Top ten anime series I bought but haven't watched.

I've seen at least the first episode of all these shows, and thought they had enough promise to buy, but somehow I just haven't worked up the gumption to sit down and finish. Maybe this public shaming will be the boot in the ass I clearly need to actually do so.

Let's have a look at the shelf, shall we? I can't really rank 'em by quality, so I'll start with the oldest on the shelf and work down to the newest. The first one has been gathering dust for over three years...

1. Super Gals

I'm a big fan of Daichi Akitaro's Child's Toy, and this show was pitched to me as what happens when Sana hits high school (I suppose that'd make Animation Runner Kuromi-chan her post-college years, but I digress). I liked the first three episodes, but just haven't made time to delve any further.

In further proof of my inability to learn from mistakes, I picked up the second season too. I did pass on the manga for now, though.

2. Brigadoon

I've actually gotten about halfway through this strange, sometimes brutally violent magical-mecha kids' show, and while I like it overall, I am a bit unsettled by the wild mood swings... Director Yonetani Yoshitomo can't decide whether he's doing a lighthearted romp or a Now and Then, Here and There-style freakout of despair, and sometimes changes his mind during scenes.

I've also been buying and not watching Yonetani's much less schizophrenic Gaogaigar, but with only two DVDs out in the US I'm not shamefully behind on it.

3. Paranoia Agent

This entry particularly baffles me, since Kon Satoshi has yet to make something that isn't worth seeing. I watched about two-thirds of PA fansubbed at a local anime club, gasping for more, missed the showing of the finale... and then just didn't watch it afterwards, either on these DVDs or Cartoon Network. Maybe I just don't want the Gekiganger in my heart to end.

4. Mobile Police Patlabor

Extremely spotty viewings here, with just the first movie and a handful of OVA and TV episodes under my belt. I do love the series, but there's just so much of it. The second movie actually wound up putting me to sleep the first time I watched it, so I've been putting off rewatching it for the review.

5. Kino no Tabi

I got turned onto this by a certain someone raving about the novels... and now I've actually read the first novel before watching more than the first third of the anime, which I started first. There's really no good reason not to finish this, besides time in the day.

Sato Tatsuo also has his hands in this show... more on him later.

As a side note, this entry stays entirely accurate if you swap out Kino for Boogiepop Phantom.

6. Infinite Ryvius

This one's just a big ol' slab of cheese. I actually don't like watching anime alone... my formative experiences were at my college anime club, so a lot of shows just feel wrong unless there are other people applauding and yelling at the screen. Ryvius seems like a good popcorn show, with plenty of characters doing stupid things under pressure and watching it blow up in their faces (I think the new Battlestar Galactica got its fanbase for much the same reason). It also helps that it mysteriously became dirt cheap over the summer; a lot of this list was born from impulse buys at ridiculously low prices, like the next series.

7. Haibane Renmei

This is probably the oddest one out on this list, since I haven't seen any of it at all. I like aBe's art style, but the anime based on his work are hit-and-miss... I like Serial Experiments Lain a lot, but Niea_7 didn't work for me at all and I despised Texhnolyze's first episode too much to even bother finishing the disc. So why pick this up? Five dollars a disc, is why.

8. Tetsujin 28

Imagawa Yasuhiro's Gigantor remake borrows very heavily from his mighty Giant Robo OVA, which was really the only way to go. The first episode was almost shamefully awesome in the way it married a more modern sensibility to the retro setup without undermining either. This is the show Getter Robo Armageddon wanted to be (a show Imagawa bailed on early), and maybe I'm actually a little afraid the rest won't live up to its promise? Or maybe I just have a criminally low attention span. Yeah, let's go with that last one.

9. Tenchi Muyo

Specifically, the third OVA series. Shut up, I'm old and need my nostalgia fix. I can't objectively judge if this is good or not, but I enjoyed the first disc, but I am a little unsettled that it's been about fifteen years between the first and last episodes of this show...

10. Shingu

Sato Tatsuo is a pretty interesting guy, who first caught my eye with the criminally underrated Martian Successor Nadesico, which manages to work as both an old-fashioned mecha show and a parody/commentary on same. Shingu is smilarly subversive, being pretty much the most laid-back alien invasion show ever. Sato's Stellvia is also on my hit list...