Yeah I have watched some others where they do it occasionally and it was fine.. like in Rurouni Kenshin. And I've yet to watch what would be considered to be a pure comedy anime so I've wondered how it's pulled off. Guess I'll have to watch one.

As for the Japanese voice acting. All I know is that I've never had an issue at all watching subs for live action shows or movies. But with anime it drives me crazy. That said, a lot of the English dubs aren't great either. One bad thing about the dubs is you hear the same voices over and over on different shows. There's one male voice (Patrick Seitz, just looked it up!), and he has a great voice, that it seems I'm hearing on almost every series. Would be nice if there was more diversity in who they use.

I tend to think Japanese dubs handle the female characters better in anime. American voice actresses have a very hard time relating to some of the female character archetypes common in anime, a product of Japanese culture. The perception of women and their place in society from anime is completely alien to almost all modern Western entertainment. You can tell the American voice actresses have a difficult time finding the right way to handle certain common roles.

I do tend to like male roles handled by American dubs better. Far too many male protagonists in anime are voiced as timidly as possible, it's a trope that doesn't work very well for someone raised in Western culture.

Not only is Cowboy Bebop one of the best anime series of all time, I'd actually place it amongst the finest television ever produced irrespective of genre or medium. Definitely a must-see for anyone looking to get into anime.

Other recommendations that I think I've seen mentioned already would include Samurai Champloo; The Big O; and Lupin the 3rd.

I don't browse this subforum very often so I don't know how people feel about Speed Racer but I've always loved it. Not sure if people want to count it though given the changes from the original Japanese version. Still, it helped shape my appreciation for the art style from an early age so it's hard not to give it a spot in my top animes.

Also, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to a first-time anime viewer, but I love FLCL. It's a very short series and pretty out there, but I love it.

---

I assume most people on this forum have seen Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven. There's an anime version of the same story called Samurai 7 that is pretty good. While it doesn't come close to being the "best" anime it actually wouldn't be the worst introduction for a newcomer to anime because most people who are film buffs are familiar with and enjoy the movie it's based on.

Do these tend to be shows from the same studio? I get the impression that FUNimation has "house talent" that they use a lot.

I've only seen a handful of episodes, but I went to an anime con over the weekend where they were screening Bebop for two hours straight and I watched a couple episodes. I keep thinking about pulling the trigger on the BD set and I liked these enough to push me a little more in that direction.

One of my favorite shows as a kid, and I can still watch episodes.

I saw one episode and it was too out there for me.

I'm a fan of both movies and have been meaning to watch this series. Maybe I'll try to fit it into a challenge sometime.

Speed Racer is really its own thing, I think many Americans that grew up on it had little idea the show was from Japan. In that regard it's like Voltron, so many watched it as just another Saturday morning cartoon.

That Samurai 7 anime is pretty good, it looks fantastic on Blu-ray.

Time has really not been kind to Voltron.

Just watch Super Dimensional Fortress Macross TV series and Macross Plus OVA, and thank me later.

Apparently there's some sort of legal mess with the original Macross series, after the ADV releases, it never came out again in the U.S., and I guess getting it licensed again is too expensive. So if you have those discs, enjoy them.

You can watch it subbed on Prime and I think Hulu. It's just the ADV dub (which featured the original Japanese voice actress for Minmei, Mari Iijima, reprising her role in English) which is mainly gone. But honestly the dub wasn't that great, and you can still watch Robotech if you absolutely want a dub (I realize there are cuts but I don't hate Macek and I think they did a decent job incorporating three properties into one).

Macross II, Macross Plus, DYRL, and all the sequels, yeah, for official releases you'll have to wait until someone pries it from Harmony Gold's cold, dead fingers, and they're holding on for dear life hoping a Hollywood blockbuster gets made and succeeds.

And now I see this was a necro bump from five years ago. I was wondering how I hadn't noticed this thread come up.

Not a lot of activity on this forum, so it's probably a good thing to necro threads here every once in a while!

So for me, best anime is actually a fairly recent one; I love Violet Evergarden as my top favorite anime of all time, and think it is a true masterpiece.

And I am an adamant subber - I can't listen to English dubs for the same reason mentioned further up the page - the English actors emotions sound so fake and way overdone, to the point it is too uncomfortable for me to even listen to. All I can do is cringe and squirm in my seat trying to listen to them. The Japanese acting is soooo much better, sounds very natural without forced emotions. Besides that, I feel that watching anime with an English dub is no longer even watching anime, it then just becomes yet another westernized cartoon.

I'll give that one a shot if I can find it streaming somewhere.

I tend to go 50/50 on English or Japanese dubs for which language I prefer. Black Butler has an iconic English dub mostly due to Sebastian's character and shouldn't be heard any other way. However, American dubs often butcher entire anime genres. They don't deal with younger characters at all very well, or more tender shows built on romance and deeper emotions. The English dub for Clannad isn't very good at all.

I am much more wary of Funimation dubs these days as their dub writers have been twisting or outright censoring the Japanese dialogue for PC concerns. As someone that understands Japanese, it's disappointing.

Violet Evergarden is on Netflix (US).

Which Funimation dubs are censored? I actually find the dubs annoying when they put, for example, swear words where there aren't any.

Funimation does a lot of dub manipulation to insert their own political and sjw views. Another reason I don't tolerate English dubs. Subtitles do get changed as well, but maybe not as often and as blatently. Even without understanding any Japanese, I can often tell when the dub script goes off track.

I imported the Australian Blu-ray release of Violet Evergarden a few months ago, and the UK will be releasing it in hopefully a nice Collector's Edition later this year. I'll be importing that one as well. I don't know if the US will ever see a Blu-ray; Netflix is basically where anime goes to die, with very, very few getting any physical release in the US - and when they do, it's a minimum 3 year wait between airing and anything coming out on Blu-ray.

I immediately thought of you when I saw that Violet Evergarden: The Movie has merchandise coming out in Japan next month. Apparently the movie got delayed but the merchandise didn't.

https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/series/509...campaign=anime

I finally got around to watching Violet Evergarden and really liked it. It is unmistakably a product of Kyoto Animation, I would have known that just by watching the series. A very tender, moving anime constructed around the art of writing letters and the lingering ravages of a brutal war. Writing letters has always had a romantic undertone and Violet Evergarden beautifully exploits the lost art. That episode with the mother and young girl near the end is a killer, even if you can kind of guess what the punchline will be after a few minutes.

Definitely one of the better anime I've come across, though I hesitate calling it a masterpiece. The premise tugs at your heart with gut-wrenching emotion, true. There's no doubt Violet Evergarden has several memorable moments and the self-contained episodes feature excellent writing. A longer, more deliberate anime would have set up the relationship between Violet and Gilbert with a little more screen time and care. I would have also liked more explanation for Violet's background and her seemingly supernatural abilities in battle.

I pondered if Hollywood would find it suitable material for adaptation and decided they'd gut much of Violet's slavish devotion towards Gilbert, among other things. They'd adapt the anime but it would look nothing like the source material.

I completely forgot to mention the voice acting on Violet Evergarden's Japanese audio. It's superb, some of the best voice acting I've ever heard from an anime.