Baccano!

This is a list of anime that Quentin has either watched and liked or anime that he would most likely enjoy, based on his filmography of non-linear narratives and overall taste of foreign movies, for example.





“I want to have the fun of doing anime and I love anime, but I can’t do storyboards because I can’t really draw and that’s what they live and die on.” Quentin Tarantino.

Anime that are aimed at an adult audience.

Groups of characters getting up to some wackiness and chaos.

(The use of the word “chaotic” here does not necessarily suggest a genre of slapstick or comedy but rather levels of chaos in characters’ personalities, actions and dynamics.)

The anime stack of mostly all-male casts which is original or adapted from mangas/novels. No romance anime here (yes there are some who fell in love but romance isn't the main plot). I won't include the sequels because the stack is limited to 50 so you gotta find them out by yourself.

Part 1 (idols, games, multimedia projects): https://myanimelist.net/stacks/2078
Also check out pretty boys doing sports: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/2079

Into blood, gangs wars, westerns, iconic soundtracks or mindless action? Immerse yourself into anime that either inspired the great Tarantino or was inspired by him. Guns, samurai swords, cigarettes, liquor, dialogue heavy scenes
you name it, all elements of Tarantino can be found hidden in this collection of classics.

I once made a list of Jazzy soundtracks I found in anime so I decided to put it here. Feel free to send me any suggestions.

List of anime with attractive aesthetics and story for young and old. They stand out for having a western or remarkable visual aesthetic from the rest.

A̷̜̖̞͉͛̚r̷̨̺̳̀͒͝e̶̢͛͐̈́͝ ̴̥́̃͐́y̷̥͕̎ō̸̤̠̝̝̈́͊̈u̵͔͌͑̕ ̵̡̎̏ṋ̷̟̖̺͘o̶̧͗̒t̶̳̹̐ ̸͚͇̄l̸̘̞͕̼̑́͛i̷̧̱͎͖̔̑̎ḳ̷̹͈̍ẻ̴̯̔ ̸̱̐́͌̄o̵̻͒͂ţ̶̍̋h̶̨͎͐̌ͅe̵͓̤̞͌́̎r̴̛͔̜͔̞͌̾̇ ̴̠͙͚͋̒̾̋g̸̢̧̾͜i̴͉͑̃r̸̢̙͗̈́̚l̵̲͕̠̿̉s̸̛̳͛̒ ̷̬̼̟̈́͆͗̈?̷̫̿̋̓
̶̗͌̌͆ ̶̧̐̎A̶͚͙̥̒̆̓͌r̴͕̙͋̊͘e̵̛̪͌̉ ̶̣̄͛̄͠y̴̰̆̿̓̏o̷̭̎̓̿ú̵̯̟̮̚͜͝͝ ̸̹̉̈͜ą̶̩̳̉̽͛ ̶̹͔͔̿͜n̵̥̭̄́̈ȉ̷̺̲͙̼c̶̢̱̯̖̉͂e̴͇̦̾̂ ̴̠̣͋̐̉g̶͉̋u̸͉̜͚͑͌̐̎͜y̷͉͌͊́̋ ̴̮̼̬͕́̏̊?̸̭̘͕̈͜

My favorite animes that should give just about everyone a least one or two good laughs.
NOT a 100% pure comedy anime list
Im not going to put all seasons of the same anime on here. If the first season is on, i will apply the rec for alle the following seasons.

Every superhero has an origin story ... and so does every anime otaku. While I got exposed to anime when growing up, my own journey only really took off in the early 2000s as digital fansubs became widely available and I took full advantage of the fast (for the time) internet provided by my university accommodation.

My anime watching activity dropped off a cliff as I got older and life got in the way, but by that point I'd already lived through the first decade of the 2000s and watched quite a lot of what came out during that decade. Enough, at least, to make a decent stab at this.

This first decade of the 2000s was transformational for the anime industry, particularly with respect to accessibility to western English-speaking audiences.

Legend has it that before this period, anime fansubs used to get distributed physically via VHS tapes. It was a pain in the ass for fansubbers, distributors as well as the consumers so only the hardcore got involved. However, around the turn of the millennium, the rise of DVDs (allowing high quality rips) and faster internet (enabling tolerable download times) killed off VHS fansubs and ushered in the digisubs era. And with this dramatic lowering of the accessibility bar, fansubs exploded across the internet, bringing in a legion of new fans. (Fun fact: MAL itself came into existence during this early period of digi-fansubs.)

It's not just the illegal side of anime viewing that took off though. Kids' series like Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon were great international success stories in the late 90s and early 2000s, and people realised there was an appetite for anime in western market. More shows started getting licensed, DVD sales boomed and some non-kids anime like Cowboy Bebop even got exposure on TV.

Anime production in Japan ramped up in the first half of the decade, though I'm not sure how much of this is to do with its growing following in the west given it was still dominated by the domestic market. But in the very least, success in the west was beginning to have a significant effect on anime production. One notable anime, The Big O, was allegedly made with western audiences in mind. While in Japan it flopped so badly that only half of the originally intended 26 episodes got made, its international success eventually led to the production of a second season.

As more and more anime titles became available to western English speaking audiences, the industry grew into a bubble. Companies started licensing anime almost indiscriminately and the Japanese companies demanded sky high licensing fees even for shite scraped off the bottom of the barrel that some dog did a number two in. A lot of stuff didn't sell nearly enough to make up the cost and this was exacerbated by a declining DVD market, widespread piracy and, later on, the Great Financial Crisis. Inevitably, the bubble burst in the second half of the decade: US licensors like Geneon and Central Park Media went bust, retailers like Suncoast went bankrupt, and Cartoon Network's anime-focused block Toonami got cancelled.

It's worth noting that anime wasn't the only industry in trouble: the whole bricks and mortar business was in decline, as was the DVD-driven entertainment business. And just like in other entertainment industries, the business paradigm was shifting. From the ashes of the anime crash grew shoots of new life. As the decade drew to a close, Crunchyroll (you may have heard of them), which started life in 2006 hosting user-uploaded pirated content, moved towards exclusively showing legally secured titles. The age of anime streaming had begun.

***

On the anime production side, when the decade started, I distinctly remember 26 episode was considered a standard season for TV anime, with quite a few shows going up to 52. As the decade wore on, 26 episode series became increasingly rare and anime around half that length became the norm as the shorter seasons reduce the financial impact of flops while holding the door open to extensions for successful shows. You can really feel the difference this had on the pacing: early 2000s shows with 26 episodes were generally slower with frequent episodic side stories thrown into the early stretches of the series to pad out the story and/or develop the characters.

Animation wise, digipaint became the norm in the early 2000s, replacing the old analogue method of cell animation. As with all transitions, there were some initial teething problems. For example, early digipaint anime were done in lower resolution as full HD wasn't much of a thing back then. These kinds of issues means that anime made in those early years have aged about as well as milk, and not even remastering can do much to salvage them.

While there'd been plenty of light novel anime adaptations before, the popularity of these adaptations hit new heights during this decade. This probably owes a lot to the ludicrous successes of Bakemonogatari and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Towards the end of the decade, adaptations of light novels with long titles that double as plot summaries also started taking off.

This wasn't just a good decade for light novels adaptations, but also visual novels, including eroge aka hentai games. This can be seen as part of anime's increased focus on catering to the otaku subculture. The shift in focus is also evident in trends like the rise of late night anime and, much to my dismay, the dreaded moe. It's not all bad though. In the case of late night anime, it also gave birth to Fuji TV's noitaminA block, which aimed at an atypical anime demographic and produced a string of critically acclaimed shows (spoiler: some of them are in this stack).

***

Anyway, enough rambling on anime history; now onto the stack itself! I came up with a complicated system to determine the potential candidates for this list. Those who aren't crazy enough to be interested just need to note that I consider all the entries to be at least great (9+/10 on MAL or 2.0+ on my personal scale) and that I'm only including one anime from each franchise (usually the earliest one that provides a good jumping in point). Let me also slap on the disclaimer that I haven't seen a lot of these for well over a decade, so I don't know if they all hold up. Feel free to skip the remainder of this section and go straight to the entries.

The main thing that people might find a bit odd about this stack is that it appears to contain entries prior to the 2000s as measured by the more commonly used metric of starting year. This is because I consider an anime to be from the 2000s if it aired DURING this decade. But that's not all! Things get more complicated for franchises. For these, I'm including multiple entries as a single entity if the storyline are closely connected, e.g. in the case of multiple seasons of a show. This results in the inclusion of series that, while did not air in the 2000s, are closely connected to sequels that did (I prefer this over the alternative of putting in some random middle season of a franchise which is not helpful for anyone wanting to start their exploration).

Finally, when judging whether these multi-entry entities are good enough to actually make the cut for the stack, I try to decide based on the merits of the entries that aired during the 2000s as a whole. To illustrate this with a real example, the reason why the Kara no Kyoukai movie series did not make the cut is that while they included a great movie in Paradox Spiral, I don't consider the entries released in 2000s to be great as a whole. Similarly, even though Cowboy Bebop qualified for this list due to the Knocking on Heaven's Door movie airing in 2001, the movie itself fell short of being great so the franchise didn't make the cut (though it would if I were making a 90s stack).

Confused? Good. It wouldn't be my stack if it weren't built on top of a convoluted system! But hopefully things will become clearer as add case-by-case clarification in the controversial entries themselves (disclaimer: it may lead to further confusion).

This is a part of a series of stacks that are about artistic tendencies in anime (and that border the fine line between sophisticated and pretentious).

This stack is a work in progress.

Bibliography:
Bridges, Will. “The Past Tense and the Future Perfect: The Postmodern Play of Watanabe Shin’ichiro and the Possibility of the Coming Community.” The Journal of Popular Culture. 51:3 (2018): 779-789.
Dorman, Andrew. “Cultural Specificity and and Globalization.” Paradoxical Japaneseness: Cultural Representaion in 21st Century Japanese CinemaI. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 40-43.
Napier, Susan J. “Anime and Local/Global Identity.” Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 22-27.
Suan, Stevie. “Anime’s Local-Global Tensions.” Anime’s Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan. University of Minnesota Press, 2021. 75-79.

Anime that bang

Anime that is already completed and will never get a season 2 either because it's original or anime adapts the whole source material. Some will not get a squeal either because the manga has already ended or the anime is too old to get a season 2.

Short Anime with only one season (With also no Second Seasons Confirmed) ranging from 5-13 episodes