(1) Voices of a Distant Star (aka Hoshi no Koe) When Mikako joins the UN space force to fight the invading Tarsians, she leaves her boyfriend Noboru behind on Earth . They still communicate despite relativity making it harder and harder to keep in touch. And as Mikako speeds away from home, Noboru grows older... A very modest tale, but one lovingly crafted. The director animated the entire thing on his own, drawing and using CGI on his home computer, and he and his wife did the original voice work. You may wonder how this unassuming little OVA (it's less than 30 minutes long) has managed to top my list. The reason is that watching it made me realize why I was attracted to anime in the first place. It wasn't the cool action sequences, the *ahem* nicely drawn females, or the ingenious plot concepts. No, it was the fact that I found truths in these simple stories. Like the truth found in this one: Love transcends all. (2) Neon Genesis Evangelion Shinji Ikari travels to Tokyo-3 to meet his father, whom he has not seen for many years. But a huge creature called an Angel attacks the city upon his arrival and almost kills him and the woman sent to retrieve him. This woman, Misato Katsuragi, reveals to Shinji that his father is the head of a secret organization named NERV. Shinji must overcome his self-loathing and work with his fellow pilots (the abrasive Asuka and the robotic Rei) in piloting the Evas and protecting the city. Seemingly hyped and hated in equal measure, pretty much any self-respecting anime fan has heard of Evangelion. And while I enjoy it greatly, I must acknowledge that Eva is a flawed masterpiece. The story is very much Monster-of-the-Week for the first half, before the eventual descent into madness that has made it the classic it is. The reason I can keep watching it is that, bar none, there has NEVER been an anime that has explored its characters in more depth. Their pasts, their thoughts, their motives, all are thoroughly dissected and laid bare. Whether those characters are worth exploring is your call to make. (3) Gunslinger Girl The Social Welfare Agency of Italy operates under the front of a non-profit group that assists terminally ill patients. Particularly young girls. The SWA's real motive is to reconstruct these girls with mechanical bodies, erase their memories, and employ them as elite operatives/assassins. Each girl is paired with a male handler whom they are conditioned to feel loyalty to. The girls carry out their missions while still trying to retain some semblance of a normal life. Girls&Guns gets a new twist. Instead of the usual formula of action-packed mayhem (a la Gunsmith Cats), here we have an exercise in character exploration. There is no clearly defined plot to track through the show. Instead, for the first half of the series each episode focuses on a particular girl and her relationship with her handler. The second half consists of two or three episode arcs that explore both the girls' interactions and their situation as child assassins in greater depth. For such a plotless show, it surprises me how many times I've re-watched it. Maybe it's the utterly bleak realism of the show, how the girls aren't happy but try to be, that makes it so interesting. And this isn't the overwrought angst of, say, Saikano, but a subtle sense of sorrow that the girls always seem to carry around with them. If you absolutely refuse to watch an anime without a well-paced plot, you might want to pass on this one. Otherwise, give it a shot. I think you may be pleasantly surprised at this bittersweet look at the lives of six young girls. (4) Fruits Basket Tohru Honda was raised alone by her mother for as long as she can remember. Then her mother died in a traffic accident just as Tohru was entering high school. Forced to secretly live in a tent, Tohru is found out by her classmate Yuki Souma. Yuki and his relatives invite Tohru to live with them as a housekeeper. She agrees, then makes the startling discovery that if anyone of the Souma household is hugged by a member of the opposite sex, they transform into an animal of the Chinese zodiac! Normally I loathe harem anime. But right from the first few episodes, Fruits Basket distinguishes itself. Most harem anime havea bunch of girls living with some generic bland male protagonist, and the "plot" consists of all of them trying to get into his pants. Fruits Basket turns this idea on its head by having a girl surrounded by a bunch of guys, and making their personalities the basis for the show's humour, rather than the usual mix of lame sexual tension and fanservice. Yeah, it's true that there are a few needless episodes, and too many characters are introduced. But better a lot of likeable characters than a bunch you can't stand ;-) (5) My HiME + Mai Tokiha and her frail brother Takumi are traveling by ocean liner to their new school overseas. A girl is spotted floating facedown in the water; she's pulled aboard and Mai saves her life with CPR. The mysterious girl (named Mikoto) is holding a wicked looking sword... Later that night, a masked girl (named Natsuki) sneaks aboard the ship in search of the one who was rescued from the sea. Mikoto's having none of that, so Natsuki whips out double pistols and the duel is on. Finally, Mikoto goes nuts and summons a power to split the ship down the middle. Mai gets knocked out and falls into the water. She wakes up in the center of an enormous circle of flame on the front lawn of her new school. And who does she meet but her new classmates Mikoto and Natsuki. This show is awesome, just awesome. This series may very well vault up several spots in my list because it's currently only half finished. As strange as it sounds, My HiME is basically a shonen magical girl show. There are slick fights, transformation sequences, summoned creatures and a lot of fanservice. Production values are first rate. Of course they are, it's a Sunrise show! But one couldn't be faulted for passing on the series based on the first few episodes, which don't have much substance beyond the decent humour and cool action. However, subsequent episodes keep getting better with the addition of more characters and the plot beginning to click into place. Great characters, great plot, so far My HiME is the whole package. (6) Haibane Renmei A girl dreams that she's falling. She awakens inside a giant egg and breaks out of it. She finds herself in a house, an old house whose inhabitants are women with wings and halos. These creatures dub her Rakka, and she soon gets wings and a halo of her own. Rakka learns that she is now a haibane, like them. She remembers nothing of her past. Reki, the leader of Old Home, tells Rakka that she must get a job in town, and, most importantly, to never go near the wall around the town... The anime that comes to mind when I think of "good atmosphere". The culture of the haibane is fully realized: their customs, their beliefs, their superstitions, and their interactions with both haibane and non-haibane are all plotted out very well. The first few episodes are more lighthearted in nature, showing Rakka becoming familiar with her surroundings and the people that she encounters. As it progresses, the series takes on more of a philosophical turn, showing the haibane question their very existence. In the later half of the series, the focus shifts from Rakka, the newcomer, to Reki, the misfit with a twisted past. I actually prefer this, because Reki is so much more of an interesting character. (7) Noir Mireille Bouquet is a most adept assassin for hire. She lives alone in an apartment in Paris. One day she receives an e-mail from a girl named Kirika, asking her to "make a pilgrimage to her past". Mireille is about to delete it when a simple song starts to play, a song she hadn't heard in years, a song from her childhood before her parents were killed. Mireille agrees to meet Kirika at a construction site. Unfortunately, a few dozen unknown armed enemies have the same idea. In the ensuing firefight, Mireille, who holds a high opinion of her skills, is amazed at Kirika's killing prowess. Kirika says she has no memory of her past. They agree to team up, and are soon entangled in a conspiracy spanning thousands of years and the continent itself. Here's another of those love it or hate it shows. Noir has a definite style going for it. Excepting rare instances, there is almost no humour. This is, after all, a show dealing with assassins. Another gripe many have is that there's no blood. And they're right, it is disconcertening at first to see someone get shot and then fall down without a mark on them. If you can accept that, and also the excessive use of flashbacks, be prepared to delve into the darker side of human nature. Noir attempts to convey a lot of its message through means other than dialogue, and Yuki Kajiura's score is an excellent complement to this. It takes some getting used to, but I still recommend it. (8) Digimon Tamers Takato is your normal everyday kid, who just happens to have a passion for the card game Digimon. One day he finds a mysterious blue card among his collection. He swipes it through his card reader, which then changes into a digivice. The blue card disappears. Later that day, while bored in class Takato doodles a red dinosaur he calls Guilmon in his sketchpad. That night, the pages he drew are ripped out and read into his digivice. Guilmon has come alive, and Takato finds himself a Tamer. Later, he will team up with fellow Tamers Henry and Rika in discovering more about their Digimon and the world they live in. That sounds kind of lame when I type it out, but the show is really quite better than that. Is the show targeted at children? Yep. Is there a lot of filler? Absolutely. But, most importantly, is it enjoyable in spite of its flaws? A resounding yes. For me, this series marked the real beginning of my appreciation of anime. Up until watching Tamers I had regarded anime as something of an oddity. Maybe I caught an episode of Pokemon after school if I had no other plans. However, the plot of Tamers called to me - an avid reader of sci-fi - and said that maybe there was more to these seemingly simple cartoons than I thought. The characters are all varied and interesting. The excellent English dub only solidifies my opinion of it. (9) Elfen Lied A creature clothed in a straightjacket and a metal helmet gets loose in a high-security research facility, and leaves dozens of ripped up corpses in its wake. The creature uses invisible arms that sprout from its back to block any gunfire directed at it, then uses these same arms as deadly edged weapons. The creature easily rips through all resistance and makes it outside. A last-ditch sniper shot is attempted, and the creature is hit in the head. The creature falls off a cliff into the ocean. The next day, college student Kouta and his cousin Yuka are at the beach when they find a cute girl with horns on her head. The girl looks to have a head injury; she's bleeding. The injured girl can only say one word, "Nyu", so that is what they name her when they take her home with them... Imagine: A Chobits in which Chii is secretly a psychotic walking death machine. This is the most violent show I have ever seen and probably the most violent I ever will. The first episode is gruesomely over the top, with limbs flying and blood squirting everywhere. You have to see the hapless security guards being torn in half at the waist to believe it. But what I find most remarkable about this anime is that it uses the violence and nudity to enhance its sordid storyline to full effect. Especially in later episodes, the violence and its justification really defines the characters. Often with other anime it's easy enough to predict the plot. This anime kept me guessing episode after episode. And the conclusion is refreshingly open-ended. It leaves enough plot threads dangling to tie into the purported OVA sequel, while still standing strongly on its own. Before watching Elfen Lied I had begun to grow bored with anime and the predictability of many shows. Elfen Lied has definitely wrenched my interest back into gear. (10) Monster + Dr. Tenma is the rising star of neurology in Germany, famous for his medical skill. He has a crisis of conscience when he's ordered to operate on the mayor of the city rather than a critically injured boy. He ignores orders and saves the boy's life, but the mayor dies. Tenma's life falls apart: his fickle fiancée leaves him and he will never advance his career again. Then the boy disappears.... and the murders begin... It's rare to find an anime where the plot can provoke such suspense. Let's be honest here. Most animes, for all their great characters, have horrible plot structure. While Monster does have its share of filler, each episode - no matter how minutely - ties into the quests of Tenma and Nina and consequently the overarching storyline. Here's one of those rare shows that does both character and plot right. It is also rare for an anime set in real world to seem as fully fleshed out as Monster does. Noir's France and Gunslinger Girl's Italy pale in comparison to the Germany of Monster, which has racial tension, history, and characters visiting famous (and not so famous) landmarks. The creators of this series have taken great care in building up their world and weaving their story through it, and it shows. + - Indicates I have only watched approx. half of this series Chris Verkoeyen demandred5151 (at) yahoo.ca