Well, as posted just this morning also, I'm dipping my toe in the anime water with "Cowboy Bebop" after hearing many good things (and the occassional Firefly comparison certainly helped in trying it out!). So far I'm through Session 2, and am enjoying it. Doesn't blow me away currently, and I don't like Ed (who was in maybe 2 episodes so far, so I'll give her a chance), but Ein is quite amusing. I figure at this stage, it's entertaining enough to keep going with it, then maybe someday down the road I'll try another movie/show/series.

When i first started watching this show i thought for sure Ed was going to ruin it for me, but in the end Ed ended up being up there with Spike and Fay in terms of the characters i liked best.

Reverie, one thing you will learn with anime series is that they are sometimes slow to take off, but when they finally do it is worth it.

Keep going with it, Ed will be one of your favorite characters by the end of it.

I'll remember you said that! ;) I have no problem with stories taking time to build, which is part of the reason I kept going onto Session 2 with it. I liked the first enough to keep going, and I figure I'll go on to the end (is it 6 and the movie?) at this point and get the full experience. I'm thinking of starting over come Session 3 and going through them all again at that point just to keep me up on it, since I think I saw that the guy Spike knew is coming back.. name starts with a "V" I belive. See how little I know? :D

Is there a good place to check out clips from shows or maybe a promo-type DVD out there?

That would be Vicious. He's not a very nice fellow :)

I recommend http://www.jazzmess.com for all of your Bebop info. Do beware of spoilers though...

Oops, sorry, I meant clips from shows other than Cowboy Bebop.. just to kind of see what else is out there.

Just a handful of them ---> LINK.

So far, no series, although Samurai 7 has me very intrigued. I just don't like getting sucked into series and waiting around for new episodes to come around (I'm the same way about books).

Many of the ones in my list were actually blind buys that came from recommendations in this thread that I started about a year a and a half ago. So far, I've only had one that I wasn't a big fan of (Blood: The Last Vampire), but I still have a few to watch. I have yet to own a Miyazaki film that I haven't loved.

As far as I know, the best place for anime trailers is at the various distributors' websites:

ADV

Geneon

Bandai

and so on.

The forums at Anime on DVD are also an excellent place for discussions of well, anime on dvd :)

I dig anime and have a pretty good collection. I was able to take advantage of a few misprices along the way to help keep costs down, but anime certainly is not an inexpensive hobby. However, I find the replay value of anime to be quite high. I generally prefer the series to the movies because you get more character development(the movies tend to focus too much on action sequences for my taste). Do some research and you'll most likely avoid the crap series. Here is a list of what I currently have and I would recommend all of them-

Ah, My Goddess!-The Movie
Akira
Appleseed
Armitage-Poly-Matrix/Dual-Matrix
Blood-The Last Vampire
Boogiepop Phantom(series)
Castle in the Sky
Cowboy Bebop-The Movie
Cowboy Bebop(series)
Cowboy Bebop-Perfect Sessions(compilation)
Elfen Lied(series)
Escaflowne-The Movie
Escaflowne(series)
Full Metal Panic!(series)
Fullmetal Alchemist(series)
Gasaraki(series)
Ghost in the Shell(movie)
Ghost in the Shell 2:Innocence(movie)
Ghost in the Shell:SAC(series)
Ghost in the Shell:2nd GIG(series)
Grave of the Fireflies(movie)
Gungrave(series)
Gunparade March(series)
Heat Guy J(series)
Jin-Roh(movie)
Kiki's Delivery Service(movie)
Last Exile(series)
Madlax(series)
Metropolis(movie)
Millennium Actress(movie)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind(movie)
Neon Genesis Evangelion-End of Evangelion(movie)
Neon Genesis Evangelion(series)
Noir(series)
Paranoia Agent(series)
Perfect Blue(movie)
Porco Rosso(movie)
Princess Mononoke(movie)
Rahxephon(movie)
Rahxephon(series)
R.O.D.(OVA)
R.O.D. the TV(series)
Samurai Champloo(series)
Serial Experiments:Lain(series)
Spirited Away(movie)
Spriggan(movie)
Tenchi Muyo!(OVA)
Texhnolyze(series)
Tokyo Godfathers(movie)
Trigun(series)
Vampire Hunter D:Bloodlust(movie)
Witch Hunter Robin(series)
Wolf's Rain(series)
X the TV(series-make sure that you avoid X the Movie like the plague)

I know I've posted this before, but just a few sure-fire anime titles for those on the fence .... no Miyazaki included, because those are just too obvious ...

Neon Genesis: Evangelion (best anime series ever; great characters, lots of action)
Paranoia Agent (creepy, awesome story)
Samurai Champloo (looks fantastic, very funny, very fast-paced, and great music)
Anything Ghost in the Shell (it never, ever gets old)
Fullmetal Alchemist (nice mix of humor, action, sadness, all in great animation)
Gunslinger Girl (like an adolescent La Femme Nikita)

Personal favorites
Boogiepop Phantom (super scary, actually kinda sadistic)
Princess Nine (lighter story about a girls baseball team in Japan)
Robotech (a classic, but not for everyone)
Appleseed (all-CGI eye candy)
Tokyo Godfathers (proof that anime succeeds without action, robots or sex)

There's a lot of crap out there, all these magical girl shows that only a few people care about ... but that's what the DVDTalk anime reviewers are here for .... we even have a motto: "We take the hit, so you don't have to!"

Anime is a *heck* of a lot easier to get into now than, say 5-10 years ago. Wasn't too long ago you had to pay 20-40 bucks for either dub or sub [you had to choose] VHS tape with 2-4 episodes on it. Now whole series are selling for less than 100 dollars, with the convenience of dvd, and the dub/sub on the same disk, and features. Plus there's a whole section in most stores for anime.
I have not been buying much anime recently, but I have also not been buying many dvd's as a whole. Rather than starting to buy a series blind, I'll rent it through BBO and watch it; most of the long series, I know I would not watch more than once.
Anime dvds I do own:
Cardcaptor Sakura
Sailor Moon 1 and 2
Excel Saga
Sakura Diaries
Perfect Blue
Akira
eX-Driver
Haunted Junction
Irresponsible Captain Tylor TV [had the OVA, but watched it once and sold it]
I guess I certainly don't have as many as lots of you, but when I also only have 146 titles in DVD Profiler, and 30 of them are the above, that's not too bad a ratio.

I second Princess Nine, I don't care about baseball [the industry], and I'm not in a girls' school, but this series was very accessible and entertaining. Evangelion of course is one of the 'classics', it's pretty heavy and has some slow periods. I've seen most of R.O.D., and of the Miyazaki's I've seen, I liked Kiki's Delivery Service the best. I did grow to like Ed in Cowboy Bebop.
Others I've seen/rented:
Eat-Man '98
Steel Angel Kurumi
Planetes [working on this one now, I like it a lot so far]
Koi Kaze [the basic concept is a little disturbing to American sensibilities, but once you get past it, the characterization is very good]
Mahoromatic
Gunsmith Cats

I didn't like Puni Puni Poemy, though I did like Excel Saga; and I couldn't get into Maetel Legend, Kino's Journey, or Now and Then/Here and There.

There's such a wide variety in anime, if you haven't found one you liked, you're either not looking hard enough/in the right places, or you just can't get over the fact that it's animated [which is true for some people], although a really good title will draw you in so you don't notice it's animated.

See, I like Puni Puni Poemi a hell of a lot more than I like Excel Saga... and I liked Excel. There is jus something about that show that I love.

This is very true. So many people do not understand that anime is not just about giant robots, tentacle rap and big eyed girls. There is some depth and brilliance to some shows and movies that go well over what is in a lot of movies and live action TV series.

The only anime my fiancee and I buy is the InuYasha series - she collects it, and has all of the discs released. She wants to get another show by the same person that creates InuYasha, but the name escapes me at the moment.

PPP was much more chaotic and surreal from what I remember, it was also a little more crude, and something didn't rub me right about it. Oh well, I'm just glad they bring over 'original' titles like Excel and PPP.

I'm a B-E-M and I'm here to say,
I will crush your world in every way!
I got 10 big arms, they grab the girls,
And then check out what I unfurl!
Yo!

heh.
and no, I don't plan on replacing Eminem in the near--or far--future.

I have heard that the 'big eyed girls' trait which is generally identified with anime, was actually from Japanese animators imitating American cartoons of the time.

A couple titles I always suggest to people who are of the "it's a Japanese cartoon! where's the big-breasted, big-eyed chicks?" mindset are Vampire Hunter D and A Wind Called [Named?] Amnesia, that one has a Mad Max type feel and can be shown to some people who might not go for another title.

Strong agreement . . . Grave Of The Fireflies and Perfect Blue were the two films that really taught me that. :up:

I started out trading VHS copies (this was before there was any anime available in the U.S.) and running an anime BBS (a repository for scripts and such). My interest peaked around '95 or so, when I was buying import anime LDs and fansubbing them. I did the convention thing in the late '90s, finally taking a trip to LA and Anime Expo in '97. I worked in the industry for a while, first by writing reviews (I reviewed a little over 50 titles for Sci-Fi's Anime Colony site before the plug was pulled) and later by timing and editing subtitle scripts for ADV.

Now I'm much more of a casual fan. It took me a while to get out of the habit of picking up all the new releases, but a few years ago I realized my collection of unwatched anime DVDs was growing larger and larger. This happened because I became more interested in live-action Asian films and other non-animated films than anime. Anime wasn't offering me anything fresh because I'd simply seen so much. The last anime series I was truly hooked on was Shoujo Kakumei Utena.

These days, I mainly lurk on message boards and answer questions about anime from the time when I really loved it. :)

This my personal anime top 10:

1. Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984)
2. Kimagure Orange Road (1987)
3. Aim for the Top! GunBuster (1988)
4. Bubblegum Crisis (1987)
5. Windaria (1986)
6. Angel's Egg (1985)
7. Giant Robo (1992)
8. Megazone 23 (1985)
9. Girl Revolution Utena (1997)
10. Vampire Princess Miyu (1988)

I also really like and recommend the Ghibli films, Memories (1995), Maison Ikkoku (1986), Cowboy Bebop (1998), FLCL (2000), Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), Macross Plus (1994), Record of Lodoss War (1990), and Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise (1987).

I felt compelled to second RJ's nomination of Giant Robo as top tier anime. :thumbsup:

Although I love anime I find that my collection consists of very few anime DVD's.

Puni and Excel are shows that require a few viewings...both can be alot to take in when viewing the first time.

Now i sinned with both of those and watched them with the English dub...sure i missed some jokes but those were great dubs and they include some classic lines and great voices.

Puni Puni took me a few viewings to hear all the jokes because, well, there *IS* alot going on. But that show is to over the top its criminal (and i love it)

<i>Mod edit: Two words - NOT allowed. Talking about d/l content, potentially in violation of copywrites, is generally frowned upon here.

thx
nemein</i>

You meant Rumiko Takahashi?

here is a list of shows by her.

You do realize you are posting in a DVD forum, right?

Yeah, that's her, thanks. She wants to collect Ranma 1/2.

Ranma 1/2 is a great show. The season sets are just so friggin expensive. I only have the first season so far because I just can't justify the price right now.

That sounds about right -- I only have 19 anime DVDs, and I consider myself a dabbler. Like many, I'm put off by the high prices, low episodes/DVD, lack of extras, and frequent repackagings of the same show.If anime series were priced and packaged like the "Batman: TAS" releases I'd have tons of them. As it is, what I have are mostly features. Miyazaki, other studio Ghibli releases (like "Grave of the Fireflies" and "Whisper of the Heart"), Satoshi Kon, a smattering of other anime classics ("Akira", "Ghost in the Shell", "Ninja Scroll", "Metropolis"). And, oh yes, a hentai title :o . Just "Urotsukidoji" -- I don't know, it just takes perversity to such an epic level I find it fascinating. I really like the series "Cowboy Bebop", but I need to see it in a more affordable DVD package to bite.