An old man is diagnosed with cancer with 3 months to live. He sits in a park depressed until an alien spaceship passing through collides with him and a nearby teenager. The aliens frantically rebuild the old man and teenager as cyborgs before leaving. The old man uses his newfound cyborg powers for good, while the teenager uses them for evil.
#C6: Sports anime for people who prefer bildungsromans* to sports
Two childhood friends who play competitive after school ping pong find their friendship and dedication to the sport tested when their sense of their relative skill in the game is challenged. A character focused-exploration of why we pursue sports, and what we have to commit to succeed.
*a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, in which character change is important.
Titles, propagandas, trailers, and poll under the cut!
#C3: Inuyashiki: Last Hero
youtube
Propaganda:
This show is nowadays remembered for referencing One Piece and its obvious CGI, but it’s so much more than that. Inuyashiki is a beautiful, dark, dramatic exploration of humanity, showcasing the brightest good that humans are capable of and the most horrific evil. It seriously explores both extremes, and it forces the audience to solemnly watch every step of the way.
It also has an AMAZINGLY badass OP and a beautifully sad ED, perfectly encapsulating the duality of the show itself.
An experimental director (Masaaki Yuasa) adapting a work from a very stylized and emotionally-focused shonen mangaka (Taiyo Matsumoto). This is an anime that feels more like watching an indie arthouse movie than a shonen anime. Featuring characters and arcs that subvert standard anime tropes, it gives an incisive picture into youths on the verge of growing up and learning responsibility. If you want to watch a short anime (one 11-episode season!) which will include cool sports action (and that’s coming from someone who is not generally into sports animes) the matches given weight by the primary use of them in narrative being as checkpoint in the characters’ growths.
I tend to prefer shojo over shonen for being more introspective, with the emotional arcs developed slower and more subtly, but for me this shonen hits a sweet middle ground of having that more internal feel, while getting to do the shonen things of having cooler, action-focused animation and character relationships which are about friendship rather than romance, and character arcs that are about trying to strive hard to achieve a dream. The show is quite well critically regarded, but a lot of anime fans get turned off by the unusual art style, and there isn’t really a fandom for it, so I think it counts as underrated anyways! Anyways, I think it delivers a really impactful and complete story-arc in a short time, and it leaves you feeling like you’ve grown alongside the characters, no matter how old you are (no seriously, my 50-year-old mother walked away saying she didn’t know anime was such a profound genre when I made her watch this).
Trigger Warnings: None.
If you’re reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.
Today's AniAnimal are this mother and child cats from "INUYASHIKI LAST HERO". In this scene, the titular Inuyashiki uses his powers to revive a dying cat.
今日のアニアニマルは『いぬやしき』のこの親子猫です。このシーンでは、名高い犬屋敷が自分の力を使って瀕死の猫を生き返らせます。