My favourite anime

If there's one thing I love, it's watching television. Or maybe it's just any screen, as I'm mostly sitting in front of screens. Makes me suddenly remember how I fucked up my eyes by programming when I was about 17, a whole summer holiday long, on a good ol' CRT monitor in a dimly-lit room. But I'm getting off track :-).

I wouldn't consider myself a huge anime fan. I used to have a friend who learned basic Japanese by basically inhaling a ton of anime shows, and that's a level of dedication I never got close to. But I've definitely watched my fair share, and I have clear favourites. I always prefer them in Japanese with subtitles. The dubs are usually fine, but the original voice acting just lands differently for me. The cadence, the yelling, the awkward pauses. Dubs flatten that out, and on top of it the lip-sync compromises end up changing the lines themselves. So subtitles it is.

# Elfen Lied

Oh wonderful Elfen Lied. I can already hear "Lilium" popping up in my head as I just write down the title of the show. Elfen Lied still, to this date, just "hits" me.

The character development is what does it. Lucy is the one we're talking about, although she also goes by Kaede, and by the gentler alter-ego Nyu. She's a Diclonius, a kind of next-step human with little horns and a set of invisible "vector" arms she can kill with from across a room. The show spends most of its runtime quietly explaining how she ended up that way.

The Kota bit (spoilers, click to reveal)

The relationship with Kota is the load-bearing piece. They met as kids, before any of the violence, when she was just a lonely orphanage girl and he was a boy on his summer holiday. He was kind to her. That early bond is basically the only piece of her life that wasn't cruelty or experimentation, and the rest of the show is asking what happens when you take a child, isolate her, abuse her, and then years later let her stumble back into that one thread of kindness. Honestly, chef's kiss.

# Hellsing Ultimate

Then we have Hellsing. Hellsing Ultimate specifically. That's the 10-episode OVA, not the older 2001 TV series, which goes off-script halfway through and turns into a completely different show. (Although honestly the fan-made Hellsing Ultimate Abridged is also a SOLID watch. Story-wise it's amazing, and I still laugh out loud every time I rewatch it.)

What I like about Ultimate is that it commits. Alucard is an ancient vampire bound to serve the Hellsing Organisation, which hunts other vampires in the name of the British crown. Sir Integra Hellsing is the one holding his leash, and somehow she actually pulls it off. A young woman in a suit, ordering the most dangerous creature on the planet around, and you buy it. Then there's Seras Victoria, a former cop turned vampire under Alucard, and her arc of slowly accepting what she's become is honestly the most grounded part of the whole thing.

What the plot actually does (spoilers, click to reveal)

The Millennium plot is the engine. A leftover Nazi battalion of artificial vampires turns up to settle a 50-year-old grudge, the Vatican's Iscariot organisation gets dragged in, and London ends up flattened. The fights are absurd and over-the-top in a way only animation gets away with, and the script takes itself seriously enough that the absurdity lands instead of curdling. The whole thing reads like a long argument about what monstrosity is, and whether men or monsters do more damage. It doesn't really land on an answer, which I think is the point.

# Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

And now, in the voice of John Cleese to camera (possibly sitting at a desk in the middle of a field): "And now for something completely different." Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. Rowdy innuendos? Check. Song tracks that contain too much moaning (looking at you "Pantscada", the whole OST was produced by Teddyloid and featured all over the series)? Check.

But mostly it has a ton of comedy that just hits my spot. It's two angel sisters kicked out of Heaven and parked in a place called Daten City, hunting ghosts for "Heaven coins" so they can earn their way back. The animation style is a deliberate slap at "tasteful" anime, closer to early Cartoon Network than to anything Studio Ghibli would put out, and they parody half the genre while they're at it. There's a transformation sequence in there that's basically Sailor Moon by way of a strip club.

The OST is the other reason to watch. Teddyloid's work on this show is unreasonably good, and it shows up at exactly the right moments. "Fly Away" over a car-chase episode is the kind of track you queue up later to listen to on its own.

And there is a twist at the end. I won't spoil it outright, but here's a small hint if you want one:

How the ending lands (mild hint, click to reveal)

The final episode commits to a bit so hard it almost stops being funny, and the long-awaited sequel that finally got greenlit is doing nothing to make things easier on people who liked clean endings.

# So why anime?

Makes me think, why do I like anime? Maybe because I grew up with cartoons and watched too much Ren & Stimpy :-). The three shows above don't have a lot in common other than being animated and being willing to commit to a tone. But I guess it boils down to me watching them at certain periods in my life, when they really resonated. These days I barely watch any anime anymore... maybe it's time to start again?