So recently I had an anime watch party and we were browsing anime to watch and I came across Pluto. Admittedly I’m only 2 episodes in but so far it’s SO solid. And I’m just surprised I had never heard of it and it came out 3 years ago. Especially since it’s a reimagining of Astroboy and everyone’s heard of that…
Another one I had surprisingly never heard of but so far seems solid is Level E written by Yoshihiro Togashi. My favorite anime is YYH and I loved HxH so how come I hadn’t heard of Level E until now? Again, only 2 episodes in but seems legitimately good and it’s by a wildly successful creator.
What’s an anime you didn’t expect much of because it seems lesser known, but turns out to be very good? I mean like, not only do u like it but ur surprised the general public - casual anime fans aren’t aware of it.
Dennoh Coil (2007), it’s basically if Studio Ghibli did Sci-Fi. Won a bunch of awards in Japan, but never got mainstream.
That’s good enough for me to look into it
Seconding it. And its spiritual successor The Orbital Children.
I’m watching Hell’s Paradise right now. It’s clearly done on a decent budget, but the animators are pretty good at knowing where they need to focus that cash. Meanwhile, the story is actually pretty good. For something like a Shonen-style power-system story, there’s a lot more going on than just flashy martial arts. I’m enjoying this one, and am surprised I haven’t heard of it before last month.
Great show. I finished that a few months ago. Definitely underrated. I’ve seen it recommended on Reddit a few times so not underground at all, but definitely a bit under appreciated. Animation is gorgeous for most of it and the whole thing is so eerie.
I second Hell’s Paradise! Season 2 was fantastic.
Shoutout for Pluto!
There’s quite a few that I’m surprised I’ve never seen anyone talk about outside of dedicated forums.
Akudama Drive ruled start to finish. It’s worth watching for the animation alone.
Xam’d: Lost Memories feels like it’s only a few years old, but it came out less than a year after Gurren Lagann. In 2008. Bones makes real pretty shows.
Speaking of Bones, Carole and Tuesday was solid. My only issue was that it didn’t take a hard enough stance against AI, but also it came out before ChatGPT and long before AI generated music was a real issue so I can’t really blame them.
Moriarty The Patriot: genuinely blows my mind that this one isn’t more well known. Sherlock yaoi + murdering rich bastards feels like such a slam dunk, and despite delivering plenty on both I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thing about this anime.
Blood Blockade Battlefront: This one is honestly just okay, but the animation is solid and the VAs have some pedigree. Idk if it just came out at a bad time or if people didn’t vibe with some of the episode plots, but it always surprised me that it only managed two seasons and then kinda faded out completely.
planetes… enjoyed the heck out of it. I’ve only met one other person irl who’s watched it… :|
The Toy Box is in my list of favorite fictional ships, right next to the Silvana and the Bebop
The Toy Box
yussss. so functional, something tells me we’ll see something like it one day.
I just watched Pluto in the last few months, one of the best Anime I’ve ever seen.
Now and Then, Here and There, a very heavy anime, I guess it’s heaviness is the reason why it never became super popular, but still, I think it still had what it takes to become an anime of cult.
Shiki, also deserves more recognition than what it has.
Kemono no Souja Erin, I didn’t finish this one, but the first half is amazing, unless the second half looses quality this one should have been popular too.
Also, it’s worth to mention Gunslinger Girl.
All these shows are kinda dark, so maybe that’s why they never got the recognition they deserve.
It wasn’t completely ignored, but I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder that Apocalypse Hotel didn’t get way more recognition than it got. Should’ve won all the awards.
Going back a little deeper, I can’t pretend to be surprised that Akagi isn’t mainstream, but Kaiji by the same mangaka deserves more popularity. It’s a tragedy that the anime ends at part 2 when part 3 was the peak.
Added them to my watchlist but I’m gonna be honest that art style for akagi/kaiji is unappealing to me
Outlaw Star
These are my submissions
Katanagatari (Bumping OST and cool fights with Nisio Isin writing)
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash (vibing isekai too busy surviving to care)
Ben-to (Stupid premise combat anime that lives rent free in my head)
Ben-To is peak. The premise is too silly, though, to get normies into it. I tried. It’s like Keijo!!! in that regard and deserves more love.
Grimgar deserves to be forgotten. Ranta is unsufferable and Haruhiro is whiny and moping around for most of the anime adaptation. I’ve read the light novels further than what was adapted in the anime and by the point I dropped it I couldn’t stand a single character anymore. Even Yume-butt can’t save this. It was incredibly pretty, though. It’s a shame the background artists died.
Saving… I’m going to try Pluto.
BLUE gender, an odd show at late night, shows a bunch of bugs suddenly show up on earth out of nowhere after they did some experiments with DNA(sounds very familiar to evangelion if not the same story/premise).
the fun thing about the bugs was thier ability to evolve against human machinery, and consume both organic and inorganic matter like metal and concrete for energy, which made them the perfect weapon against humans. very evangelion like. by the end of the series the earth sent a signal to cause the bugs to go extinct, and the ones on the space station too. but left the scattered survivors. they were very obscure as to the origin of the bugs, and the strange guinan origin of bugs and the structure energy beam.
the OG full metal alchemist, i dont think it has much viewership as brotherhood. because it was on late night.
also Ghost in the shell, convoluted and hard to follow but i did get the jist of it by the end.
Terminator Anime. It is surprisingly good but it had been cancelled because it wasn’t popular enough.
i heard the sarah conner chronicles was good to, and canceled for the same reason.
Warning, these are titty animes, so feel free to judge me if you want.
I have literally never heard anyone else talk about Sin: Nanatsu no Taiza/Seven Mortal Sins (this is NOT the Seven Deadly Sins show from Netflix), but I think it’s incredible and incredibly deep. It doesn’t totally beat you over the head with the themes, but it’s an excellent take on the message of automony, free will, and determinism, with Lucifer the falling angel taking center stage.
Beyond that, I think Sekirei is probably one of my overall top favorite anime, with some truly fascinating world-building. It’s Pokemon but big tiddy babes instead of little pocket monsters! That being said, there is one character that almost ruins the show with weird pedo bait and god I wish so very very much that character and her storyline just fully did not exist (Kuu).
Titty anime definitely used to be offputting for me tbh. But the older and lonelier I get, the more I can deal with it. So I’ll add them to my watchlist.
