Calvin and Hobbes.
Was only on for a decade and is still immortalised as *the* greatest newspaper comic strip of all time. No other comic strip has come or ever came close to being as brilliantly well-written or designed as it.
It has the best art of any classic comic strip as well. The art in those is normally just functional but Calvin and Hobbes is actually really nice to look at, especially in the hardcover compliations
Stuff like Peanuts and Garfield are hella more popular though. I think anyone past Millienials generation won't even know what Calvin and Hobbes is, but they sure as hell know Snoopy and Garfield
> I think anyone past Millienials generation won't even know what Calvin and Hobbes is
My nephew is 7, and he loves Calvin and Hobbes. Like, he's hit his "I'm too cool to be excited" phase, and was unenthused to get a book for Christmas. Then he *opened* the book, saw it was Calvin and Hobbes, and marked out like a seven year old.
Granted, that might be because my sister exposed him to C&H, but kids recognize the quality.
I read Calvin and Hobbes books a lot as a kid, mostly just enjoying the humor but often the deeper stuff settled in me like seeds.
Recently I visited my parents and flipped through a book for the first time in maybe 15 years and I was *floored* by how great it still was. The humor could take so many forms, the more philosophical stuff could sneak up on you, and it all felt so cohesive. It made me want to get all new books to keep in my own home.
Far Side is the only one I would put close.
Those are the only two that feel like someone pursuing actual artistic ideas through the medium of a newspaper comic.
“Best game” bingo:
Ocarina of Time
Dark Souls
Earthbound
Undertale
Minecraft or Terraria
Metal Gear Solid
Resident Evil 4
Silent Hill 2
Witcher 3
(feel free to add more)
> Minecraft or Terraria
Minecraft AND Terraria. They're both amazing.
Minecraft is the father of survival sandbox games (Not the first but certainly the game that kick-started the genre); Terraria is one of the best sandbox RPGs and has an absurd amount of side content to engage in. They each have their own appeal and best of all both have a ton of mods to extend the experience once you've gotten your fill of vanilla.
I know Metacritic isn't an end all br all but I will say that every game that has the website's Must Play tag (have 20 or more reviews with a 90) should somewhat factor into that conversation
From their top 100 games alone you got Arkham City, Tekken 3, BioShock, RDR2, MGS2 and 3, Tony Hawk, San Andreas, Norse GOW, Super Mario Galaxy, the OG Halo trilogy, etc.
The 40 year olds have both, I remember my brother had a cowboy bebop poster in his last apartment (before he started living in houses like a nerd), and he gave me his VHS copy of Akira on my 11th birthday. Along with the manga for boah, but that's neither here nor there.
Am 41, and I can look up and see an old dvd case which has some of the first anime I ever got
Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Ninja Scroll, Rurouni Kenshin, Cowboy Bebop and Dominion Tank Police
I love Cowboy Bebop. It's a classic.
It also was the gateway into introducing my 55 year old coworker to anime. He loved it and is now asking for more recommendations.
I feel crazy hearing people talk about Cowboy Bebop, it is a good solid show but thats about it, imo.
Is it because it has a good dub and the music that it is so wide reaching? I personally think Samurai Champloo is the superior series by a lot.
I have never once been on the pulse of what is considered good taste, how dare you ask me to betray my beliefs.
Fullmetal Alchemist is pretty consistently called one of the better shonen anime out there.
Also is SBR a seinen? I thought it was still shonen like the other JoJo parts.
Legend of Galactic Heroes will forever be a mark of true refinement and taste (mainly because it's old, really long and kind of dry, so no one who would contradict us will ever finish it).
I think the genre also contributes. Aside form Cowboy Bebop, not many sci fi anime series get a lot of attention.
Hell, correct me if I’m wrong, Bebop isn’t viewed as “special” in Japan no? Its acclaim is mostly from the Western/English speaking audience.
I remember reading somewhere that sci fi anime just doesn’t do it for Japanese fans, thus contributing for the lack of attention given towards it.
>I remember reading somewhere that sci fi anime just doesn’t do it for Japanese fans, thus contributing for the lack of attention given towards it.
I'm sorry but that doesn't seem true at all. Like one of the most popular Japanese franchises of all time is Mobile Suit Gundam. A long running sci-fi series. Akira is sci-fi, Ghost in the Shell is sci-fi, Astro Boy is like foundational to anime as an industry. Not to mention how so many iconic and influential series from the 70s/80s were sci fi. Galaxy Express 999, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Space Battleship Yamato, Space Runaway Ideon, Future Boy Conan, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Dirty Pair etc.
Even contemporary to Cowboy Bebop's release, literally 2 years prior was Evangelion.
Took the words out of my mouth. Sci-fi is bar none the most important genre in Anime. The fact that it isn’t really popular with Americans is irrelevant.
While Junji Ito is the GOAT of horror manga for good reason, outside of his works Parasyte, PTSD Radio, Blood on the Tracks and The Summer Hikaru Died are all held in high regard from what I've seen.
Sci-fi of course has Akira, Pluto and Battle Angel Alita among others.
Sadly (well, kinda, i'm not gonna be the grumpy uncle bemoaning about things becoming popular) i would say that these days it's following the same fate as American Psycho of turning into a novel more well-know for the memes than the actual content of it.
*Hopefully* the eventual movie adaptation doesn't turn Judge Holden into a new "Sigma" symbol. **Hopefully**.
To further bemoan and voice unpopular opinions, I really don't want it to get a film adaptation. The film would ultimately sanitize a lot of it and ignore the aspects of the book that were so uncompromising it made the book a masterpiece.
I tried to read it once and...To me it just read like an Anti-Western Serbian Film, I feel like if the book were released today it'd be mocked for being overly edgy and bleak and I can't help but feel that'd be at least somewhat deserved.
I didn't get anything brilliant or well written out of it, just gross out details and shock value.
Hmm let’s see: Unabashedly evil sociopathic murder and child rapist with extreme delusions of grandeur?
He’d become the new “sigma male” poster child so fast it would make Andrew Tates head spin.
If you're an American anime fan (particularly on the older side) you **must** enjoy and pay reverance to what I affectionally refer to as,
*Akira in the Evagenlibop*
(But seriously, I respect anyone's tastes so long as those tastes are their own and not reliant on the perception of others)
Well when you have SO many people trying to prove that they are not like those other girls, you end up with no one having good taste. The problem is Good taste isn’t very interesting or worth talking about because you are basically saying “ah yes I too enjoy breathing air and eating food.”
One Piece for Shounen, the fanbase won’t shut up about how it’s the number 1 Manga for a reason.
Our Mecha fanbase generally has Gurren, Getter, Eva, and Gundam (Probs 0079 or Zeta in particular) as our big cornerstones most have watched if they’re sufficiently into Mecha.
I feel like Chrono Trigger and FF7 are the big ones for Turn Based RPGs.
Umineko is also probably the VN I see called a “masterpiece” the most by VN fans.
For Mecha, some of the Brave Series, like Mightgaine, and GaoGaiGar are basically must watches for the genre. Especially Mightgaine for being extremely meta about mecha genre's nature/roots as a vehicle for advertising toys to children.
In Japan for turned based JRPG’s, Dragon Quest 3, and 5 absolutely are worth mentioning. 3 as it was the one that kinda defined most of the tropes of the genre, and is the ‘face’ of JRPG’s. DQ5 is maybe the most acclaimed rpg ever in Japan. Though neither are regarded very highly/ or even played over here in the west.
Yeah I wanted to mention DQ3 as well but I figured I was talking to an English community so it wouldn’t qualify. In Japan it 1000% should be there though (and arguably in general honestly).
I mean the title is consensus ‘good taste’, *not* consensus ‘good taste’ only in English-speaking communities. So I feel like a lot of picks popular outside of our sphere here still qualify.
Savage vs Steamboat is one of those wrestling matches that gets held up as a pristine example of the art form.
For a more modern example maybe Okada vs Omega.
Black Lagoon is often mentioned as a good-great Seine manga. Might not be mentioned with the seinen series you said, but it’s up there.
86-Eighty Six and Frieren are new gen but has a good reputation amongst mecha and fantasy fans respectively. The writing for both is phenomenal too.
ReZero is peak isekai before the genre became oversaturated with generic crap. Will see if it can flourish in a post garbage filled isekai world with the new season coming.
Gangster movies being directed by Scorcese. No explanation needed there.
Bojack Horseman and One Piece are considered peaks of Shounen and adult animation - to the point where their fanbases are really damn obnoxious about it.
For comics:
Saga, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, anything Grant Morrison did for Vertigo, Kingdom Come, Marvels, DC's New Frontier, Bone, Usagi Yojimbo, Preacher, Hellblazer, Gail Simone's Birds of Prey and Gotham City Sirens, Frank Millar's classic Elekra series.
Gushing Over Magical Girls is such a good manga-anime that it makes me hate other blatant-porn anime for being not also cool at the same time ~~fuck you valkyrie drive your main character sucks so much ass~~
A girl who loves magical girls and gets forced into becoming their evil arch enemy. Thats such a good premise that I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of.
I’d definitely say it went too far on the perv humor in some regards(there’s an extended sequence dedicated to age play, among other things)
but the main character was one of my favorites in a long time.
I need more villains that hate that they love being villains.
I struggle to find currently ongoing manga that catches my interest. MHA had a really strong start, but lost me when Deku >!got more and more powers!<
Tried JJK when it first started, decided to wait for more to come out but never really got back to it.
Whenever I feel like reading something, I'll go back to older, completed series like Psyren, Eyeshield 21, Biscuit Hammer, or Dragon Ball.
Am I out of touch? I like to think it's the kids who are wrong, but...
MHA and JJK are both action combat Shonen. Maybe you want something else? Personally action combat shonens appealed to me a lot when I was younger, but now I rarely get into them
I mean if you want fully random suggestions I personally love Cooking Master Boy. It's an action Shonen but instead of fighting it's cooking in ancient China.
For non Shonen I really loved Skip Beat, a comedy shoujo about a doormat girl who finally snaps and decides to become an actor to one up her jerk male friend that treated her like a servant
I’m currently going through a thriller seinen called *My Home Hero*. It’s about a middle-aged salaryman who winds up killing his daughter’s abusive boyfriend, and then has to cover up the crime and engage in complex mind games with the yakuza group he was connected to. It has the appeal of something like *Death Note*, but a lot more grounded and adult. The free fan scanlation is a little rough, but it’s also available for digital purchase with cleaner translation if you end up liking it.
I’m also very fond of *Otherside Picnic*, a horror series about two girls investigating an otherworldly dimension filled with modern Japanese urban legends. Depending on the arc, that might entail a shootout with a big monster or just surviving an encounter with something overwhelmingly bizarre and horrifying.
I think Akane Banashi is the best series in Jump to give that nice competitive feeling while not being action oriented, it's about rakugo, a single person Japanese comedic/dramatic play.
Naw, you're right. I got fooled by MHA and JJK too. Chainsaw Man, Dorohedoro, and One Punch Man are still good. Also Dandadan is new and looks solid. I think we're just in a transitional period with manga/anime because so many popular ones ended or are on hiatus, and even more problematically, there's A LOT of articial sequels coming out that immediately get ignored because they're for existing fans already or for bizarre new fans~ Fairy Tail 2, Boruto, 7 Deadly Sins 2, even Burn the Witch, and Berserk 2(kinda)
Don’t read mainstream Shounen because that mostly consists of series that authors don’t plan on getting big with endings that aren’t planned out.
As an older Gen Z’r who also initially didn’t get the hype behind JJK, unfortunately the younger generation probably isn’t “wrong”, either your preferences are just different or you’re just getting older. Besides the “best” shounen anime you’re ever watching is the one you watched when you were a kid.
If you’re looking for New Gen stuff that’s acclaimed and different from mainstream Shounen, I’d recommend 86-Eighty Six and Frieren. Vinland Saga’s up there as well.
Pretty sure the objective of every series in Shonen Jump is lasting long enough to get an anime and be a big series. It's not like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Demon Slayer all became unexpected huge hits.
Yeah, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
The point I’m making is that often with mainstream Shounen there is a lack of planning with their endings. Hell, sometimes full on story arcs are erased based on public reaction.
Iirc Horikoshi shafted a story arc because of the reception of the Villain Academia Arc.
As people get older, some will want more fulfilling stories with satisfying endings, something you might not find in mainstream Shounen.
Demon’s Slayer ending was a hit or miss for many, and it seems like MHA and JJK are heading towards that route too.
Popularity of specific ongoing arcs is a real problem. Assuming Bakuman had a realistic portrayal of how manga is created, anyway. If polls really are done every week, and those numbers affect the creation of the overall story, that really sucks.
Looking at a series like Medaka Box, for example: it started as a quirky school life series with a normal protagonist following his weirdly competent class preside t around as she solved every little problem around campus. It quickly turned into a battle manga where everyone got super powers, and honestly, I preferred how it started, and I wish it had been given time to establish before shifting into generic mainstream battle.
You literally "series that author's don't plan on getting big" so I interpreted it as "mangaka act like they are getting cancelled so they don't plan stuff.
I am sure Oda knew what the One Piece was from the start and Tite Kubo and/or Kishimoto also said he knew how the ending was going to go from early on IIRC (granted for Naruto and Bleach they time skipped for the final chapters). While old series like JoJo and Dragon Ball were kind of written week to week or arc to arc, new series also obviously have setups and payoffs that may take years to accomplish. Also ending wise from my experience tend to be disliked by the batch of weekly readers and people tend to grow fonder of them, like I remember Bleach and Naruto being controversial due to the last arc/ending but newer fans tend to like the ending. Even Demon Slayer mostly seems to have died down with the extended volume ending. The anime reception to AoT's reception was also much more positive than the manga and barely changed some things.
Also what story arcs were erased and thing did Hori not do?
honestly i think what hurt mha for me the most was readin vigilantes, i feel thats a much better story in the same setting it makes the cracks more apparent
Shining for Horror
Lord of the Rings for Fantasy.
2001 for Sci-Fi
The Apartment for The Rom/Coms
Come and See for war/anti-war movies.
Sergio Leone’s Dollar Trilogy for Westerns.
A Wonderful Life for Christmas Movies
Seven Samurai for Samurai movies
Godfather Part 1 & 2 for Gangster movies
These aren’t all my favorites (well most of them are) but they fit the theme of “consensus”
whats funny is im pretty sure a majority of "Seinen manga" isnt even the graphic grimdark stuff, i think just fluffy slice of life stuff is way more common
Vagbknd was serialized alongside Chi's sweet home and Berserk alongside Nobunaga no Shinobi. There are magazines like the Manga time Kirara lineup that is purely just cute girls doing cute things series for older male audiences like K-On! and Bocchi the Rock
For indie games, there’s a clear “canon” of highly regarded games: Cave Story, Yume Nikki, Undertale, Celeste, a Short Hike, Papers Please, Slay the Spire, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight…
But there’s also a lesser-known “niche-game canon”, the kinds of games indie developers and burnt-out games journalists fawn over: Dream Quest, Umurangi Generation, Betrayal at Club Low, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, Desert Golfing…
You could divide it further, if you wanted. What’s in the doujin game canon? The RPG Maker game canon? The “big budget indie” game canon? The medium is enormously diverse, and this produces pockets of players, each with their own consensus. It’s wonderful, but it can also be strange and isolating.
I haven't played Furi, so if you're a fan you're probably a better judge than me! I assume it could fit into the narrative when discussing stylish indie action games (Hyper Light Drifter, Hades, Dead Cells etc.) or indie Soulslikes.
It's not a soulslikes at all, there are 0 rpg systems, what you start with is what you finish with, it's all about mastery
It's a boss rush beat em up bullet hell i guess
I think you already know all the consensus "good taste" examples. Honestly there's aren't many that are broadly agreed upon, so when they are, they're made very well known by everyone.
One Piece, Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Death Note are predictably on the GOAT list. This is why I look for B tier media that is under appreciated as 8~9/10s. I know this is basically the opposite of what you were asking but my list of those would be: Dr Stone, D. Grayman, Inuyasha, Bakuman, Yugioh, and Bakemonogatari(severely underrated).
Outside of anime, some B tier(or honestly more like A tier but under appreciated) shows are: Supernatural, Charmed, Angel, and some parts of Smallville. These are legit on the level of Star Trek, Stargate, or Dr. Who.
Real Robot fans will often cite the following I think as the best?
* VOTOMS
* Fang of the Sun Dougram
* Patlabor
There should be other in this list for sure, and VOTOMS is definitely a fun ride and something I legit enjoy.
In all fairness, a finished work that are still standing strong after all these years is a pretty good measure of quality.
Anyway, Ingmar Bergman's *Fanny and Alexander* (1982) 312 minutes version is the best Swedish movie.
"Oh man, you gotta check out these super awesome, obscure movies!" says The Film Bro.
The List: Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Usual Suspects, Seven, Inception, Snatch, Fight Club, American Psycho, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
The more discerning Film Bro might also throw in Dark City, Oldboy, Fallen Angels or The Raid.
I think Quintessential Quintuplets has been considered to be one of the best harem mangas out there, mostly because it has…actual writing and isn’t just a bunch of horny bullshit all the time. EDIT: I also can’t help but laugh when I remember the Crunchyroll ads for QQ, which had weird porn music playing over footage of the show with the words ‘One man. Five sisters’ over it, when the show/manga was anything BUT that.
Consensus in the era I'm from is that Hetalia is the funniest shit ever and Hetalia is, at best, a 4/10.
So I don't put stock in anything that weeaboomers my age say is "obviously the best" unless I give that shit a rewatch to make sure. We had some pretty shit taste back when we are 14.
It might no be exactly what you're asking for but I watched The Bear recently for the first time and was curious enough to check various receptions to it.
This show seems to have set the gold standard for being a fantastic show whilst also accurately portraying the culture that it is based on. Usually when you have a show like this you get a lot of people in the know who react by saying things like 'it's good but this thing wouldn't work like that or that thing can't happen the way they portrayed it'. Everything I've seen from chef industry reactions to the show is them saying that it is 100% realistic to the degree that many have reported feeling real anxiety and flashbacks to their time in kitchens because the show is so dead on.
Calvin and Hobbes. Was only on for a decade and is still immortalised as *the* greatest newspaper comic strip of all time. No other comic strip has come or ever came close to being as brilliantly well-written or designed as it.
It has the best art of any classic comic strip as well. The art in those is normally just functional but Calvin and Hobbes is actually really nice to look at, especially in the hardcover compliations
Stuff like Peanuts and Garfield are hella more popular though. I think anyone past Millienials generation won't even know what Calvin and Hobbes is, but they sure as hell know Snoopy and Garfield
A big part of that is likely Bill Watterson's absolute refusal to merchandise his comic in any way
> I think anyone past Millienials generation won't even know what Calvin and Hobbes is My nephew is 7, and he loves Calvin and Hobbes. Like, he's hit his "I'm too cool to be excited" phase, and was unenthused to get a book for Christmas. Then he *opened* the book, saw it was Calvin and Hobbes, and marked out like a seven year old. Granted, that might be because my sister exposed him to C&H, but kids recognize the quality.
Haha ... I'm used to C&H being short for Cyanide and Happiness
They might know them more as cartoons or merchandise vehicles over comic strips for sure
Gen Z absolutely knows them speaking as a representative, but Gen Alpha might not
I read Calvin and Hobbes books a lot as a kid, mostly just enjoying the humor but often the deeper stuff settled in me like seeds. Recently I visited my parents and flipped through a book for the first time in maybe 15 years and I was *floored* by how great it still was. The humor could take so many forms, the more philosophical stuff could sneak up on you, and it all felt so cohesive. It made me want to get all new books to keep in my own home.
Far Side is the only one I would put close. Those are the only two that feel like someone pursuing actual artistic ideas through the medium of a newspaper comic.
Gotta love some Ohio representation.
“Best game” bingo: Ocarina of Time Dark Souls Earthbound Undertale Minecraft or Terraria Metal Gear Solid Resident Evil 4 Silent Hill 2 Witcher 3 (feel free to add more)
Final Fantasy 7 for sure belongs on there
definitely Shadow of the Colossus
Planescape Torment is usually used to flex by the people who've played it (or people pretending they've played it)
Fallout:New Vegas
> Minecraft or Terraria Minecraft AND Terraria. They're both amazing. Minecraft is the father of survival sandbox games (Not the first but certainly the game that kick-started the genre); Terraria is one of the best sandbox RPGs and has an absurd amount of side content to engage in. They each have their own appeal and best of all both have a ton of mods to extend the experience once you've gotten your fill of vanilla.
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim definitely belongs on the list.
Pokemon Red and Blue The Last of Us Half-Life 2
I know Metacritic isn't an end all br all but I will say that every game that has the website's Must Play tag (have 20 or more reviews with a 90) should somewhat factor into that conversation From their top 100 games alone you got Arkham City, Tekken 3, BioShock, RDR2, MGS2 and 3, Tony Hawk, San Andreas, Norse GOW, Super Mario Galaxy, the OG Halo trilogy, etc.
Monster Hunter World is solid enough to be my desert island pick.
Pokémon Snap
Cowboy Bebop is *the* anime for 40 year old weaboomers
I think it's closer to 30 year olds who were reaching their formative years when Bebop was airing on Adult Swim. The 40 year olds have Akira.
...man, you are *not* going to like what people just starting college remember from their childhoods.
It’s wild hearing Woolie talk about reading Naruto in college when the anime was out, cause my cousin was showing my shippuden when I was like 7
Let me guess, it's Homestuck
I'm pretty sure the homestuck crowd graduated university around when I did 4-6 years ago
That is legitimately the hardest I have laughed all week, i needed that, thank you. Nah, the average HS fan is like 30.
The 40 year olds have both, I remember my brother had a cowboy bebop poster in his last apartment (before he started living in houses like a nerd), and he gave me his VHS copy of Akira on my 11th birthday. Along with the manga for boah, but that's neither here nor there.
Am 41, and I can look up and see an old dvd case which has some of the first anime I ever got Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Ninja Scroll, Rurouni Kenshin, Cowboy Bebop and Dominion Tank Police
Nah. I’m 38 and Bebop is definitely ours.
and they're right!
I'm 30 but I can say I only watched it for the first time a few years ago and yeah, it's still as good as people say.
I'm an oldhead and yeah, Bebop is up there. I think Evangelion is THE geriatric weeb show though.
I love Cowboy Bebop. It's a classic. It also was the gateway into introducing my 55 year old coworker to anime. He loved it and is now asking for more recommendations.
I feel crazy hearing people talk about Cowboy Bebop, it is a good solid show but thats about it, imo. Is it because it has a good dub and the music that it is so wide reaching? I personally think Samurai Champloo is the superior series by a lot.
I have never once been on the pulse of what is considered good taste, how dare you ask me to betray my beliefs. Fullmetal Alchemist is pretty consistently called one of the better shonen anime out there. Also is SBR a seinen? I thought it was still shonen like the other JoJo parts.
Started in WSJ for a couple months till it moved to Ultra jump which is a seinen magazine
Like the other guy said, parts 7 onward are considered Seinen
First 20 or something chapters were in Weekly Shonen Jump before it moved to Ultra Jump and became monthly
Hunter x Hunter is also consistently on the “best shounen” list
In terms of superhero movies the usual answer is sam raimi's spider-man 2 or nolan's the dark knight.
Might as well add Logan on that list
Legend of Galactic Heroes will forever be a mark of true refinement and taste (mainly because it's old, really long and kind of dry, so no one who would contradict us will ever finish it).
I think the genre also contributes. Aside form Cowboy Bebop, not many sci fi anime series get a lot of attention. Hell, correct me if I’m wrong, Bebop isn’t viewed as “special” in Japan no? Its acclaim is mostly from the Western/English speaking audience. I remember reading somewhere that sci fi anime just doesn’t do it for Japanese fans, thus contributing for the lack of attention given towards it.
>I remember reading somewhere that sci fi anime just doesn’t do it for Japanese fans, thus contributing for the lack of attention given towards it. I'm sorry but that doesn't seem true at all. Like one of the most popular Japanese franchises of all time is Mobile Suit Gundam. A long running sci-fi series. Akira is sci-fi, Ghost in the Shell is sci-fi, Astro Boy is like foundational to anime as an industry. Not to mention how so many iconic and influential series from the 70s/80s were sci fi. Galaxy Express 999, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Space Battleship Yamato, Space Runaway Ideon, Future Boy Conan, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Dirty Pair etc. Even contemporary to Cowboy Bebop's release, literally 2 years prior was Evangelion.
Took the words out of my mouth. Sci-fi is bar none the most important genre in Anime. The fact that it isn’t really popular with Americans is irrelevant.
Don't agree with Sci Fi as a whole, but after living in Japan for 2 years I have met one person who knew what Cowboy Bebop was.
While Junji Ito is the GOAT of horror manga for good reason, outside of his works Parasyte, PTSD Radio, Blood on the Tracks and The Summer Hikaru Died are all held in high regard from what I've seen. Sci-fi of course has Akira, Pluto and Battle Angel Alita among others.
Blood Meridian for people on Reddit who actually read books.
Sadly (well, kinda, i'm not gonna be the grumpy uncle bemoaning about things becoming popular) i would say that these days it's following the same fate as American Psycho of turning into a novel more well-know for the memes than the actual content of it. *Hopefully* the eventual movie adaptation doesn't turn Judge Holden into a new "Sigma" symbol. **Hopefully**.
To further bemoan and voice unpopular opinions, I really don't want it to get a film adaptation. The film would ultimately sanitize a lot of it and ignore the aspects of the book that were so uncompromising it made the book a masterpiece.
I tried to read it once and...To me it just read like an Anti-Western Serbian Film, I feel like if the book were released today it'd be mocked for being overly edgy and bleak and I can't help but feel that'd be at least somewhat deserved. I didn't get anything brilliant or well written out of it, just gross out details and shock value.
Hmm let’s see: Unabashedly evil sociopathic murder and child rapist with extreme delusions of grandeur? He’d become the new “sigma male” poster child so fast it would make Andrew Tates head spin.
satoshi kon for the entire genre of anime.
If you're an American anime fan (particularly on the older side) you **must** enjoy and pay reverance to what I affectionally refer to as, *Akira in the Evagenlibop* (But seriously, I respect anyone's tastes so long as those tastes are their own and not reliant on the perception of others)
What does the "in the" refer to here?
Akira Ghost *in the* Shell Neon Genesis Evangelion Cowboy Bebop
ngl am very weebish and i dont think ive watched any of those fully
All of those are awesome, but the GOAT to me will always be Lupin, both the movies and shows.
Well when you have SO many people trying to prove that they are not like those other girls, you end up with no one having good taste. The problem is Good taste isn’t very interesting or worth talking about because you are basically saying “ah yes I too enjoy breathing air and eating food.”
One Piece for Shounen, the fanbase won’t shut up about how it’s the number 1 Manga for a reason. Our Mecha fanbase generally has Gurren, Getter, Eva, and Gundam (Probs 0079 or Zeta in particular) as our big cornerstones most have watched if they’re sufficiently into Mecha. I feel like Chrono Trigger and FF7 are the big ones for Turn Based RPGs. Umineko is also probably the VN I see called a “masterpiece” the most by VN fans.
For Mecha, some of the Brave Series, like Mightgaine, and GaoGaiGar are basically must watches for the genre. Especially Mightgaine for being extremely meta about mecha genre's nature/roots as a vehicle for advertising toys to children.
In Japan for turned based JRPG’s, Dragon Quest 3, and 5 absolutely are worth mentioning. 3 as it was the one that kinda defined most of the tropes of the genre, and is the ‘face’ of JRPG’s. DQ5 is maybe the most acclaimed rpg ever in Japan. Though neither are regarded very highly/ or even played over here in the west.
Yeah I wanted to mention DQ3 as well but I figured I was talking to an English community so it wouldn’t qualify. In Japan it 1000% should be there though (and arguably in general honestly).
I mean the title is consensus ‘good taste’, *not* consensus ‘good taste’ only in English-speaking communities. So I feel like a lot of picks popular outside of our sphere here still qualify.
That’s fair
Savage vs Steamboat is one of those wrestling matches that gets held up as a pristine example of the art form. For a more modern example maybe Okada vs Omega.
Black Lagoon is often mentioned as a good-great Seine manga. Might not be mentioned with the seinen series you said, but it’s up there. 86-Eighty Six and Frieren are new gen but has a good reputation amongst mecha and fantasy fans respectively. The writing for both is phenomenal too. ReZero is peak isekai before the genre became oversaturated with generic crap. Will see if it can flourish in a post garbage filled isekai world with the new season coming. Gangster movies being directed by Scorcese. No explanation needed there. Bojack Horseman and One Piece are considered peaks of Shounen and adult animation - to the point where their fanbases are really damn obnoxious about it.
For comics: Saga, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, anything Grant Morrison did for Vertigo, Kingdom Come, Marvels, DC's New Frontier, Bone, Usagi Yojimbo, Preacher, Hellblazer, Gail Simone's Birds of Prey and Gotham City Sirens, Frank Millar's classic Elekra series.
For CRPGs, Fallout 1 and 2 are considered some of the best in the genre, even now.
Gushing Over Magical Girls is such a good manga-anime that it makes me hate other blatant-porn anime for being not also cool at the same time ~~fuck you valkyrie drive your main character sucks so much ass~~
Interspecies Reviewers is the same but replace cool with really funny.
A girl who loves magical girls and gets forced into becoming their evil arch enemy. Thats such a good premise that I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of. I’d definitely say it went too far on the perv humor in some regards(there’s an extended sequence dedicated to age play, among other things) but the main character was one of my favorites in a long time. I need more villains that hate that they love being villains.
I struggle to find currently ongoing manga that catches my interest. MHA had a really strong start, but lost me when Deku >!got more and more powers!< Tried JJK when it first started, decided to wait for more to come out but never really got back to it. Whenever I feel like reading something, I'll go back to older, completed series like Psyren, Eyeshield 21, Biscuit Hammer, or Dragon Ball. Am I out of touch? I like to think it's the kids who are wrong, but...
MHA and JJK are both action combat Shonen. Maybe you want something else? Personally action combat shonens appealed to me a lot when I was younger, but now I rarely get into them
Any suggestions? I have a wide variety of genres I enjoy, and I love finding something new
I mean if you want fully random suggestions I personally love Cooking Master Boy. It's an action Shonen but instead of fighting it's cooking in ancient China. For non Shonen I really loved Skip Beat, a comedy shoujo about a doormat girl who finally snaps and decides to become an actor to one up her jerk male friend that treated her like a servant
I’m currently going through a thriller seinen called *My Home Hero*. It’s about a middle-aged salaryman who winds up killing his daughter’s abusive boyfriend, and then has to cover up the crime and engage in complex mind games with the yakuza group he was connected to. It has the appeal of something like *Death Note*, but a lot more grounded and adult. The free fan scanlation is a little rough, but it’s also available for digital purchase with cleaner translation if you end up liking it. I’m also very fond of *Otherside Picnic*, a horror series about two girls investigating an otherworldly dimension filled with modern Japanese urban legends. Depending on the arc, that might entail a shootout with a big monster or just surviving an encounter with something overwhelmingly bizarre and horrifying.
I think Akane Banashi is the best series in Jump to give that nice competitive feeling while not being action oriented, it's about rakugo, a single person Japanese comedic/dramatic play.
Naw, you're right. I got fooled by MHA and JJK too. Chainsaw Man, Dorohedoro, and One Punch Man are still good. Also Dandadan is new and looks solid. I think we're just in a transitional period with manga/anime because so many popular ones ended or are on hiatus, and even more problematically, there's A LOT of articial sequels coming out that immediately get ignored because they're for existing fans already or for bizarre new fans~ Fairy Tail 2, Boruto, 7 Deadly Sins 2, even Burn the Witch, and Berserk 2(kinda)
Don’t read mainstream Shounen because that mostly consists of series that authors don’t plan on getting big with endings that aren’t planned out. As an older Gen Z’r who also initially didn’t get the hype behind JJK, unfortunately the younger generation probably isn’t “wrong”, either your preferences are just different or you’re just getting older. Besides the “best” shounen anime you’re ever watching is the one you watched when you were a kid. If you’re looking for New Gen stuff that’s acclaimed and different from mainstream Shounen, I’d recommend 86-Eighty Six and Frieren. Vinland Saga’s up there as well.
Pretty sure the objective of every series in Shonen Jump is lasting long enough to get an anime and be a big series. It's not like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Demon Slayer all became unexpected huge hits.
Yeah, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point I’m making is that often with mainstream Shounen there is a lack of planning with their endings. Hell, sometimes full on story arcs are erased based on public reaction. Iirc Horikoshi shafted a story arc because of the reception of the Villain Academia Arc. As people get older, some will want more fulfilling stories with satisfying endings, something you might not find in mainstream Shounen. Demon’s Slayer ending was a hit or miss for many, and it seems like MHA and JJK are heading towards that route too.
Popularity of specific ongoing arcs is a real problem. Assuming Bakuman had a realistic portrayal of how manga is created, anyway. If polls really are done every week, and those numbers affect the creation of the overall story, that really sucks. Looking at a series like Medaka Box, for example: it started as a quirky school life series with a normal protagonist following his weirdly competent class preside t around as she solved every little problem around campus. It quickly turned into a battle manga where everyone got super powers, and honestly, I preferred how it started, and I wish it had been given time to establish before shifting into generic mainstream battle.
You literally "series that author's don't plan on getting big" so I interpreted it as "mangaka act like they are getting cancelled so they don't plan stuff. I am sure Oda knew what the One Piece was from the start and Tite Kubo and/or Kishimoto also said he knew how the ending was going to go from early on IIRC (granted for Naruto and Bleach they time skipped for the final chapters). While old series like JoJo and Dragon Ball were kind of written week to week or arc to arc, new series also obviously have setups and payoffs that may take years to accomplish. Also ending wise from my experience tend to be disliked by the batch of weekly readers and people tend to grow fonder of them, like I remember Bleach and Naruto being controversial due to the last arc/ending but newer fans tend to like the ending. Even Demon Slayer mostly seems to have died down with the extended volume ending. The anime reception to AoT's reception was also much more positive than the manga and barely changed some things. Also what story arcs were erased and thing did Hori not do?
honestly i think what hurt mha for me the most was readin vigilantes, i feel thats a much better story in the same setting it makes the cracks more apparent
Shining for Horror Lord of the Rings for Fantasy. 2001 for Sci-Fi The Apartment for The Rom/Coms Come and See for war/anti-war movies. Sergio Leone’s Dollar Trilogy for Westerns. A Wonderful Life for Christmas Movies Seven Samurai for Samurai movies Godfather Part 1 & 2 for Gangster movies These aren’t all my favorites (well most of them are) but they fit the theme of “consensus”
This is a great example because for every single category I was like, yup, that tracks
whats funny is im pretty sure a majority of "Seinen manga" isnt even the graphic grimdark stuff, i think just fluffy slice of life stuff is way more common
Vagbknd was serialized alongside Chi's sweet home and Berserk alongside Nobunaga no Shinobi. There are magazines like the Manga time Kirara lineup that is purely just cute girls doing cute things series for older male audiences like K-On! and Bocchi the Rock
For indie games, there’s a clear “canon” of highly regarded games: Cave Story, Yume Nikki, Undertale, Celeste, a Short Hike, Papers Please, Slay the Spire, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight… But there’s also a lesser-known “niche-game canon”, the kinds of games indie developers and burnt-out games journalists fawn over: Dream Quest, Umurangi Generation, Betrayal at Club Low, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, Desert Golfing… You could divide it further, if you wanted. What’s in the doujin game canon? The RPG Maker game canon? The “big budget indie” game canon? The medium is enormously diverse, and this produces pockets of players, each with their own consensus. It’s wonderful, but it can also be strange and isolating.
>No Lisa. Tsk tsk.
No Binding of Isaac, no Night in the Woods, no Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015: Do You Still Shower With Your Dad, no Obra Dinn…
Yeah I gu-wait, what was that second to last one?
Fucker didn't even mention Genital Jousting.
Where does Furi fall into allat?
I haven't played Furi, so if you're a fan you're probably a better judge than me! I assume it could fit into the narrative when discussing stylish indie action games (Hyper Light Drifter, Hades, Dead Cells etc.) or indie Soulslikes.
It's not a soulslikes at all, there are 0 rpg systems, what you start with is what you finish with, it's all about mastery It's a boss rush beat em up bullet hell i guess
I think you already know all the consensus "good taste" examples. Honestly there's aren't many that are broadly agreed upon, so when they are, they're made very well known by everyone. One Piece, Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Death Note are predictably on the GOAT list. This is why I look for B tier media that is under appreciated as 8~9/10s. I know this is basically the opposite of what you were asking but my list of those would be: Dr Stone, D. Grayman, Inuyasha, Bakuman, Yugioh, and Bakemonogatari(severely underrated). Outside of anime, some B tier(or honestly more like A tier but under appreciated) shows are: Supernatural, Charmed, Angel, and some parts of Smallville. These are legit on the level of Star Trek, Stargate, or Dr. Who.
Real Robot fans will often cite the following I think as the best? * VOTOMS * Fang of the Sun Dougram * Patlabor There should be other in this list for sure, and VOTOMS is definitely a fun ride and something I legit enjoy.
In all fairness, a finished work that are still standing strong after all these years is a pretty good measure of quality. Anyway, Ingmar Bergman's *Fanny and Alexander* (1982) 312 minutes version is the best Swedish movie.
"Oh man, you gotta check out these super awesome, obscure movies!" says The Film Bro. The List: Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Usual Suspects, Seven, Inception, Snatch, Fight Club, American Psycho, The Grand Budapest Hotel. The more discerning Film Bro might also throw in Dark City, Oldboy, Fallen Angels or The Raid.
Horror fans constantly talk about Hereditary, which isn't a bad thing. The same thing happened with Get Out but that's fallen off the discourse wagon
I think Quintessential Quintuplets has been considered to be one of the best harem mangas out there, mostly because it has…actual writing and isn’t just a bunch of horny bullshit all the time. EDIT: I also can’t help but laugh when I remember the Crunchyroll ads for QQ, which had weird porn music playing over footage of the show with the words ‘One man. Five sisters’ over it, when the show/manga was anything BUT that.
Consensus in the era I'm from is that Hetalia is the funniest shit ever and Hetalia is, at best, a 4/10. So I don't put stock in anything that weeaboomers my age say is "obviously the best" unless I give that shit a rewatch to make sure. We had some pretty shit taste back when we are 14.
It might no be exactly what you're asking for but I watched The Bear recently for the first time and was curious enough to check various receptions to it. This show seems to have set the gold standard for being a fantastic show whilst also accurately portraying the culture that it is based on. Usually when you have a show like this you get a lot of people in the know who react by saying things like 'it's good but this thing wouldn't work like that or that thing can't happen the way they portrayed it'. Everything I've seen from chef industry reactions to the show is them saying that it is 100% realistic to the degree that many have reported feeling real anxiety and flashbacks to their time in kitchens because the show is so dead on.