My Top Ten... Scenes from Anime.

 I've been an anime fan ever since Manga Video began releasing these strange, violent, new Japanese cartoons in the UK. These days I've drifted away a bit  but still put my head round the door from time to time. So I thought I'd share some of my all-time favourite anime scenes. Obviously I'm limited to stuff I could find on Youtube, which is why there's nothing from Studio Ghibli. (Anything that pops up on YT gets nuked almost immediately.) and quite a few others I either could not find at all or the clip was too long or poor quality or somebody put Linkin park over the top of it.  

So, in no particular order, here's a buncha scenes I rather liked.None of them are exactly obscure but you try finding clips of Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gotaman on Youtube. Enjoy.

End Of Evangelion - Asuka's Last Stand

  Teenage mecha pilot Asuka Langley is on her own, in a mech unit rapidly running out of power, as she battles nine hostile units in a brutal hand to hand fight

Asuka gets a lot of flak for being an utter bitch but she redeems herself here by kicking some righteous ass.  And then you get one of the most chilling scenes in anime history.

Macross - Do You Remember Love? - Minmay Sings

 In which the fate of the Earth rests on one Space Fortress, a handful of transforming mecha - and a teenage girl singing a gentle love song. 

 Only the Japanese would think of weaponising Idol Singers and this is the scene I use when I want to explain that Anime does things differently. I also like the song. No seriously. I even went and bought the soundtrack CD.

The Cockpit - The Man Who  Didn't Sell His Soul To The Devil

A disgraced Luftwaffe fighter pilot is given a last chance to redeem himself by escorting a captured B17 and her cargo to the rocket testing site at Peenemunde. When he finds out what the cargo is, a terrible choice has to be made. Sacrifice his honour and a woman he loves or allow a horrific weapon to be unleashed on the world.

A very underrated series IMHO and this scene just keeps punching me in the gut every time I see it.

Macross Frontier - The Sing-Off

Another musical moment from the latest entry in the Macross Franchise.

Fighter Pilot Alto is sharing a moment with the two girls in his life - pop idol Sheryl and aspiring songstress Ranka. 

When a familiar song comes on the radio, the girls decide to serenade the bewildered Alto.

Poor Alto clearly has no idea what the hell is going on. Can you blame him?

A charming little scene and a ridiculously catchy song to boot.  

Dominion Tank Police - The Puma Twins Dance

Masamune Shirow's tale of a dystopic future sees the titular Tank Police facing cyborg badass Buaku and his two catgirl sidekicks. Massive property damage ensues. 
Here, the villainous twosome are cornered by a SWAT team. What they need is a distraction...

Along with Project A-Ko, Dominion was one of the first anime on the UK market to go for laughs rather than ultraviolence and tentacle rape. I used to have a t-shirt with the Puma Twins on it.
Because they were frigging cool.

Speaking of Project A-Ko...

Project A-Ko : The Ultimate Chickfight

High School Queen B-Ko Daitokuji has spent the entire film trying to get rid of  rival A-Ko Magami. Since nothing else has worked, B-Ko decides to do the job herself.

Oh, did I mention that A-Ko has superpowers? And B-Ko is a genius inventor?

And that there's some hostile aliens invading as well? The result is spectacular.

 B-Ko is easily my favourite anime character of all time. How can you not love an elegant young lady who thinks rocket launchers are a fashion accessory?  Nuts, obviously, but nobody's perfect.

 Black Lagoon - Revy v The Giant Nazi

 A Neo Nazi gets the drop on pirate/gunslinger/psycho  Revy but then makes the mistake of monologuing.  He really should have been paying attention to what his supposed victim was doing...

Black Lagoon is just full of awesome moments and quite a lot of them involve the frankly terrifying Revy. I picked this one because ...well, it's exactly  the sort of thing you wish films did more often.

Cowboy Bebop The Movie - Spike vs Elektra

 Space Bounty Hunter Spike Spiegel is snooping about somewhere he's not supposed to be when passing agent Elektra busts him. The resulting fight is...well one person is taking it seriously.

Male anime characters tend to come in three varieties:
1. Cocky 2. Moody 3. Hapless doormat.
The easygoing Spike manages to avoid all of these and is, incidentally a bona fide badass.

Macross Plus - Re-entry

Fighter pilot Isamu Dyson tries to sneak through Earths defences by switching off his systems and feefalling. Meanwhile love-interest Myung tries to escape from her trap and rogue AI Sharon Apple uses her hypnotic powers to blow her audience's minds .

In truth it's the music that makes this clip for me. Yoko Kanno couldn't write a bad soundtrack
if she tried and the combination of the very danceable "Information high" plus Sharon Apple's
mindf**k light show make this my favourite scene in the film. Not bad considering the last third of the film is one long procession of coolness.

and finally.

(Replacing the scene I originally had here.)

Ghost In The shell - Kusanagi Beats Up a Bad Guy

Ghost In The Shell is rightly praised for the quality of the animation and an intelligent storyline that combined cyberpunk with some exploration of the human condition. The Wachowski Brothers openly cited GITs as a big influence on The Matrix. 

 But as far as I'm concerned, the highlight of the entire film was cyborg badass Mtoko Kusanagi's brutal takedown of a fleeing terrorist. When your skin is plastic you can have all sorts of fun extras built in. Like thermal camouflage, for instance. The poor sod literally never knew what hit him. 

 

That's my favourites. What're yours? 

That's all folks.