Mushishi

Associated words: Dark (Visually and/or Thematically), Story-centric, Atmospheric, Abstract, Psychological, Unorthodox, Nihilistic, AND/OR Avant-garde
(Emphasis on AND/OR)


Do check out the other 'half': https://myanimelist.net/stacks/4917 (Some shows could also fit here)

May or may not be completely western songs

(Note: Feel free to message me for suggestions)

This stack will balance between fairly conventional but beautiful art style -for example 3-gatsu no Lion- and unique artstyle -like Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei-, with some maybe not-so-worthy mentions in the middle.

So far I'm gonna add the ones I watched, so let's say that it's always in construction.

Oh, btw, for series with multiple entries, I'm gonna add the first one only. Enjoy!

List of obscure confusing plot-centered anime from the stone age that will automatically make you have a superior anime taste.

Anime smokers, tobacco became a great part of human civilization, it's not that good for you, but for some people it became a part of their character.

A comprehensive watch order of the Mushishi series, which includes every entry of the Mushishi franchise.
Original Guide: https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1882708

AEGC Interest Stack index: https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2017008

Anime with yōkai⁠—spirits from the Shinto religion and/or Japanese folklore. Popular types include kitsune (fox spirits), shape-shifting tanuki (raccoon dogs), kappa (river monsters), and oni (ogre-like demons).

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:
Blautoothdmand. “The Appeal of Slice of Life.” The Artifice. 27 December 2017.
Roquet, Paul. “Ambient Literature and the Aesthetics of Calm: Mood Regulation in Contemporary Japanese Fiction.” Journal of Japanese Studies. 35:1 (2008): 87-95.
Zeria. “Iyashikei: The Genre of Healing – An Attempt at a Definition.” Floating into Bliss. 27 May 2017.
---. “The Definition of Iyashikei Isn’t So Simple.” Floating into Bliss. 15 July 2019.

Just some Iyashikei(healing) anime to make your day better.
This will be the ultimate list. I'll add more by time to time.
I'll add only one season of each anime.

Anime where characters aren't big eyed cute girls

I'll add more later

This is stack of predominantly non-comedic, Slice of Life anime. These anime are not entirely devoid of comedic elements, but comedy features rather sparsely and isn't a key plot-device. Some of the anime featured here uses the opportunity to deal with and provides an insight into complex subject matters, ranging from Depression to Gender-identity, in a realistic and humane way.

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

anime that really, really stick out, and are worth watching even if you aren't an anime fan, and are just a fan of great visual media in general.

sometimes we just want to relax and chill with cup a coffee or see something that make us smile

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).