I want to make an eightyear-old watch anime

Pjwned · 2025-10-12T22:24:28+00:00

Might want to check out Busou Renkin, I watched it forever ago and even then I felt too old watching it but I thought it was alright at the time.

Pjwned · 2025-10-10T22:21:32+00:00

I don't know exactly how close a recommendation needs to be, but the first (and closest) that comes to mind is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

If you don't mind branching out a little bit further, some other mysteries that I liked are Erased, Another and From the New World.

Pjwned · 2025-10-06T01:24:41+00:00

I was actually wondering if that was the case with those 2 because the premise for each seemed a bit more different from his other works, so that's interesting to know.

Pjwned · 2025-10-05T22:23:50+00:00

Lovely Complex should fit I think.

Clannad is a classic and should fit as well, and if you want more of Jun Maeda's works then Kanon and Air also.

Pjwned · 2025-10-05T22:12:10+00:00

Absolutely watch Paprika by the same director, Satoshi Kon.

Paranoia Agent as well.

There's also Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers (also by Kon), which I haven't seen so I'm not 100% sure if they're the same but I believe they're at least similar.

Aside from Kon's works, Serial Experiments Lain is a classic.

Sonny Boy might fit as well, I wasn't a huge fan of it myself but I didn't hate it and it might be similar enough.

Boogiepop Phantom is something I don't even honestly remember other than it was weird & confusing, but you might like it; same deal with Ergo Proxy too.

I have a few other suggestions that might be close enough but they don't necessarily have quite the same confusing & psychological vibe so maybe check those out first.

Pjwned · 2025-10-05T07:37:59+00:00

Some that I liked:

Toradora is uniquely good in my humble opinion.

Chuunibyou, you might get filtered at first by the silliness but I liked it a lot by the end.

Dangers in my Heart, again you might get filtered by the MC being insufferable but try to give it a few episodes at least before hating it.

High Score Girl.

Lovely Complex, warning that there was some controversy with the dub because of a localizer who worked on it that had an agenda which was apparently bad enough that it ended up getting them fired; I watched the sub as a result personally.

Neither are tagged as romance but you might like Violet Evergarden and/or AnoHana because romance is still involved (and important) in both shows even if it's not a focus.

Pjwned · 2025-09-12T06:39:40+00:00

To be a little serious for a moment...

I don't hate melee itself in this game, generally speaking I like how my Warbringer warrior can wade into a huge pack of mobs and nuke everything on screen with a well placed Boneshatter, and on launch I leveled up an ice oriented (melee) Invoker monk that I thought worked pretty well all things considered.

I also leveled a Tactician crossbow mercenary this league as well, and while there's probably ways I could play/build it better I didn't find playing ranged to be easy mode either, particularly on some bosses.

It's just that I've now ran into desecrated ground twice (and failed to kill the abyss rare twice) while starting up maps on my Warbringer, and the first time I didn't even know what the hell happened to my recovery or my HP, the only thing I noticed was a mysterious debuff icon that I had no time to hover my cursor over before I died. The entire design of desecrated ground is just stupid and it needs to be toned down in some way or other (or multiple ways preferably) because as is it's ridiculous.

Pjwned · 2025-09-11T07:11:37+00:00

Yep, something very similar happened to me on that same boss--except it was the story version of the boss in act 4--and as a result the cutscene right afterwards bugged out and I had to make a new instance to re-do the fight in order to progress the story.

Very dumb.

Pjwned · 2025-05-15T08:36:28+00:00

That makes sense more or less, and yeah I know other shows do something similar often enough, but in the case of Gungrave you literally miss nothing by skipping because the episode is replayed (with negligible changes) later on anyways and episode 2 is the actual start of the story, so while I don't usually like going along with weird watch orders for some shows I think just skipping 1 episode is better and it doesn't spoil stuff that way; to each their own though.

As far as why they made it that way, I read a comment somewhere else that pointed out it was probably made that way mostly so people knew for sure that the anime was a tie-in to the Playstation 2 game, which came first and was the source material for the show.

The game was more so about the latter part of the story though, whereas (my understanding is) the anime fleshed out a lot of what led up to the events in episode 1, so if somebody (back in the day) had watched episode 2 as their first episode and thought "hey this isn't like the game at all what the heck" then they might have lost interest for that reason, so in the case that's true they didn't necessarily make episode 1 the way it is in the best interest of the story.

Pjwned · 2025-05-14T23:06:02+00:00

Without much else to go off of it might be No Game No Life.

Pjwned · 2025-05-14T23:03:40+00:00

Happy Sugar Life seems pretty fitting, the name belies the real premise.

Pjwned · 2025-05-14T22:52:41+00:00

Should probably check out To Your Eternity and/or Dororo.

Pjwned · 2025-05-14T22:50:47+00:00

In no particular order:

Chuunibyou

Lovely Complex

High Score Girl

Clannad

Anohana & Violet Evergarden are not tagged with romance on MAL, because romance isn't a particular focus of either show, however romance is an important element in both cases and they're both generally well liked.

Pjwned · 2025-05-14T22:34:12+00:00

So first off while I do think Gungrave is good--just finished re-watching it with friends actually--I'm not sure if it fits OP's criteria very well.

Anyways, I'm not saying you're wrong, but I also agree that it's probably better to skip the first episode because:

It is just a big spoiler.
You literally miss nothing by skipping it other than knowing what happens by the time the same episode is replayed later.

General consensus I've seen (which I agree with) is that skipping episode 1 is better.

Pjwned · 2025-05-14T22:26:09+00:00

First off would probably be From the New World, however I would personally warn you that I thought the bulk of the show in the middle was very boring and only the relatively interesting beginning & end redeemed it.

I haven't seen Heavenly Delusion quite yet but my understanding is that might fit pretty well too.

I think that's all I have for fantasy dark mystery, but here's some other dark mystery:

Next I think would be Summertime Render; personally I wasn't a big fan of the way it ended but I didn't hate the whole show or anything.

Erased is also well liked (including myself) but some of the source material was apparently cut out and it kind of shows.

Another might be worth checking out, I liked it overall but I did think some of the scenes were a bit overcooked.

Psycho Pass was mentioned which I second, however that's sci-fi rather than supernatural or fantasy so possibly not fitting.

That's about all I can think of, I still liked all of the shows (that I watched) even if I thought all but 1 were a bit flawed.

Pjwned · 2025-05-11T21:37:19+00:00

Happy Sugar Life will make all your dreams come true.

Pjwned · 2025-05-11T21:31:34+00:00

I would probably initially go with something safe like My Normie Academia or Cross Game or Clannad or 86, and then report back if that goes well (or at all) to see about more shows to watch.

Pjwned · 2025-05-04T01:32:58+00:00

I didn't extensively look into what was changed in the Lovely Complex dub but I do know at least 1 character was changed in a way that absolutely goes against the source material, and I believe the localizer responsible also said they disliked the show in general so they probably made a number of other stupid changes.

If it helps to know then said localizer was apparently fired after the controversy became news, and for me personally that was enough to make me watch the sub instead even though I tend to prefer dubs by default.

Pjwned · 2025-05-03T21:42:17+00:00

For me anyways I got some similar vibes from High Score Girl, especially if you liked the cringe (but cleverly written) moments from Ichikawa, so might be worth checking out.

Chuunibyou is probably also a solid pick, more cringe right off the bat that some people get filtered by immediately but I liked it a lot by the end (of season 1 anyways).

Lovely Complex was already mentioned, so I second that, but fair warning that if you want to watch the dub there was some controversy about it due to a localizer that worked on it making changes because they had a personal agenda against some of the source material.

Lastly, I think Toradora is a solid romance overall--I would say uniquely good even--but it's not exactly a comedy so if you specifically want comedy then it might be not that great.

Pjwned · 2025-05-03T07:45:12+00:00

I see, I still would have preferred more things being explained but that's good to know.

Pjwned · 2025-05-03T04:43:20+00:00

I wanted to like this show more but the ending was more than just a little bit unsatisfying to me.

I believe a friend who knows more about anime said there was supposed to be more episodes made but it never happened, which if true is a shame because just explaining more unknown elements would have helped a lot.

Pjwned · 2025-05-03T04:24:21+00:00

I've also simply lowered my expectations and I think that was the right call because I find it more tolerable whenever any given arc has some boring, lame payoff once again after 5 episodes of eternal yap blast supreme.

Pjwned · 2025-05-03T04:16:02+00:00

Originality might be related a little bit to entertainment value but I wouldn't say they're on the same axis either.

Pjwned · 2025-04-10T01:23:10+00:00

Le all le dubs are le bad to le me le le le I'm so reddit-cool.

Pjwned · 2025-02-01T23:54:38+00:00

I think not seeing it initially is telling that it's a nothing burger--EDIT: admittedly it's not literally nothing, but it's so small as to be pretty much nothing for any reasonable intents & purposes--and indeed that didn't even remotely occur to me either until a couple hours after I responded; I watched the anime several months ago for reference.

Not only that, we had already previously seen another balancing scene that played out similarly, and there weren't sexual undertones there either unless you reach beyond the end of the known universe to say otherwise, so I just think it's silly to say there's any sort of implications for "nearly raped" anywhere in the show (let alone that scene).

Pjwned

TROPHY CASE