This week's poll was suggested by hiei_luke. The names of each decade don't really mean anything. Just pay attention to the decade. And sorry if your favorite series wasn't listed. Had to pick and choose. Some cross over multiple decades, so I had to be a little liberal about it.

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: Favorite type of ending for a harem series. (MC = main character)
Choices:
I hate harems - votes: 1705 (39.7%)
MC ends up with no one - votes: 181 (4.2%)
MC ends up with a side love interest - votes: 400 (9.3%)
MC ends up with character that was introduced much later into the series - votes: 201 (4.7%)
MC ends up with the first introduced love interest (i.e., main love interest) - votes: 654 (15.2%)
MC ends up with everybody - votes: 1150 (26.8%)
There were 4291 total votes.
The poll ended: March 16th 2019

I guess that's why you watch harem series: you want to see the main character get with everyone

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Definitely the 2000s, when it comes to both anime and manga. The other day I was just randomly thinking about my favourites, and had the pretty shocking realisation that ~90% of them were from 1990-2010: Mushishi, Yotsubato, Death Note, One Outs, Get Backers, Pet Shop of Horrors, Mononoke (anime), Naoki Urasawa's best works, Liar Game, Satoshi Kon's anime... the list just goes on.

What's happening in this day and age? Almost none of the post-2010s managed to make it into my favs. I can understand the pre-1990s cos they were before my time and probably why I find them largely unappealing save for a few exceptions, but imo modern-day fiction is just getting shallower and less unique, despite, funnily enough, being more liberal in terms of subject matter.

90s. It was those shows that got me into anime in the first place after all, even if I was unaware of it at the time haha.

This is a fascinating series of choices for me. One Piece is still ongoing (and keeps getting better), but in the spirit of the listed series, I selected "90s".

This was rather difficult for me to choose because I pretty much consider 90's, 2000's and early 2010's the best era.
All of my favorites are from those 3 decades. Well, more like 25 years. The last few, not so much.

I think 2010 could very well be divided in 2: 2010-15 & 2015-19

These past years...can't say smt best has been created or at the very least I haven't come across it.

I really wish for this one we could've picked several choices, but oh well, went with 90's since that is when the goodies (to me) began.

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The 80s, just for Berserk alone. We also have Please save my Earth as another genre setter and the pre-DBZ Dragon Ball goodness. The 80s further gave us Legend of the Galactic Heroes aka. the best long-form anime of all time (technically an OVA based on books) and Akira aka. the best-animated film of all time. The 90s come thereafter, with Cowboy Bebop aka. the best short from anime of all time and Macross Plus aka. the best (traditional) OVA of all time. Mars, Monster, Rurouni Kenshin (+ Trust & Betrayal), HxH and even Naruto (the manga was legit fun till the Pain War). This was also the era when anime and manga manage to become viable in the west. It´s almost a foto finish with how close in quality the 2 decades are.

The 80s were the best time for US comics with the 00s coming second. Animal Man, DKR, Watchmen, V or Vendetta, 80s era X-men and the Post Crisis DC books that finally unified the canon. A+ stuff. Grant Morrison and Alan Moore broke out and were hired by DC as a result, which bring me back to the US argument. The 80s are even the peak era for EU comics. The Incal and XIII started for example. It´s really a shame that I wasn´t born a decade earlier, as I would have loved to live through this stuff, just not in the USSR... The never ending fake nostalgia for the 80s that has been around for over a decade (!) is legit infuriating though. Chernobyl, the Challenger explosion, the endless wars/rising terrorism and the very real danger of nuclear war were a thing, just not on 99% of these nostalgia wanks.

PS: Gundam is from 1979, Attack on Titan and the original One Punch-Man are from 2009, so the math doesn´t check on these 2 😉. The 80s still gave us the best Gundam with Zeta.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 6:58 pm, Mar 16 2019

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90s-2000s were the best time. I voted 90s because a lot of the anime people might associate with the 2000s still started in 90s first as manga like Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, Naruto, 20th Century Boys, Blade of the Immortal, Bleach, Hellsing, Trigun, etc. Those are my some of my absolute faves and the reason i first got into manga and anime.

2000s were great as well and transformed manga and animes appeal from insiders only to that of a worldwide audience, from which the current age is the absolute peak (torrents, livestream, netflix era). Unfortunately while i can say manga has gotten more professional now, i can't say it has necessarily gotten better.

I think the answer is different between manga and anime for me.
I feel like modern-day manga is so varied and interesting and while there is a lot of very basic titles which are there just to fill a void, there's also a lot of really interesting stuff being done with seinen series now more than ever, I feel.

Although, I think my favorite era of manga is still going to be classic 70s manga where things had advanced past the comedic 4-panel stuff from the 60s, and had progressed into more cinematic gekiga, as well as experimental stuff like what was being published in Garo at the time. This kind of spread into the 80s as well... and the poll itself seems to be focusing on Shonen more than manga as a whole, so I'm not sure what to choose.

When it comes to anime, I feel like it reached it's pinnacle in the late-90s, when the art had gotten to such a point that even the low-budget productions still managed to look fantastic, and the higher budget stuff still hold up the test of time today (provided they are re-scanned from a film print and re-released in HD). It's also the time before digital artwork had seeped it's way into everything, so it still had this very textured, hand-crafted look to everything which I still crave, and has started to come back into fashion slightly in recent years.

I feel like the manga of this era, while good, started to fall into tropes. Specifically shonen manga of the era ended up being somewhat formulaic in a way that felt a tiny bit repetitive, but for the most part was still enjoyable.
Even if I think seinen stuff is more interesting, I feel like there wasn't very much interesting seinen stuff coming out in the 90s. It was mostly just manly stuff, which can be fun but also pretty formulaic.
Since there isn't any really good options for my favorite era of manga, I'm going to vote 90s, though, since it is my favorite era of anime for sure.

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::End of Transmission::

My favorite era was the 90s, but to answer which was "The great era for manga/anime", I chose the 80s, due to the quality that Japan's economic boom allowed for.

On a slightly unrelated topic, here's an anime question.
If, hypothetically, we were to think of:
The 70s as the time Japan's animation scene developed it's own identity,
The 80s as the reign of Japanese animation geeks and a concept of anime beyond "cartoons made in a Japanese style".
The 90s as the birth of the modern otaku and subsequently the first (highly experimental) era of shows to be made by them.

What exactly are the artistic characteristics of the 00s and 10s beyond "adopted modern production techniques" and "was influenced by the previous era"?

I'm not saying these are bad eras, like many of you, most of my favorites are from these times, and I feel comfortable saying that many are as close to the concept of "objectively good" as one can get, but I feel like because I grew up during these eras, most of the shows I have watched, period, are from around that time period, and so I am not seeing the bigger picture.

Likewise for manga:
If the 60s were when modern manga began,
the 70s, when it solidified as a concept,
and the 80s, the era when the bars were set,

What exactly do 90s, 00s, and 10s manga have to define themselves beyond improvements in illustration methods and distribution channels?

(I may repost this on reddit later,.)

Last edited by Banshou at 8:19 am, Mar 17 2019

The 90s for me. I have heard and watched some of the shows in the 70s but I thought of them as just "cartoon tv shows" and the 90s anime are the ones that got me really into anime.

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Late 80's, but mostly the 90's mainly due to the art style and the..."comfy" feel everything had.

As far as what I have experienced, the 60's suffer from being the first and the "roughest" years, the 70's feel like the precursor of everything to come after, the former half of the 80's feels a bit like an extension of the 70's with some more experimentation, the 2000's feels like they went all over the place (With just as much success), and the past decade seems like everything is targeted more towards being clean and marketable.

Last edited by Transdude1996 at 7:41 pm, Mar 16 2019

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Thanks, lambchopsil-san for approving my suggestion.
From the list of names, you might know which era I would choose 😁

I wonder which era that the mods & admins prefer (I bet I can deduct lambchopsil's choice pretty easily)

I agree with you.

Last edited by ForeignerChan at 3:29 am, Mar 19 2019

For anime, I would say 90's and onward. I picked 90's because It had a really great run of anime. Majority of Dragon Ball Z aired in the 90's, there's also Rurouni Kenshin, original Hunter x Hunter, Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon, Hana no Mahou Tsukai Mary Bell, Yu Yu Hakusho, Ojamajo DoReMi, Pokemon, Digimon, and tons more. It was also a great era of magical girl anime.

For manga, I would say 2000's and onward. There are some that I enjoy from the 90's even 80's but I find that lately, I've been enjoying manga from 00's and 10's mostly.

I feel like it’s kind of skewed against 80s anime because of the popularization of anime and manga in the 90s. A LOT of classics have gone unlocalized and untranslated. In general, I feel like the 70s and 80s do underrated by modern anime fans because of the way they look. But I feel like they’ve got that certain gekiga style that modern works lack. Fans can find a lot of compelling classics if they just keep an open mind.

The 80s in particular are noteworthy as the economic bubble resulted in niche groups of fans funding high quality animations which were bought at exorbitant prices. Animation that more than stands the test of time.

Mushi Productions had great shows even in black and white. Look at Dororo and you’ll be shocked at what they were capable despite limitations.

The original Lupin Series was directed by Miyazaki. Both he and Isao Takahata directed a lot of classic TV series before their more well known movies. This was the era of “Animation Masterpiece Theater” TV adaptations of literature.

This was the era of Tezuka! The God of Manga!

Don’t neglect the classics!
Space Adventure Cobra