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Check out that animation when Vash fights that samurai guy. HA HA HA HA! Budget issues much?

First some good things. The environment feels very fleshed out and realized. You could sum it up perfectly with "sci-fi plus western," but it feels like its own world, which I really feel is a huge boon in fiction.

Flaws, though? Inconsistent, often very poor animation. Two one-dimensional characters crammed together (an idiot savant joker and a dark, troubled guy) instead of a truly fleshed out protagonist. A sudden tone swing in the middle of the series from comedy to drama that is very, very ham-fistedly "dark". (It's really ... sad and stuff when a kid dies, innit?!)

It seems like their heart was in the right place, but I imagine adult swim nostalgia is about the best thing Trigun has to offer anyone nowadays.

I see a lot of elitism and in-group/out-group mentality here, whether it be about shonen, "moeshit" or what-have-you, and I'd just like to say, if you like Elfen Lied, it's okay. I won't judge you. But if you like Elfen Lied, you probably don't have much of a place to talk about "bad anime," because man. Pedophilic undertones, highly detailed gore hilariously contrasted with stock Saturday morning anime-looking character designs, infantilized girls making cat noises, "profound" fake latin, over-the-top cruety as a cheap dramatic device, etc. etc... It's like some super-complex AI watched every bad anime on the planet, then made its own anime based ... on what it learned. It's SO generic that it's paradoxically totally unique, that's one thing I can say for it, but at the end of the day this is the kind of thing that makes the medium a guilty pleasure for a lot of people.

I remember they used to sell like a thousand volumes of this in Borders. If I wanted a reference point to finding new things, the safest way I could put it is "find me the OPPOSITE of Getbackers." It's pretty much as much of a mindlessly pumped out cynical product as a series can get; very slick, professional art, but mostly used to emphasize full page "fanservice" (that's what kids today call tits and lady underwear, right?). Plot's neither here nor there for the most part, things are obviously made up as the story goes along, but without the grace of even the most generic ... 100+ volume action titles. Characters couldn't get much more stock, like, there's this "dark and mysterious" guy with a fedora and a black coat who uses little surgical knives. His name is... Raven or something? Raven McCrow? Am I describing a real character, or your roleplaying forum character you made when you were 11? FUCK GETBACKERS.

Sometimes more than having any legit gripes, you'll be unable to get into something just because it's "after your time." I just don't get the appeal of Death Note, it's like anime for the Hot Topic/nu-metal crowd. Really bad metalcore music, angst angst angst, a general goth pseudo-creepy vibe, and characters who seem to have more obvious quirks than personality. (Imagine all the awkward middle-schoolers who probably tried to imitate that tired looking guy's weird mannerisms and try not to retch.)

I'll give this at least a 5 because I'm sure there's probably a decent plot in this somewhere if you're not instantly offput by ... everything about it like I am.

I'm sorry, with respect to what he's accomplished, Miyazaki can't tell a good story to save his life. As a test, ask someone who loves Spirited Away for a brief wiki-style synopsis and see if they can do it. Probably not, but it's not their fault; it's a plot based on coincidences and contrivances. The sentimentalism is manipulative & manufactured (aww, the old spider guy has developed a grandfatherly attachment to the protagonist for no reason! etc) and the usually great Joe Hisaishi is reduced to sappy Disney style orchestral "emotional scene #50" muzak. At a bloated two hours, I don't think good visuals are ... enough.

Although not totally faithful to the manga, this is one of those shows where the problem is that it maybe didn't take enough liberties, and the pacing kinda got lost in translation between the two mediums. It has a certain charm to it, but once the action starts getting emphasized, it turns into one of the slowest, least fluid shows I've ever seen. You know the saying "show, don't tell"? A character will use some move, and then they spend twice the time explaining what just happened.

"Ha ha! I've turned some of my hairs into demon monster things!"

"Oh no! I can see that ... you did that! Now what will I do?"

"Ha ha! My demon monster things will eat you! Ha ha!"

"I better run!"

"Try to run! My demon monster things will get you and..." etc.

They spent way too much energy on thinking how to put as little into an episode as possible.

I went into this expecting delightfully generic, violent 80s stuff like Devil Man or Angel Cop, but unfortunately with overly long, uneventful hour-long episodes and mostly lazy animation, it falls on the decidedly "un-delightful" side of generic. The hilariously bad dub can make it watchable, though. "Get lost. You wouldn't know a goddamn vampire if one jumped up and bit you on the end of your fuckin' dick. So just get off my back."

Stupid but somehow lovable. Space transvestites, great blink-and-you'll-miss-it animation, bad synthpop, and giant robots every 10 minutes FOR NO REASON. At a brisk 80 minutes, it just flies by and is a lot of fun. As a child of the 80s, everything about how this movie looks and sounds just resonates with me.

Wow, it's like everything unappealing about both western and eastern animation rolled into one, with a dash of what your mom thinks South Park's sense of humor is like (she probably doesn't realize there are at least satirical and dry British elements in South Park, however heavyhanded). Here's the thing: stuff like farts and orgasms and erections aren't inherently funny. They're potentially funny (but probably not) when juxtaposed with something incongruous or unexpected, but they can't just tossed around like they're a free pass to instant comedy. Meanwhile, it doesn't really matter how "weird" a show is if it looks like it was slapped together ... in flash animation. The contrived absurdism of the youtube generation flabbily huffs onward.

Cowboy Bebop is a triumph of budget; a paper-thin anime with dynamic, fluid animation, a lovingly crafted eclectic soundtrack, and stylistic nuances for miles (one episode even effectively parodies blaxploitation). I don't mean that in an entirely derogatory way; it's really no surprise this is one of the major things that got people into Japanese animation, because it's an extremely fully realized show, so fully realized in fact that it's easy to overlook broad, undeveloped characters and a fanservice-vehicle female character who's dressed like a space hooker most of the time. There's not much to it, and yet there is.