I decided it was 80's for manga and all their subsequent animated releases which were in the early 90's
I might have a different answer if I was 25 years older back then.

runner up answer is: right now.
The wide-spread availability of all genres is phenomenal and important, as well as having such a large back catalogue a person could conceivably do nothing but consume for 16hrs/day every day and never run out of new materials

You may be surprised to learn that almost all the anime I've watched is from the 2000s

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I suspect this question is pretty much the same as "When did you get hooked on anime?" In most cases, it will reveal the responder's age rather than provide objective judgment of various eras in anime history.

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The surprising part might be that I deducted that is your chosen era because of the ol' "This means war" hint 😁


One might argue that is not the case since some might prefer the earlier era if the quality of the manga/anime are to his/her choices.
But, I can see your point if readers chose them because of sentimental reasons.

Last edited by hiei_luke at 6:02 am, Mar 20 2019

I agree. I checked the "For how long have you been reading manga?" poll from October 2017 and the April 2014 "How old are you?" and compared it to this poll. The age poll and this poll are pretty similar in results, especially when you bin birth years ~5 years before an era to the era year. There's some problems with the methodology: the older birth years are more spaced out and the years from 1992-2004 have the most users but only four selections available.

I got hooked in the 90's but I no longer have the time to sit through 100+ episodes of filler so I wouldn't call that the best era. The decades before that were also like that (but the 80's does have the best movies/OVAs). Modern CGI looks bad and current seasons are so short that 00's hits the sweet spot between the two.

90s out of personal bias, as those were the series that I watched when I was a kid. There have naturally been good ones even before that and afterwards too. Would argue 2000s had the most good ones, but at the same time, a lot of moe crap came along and characters turned more jarring and everything was filled with anime tropes. Those shitty ones take away from the rest.

I am almost shocked that I agree with all of hiei_luke´s titles for the various decades except one. "Millennia" is much of an evaluation and more of a place holder. Here is my hot take on the 00s:
The Anime Boom or the Export Age.
The increase in output was insane and you could clearly see that Japan became hyper-aware of the export markets. Just look at the plot of Gundam 00 or the bewildering commentary on the Middle Eastern Wars that somehow overtook the first FMA in its original 3rd act (the director was the same). GitS Innocense was literally designed to win the Palme d'Or, the first anime won an Oscar, Death Note is what happens if an American cop thriller is filtered through the Jump lense and South Park had a whole ep. on anime.
The current decade will likely be remembered as the Digital Age or something like that. Day and date streaming, the near-death of home media, digital or web(only) manga, etc. But we obviously still need to exit it to have a final evaluation.

I wonder what the next decade will be about. I wouldn´t be surprised if the American tv industry will figure out how to make good manga/anime adaptations before Hollywood proper does (Netflix can only improve on Sword Arts Online if you ask me). It can´t be too long now. One or two big successes in a short time frame would be enough to turn things around for foreign adaptations of Japnese source material for good. The near ubiquitous superhero adaptations are proof of that.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 12:37 pm, Mar 22 2019

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"I wouldn´t be surprised if the American tv industry will figure out how to make good manga/anime adaptations before Hollywood proper does"

I think it already has. Several of the big shows from my childhood, like the Powerpuff Girls and Totally Spies, were very anime-esque, then Teen Titans and Kim Possible brought it even closer, and now we have the Avatar franchise, which is close enough for ignorant people to ask for in "the original Japanese."

In fact, Transformers was actually animated by Japanese artists but written and produced by Americans.

As an aside, earlier you mentioned 2000s comics and X-Men. Did you like Uncanny X-Men at that time? It felt like an angsty soap opera to me but I wasn't talking to the bigger fandom at the time so I don't know how other people felt. I enjoyed New X-Men until they killed everyone off.

The Battle Angel Alita film "failed" commercially (After performing during one of the lowest sales period in years, and on top of the fact that Americans are not watching movies anymore) and I've heard that it's the best adaptation yet (Partially because Cameron actually read and loves the damn series). The only other ones worth noting are Edge of Tomorrow (Which was a financial success, but went through several severe rewrites for a few years), Astro Boy (Which was a joint project with a Chinese company and rather good, but flopped), and Speed Racer (Which was an okay film, but flopped as well).

As far as SAO, the entire series is trash. However, I have heard that Gun Gale Online and the original 2005 webnovel (Which has been scrubbed from the known net) are the only exceptions to this. Also, I doubt the Netflix series will be good when much of modern American TV and film is trash, and the only thing they take away from the failures of Death Note and Ghost in the Shell and Kite and Oldboy is that "whitewashing is the problem" when that was never the problem. And, they are still managing to miss the point with the Your Name film.

In addition, WHY do we even need Hollywood to adopt ANYTHING? Much more, make it "live-action" when an overwhelming amount of current live-action films use CGI to the point that you might as well be watching a cartoon. About two decades ago, a Chinese film was released into the Western world, was able to stand one it's own, became a commercial and critical success worldwide, and was supposed to be a change in the way films were distributed with showing how Hollywood isn't the one-all-end-all to how films are made and released. Shouldn't we be far beyond begging one of the biggest institutions in the world for trafficking, corruption, and crime to "adapt" something when we can just go see the original work for ourselves and support the original creators (Especially since Hollywood barely makes any original works anymore)?



Totally Spies is a French series, and the French are huge weebs if it wasn't apparent with Code Lyoko, Lastman, Oban, Wakfu, Super Fuck Friends, Nicky Larson et le Parfum de Cupidon, and that they're the sole reason why NISA hasn't gone bankrupt yet. And, the Nips love them back just as much (Read up on Paris Syndrome).

As for all the American series you listed, they were all animated in Asia, primarily Japan and/or Korea. EVERY American cartoon is animated in Asia since...the 80s. The only exceptions to this rule have been the Cal-Arts/Flash series, which pale in comparison in animation (Especially since Wakfu is also produced in Flash) and actual depth (When compared to foreign and past works).

Last edited by Transdude1996 at 11:01 pm, Mar 22 2019

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