Still on the hunt for questions, however I did like the most recent inquiry that came through. As always, I’d love to know your answer to the question and if you have something you’d like answered, be sure to fill in the survey below or DM me on Twitter.
Is there any genre of anime that you have yet to watch a “definitive” title? In other words, for many genres you’ve probably encountered an anime that just links to it. Ex: Action anime = DBZ Horror = Tokyo Ghoul, etc. What genre have you not experienced that yet?
Anon
This is probably where I admit that of the big 3 shounen titles, Bleach is the only one I’ve watched. I did try Naruto and One Piece but for various reasons just never got into them. Then again, it isn’t as though I haven’t watched plenty of other shounen titles and while some might be arguably more definitive of the genre than another, I don’t think it matters all that much.
Even in the question examples, I found myself wondering whether I’d class Tokyo Ghoul as a horror. Certainly there are parts of the story that are horrific but I would watch that more for a dark action than the horror elements. For horror I’d turn to Shiki or Higurashi.
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That said, there are plenty of ‘big’ anime in various genres that I’ve just never gotten to. I still haven’t watched Spice and Wolf despite it being endlessly recommended, there are plenty of sport and harem anime I’ve never tried or gone near, and literally hundreds of comedy anime that I either never even started or didn’t watch all of it (Gintama comes to mind, though I did really enjoy season one, I felt one season was enough).
So pretty much I don’t really feel there are ‘definitive’ titles for genres, though there are very popular examples from the genre. Even then, there are always plenty of anime I haven’t watched despite how much anime I try to watch. That’s kind of what I like about it because there’s always something new to find and experience.
But I will throw this question over to the readers and see what they think. Please leave us a comment below.
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Karandi James
Funnily enough for all the sports anime I’ve watched, they’re almost all quirky niche titles mostly centered around esoteric or outright fictional sports like mahjong or tankery or flying circus. You start rattling off all the really popular sports series over the years – Haikyuu, Kuroko’s Basketball, Ace of Diamond, Hajime no Ippo, Prince of Tennis, Inazuma Eleven, etc. – and it’s basically a big long list of “nope.” I read and watched a little bit of Initial D, but as far as the genre titans go that’s basically it.
I did watch Haikyuu after a lot of recommendations and ended up really enjoying it. Kuroko’s Basketball though was fine but I didn’t watch beyond season one because I just wasn’t that into it. I still haven’t gotten to Prince of Tennis though that’s probably the next sports anime on my list that has been recommended endlessly and I still haven’t even tried it.
I’ll probably never watch any of the ‘big’ Shonen, the genre just doesn’t interest me enough to go out of my way. I’ve watched some seasonals, and that’s about it.
If I came across Bleach today I probably wouldn’t have gotten into it. At the time though, with limited anime options, I was thrilled to find most of it online and just got sucked right into it. Now nostalgia for it is pretty fierce and I just kind of love the characters (even if I do spend a lot of time making fun of them).
Hi Karandi, for me it’s probably ‘Death Note’ – which I remember abandoning fairly early on, as I found Light’s psychopathic tendencies destroyed any chance I’d ever find him a sympathetic character and I actually wanted to see more of Ryuk instead 😀
Death Note is definitely one of those anime that is basically assumed viewing from fans. I know that my knowledge of the second half of the series is considerably weaker because after the first viewing of the complete anime I tend to stop when I get to a certain point because I like that better as an end to the series.
I remember feeling that way about a couple of series, yeah!
(One day I might finish Death Note basically because it is so, so well-known – but it’s been sliding down my list for a while, too much I still have to get to that I reckon I’ll enjoy from top to bottom)