Hello all. I imagine this question has been asked dozens of times, but please bear with me. I recently started watching anime again after many, many years of being out of the loop, and while I found many different series, there are certain parts that stick out in my mind. I'm mainly looking for shows that have quality animation, as the subject suggests.
What prompted this was my completion of the series
Mahoromatic. While overall there wasn't anything particularly special about it, some of the action scenes were incredibly well done. They had a nice, detailed feel to them, they conveyed the intensity and drama of the moment extremely well, and overall they just left me very impressed.
Here is said scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O73o6tGe_gI
Sorry if it doesn't live up to anyone else's expectations, but that scene just really left a mark on me.
I've generally tried to avoid older anime because I felt that the animation quality would feel old, stale and just plain shitty. However this scene and others within the show showed me that, when they didn't have to worry about making everything high definition, shiny, glossy, and pretty, they were actually able to give life to the characters themselves. I enjoy the attention to detail when the movement of a character is fluid and they capture that character's essence and personality by really using body language to convey their emotions, and especially when they put a good focus on a character's facial animations (which surprisingly seems to be missing a lot these days).
I haven't seen them in a while, but other series that come to mind when I think of quality animation are
Xamd,
Cowboy Bebop ,
Samurai Champloo ,
Gurren Lagann and probably others as well. I watched
Highschool DxD a while back and the opening scene where the main character had been impaled and was dying was extremely well done and gave me high hopes for the series...unfortunately, that didn't last long. It wasn't a bad series, I enjoyed it, but it didn't match the opening scene at all. I know all of the Miyazaki movies are extremely well animated, but beyond that my knowledge of anime movies is very limited.
So please, I beg of you, assist me. Share with me what anime series (and movies as well I suppose) you feel have top tier animation. I'm not talking about CG eye candy, I'm talking about smooth, hand drawn goodness that really brings out the characters and allows you to immerse yourself in the show.
Good character development would be a plus, but it's not required. I have plenty of suggestions to seek but I can't do them all at once.
Thank you for reading all of this is you made it this far, and I would appreciate any help in my search!
Also, sorry if there are any random words or grammatical errors, I typed all of this out on a phone.