Limited Series Animes

[Moral Orel]

For me, the anime that don't try to stretch a show out forever are the best. I liked Bleach and Naruto a lot, but it irritates me a lot to have to watch "previously on..." for half of an episode just for filler. I lean towards darker/weirder stories and topics, but I don't have a good way of finding other anime I might like. Netflix has run dry for me. So how about I list some of my favorites, and all you nice folk can help me out with some recommendations.

Also, although I know this makes me a pariah in a lot of anime circles, I don't do subtitles when I watch anime. If it's any good I'd like to watch it with the wife, and since she's dyslexic, she can't read subtitles and watch the show at the same time (I don't care for them much either).

So here goes...
Deathnote
Gurren Laggen
Samurai Champloo
Mushi-Shi
Full Metal Alchemist (I tried and hated Brotherhood)
Paranoia Agent
One Punch Man
Baccano!
Avatar: The Last Airbender (I know it's not technically anime)
FLCL
Dragonball (everything after the first series I hated).
Kill La Kill
Ghost in the Shell (just the first movie, never tried the rest)
Hell Girl
Soul Eater
Parasyte
Afro Samurai
Space Dandy
Welcome to the NHK
High School of the Dead (I actually thought it was a really good anime despite the gratuitous fan-service, which I also don't mind. I said "Kill La Kill" already didn't I?)
XXXHolic (the XXX doesn't mean inappropriate content, it's more like "fill in the blank" for those who haven't seen it)

Thanks in advance!

 

[PinkDragon]

Why would you hate Brotherhood? Brotherhood is the original you know?
Also you should really see mob psycho 100.

 

[Moral Orel]

Why would you hate Brotherhood? Brotherhood is the original you know?
Also you should really see mob psycho 100.

Well, from what I understand, Brotherhood follows the manga accurately, but regular FMA aired first, right? It might be mostly due to which one I saw first. Watching Brotherhood second just looks like they mangled the story of FMA. I gave it a long time to get good, but it was irritating me how it breezed over events that were powerful in FMA, like the Nina story.

Then there was an episode that happened to be on, way later in the story after I stopped watching, where they realized the bad guys they were fighting were robots (or something) so they didn't have to hold back and all I could think about was the old Ninja Turtles cartoons where they made all the Foot soldiers robots so they could get slashed with katanas and stuck with sais. Like they were forcing a lower rating than what should have been normal. It just seemed way toned down, whereas FMA was really unsettling.

I've seen some commercials for Mob Psycho 100, it looks pretty cool, haven't tried it yet though.

 

[Ironhold]

Well, from what I understand, Brotherhood follows the manga accurately, but regular FMA aired first, right? It might be mostly due to which one I saw first. Watching Brotherhood second just looks like they mangled the story of FMA. I gave it a long time to get good, but it was irritating me how it breezed over events that were powerful in FMA, like the Nina story.

Then there was an episode that happened to be on, way later in the story after I stopped watching, where they realized the bad guys they were fighting were robots (or something) so they didn't have to hold back and all I could think about was the old Ninja Turtles cartoons where they made all the Foot soldiers robots so they could get slashed with katanas and stuck with sais. Like they were forcing a lower rating than what should have been normal. It just seemed way toned down, whereas FMA was really unsettling.

I've seen some commercials for Mob Psycho 100, it looks pretty cool, haven't tried it yet though.

The original manga was still ongoing at the time the original anime was being produced. The anime caught up to the manga right after Hughes' death, and so the people doing the series decided to go off on their own rather than work with the author of the manga. This led to the significant differences we saw, and even the infamous movie.

Brotherhood, meanwhile, was done after the manga was far enough along that the two could be completely synced. If anything, sidestories from the manga had to be trimmed for episode count.

 

[Moral Orel]

The original manga was still ongoing at the time the original anime was being produced. The anime caught up to the manga right after Hughes' death, and so the people doing the series decided to go off on their own rather than work with the author of the manga. This led to the significant differences we saw, and even the infamous movie.

Brotherhood, meanwhile, was done after the manga was far enough along that the two could be completely synced. If anything, sidestories from the manga had to be trimmed for episode count.

That's weird. I put a good 10 episodes into Brotherhood, trying to like it. It didn't follow FMA at all. It had a lot of the same story pieces in it, but they started off so different.

 

[Ironhold]

That's weird. I put a good 10 episodes into Brotherhood, trying to like it. It didn't follow FMA at all. It had a lot of the same story pieces in it, but they started off so different.

Japan doesn't do re-runs outside of very special occasions.

If an episode of a series is scheduled to air, then it needs to be a new episode or else someone's in trouble.

This is a consequence of the way Japan does television. Here in the United States (and, by extension, much of the Western world), the season is all year long. It starts in the Fall, usually September, and goes for the next twelve months. In Japan, however, each calendar season is a new television season. Additionally, production teams are generally told ahead of time how many episodes they're going to be allotted per season, usually a multiple of 13 if the show is to air weekly (52 weeks in a year / 4 seasons in a year = 13), minus any scheduled holiday preemptions.

The end result of this is that people know in advance how many episodes a show is to get, and so once that show's finished its run it's pulled and a new show is brought in to take its place. By the same token, however, if a show is scheduled to run for a certain period of time, it's scheduled to run for that certain period of time. It's my understanding, for example, that this is why Evangelion's final two episodes were such a mess: Gainax didn't have enough money left in the budget to do as elaborate a final battle as they wanted to, but they couldn't end the series after Kaoru's death (a natural stopping point) because they were obligated for two more eps.

In the case of anime series that adapt other works, this often leads to problems when the anime catches up to the source material. If a show has permission to run for as long as it pleases, then the writers can work around this by inserting "filler" arcs or even entire "filler" seasons. This is risky, however, as shows have been sunk by ill-conceived "filler", such as Ruroni Kenshin and its infamous "Renegade Christian" arc. Basically, you're more likely to have a Ruroni Kenshin disaster than you are to have what Bleach had with its filler arcs, most of which were successful.

If a show has a fixed episode count, however, the writers are basically left scrambling to come up with their own original material. Some shows will do filler, end on a cliff-hanger, and pray for another season so that they can get back to the source material (this is what Blue Exorcist is having to deal with right now), while others just go on up to the source material, then diverge into its own independent story.

In a few extreme instances, like Trigun, the anime staff just won't even bother beyond the basic characters and concepts, then pick and choose what bits they'll go for from there. If it tells you how things had to be with Trigun, the final member of villain group the Gung-Ho Guns is different between the manga and the anime because the final Gun hadn't been introduced in the manga when the time came for the final member to be unveiled in the anime. I kid you not.