Your favorite massively EPIC anime?

Have you ever watched an anime and found yourself becoming lost in the outrageous size and scope that it projects? Do you have any favorite anime that manage to build a ridiculously large world and keep things believable and interesting? If so, then you should share it here!

For me, my favorite massive and EPIC anime is The Twelve Kingdoms (Juuni Kokuki). This was actually one of the first anime that I ever watched, and I was really impressed. At the start, I was expecting a typical fantasy setting, with high level overviews of culture and a world that stayed narrowly focused on one specific region.

Instead, The Twelve Kingdoms went wayyyy beyond any of my expectations. It portrayed at least three complex cultures; their societal rules and expectations; prejudices and superstitions; local mythology; and their architecture, languages (implied, not spoken, I think), etc. As a writer that loves "worldbuilding", I found what they did to be both amazing and unexpected. It was a treat to watch the show, and I only regret that it dropped off without finishing the second season (due to budget issues, I think, but the first season and most of the second were finish, and it's very much worth watching).

What about you? Has the world of a particular anime ever blown you away by its size, scope, or some other feature?

Nice that you mention Twelve Kingdoms. That anime was appallingly underrated. When I first saw it, I dismissed it as just another boring fantasy anime set in medieval times, but after I began watching it, phew! What a blast that show was. Such fantastic characters that kept me on edge. It exemplified some of the best character-writing you could find among anime.

As for me, however, my favorite "epic" anime would still have to be Berserk. Berserk just did so many things right. For starters, if you want to talk big, Berserk's prologue can almost be said to be three movies in length. Yes, I'm referring to "The Golden Age" arc, as that felt like one huge introduction to Guts and the other characters that it almost felt like a prelude to the real story that comes after. The titular "berserk" armor doesn't even come till later! In the manga even! (till they finally adapted the rest of the manga into anime recently, of course... albeit poorly adapted, from what I heard)

Then there's Griffith, such a complex villain that I don't know whether to pity or hate. He strives for perfection, but much like the proverbial Lucifer, he falls from grace. Due to this fact, I feel he makes a perfect antagonist to Guts, who externally looks like an a-hole, but is a good person inside as opposed to Griffith's "graceful" appearance.

And Guts, the misery-sponge with the iconic big-ass dragonslayer. There's usually something badass about hard-boiled heroes with a life full of miseries, but god, Guts makes all the others look like the characters of Beverly Cleary! He was raped as a child, forced to witness his love being raped by his best friend, and is then cursed to being pursued by demons for all eternity 24/7. If that's not bad enough, let's take away his arm as well, and give him an armor that makes him much more angrier than he already is from all the suffering he has, making him an insane berserker that would make Wolverine pale in comparison. "Misery-sponge" is right. lol

Berserk also deconstructed A LOT of fantasy tropes till it looked more like a bleak dytopian fiction, especially the badass hero trope. He might be badass, yes, but he's also f-ing miserable as the hero, not exactly the type of shining hero you'd see back in the day when dark fantasy wasn't as common among anime and manga.

Finally, thanks to the anime adaptations, we have badass versions of the Golden Age arc with such epic soundtracks that could rival The Lord of the Rings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrOliVhbBo8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkYYYew8CUI

HAI YAI FORCES! HAI YAI FORCES!

Have you ever watched an anime and found yourself becoming lost in the outrageous size and scope that it projects? Do you have any favorite anime that manage to build a ridiculously large world and keep things believable and interesting? If so, then you should share it here!

 

For me, my favorite massive and EPIC anime is The Twelve Kingdoms (Juuni Kokuki). This was actually one of the first anime that I ever watched, and I was really impressed. At the start, I was expecting a typical fantasy setting, with high level overviews of culture and a world that stayed narrowly focused on one specific region.

 

Instead, The Twelve Kingdoms went wayyyy beyond any of my expectations. It portrayed at least three complex cultures; their societal rules and expectations; prejudices and superstitions; local mythology; and their architecture, languages (implied, not spoken, I think), etc. As a writer that loves "worldbuilding", I found what they did to be both amazing and unexpected. It was a treat to watch the show, and I only regret that it dropped off without finishing the second season (due to budget issues, I think, but the first season and most of the second were finish, and it's very much worth watching).

 

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What about you? Has the world of a particular anime ever blown you away by its size, scope, or some other feature?

For me, my favorite epic was the original Fullmetal Alchemist series because I was drawn into the show's plot and emotions.

Gunbuster the predecessor to all over the top mecha ever created, I still rewatch scenes and shed manly tears

Space Patrol Luluco.

Although it is not even close to being believable (I don't think the show was made for that anyway), it is most definitely massive in scope and epic in the way it presents the show

The Universal Century works of Gundam, at least up to Char's Counterattack and excluding ZZ, would qualify as this for me. I started to lose interest around Unicorn (which I still haven't finished) but I absolutely loved how the UC developed from the original MSG up to that movie. The movie itself left a lot to be desired - I'd call it the turning point, if only because I hated how it ended - but the various shifting politics and struggles of the cast really kept me captivated.

Attack on Titan... In Manga their world is pretty EPIC.

When I first saw it, I dismissed it as just another boring fantasy anime set in medieval times

I actually had a similar reaction when I first saw it. I've seen so much fantasy already that I am often bored to tears when the same old thing is done yet again. Twelve Kingdoms took a very different approach, however.

Berserk

Thank you for writing this. I have been debating on adding Berserk to my watch/read list, and I think that I'll probably just do it. I like a good fantasy deconstruction that manages to stay fresh and has decent characters. I have no clue when I'll watch it, since I'm not in the mood for hyper-grim stuff right now, but I will definitely dig in at some point.