Eh no. Anime is different to animation. Toy Story and Avatar don't count. Yes Anime is an excellent medium with limitless uses, but most anime with good plot will come across one of your nonos.

Death Note? Great plot, psychological warfare, plot twists a plenty, great characters, one of the best anime made. Ah but it has character monologues and a girl hopelessly and obsessively in love.

The monogatari series? Some of the best writing I've ever seen, hilarious, great characters. Ah but it's a harem with plenty of fan service, jiggly boobs and onii-chaaaaaans.

You get the drift. It's not a question of how good a medium is, it's a question of how picky you're going to be about it.

On Topic: Ghost in the shell, Stand alone complex is a good fit for your likings.

 

Meerkats: Notice I ask for animated stories, not anime. I understand the distinction. One thing to keep in mind is that anime is a subset of animation, not the other way around.

And I suppose we disagree in what great story-telling really is. If you consider a show with 'plenty of fan service' to have some of the 'best writing' you've ever seen... Well, they are antonyms to me. Erotic fan service in a psychological thriller is like a shoot-out scene in Steve Jobs' biographical film. You can tell it's there to attract an audience that would not otherwise be interested in the story.

The monologues and inexplicable romances aren't as bad as the soap-dotted tits, but not by much. It's just lazy story-telling. Instead of having the protagonist brood in a still frame for 5 minutes with a running commentary that basically tells you everything that already happened and how he feels about every single thing, why not convey this in-story? It's the basic 'show, don't tell', only anime takes the 'tell' to ridiculous extremes and it's forgiven because by now it's a well established trope.

I repeat. The medium is excellent and limitless. It has just as much possibility as film (or more) but with a fraction of the cost. What's not to like? Guess we'll have to wait a while for the industry to mature to the point other mediums are.

Thanks for the recs. Will give them a go.

 

I'd disagree with this. There's quite a lot of anime that neatly avoid that list of pet peeves. Granted, most of them aren't as popular due to the art style that isn't as clean (?) as the more well known anime. But they are still considered very good, even outside the general targeted audience for anime. I know that Roger Ebert put Tokyo Godfathers on his great movies list, as well as Spirited Away, for example.

Anyway, my list of pet peeves is quite similar to IdSayWhyNot's, and I've found and enjoyed more than a few anime series/movies that don't ping anything on there.

Edit: I would not consider Death Note to be anywhere near a great anime. It relies heavily on the supposed genius of the MC, but the writing is no where near good enough to show the MC as anything more than supremely lucky.

 

My bad, I didn't read the beginning of your post.

I see the problem here is a lack of communication. The points you make here make good sense, and I completely agree with them. I've dropped many a show because of displaced fanservice, but then in a show such as the monogatari series fanservice works. Not all good writing is centred around thrillers and in this case, bakemonogatari is based on character interaction and the dialogue writing is top notch.

Now that I've read your clarification on what you meant about monologuing, I'm going to go ahead and recommend Death Note anyway. The monologues aren't anything like you explained. Just drop it after episode 25.

And don't wait on the anime industry to mature. That's a fight long lost.

 

I'll just list some things by genre with a link to the ANN Encyclopedia page. Most meat your requirements, a few don't. All are of high quality, and are what I would recommend to anyone if they are new to anime.

Action
Akira
Black Lagoon
Macross Plus

Comedy
Detroit Metal City
Cromartie High School
Astro Fighter Sunred
Azumanga Daioh
Nichijou

Drama/Suspense
Grave of the Fireflies
Rose of Versailles
Gankutsuo
Patlabor 2: The Movie

Fantasy
Mushishi
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
The Twelve Kingdoms
Kara no Kyoukai

Horror/Mystery
Monster
Mononoke
Memories
Baccano!

Psychological
Paranoia Agent
Death Note
Blue Literature
Revolutionary Girl Utena

Romance
Five Centimeters Per Second
Kare Kano
Honey and Clover
Lovely Complex

Sci-Fi
Legend of Galactic Heroes
Time of Eve
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Planetes

Sports
Hajime no Ippo
Chihayafuru
Akagi
Cross Game

Have fun!

 

You couldn't be more wrong. For its sequel, Fate Stay Night, the awkward romance might be true, but Fate Zero has zero romance/fan service content at all. All plot, which is largely why I recommend it so highly. It fits perfectly into your requirements.

Most of the stuff I recommended would suit your requirements to be honest. The non-mecha constraint does take off a fair few, though I think you've got some misconceptions on mecha set up by either Gundam type series or some just generally bad ones (since posing only really happens in those).

Psycho Pass, as we've been discussing recently, would fit your constraints. As would Baccano, Death Note, Black Lagoon, Twelve Kingdoms, Berserk, Kara no Kyoukai, Monster, Time at Eve

If you relax the mecha constraint, you can add NGE/Rebuild of Evangelion.

Code Geass has ridiculous amounts of fan service (tits), but it's also offset by decent amounts of plot. Second season is worse in that aspect though.

Apart from the issue with tits/fanservice (which admittedly a decent problem in many but not all anime) most of your other hangups seem to be driven by what you've seen in Gundam (or just bad mecha) and anime just generally aimed at young ages.

How are those two anime good suggestions? They're like, the COMPLETE opposite of what he wanted. I'm trying to work out if you're trolling or not... =\

 

Evas aren't actually robots so much as armored cyborgs (it's not a spoiler, they're explicitly denounced as robots in the first episode). I don't know if that's still interesting to you. Evangelion is actually meant to be a different look at typical giant robot tropes in general. It's one of my favorites so you'll forgive me if I push a bit on this.

Fanservice aside (I for one just sort of tuned it out) I would definitely recommend the first season of Code Geass. While it has robots, they aren't really the focus of the show; they're just weapons of war like tanks. Honestly if you took the robots out of the show and just replaced them with tanks or something it wouldn't even be that different. However in season two they annoyingly get more and more "super" and kind of take over some of the focus.

 

Actually, you're wrong about that. Evangellion was never considered a giant robot show, or created to be a different kind of robot show. It was, instead, an homage to tokusatsu shows like Ultraman that the members of Gainax were huge fans of - particularly Anno, who had directed a live-action fan-film about Ultraman.

 

I have heard about Anno's liking for those kinds of shows and I see the parallels, but I'm not entirely sure about Evangelion not being considered a giant robot show or having nothing to do with giant robots. Most of the commentary I've read about it since first watching it is about how it relates to "super robot" shows.

 

You should go watch those shows, and then rewatch Eva. The entire thing is a darker, more depressing version of them. Just jumbo-sized.

 

Some Series:
Samurai Champloo- A semi-comedic take on classical samurai melodrama.
Digmimon (very kid friendly, very episodic, very "moral of the moment" and yet still quite intriguing. especially Tamers)
Avatar The Last Airbender: Some parts are forgettable, others are extremely well written and put together. American cartoon work operating at a very high level for both design and themes.
Trigun- Features probably the Nicest Person Ever as the protagonist. Up there with Outlaw star and Cowboy Bepob in the "great space-dramas" of Toonami lore.
Princess Tutu- lots of cuteness, combined with a very long exploration of free will. Also horribly misleading first season (the second season is where the meat of the story is)
Bartender- Episodes about the best bartener in the world, who works with humility and decorum to bring his customers not the drink they want, but the drink they need.

Movies:
Blood the Last Vampire- Vietnam war era, US military in Okinawa is dealing with a slight infestation of vampires (ala Nosferatu, not Dracula). So they get a vampire hunter. More horror and drama than action.

 

As evidenced by the suggestions so far, if you want an anime without gratuitous boobs, cliched villains, and magically-transforming-little-sister-robots, stay away from most of the recent stuff and look slightly off the beaten path.

Black Lagoon - I'm pretty sure I've recommended it 3 or 4 times in this thread, now. Damn near perfect anime.

Ghost in the Shell - Unlike other recommendations so far, this is the movie and not the series. Now, it does briefly and infrequently have boobs. But, unlike in most other anime, they complete don't matter.

xxxHOLiC - Supernatural and thought provoking.

Ano Hana - One of the greatest anime stories ever told.

The Legend of Black Heaven - A man plays a guitar in space to save the world. Yes, that is exactly what happens.

Trinity Blood - Technologically advanced vampires from space working for the Vatican 1000 years in the future. Good stories, great characters.

All the other recommendations already seem pretty spot on.

 

o: I just finished watching Ergo Proxy 3rd rewatch. It seems whenever I rewatch it, I learn something new about it.

I also found two Ghost In The Shell, Standalone and 2nd GiG dvd boxes in the closet I got from a convention center long ago from J-List panel.
XD but I haven't watched it yet, I probably should soon

Finishing Bakemonogatari and watching Nisemonogatari next.
I'm still waiting for Hanasaku Iroha, Stein's Gate movie to be availible.

 

Banta's list is very, very good, I'd also like to add Ano Natsu, Toradora and Kokoro Connect on the romance front and give you a heads up about Hyouka, one of the most visually striking anime's I've ever had the pleasure of watching.

Dereban is best girl.

 

I agree with Hyouka. One of the best SoL/Mystery shows... actually, probably the only show.

Otherwise, Banta's list looks pretty good, except I disagree with a few of the choices - Sunred (not that funny when you get down to it), Madoka Magica (overrated) and Hajime no Ippo (MC is... uninteresting).

 

Watched the first episode of Hyouka; the individual mysteries seem well-crafted and the protagonist is novel, but is the generic moe-blob heroine going to remain a permanent fixture? Really, really hate that character archetype.

Best recent stuff: Shingeki no Kyojin and Zetsuen no Tempest.

The former is just awesome. It strikes the appropriate balance of hot-blooded determination and crushing despair. The conflict feels like an actual struggle, the fights themselves are brutal, the protagonists avoid the most tiresome cliches of shounen, and most importantly... you really want them to win. The sheer unfairness of the world is striking in a way that most stories never reach. I actually teared up a little during Armin's speech at Trost.

Zetsuen no Tempest is... weird. Weird, but good. The best thing about it is that it defies your expectations. You know all those predictions we make based on the underlying tropes we assume stories adhere to? It throws those out the window. You'll be completely convinced your theory is the correct one, and Zetsuen is like: "Lol, no. Have a complementary mindfuck on the house." The confrontations are pretty tense, too, both those that involve chucking logic bombs at the other party and the bits that involve actual fighting. The only real problem I had with it was the Shakespeare quoting going in; it got a little anvilicious after a while.

Anyway, I'd definitely like to watch more stuff like it. Bit of a tall order, but are there any other supernatural animes with multi-dimensional characters and complex morality?

 

Uh, Chitanda is like that for awhile. She gets better with time though. The whole series starts pretty slow, but is fairly solid overall.

 

Shinsekai Yori certainly is supernatural with the complex morality. For most of it, it probably comes more under a adventure, mystery and cultural exploration genre, though has bits that are more action-y.

The last episode left me feeling uncomfortable and mindfucked for days, unwilling to accept what happened at the end as a 'good' ending, but at the same time unable to come up with any ways that situation could have ended up better. It was great.

It's something you have to be in the right mood for. It's slow, and initially just seems random in where it takes you - showing you different aspects of this bizarre New World for no apparent reason, but it all comes together later.

 

Tried Attack on Titan last week and after six or seven episodes, didn't want to continue any more.

Main character is utterly unlikable and detestable, more in vain of Naruto or Shirou, only even more unlikable than those two. Rest of the cast is meh. Only likable character was the childhood friend of the protag and the fact that she was so utterly dependant and submissive to the main char, despite being like 30000 times better and more worthy, really curbed whatever enjoyment I had left.

So, there is that.

 

That's somewhat surprising to me, honestly. Eren dispenses with most of the redundant blathering about the 'power of X' and actually demonstrates his determination. He's what a shounen protagonist should be, but so often falls short of.

Jarik: Thanks for the recommendation, definitely going to check it out.