America’s Top 30 Anime Classics, According to the Japanese
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Sep 5, 2012 10:07 JST
- Tags: Evangelion, Mononoke hime, Nausicaa, Pokemon, Rankings, Studio Ghibli, USA
As if it were not already plain enough how much the tastes of American anime fans differ to those of the Japanese, a survey of what the Japanese think of the USA’s “Top 30 Anime Classics” confirms it in no uncertain terms, with Ghost in the Shell and Akira yet again losing out to such genre classics as Pokemon, although it seems virtually everyone can agree on the greatness of Ghibli.
The ranking, with the original American ranking positions in brackets:
1. Neon Genesis Evangelion (2nd)
2. Pokemon (17th)
3. Spirited Away (10th)
4. Princess Mononoke (6th)
5. My Neighbour Totoro (14th)
6. Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (5th)
7. Howl’s Moving Castle (21st)
8. Gundam (15th)
9. One Piece (12th)
10. Grave Of The Fireflies (25th)
11. The Castle of Cagliostro (24th)
12. Ghost In The Shell (1st)
13. Naruto (3rd)
14. Dragon Ball Z (7th)
15. Rurouni Kenshin (16th)
16. Millennium Actress (27th)
17. Bleach (29th)
18. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (30th)
19. Akira (4th)
20. D.Gray-man (26)
21. Soul Eater (28)
22. Patlabor (19)
23. Tekkon Kinkreet (18th)
24. Ninja Scroll (8th)
25. The Vision of Escaflowne (11th)
26. Tokyo Godfathers (13th)
27. Memories (20th)
28. Sword of the Stranger (9th)
29. Street Fighter 2 (22nd)
30. Dead Leaves (23rd)
Americans may of course doubt the validity of any ranking which fails to include Cowboy Bebop…
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Are they just not aware of how popular Cowboy Bebop is in America?
Pretty much anything by Watanabe didn't do nearly as well in Japan. Beebop, Champloo, etc.
And the reason is that Watanabe is absolutely infatuated with western culture - which is pretty obvious if you look at pretty much all his work. I do like it a lot, but I can see why it doesn't appeal to the japanese audience as much.
Cowboy Bebop? An anime about americans in space with a bunch of cowboy flavour tossed in and jazz music. Awesome to a westerner - odd and niche to a japanese person.
Samurai Shamploo? A very unusual way of presenting samurais, at times parodizing classic samurai stories and all of this flavoured with hip hop.
To an american; refreshing and less high-contextual than other samurai stories out there.
To a japanese; just... weird. Like, what?
Something like that.
Japanese don't like Champloo OR bebop? DAMN do they hate Trigun as well?
You could probably be the worst person ever.
Trigun, good, the others, not my type. Also really don't like crayon shin-chan. Everything else is good in my book...except the obscure names most americans had to google to find the romanized version... D. Gray-man should be way higher on the list...but then again the anime stopped right before the awakening/created exorcists arcs.
I don't like Champloo and I don't like Bebop. I also hate Trigun, but I'm no japanese, but german o/
Akira, too, is something I don't like. Whatever. There's also plenty of stuff I like,.. Type-Moon stuff for example. Except Canaan. Canaan suckz.
I'm not much of a fan of Beebop or Outlaw Star, but HOW THE HELL does Champloo fail? What's not to like?
The Japanese aren't a fan of renegades or portraying their past as a lawless, honor-less, slaughter fest.
No Baccano? No Durarara? =...........= Naruto? Fuck Naruto. . .
i thought afro samurai was stupid....
there are 3 shows i never seen so i call bs on this top list
Damn, edit mode doesn't work.:/
I wanted to put Gurren Lagann, not Akira...
That is their past. That is everyone’s past.
gurren lagann fanboy...
And what about Afro Samurai and Akira?
This list is more like a sketch of European's classics.
If you think that's a disparity... hardly ANYONE in Japan cares about Outlaw Star, yet people over here (including me) love it and pretty much everyone has seen it, many before it was even on Cartoon Network.
Surprised Tenchi Muyo didn't make it on there either.
Yes thank you both of those shows are, and still are my all time favorites. Like Cowboy Bebop but Tenchi Muyo, and Outlaw Star will always be top in my list.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, Shows like Pokemon and Naruto are way more popular than Cowboy Bebop in the US.
This is a rank of classics, not popularity.
What do you think any open-population web-based poll is going to be?
The first episode of Pokemon aird in 1997.
The first episode of Cowboy Beebop aird in 1998.
Fist of the North Star should be there too. Who the hell didn't like atatatatatatatatat?
Exactly. If this were a list of actual "classics" then Astro Boy and Speed Racer would be on this list.
And star Blazers (AKA) Battleship Yamato, Ah My Goddess is a classic Paprika and Prince planet
I never said that Pokemon or Naruto weren't more popular. This list consists of 30 anime series. and Bebop didn't even make the list at all. That's what is bizarre about it. I never expected it to be number 1. Just to, at the very least, make the list.
Not really series, they had a lot of Movies on here that could've just been condensed to "Ghibli"
That's mainly because Bebop was late night and isn't airing anymore.
every sunday morning at 1:00 cowboy bebop on cartoon network
Where is KITE?
That's more of a Niche show. The American version had uncensored porn in it remember?
As crazy as it sounds, half the japanese have never even heard of cowboy bebop. No idea why.
seriously, I loved Cowboy Bebop. Though this is according to the Japanese apparently. I would have liked to see Gungrave on there or TRIGUN sheeeyiiiiitttt Tyrone. I know plenty of people that oogle and oggle over Trigun, especially myself.
i don't think cowboy bebop was that great, it was only ok...
I've been wondering about Bebop. Maybe in Japanese it isn't as good but works incredibly well in English? The dialog is really good in the English version. An example of reverse translation betterment where the translated version is better than the original?
Also missed on that list:
Trigun
Fooly Cooly
Inuyasha
Champloo
Eureka seveN
I'm no expert, but the Japanese cast was pretty good (it had Kouichi Yamadera as Spike, Megumi Hayashibara as Faye, and Norio Wakamoto as Vicious, FFS), and the show won awards in Japan. I think it's more that it got a fucked-up TV airing (TV Tokyo only ran episodes 2, 3, 7-15, and 18), due to concerns about the violence level. It did eventually get a full run on WOWOW, and later on Animax, but the damage was done.
Makes sense...
Trigun is probably my favorite anime.
That's why Japanese anime will eventually loose market, misconception of foreigners taste...
Lately they seem to only mass produce moe, harem, ecchi and a little bit of hentai...
lose what market?
1) its a market built on foreigners liking what comes out of Japan.
if an American wants "American flavored" cartoons he/she wouldn't be watching anime.
that's like arguing Japanese food should be made to suit the palette of American eaters. a flawed notion because an American fan of Japanese cuisine has a palette that likes Japanese food. that's kind of the whole point.
2) what market?
the anime/manga markets outside of Japan are a long way from their heyday.
they've largely collapsed and the companies that were making all their money localizing Japanese otaku culture have slimmed down significantly or shutdown.
what's left isn't a primary concern of anime studios. and given a choice between pandering to fans in Japan or overseas fans, they'll pander to their Japanese fans. there's at least a chance of some money in that.
lol anime is not made & marketed for foreigners, stupid. It's Japan first, then the rest of the world gets the scraps.
Japan DOES do too much Harem/Moe/Eechi though. It's generic as fuck and is formulaic.
Seriously, they gave K-On a second season instead of Lucky Star. What the fuck man.
Lucky Star has so much source material that could be used. But maybe it's because they fear they will be ragged on for them not being in high school anymore, who knows the Japanese otaku are NUTS.
That's another thing, HIGH SCHOOL, SERIOUSLY it's TROPE.
And they wonder why we like stuff like Champloo and Bebop? Because it's UNIQUE
Not exactly a good analogy.
American TV/movies show exactly what American flavored is. The proper analogy is cooking american food with japanese cookware.
We want cartoons with the same content you can find any day of the week from many writers who have nothing to do with Japan.
Ghost In The Shell (1st)
There is no need to have any other title in that list.
AMEN brother, too bad anime stopped being about telling a good, plausible story with a dose of fantasy and became about selling unrealistic, tired stereotypes of girls to lonely otaku, that incapacitate them forever of engaging any real woman on an attractive way.
Just watching Hyouka, I constantly facepalm of how catered to otakus Chitanda is and what a pussy Oreki acts like, a situation like that would NEVER happen in real life.
I'm hate the MOE MOE only animes too.
but i think Hyoka is not that bad!!!!
I sort of have to agree. I've been trying to watch new anime but it seems the ones I might be interested in are more about fan service than kicking into a real story. I'm sad neither FMA series made it onto the list.
I couldn't have said it better... Because every time I do people downvote me into oblivion for bashing K-On!, Haruhi, and just all of the Slice of Life/Moe genre in general.
I'm not a fan of shows like Quaser either, when they constantly have tits flying out and stuff. It seems like a desperate attention grab to me.
I like GitS, but I also like K-On. Sure, I like them for very different reasons, but there's no reason a person can't like both.
Anyone who thinks Suzumiya Haruhi is a Slice of life/moe anime never really watched it.
I'm sorry, Suzumiya is not just a slice of life anime, the reason people like it is because at least one part of the anime is made for everyone. Whether its espers, aliens, time traveling,(this is a joke btw) but seriously it had music, a mind fuck story depending if you were paying attention or not, and was overall interesting. So far I was only enjoying it bit by bit, til they had a mystery/murder episode, with Phoenix Wright references. That won me over to liking the series. There's something to like even if its just Mikuru's boobs.
SoL series can potentially be good. Remember Maison Ikkoku or Kimagure Orange Road from the 80's? There are even more recent series that nobody knows about like Ristorante Paradiso. When they try to tell an actually believable story with realistic, well developed characters and when they include some theme or aspect that is original, then there's nothing wrong with the SoL/moe genre.
But no. Instead we get the lowest of the low otaku fetish pandering because that's what sells and companies aren't willing to take the risk and alienate their target audience. Most modern anime is to actual animation is what Fox news is to journalism.
Some people brought up some good titles its sad that they didn't bring up Project A-ko that was a movie.I am not going to start flame wars because those titles were entertaining everyone who watch those titles Past or Present.
@13:18
True, bit Haruhi also fit into the Moe and Parody category...
I'll admit to liking Toradora! because it actually had a well developed romance story, but I think the fact that it can actually be listed as romance sets it apart too.
11:17 05/09/2012
I love that otaku cathexis part not for the unrealistic, tired stereotype use, but for the injection of a plausible story with a dose of fantasy.
I thought anime was a good antidote to tactical snobism and taught appreciation of the soothing/motivating/instrumental/socrealist purposes of art. The fabular outlook means just sharing a focus of attention. There are more entertaining things that can be shared than that.
We complain about the population of the Earth being overpopulated.
If this "Fan-Service" based anime keeps the Weak-Minded from ever having kids then I'd say thumbs up to Japan for eliminating the IDIOT race and preserving only those that deserve to live.
There's a lot of idiots who have children that don't deserve to live let alone contaminate the gene pool as well. :/
You should get a life... its actually sad how bitches like you rant about new anime but still watch everything.
Anime is still good. Its even better now becauce the looks changed.
Are you kidding all of this new moe anime that's coming out is shit! You dumbass
My opinion > Your opinion, faggot.
you sir summed that shit up perfectly
agree GITS is the BEST
>he says GitS 1st movie is awesome, yet you know he never read the manga
herp derp
GitS movie is nothing more than mere highlights from the manga. And without it, it is incoherent shit. The mere fact that you think it's a "classic", while not reading the manga means you're an idiot.