So, what do I like?

It's complicated to look at what types of things I like, sometimes I'll like a show for being realistic, and then pass on another one because it's too realistic. In short, I'll include some top five lists.

Top Five:

American TV shows (live action)
1) Babylon 5 - The granddaddy. Just wish they had passed on season 5.
2) Smallville - Each season has had something good to take away from it. I wish they would incorporate a little more Superman mythos. And I wish that they had cut the Lana character and renamed the Chloe character Lana, but other than that, I'm good.
3) Battlestar Galactica (the new one) - A lot of promise in Season 1, Season 2 was a bit of a letdown. I'm not very fond of shows that hit the reset switch.
4) M*A*S*H - Weird. I know. By this point a lot of you are thinking that I don't like old TV. That's mostly true, but I've always enjoyed M*A*S*H. It's the first show where I felt like things were happening to the characters, people went home, people died, relationships changed. It just felt more real. The only other sitcom that cracks the top 20 would be Friends, for a lot of the same reasons.
5) Firefly - If it hadn't been aborted just as it was getting started, this might have been #1.

American TV Shows (animated)
1) Batman: The Animated Series - Loved it, the actors were great, the scripts were occasionally amusing, often touching, and they managed to play in a pretty big gamut of the Bat-verse without tripping up. This is pretty difficult, as Batman's villains run the gamut of sympathetic to despicable. It even manages to keep it's little sequential bits going, Harvey Dent changes into Two Face, Robin grows up and leaves.
2) Gargoyles - I know. It's Toon Disney fodder, but the story for those first two seasons was incredible. Gargoyles was actually my introduction to the "Previously, on ..." line. I'd never really noticed it before, but it was a must for watching the show. Too bad they went for the Goliath Chronicles episodes.
3) Justice League/Justice League Unlimited - This series is actually more of a successor to the Superman series than the Batman series, but I still love it. I didn't have anything against the Superman series, in fact, I enjoyed the way they set up the Darkseid plot for three years before really bringing it out for the series finale, but there were two few episodes dealing with that, and too many dealing with random Lois getting into trouble. Justice League follows a lot of those plot points that were left dangling, with almost no damsel in distress.
4) The Simpsons - Hard not to love the Simpsons, who manage to come up with funny, culturally relevant gags after so many years.
5) Teen Titans - Seasons 1, 2, and 4 were outstanding. 3 put me a bit into snooze mode, and 5 has yet to show me why I should be caring that it's getting cancelled. But the best moments of 1, 2 and 4, I would stack up against any other series I've seen. Terra turning traitor, Robin joining Slade to save Raven, great stuff.

Top Five Anime series
1) R.O.D. the TV - Helps that it features bibliophiles so prominently, love the characters and the animation. I especially love the attention to detail (people change clothes, but items in locations are always in the same spots). Even the dub isn't so bad.
2) Noir - I freely admit I'm an idiot. I missed the whole yuri thing until it was explicitly pointed out in the letter. Didn't detract from what I feel is a darn fine show about discovering who you really are. Kind of like the Bourne Identity (the real written one, not the one they put on film) in a way.
3) Full Metal Panic (including Fumoffu) - Funny, touching, absurd all at the same time. I like my shows to run the gamut on emotions and to really dig into what makes characters work. Full Metal Panic manages to do all of that while including giant robots (something I normally can't stand).
4) Fullmetal Alchemist - 51 episodes. No filler. Caused me to cry in at least four different spots that I can think of, off the top of my head. Though nothing surpasses the death of Maes.
5) Shuffle! - Interestingly, there was a time when I would have said that there was no harem anime that was worth the time of day (I don't think I'd seen one at the time). Then I read Love Hina and saw the anime. I justified it to myself by saying, "It's not a harem anime, he's only ever interested in the one girl." Then I saw Ai Yori Aoshi and someone pointed me to Da Capo, both shows I enjoyed immensely. I have now realized I'm a fan of this entire genre. Shuffle! manages to transend a genre that I like by breaking some of the conventions that irritate me the most (there are other ones that I can live with). And, finally, someone besides the childhood friend gets the boy. Drama, romance, and comedy, all wrapped up with a pretty character-centric bow. Though it has emotionally scarred me from ever entering the Animesuki forum on it ever again.

Top Five Movies
1) John Carpenter's The Thing - Bizarre out of left field movie, but there's something about it that truly tries to evoke H.P. Lovecraft (one of my favorite authors of all time).
2) Aliens - Amazing how what was a very simple scary movie (very good also, but I didn't want to put both in the top five) can have it's concept tweaked only slightly to produce a great, suspenseful action movie instead. "Game over, man!"
3) The Fellowship of the Ring - I know Return is most people's favorite, but all of the truly great moments, for me, happen in the first one. Gandalf's sacrifice at the bridge, Boromir's defense of Merry and Pippin at the ford, even the Nine are best in the first movie.
4) 2001 - Blade Runner could get this spot, Conan (the Barbarian of course, there was NO other Conan movie) could also, but 2001 is, for me, quite simply one of the best science fiction movies of all time.
5) The Princess Bride - True Love, miracle workers and mostly dead. The first "fantasy" movie that I really got into, though later I would go back and watch some earlier ones that I also greatly enjoyed. Plus the fencing was very nicely handled.


Next time we'll take a look at the written stuff.