CaliggyJack: My 25 Favorite Animes of All Time

CaliggyJack 05.05.26	Honorable Mentions - Shakugan no Shana Dragon Ball Persona 4 The Animation Vampire Knight Burn Up W If you can't already tell. I really like Ghost in the Shell.
Winsomniac 05.05.26	smh so many toonami era animes but bleach and soul eater not even listed :(
CaliggyJack 05.05.26	Ichigo always fucking annoyed me idk why
BAT 05.05.26	some bangers here, although i'd love to flex my oldschool elitist cred i'm very fond of the 2000s lineup of adult swim anime. s-cry-ed is one that didn't click with me at all back in the day annnd i've been meaning to give it a second chance at some point. basic tier recs would be like baccano, gurren lagann/kill la kill, paranoia agent, devilman/go nagai stuff, 80s fist of the north star, x/pretty much anything clamp, trigun, now and then here and there, space dandy/samurai champloo, and so on. moviewise probably like ninja scroll, everything by satoshi kon, silent voice, vampire hunter d&bloodlust. generally my upbringing in anime was from thrifting tapes as a teen so i'm very fond of like manga ent/central park media/adv films/steamline pics era of anime/ovas/etc. i'm honestly pretty unknowledgable about 2010s onwards stuff but i've seen a few things here and there. 70s to like 2004 is my shit tho and past year or two i've been rewatching dragon ball, z, gt, and now i'm finally watching super for the first time just got to the goku black stuff. i'm digging it so far, i bought like a bootleg collection of it and half the discs are fucked tho so keep having to pirate a bunch of it anyway :(. yuyu i've been planning a rewatch that's one of the shows that gateway'd me likewise been planning on picking up the bluray set of fma to give that a rewatch cause i've not seen it since like first run adult swim, i have a feeling i'd appreciate it a lot more subtitled cause i could never stand vic miwhatevers voice. never saw brotherhood, mushishi and ergo proxy are also on my wishlist never got around to those
CaliggyJack 05.05.26	Ergo Proxy is a masterpiece
EoinCofa 05.05.26	Not anime but Flow was a great animated film
troyofyort 05.05.26	Def watched the Toonami/Adult Swim Weekend nights! So much nostalgia here.
AlkemestRedux 05.05.26	Lots of scifi bangers in here. I remember really liking Texhnolyze for how crushingly bleak it was.
Tomstein 05.05.26	Just wanted to say Sailor Moon can beat Goku, and Hinata is better for Naruto then Sakura. Smiles
CaliggyJack 05.05.26	@Troy yep. Loved Toonami back in the day.
NudeTayne 05.05.26	No Outlaw Star is unforgivable
ConcubinaryCode 05.05.26	Just finished bebop since my friend gave me crunchyroll and I get the hype. Such a fun show that kind of went absurdly high stakes at the end. I just ordered the movie so im waiting on that. My anime intake was pretty limited to just adult swim so I only got to see stuff like bleach for the most part. Kinda wish stuff like GitS and Evangelion was on here so I could rematch.
ConcubinaryCode 05.05.26	Also AoT thoughts?
CaliggyJack 05.06.26	I hate AoT sorry
heck 05.06.26	no Steins;Gate, list is a joke
ConcubinaryCode 05.06.26	Damn, I know season 4 is controversial but 1-3 were so engaging to me.
CaliggyJack 05.06.26	Oh I've hated it since the very first chapter of the Manga was published. I think the writing is awful. I was never a fan and I never understood it's popularity personally.
troyofyort 05.06.26	Lol same about the first chapter. I also hate that kind of art style immensely.
NudeTayne 05.06.26	always hated FMA anime style, thought it was too static and animators were lazy tbh
IsisScript80 05.06.26	Re. AoT: “…I was never a fan and I never understood its popularity personally.” I remember… just before the Episode 1 of the anime’s first season was released, I happened to browse the series of trailers online for the then-upcoming season’s releases, and I saw the AoT trailer… I remembered NOTHING else after it. The premise, the setting, the action, and the sheer uncanny valley spectacle of smiling, humanoid giants eating little us was so visceral and instantly captivating, it stood WAY out, over anything contemporary. I’ve been very up and down with it over the years, but its instant, captivating appeal is immense.
NudeTayne 05.07.26	AoT is definitely better than FMA
NudeTayne 05.07.26	Naruto too, that show is so damn cringey
artiswar 05.07.26	Durarara but no Baccano? Gay
IsisScript80 05.07.26	"Lots of scifi bangers in here. I remember really liking Texhnolyze for how crushingly bleak it was." I saw part of that... dropped it through no fault of its own, as it was really excellent. SOOoo intensely bleak and atmospheric. Some really good series mentioned... other names I would throw in: 'Trigun', 'Gurren Laagan', 'Berserk' ('97 series), 'Parasite: the-maxim', 'Devilman' (OVA series, and later 'Crybaby'), off the bat... More recently, 'Dorohedoro' has been superb. Completely uncompromising, artistically. Really dug 'Chainsaw Man' too.
artiswar 05.07.26	Trigun is gud, so is the movie. Really iconic series
CaliggyJack 05.07.26	I saw the OVA for Amon. That shit fucked me up something fierce. Christ Almighty that was messed up.
BAT 05.07.26	Amons nothing compared to violence jack, the first two devilman ovas are fun af tho
CaliggyJack 05.07.26	I think it was less about violence and more about how the violence was done. There was something uniquely emotionless and callous about the way the kid was killed that unsettled me in ways that haven't been replicated.
BAT 05.07.26	Go nagai is potentially the most influential/pioneering mangka of all time but yeah it's crazy how his work would swing from like lighthearted to straight gore. But yeah if that's what bothered you with amon: violence jacks got it beat, it's kinda wild to me that you can buy it off Amazon nowadays cause its release history when I saw it was like censored worldwide and rightstuf launched a release company just to get the uncut version out(which promptly off shooted into media blasters and early hentai distributor kitty).
IsisScript80 05.08.26	^ 'Violence Jack' is so OTT. Not very good, but kinda fascinating. But yeah... Go Nagai... he's definitely a cheeky one.
BAT 05.08.26	it's definitely 'trashy' but i actually dig it, very of it's era(most early American imports focused on edgy/pervy stuff cause it's what American fans would buy at the time, and the late 80s was kind of watershed moment in japan cause direct to video ovas didn't have to get rating certificates hence stuff like violence jack was dropping alongside overfiend.) it's tech part of the devilman franchise but both have separate trees of future influence, I appreciate the low resources dedication in that era of anime, generally teams of like 10-20 pouring their hearts into some crazy shit
IsisScript80 05.08.26	^ I agree, and yeah, I knew that Violence Jack is a meant to be a reiincarnation of Akira Fudo; I found that a fun bit of recontextualisation when I became aware of that, lol. And yeah, the '80s/early '90s stuff was wild. A sweet little pocket of pocket of popular culture, that can never be repeated.