Rec me anime!

[oyceter]

Currently I have no kdramas except Gourmet on my list, and I'm caught up with most of the shows I want to watch. Also, I'm in the mood for short episodes. So, rec me anime (but please read the qualifications first)!

• Available on Netflix


• Not too bloody


• Have cool women. I don't mind if they aren't the protagonists or if they don't physically kick ass, but I also don't want a series in which all the women or girls feel like objects.


• Not depressing


• Have an ending


• Bonus points for something funny with depth (ex. Samurai Champloo) or something that hits my gothic shoujo id buttons (ex. Vampire Knight)

I prefer series, though I may watch movies/OVAs too.

I've seen and liked:
Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam Wing, Gunslinger Girls, Haibane Renmei, Honey and Clover, Kare Kano (incomplete), Mushishi (incomplete), Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ouran High School Host Club, Princess Tutu, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Samurai Champloo, Vampire Knight, X, Yami no Matsuei, and nearly all the Studio Ghibli movies. And though it's not anime, I've seen Avatar too.

I've seen and disliked:
Akira, Gasaraki, Ghost in the Shell, Lain, Perfect Blue, Tenchi Muyo

Comments

[octopedingenue]

I had to look up tachyomi and am now giggling because it's what I do almost every day! Only I've called it hobotakuing because of something telophase said.

Claymore is...pretty damn bloody. The anime less so than the manga because of broadcasting standards, so the monsters die with more flashes of light and less gouts of gore, but there are still regular decapitations, limbs getting lopped off, someone getting punched through the gut once an episode...lots of horror-bodies that are not so much gory as they are ohgodbodiesdontworkthatway. Mostly everyone has a Wolverine healing factor and they stick their arms/legs back on and walk it off, except when they heartbreakingly don't. But I am surprisingly okay with the violence, I guess because...it's not senseless? I have read only 12 volumes of the manga and seen a little over half the anime, but I think I can assume an opinion from that. [cue rambling with general SPOILERS on women and violence, you can skip this part] The women fight and get injured and go on fighting but are rarely like "This is only a flesh wound!" They feel pain, they need time to recover. They beat each other to raw shreds, and it's not the fake sexy girlfighting where every shot is an excuse to pose with simultaneous tits and ass shots and conveniently ripped-open bra, and where you can shoot a woman or rape her but god forbid you cut open her face on camera. There are only 2 instances I can think of offhand with violence overtly sexualized, and they are both interesting in unsettling ways: once they're fighting a male monster and his berserk behavior is contrasted with that of the female warriors. The other, a group of random bandits threaten to rape a Claymore; instead of slaughtering them as she is perfectly capable of doing, she casually opens her uniform, and they're so horrified by the sight of her naked body that they back off.

I have thinky thesis thoughts that I really need to see the rest of the series in comprehensible translations to complete. But in the short version (this is the short version?) I like how the series fucks with the idea of women's bodies as sites of violence, women's bodies as monstrous. The Claymores Wishverse Slayers gone to hell; they're anonymous foot soldiers made part monster to fight monsters and expected to die without question under the orders of a patriarchal organization. Their prettiness is only superficial, their sexuality is questionable, and their bodies are a constant battleground for control: too little control and they become monsters, too much control and they become mindless loyal drones. But they're still inarguably women, and while they're pissed at their lives being stolen from them, they're not going, "My life has no meaning because a man will never kiss me or fuck me and I will never have babies," they're going "This is my life and I should decide how to live it." The subtext is of women learning, in violent ways, to control their own bodies: both in the sense of controlling their bodies' physical abilities, and in the sense of controlling what actions their bodies take and for what reasons.
[oh man I finally stop talking]

ANYWAY. The anime is better than the manga at culling the filler from the first couple of storylines. Both series really start to pick up with the arc introducing the next major Claymore after Clare (i.e. Paku Romi!): middle of volume 3-4? in the manga, episodes 5-8? in the anime. They aren't technically dependent on the earlier stories though lack resonance without them, so you can skip ahead to them if you need.

[oyceter]

Hrm... the bits about women's bodies and violence sound interesting enough to brave decapitations and spouts of blood, although maybe I will wait until I am in a somewhat better mood to check it out. Still! I encourage your writing that thesis!

[octopedingenue]

(Random trivia: I believe Claymore is the first Shonen Jump series to have a female protagonist. I'm not sure how popular it is in Japan, but at the least it was the only series to survive the cancellation of the monthly mag in which it originally ran. Baby steps!)

As a series Claymore doesn't strike perfect blows for feminism. There's still little input from non-superpowered-women, for instance. And much as in BtVS: there's still something eternally skeevy about women given power through being physically and mentally violated by men, and there's an ugly undercurrent of physical ecstasy = sexually uninhibited = loss of control = EVIL. (Which does not prevent it from being the femslashiest thing that's ever moved, mind.) But it pushes many of those points further than Buffy was ever willing to go. And it is so much more pleasant to deal with in many regards than the misogyny I have to lalala my way past in like 99% of shonen to enjoy any of it at all.

Also, there are deliciously satisfying incidents of fighters gone BERSERK brought back from the EDGE of their own INNER DARKNESS by the POWER of their comrades' LUUUUUURVE! You know you love it.