This site https://myanimelist.net/anime/genre/26/Shoujo_Ai should have most of the available Yuri anime. Some of these who are listed there just consist of strong bait, so be careful what you choose. I watched a few of them and would say Strawberry Panic was the best from these few I have seen.

 

As disappointed as I am over the canon pairings in Hibike Euphonium @Cyclops, despite all evidence to the contrary?

Anyway, unfortunately most yuri anime is just yuri baiting or fanservice shows including the likes of Yuru Yuri, Sakura Trick, etc. That, or anime like PMMM where it's heavily implied and basically canon, but never really treated from a romance perspective.

@Banta's post covers a lot of the ones I'm aware of.

Really speaking, you're better off delving into the world of shoujo ai/yuri manga, where there are quite a few more options that are worth reading (most quite short however). Often end up doing big yuri manga binges at a time and still find new ones around.

 

Thanks for the recs everyone. I'll check out those shows when I can.

That's the one. I didn't specifically name this anime in case people here were unaware of the book canon stuff and I didn't want to spoil anyone, but I should have known anime viewers on this site would already know whats what.

Damn right I'm disappointed. When I found out it wasn't a yuri pairing I was confused as hell. The book canon pairing makes zero sense given what we've seen in the anime.

I'll follow your suggestion and look for yuri manga.

 

I'll recc some in the manga recommendation thread when I get the chance.

Edit: And posted!

 

If we're talking about yuri, I feel the need to mention Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and its sequels. I'm surprised someone hasn't mentioned already, actually.

Nanoha and Fate, over the course of four seasons, go from being enemies, to childhood friends, to implied dating, and then to raising a daughter. It's one of the more satisfying character progressions I've seen.

 

Huh, wow. So are we talking like, Madoka: Rebellion level implied? Or even more direct?

Nanoha is one of those anime I've always wanted to try as I keep hearing great things, but I always struggle to get through the first episode, which feels very...juvenile. Does it change much?

 

More implied than Madoka. They're living together by ViVid, and Vivio refers to them as "Mama Nanoha" and "Mama Fate". It's never directly stated, but that's more an amusing technicality than anything else

And yeah, it is very juvenile. It never really loses that - it definitely remains feeling like a kids show, even with some pretty serious scenes thrown in. The later parts of the first season I remember being very heavy.

That said, the movies (while definitely not a substitute for the show itself) are a pretty solid alternative if the show is too outright childish. It has a sleeker animation, and the art feels a lot less like it belongs in a Saturday morning cartoon. They only cover the first two seasons, however. After which there's a time skip to them being adults.

 

So, good news: Kekkai Sensen is getting a second season. Bad news: Rie Matsumoto isn't directing it.

 

So I finally saw Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) at the cinemas yesterday (MAL / trailer). I'm sure everyone here is across the hype, but if you haven't heard of it, it is Makoto Shinai (5 Centimeters per Second) new work and his play for being the new Miyazaki. It is currently sitting at $175M USD at the box office, making it the 5th highest grossing anime film ever (and the number keeps growing each week its out), it has a rating of 8.9 on IMDB, 9.4 on MAL and has had top reviews from all sorts of mainstream critics.

Without giving away too much, the story follows a male high school student called Taki who lives in Tokyo and a female high school student called Mitsuha who lives out in a remote country town. They start finding out that they sometimes randomly switch bodies, and this leads to the usual anime fun you expect. Throw in some hard hitting tragedy involving memory loss, natural disasters and the fateful romance, and you have your story. On paper, it really is nothing special apart from the body switching/gender bending part (which has been done in anime before, but never really in a serious take on it).

What really propels the anime up there is its execution, which is done nearly perfectly. It's an emotional rollercoaster of heart-wrenching feels, anxious tension and comedy with Makoto's trademark breathtaking visuals and likeable characters. There are multiple climaxes and you spend most of the second half of the movie sitting on the edge of your seat with your heart beating heavily in your chest, your fist clenched in hope and tears threatening to fall from your eyes.

The only shortcoming of the anime is the rather dull and not very memorable OST (a real shame given there are some fantastic OSTs coming out that would have worked really well with this movie. Yokoyama Masaru from Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso anyone?).

It's definitely worth the hype, and I am honestly considering rewatching it this weekend. I'd highly recommend you try to catch it on the big screen (subtitled with Japanese audio) if it's out in your country. It was only around for around 10 days here in Australia.

9.5/10





The other thing I wanted to recommend was the Chihayafuru Part 1 (IMDB) and Part 2 (IMDB) live action adaptions, which I also managed to catch in the cinemas for the Japanese film festival. I know they probably don't belong in this thread, but it seemed appropriate.

I am a massive fan of the anime, which is a sports/hobby anime that follows a traditional Japanese card game called karuta. It's a shoujo anime (female protagonist), but with all the energy of a shounen sports.

I had given up on Japanese live action adaptions of anime years ago. Unlike Hollywood adaptions, which often throw away the source content entirely, Japanese live action adaptions try to follow the anime - sometimes too literally. Actors/actresses often do poor jobs of pulling off the exaggerated anime characters, action scenes look silly, CGI is silly, etc. So I came into these movies with low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised.

The movies do try to stay true to the anime as much as possible. The characters were spot on - so much so that when I rewatched Season 2 the day after, the transition was absolutely seamless (and when Japan casts characters, rather than just choosing the most big name actors/actresses for the roles, they try to find characters that actually LOOK the same as their anime counterparts). The cast were actually taught to look like they were highly skilled at this sport (rather than just going through the motions like most Japanese casts seem to be for these sort of adaptions). The cinematography, film techniques, camera angles and the way the action was done was straight from the anime - and it worked! The soundtrack is a rearrangement of the original themes, but redone by Yokoyama Masaru).

And most importantly, the plot worked. It skipped a lot of side arcs without feeling rushed. The pacing worked really well - perhaps even better than the anime (which starts very slow). Every match successfully created amazing tension and energy. Certain emotional scenes actually hit me harder than they did in the anime.

Overall, it's probably the only Japanese live action adaption of an anime that was as good, if not better than the original (season 1 anyway) and it did it while giving it a distinctly anime feel - it barely felt like a live action at all. And given I loved the original a LOT, that means a fair bit to me.

Anyway, check them out. Japan is definitely lifting their game on live action adaptions (the Rurouni Kenshin trilogy live action movies weren't bad either).

8/10

 

In my goal of consuming more anime, I'm going to start watching two shows at a time (one episode a day, everyday). However, my list is long, and I'm not sure where to start. So, DLP weebs, which two of these shows should I start watching right now to get into the swing of things?

1. Yuri on Ice
2. Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress
3. Re:Zero
4. Show Genroku Rakugo Shinji
5. Thunderbolt Fantasy
6. Mob Psycho 100

 

Mob Psycho 100 and Show Genroku Rakugo Shinji. Yuri on Ice is overrated, and Kabaneri is just mindless action (though if you're into that you'll probably enjoy it). I've never heard of Thunderbolt Fantasy.

 

Can i ask why everyone is going crazy over YoI?

There isn't even a best girl as far as i can tell. What is even the point of anime if the show doesn't spark that debate?!

 

It's literally a Taiwanese puppet show with Japanese voices and written by Urobuchi. I watched it week by week and dropped it near the end because Uro started edging again. It was decent up until that point though.

Mob Psycho is fucking fantastic. Make that a priority.

As to Yuri on Ice: it's just a romance show with gay dudes. I'm not interested in that at all but apparently it's decent?

 

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu is by far my best anime of the season. It made me laugh and legitimately had me shedding tears. True beauty in anime, and I've reviewed it on my blog here.

Mob Psycho I never finished, because despite how hilarious it is and how amazing the animation is, around the time they were invading the Scar lab I just lost interest in the plot. Its just a touch too silly for me.

Haikyuu is still a great sports anime, and in the same vein Yuri on Ice!!! is a good ice skating show. Im a bit mad that it

Spoiler

never paid off and victor and yuri never banged or even kissed

but overall quite enjoyable. YoI is a romance, but primarily its about the competition in the exacting sport of ice skating.

Re:Zero is up there too, while the animation can be hit or miss the story is just so good, and some of the emotional beats hit like a truck.

Apparently Showa Genroku is getting a second season which makes me more happy than I can say. Re:Zero second season should be great too.

What are we looking forward to in 2017?

 

Konosuba will probably be pretty hillarious again.

Though about Yuri on Ice, I think it's mostly the uniqueness, since there aren't that many mainstream shows with such in your face yaoi, they seem to also have a plot instead of just smut.

Aside from that didn't really gather much of my interest, despite me loving iceskating.

 

Saw the first season of My Hero Academia and I have to say, I was absolutely underwhelmed by it. The protag was super annoying, most characters were shit and to be honest the only two I kinda ended up liking were All Might and Frog Girl. The rest are generic, forgettable, bland, predictable archetypes that have long been played out without bringing anything new to the table.

A few times it surprised me by being slightly more brutal than I had anticipated, but overall, it was decent but meh.

I can't stress enough how much I disliked the protag. He was whiny, annoying, bland and he cried at least once every episode. This is not me saying I dislike male characters having emotions besides anger or joy or that I dislike/disapprove of men crying or whatever. But Boku cried every fucking episode, most episodes several times, and that's just aggravating. I can't think of any character, male or female, that has cried in every episode/chapter otherwise in anything.

Basically, just way overused crying as a mechanic to show how much a character cares, just seemed lazy.

I keep hearing the tournament arc is supposed to be really where it takes off and I might give it a shot but dunno. So far, rather disappointed by what was supposed to be the next big shonen.

 

Lol. Then I'll say it. I don't want my protags crying like little bitches. I watched Evangelion, that's me done on that front for life.

 

Huh. I didn't find Midoriya that annoying at all. If anything, I found him kinda tame in comparison to other "pathetic" protagonists. But I may be somewhat of a skewed barometer on that front - Shinj Ikari ranks as one of my favorite male protagonists in anime. The only time characters like that bother me is when they never grow at all.

Yeah, it does pick up by the tournament arc, but if you don't like it now you're probably not going to like the tournament arc much more. That said, Midoriya does grow a lot (especially later in the manga), so if you can ignore all the other things you didn't like, you might enjoy the rest of the story.

 

This genuinely boggles my mind.