I wasn’t a huge fan of the story, but Garden of Words is worth watching just for the scenery art.

School Days😬🤮

It’s rare that a show makes me that mad, and the ending is unforgettable, but I’m pretty sure it’s not quite the same kind of emotional payoff that OP’s looking for… so, “Troll Answer”. ;-)

Most of the stuff that comes to mind is already on your list.

Maybe you’d like the movie, Colorful, or the series Your Lie in April?

This is a stretch, but maybe also consider Shin Sekai Yori? The particular things that’ll hit you there are, uh, a bit different though, if it works on you.

Troll Answer: School Days. 👹️

Not on my copy – I double checked before posting.

Could be there’s a different version of the DVDs with it though. 🤔️

Yeah. I expect it was probably some licensing bullshit like either they couldn’t get the rights again for the re-release or it cost to much to get them, but I don’t know why they did it specifically. It irked me when I realized they’d changed it though.

They changed the intro song when it was released on DVD. When the show was originally airing, the intro was “Girls on Film”　(グラビアの美少女) by Duran Duran; the version on my official (Funimation) DVD copy has “Shutter Speed” instead though which is much less memorable.

So… is this a metaphorical kind of eating, or are we getting a vore anime?

Did you watch all of Endless 8? (Kyon-kun denwa!)

I can’t think of any other shows that deal with time travel off the top of my head, but if you want some more serious sci-fi flavored shows, maybe try Ghost in the Shell?

Steins;Gate has a particular kind of humor. My gut feeling is that if you’re bothered by anime humor in general in other shows you probably won’t like it, but I don’t know your specific tastes.

I’m not sure if it ever made it to DVD.

It did. I have a DVD copy in a box somewhere.

I also recommend From The New World (Shin Sekai Yori).

Takopi’s Original Sin - I should warn you this one is kind of hard to watch

I’ve seen the first couple episodes and while I’ll definitely be finishing it, yeah… it’s right up there with Grave of the Fireflies.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I’ve heard of a few of those, but most are new to me. I’ll look into them – thanks for the suggestions!

Catching up on AOT is definitely on my PTW. Makeine is already on there as well. I’ve seen Monogatari up through Nisemonogatari; will probably get back to it eventually. Not familiar with SHOSHIMIN – will look into it, thanks!

Is the NieR Automata adaptation still worth watching if I’m already very familiar with the game (e.g. I got all 27 endings)? I’ve watched the first episode of it, and while it looked like a solid adaptation I wasn’t sure if I’d get anything new out of it.

Not really on genre – I’ll watch a bit of everything.

I tend to prefer shows that have a strong continuity between episodes, and that’ll grab you and make you binge the rest of the show (or at least the arc) in one go though. The 2nd half of Steins;Gate, Erased, Shin Sekai Yori, A Place Further Than The Universe, Mai-HiME, FMA, Madoka Magica, ATLA, etc. worked for me.

Preference also towards shows where the characters are not in high school (although that’s not a deal breaker). e.g. more Shirobako, Planetes, Samurai Champloo, please!

So… my situation has changed a bit recently, and, for better or worse, I’ve got (convenient) access to Crunchyroll through at least the end of the year. I’ve barely seen anything new since 2020. I’m going through some of the obviously popular stuff from the last few years like Bocchi, Frieren, Nagatoro, Spy x Family, etc. that’s entered my awareness mostly through memes. Just finished Mushoku Tensei and currently watching Apothecary Diaries. Open to suggestions.

“The easiest way to stop piracy… is to give those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” -Gabe Newell

Yep – although even there, I have 5x as many games on GOG as Steam because they’re mine and I don’t have to worry about dealing with forced updates ever. That was a BIG deal for me when I had crappy internet access – a single game’s forced update could tank my entire month’s quota… I still get nervous putting Steam in online mode to this day even though I don’t have to deal with that shit any more.

Disagree with you on the BD issue, though. Much more capacity, higher quality video and audio, and drives are dirt cheap. I have a BDROM in an external enclosure, and it handles DVD and BD perfectly.

My complaint there’s about Blu-Ray’s DRM. Better quality video means nothing to me if I can’t actually get the damned thing to even play.

Whilst I agree, there’s (currently) nothing stopping you from buying the DVDs?

I have a ridiculous number of DVDs. (Blu-Ray on the other hand can fuck off and die.) A ton of content is just not practically available as DVDs.

Checking Amazon just now for some stuff that was absolutely impossible to find at all a few years ago when I was looking for it, there seem to be non-US releases now (e.g. region 2, region 4…) for some of them at not insane prices. Others want $300 for “only 1 in stock” from a nonsense bot account with a last purchase comment from ~2015… i.e. they probably aren’t real listings even if I was willing to pay that insane amount. A few others look like they might be commercial pirate offerings with only subsets of episodes and strange packaging. (I might just be OOTL on some marketing gimmick with those though.)

Honestly, I’ve largely given up on anime since COVID hit. I still like the art, but I don’t really watch new shows any more. The inability to get legit copies in a timely fashion is the main reason why. The shift to Blu-Ray really alienated me. Yes, I can work around its bullshit up a point. No, I am not going to pay ~$60 for half a show from years ago and then have to do quasi-illegal shit just to get it to maybe play on my computer – without menus. Fuck that.