Third Party Figures

[cmoney]

If you liked The Tragedy of Man, you'd probably like Son of the White Mare.

Yup, I've seen and admired that one too.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Prove it, tough guy.

To start, any/all of Kon's work. He only made 4 movies and I think they're all pretty fantastic. I think they used to be obscure but Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Perfect Blue, and his series Paranoia Agent are all worth checking out. Paprika and Paranoia Agent are trippier and more strange. Perfect Blue is a hard R psychological thriller (NOT a date night film), and Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers are both extremely sweet sentimental films. Get the latest Gkids translation for Tokyo Godfathers though, early translations are not especially kind to a trans character (less kind than the actual Japanese, in fact).

I need to watch more of it, but Mari Okada's stuff is also real good. Anohana: The Flower that We Saw That Day and Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms are both movies that I have recommended to people who haven't had a nice ugly cry in a while and would like to fix that. Anohana in particular is that way, as it's about the ways a group of grade school friends are changed, broken, and ultimately healed by the drowning of one of them. Maquia is a drama about adopted family and beautiful things you love and will outlive, but the backdrop for it is high fantasy stuff that would fit perfectly in a D&D campaign.

Somewhat adjacent to Mari Okada's stuff, Wolf Children has a similar vibe and will also get the tears from you. It's about a young woman who begins a relationship with a werewolf while in college, but after his death must raise their two children alone. Whatever you're picturing from the first sentence of description there this isn't that, and it's actually a really sincere family drama.

Naoki Urasawa's 'Monster' is another great one, though on the longer side. Monster is basically one part Silence of the Lambs, one part Fugitive, and one part cold war thriller. A Japanese doctor who is ethical to a fault saves the life of a mysterious child who is brought into his hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. Due to internal hospital politics this act threatens to cost the doctor his job until everyone who threatens him suddenly turns up dead just as the child, who was in a coma, disappears. Years later the doctor discovers the child is linked to a series of brutal serial killings. The doctor threatens to expose them, leading to the child framing the doctor for the murders that ensured his career. This one is a slow burn but it's got twists and turns galore.

Psycho Pass is one of the more popular ones, and this one is pure dystopian science fiction. It's about a new system of mass surveillance that can judge your psychological profile from CCTV footage. If you are detected to be a latent criminal you will be hunted down and either killed or institutionalized by the police. You will need to give your POV character a chance because she is on an arc and at the start of the show she is infuriatingly naive. That's ok, she gets way WAY better.

I could go on but those are the ones I think most folks stuck in the battle-anime trenches might want to check out. Depends greatly on your taste, but one of the things I look for in anime at this point is stuff about adult characters, which, though it isn't fool proof, tend to mean the writing is better. Anytime I see something where all the protagonists are under 20 I just kinda sigh because those are almost guaranteed to be real tropey. There's good stuff out there, but I think most of that people are aware of. Nobody needs me to recommend Delicious in Dungeon or Frieren.