The best decade of anime?

In your opinion, what is the best decade of anime and why?

I'd have to go with the 80's on this one.

The 60's and 70's gave us a nice starting point. The 80's expanded upon that with more detailed stories, better shading and animation, and very little stock footage. The 90's were a great tribute era, but some shows, like The King of Braves GaoGaiGar, suffer heavily from stock footage, or in the case of Getter Robo Armageddon, it was a great show, but if the director hadn't been fired it could have been better. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both of those shows.

I suppose you could say anime storytelling was perfected in the 80's, and the animation and visuals themselves were perfected in the 90's. I like a bit of grittiness. Most anime nowadays is too shiny. Compare Zeta Gundam to Gundam Seed and you'll see what I mean.

By the way, I do think there is good post 2000 anime(New Getter Robo, GaoGaiGar Final and some others).

So, what's your take?

That's a hard call, seeing as styles and what's considered "popular" is always changing. I'm gonna have to go with this last decade though, the uh... 00's.

Not because the came before it was bad, but because I think the anime that's out now is pretty interesting. Or well, interests me more than Sailor Moon, DBZ, and Detective Conan did. But then again, I'm older now than I was then sooo... n__n;;

I guess I'd go with the 80's. A lot of my favorite anime are from that era. Particularly the mecha. (Zeta, Votoms, L-Gaim, ZZ) I agree with your sentiment of gritinesss. Most of the shows today seemed to be filled with nothing but fanservice, lol. I still enjoys shows from 90's and the 00's. They just seem to be lacking something that those shows back then had.

Why are you all assuming that a decade has to be from 19x0 to 19x0? My favorite decade of anime is 1986 to 1996. In 1996 I was ten, and that's when I really started to get into anime, but I don't think that's the entire reason. So many of my favorite anime fall into those years; Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Blue Seed, Tetsuwan Birdy, Bubblegum Crisis; even the border years are good, with Urusei Yatsura ending in 86, Detective Conan starting in 96, and a bunch more that don't immediately come to mind. I love both older and newer movies and shows, of course, but things like Naruto just don't have the same feel as Blue Seed, et al. Nothing against Naruto, I watch Shippuden every Thursday, I'm just saying.

There are so many great modern anime (Lucky Star, Hajime no Ippo, One Piece, Death Note), but if you watch the somewhat dated stuff you'll find that audio quality and smooth animation aren't as important to you as you think they are. One of my top ten favorite animated tv series of all time is Mirai Shonen Konan (1978); if you like Studio Ghibli, it's a must-see. As a bonus, try to see how many scenes you can find that Eiji Aonuma lifted straight out of it and into The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

I mostly like cardcaptor sakura cause it is my best anime for me at 1998 to 2000

In the end, I like anime made during the 1990s to the early 2000 (like 2003-ish?).
I just realized that most stuff I like are concentrated here.

kohei said:

In the end, I like anime made during the 1990s to the early 2000 (like 2003-ish?).
I just realized that most stuff I like are concentrated here.

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^ This. With a few exceptions, a good chunk of the anime I like come from the 90s and very early new millennium. These days, it's rare for me to find more than two shows a year I actually like.

My favorite series are scattered across the decades, generally starting in the early 80s (Macross, Urusei Yatsura) and ending quite recently, but if I were an anime I think I would want to be made somewhere in the span of 1993-2002. The early-mid 90s were when a ton of original series took off, cell animation was in its prime, and there was still money in the industry. A lot of good things have been made in the 00s, but I feel like there are more mediocre series and fewer outstanding ones in recent years with too many manga-derivative cash cows - and I'm not fond of the over-reliance on computer art. Not saying I want to go back to 1978, just that I want more care put into my anime.

StarGirl said:

I mostly like cardcaptor sakura cause it is my best anime for me at 1998 to 2000

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Someone has good taste. :D

Personally, I'd pick the last decade. I'm a bit biased because I began watching in the past ten years (more or less; I watched before, but not much), but I've gone back and watched stuff from the 80s and early 90s, and I haven't liked much. In the past ten years or so, there's been amazing progress not just in animation quality, but in the quality of the better works. Sure, there are about 50 bad anime for every good one out there, but that's just because anime has grown so much in Japan that everybody and their dog can make one (and fanservice sells, so many times that's what comes out). If you just look at the good anime, I would say things have been getting better.

Fanservice isn't SO bad, anyway... :3

twocows said:

Fanservice isn't SO bad, anyway... :3

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I'd say it's the downfall of anime.

Well, I say the 1990's and 2000's are the best anime decades.

90s of course! EVANGELION! I honestly don't watch much pre-90s stuff, so I'm obviously going to go with that lol. I do like a bunch of 2000s ones as well though.

we'll i have to say 1980's, Transformers

About 1985–1995. It's the style mainly, there are a lot more lines and the colours are sharper, everything is off-looking especially in Saber Marionette, which is what makes me like it; and how the shows still remember they are wacky cartoons, not... I dunno, shipping debates?

Jack O'Neill said:

Which ties back into what I said earlier about the moe plague and the studios constantly pandering to the fringes of the consumer base. Like most things, fanservice is good in moderation; overdo it, however, and you end up with the current situation the anime industry is in.

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I agree wth you so much. Moe really put me off watching anime recently.

My avatar doesn't count though. It's lovely.

Late 1990's to mid 00's for me. The recent animes that have come out weren't meticulously well thought out as those in this time period.

The '90's And Early '00's. Maybe Because Of Sailor Moon (all Series & Movies) , Pokemon, Digimon, etc.

I like the mid to late '90s, where they had shows like Escaflowne, Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, etc. Those were some great shows.