never watched Anime, how to start?

[Hawthorne Wipes]

Do you know One Piece..?
Shingeki no Kyojin is also worth watching, and it only has one season (the anime; the manga is way more advanced)

Edit: I don't recommend Fullmetal Alchemist, at least the first series. Got its moments.. but gets boring pretty quick, and the characters are so plain.

[Deleted]

i cant understand people recommending 500+ episode mainstream animes with buttloads of filler episodes...(ignoring the fact that they are mostly mediocre or below imo)

its because those giant animes are what brought many here into anime. for me it was dragon ball at first that brought me into anime and naruto+one piece that brought me into manga. but i agree. i would not reccomend these for someone new to anime since they are more suited to either children or long time watchers.
BUT dragonball kai is a great way to get the dbz expirience without the constant filler or 5 minutes that take 5 episodes.
and the worst anime when it comes to filler HAS to be naruto shippuden. the manga ended a long time ago but they keep milking the anime. its probably more filler then canon at this point

[Wayne25uk]

Maybe try this new Anime called "Go outside fatty!" its really good and the characters are so realistic, and it actually makes you healthier as you do it.

[Tommy T]

Retreat to the basement.

Toppest of Keks

[Saverem]

Cowboy Bebop and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood are good introductory anime as they don't contain any crazy Japanese shit that would require your body to be ready in order to take in. You'd have to ease slowly into that.

[Airlick]

Which Anime is generally most critically acclaimed anime?

Shinsekai Yori, Monster, Clannad, anything by Miyazaki, Higurashi, Cowboy Bepop (as listed by yourself)... You'll rarely see critics being negative about these shows, simply because they do what they are supposed to do in pretty much perfect fashion. A good critic will understand what's the purpose of an anime and will rate it accordingly. A bad critic will go "it's not what I expected" and rate it poorly based on their subjective opinion. Sometimes bad critics will happen to agree with the good ones, sometimes they don't.

Oh, there's also Steins;Gate, it is truly a gem, you have to try really hard to find flaws in that show.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Yeah, it's not. It's criticized A LOT. I don't think anyone would try to deny NGE's influence on anime and even popculture in general, but the show is a pseudophilosophical clusterfuck of unclear, very poorly handled (in terms of pacing, the style of narration and the general quality of it) story and some of the most annoying characters to ever appear in any form of media. There's literally not a single likeable character in the whole show, they come in 3 varieties: emo, scumbag and poser, and most of them combine more than 1 of these traits. Makes it a real pain to watch.

Though I guess that, based on the first part of my own post, NGE SHOULD be critically acclaimed based on how good it does what it's supposed to do. After all, it's an anime made for depressed people by a depressed person, and it's extremely appealing to said people. But I honestly can't picture the mentally stable people being able to relate to it. We're not living in a perfect world, though, and the critics do let their own opinions influence their reviews, which is why the community is torn on the matter of NGE, and this is why you can't call it a generally acclaimed anime. It's not.

[Tatsujin]

you made me blow water out of my nose, hilarious!

i fucking choked while reading the first four posts on this valley nature bar -cough cough-

As for the OP, go to AniDB.net and click on the "Seasonal Chart" or something like that, on the left side. Now navigate through it and see what seems to be interesting. Take good care to see the "Average" rating on there as it is the most accurate for how good the series is. Usually a 5 for me is good to watch, 4 is riskying, 6 is really good and 7 and above is a must watch.

If you want drama shows, I recommend Clannad and then Clannad After. Both are long TV shows. Clannad After is what everyone goes after, obvioulsy Clannad is the set up for the second season. If you want something short and realistic, 5 Centimeters Per Second. It feels too real and very nostalgic in all areas.

For action, ... oh man there's a lot of good ones. I heard One Man Punch is not only funny but has really good action. Mardock Scramble is 3 movies, long movies, and it has very dark themes (rape, violence, gore and other disturbing scenes ... like, very disturbing). Ghost in the Shell (1996) movie is great to start with and move on to the other movies. There is some new OVAs that came out which is the prequel to the movie, or something? There is also the show that EVERYONE talks about and half the people will tell you "hype and it's shit" - Attack on Titan. This series is freaking amazing, not only the TV show, but the manga is deliberately super amazing even though it doesn't even come close to Muv-Luv Alternative's superior level of storytelling, political warfare, PTSD scenes, character structure and development, epic music ... okay well you get the idea. But the creator of Attack on Titan was mostly inspired by Muv-Luv series, especially Alternative).

If you want fanservice, Keijo is the most recent one and it has a gravity hole of many butt shaking and tit flopping and ... well, you get the idea. But well ... it just sucks because for the past several years Anime is about 70% fanservice crap with stupid repetitive stories. That's why I threw AniDB. Don't go with MAL, most of the ratings are 7s and some 8s on the ratings, even the really terrible shows. So you can't tell how good a show is.

Oh yeah!!!!! I remember uh ... uh ... Macross Frontier! Really great show. Start with the TV (if you can download the blu-ray version you'll see extended features). Then jump to the two movies! Holy hell super epic awesome music and super fast action! Sheryl is so awesome!

I'll recommend Gargantia. Don't even read what's it about, just start with the first episode and it will suck you in 20 seconds in. Still waiting on a damn second season ... they keep releasing new OVAs, we're up to like 4 or 5 OVAs. But it start with a TV series which heavily rivals with the best looking anime we have today.

Lastly, I will recommend Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night - Unlimited Blade Works - both are new TV series and they were done by ufotable (animation direction) and Type-Moon (directors/owners/animators). Every episode is a freaking movie-quality - no questions asked. Zero came out few years ago and UBW came out about a year or two ago. Start with Zero. It has everything - from drama, some comedy, super fluid animation (extremely fluid and eye popping, unmatched quality as ufotable doesn't joke around with animations) story is superb as well as the characters.

There's just too many series and genres to recommend. Hell I'd even throw in the famous old school Great Teacher Onizuka. That ending music (ED) is soo bad ass and awesome even today.

Edit - One more show! Re:Zero - I recommend this practically to everyone, there's a second season in the works so I'm looking forward to something permanently bad to happen to the main character.

[GreenJesus]

Re:Zero
Log Horizon
Fate stay/zero series
Full metal
JoJo
One piece
Steins Gate
Cowboy bebop
Samurai champloo
.....
Jesus.. how the fuck do I narrow the list down? It's impossible. I can just keep listing anime for hours. Just go crazy and you probably won't have a life anymore from being sucked in to animoo world.

[Tennis]

I'm at that point when there seems to be nothing good going on... Walking Dead, Suits, TBBT releasing 1 episode at a time is sooo slow for me, Game of thrones even worse, 1 at a time and only 10 episodes.
Which leads me thinking maybe I should broaden my watch list, Anime seems like a wild untamed animal to me, I'm kinda curious, want to start, yet at the same time I do not want to wake up on the wrong foot (this saying sounds weird in English, do you even have something like that?)
I'd like to start watching the best, which one do I start with?

Try

Kono Suba
Sword Art Online
Code Geass
Death Note

[Arrowstormen]

Old thread is old.

[Linri]

i would begin looking at genres you may enjoy, like space, or fantasy, slice of life, romance etc

check out a few shows with animation style you think you may enjoy as well

find a mesh between the two and go from there, that's how i kind of started

[Deleted]

My favorite anime of all time is Chrno Crusade. Highly recommend you to watch it. And good anime of this year is "Your name".

[Jazzhands]

Start with One Punch Man. Only 12 episodes right now, it's great comedy, awesome characters, amazing fights. It's become my go-to to recommend for people trying to get into anime. It's got a little bit of everything except romance.