Okay I've taken a while(almost a year)to upload this post.yeah it took me forever to write this,majorly because I've been putting it off for a while.
I'm usually into television series of sorts but in the recent years I have taken an interest in animes and mangas(japanese/chinese/korean graphic novels basically) and can now say I am absolutely addicted to them strangely enough.I could go on and on about how Naruto changed my life,rather got me hooked to anime and the amazing lessons i got to learn from it(no,really there are some hidden morals)and let's face it,it brings a lot of positivity. However,if I had to list down ten of my favouriteanime/mangas so far..they would be (not quite in the order of favourites) listed down as follows.Webtoons seems to be a genre that i left out but i will write about that someday.
10.Bleach
For obvious reasons,the ever-so fascinating concept of shinigamis(deathgods),and soul society that protects the people from evil spirits and every other supernatural aspect of it.Infact this was the first time I came across the concept of shinigamis,and realised a lot of the supernatural animes have shinigamis and other death god equivalents
Not that i'm a sucker for shoujo(romance)mangas but this one really caught my attention.The simple undertone of romance and never over the top.The subtlety in a strange infatuation that develops into mutual admiration.Can never really put it in a word but even so worth a read.
8.Vampire Girl
Okay firstly don't go by the name,it has got hardly anything to do with the age old cliched vampire stories,the major plot infact revolves around a certain kind of "romance" and the irony that lies with the idea of karma and re-birth.This manga is really a masterpiece by Fujiwara kaoru.To me ,this manga is an admixture of the chaos theory and the domino effect,once a certain kind of external element is introduced,it sets in effect a series of events that be quite chaotic but eventually when pieced together ,makes sense.
Even the artwork is sketchy and has a gothic style to it which really is apt for the plot
7.
Litchi Hikari Club
This has got to be one of the most twisted,messed up,psychological thriller i've ever read (among mangas atleast).It could be ' The Clockwork Orange' of mangas.This transcended any idea i had of morals and principles and doesnt leave anything to your imagination.But even within its grotesque nature,it's quite a masterpiece.Its a comment on society and the perversity that exists within this framework.It questions one's very existence and the artwork is very,very creepy.But i guess the author Furuya Usamaru has a penchant for creepy things.Which also brings me to my next favourite which also happens to be partly his work (because the original piece of literature is by osamu Dazai) called ningen shikkaku
6
.Ningen Shikkaku(Alternative title:no longer human)
This is supposedly a famous piece of post world war japanese literature by an author called Osamu Dazai.The reason i mention this piece is not because the story is extraordinary or anything but its about a man who is completely vanquished by his insecurities that he feels like a failure as a human being,and how he succumbs to his anguishes and wishes to just disappear from the face of the earth.It is as depressing as it sounds but there was so much honesty in what he felt,that it got me curious, to look up osamu dazai just to know what kind of experiences must it take to come up with such a kind of literary work.It was then that i could literally draw parallels ,from the book to the true events that took place in his life.An abusive childhood-alcoholism-string of affairs-multiple attempts at committing suicide-not even alone at that but double ,all of these against the backdrop of the world war.So even if we think that how can a man meagerly be burdened with issues that seem banal to us ,well think about the day and age,the times he was born in.i think this book particularly as mentioned somewhere i read,was written during the last days of his life,so it was a probable result of post traumatic stress disorder.All of his works are truly, projections of his state of mind in those phases but in fragments,i'd say this book could be as close as you can get to understanding osamu dazai as a person,it encompasses the agony of not being acknowledged or as he would put it 'qualified' to be human,in an autobiography of sorts.
5.
Dr. Du Ming
I read this a long time ago.It is a Chinese graphic novel.For a fact i'm drawn to dark things,that appeals to me psychologically .As a result I loved the artwork as well the style of the narrative.The story keeps moving forward and in flashbacks,which maybe difficult to follow in the beginning but then it all makes sense.It starts of with a girl(who is the narrator's object of affection) ending her life.So the narrator tries to piece together what she might have gone through to take such a drastic step.Initially you just get a vivid image of her through the letters she writes to him but later as he reminisces about his encounters with her,there is a sense of clarity. The amazing thing is you never really get to know this woman who is shrouded with mystery,but only through the perceptions of the narrator,who obviously paints a very beautiful picture of her.
4.Elfen lied
So Elfen lied ,like death note is unavoidable,when you are sucked into the realm of psychological thrillers and 'yandere' stuff as some may call it,you are bound to watch elfen lied at some point and like it.It quite reminded me of ghost in the shell trilogy and the entire cyberpunk oriented plots.But this anime is pretty gory,violent,definitely not for the weak hearted.Even though there isnt much to say about the plot as such,there is just a lot of destruction happening everywhere.But there are some animes in which you can just appreciate certain aspects of it,so well in this case i'd say i like the recurrence of the lilium music box theme .It essentially plays a major role so as to remind the main charactar who she really is/or who she once was.So everytime she went 'carrie' on people, terminating anyone(who gets in her way when she is enraged)this musicbox ,a token of the past that kept her cool.
3.Mirai nikki
This manga/anime is the epitome of yandere.Every character in this manga has his/or her own eccentricities.The plot has everything i dig,from the idea of time travel and parallel universes to a simple game of survival of the fittest.It is very crude and 'some'characters more than the others are plain sociopaths.There is absolutely no idea of normalcy in this psychotic plot whatsoever.Each and every character is gray and shrouded with a dark past ,each of them learn to manipulate and exploit the other in order to emerge victorious,losing their supposed innate sense of humanity.
2.So there was this phase when i liked animes/mangas with ninjas and assassins .I pretty much ended up watching every action related anime i could find,and ended up watching quite a few good ones actually-i like each of them for different reasons.One that id particularly mention is darker than black.Not only because i liked the action sequences but also the undefined/unspoken bond between the two main characters hei and yin.In the OVAs there were little instances you feel they were much more than partners that just assassinated people mindlessly but had a human side to them.
1.Death Note
The character development,the background score,the pace of the plot everything was just about perfect.Although i cried and had withdrawal symptoms after the death of one of my favourite characters,after which honestly i thought it was a drag.The anime could've just ended in 17 episodes but i kept watching anyway.There are particularly two things i liked about the plot,one being the twisted but brilliantly laid out mindplay between two people with their own sense of justice,which brings me to the next thing that i really loved,you never end up rooting for either of them until ofcourse one of them doesn't know where to draw the line between doing it for the general good and playing god which leads to a series of bad decision making on his part and by the end of it completely loses himself.So it really makes you think,when you have the power to do anything,what do you do with this insane amount of power,can it change you?a code that you live by and then one day you make principles that would be convenient to you,to justify your actions even when you have lost the basic sense of whats wrong and whats right,would that still make you righteous?
