This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
As I was jacking off to Kino no Tabi this afternoon, I found myself in a cum-coma induced bout of inspiration: What if anime quality could be objectively quantified? And what if that formula could be compiled in under 10 minutes cuz tbh I have shit to get done today?
And so…
As determined over the course of consuming a bowl of post-fap ramen (thank you, based Maruchan), the perfect anime:
- Takes place in a unique, tryhard environment
- Note that it cannot take place in a “high fantasy” setting, because that’s popular and all popular things are bad
- Indirectly critiques modern society in the least subtle means possible
- Is adventure-based cuz a scattershot approach to world-building is easiest
- Thinks a whole fucking lot of itself
The following five series fit the formula.
Five Perfect Shows
Kino no Tabi (Kino’s Journey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udmx3ioHWDI
If you were forced to read Calvino in middle school too, this is essentially a tolerable version of Invisible Cities. To put it less pretentiously, shit is episodic & the titular Kino travels to vastly different places in each arc.
Each place Kino travels to has a moral it will beat you over the head with until you meekly accept this is simply how it has to be. For example, when Kino travels to the Land of Direct Democracy, she finds only one person left because all the citizens gradually voted to kill off problematic groups. Turns out that once you start one purge, more will follow. Huh.
Kino no Tabi is the perfect show to watch if you want to be told how to think, but also don’t want to be told anything new.
10/10.
Shinsekai Yori (From the New World)
Shinsekai Yori proves definitively that with a big enough background budget, you can get away with compiling your cast of main characters from a dump heap.
Every time you get an intriguing shot of a forest, village architecture, or a bloodstained psychotrip of whatever the fuck, it’ll almost allow you to forget that there are children in the show yet to be strangled.
10/10.
Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita (Humanity Has Declined)
It’s genki af.
10/10.
Last Exile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za8yd4Bu754
Know how in Final Fantasy XII, everything about the two main characters sucked, but everyone else was fucking awesome? Welcome to Last Exile.
Still, XII managed to be the best Final Fantasy, much like Last Exile is the best steampunk anime. Never mind that the competition for both was Special Olympics-tier.
10/10.
Ergo Proxy
I don’t remember shit about Ergo Proxy other than that it was dark, and I doubt you do either. Dystopian, psychological, gritty, & evanescent. …Or uhh, reminiscent of Evanescence? Fuck.
Whatever, those buzzwords doing anything for ya? Cuz if not, I’m afraid I ain’t got shit left.
10/10.
Nostalgia baiting?
Well, how’d my criteria work out? Fucking perfect, huh? Good thing none of this applies to anicancer like Rolling Girls, Fractale, Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi, Shangri-La, or Galilei Donna. Boy would that fuck with this post’s premise.
I expected to see 91 Days on this list. And Nano.RAPE makes me want to bleach my ears off. Thanks a lot.
91 Days doesn’t fit the criteria. And also it sucks.
D_S, your list is woefully incomplete. Even if 91 days doesn’t make it, what about Trigun, the most trihard of them all?
You also can’t forget Darker than Black, Jigoku Shoujo, that other one that’s literally the same show as Jigoku Shoujo, Wolf’s Rain, Big O, and Serial Experiments Lain. Some of those may stretch the definition of “adventure,” but they’re an adventure of the *mind*
‘also it sucks’
I’m getting mixed massages here…Ergo Proxy doesn’t?
I think I remember liking Ergo Proxy. Not going to rewatch to find out, though.
‘raison d’être’
FFXII best final fantasy??
FFVI says hi.
>being that old
Welp the first 3 of this list are in my top 10 shows, i’m missing ergo proxy and last exile, although i don’t care about the last one since it doesn’t inspire me that much.
Last Exile is great if you wanna see musket-style battles on fucking flying ships. And who doesn’t want that?
you got mi attention :^) i might give it a try after all.
> nobody remembers Ergo Proxy
You take that back. I fondly remember watching it while listening to Linkin Park in the background (or was it Slipknot?) and complaining to my friends on AIM how my parents didn’t understand me.
>AIM
Oh fuck I thought I had suppressed these memories. Goddammit, to the emergency Tito’s I go!
Ironically Ergo Proxy and kino are the only anime I still remember from this list. The rest is just the typical slightly above average garbage that airs every season.
I really hope you’re beeing ironic like usual.
The world may never know~
*dung heap
Last Exile S1 MCs ain’t even that bad — at least compared to the super shitty one of S2.
God the second season of Last Exile was a fucking abortion. The main character was hang-myself-from-the-rafters tier. Made me long for the days when the first season’s MCs were just kind of bland and nondescript.
I couldn’t have said it better.
finally someone with good taste. loved them all.
fine, ok, i’ll download humanity has declined.
last exile was some weird kind of terrible that made me watch all 100+ episodes (cant recall if its one of those 13/26 episode things, but it sure kept going)
and ergo proxy… ugh. UGH. loved the setting, but some of the extremely bleak episodes made me wanna kill myself. and so i did.
/ghost out
I… Oh no, did you watch Fam – The Silver Wing? Red alert, wrong one.