And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for!  Which Anime Series has The OCBENJI Blog (beta) chosen as its #1 Must See Anime Series?  What could possibly knock the classic Dragonall Z off the top spot?  Scroll Down and find out.

 

If you don’t know me very well then you might be surprised to learn that I’m an avid anime buff.  And with anime gaining popularity in the U.S. (with peple who wouldn’t normally watch it) i’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Must-See Anime Series for those of you looking to pop your anime cherry.  Now while there are alot more (and better) ones out there, I decided to stick with the more popular and completed ones that you can actually buy in this country without having to look that hard.

1.  Rurouni Kenshin

What Wikipedia Says:

The story of Rurouni Kenshin takes place during the early Meiji period in Japan. It tells the story of a peaceful wanderer named Himura Kenshin, formerly known as the assassin “Hitokiri Battosai“. After participating during the Bakumatsu war, Kenshin wanders the countryside of Japan offering protection and aid to those in need as atonement for the murders he once committed as an assassin. When arriving in Tokyo, he meets a young woman named Kamiya Kaoru, who was in the middle of a fight with a murderer who claims to be the Hitokiri Battosai from her swordmanship school. Kenshin decides to help her and defeats the fake Battosai. After discovering that Kenshin is the real Battosai, she offers him a place stay at her dojo as she notes Kenshin is a gentle person instead. Kenshin accepts and begins to establish lifelong relationships with many people such as Sagara Sanosuke, a former Sekihotai, Myojin Yahiko, an orphan from a samurai family, and a doctor named Takani Megumi. However, he also deals with his fair share of enemies, new and old, including his rival from the Bakumatsu Saito Hajime and the former leader from the Oniwabansho, Shinomori Aoshi.

Why it made the list:

The great Rurouni Kenshin, where do I begin?  Lets start with the cast.  You have the usual suspects here:  the big strong guy who was an enemy then becomes a friend, the girl, the younger boy, the hero, and everybody else.  Next is the setting:  beautiful post revolution Japan.  This series isn’t just a jack of trades genre-wise, its a master of all.  It can play on your heart strings like an angel on a  harp.  It can make you laugh hard enough to make it hurt.  At times it will make you put on your thinking hat just to figure out what just happened.  Overall you will feel a sense of quality.  But its more than the deep characters, each with their own reasons for doing what they do, more than the beautifully told story of redemption and atonement.  There are so many words I could use to describe this series and they would all be good but only two words would do it justice, Tsuiokuhen and Seisouhen.  Those are the names of the OVA’s that you must watch to finish this masterpiece of anime perfection.

OCBENJI One Line Review:

“If you don’t have tears running down your face or are at least tearing up by the end of the OVA’s, your just not human.”