How To Recommend Anime To Your Friends

So, you like to watch anime. No, you don’t just like anime – it’s a passion. You aren’t quite at the weebification stage where every inch of your walls is coated with anime posters and the few spaces on your bookcases that don’t hold manga are holding figurines. But you love it. You love it so much that you want to spread the joy and get your friends and family into anime.

Here’s where the trouble starts. I’ve seen two broad reasons people won’t watch anime. “Cartoons are for kids,” and “Isn’t anime where all the girls have giant boobs?” Now, some people just don’t like anime. That’s fine; stories are subjective. However, discounting the medium for the above reasons is sketchy as neither statement is true. There is anime aimed at children, and there is anime whose main selling point involves the proportions of the women in the cast. That’s true of live-action shows as well as books, and movies, and it’s just not a real reason to avoid trying to watch anime.

But how do you break the ice? By giving them what they want to watch. Sure, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is your favorite anime but for some people, it might be a bit too out there to latch on to. I’m not saying you should hide your favorite anime from the world, but the best strategy would be to ease them in based on their tastes. So I’ve compiled a list of anime you can recommend to your friends, family, dog, and anybody else you want to join you as you watch anime, based on genre.

Family Films

Recommendations: Studio Ghibli, Lu Over The Wall

Okay, so we’re starting with movies aimed at children because sometimes your baby brother is in the other room and you don’t want to expose him to certain shows. These are great films that the entire family can enjoy, and I love them all.

To start with, Studio Ghibli. This is one of the times your friends might know the name. Studio Ghibli’s magnificent line includes movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, movies that are about as mainstream as anime gets. I suggest the two movies above particularly.

Spirited Away is about a young girl named Chihiro who stumbles into a magical world of spirits. After her parents are cursed and become pigs, Chihiro works at the spiritual bathhouse run by the sorceress Yubaba as she tries to save her parents. Notably, Spirited Away is the only anime film to receive an Oscar. It is also one of the most thematically rich movies I have ever seen. Brilliant animation and a compelling protagonist round out this stunning story.

Princess Mononoke is something you might want to put on for older viewers. It’s much more of an action-adventure as a young man, Ashitaka, is cursed by a demon and travels to a distant land to find a cure. There he encounters a town that seeks to dominate nature and Princess Mononoke, a young woman raised by wolves. This tale is exciting, beautiful, and a fantasy-oriented look at what happens as humanity begins an industrial age and nature rebels.

Then we get to Lu Over the Wall. This is about a high school student, Kai, who lives in a coastal town filled with myths of mermaids attracted to music. After getting drafted into a band formed by his classmates, Kai befriends the mermaid Lu. This film…this film. The writer/director is Masaaki Yuasa, who is one of my favorite filmmakers. I cannot recommend this movie enough. It’s bright and friendly and has glorious animation with Yuasa’s unique visual flair unrelenting passion. I could write this entire article about his works, but we need to move on.

Science-Fiction

Recommendations: Cowboy Bebop and Gurren Lagann

With such a wide scope, science-fiction is hard to pin down. Thus, I’m going to stick with a couple of classics.

Cowboy Bebop is generally considered one of the best anime ever produced. It also doubles as a recommendation for people who enjoy Westerns. The show follows a trio of bounty hunters in the far future, chasing down criminals in a mostly colonized solar system to scrape out a meager living. One of my favorite anime, I revisit it often. It’s a deeply philosophical show. I wholeheartedly recommend watching it once and then a year later once more to see how you relate to the struggles of Bebop’s crew of misfits. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the killer jazz soundtrack that accompanies the philosophy. I’m listening to that as I write this article.

Gurren Lagann is another fantastic show. This one follows Simon, a young boy raised in a massive underground city. At the urges of his big bro Kamina and the aid of a young woman named Yoko, Simon makes his way to a surface filled with beast people and mechs. You can argue that Gurren Lagann flirts heavily with fantasy, especially as you get deeper into the show. But it’s still a fantastic story of adventure, action, tragedy, and what it means to grow up and become a man. It also invented playing the theme song during the final battle – or at least perfected it.

Fantasy

Recommendations: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Noragami

The classics keep rolling in with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The story follows brothers Edward and Alphonse Eric, both of whom are highly skilled at the craft of alchemy, a magic system with strict rules - which the brothers break when they try to resurrect their deceased mother. This costs Edward an arm and a leg, and Alphonse his entire body. This show is one of the most exciting fantasy narratives I’ve seen. It works with a lot of thematic material, and the scope of the show extends well past the brothers as it examines the consequences of greed and war. I’m hard-pressed to think of another show with so many complex, well-rounded characters.

Noragami is lesser known than Brotherhood and a pure delight. It’s about a young woman named Hiyori who saves the life of the god Yato and ends up as a half-dead girl who can see spirits. My favorite part of this show is how it strikes a balance in tone. Yato is a poor god in both skill and wallet. He’s a bit of a bum, too. This leads to the show having a very comedic tone – but there’s also deep tragedy hidden in Yato’s past and his messy relationships with other gods. This darkness is balanced masterfully with the show’s humor, and this anime’s greatest flaw is its incomplete story.

Superhero Anime

Recommendations: My Hero Academia and One Punch Man

My Hero Academia is one of the hottest anime around, and potentially already on the radar of superhero fans. It follows Midoriya Izuku, a young man born without a superpower, or Quirk, in a world where 80% of the population has one. His idol and the world’s Symbol of Peace, All Might, passes his Quirk to Midoriya, and he begins pursuing his dream under All Might’s tutelage. A little bit Marvel and a little bit Harry Potter, this is an easily accessible show bound to pull people in. It’s heartfelt and pits a large, developed cast of students against terrifying villains who are hellbent on tearing down the superheroic society.

One Punch Man is on the opposite side of the spectrum. While My Hero Academia is all about the joys and trials of becoming a superhero, One Punch Man is a satire. It follows Saitama, the most powerful man in the world. So powerful that he can blow away enemies in a single punch – no matter how strong. This amazing skill makes Saitama’s life a living hell because nothing challenges him. Couple that with a society that mocks Saitama’s prowess because they think it’s a scam, and you have a fascinating foundation for a story. This is best viewed with My Hero Academia for a well-rounded experience.

Romance Anime

Recommendations: Plastic Memories and Wotaki: Love is Hard For Otaku

If you’re looking for a romantic comedy, then Wotaki is right up your alley. It’s about two office workers who were childhood friends and rekindle their friendship over a mutual love of all things nerdy. This friendship deepens into romance very quickly. This show sticks out because it’s very heartfelt and adult, and it’s also a bit different than other romance anime. Many anime romances, especially romantic comedies, focus on the “will they, won’t they” aspect of the narrative. It’s not uncommon for seasons to stretch by before one part of the pair confesses to the other. Wotaki takes the opposite approach, getting the romance started fast and mining that for its comedy.

But maybe you don’t want to laugh. Maybe you want to cry. Plastic Memories is a far more dramatic show. It’s a near-future sci-fi where humankind has created androids with complete personalities to aid them in everyday life. These androids have a limited lifespan, and the show focuses on a crew of workers who find androids who malfunction or are close to the end date and retiring them. These workers are in pairs of humans and androids, so I’m sure you can guess where this story ends, but it is a delightful little tragedy.

Drama Anime

Recommendations: The Great Passage and Keep Your Hands off Eizouken!

The Great Passage is adapted from a novel of the same name written by Shion Miura. It’s about a dictionary maker. That’s right, you get an exciting peek into the high-stakes world of dictionary making. I’m serious. This is an insightful anime that looks at the process of crafting a dictionary, down to the tiniest details like how sticky the paper the book is printed on is. This show’s real selling point, however, is the characters. Each and every one of them love words and making dictionaries, and one way to create a great drama is to focus on a group of passionate people do what they are passionate about.

Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! responds very well to this philosophy but follows a group of teenage girls who create an anime production company as an afterschool club. Eizouken! was my favorite anime from 2020, and it has that same deep-seated passion. It’s also incredibly innovative; once again, Yuasa helms this work and his passion for anime bleeds into the show’s fabric. I really can’t recommend this one enough. It’s a fabulous show with a fabulous director and a skilled story adapted from Sumito Oowara’s manga series of the same name. Just watch it, please.

That’s the list. A bundle of anime that suits a bunch of common genres. You might look at this list and think I reached for low-hanging fruit, avoiding anything too obscure or bizarre. You aren’t wrong. But this isn’t a list of recommendations for the hard-core otaku; this is for the people who want to attract their friends into a shared passion. Who wants to share the stories they love with those they love. With this in mind, I wish you the best of luck in finding a show that you and your friends will bond over.