Star Ocean EX and .hack//Sign fall into the "good fantasy RPG made anime" genre, where the Star Ocean anime is what we all come to expect from something that carries the title of one of the best RPG series out there, and .hack does a deep introspection dealy using an online game as a medium.
Alas, without the entire .hack series (games included) watching just one of the series seems kind of empty, like there's too much left to go over as far as the setting and history are concerned. .hack//Legend of the Twilight Bracelet is a lighthearted visitation to the world, and inbetween the game series and .hack//Liminality (packaged in 4 parts on DVD along with each part of the game) fills in the blanks.
Hellsing and Witch Hunter Robin kind of fit into the whole "super natural with 'minor' powers" genre, with the characters and their strife playing more of a role than their powers. (I quote 'minor' because in comparison to some of what anime is capable of, being able to incinerate a single person in a flash is insignificant) Both series revolve around a "new" addition to the situation (in one case, a young vampire learning to cope with unlife with the hero, her master. And in the other case a young girl, gifted with pyrokenesis, learns the ropes in a rather Men in Black environment), and evolve to the conclusion of the new additions being invaluable key characters in a grander scale plot than was originally shown to them.
Trigun is perhaps my favourite, though it shares a spot next to Cowboy Bebop. Both are again similar, they take place in the future and both start out light hearted but tend towards more serious situations and much action and introspection past the midpoints.
In Trigun the camera almost always revolves around our hero, a man rumoured to be the destroyer of a town (though how it's possible that a lone man with nothing but a slightly oversized pistol can do so is not revealed until much later). I feel it ends very well, but the starting alone will keep you watching.
Cowboy Bebop follows a duo of bounty hunters, who through the course of their (mis)adventures pick up a free spirited woman (also a bounty hunter) and a young girl (oddly named "Edward"). Many situations of humour, strife, and occasionally confusion ensue, and towards the ending of the series most of the confusion comes from the shadowy past of one of the origial duo.
Vandred. It starts out as the ultimate battle of the sexes, men and women having moved onto entirely seperate worlds. With a small group of men trapped aboard an experimental assault ship (meant to ravage the women's world) with a full complement of women initially holding them hostage, the situation seems tense indeed. Surprisingly there's VERY little cheese cake type action for a situation of this... magnitute, and all of those involved are so plainly addressed as to be of an educational nature (the kind of thing you learn in school, like how we as a species continue on).
So much anime to recommend, too tired to synopsitize them all with the same detail:
- Robotech (classic anime, one of the first translated and thus subject to inconsistancies with the original Japanese Macross series)
- Macross 7 (follow (indirectly) the exploits of two of the main characters from Robotech). Music, action, and divining the soul.
- Macross Plus (I personally love this one the most of the Macross series)
- Patlabor 1-3 (1 for me is amazing, while the rest seems to just kind of... seem stale. But it's all good none the less)
- Ranma 1/2. It's a classic, but at 7 seasons and I think 4 movies, it's a monster to go through (and especially to find). After the 3rd season though it's just a lot of what happened before done over again with similar situations, so you might lose interest... It's a blast along the way though!
- FLCL. I was worried about watching more of this series after the second episode because it confused the hell out of me, but as far as acid trips go it's pretty good.
- Naruto is excellent, light hearted comedy at some points with tense action at others. There's highs and lows enough for everyone, especially lately which features a new 'sob story' motif for the female audience (and the guys who secretly like emotional scenes).
- Samurai 7. Awesome. Just download it.
- Hunter X Hunter. Also awesome, very light hearted during the main series, but it gets dark and action packed in the first OVA following it. Afterwards it picks up again to a more up beat style in the final two OVA series (the Greed Island saga).
- Dragon Drive is one of those sorts of novelty series. There's dragons, and that's enough to hold you for the first 8 episodes or so, but if you don't appreciate the storyline that develops in those 8 episodes, you won't really be able to stand watching the rest.
- Mahoujin Guru Guru. It's silly, very light hearted, and features lots of body humour. Though it appears rather childish, there's quite a few situations which would involve a more mature audience to get all the humour involved.
Ok, that's it, I'm all anime'd out for tonight.