Submitted 3 days ago by mo_lave@reddthat.com to anime@ani.social
Saw a comment on the Journal with Witch episode discussion to this effect… what other anime had that effect on you?
For me, as soon as I watched the OP of Girls und Panzer: Das Finale Part 4, I know I’m in to something great. Everything about it was an elevated experience from the past entries. Same with Rose of Versailles (2025) (OP) and The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity (teaser visual and from awareness of staff and studio)
Monogatari Series.
This is the first 45 seconds of the first episode:
It’s really perverted but I’ve never seen perversion presented in such a way. I instantly knew it had a different kind of “language” in anime. I love every second of it. ^and^ ^i^ ^love^ ^hitagi^ ^so^ ^much^
There’s a lot of issues the the Monogatari franchise, but its cinematography is unparalleled
Frieren
I am going to exclude any shows for which I had previously read a manga or novel version of the story. There are a couple shows I can think of where I knew after episode 1 that I was in for a good time:
There are two main categories:
The first is when characters show some maturity or just a lack of stupidity in their thoughts and behaviour. Some examples include:
The other is when the show subverts expectation by not following stupid tropes; these are usually parodies. Some examples include:
The beginning of Redline gave me the impression that the whole movie would just be a sequence of cool shit happening, and then the whole movie was a sequence of cool shit happening. It ended up being one of my all-time favorites, and proved to me that an anime doesn’t need a complex story to be excellent.
hyouka and haruhi maybe
I usually pick out my anime carefully. I don’t watch that much so I don’t want to pick something that is ass. I also tend to finish everything I watch. So usually I pick out things that I quite like.
In the beginning of liking slice of life I didn’t know what to expect and if I liked it so I didn’t guess before watching that I would be into it. However it changed with Lucky Star. I watched a few clips on youtube and thought, man this is going to be great. And it was! While watching the very first scene where they eat lunch I just thought “this is the shit”. Lucky Star really confirmed to me that SOL was my thing.
Some of the shows I found had great opening scenes and became favourites:
Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso
Golden time
Outlaw star.
Rottcodd@ani.social 3 days ago
Joshiraku is about five rakugo-performing girls. The first episode opens with the end of a performance by one of them (to an audience of mostly empty seats), then the OP. Okay - at this point, I don’t really know what to expect, other than likely low-key humor.
Then it moves to them in a dressing room in which most of the series takes place, kneeling around a table. The camera focuses on one of them, then after an awkwardly long silence, she says, “You should just read the manga instead.”
I was sold right then and there.