. There are some scenes and aspects of the original that I like better than Brotherhood, but it manages to win out.

I really need to take my glove off before I do that. My glove budget is going dry.

The original FMA would’ve made it, but I can’t deny the fact that Brotherhood does more things better than the original and has a solidified ending within its own series. While I don’t think Conqueror of Shambala is anywhere near the travesty fans seem to make it out to be, it still didn’t make a very satisfying ending to me, plus I’m not really a fan of series having a series finale as a movie, so Brotherhood wins out.

FMA as a whole just has such an amazing flow. It has a great blend of serious and sometimes even dark storylines, fantastic action sequences, hilarious comedy, lovable characters, frightening villains, and it all comes to together so well that it’s just amazing. Not to mention how well the artwork, animation and music work alongside it. It’s so difficult to find shows that have that level to talent to mesh all of that together so well, but both FMA series show this talent off like a superpower and I love every minute of it.

Honorable Mentions: Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, Fruits Basket (which honestly would’ve made it if it didn’t end so abruptly and without including the other members of the zodiac.), Kodocha and the Dot Hack franchise.