Ghostlightning made an interesting post on favorite anime characters over at THAT Anime Blog.  I originally thought to post a comment in response, but then I decided it would be better as it’s own post.  Maybe you’re all interested in my choice of characters as well.  GL presents two categories: Complex and Admirable.  I would like to add Entertaining as well.  Let’s face it, sometimes you like a character because no matter what they do, they look awesome and steal the show.  This list does contain some spoilers.  So without any further ado, here is my top 10 list of favorite characters, and the reason for their selection.

Eikichi Onizuka - GTO - Complex

He is definitely not the greatest man in the world by moral standards.  He used to be a delinquent, he drinks, he smokes, he’s a womanizer.  But he also cares deeply about his students and always looks out for their well being, even if they do him wrong.  I would have loved to have him as a teacher.  He’s a case study in judging people based on their appearance, rather than their ability.

Masamune Date - Sengoku Basara - Entertaining

Every time Masamune comes on screen, something amazing happens.  Whether he’s riding on his motorcycle horse, dropping boisterous lines to rally the troops, or launching his latest electrically charged attack, he does it all with style.  The guy oozes charisma, even when he’s lying wounded on the ground.  The eyepatch and awesome headgear helps his image as well.

Maka Albarn - Soul Eater - Admirable

She’s not this overly sexed up heroine like you see in so many series.  She’s a girl who likes to read books.  Maka has her compassionate side, which I’m convinced she could use to befriend anyone.  She also isn’t afraid to toss off orders because of things more important.  Add to it the patience of a saint for having to deal with Soul all day every day, and you have quite an admirable character.

Firo Prochaineze - Baccano! - Admirable

He’s probably the closest thing to a gentleman on my list.  Even at his young age, he acts quite mature and becomes an executive of his mafia family.  He has exceptional skill with the knife, but he never lets his abilities go to his head.  Firo goes way out of his way to help others at his own inconvenience.  He even has an unfortunate run-in with the law in order to protect the woman he loves.  Of course, he can be a bit cocky too, especially if you look down on him.

Kamina - TTGL - Complex (surprise?)

Ghostlighning said it best, he’s a “courageous moron.”  Never tell him the odds, because he’ll simply brush it aside and charge straight into battle anyway.  Even if he’s going to lose, he’d rather fail than not even try at all.  His bravado hides his own insecurities though.  He projects this strong will because he has to motivate the troops for battle.  Really, he fears death.  When a cave-in threatened to kill him, he froze up.  He truly believes in Simon, his friend and companion who saved him that day, to the point he uses his last ounce of energy to protect him.

Manami Amamiya - Manabi Straight - Admirable

In a veritable sea of pessimism, Manami remains the only optimist.  I’d really call her a super optimist.  Her cheerful demeanor motivates an entire school to join together for a single cause: holding a school festival.  She has a unique way of looking at the world, seeing the “big picture” all the time.  Her little eccentricities, like running in order to think, make her all the more endearing.

Kazuma Kuwabara - Yu Yu Hakusho - Complex

He’s a delinquent who acts a lot like Kamina in his sheer determination.  He never quite measures up to the ability of his comrades, but he makes up for it by never giving up.  His sheer force of will and refusal to fail allows him to overcome impossible obstacles.  Despite his tough exterior, he is easily the nicest out of the quartet of heroes, and has a soft spot for cats  Kuwabara sits out the final arc of the series.  Why?  Because he finally decided he wants to do something with his life by pursuing an education, and he succeeds.  Good on him.

Haruko Haruhara - FLCL - Entertaining

Haruko is quite the “over-the-top” character.  Crazy things follow her everywhere, and she instigates most of it.  She makes her big debut by hitting the main character… with her bike. Shoot, her guitar acts as both a gun and a rocket launcher, how cool is that?  And the family cat?  She uses it as a telephone.  Her spastic craziness and overwhelming personality really drive FLCL for me.

Hiiragi - Hanamaru Kindergarten - Entertaining

Hiiragi is the precocious child in series’ trio.  Fortunately, she uses her massive knowledge for awesome.  When the other character’s have a problem, she delivers a solution.  The solution makes sense, in a child-like way, and shenanigans ensue.  I wonder if she does it all for her own amusement.  She also enjoys cosplay, and it’s nigh impossible not to “D’awww” at her when she reveals her latest outfit.

T.K. - Angel Beats - Entertaining

He speaks in broken English phrases.  He spends the majority of his screen time dancing.  And every time he comes on camera?  Yeah, he steals the show.  Even sitting in the background, he’s usually doing something to take your eyes off the main characters.  T.K. has an entirely one dimensional personality, and I love him for it.  He’s also the only character I really wish I knew more about.

Closing Statistics

Since GL was looking for some sort of correlation in character selection, here’s some number crunching.  Entertaining characters make up the plurality of my list, with 4 selections, while Complex and Admirable characters split the remainder.  I tend to like characters from series I like, as 4 of the top 10 are characters in my top 5 favorite anime, and 1 is from my top 5 manga.  All the characters from my top series are the main character as well, except for Kuwabara.  I prefer “determinator” type characters who never give up even against impossible odds: they account for 6 slots on the list.

So that’s that.  Hopefully this gave you a good viewpoint toward my preferences in anime characters.  I enjoyed putting this post together.  If you’ve got a bunch of characters you really appreciate, I encourage you to either comment or write a post of your own.

A hint about my top pick, and no, it's not as simple as it seems.

I was not planning on taking this long to finish this part of my top 10 anime but as I tried to write something for each anime, I found it increasingly difficult to do so. Some of the anime on this part I could write thousands of words about and still not get everything said I want to say about them which made writing only a paragraph or two about them extremely challenging. I finally finished, though, and present the second half of my top 10 anime of all-time now.

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Vintage: Summer 2005, OVA1 – Spring 2007, OVA2 – Winter 2009
Director: Takuya Sato
Studio: Daume
Times Watched: 4

It’s only been a year since I first watched Ichigo Mashimaro, aka Strawberry Marshmallow, which makes it the newest-to-me anime on this list. I avoided it for several years because it just didn’t look that interesting to me but I finally decided to give it a try after I realized it was made by the same studio that did the first season of Minami-ke, my favorite anime comedy. I realized almost immediately that, underneath the cute, slice-of-life feel to Ichigo Mashimaro, the characters and their roles in the show were deeply thought out and expertly put together allowing it to excel in many of the same ways that made Minami-ke so good. Miu, much like Kana in Minami-ke and Haruhi in the Melancholy of Haruhi, is the spark plug that directly or indirectly creates and drives the show; take her out, and there’s no show. Chika plays the straight-man, Ana and Matsuri play the victims (Ana wants to hide the fact that she no longer remembers English even though she was born in Cornwallis, England as well as her last name and Matsuri is an innocent soul willing to believe anything that’s told to her), and Nobue plays the lazy authority figure that allows everything to happen and sometimes is the facilitator of the action.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a show being cute, having a relaxing slice-of-life feel to it, or the ability to lighten the viewer’s mood. Last fall, after my younger sister’s guinea pig died, I used Ichigo Mashimaro to get her to smile again after days of crying and being completely crushed. And I used Ichigo Mashimaro to help get through this past February when it snowed practically every day and the sun totally disappeared for the month.

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Vintage: Fall 2007
Director: Masahiko Ohta
Studio: Daume
Times Watched: 4

Squeaking past Ichigo Mashimaro is Minami-ke which I was just saying is my favorite anime comedy. As many of you know, the second and third seasons of Minami-ke were handled by a different animation studio and since those seasons were so glaringly deficient, I’m not including them here. The difference between them boils down, I think, to two key differences. The first was that Studio Daume was able to handle the large cast to Minami-ke, never spending too much or too little time with the various characters, and the second was Studio Daume had great comedic timing.

One of the reasons why Minami-ke is my favorite anime comedy and my number 4 top anime is because the show is built around three sisters and the family comedy on display here reminds me of my family growing up. I’m the oldest of 6 siblings but after me came 4 sisters and the first 3 younger sisters have personalities that the Minami sisters emulate pretty closely.

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Vintage: Summer 2000 – Spring 2001
Director: Kazuya Tsurumaki and others
Studio: Gainax
Times Watched: at least 9

FLCL was another series that Cartoon Network introduced to me but unlike Paranoia Agent I never stopped watching FLCL; it’s like an itch I need to scratch every so often. As a result, it’s been a constant companion as I’ve grown in my anime fandom and it seems like every time I watch it, there’s still something new to appreciate about it. I still remember the first time I actually got the Lupin references in FLCL and recently, the realization of how old South Park is dawned on me when I saw it referenced in FLCL.

When I first watched FLCL, I didn’t give much thought to it’s uniqueness; I thought it was a typical anime show and that I could find many more shows like it. I eventually learned otherwise; FLCL showcased Gainax at it’s creative best, with everything – story, plot, characters, animation, animation style, music, and voice work – working together perfectly and there’s almost no one that can come close to competing. Even having Gainax hitting that same level of perfection is exceedingly rare, by my count it’s only happened one other time, though the near perfect efforts by Gainax (like Magical Arcade Abenobashi) are still treats.

FLCL is unique to me in another way. It is, so far, the only anime that I enjoy the English and Japanese dubs equally as much.

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Vintage: Spring 2003
Director: Ryutaro Nakamura
Studio: Studio Wombat
Times Watched: 4

Outside of being one of my favorite shows, Kino’s Journey also became quite influential in turning me into the anime fan I am today and helped ensure that I would stay an anime fan. Before Kino’s Journey I had only watched and been exposed to shounen/action anime like Yu Yu Hakusho and Kenshin and I thought this was what anime was. If I would have continued to operate under this impression, eventually I would have grown tired of anime but I happened to give Kino’s Journey a shot and it opened my eyes to what’s possible with anime. From there, I started discovering the many various types of shows anime offered, especially if one removed the filtering agent known as R1 DVD companies, and now I’ve taken the search one step further and try to watch everything, relishing the moment when I find a great anime show in an unlikely place.

Kino’s Journey remains one of the shows I most want to see a sequel of, though I realize with each passing year it becomes less-and-less likely as are the chances of every getting to read the light novels that Kino’s Journey is based off of. I remain hopeful, maybe once the current crop of anime fans start getting tired of the current big action/shounen shows and start wanting something different there’ll be a chance to introduce a show like Kino’s Journey to them. Which reminds me of the most recent time I rewatched Kino’s Journey. It was with my youngest sister and I’d been waiting until she seemed old enough to appreciate the show. I wasn’t surprised that she really liked it; nor was I really surprised when she told me afterwards that she’d watched a couple of episodes over my shoulder, years ago, and didn’t like it one bit.

Kino’s Journey also remains, due to it’s ability to be very entertaining and very thought-provoking, part of my gold standard when evaluating new anime.

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Vintage: Spring 2007 – Summer 2007
Director: Hiroyuki Imaishi
Studio: Gainax
Times Watched: 5

Drilling through the past favorites and kicking all new competitors to the curb is my top anime – Gurren Lagann.

By rights, Gurren Lagann should have failed at some point; it took so many risks with it’s story (character deaths, characters being introduced late, time skips, plot twists, etc.) that it seems inconceivable that Gainax pulled every single one off. It made for a very thrilling and memorable viewing experience that first time because no one, except the Gainax staff, knew what was going to happen. Watching Gurren Lagann the first time the way I did, having to wait a week for the next episode to air and be fansubbed, also allowed me look at the series in a much deeper way then watching it on DVD ever could. I couldn’t marathon the whole series in a few days or even watch multiple episodes at one time or go read spoilers; instead, the only way to feed my desire for more Gurren Lagann was to watch the episode multiple times, pick it apart, and try to guess what was going to happen next. Of course I bought it when it came out on DVD but, much like Haruhi, if I hadn’t been a fan of Gurren Lagann before the DVDs came out I don’t think the reviews over here would have convinced me too.

One of the reasons I really liked Gurren Lagann and think it’s deeper than many people give it credit is it’s portrayal of heroism and the costs heroes have to pay to become heroes. It’s not something that’s seen too often on American television anymore or discussed about in society so I liked when Gurren Lagann focused on it.

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Did anyone figure out the hint? I used a screenshot from the latest Evangelion movie because it felt like Gurren Lagann was definitely on the minds of the creators of Evangelion when they put together the second movie. See also the screenshot below for another example.

Replace that missile with a giant drill and doesn't it remind you of a certain scene in Gurren Lagann?

Filed under: anime, anime rants/views

Everyone has one and there’s no surer way for other people to figure out loads of information about a person then from a person’s personal top 10 list. The genre of shows the person likes, the length the person has been a fan of anime, if the person is an elitist fan or a populist fan, what the person thinks about old anime being superior to new anime and vice-versa, if the person watches anime with fan-subs or dubs are just some of the things people can glean from a top 10 anime list. Even using some other number then 10 can be illuminating; a person doing their top 75 anime shows is saying something completely different then a person that only has a top 4 or top 6 list.

I knew this when I started blogging and I also knew that I didn’t have the breadth of knowledge needed to make such a list without being deeply embarrassed of it a year later. Therefore; I waited, read other people’s lists and consumed as much anime (current and old) as possible. I refused to rough out a list until I was done considering what important conditions I should set-up for the list because I didn’t want potential picks to influence my thought processes. The conditions that will constrain this list are three.

1. For an anime to be eligible, I needed to watch it at least two times.
2. No movies would be eligible.
3. For shows with multiple seasons, I could choose which seasons to include but no one show could be listed more than once.

The first constraint made a lot of sense to me. I’ve often encountered a show where the second time watching it yields a different response – either positively like Lucky Star or negatively like Azumanga Daioh or Witch Hunter Robin. Watching an anime that second time also reinforces the experience in my memory and helps ensure that imperfect recollections of a show don’t improperly help or hinder a show’s chances. The flip side of this constraint is that there’s a large number of shows that I can’t consider at this time that I’d love too. Kaiba, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Baccano, Cross Game, Clannad, Kanon, Kemono no Souja Erin, Spice & Wolf, Ga-Rei:Zero, Sora No Otoshimono, Hanamaru Kindergarten, Blue Literature, Hidemari Sketch, and Bakemonogatari are just some of the shows that I think could be competitive in making this list but have only been watched once.

The second constraint is there because I think series and movies are just too dissimilar to put into one list together; it would be like creating a top 10 list of the best cow and dog breeds. It might be possible but it wouldn’t be meaningful. And by carving movies off, I can make a companion list at some point of the my top ten anime movies.

Since most seasons (not cours) of anime are produced separately, I put in the third constraint in because it didn’t make sense to me to penalize an earlier season if future seasons stunk and were made just to bilk money from the fans or if later seasons improved from the earlier seasons.

Now with that out-of-the-way, let’s get to the list.

Vintage: Winter 2009
Director: Kazuki Akane
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Times Watched: 2

The first season of Birdy was a good show, one of the bright spots in a pretty weak summer season but there were weaknesses that prevented it from being great. I can be a very optimistic person so when the second season rolled around I had very rosy hopes. Imagine my shock when even these rosy hopes couldn’t match how good the second season was. The wooden characters from the first season were replaced with characters that oozed personality and depth. The story was grittier and more real; the building destroyed in the first season remained destroyed and the people who lost their homes were still homeless in the second season. No punches were pulled, the super-powered character with an understandable desire for revenge kills in a way you’d expect an angry individual out for revenge would. And I loved the animation style they switched to for the fights; if I had to describe it in one word that word would be “kinetic”. The characters looked like they actually weighed something and the sense of motion was unparalleled. It ended at a good point but one can just tell there’s still untapped potential with the bigger story so I’m still fervently hoping for a third season.

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Vintage: Summer 2007
Director: Takashi Ikehata
Studio: J.C. Staff
Times Watched: 4

The set-up for Potemayo (sentient unearthly creatures coming to life in a refrigerator) would have been the start of a horror film in probably every other country in the world but in the hands of J.C. Staff, we get a cute comedy/slice-of-life show with a very messed up sense of humor. Calling it unique would be an understatement and trying to make an accurate judgment about the show based solely on it’s animation style and characters is impossible.

I really didn’t expect Potemayo to make my top 10 list but the show holds up so well every-time I rewatch that I need to just accept that Potemayo is a great show.

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Vintage: Winter 2004
Director: Satoshi Kon
Studio: Madhouse
Times Watched: 3

I first watched Paranoia Agent when I was a freshly minted anime fan on Cartoon Network way back in the day when Cartoon Network ran animated stuff all day and wasn’t afraid to show anime before midnight. The realistic setting, the mystery behind Lil’ Slugger, the examination of the psychological effect Lil’ Slugger would have on the populace, the oddness that I’d later learn to be Satoshi Kon’s trademark and the interesting – often quite twisted – characters fascinated me and helped open my perception of what anime could do. Several years passed and I grew hesitant to watch Paranoia Agent again because I worried that it wouldn’t stand up. That had happened with Witch Hunter Robin and I didn’t want to lose another early anime favorite but my youngest sister stated bugging me about watching it. I pushed it off for a while but I eventually relented and we started watching Paranoia Agent. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have worried since I adore every other work of Satoshi Kon I ever watched and Paranoia Agent is no different. Many mystery type shows are only good the first time through but even knowing how Paranoia Agent ends doesn’t diminish how enthralled the show left me.

An interesting tidbit, Paranoia Agent is the only show on this countdown that I’ve never listened to the Japanese dub of it.

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Vintage: Summer 2007, Winter 2008, Summer 2009
Director: Akiyuki Shinbo
Studio: Shaft
Times Watched: 3, 3, 1

Having to bend my rules to include the whole series of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has left me in despair!

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei really is an acquired taste. Looking back, I needed that first season and the months between it and the second season to really get the show and it’s sense of humor situated in my brain. And it eventually clicked because I instantly, and completely, fell for the second season and later rewatches of the first season left me with a better opinion of it. I’ve also learned the best way to watch Despair is to watch each episode twice; once with my finger posed over the pause button so I can read all the text in the background and the second time without pausing so I can focus on the foreground. This leads me into putting much more effort into getting this show than any other anime but I think it’s worth it.

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Vintage: Spring 2006
Director: Tatsuya Ishihara
Studio: Kyoto Animation
Times Watched: 6

At one time this would have been my #1 or #2 pick for top anime and seeing it drop this far makes me a bit sad even if I fully believe it deserves this diminished level. It’s very difficult to get into the old mind-frame for this show when the renewed Melancholy of Haruhi (2009) employed the Endless Eight stunt. It’s not that I particularly hated Endless Eight but back in 2006, I decided not to read the novels Haruhi were based on because I didn’t want to be spoiled before watching the future seasons of anime and I’ve been waiting for more of the story ever since and thought that time had finally come. I know this is a mend-able feeling, though, all I need is Kyoto Animation to animate a couple of seasons of Haruhi, reaching the quality level of the 2006 series,  and chances are I’d be pushing this back up.

One of the interesting things about The Melancholy of Haruhi (2006) was observing how hype effected fan reception. At the very beginning when there was no hype for the show, everyone (and I mean everyone) loved the show. I remember watching Haruhi work it’s way to number 1 on ANN’s top 10 anime list. As time and the hype increased, though, I noticed more and more new viewers react negatively towards it, wondering what the hype was all about. This trend continued and intensified when Haruhi was licensed in America and the non-fansub fans finally got to watch what the fansub fans had been incessantly talking about for over a year. Their reactions were even less positive and reading what these people thought of Haruhi made this fan’s blood boil on numerous occasions.

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That ends part 1. I’m curious if anyone can guess my top 5 before I post it in the next day or two.