Gateway anime.

Looking over the various recomendations I can't help but note they are all at least a few years old, and most considerably older.

A reflection of how niche things seem to be getting at present perhaps?
 
If you wanted something more recent, Summer Wars might be a reasonably safe bet. My opinion of it has deteriorated somewhat since I first saw it, but it's an accessible film that I think has a fairly broad appeal.

I do agree that you should base your recommendations on who you're aiming for though. I've been doing an occasional film review show on youtube for the past while, in which one of my friends and I swap film reviews to try and educate each other about our particular interests (mine being anime, his being horror), and I've tried to strike a balance between films I think he'll like and films that I think are important to anime as a medium.

It's thrown up some interesting results; he was not as keen on Akira as I thought he might be, but he really liked Space Adventure Cobra. Strangely, Summer Wars is not a film I've suggested yet, so I might feed him that soon and see what happens.
 
If I wanted to force someone into it, I'd make them watch it Clockwork Orange style anyway.

Prof. Irony...I'd agree with Summer Wars until the climax. If you don't know how to play Hanafuda...you're going to be really confused.
 
I agree that it depends on the person. For some reason my mum adored Fushigi Yuugi but she's generally dismissive of everything else, whereas my dad watched the Ghost in the Shell movie on his own while travelling and is curious about Eva (not curious enough to have seen it yet, though). I think he'd like some of the more serious Gundam series if he ever had time to get into it, but most anime would just annoy him.

Both of them absolutely love the Drops of God manga, however, even though it's the only manga - or indeed comic - they have ever touched.

Meanwhile one of my brothers is definitely uninterested in anime, and I doubt a series will ever exist which could change his mind there.

I know a lot of people who'll watch Ghibli but without any interest in seeing anything else, so I'm not sure how good they are as gateway shows so much as just generally appealing movies anyone can enjoy.

R
 
Girlfriends are the general group (that makes it sounds like there' been a lot, there hasn't lol) that I actively try to get into or to at least understand anime. I've usually gone with Nana or Haibane Renmei as well as the Ghibli films to get them into it. Most girl I've shown get pretty hooked on Nana (not that i didn't watch the whole lot in 4 days myself, over a very lonely Easter holiday at uni).
 
It's a science.

Hell, I wouldn't even mention the fact it's anime to them if entriely possible. If a show is good then it'll plant the seed of "That was good, what else should I see?" in 'm.
 
FourthLion said:
Girlfriends are the general group (that makes it sounds like there' been a lot, there hasn't lol) that I actively try to get into or to at least understand anime. I've usually gone with Nana or Haibane Renmei as well as the Ghibli films to get them into it. Most girl I've shown get pretty hooked on Nana (not that i didn't watch the whole lot in 4 days myself, over a very lonely Easter holiday at uni).
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If I tried to show my fiancee any anime, she would probably kill me...painfully, her last b/f pretty much made her watch it all the time. I'm amazed she even wanted to go out with another anime watcher.
 
Lawrence said:
Hmm, talk as if you want to hook someone on anime? Isn't this kinda like forcing your taste on someone?
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Not to pick on you, but this is a fairly regular and completely misguided response to this kind of thread.

Reasonable assumption: All of us here like some anime, but didn't know we liked it before we watched it.

Reasonable conclusion: This is also true for some other people in the universe who haven't seen any anime yet.

Possibly more debatable but hardly offensive: It might be cool for all concerned if people who already know the attractions of a certain hobby help other people to learn of them.

Personally, I don't think it matters, since the "gateway" isn't the same for everyone.
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This I agree with (as other people have mentioned, genre preferences would help), but I don't think it particularly stunts the potential for discussion. People could always suggest potential gateway anime alongside the type of people they think might take to it, for example.

Rosencrantz said:
Looking over the various recomendations I can't help but note they are all at least a few years old, and most considerably older.

A reflection of how niche things seem to be getting at present perhaps?
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Perhaps, but I am more inclined to believe it is because people are taking examples from when they first got into anime, which then follows on might be shows that older people introduced them to from when they got into anime.

It is almost inevitable that people will suggest series that have stood the test of time rather than pick something new that "might" work.
 
Professor Irony said:
If you wanted something more recent, Summer Wars might be a reasonably safe bet. My opinion of it has deteriorated somewhat since I first saw it, but it's an accessible film that I think has a fairly broad appeal.

I do agree that you should base your recommendations on who you're aiming for though. I've been doing an occasional film review show on youtube for the past while, in which one of my friends and I swap film reviews to try and educate each other about our particular interests (mine being anime, his being horror), and I've tried to strike a balance between films I think he'll like and films that I think are important to anime as a medium.

It's thrown up some interesting results; he was not as keen on Akira as I thought he might be, but he really liked Space Adventure Cobra. Strangely, Summer Wars is not a film I've suggested yet, so I might feed him that soon and see what happens.
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Have you tried showing Mike some TV shows? I can see him liking GitS SAC.
 
I always use Perect Blue to showcase because in some ways, it is 'unanime'. However, probably not recommended for young children for obvious reasons relating to the content.
 
MaxonTreik said:
Have you tried showing Mike some TV shows? I can see him liking GitS SAC.
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Strangely, I've never actually tried giving him a tv series to watch, at least not outwith the Cowboy Bebop simulwatch (and I think Mike had seen some of it before). I think SAC would be a good shout though; I'd always thought that, once we finished Cowboy Bebop, we'd move onto SAC, but it's taking far longer to do the simulwatch than I'd hoped.

He's up to his eyeballs with his work at the moment, but once things settle down a bit, I'll see if I can get him to have a look at it.
 
ilmaestro said:
Rosencrantz said:
Looking over the various recomendations I can't help but note they are all at least a few years old, and most considerably older.

A reflection of how niche things seem to be getting at present perhaps?
Click to expand...
Perhaps, but I am more inclined to believe it is because people are taking examples from when they first got into anime, which then follows on might be shows that older people introduced them to from when they got into anime.

It is almost inevitable that people will suggest series that have stood the test of time rather than pick something new that "might" work.
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That's probably right, a lot of those shows were on when I was just starting toget into anime, but I think we still lack easily accessible shows at present.

Where's this generations bebop? a lot of the more recent shows seem to lack broad appeal that some of the older shows had
 
It's difficult, of course, to consistently find Japanese shows that are easily applicable to Western tastes - and increasingly so since the Western anime industry effectively died - but I think that it is now just a case of being more genre-specific, for example, than being able to pick a "catch all" show like Bebop (which was unusually successful - you could probably count on one hand the number of shows that have had such a strong influence in a time when anime fandom was growing quickly in the West).
 
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