TheFenceBeetle Blog

- Gateway animes that allow people who don’t know anything about anime to get accustomed to the genre. This is stuff like Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, the cyberpunk movies like Ghost in the Shell and Akira, maybe PsychoPass, and I would even say some Gundam arcs. This is stuff that can and should be recommended for people who have never seen an anime. I think the prevalence of the cyberpunk and futuristic genres is explained by the fact that Western audiences are already somewhat accustomed to them in relations to Japan.

- General audience animes, those that everyone thinks of when saying "anime", but are often too big in scope or too mired in their own rules and style for anyone who isn’t use to it. I would say this encompasses stuff like most shonens Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, but also any Magic Girl and all isekais.

- Meta-commentating animes, which assume that the viewer is well-versed in the anime culture, and therefore are comfortable with bending or breaking the rules. I would put here stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion (which has a massive bait-and-switch around it being in part a slice-of-life), Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (the first part of which ends with the main character dying, which at the time was shocking, and has since basically created its own weird genre standing more or less alone), One Punch Man (although this one is the easiest of meta animes, but it doesn’t make sense without understanding what is being made fun of) and even HxH which is also subverting expectations for a shonen again and again. Oh and I would also put Frieren here because its basically a post-shonen.