Anime Recommendations for People Who Dont Like Anime

The All-time Anime to Lookout if you Hate Anime

Your friends caught you watching anime, and now they detest you

I used to be an anime-hater. An anime-hater isn't someone who hasn't watched whatever anime, or doesn't really have any interest in the medium — it'due south for people who actively hate information technology, people who make anime fans "stay in the weeb-closet", similar I did for a number of years.

This list also doubles for older fans who have been left behind in the wake of the breakneck pace of the new anime medium, which was once a slow trickle of cult shows that would rarely get official dubbings. This list doesn't have whatsoever high schoolers, memes, or seasonal "trash genre" shows (trash, in one case derogatory, has now more or less become it's own strange genre).

This listing is past no means definitive either — add your suggestions in the comments. This list is also 100% biased, manifestly. I didn't add anything I've not watched, and I clearly have a tendency to darker, grittier shows.

There are obviously some things missing as well. I'm not because shows written for non-adults here, nor anything I've just never seen and tin't recommend in good faith, no matter how stellar the reviews (due east.g. Grave of the Fireflies).

The club I've put them in isn't a ranking, but instead a recommended watch order, from easiest to most difficult.

1. Cowboy Bebop

The bounty hunters, who are gathering in the spaceship "BEBOP", will play freely without fright of risky things. They must create new dreams and films by breaking traditional styles. The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be chosen… COWBOY BEBOP

Yeah, yeah, everyone was expecting this 1. But its 26-episode run is a legendary work of genius by Shinichiro Watanabe, and it rightfully takes it'southward comfortable place at number 1 in this list.

A series of loosely continued episodes features a fix of bounty hunters in the future of 2071 (equally imagined when the series was created, and then cut information technology some slack at that place). The solar organization has been colonized, and infinite travel is commonplace. Each of the four characters is unique and interesting, with often competing personalities and overlapping themes. They struggle to deal with their corresponding pasts, and eventually they all must face up who they are (or aren't), and the people that they've left behind.

Jet, a former police officeholder who grew disillusioned with his role in the world, set off to exist a bounty hunter with his ship the eponymous Bebop. Faye, who seems similar everything wrong with anime at starting time (fan-service male allurement, to exist exact) actually inverts the trope — she's doing it on purpose, and it's part of her graphic symbol, which is by far the most nuanced in the evidence. Ed, the lunatic hacker who'south actually the only Earthling in the gang. And the main graphic symbol, Fasten Spiegel, an impossibly but subtly absurd bounty hunter with a dark, sad past.

Cowboy Bebop starts off with action and a healthy dollop of goofiness, but brand no mistake — this show deeply explores ennui, loneliness, despair, greed, and redemption in its characters. And like improvised jazz, upon which much of the show'south soul is based, the characters come together seemingly randomly, and don't quite fit, but in the end they create a beautiful work of fine art, with the 1 of the most iconic endings in all of anime.

Combining deeply soulful jazz music, jaw dropping action and blitheness, and witty, succinct, only revealing writing even so, Cowboy Bebop also nails all of its technical categories equally well. Also, it'due south got absurd spaceships and fun action scenes. It's considered the best English language dub ever, with near people rating the English version as ameliorate than the original Japanese, a feat which is exceedingly rare.

Also, while information technology flopped in Nihon, information technology enjoyed the longest run on Toonami of any show, with simply 26 episodes. I could become on and on — but you should just watch it. Also, the opening theme song is downright awesome.

2. Monster

Tell me, what do you think is the ultimate fright? I really thought I'd already reached the darkest of the dark, but then, ahead of me, I beheld a darkness even greater nevertheless.

Dr. Kenzo Tenma is a brilliant neurosurgeon in West Germany, pulling even the most extreme cases from the brink. He has everything — a beautiful fiancee (who is the girl of the infirmary director), a career on the rising, and a fulfilling task that he loves. As you'd expect past now, this doesn't terminal very long.

One nighttime, two patients needing brain surgery come in. One is a kid, a young boy who's parent's were brutally murdered in a robbery, with a bullet wound in the head. The other is the mayor of the town. Tenma makes what he feels is the right option, and he performs surgery on the child. He leaves the mayor, who came in slightly after the child, to other surgeons, but the mayor dies on the table. The child is saved past Tenma'south skilled hand, however.

The upper direction is furious, blaming Tenma for the death of the mayor. His fiancee dumps him in dramatic fashion, and he is told his career is going nowhere. The manager and his cronies brainstorm to push button Tenma out, who contemplates leaving Frg birthday.

Then, suddenly, the managing director and his cronies are institute expressionless. The boy Tenma saved, forth with his traumatized twin sister, go missing.

Nine years later, Tenma is the Chief of Surgery. Things are going well once again, but the killings showtime once again. And Tenma, as innocent as he is, is the only one to directly do good from the crimes. And and then he begins his quest to find the real killer, the little boy whose life he saved all those years ago.

Monster is a slow, dark, and downright creepy look at what happens when pure skillful meets pure evil, and how a twisted childhood can enhance a heartless killer. Johan Liebert, the antagonist, is probably the most unsettling, hair-raising villain in the medium. This show isn't for the impatient, or the faint of heart, but it is of the highest quality, and should be watched immediately. Warning, it'southward long, clocking in at over 70 episodes, only it is worth it.

3. Ghost in the Beat

Chief Nakamura: Nonsense! There'south no proof at all that you are a living, thinking life form!

Puppet Main: And can you lot offer me proof of your existence? How can you, when neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is?

Originally a manga (Japanese comic) past Masamune Shirow from 1989, Ghost in the Shell (sometimes referred to every bit GitS) is a media franchise, and an icon of 90's anime in general. The movie that followed the manga, Ghost in the Beat out, is mostly considered a critical success and a cult classic. It received overwhelming praise from critics, and the Wachowski brothers openly admit it as the directly inspiration for The Matrix. James Cameron too cites it equally an inspiration for Avatar, which has a like premise.

Just don't feel bad if y'all've never heard of it outside of that ane Scarlett Johansson live-action remake — outside of the older anime circles, it's widely unknown in the Westward. That's the last I'll mention of the alive-action reboot — I haven't een it, merely it got a rather tepid reaction, so I'll get out it be for now. What follows is a synopsis of the original 1995 movie.

Yeah, I am fibbing a footling here, as it's non technically a show, simply a movie. Its spin-off shows are good too, so I'll allow it slide.

The twelvemonth is 2029. Moore's law remains unbroken, and humanity is on the verge of a Kurzweilian singularity. Cyberization — the practise of voluntarily replacing parts of yourself with avant-garde prosthetics — has offered humanity a leap forrad. Now, even brains take become cyberbrains, electronic facsimiles of the natural human brain. The Internet is now inside our heads. Humans have enjoyed the advances in engineering, merely something is gravely wrong.

Motoko Kusanagi, working under the newly formed Section 9 of Public Safety, takes on the case of the mysterious "Puppet Master", a hacker that commits crimes by hacking into the cyberbrains of others. Herself a primary hacker, she and her team work to track downwards this hacker, and encounter questions about themselves and their own existence along the manner. She's joined by Batou, an quondam military machine comrade who provides fifty-fifty more muscle to the super-stiff cyborg, and Togusa, an ex-cop who is one of the few remaining totally organic humans. He provides a dissimilar, traditional perspective, and in a earth of uber-cool cyborgs, hitting-men, and super soldiers, he'southward just a family man with an old revolver.

Ghost in the Vanquish is a deeply thought-provoking work that asks what the real definition of life is, and what constitutes a living being. It ponders the nature of existence, and in an historic period where the Internet was only starting to blossom, asks audiences to consider what the wider ramifications of interconnectedness really are.

Too, while it probably didn't invent cyberpunk, information technology, along with the original TRON, made cyberpunk into what information technology is today. It'southward not afraid to confuse you either — it requires your full attention, and information technology won't slow down for you lot. It freely mixes politics, philosophy, technology, and other themes without hesitation.

The movie spawned multiple serial, including the two Stand up Alone Complex shows and the Ascend reboots. They play fast and loose with self-consistency (read: don't expect consistent backstories, or even consistent characters across series), but they're all high quality for the most part.

4. Neon Genesis Evangelion

"Man fears the darkness, and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with burn down. He creates life by diminishing the Darkness."

— Rei Ayanami

"Evangelion is my life, and I have put everything I know into this work. This is my unabridged life. My life itself."

— Hideaki Anno, The Director

Neon Genesis Evangelion (normally NGE or Evangelion, or sometimes just "Eva") is widely considered the "final boss" of anime. Information technology'south darker than Monster, more disruptive than Ghost in the Shell, and more nuanced than Cowboy Bebop. Information technology requires an understanding of the tropes of mecha (read: behemothic robots) every bit well as the story of the managing director itself.

This story takes place in the future (I'thousand beginning to discover a trend…), but honestly, that inappreciably matters. The actual content of the first six or seven episodes are actually a adequately normal show, with the standard tropes of whatever giant robot anime. That's what information technology was supposed to be.

Hideaki Anno descended into a deep depression (among other mental illnesses, but he'south okay now) throughout the product of the original 26 episodes. What was supposed to be a normal action show (albeit still definitely not appropriate for kids to watch), transformed into something else. Information technology became a example written report in low and psychosis, and not in a subtle fashion like BoJack Horseman, merely in a raw, brutal manner that actually doesn't pull its punches.

The lore is disruptive equally hell, and that'due south intentional. Yous're as helpless as Shinji Ikari (the main character), trying to understand his confusing, terrifying globe over which he has no control. You lot encounter him crumple under life-altering trauma that most other fictional characters just sort of shrug off, equally if the writer didn't want to deal with it.

The characters all slowly crumble under the weight of their responsibility, and a conspiracy from within humanity'due south highest echelons threatens to torpedo their efforts. All the while, terrifying, heed-bending aliens called "angels" (become fix for some pseudo-kabbalah-mysticism in this one) set on the already devastated Earth i by one. All the while, Gendo Ikari, Shinji's estranged father, watches heartlessly as his son screams out in agony and fear while fighting the terrifying monsters.

And we oasis't fifty-fifty talked about the robots themselves. They're a whole other can of worms that require a lot of spoilers to talk most, so I won't.

The infamous final ii episodes are a jumbled, borderline psychotic mess, a result of the complete breakdown of the director and the money for the show drying upwardly. Afterwards, every bit the money poured in, End of Evangelion was produced, two feature length animations that provide what the bodily terminate of the show was supposed to be. And it'south not for the faint of heart.

This show is likewise hard considering it embraces the tropes that make anime-haters hate anime, but proceed watching — it turns those tropes on their head, makes them look distressing and ridiculous, and generally messes with your caput. It knows what information technology'south doing. Probably.

There's a reboot series of movies, which are a flake brighter in tone and a flake easier to sympathise, made years afterwards the original. The story is somewhat different likewise.

On the bright side, the opening theme song is actually tricky.

In that location are enough of other shows that belong on this listing, and calling Cowboy Bebop piece of cake is questionable at best — it's simply the "easiest" of this list for people who ordinarily would never watch anime. It's much more nuanced and dense than the boilerplate testify.

Merely there are shows that you should watch that didn't quite fit the criteria of this list (avoids anime stereotypes, written for an adult audience).

Honorable Mentions

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

This is actually a fantastic testify, that only missed the list because of the criteria I set out at the commencement. Widely considered the "gateway drug" of anime, it's entreatment is universal. Vivid and colorful characters in a diverse and fascinating world, with a thick but like shooting fish in a barrel to follow plot. Besides, forth with Cowboy Bebop, it's widely considered to be the other "good" dub, worth watching in English dubbing rather than subtitled. Too information technology has astonishing opening songs, second only to the legendary Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion openings.

Sure, at that place's politics, full-blown magic masquerading as pseudo-science, heartwrenching tragedies, and ancient evils and prophecies, but the show hinges on the centrality of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric. I won't say any more hither, because this i should only be enjoyed without any other preconception. It has a confusing outset episode, simply it clears up after that.

The animation is stunning, the writing is a case-study for concise, cracking, only still emotionally audio and connected story crafting, just the music is what seals the deal. Aye, it's got its goofy (and sometimes a chip cringy) anime one-act moments, and yes, it was actually meant for people under the age of 18, merely delight don't let it's exclusion from the list in a higher place discourage yous from watching it. It'south a true masterpiece of the medium, usually considered the overall best anime out there, and one of my personal favorites.

Simply steer articulate of the Netflix live-action motion-picture show, and remember that Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is actually the faithful manga adaptation. At that place was a series before information technology, just Fullmetal Alchemist, that halfway through begins to take some controversial liberties with the story.

ii. Decease Note

A teenage genius, Light Yagami (coughing symbolism cough), gets a agree of a notebook, a special notebook chosen the "Death Note", once owned by a shinigami (Japanese Death God). Whoever's proper noun he writes in the book dies.

And then, naturally, he loses his goddamn mind and begins cleansing the earth. But he'south got to deal with an equally smart investigator, hell-bent on finding him out.

Cue the most intense game of cat and mouse since Monster. It's a bit less serious than Monster, but it also takes the time to pose deep questions about morality and crime in full general. In a really twisted way, what Lite Yagami does isn't a bad thing. But his descent into madness alongside his investigator'south unscrupulous techniques create a grayness zone between the light and dark.

A thrilling scout, it does suffer from some less than perfect writing near the later parts of the evidence and has some tropes that bar it admission from the in a higher place list, but it is otherwise an intelligent, deep, and thrilling tour de forcefulness that is worth a scout past anyone.

Again, don't watch the alive-activeness picture show on Netflix.

iii. Baccano!

A vastly underrated jewel in anime, Baccano! is an impossible to ascertain story with no definitive principal grapheme. Information technology'southward non-linear, and information technology starts off very confusing. Only I promise, it'll all make sense in the terminate.

A rare anime set up in the good quondam United states of america of A in the 1920s and 30s, it mostly takes identify aboard a train, the Flying Pussyfoot, filled with colorful, vaudevillian characters, each on the train for a different reason. Then, people outset dying, and things go interesting. The story jumps around to different arcs, but they are all strangely connected.

Information technology'southward goofy, raunchy, funny, simply also very dark and gory, so definitely not meant for the faint of middle, merely it is a very tightly-written tale that happens to nobody in particular, but to everyone all at once. Information technology revels in neat musical taste, stunning blitheness and action, and fascinating characters. It'southward likewise got a jazzy opening to rival Bebop and Brotherhood, and is definitely deserving your attention, even though information technology didn't quite fit the criteria of this list.

In the end, I tin can't make yous non hate anime. I tin't also stop the e'er-increasing tidal wave of anime that reinforce the stereotypes of the genre as hopelessly weird, foreign, needlessly hyper-sexualized, and worst of all, childish. Merely I hope that you at least give a few of these an honest shot. Find some private time if you're embarrassed, and don't tell anyone if you don't want to. About all of these are available on either Netflix, Hulu, or Crunchyroll.

You lot don't need to dress upwardly equally anime characters, speak Japanese, understand complicated memes, or only watch anime. I sentry all kinds of shows, read all kinds of books, and enjoy all kinds of music. I'thousand merely request y'all to continue an open mind.