What isn't it from?
also the answer is uwabaki no nioi no kitsui otokonoko couple
btw it's hentai

So, I guess I'm ten years late, but over the last month I finally watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (specifically just the first season).

I... can see why it became so popular, but right now it occupies the same kind of "this f!@#$%g show" territory as Higurashi for me. Worth noting: I watched it in the original broadcast order.

Same. It's animation is pretty damn amazing.

Suzumiya is a great show. Were there ever more than two seasons and a movie?
A watched Code Geass recently, and found it quite good. It eventually gets dumb with implausible ideologically-driven plots and weird theology stuff (it's from the same guys who do Gundam which I understand does the same thing) but it's a fun ride over all.

i watched mai-hime and it reminded me of madoka and narutaru it wasn't great

In my memory of my opinion when I first watched it on Toonami (like 10 years ago), the beginning of Code Geass is good in a Death Note over-the-top teenage genius kind of way, with a neat premise and attention-grabbing plot hooks, then slowly wears thin as it goes on (especially during the second season), but the ending made that show worth the watch for me, in much the same way Death Note's ending did. It just brought everything full circle.

I've never felt the desire to go back to Code Geass, but I felt fulfilled by the one time I did watch it.

I agree that the Code Geass' ending was fitting, I just think it wasn't set up very well.

To be honest I don't really remember any of that. The Pizza Hut episode(s) made more of an impact.

... and the table-humping scene.

... especially since I didn't get it for a long time.

Just finished off Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash. Really liked it as a representative of the "random kids fall into a magical world that functions strangely like an RPG and have adventures where almost nothing about how they got there or why is ever explained" genre. Honestly, having so little about it explained really helped the narrative over all and there were a lot of side bits that I'm both happy and sad were never really explored.

I'm also about three episodes deep into The Ancient Magus Bride, which I hear people really liked. Also Food Wars is back in session with a new season and I'm really enjoying getting my favorite cooking anime back.

Gintama, Classicaloids, Osomatsu, Hozuki no Reitetsu

Lots of fantastic comedy sequels this season. Gintama is focusing on the funny little stories that are the backbone of it, Classicaloids is back with their wacky cast of composers, Osomatsu has lost none of its irreverence, and Hozuki is still an amusing peak at the afterlife.

The new stuff I'm still working into. AMB is visually impressive, but still waiting on the story to get some teeth. Still, it's weaving a world of magic which is thrilling to be a part of.

Just started watching Net-juu no Susume. It's pretty cute,and probably the closest thing to a Japanese adaptation of You've Got Mail.

I finally, for the first time in my life, watched an anime series.
It's The Cholerism Cholericism Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia.
It's basically Homestuck: the Anime.
The colorful, multi-layered, absurd yet logical world, populated by colorful, multi-layered, absurd yet logical charachters. Which I liked. And they all seemed like real people, even when they weren't, not overreactiong to everything or being slaves of their cliches. Global plot is amazing, and the irony... oh my... THE IRONY. The athmosphere creation was very, very good, with occasional bombs like Yuki's exposition sequence (big thanks to translators there), computer game episode, and huuuuuuuuge time loop that felt like bold, amazing experiments. I liked narrator's internal (and external) comments too. Speaking of this, voice acting was very good too, esp. at ditching original japanese speech.

Carp: the intro/outro (HOW ?! WHYYY ?!), local plots aren't that great, charachter style is a bit annoying sometimes, Status Quo is (demi)God: central conflicts are never resolved and central questions are never answered, not enough worldbuilding.

I's awesome and it's ironic and it's a good story. That's really all there is to say on the matter.

I'd like to say a few things in response to that. A disclaimer: I've only watched the first season, so any big changes to the characters or series as a whole I won't be aware of; I think my overall opinions will probably still hold through that second season if I ever get around to it, but know that my reasoning may be a little flawed here.

Firstly, I try not to make retroactive connections like that. Homestuck came years after Haruhi. I'm not going to "correct you" because that would be dumb on multiple levels, but know that I'm not going to be drawing any parallels here and mostly ignoring your more in-depth comparisons between the two IPs.

Secondly, I am going to heavily disagree with you that the characters felt "real" and not "slaves to their clichés" or "over-reacted to everything". I found each of the main characters to be cliché nearly to the point of being insufferable. Each of them, and all the situations they were put into, were played exactly as their character types would be to get the maximum amount of reaction from the young-ish audience they were going for. A friend of mine described it (without ever having watched it, I should note) as "quality waifu show", and, despite my disdain for the term "waifu", I'm inclined to use the same description. Every one of the main characters is designed and acts in such a way as to attract people to them, and I'm including both the boys and the girls in this because damn even I as a straight male can see how attractive the boys are. The thing is, I consider them all fairly one-dimensional, or at best two-dimensional; they never felt like "real people" to me.

legitimately what's the appeal of anime? im not bashing im just curious.

I'm afraid I don't understand the question.

just wondering what the appeal of anime is. why people enjoy it.

What is the appeal of books?

What is the appeal of television?

What is the appeal of Disney movies?

That is far too broad of a question for me to even wrap my head around.

It's a medium in which stories are told. Full stop.

Why anime over other media? there are a few potential reasons.

• Anime productions, WAY more often than western shows, tell a complete and contained story rather than remaining unfinished or a series of vignettes (the West is starting to cotton on to this).
• Most Anime have half-hour episodes, which provides both a bite-sized consumption minimum, and a brisk internal pacing.
• Being animated, creators have a lot of freedom to tell stories that require impressive visuals without needing a massive effects budget.
• Some people like the art style(s) common to anime, over those common to western animation.
• There is a LOT of it and a lot of it is genre fiction; which despite some notable successes has been largely derided and overlooked in the West, so fans of Genre and Speculative Fiction who are willing to look to Anime are likely to find many stories that fit their favored categories.

And now, a micro-essay on one source of appeal for Anime to Western Audiences.

In general, Media from one's own culture is both Familiar and Developed. For English language western media, we have tropes dating back to Shakespeare (at least) still dominating our writing and creations. And in some ways, the craft of storytelling is an iterative process. What's truly new is rough around the edges, but if we take up the storytelling tools we refine them use after use. Those who consumed crude versions of a story might fashion better versions, and those who know those better versions would output more nuanced versions. Waves of deconstruction and reconstruction come and go as the tools are challenged and then the challenges themselves challenged. The Lord of the Rings was not generated wholecloth without millennia of European culture and writing to draw on, and even now what Tolkien did is being redone by current authors, taking and refining what pleases them while setting other elements to the side. As such, we've had hundreds of years to refine our techniques of storytelling with the tools we've been working with. When something new -- truly new -- comes along it is unrefined, and we might appreciate it somewhat for its newness, but next to something that benefits from those ages of iteration, it doesn't have a lot of 'catch'. A genius sculptor working with stone-age tools will not produce art as pleasing to the senses as a sculptor of common skill working with the tools of the modern era.

Yet we still crave novelty, and in some ways the pursuit of Anime provides that to Western audiences. the culture of Japan is so distant from the West that their tools and methods of storytelling have diverged from ours. They've still been refining their own stories for eons, so Anime benefits from the iteration necessary to create something gripping, but those refined forms will look new to members of other cultures who are not familiar with its origins. And you can see that the reverse is also true: Japanese media seems to have a fascination with the trappings of Western Fantasy, and in many ways works more with them now than we do ourselves: because we have provided these refined yet novel images. And when a creation from a Japanese mind influenced by Western media is presented to Western audiences, we see not just the strange and novel (however refined) but also something of the comforting and the familiar, enough to ease the western audience in and let the new elements (such as unfamiliar character archetypes) shine through without being off-putting. Thus, even to many casual observers, it dodges the problem of the "truly novel" hits by lacking elements to which the consumer has grown accustomed.

And once a Western viewer has consumed enough Anime that its own eccentricities are no longer novel, they have likely formed their own opinions on the tools and tropes of Anime, and have probably enjoyed some enough to seek out more of the same.

moreso just wondering why its so widespread here. its one of the biggest threads here, many are rocking anime avatars. i dunno. it was never my thing, not knocking it but I was never big on the animation style, the excess of yelling and high pitched voices, the frenetic quality to a lot of it

i dug the first two seasons each of yugioh, pokemon, and some dbz (dbz moreso for nostalgia) but that was about it for me

was just looking for insight

this is coming from someone who praises star trek and trailer park boys as pinnacles of television so take it as you will

In addition to my prior post that likely passed yours in the night, I do note those are all "Shonen" anime of, more or less, the "Fighting" genre (Shonen is a demographic; essentially, it means "For teen boys" -- so the shows you've watched that share lots of yelling and high-pitched voices as well as some flashy fight scenes, are targeted primarily at males 13-17). If you would be amenable to looking to expand horizons, I might recommend a show like Haibane Renmei -- a contained, 12 episode story aimed at a very different demographic and thus (while some voices might still be high pitched) cut from a very different cloth when it comes to episode pacing and content.