The Shrine

Haven't seen much in anime in a long time. I was curious as to what has been really good. So far, ones that I've heard about in that time range would be:

Naruto Shippen
FMA: Brotherhood (haven't seen it yet, but have it in queue)
Death Note
Hellsing OVA (heard it was cancelled, though)

Shippen? Really? :p

FMA Brotherhood is good but I find it overrated and most of the best parts were already covered and lost their touch, Shippen and Death Note (after the first story arc) are kind of ridiculous, and Hellsing I don't really count because it's an OVA.. I'd say Darker than Black is the best thing I've seen in ten years.

It's Shippuden, if my first post didn't make it clear that Shippen is a butchering of the spelling lol.

Whatever - I stopped paying attention to Naruto when I exited my teenage years :P

Eric wrote:It's Shippuden, if my first post didn't make it clear that Shippen is a butchering of the spelling lol.

It's a hard spelling to remember. I'm just going to call it "Naruto S" next time. Or even "Naruto EX Alpha 2 - Super Tiger Edition".

Shippuuden is amazing when it's not in filler. They stopped doing inner-ep filler after the second manga arc (after about ep 70) which was very positive and makes it great to watch. Unfortunately, they go on filler every about 15 eps or so for 5 eps or so. Filler ain't as horrible as it used to be (or as long) and they try to tie it into the current storyline instead of stupidity (like using the Rasengen to make bread). But it's pretty clear when an ep is a filler ep still.

Death Note is 37 episodes of awesomeness. Many people will tell you that the "real" show ends after the L arc ends (after ep 25) but don't listen to them. The N arc is really great. They greatly condensed that second arc and it's done quite well (in the manga, it's about as long as the L arc but it's only 12 eps vs 25 in the anime). And if you love it (and you will), you should watch the live-action Japanese film. It's a 2-parter and it's amazing. Also, Hikaru No Go (what the creator did before Death Note) is also quite good

FMA Brotherhood is the "real" FMA. I liked the original 51 eps....but they're NOTHING compared to Brotherhood. Everything is done much, much better. Animation is movie-quality until about ep 30 (they started to run out of money; show barely had the budget to finish, actually), storylines are much more dense and awesome (lots of filler in the original), goes SOOO much futher with the story than the original, it's more mature, deals with relationships much better (ain't called "Brotherhood" for no reason), it's balls-to-the-wall intensity from ep 1 to 64....really, everything is turned up to 11. This one is the only one which can compete with Death Note for intensity and sheer awesomeness. It's basically a non-stop awesome ride.

Another one I cannot recommend enough as a light-hearted and genuinely funny anime is Yakitate Japan. It's 69 episodes about coming up with the ultimate Japanese bread ("pan" means "bread" in Japanese) and it's so light-hearted it's just fun as hell to watch. It's a little older (10-15 years) but it's a good change of pace from the serious ones.