Having Your Hands Full {The Parent's Edition} Part 2
Yu Yu Hakusho-
This isn’t even a joke, no matter which show I used to introduce someone to
anime, Yu Yu Hakusho has always played a pivotal part in their conversion. My favorite series of all time, Yu Yu Haksuho
manages to transcend the usual shonen fair to bring something really potent,
poetic, hilarious and edge of your seat, it does this while still finding a way
to be wholly relatable and carrying a big heart on it’s sleeves.
Yu Yu Hakusho
focuses on young outsider Yusuke Urameshi, who can’t seem to go anywhere without
people pointing fingers at him, fighting him, so much so he doesn’t see the
people that really love him and are trying to understand him. When Yusuke does
what seems like the unthinkable to some, rescuing a boy from a speeding car, he
dies (first episode everybody), it’s then that he sees all the people who care
about him. Not knowing it this would be the first time his moral perception
would be opened and altered leaving it open for everything that would come
afterwards.
Yusuke goes
through an ordeal to get his life back, as he does it he gets an insight into
the lives of those who love him, his rival Kuwabara who is more than a thug but
an honorable young man with a code, as well as his true love Keiko. someone who can open her heart to the world around her and see the special things in those that most would ignore. Someone who
would help bring him from the brink of death.
Once he returns the powers of
Spirit World ask him to be Earth’s new Spirit Detective, someone who
investigates demons and rogue humans that may be endangering all three worlds.
So this is where Yusuke’s life would undergo constant transformation, as he
connects with his true self and his feelings and how it would affect the
countless lives in the world and those closest to him. Defying expectations as he does, always thrown into situations he shouldn't be prepared for and seem destined to rip him apart.
It’s a hell of
a ride, Yusuke being the take no crap sort of person he is, Kuwabara as
mentioned the determined honorable human that will make you laugh, Kurama the well-mannered
intellectual demon who used to be the legendary bandit of demon world and Hiei
the cut throat, fiery tempered demon. Along with the rest of the cast that
includes a talking baby who is actually the prince of spirit world, you realize that nothing is truly strange but it
is moving and beautiful, Yu Yu Hakusho does that to you and will to anyone you
show it to.
Hellsing/Hellsing
Ultimate- People always complain that the vampire concept is dead to a mainstream
audience, no one has told Anime this or Comics or TV shows with vampires in it
like The Strain and even Penny Dreadful. Hellsing is a momentous achievement, one
that if you have a parent that is into horror can see how anime knows how to
push those boundaries in many ways, sometimes they push in a way that becomes
quite iconic. While maintaining enough vampire lore to make fans of Stroker and
of countless other stories cheer in glee. Hellsing is a masterpiece painted in blood.
Hellsing shows
an organization with the same name that hunts in the shadows in the name of her
majesty the queen and all those that live in England. They hunt vampires, the
ghouls they control and organizations who wish for complete anarchy and chaos.
Among their trained killers they have a secret weapon, a very old and powerful,
seemingly indestructible vampire by the name of Alcuard. Something one cop Seras Victoria learns first
hand, after being attacked by a vampire and bitten by Alcuard in order to save
her life.
Once he has, Seras
has become apprentice to one of the greatest vampires in history and a part of
an organization that hunts and kills her kind and the strange abominations that
have been artificially created to seem like vampires. Alcuard has an
interesting relationship with the leader of the Hellsing organization, Integra
Wingate Hellsing. One of master and
servant and yet him being chaos against the forces of chaos may lead to some
devastating results. The first series was moody and atmospheric and though it
doesn’t followed the manga the entire way through it quickly established
Hellsing as a favorite among anime titles. The other Hellsing Ultimate is a
tribute to the manga, adapting the style and story more closely that will leave
you in awe as well as your parent. An Amazon review I once saw called it distasteful in some of the things it said, they believed it was for shock value but they forget these are monsters and you're in their world now. Just warn them to put on their big pants
because like many titles on this list the show is very mature.
Case Closed/ Detective Conan- If there is one thing anime
does well, it’s show love for the genres that we appericate here in the West.
It takes you down some fun routes and some surprising places. Detective Conan
is a great example, the most successful mystery anime series of all time as
well as being one of the longest running series (I believe 8th), it manages to incorporate all the
necessary things to turn anyone, including a parent into an Otaku.
Easy
accessibility, I say this in how there are many episodes that can be watched
without feeling that your missing
something. Yet once you find you really enjoy the series, there is an
underlining story filled with twists that reach explosive points you aren't going to expect. It’s not easy
to run almost 800 episodes and keep the underlining story interesting but they
do so. Of course the mystery aspect is
always captivating, complex and unique, it takes someone as gifted as Conan Edogawa
to figure out who did it.
The characters are built on throughout the
series and there is a surprising amount of focus placed on love, which shows
that underneath Detective Conan there is a big heart there. Parents may get the
references to the large array of detective novels and TV shows that character’s
names are rooted from or certain cases as well as locations, which means they
get to tell you something that maybe you didn’t know. As I’ve said there’s
plenty to sink your teeth in and there does seem to be a slow movement of getting
more Conan back here in the US. You have to hold out hope, in the meantime
there’s movies and specials, several parts to cases, that will keep you
occupied for a long time.
The series
focuses on Shinichi Kudo/ Jimmy Kudo who is considered the modern day Sherlock
Holmes, this teenager helps the police with what seem like impossible
mysteries, his keen observations skills and intellect are unsurprising when
realizing he’s the child of a world famous novelist and a retired actress. He
takes his friend and love interest, Ran Mori/ Rachel Moore to a theme park when
he witnesses a shady deal taking place. Unfortunately during the deal of a man
and two mysterious men in black, he’s caught seeing too much, attacked and
given an experimental poison that’s meant to kill him, instead it turns him
into a child.
Now a child he
seeks the help of his neighbor Professor Agasa, together they make a new
identity for him, Conan Edogawa, it allows him to move in with Rachel and her
bumbling private detective father Koguro Mori/ Richard Moore. Now as a kid he
uses tools to solve crimes and lifting her father’s reputation, knowing that no
one will listen to a kid, in the hopes that the cases will be able to present
these two men, the organization they are a part of and a way to return his body
to normal.
Master Keaton- I can’t help it I’m a sucker for both Master
Keaton and Monster, so any chance to pitch them to the doubtful or a way to
get someone into anime I do so. Master
Keaton is a wonderful series that focuses on Taichi Higura Keaton, a former SAS member
who teaches part time and also is an insurance investigator for Lloyd’s of
London. These cases lead him around the world, meeting all sorts of people with
hopes and dreams, like his and others that run parallel, sometimes (more often
than not) these investigations lead him into dangerous situations that along
with his training, his knowledge of archeology often helps to save him.
What are
Keaton’s dreams you ask. The truth is that Keaton as an archeologist as well,
hopes to focus on that full time and get the chance to do an excavation near
the Danube River to prove a theory that the area may have been the truth
origins of European Civilization. Quite the mouthful, it’s a detailed show that
leaves you open to the world around you, it’s astounding on how you can
appreciate all things big and small, if there is a series that your parents may
beg you to watch the next episode of, Master Keaton just might be it.
Monster- Brilliant
Neurosurgeon Dr. Kenzo Tenma is a Japanese man in Germany before the fall of
the Berlin Wall, he’s on his way to reaching the very top of the ladder,
engaged to the hospital director's daughter. Something changes though when a Turkish woman
blames him for not operating on her husband, when he could have saved his life.
Haunted by this he realizes the world around him is ruled by politics and to
them life is not equaled.
When Dr.
Tenma is called into an emergency he finds two twins, a boy shot in the head and
his sister in catatonic shock. The complex surgery is something he believes only he
can do to save the boy’s life before he’s asked to operate on the Mayor
instead. Making the decision to operate on the boy crumbles everything
he ever worked for. Cast out and
engagement broken, Dr. Tenma holds on to the truth that all life is equal and
what it truly means to be a doctor. That’s when an incident occurs finding two
doctors and the director of the hospital murdered by poison candy. Tenma gets
his a second chance though he already understand what he really wants in life.
Ten years later
while seeing over a lock picker, he finds the man missing from his hospital bed
and chases him to a building, starting to realize the man is running from
something. What he finds is what his patient had been warning him about, a monster. A beautiful
young man who executes his patient and turns out to be the boy he saved all
those years ago. Soon Tenma finds out that this boy has been systematically
killing middle age couples across Germany. Feeling he’s responsible he goes
after the boy by first going after his strange past that leads to dark corners
of where the true monster of humanity resides.
A meditation on the human soul, it’s capacity for good and
evil, Monster is a high achievement in more than being a psychological drama,
it’s a poetic expression of life and what it can make of us. It's abilities to transform you and how you may transform the world around you, the existence of a choice and how people see that existence quite differently. If you have a few shows you know you’d want
to sell your parent on, make sure that Monster is one of them. If you’ve never seen it then the both of you
are in for a treat.
Full Metal Alchemist/ Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood - It's hard to achieve such great things for one series but going back and achieving it again is another thing entirely. We've seen movies that brought great shows, defying the odds, well here's a show that brought another great show. It is something very human, very personal and very possible in being the choice to sit down a parent for. After all Full Metal Alchemist is iconic, the way shows like so many other anime your shaking your fist at the screen for not being on the list. (Don't worry we're getting there, quite a bit you know and even more we'll have to explore and talk about in other ways.)
A story of redemption and brotherhood, Full Metal Alchemist shows two young boys raised by their mother diving into Alchemy, the study of transmuting one thing into another. Naturals in the art they quickly feed their appetite to learn more until their mother passes away and there's no way to cope with it, with being alone and what they loved is their only hope in bringing back who they love. However they do what is forbidden, human transmutation and pay the ultimate price. Edward loses his arm and his leg and his brother Al loses his entire body, only surviving because his brother managed to connect his soul to a suit of armor.
Surviving they go to search for the philosopher stone in the hopes of returning their body, even if it means one might have to become a state alchemist, to some that means a soldier, a dog of the state, to do it. Their life was changed by consequences and now they'll see a world of consequences and how they may play a pivotal part in more then just their sole journey of redemption.
Not a bad start for shows to give to your parents to watch.
Some of you might ask well what about Attack On Titan and all the other no
brainers, well of course show these to them, the truth is you never know what
show might make someone a diehard anime fan. Perhaps a Gundam series is what
would get your parents to understand anime. Trigun has Western sensibilities, Wolf’s Rain
is poignant. Perhaps a movie, like Akira or Grave of The Fireflies or Perfect
Blue or even Places Promise In Our Early Days. All find choices and will be on
the next list but these are some of many starting points to work with.
A movie list is
also definitely in order (Vampire Hunter D) but there are enough anime to write
all day about what you can show a parent. So I suppose more lists are in
order maybe even to show over the holidays, flashback of previous lists. In the
meantime pop in that Lupin The Third, that Patlabor, that Psycho-Pass, and give
them series that they won’t be able to forget.
A Podcast Companion
*Need more otaku time, well for more
ideas why not hop on to the newly minted podcast Rats On A Plague Ship. A
podcast that speaks on all matters of geekdom with yours truly and my fellow
co-host Sal Almaraz. The true cure to when the hours feel like they drag!
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