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@AmishSamurai and CFFJR, I'm going to hope you guys have both seen Touch! Not to pit it up against Maison, they're quite different, but Touch is at the same caliber to me. Incredibly powerful, mature series. The character growth was insane. Maison really hit at home though, watching that a few years ago when I was out of high school and all, it's just so easy to relate too for young adults.

80's drama doesn't top these. I love City Hunter as well, though it's obviously way different than those two.

Mermaid Saga is one of the OVA's from Rumiko I'd like to get to. I watched One Pound Gospel which was decent, but yeah Mermaid Saga sounds a lot more intriguing.

Pulsar_t wrote:Never knew it had a game. Oh and VOTOMS is ace. Do post your opinion if you don't mind, most whom I've recommended watching the series rather enjoyed it.

Votoms is probably my second favorite sci-fi series after Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Sounds like you're a fan which is awesome, I absolutely love Votoms and all of the sequels, Mellowlink was cool too. Gotta admit though I watched one of the newer spinoff movies that had a different director, Case Irvine... and it was pretty damn horrible for Votoms. They just need to let this franchise rest and have its glory, don't make it the next Gundam or anything lol.

If you haven't seen it Pulsar, Fang of the Sun Dougram was finished being fully subbed earlier this year and was the series the Votoms director did before it. It was absolutely amazing stuff and supposedly the series that heavily inspired the Battle Tech franchise. Another one of my top favorite mecha shows for sure. It's dated visually yeah, but as a Votoms fan I'm sure you and maybe others here would be able to appreciate it.

CFFJR wrote:

Xeogred wrote:Have you seen Urusei Yatsura? For some reason that one looks a little more appealing than Ranma to me, lol. Definitely plan to watch both eventually though. And Maison is the bomb (up there with Touch!)

Honestly don't think I plan to watch Inuyasha though. Meh.

I've only read about the first 50 chapters or so of Urusei Yatsura. It's good, and I need to finish it, but I haven't found time to lately.

You should try both to be honest. Ranma is my all time favorite comic, so granted I'm biased, but the chaotic humor is there in both it and Urusei.

As for Maison Ikkoku, it has no match as far as I'm concerned. One of the best, bar none.

I'm a huge Takahashi fan, but Inuyasha left me very cold, sad to say. I may finish it one day, but as it stands I read the first 40 chapters and couldn't handle it anymore. And that was several years ago. Every character in that series has already been done in one of her own previous works, and done much better at that.

A better Takahashi choice for horror and demons would be Mermaid Saga. Don't be fooled by the name, its a serious story with horror elements, and its pretty damn bloody. Its also really cool.

The most interesting character in Inuyasha for me was Kikyo. She's really what kept my interest in the series. It's interesting that the most serious and less comedic character in the story was my favorite, since Takahashi is known for humor. I actually found Inuyasha and Kagome kind of annoying, but what I liked about Inuyasha was his obsessive loyalty to Kikyo, which made for one of the more interesting love triangles I have seen in anime. Being stuck on the dead former incarnation of your current love interest. I thought that was kind of fascinating and I loved the tragic, Shakespearean quality of Inuyasha and Kikyo's relationship. She was the one, but things went sour and fate sort of course corrected by having Inuyasha meet Kikyo's reincarnation. That's an interesting story. The Inuyasha manga dragged on for too long though and after a while I stopped caring

AmishSamurai wrote:Maison Ikkoku is in my opinion the greatest romance manga/anime, and every other romance manga/anime is just copying it. Except the harem genre, in which case they're copying Ranma.

Haven't seen Maison Ikkoku, but I think my favorite romance anime of the ones I have seen was the Ah My Goddess OAV. Very touching. Also, I consider the original Tenchi Muyo OAV to be far better than Ranma in the harem genre. Though I'm biased, as Ryoko was one of my favorite anime characters ever. Easy choice for me if I was in Tenchi's shoes. Pick Ryoko! Ayeka is just too prissy and stuck up LOL

Gamerforlife wrote: Also, I consider the original Tenchi Muyo OAV to be far better than Ranma in the harem genre. Though I'm biased, as Ryoko was one of my favorite anime characters ever. Easy choice for me if I was in Tenchi's shoes. Pick Ryoko! Ayeka is just too prissy and stuck up LOL

Your preference, but Ranma as a franchise does predate Tenchi by four years.

Just saying.

I definitely agree with your romantic choice for Tenchi though. Ayeka sucked. Ryoko is all kinds of awesome.

In general though, I must say that despite Ranma's many suitors, I don't really consider Ranma 1/2 to be a harem series. It just feels different. And really, all the harem series that came after really did follow the Tenchi model a lot more than Ranma.

Ranma, like most Takahashi material, did its own thing.

Did anyone ever really consider Ranma 1/2 to be harem? I know I didn't.

Ah, Inuyasha. Much like most anime series, it was decent for the first 13 episodes or so, then it fell flat to such an incredible degree that it became nigh unwatchable to all but the most diehard fans.

Only difference is that most other anime series didn't hog two hours of adult swim for what felt like decades. As such, I have an undying hate for the entire series. I feel really bad that I actually bought the first season box set. (To my credit, though, the same guy was also selling box sets of Cowboy Bebop, Hellsing, Trigun, Escaflowne, etc. for really good prices. I pretty much took one of everything he had. Plus this was before I had cable.)

AppleQueso wrote:Did anyone ever really consider Ranma 1/2 to be harem? I know I didn't.

Well like I said, I don't, and most fans I've spoken to don't either, but there are a few people who do consider it the first.

I suppose I understand why, since Ranma has four girls (and a guy) dogging him at all times, but aside from that basic part of the scenario its not really the same thing at all.

I guess Ranma would be a proto-Harem. It has several Harem elements, but doesn't quite fit the bill. Tenchi is kind of a proto-Harem too. I think the first "true" harem series is probably Love Hina.

AmishSamurai wrote:I guess Ranma would be a proto-Harem. It has several Harem elements, but doesn't quite fit the bill. Tenchi is kind of a proto-Harem too. I think the first "true" harem series is probably Love Hina.

I can agree with that.

I hated Love Hina. Just throwing that out there right now.

AppleQueso wrote:I hated Love Hina. Just throwing that out there right now.

I did too. Just saying it had some significance on the industry.