After the brilliant list of the greatest animated movies I thought it natural to list my favorite animated series. I had a good think about this on my daily mindless drive back home and came to a fascinating realization. While American studios make excellent films, the best animated television series hail from Japan. Well, it’s as fascinating as any conclusion can be while staring glumly at hordes of fellow slack-jawed yokels navigating steel caskets.
Anyway, here’s the list. I’m leaving the Simpsons off because it was on my Top Four Television Shows a few months ago.
1. Batman: The Animated Series
Let’s just get the obvious one out of the way. If Mask of the Phantasm is my choice as best animated movie ever surely the series that inspired would make its way on to this list. I tried to think of other American series that could qualify for the sake of spicing things up but came up aces empty. Old favorites like Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and He-Man were great and new stuff like Family Guy is pretty good but the Batman series beats them all.
2. Full Metal Alchemist
Maybe this isn’t the greatest anime series ever conceived but I thought it was a lot of fun. The problem with some anime is that they take forever (think Dragonball Z and Naruto) because they run concurrently with the manga. I watched quite a bit of Dragonball Z in grade school and tore through the first hundred or so episodes of Naruto but eventually series like that lose their steam. FMA, on the other hand, uses the right formula: a deep story with memorable characters contained within a reasonable amount of episodes – in this case fifty episodes and a movie.
Other series that had a chance here include Neon Genesis Evangelion, Samurai Champloo and Berserk. The former is an excellent series despite one of the most annoying main characters in the history of imagination but falls short because of a weird ending. Samurai Champloo was also a fun show but not good
enough for the list. Berserk is a crazy show, a real mind-fuck, deeply engrossing but it just ends in the middle of the story – that whole running concurrently with the manga issue except they decided to just stop the show.
3. Planet ES
I’m not really sure why I like this series as much as I do. It’s about a couple of people in the future whose job it is to clear space debris. Not the most exciting of premises but the show does a remarkable job of building character and story momentum. I didn’t realize how hooked I was until it ended.
4. Cowboy Bebop
This is my favorite animated series of all time. It may not be a continuing episode-to-episode narrative but there is a fascinating overarching story related to the main character. The characters are really well-done, the music is great, the animation fluid and exciting and the stories entertaining. It’s pure entertainment – what more can you want?
I have never been much for animated series (not since my days of watching the Glow-worms or My Little Ponies:), but I really do think that Batman Beyond is pretty cool, and I always enjoyed the X-men. Are those Japanese? I remember you used to like Space Ghost, too:) Oh, yeah, and I like Aeon Flux (the animated series, not the movie:).
Space Ghost, Coast to Coast… a strange cartoon/talk show hybrid. I thought it was great for a while but no one else seemed to like it. Oh well. When I was thinking about this I realized that there weren’t very many series to choose from. I mean, I don’t remember following any cartoons with a passion. I had favorites but nothing that couldn’t be skipped. Forgot to mention Reboot in the post, which was fun.
Batman Beyond and X-men aren’t Japanese. The former is pure WB – like the Animaniacs, which was a great show too! Good enough that I ordered the soundtrack through BMG. And then never listened to it.
Man, I love Cowboy Bebop too. What makes it great is that it’s really well written, with great characters, yet it avoids taking itself too seriously. That and the action. It’s midblowing.
I also think the new Spider-man series, Spectacular Spider-man, holds its own. Faithful to the sources material, yet it has its own style and flare.
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Have you ever seen Gargoyles: the animated series? I would venture to say it is as good as Batman TAS, and it’s voiced by the cast of Star Trek TNG.
Heard of it but haven’t seen it. Will have to check it out.