There's tons of anime out there, of all sorts and styles. Everything from sci-fi space wars or mecha battle, swords and sorcery tales, cyberpunk, corporate espionage, to "lesbian schoolgirl demon-tentacle rape" (hentai). Everyone usually develops their own preferences, but I'd like to list some of my favorites as recommendations. Most of the stuff I like happen to be good things for introducing other people to Anime, both guys and girls (I've known a couple of guys that have tried to introduce girl friends of their to Anime with something like La Blue Girl, which tends to NOT make a good impression of the medium as whole for them). This list has proven to be difficult to keep reduced to a "brief listing" of titles to recommend, as the more Anime I watch, the more stuff I find I like.

• Oh! My Goddess - My all time favorite Anime period, and something that I would consider an excellent OAV series to introduce the ladies to Anime with. Inspiration for my choice of domain name came in part from Aa! Megami-sama

• Record of Lodoss Wars - Probably the closest you'll find to an "AD&D-like" swords & sorcery Anime.

• Trigun - Sort of a post-apocalyptic western comedy. Hard to describe, but very, very funny.

• Battle Angel Alita - Just your normal futuristic-wasteland cute little teenage cyborg bounty-hunter. :) See it, you'll probably like it.

• Neon Genesis Evangelion - One of the most popular "mecha" Anime aside from the Gundam series, though the Evas are not acually mecha. One of the more bizarre Anime I think there is, it gets really strange towards the end.

• Slayers! - Admittedly a little bit silly at times, I found it to be a fun fantasy adventure/swords & sorcery OAV series.

• El Hazard - Something of a cross-genre modern world/sci-fi/swords & sorcery OAV series, with the most hilarious villain I think I've ever seen, period: The Evil Student Council President!

• Saber Marionette J - This series is one of my favorites as well, ranking up there with Oh! My Goddess and Lain. Comedy, bits of romance, action, a nifty story, all around great Anime.

• Serial Experiments Lain - Possibly the weirdest Anime there is, alongside Neon Genesis Evangelion. Different art style from most other Anime I've seen, with a story that tends to mess with your head a little, and is very cutting and modern, with lots of technology and computer elements. In addition to being weird, this is one of my favorite Anime titles.

• Card Captor Sakura - Card Captor Sakura is a magical girl story about a 10 year old girl Kinomoto Sakura who has to use magic to collect cards, which have escaped from a magical book (partially her fault, but anyway . . .). This series, at least the first season, should carry a "high cuteness content" warning. It's very cute, but often quite humorous, and Kero-chan (The Guardian Beast, Kerberos) just rules.

• Cowboy Bebop - Very nifty futuristic series about the adventures of the bounty hunter crew of the ship Bebop. Very cool art style, lots of action, almost every episode has a fun plot twist, and a rocking jazz soundtrack. The intro is a sort of "70s style action show" intro, and pulls you in from the start.

• Revolutionary Girl Utena - Utena tends to be really strange, but it's also often damned funny. A few Utena episodes have made me laugh harder than almost anything else, ever, period. The Apocalypse song also tends to get itself stuck in your head.

Got a question about Anime you think I might be able to answer, a suggestion for something you think should be added to this section, a cool Anime-related web site to tell me about, or just want to tell me about some cool Anime title I haven't mentioned yet? E-mail me at zoas@yggdrasil.net.