Kimi ga Nozomu Eien

My collection for romantic-comedy drama animes. This kind of formula is one of the major things in terms of romance. A pinched of humor and romance, but mostly it have the most dramatic element. Some of these animes are truly tearjerking and kinda frustrating to watch XD But these are my recommendations that you might give an interest.

The romance as a genre, in it's typical sense, is a hit or miss for most of us, and this is understandable. Each of us had different outlook on life, our experience has shaped our personalities by particular ways, and the way we comprehend the fragile and gentle feelings of love within ourselves is something very personal.

But then again, some stories, despite not having entirely romantic focus, can portray relationships and can be felt deeply. Shows like these rarely does get the spotlight for this reasons, and are oftenly skipped by people who're usually interested in the romance aspect of things, which is one of the reasons this collection was made.

Some of these works have interesting variety of genres, themes and moods, but in each of them you can find a hint of, if not well explored, romance. As well as that, some romances that are breaking the mold of the usual adaptations are included, since they're rarely well explored within the fandom, and deserve our appreciation.

This is a part of a series of stacks that are about artistic tendencies in anime (and that border the fine line between sophisticated and pretentious).

This stack is a work in progress.

Bibliography:
Elma, Alma. “Anime Cliches 30: Nakige.” Fate. 4 April 2016.
Galbraith, Patrick W. “Bishōjo Games: ‘Techno-Intimacy’ and the Virtually Human in Japan.” [Bishōjo Games + ‘Mechanical Sex’, Unstable Gender.] Game Studies. 11:2 (2012).
Scamp. “Secret Santa review: Kanon (06).” The Cart Driver. 24 December 2013.

Every superhero has an origin story ... and so does every anime otaku. While I got exposed to anime when growing up, my own journey only really took off in the early 2000s as digital fansubs became widely available and I took full advantage of the fast (for the time) internet provided by my university accommodation.

My anime watching activity dropped off a cliff as I got older and life got in the way, but by that point I'd already lived through the first decade of the 2000s and watched quite a lot of what came out during that decade. Enough, at least, to make a decent stab at this.

This first decade of the 2000s was transformational for the anime industry, particularly with respect to accessibility to western English-speaking audiences.

Legend has it that before this period, anime fansubs used to get distributed physically via VHS tapes. It was a pain in the ass for fansubbers, distributors as well as the consumers so only the hardcore got involved. However, around the turn of the millennium, the rise of DVDs (allowing high quality rips) and faster internet (enabling tolerable download times) killed off VHS fansubs and ushered in the digisubs era. And with this dramatic lowering of the accessibility bar, fansubs exploded across the internet, bringing in a legion of new fans. (Fun fact: MAL itself came into existence during this early period of digi-fansubs.)

It's not just the illegal side of anime viewing that took off though. Kids' series like Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon were great international success stories in the late 90s and early 2000s, and people realised there was an appetite for anime in western market. More shows started getting licensed, DVD sales boomed and some non-kids anime like Cowboy Bebop even got exposure on TV.

Anime production in Japan ramped up in the first half of the decade, though I'm not sure how much of this is to do with its growing following in the west given it was still dominated by the domestic market. But in the very least, success in the west was beginning to have a significant effect on anime production. One notable anime, The Big O, was allegedly made with western audiences in mind. While in Japan it flopped so badly that only half of the originally intended 26 episodes got made, its international success eventually led to the production of a second season.

As more and more anime titles became available to western English speaking audiences, the industry grew into a bubble. Companies started licensing anime almost indiscriminately and the Japanese companies demanded sky high licensing fees even for shite scraped off the bottom of the barrel that some dog did a number two in. A lot of stuff didn't sell nearly enough to make up the cost and this was exacerbated by a declining DVD market, widespread piracy and, later on, the Great Financial Crisis. Inevitably, the bubble burst in the second half of the decade: US licensors like Geneon and Central Park Media went bust, retailers like Suncoast went bankrupt, and Cartoon Network's anime-focused block Toonami got cancelled.

It's worth noting that anime wasn't the only industry in trouble: the whole bricks and mortar business was in decline, as was the DVD-driven entertainment business. And just like in other entertainment industries, the business paradigm was shifting. From the ashes of the anime crash grew shoots of new life. As the decade drew to a close, Crunchyroll (you may have heard of them), which started life in 2006 hosting user-uploaded pirated content, moved towards exclusively showing legally secured titles. The age of anime streaming had begun.

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On the anime production side, when the decade started, I distinctly remember 26 episode was considered a standard season for TV anime, with quite a few shows going up to 52. As the decade wore on, 26 episode series became increasingly rare and anime around half that length became the norm as the shorter seasons reduce the financial impact of flops while holding the door open to extensions for successful shows. You can really feel the difference this had on the pacing: early 2000s shows with 26 episodes were generally slower with frequent episodic side stories thrown into the early stretches of the series to pad out the story and/or develop the characters.

Animation wise, digipaint became the norm in the early 2000s, replacing the old analogue method of cell animation. As with all transitions, there were some initial teething problems. For example, early digipaint anime were done in lower resolution as full HD wasn't much of a thing back then. These kinds of issues means that anime made in those early years have aged about as well as milk, and not even remastering can do much to salvage them.

While there'd been plenty of light novel anime adaptations before, the popularity of these adaptations hit new heights during this decade. This probably owes a lot to the ludicrous successes of Bakemonogatari and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Towards the end of the decade, adaptations of light novels with long titles that double as plot summaries also started taking off.

This wasn't just a good decade for light novels adaptations, but also visual novels, including eroge aka hentai games. This can be seen as part of anime's increased focus on catering to the otaku subculture. The shift in focus is also evident in trends like the rise of late night anime and, much to my dismay, the dreaded moe. It's not all bad though. In the case of late night anime, it also gave birth to Fuji TV's noitaminA block, which aimed at an atypical anime demographic and produced a string of critically acclaimed shows (spoiler: some of them are in this stack).

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Anyway, enough rambling on anime history; now onto the stack itself! I came up with a complicated system to determine the potential candidates for this list. Those who aren't crazy enough to be interested just need to note that I consider all the entries to be at least great (9+/10 on MAL or 2.0+ on my personal scale) and that I'm only including one anime from each franchise (usually the earliest one that provides a good jumping in point). Let me also slap on the disclaimer that I haven't seen a lot of these for well over a decade, so I don't know if they all hold up. Feel free to skip the remainder of this section and go straight to the entries.

The main thing that people might find a bit odd about this stack is that it appears to contain entries prior to the 2000s as measured by the more commonly used metric of starting year. This is because I consider an anime to be from the 2000s if it aired DURING this decade. But that's not all! Things get more complicated for franchises. For these, I'm including multiple entries as a single entity if the storyline are closely connected, e.g. in the case of multiple seasons of a show. This results in the inclusion of series that, while did not air in the 2000s, are closely connected to sequels that did (I prefer this over the alternative of putting in some random middle season of a franchise which is not helpful for anyone wanting to start their exploration).

Finally, when judging whether these multi-entry entities are good enough to actually make the cut for the stack, I try to decide based on the merits of the entries that aired during the 2000s as a whole. To illustrate this with a real example, the reason why the Kara no Kyoukai movie series did not make the cut is that while they included a great movie in Paradox Spiral, I don't consider the entries released in 2000s to be great as a whole. Similarly, even though Cowboy Bebop qualified for this list due to the Knocking on Heaven's Door movie airing in 2001, the movie itself fell short of being great so the franchise didn't make the cut (though it would if I were making a 90s stack).

Confused? Good. It wouldn't be my stack if it weren't built on top of a convoluted system! But hopefully things will become clearer as add case-by-case clarification in the controversial entries themselves (disclaimer: it may lead to further confusion).

Anime adaptations of various visual novels. Their total number is clearly more than the allowable limit, so I tried to add mainly adaptations of novels by well-known brands (Key, 5pb, Aquaplus), or those with well-known adaptations. Given the many sequels, spin-offs, and versions (especially in the case of the Fate series), I added only very first anime in the franchise.

These series will make you cry your heart out and you will love it, I swear

Animes that contain scenes in which it is implied that one or more characters are or were involved in sexual activities without showing explicit images of the fact.

Part 1
https://myanimelist.net/stacks/6414

Series that do not stick to the 10-13 or 22-28 or 36-43 or 47-53 chapter rule. Not including longer anime nor OVA/ONAs nor less than 6 episodes.

These are the featured films and series that will make you cry and worst, break your heart. Tearjerking dramas and slice of life that are worth to be watch. Some of it are pure dramas and some of it can be blended in other genres. Still, you need some box of tissues before watching these shows and films.

Some characters here are for sure a tsundere and for others it could be debatable depending on who you ask but i still decided to put them here because why not

Anime based on Visual Novels and Games

This list will always be in alphabetical order.

If the ratings on my profile tell you nothing else it should tell you this; I am very a harsh critic. My average for animé and manga are both in the 5's and, considering how many titles I've completed, will likely always be there. If I rate something a 6 or higher I really do think it's worthwhile. So everything in this stack is something I would recommend at least trying.

This stack is for all of the animé that made me or almost made me cry. Just because a series is listed here does not mean it was depressing. Some of these are mostly happy save for that one story or scene which made me well up. All animé in this stack are animé that I have finished and given a rating of 6 or above. This stack will be updated as I find new titles. Make sure you have lots of tissues.

My manga version of this list; https://myanimelist.net/stacks/24508

Forgotten comfy gems of the early-digital era of animation. Specifically series from the 2000s that might still have been produced in a 4:3 aspect ratio but this is not a requirement. The series I picked for my list are generally more absurd comedies or meta-commentaries with a lot of heart since that's what I gravitate towards, though is not necessariy representative to describe everything here. Not all of these shows were the most successful during airing but severely overlooked. Everything here is worth watching!

Work in progress

NOT an exhaustive list. 50 TV anime adapting visual novels/ eroge with a male protagonist, usually with romance or a harem. Went for a generic sample, excluded series too exceptional/ distinct (Higurashi, Fate/Stay Night, ef: A Tale of Memories., etc.). 5k members minimum.