The apartment handyman here is named Alex. He's a nice guy, probably about my age. He gets an apartment in the complex rent-free as part of his compensation, in which he lives alone. Sometimes I see him and we talk.

Today I went out to pay my rent, and went for a walk in the rain to try to find that spectacular tree. (And I couldn't. So no more pictures of it.) When I came back, he was working on a light in front of one of the buildings, and we got to talking.

It came up that he was interested in anime but hadn't really had the chance to watch very much of it. He sometimes watched the Anime Network. So I came back here and put together a sampler disk. One of the comments he made was how he was bothered by anime anatomy, especially in how girls tended to be drawn, with ridiculous breasts.

Anyway I came back here and decided to make him a sampler. I thought y'all might be curious about what I gave him.

I included an HTML file which began this way: "This contains the first episode of several series I like. Anime is a lot more varied than this, but I didn't include things which are hyperviolent, or any horror series, or ones featuring big sweaty men. Not my style."

So, what was on it? In no particular order:

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou ep 1
Macademi Wasshoi ep 1
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS ep 1
Saki ep 1
Samurai Girl Real Bout High School ep 1
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun ep 1

...and to round it all out (ahem) I included the second episode of Divergence Eve, as an example of a show that took pandering to an extreme. I did warn him that several of these had panty shots, and I did warn him that there was nudity in two of them.

Why did I pick those? Well, I went through my whole download directory and picked shows I liked, shows which didn't feature sweaty men, shows that weren't too strange, shows that I thought were reasonably accessible, and (except for Divergence Eve, which was the deliberate counter-example) shows where the girls didn't have absurd chests. And shows which, for the most part, did a pretty good job of using the advantages of the medium. And shows where the first episode stood pretty well alone in terms of establishing the series concept.

So:

no Abenobashi. The first episode is really atypical, since it's in Japan.
no Asobi ni Iku Yo. Eris is too busty, and anyway the first episode doesn't really stand alone very well.
no Banner of the Stars. The first episode is pretty much a recap of Crest. The real story doesn't begin until ep 2.
no Chu-Bra. I didn't want him calling the police on me.
no Juuden-chan. Same reason.
no DBK. No big sweaty men.
no Manabi straight. I haven't watched it myself.
no Ikki Tousen. Just not really a good gateway drug.
...and so on.

I seriously considered giving him Summer Wars, but the only copy I have is 1080p and I wasn't sure he'd be able to play it.

Also, I wanted to keep the total number under control. There probably were other things I could have included, but if I'd dumped 50 eps on him, I doubt he'd have watched any of them. (It's easier to talk someone into climbing a hill than to climb a mountain.)

So after I got done collecting everything and burning it onto a DVD, I went back out and tried to find him, and couldn't. So I left it in his shop. I have no idea when he'll find it, or whether he'll bother to do anything with it. But if, next time I see him, he does mention it, I'll let you know.

(Oh, I also included the install files for MPC and CCCP, just in case.)

UPDATE: OK, everyone is going to want to play. So here's your challenge: Six episodes, plus maybe one extra, for your sampler disk to a newbie with the intent of getting him interested in the form.

UPDATE: I think I must be getting into a rut. I just noticed that these are all "magical girl" shows. Ah well... I sure hope he doesn't decide I'm a perv, or a loon.

UPDATE: Don responds.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 01:45 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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