me and a friend were talking about what series we would highlight if wed were to start an all manga and anime store. my pick was obvious for me, i am a huge fan of the "BERSERK" series (both the manga and the anime).

ill start with the manga. its meticulusly drawn, and while kentaro muira ( author and artist) starts the series off with stiff figures and a still developing style, he still treats every page like its his last. his work continuely evolves through out the series ( when i was in japan in 2005, 31 had just came out i believe) and seeing how far he has come since since his first manga volume has been a constant inspiration for me. when the story started i thought it was your typical thoughtless fight manga, but once you get into it becomes clear there is just the right amount of depth and thought behind the violence (any story where a flash back goes on for 10 volumes is pretty cool in my book).

anyways, i dont want to make this to long, so i will just say the anime is almost verbatum of the manga series (besides a few of the more graphic scenes) and took place roughly during the manga volumes 4-14. on top of bring this great series to the screen you are treated to a haunting score that complements the more poignant scene.

thats it, there are alot of great series out there, but this one is my favorite.thanks for reading (and hopefully participating!).
evan

Naruto.

i've been brainwashed into the popular stuff....so mostly naruto. because of the character development.every character has a backstory, and all of them are awesome (minus sakura). that's the reason i got into lost, as well, cause everyone
s got one of those dark mysterious revealed pasts....

I love old-school/obscure manga and anime, which I guess is strange for someone my age, but I think they're so much better then the new stuff.

For manga, I guess I choose Maison Ikkoku by Rumiko Takahashi (also the author of InuYasha and Ranma 1/2). I think it's one of her best works; it's a humorous romantic-comedy spanning over 4 years. I have all 15 volumes and it never gets old!

Anime-wise, I choose Lupin III and Galaxy Express 999. Lupin is soooo funny, so I love to watch it, and Galaxy Express has a rare whimsical feel to it and I love the old art styles of both.

Lupin III and Detective Conan (aka Case Closed). I'm just a giant fan of heist/treasure hunts and of murder mysteries. I'm seriously addicted to the latter. I've been reading murder mysteries for as long as I can remember. It took me forever to find a good long-running mystery series. And I like the humor in both -- especially some of the Lupin III dubbing.

(Fighting and magic-related stories of any kind hold no appeal for me. Nor do I like post-apocalyptic, space, futuristic, steam-punk stuff. Or romances, melodramas, thrillers... It's pretty much a no-brainer question for me.)

I'm not deeply into anime or manga, mostly because I can't find any where I live. But I do have an interest in the stuff, and if I could locate some (not a fan for shopping online) I would probably buy more.

As for manga, I really, really got into the Golgo 13 series. I'm a fan of action movies and the like and this had been suggested to me. They're gritty, violent, and yet intelligent stories focused on a hitman for hire codenamed Golgo 13. I've also been reading the Gunsmith Cats.

As for anime, that's a lot trickier since there are even less places to find decent anime than manga where I live. I haven't really watched any series (though I've enjoyed a number of movies) so I can't say with any certainty that I have a favorite anime.

Personally, I'd love to find the Berserk manga. When I heard about this it sounded like the same sort of stuff I'd love. And again, my disappointment grows when I learn they don't sell any Lupin III anime or manga nearby. Dang, both those sound really good to me.

As a manga, Uzumaki by Junji Ito. Although only three volumes long. its probably one of the most explicitly surreal and horrifying works I've seen in my life. Seriously, it's about a town attacked by the abstract of a spiral and it doesn't have a happy ending. I loved it. Don't watch the movie, its just gibberish that came out when the series wasn't done.

For anime, Ergo Proxy. which was released in the States this past year. The series is brooding, dark, and quite intellectual, set in a dystopian 1984 style future. The production values are high on this gem.

I'm also fond of Ninja Scroll, Demon City Shinjuku, and Wicked City (I enjoy more mature themed anime as a whole).

I did a school project (for Motion Pictures class) on Miyazaki once - I think it's safe to say I love the Studio Ghibli movies.

I like Kakurenbo, too. I saw it for the first time at one in the morning, in the middle of a storm, so maybe that's influenced me, but the impression stuck with me.

As for actual anime series.... One Piece. I could ramble on for a couple of hours about why I love One Piece to tiny bits - most of it has to do with the off-the-wall humour, the crazy character designs and the way it mixes serious storylines with mad gags - but that'd be a waste of space. I've got a whole lot of other titles on my list of "favourite anime" (Last Exile, Death Note, Emma, FMA, etc., etc.) but One Piece is the all time favourite.

I've only seen three episodes of Eureka 7, but I've a feeling that's my kind of anime too.

I was into all this stuff before it exploded into what it is today, unfortunately, once it became the popular thing, I really haven't found much that I liked since then. Mainly Cowboy Bebop. I also seem to remember enjoying reading the first Venus Wars limited series of manga. Though I'm not now, nor never was as into manga as I was into anime. I still love the Valkries from Macross/Robotech though. (When I was a kid, Hasbro licensed them as one of the Transformers, which for me was awesome. I wish I still had that, it was great.)

Gantz, for the pretty ladies and the extraneous gore.
and Full-Metal Alchemist never hurt my eyes either.

Beyond the Clouds (The Place Promised in Our Early Days)
It was kinda artsy, I liked it for that.

Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad: It featured several bands I like that are indie labels, thought that was pretty cool considering the fact that most of the anime I watch doesn't have that great of a musical selection.

Samurai Champloo: A lot of the music I had enjoyed from the artists previous to the anime so I enjoyed it a lot.

Ghost in the Shell Series: Major is in it. need I say more? (it had a great story and top animation as well)

I don't watch much anime and have only bought/read 1 manga.

Azumanga Daioh is the only Manga I have bought and that's due to the series being so great. It was just so randomly insane! Osaka is hilarious!

Other favorite animes include
Ranma 1/2 That's the one I collected as a kid. I want all the mangas of it as well but have yet to start collecting =p The fights and the character relations are what got me into this series. Such good story potential!

Guyver, I got into it due to the live action Guyver 2 movie. I loved the fight scene with the two Guyvers =P

My favorite anime however is Street Fighter 2 The Animated Movie. It has the most fluid best animated and choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen!

i think you will find that when we were younger only what (im guessing) was the biggest hit made it to our shores, now we are getting so much you have to really sift through alot of material to find the gems. (and what ever happened to calling it japanamation? i still cringe to the word anime, im not sure why.)

i havent read the mangas, but the venus wars japanimation was great, other honorable mentions. herioc legend of arislan (sadly never finished), the vision of escaflowne, patlabor 1 (oshii at his best), and the ova angle cop. great stuff.

Randal
I was into all this stuff before it exploded into what it is today, unfortunately, once it became the popular thing, I really haven't found much that I liked since then. Mainly Cowboy Bebop. I also seem to remember enjoying reading the first Venus Wars limited series of manga. Though I'm not now, nor never was as into manga as I was into anime. I still love the Valkries from Macross/Robotech though. (When I was a kid, Hasbro licensed them as one of the Transformers, which for me was awesome. I wish I still had that, it was great.)

I'm incredibly picky when it comes to manga and anime because, well, there's so much of it and I feel that it's incredibly generic just like most mainstream superhero comics. I can't stand the romance stuff because it's all BIG SPARKLY EYES LITTLE MOUTH "I WUUUUUV YOU BUT CANT SAY IT TO YOUR FACE!!!" garbage. I can't stand the action stuff because it's about a bunch of guys who stand around, scuffle for a few seconds, then break up the action to comment on it. I can't stand the drama work because, while I don't want to generalize, Japanese writers have this thing where they EXPLAIN everything in great detail which is weird because they pretty much invented the silent panel whereas western comickers have a bad habit of putting text in EVERY page.

That said, I also can't stand the Anime cliches: particularly

-The harem house with one oblivious guy and thirty hot girls
-The deconstruction of a Christian-like religion especially when GOD is the badguy
-Nature is always good and technology is always evil. Always.
-The female lead is either a lovable ditz or a spunky, independent warrior.
-If the main character is a teenager (and most of the time HE IS) then he'll probably be stupidly optimistic

With all my "hatreds" set aside, when a good anime or manga comes out that I actually like it turns out to be really, really/b] good. Here's my definitive (and small) list of anime/manga that I find super, super good.

Anime

Here and There, Now and Then: Detailed and developed characters? Check. Willingness to kill off well developed characters? Check. A hauntingly beautiful atmosphere? Check. Fantastic writing and message? Check. Yeah, this was the anime that rekindled my love in material from the far east.

Kino's Journey: I never heard of the book series but the anime was fantastic. Hauntingly surreal and beautifully animated.

Mushi-Shi: Thanks to mlai for the recommendation, this had Studio Ghibli style written all over it (although it was a SG production, it felt like Miyazaki in spirit). Probably the best art direction I've ever seen in any anime. Period.

A Wind Named Amnesia: Another mlai recommendation. An older movie, but it trumped a lot of the recent stuff I've watched.

Manga

Battle Royale: I loved how this manga set you up with hopelessly optimistic children only to kill them in a beautiful full page splash panel complete with exaggerated violence. One of the more powerful works I've read.

GeGeGe no Kitaro: I love the style, I love anything based on folklore, and it's just an all around good manga.

Anything by Taiyo Matsumoto: I loved Black and White, I saw a fansubbed Ping Pong, and I really wish his other material would be translated but there's little market outside of Japan for seinen manga.

Anything by Osamu Tezuka: I know he's kind of "oldschool" but man, I loved Buddha. It was one of the first mangas I read as it was translated in the days of "20$ manga volumes" before publishers got smart and lowered the price.

angry_black_guy
Manga

Battle Royale: I loved how this manga set you up with hopelessly optimistic children only to kill them in a beautiful full page splash panel complete with exaggerated violence. One of the more powerful works I've read.

GeGeGe no Kitaro: I love the style, I love anything based on folklore, and it's just an all around good manga.

Anything by Taiyo Matsumoto: I loved Black and White, I saw a fansubbed Ping Pong, and I really wish his other material would be translated but there's little market outside of Japan for seinen manga.

Anything by Osamu Tezuka: I know he's kind of "oldschool" but man, I loved Buddha. It was one of the first mangas I read as it was translated in the days of "20$ manga volumes" before publishers got smart and lowered the price.

Seconded. :D

well what I like depends on my mood and what the standards are for a given genre (my standards)

However;

Anime-
Millenium Actress
Kelaido Star
Cutey Honey
Crest/Battle/Banner of the stars
Saiunkoku monogatari
12 kingdoms
Doujin Works
Urusei Yatsura
Dirty Pair (original not the flash)
(and most of what have been mentioned)


Manga-
Shadow Lady
Gals
Azumanga Daihou
Dramacon
COMIC
Mars
Air Gear
Emma
Saiyuki
(quiet a few others. I know more manga then anime though so the list is too long)


What I realy dont like:
Yuu Watase
Clamp
Mayu (or Mayo?) Shinjou
Naruto
Blood Plus
Vampire Knights
Kingdom Hearts (the whole franchise)
Final Fantasy(the whole Franchise)
(this list has more but not so long since it takes a lot to be on my 'block' list)


There has been some series that just flat out didnt impress me like Death Note or Egro Proxy That was supposed to be good... but just didnt catch me...

im not a huge manga/anime fan but from what ive seen, i can say that:

1. i love the manga and anime of Fullmetal Alchemist the story's great, the actions great, and the ending's great.

2. i both like and loathe naruto (its complicated).

3.i love the Basilisk manga(sex and violence ftw!).

4.and i like the manga of Bleach(i can skip through the talking parts in the manga).

also,

cetriya
What I realy dont like:
Yuu Watase
Clamp
Mayu (or Mayo?) Shinjou
Naruto
Blood Plus
Vampire Knights
Kingdom Hearts (the whole franchise)
Final Fantasy(the whole Franchise)
(this list has more but not so long since it takes a lot to be on my 'block' list)


There has been some series that just flat out didnt impress me like Death Note or Egro Proxy That was supposed to be good... but just didnt catch me...

Why the FF and Kingdom Hearts hate?

Of full lenght anime movies, I'd say Spirited Away. I love Ghibli in general, but this one's the most otherworldly and magical, with a bunch of the quirkiest characters.

And Metropolis. The finest eye candy and great music. Plus, I seem to have a soft spot for apocalyptic scenes of destruction..

Of anime series, Cowboy Bebop, hands down. A great mixture of action, great music, humor, melancholy and trippyness. Plus an unforgettable cast of characters (especially Ed and Jet) and antagonists (Tong Pu!)

Oh and Furi Kuri (FLCL). I love the sheer randomness in it, nothing seems too crazy for the writers. Robots growing out of a kid's head. A celphone turning into a robot pet. A gigantic iron whose purpose nobody knows. And more! And last but not least, great soundtrack.

I've only read two manga series and watched a handful of anime shows (at least that I could stand for more than one episode).

Anime:

Ultimate Muscle - It was basically about superhuman pro wrestling. It used to run on Saturday mornings and was ridiculously entertaining. This is really the only anime I've watched with any sort of regularity since Pokemon when I was little.

Manga:

Ultimate Muscle - I've only ever been able to find the first two volumes, but the anime series followed the book pretty closely (well, at least for the parts that covered the first two volumes). I actually liked the manga better, mostly because they kept in all the dirty jokes and violence that couldn't get past the censors on TV.

Gunsmith Cats - I just picked up the first volume of the Dark Horse Revised Edition of this series and I'm enjoying it immensely. I'd heard that it was great for looking at how to draw gunfights and car chases, and it turns out that there's rarely more than two pages where there isn't either a gunfight or a car chase. Or a gunfight during a car chase.

Dr3wdub
Why the FF and Kingdom Hearts hate?

for FF, because I have yet to find a reason to like it but people keep talking about so i feel left out... and thats not a nice feeling to have.

For kingdom hearts, it's just stupid. realy, I dont mean to sound like a noob, but that was a series that tried so much to make a story out of nothing. "Tales of symphonia" and "Radiata stories" deserved more attention then what KH did.

School Rumble for its cuteness.

Death Note for its coolness.

One Piece for its stupid coolness.

Paprika for its brain raping coolness.

All Megaman shows for its UBER coolness.

Digimon becuase it made up most of my childhood.

Metropolis for its sad cuteness. ;_; *Both book and movie.*

Medabots becuase that was just plain cool.

And lastly, all of Miyazaki's works. Becuase that man is an anime pimp.

Someone already mentioned Kino's Journey! I was sure that I was going to be the only one here who had seen it! You have no idea how happy it makes me that I'm not!
I adore Kino's Journey, and it is one of my all time favorites. It's a great watch, especially if you like moralistic tales like I do. I just love the overall message that all of our faults are our source of beauty. 'The world is not beautiful, and that, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty.'

Another one that I've recently gotten in to was Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I somehow stumbled upon it on the internet, and I have to say that it is by far the creepiest anime that I have ever seen. It establishes a type of tension and intrigue that I haven't really seen done effectively before. The false sense of security that you get from the semi-chibi style just increases the creepy factor, in my opinion. Watching this show sort of felt like watching a good suspense thriller. It's rather bloody though, so be warned.
I also enjoy Death Note, Paranoia Agent, Mushi-shi, Haibane Renmei, Tokyo Godfathers, Melenium Actress, Full Moon wo Sagashite (the manga), and Azumanga Daioh.

My favorite anime has to be the whole Dragon ball franchise. I never lost interest in any of its episodes, and it was very original to me. That what got me and kept me drawing.
Runner-ups:
- Mobile Suit Gundam (Forgot which one >.>)
- Samurai Champloo
- Death Note
- Others I probably can't remember.

My favorite manga has to be Naruto. I love the art. I love the character development that is taking place. I love the plot. I love the characters reactions/expressions. This comic (In my opinion) is well written and drawn, and I love to read it.
Runner-Ups:
- One Piece
- Hitman Reborn

For anime

Ghost in the Shell SAC all three series
Gundam 0080
Cowboy Bebop
Neon Genesis
Robotech

as for manga
hmm...haven't found a series that I've really loved
NGE was good
Death Note was fun to read

Number one is a tie for me in Monster and Gantz for manga. I've seen the entirety of both anime and even so when I read Monster I read them over and over and overagain. The storytelling is so captivating it just falls of he page onto my desk and plays itself otu before my eyes. And I love Gantz for it's portrayal of the human race and the fact that almost no one is ever the uber bad ass. I've watched it with people and talked about it and everyone always talks themselves up and says they'd have done this, but when they people are too scared toreact, that's how people'd go and I love Gantz action. Tis sweet.

And people who hate things because they are popular and love because they are obscure less like the source material and more love to whip out their geek cock to show it is in fact bigger thern yours because they know this and you don't. In my experience anyways.

If I had to pick an all-time favorite manga, It'd be King of Bandits Jing. I love the characters and the story, as well as the fact that most, if not all of the characters are named after something to do with Alcohol.

Manga and Anime:

Trigun.
Azumanga Daioh.
Naruto.
Just recently, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann.
And Full Metal Alchemist.

I have no clue why I like them, though.

I just like them.

My two favorite Manga are Bleach and GetBackers. They both are unique in their own way and have great story telling and art. Bleach is waaaaay more popular than GetBackers, but I think if more people picked it up they would be into following the series.

.-CLAYMORE: Just became my most favourite series, its quite mature and dark (not hentai or sex related whats so ever), LOTS of action (no slow or dull moments), interesting story.

.-Full Metal Alchemist: excelent story and animation.

.-Tenchi Muyo: fell in love with the characters in the series, the movies are really good.

.-Blood (movie): its a bit short but really good, the series "blood+" destroyed the character though. (she was agresive, strong, mature and made instant desitions for her actions in the original movie you felt her as a leader, but in the series she was portrayed as a simplistic, slow, weak and lacks in desition and always protected by another guy, so she became from a leader warrior to a stupid teen in distress)

.-Vampire Hunter D 2002: one of my favourite movies, it is dark, odd, and just great.

.-Ghost in the shell: Loved the first movie, hated the scond one (it was 90% still frames with internet dialog O_o' really lame), the series was "ok" but wasted too much time on the guys conferencing trough internet.

.-Macross Pluss: Never liked the series much (hated the 7 series...found stupid that they had to play musical intruments to pilot the robots), neither liked robotek, but loved macross pluss, the story was involving and the animation was excelent.

.-Those who hunt Elves: It was the most hilarious series i have watched and my favourite episode was the rol of paper pupu one ^_^ (dont know the name of the episode since i watched it on tv)

.-Night Stalkers: have the first (or last) two parts though (cant remember which ones i have ^^), the story is a bit slow but the animation is amazingly well done and the art is beautifull (love morrigan)

have others but ill post them later.

@ Angry Black Guy:

Following up on Deepcheese's recommendation, you should seek out Haibane Renmei. It's another 1 of those stories that's probably right up your alley. It's a short series (12 episodes?) with a complete self-contained story.

The literal translation of the title is Ash Feather Federation. It's about a group of young girls living in an orphanage in a very odd town. The show's interplay of dark foreboding and cute/poignant childhood friendships is very subtle and very well done. And the symbolisms. OMG, the symbolisms.