SIM Anime and Gaming Club

5 – Yu Gi Oh

Mix friendship, typical shounen elements and card game and you will get Yu-Gi-Oh, the father of trading card games and their anime. Yu-Gi-Oh has everything required to make a typical shounen title: friendship, honor, loyalty, cheesy lines and exaggerated super powers from the card game. One really can’t say it has one of the best plotlines around, yet said title had kept me entertained when I was still an 11/12-year-old brat. Because of the anime, Yu-Gi-Oh was also the very first manga title I bought the moment I had weekly allowance of more than a few dollars. Until today, it’s still one of the very few titles I will still look back occasionally when I’m feeling sentimental, be it the manga, anime or fanfictions.




4 – Kyou Kara Maou

This is also another sentimental title for me. This was my Gintama before the real one came along. Granted, it isn’t as funny as Gintama, but this title makes me smile whenever I watch it. Though not officially stated, this title is commonly acknowledged to have BL elements. However, this series to me was all about how a guy tries to survive in an alternate world after being comically sent there through a toilet bowl and how friendships and even kinships are formed along the way. Of course, seeing decent guys making a big fool out of themselves is also a big plus. Though I would admit this title did indirectly caused me to walk down the path of BL, having been introduced to drama CDs because of it and later on, BL drama CDs. Being adapted from a light novel series, this title also revealed me to the wonders of the world of light novels.  This title is also responsible for making me the seiyuu fanatic that I’m today because of the class A group of seiyuus of the anime series.



3 – Natsume Yuujinchou

This is one of my personal favorites and probably one of the few odd one outs of my list of favorite anime. The slice of life genre is one that I rarely touch because it’s resembles reality too much, something I avoid when I read or watch anything. I picked up this title without much expectation and only because I like the seiyuus of the 2 main characters. Never did I expect I would fall in love with this series. It has a simple tone, bland and dry even some might say but once you look past it all, you will find that it is very colorful. The characters come together to weave a bittersweet yet somewhat hopeful story which will make you cry, laugh and reflect on life. You will come to love the characters especially the main character, Natsume and his sarcastic but still adorable pet cat, Nyanko-sensei, and appreciate the simplicity of it. Perhaps you can even relate with some of the things that happened in the anime.



2 – Gintama

Ah yes, Gintama. What is there not to like about it? This is one of the titles which you must never judge just by looking at its drawing style. It might not be an award-winning art piece, but it’s definitely a masterpiece in its own right. Altering and twisting history until it’s almost beyond recognition, it wins over the fans with its depiction of the daily lives of the protagonist and his friends, littered with randomness and parodies of classic and popular titles from anime, manga, games and even western titles such as Star Wars. Of course, being a shounen title, it also has its fair shares of serious and action-packed story arcs which are as entertaining their usual random episodes. This series will definitely leave you in tears. And one piece of advice: Don’t watch it when you are eating or drinking. You will definitely choke at some point because of all the laughing.



1 – Code Geass

With the beautiful character and background designs, high quality music, well-thought plotlines and well-developed characters, this is definitely one of the most classic titles of the decade. This anime is not just your regular action-packed mecha fantasy anime. It is also filled with thrilling showdowns of the minds not unlike the likes of Death Note. At the same time, it is also filled with philosophical questions which apply very well to the real life despite being a fictional title. I remember pausing several times to reflect on these questions and this process is definitely one of the pluses of this series for me. Many might find the bittersweet and open ending unsatisfying. Despite being one of them, I feel that the ending is a befitting close to a classic anime.