[TheSix]

Ten months and still strong. Confirmed most successful recommendation thread on the site?

Anyway, some things to look at:

Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Macross Plus and Macross Frontier. The Macross franchise is probably my favourite in Anime history, and these three pieces are much of the reason for that. SDF has some great thematic concepts (using a romantic triangle as symbolic of the conflicts of battle, presented alongside the actual battles within the series: "love is war", literally) and fine Characters (although it's rather old, so perhaps visually it's a step down from what you've previously seen); Plus (the film, at least: I never saw the OVAs) moves the series to different ground, taking a larger science - fiction bent, and taking the series' themes of war and revolving them more around personal wars, wars with yourself and close friends; these themes are handled very well, as are the relationships between the Characters they are represented by and accompanied by excellent action scenes and a great soundtrack. Frontier is potentially my favourite Anime of all time: It takes simple ideas and executes them to a very high standard, and develops SDF's themes in very fine ways (quite cleverly, it serves as a sequel to a series about conflict by looking at how conflict influences future generations: Most of the central Characters are afflicted by some form of event related to their past and/or childhood, sometimes involving the events of previous installments in the franchise or it's mythology, and a lot of the series revolves around them overcoming these). It's plot can be somewhat predictable at times (and this predictability could often have been easily avoided, to the point I'm sometimes convinced it's intentional), but it progresses ridiculously smoothly, and it's Characters are people I consider realistic and rather well - rounded. You can watch these series in any order, but I would recommend you watch SDF before Frontier for thematic context (Plus doesn't focus as much on building SDF's themes as Frontier, and to be honest is pretty dissimilar to the two overall, so it doesn't really require any prior viewing of the franchise to get the full amount of enjoyment from it). Also concerning SDF and Frontier, my recommendations for them refer to the series rather than the films: SDF's simply attempts to place too much in too little time, while Frontier's has less of the series' great Character focus and has what I consider some questionable plot alterations.

Kino's Journey: Focuses on a traveller and her talking motorcycle as they roam through the world the series takes place in, each part of that world representing an often brutal human problem. It's understated tone is excellent, and I consider Kino and Hermes one of the best duos in Anime. However, it is a rather episodic series, despite the continuous development of Kino's Character, and can be rather dark (although almost all of the stories have a small amount of brightness in them), so I'm not entirely sure it's for you. Still, you asked for things that are moving, and this certainly moved me, so I thought I'd place it here.

Shakugan no Shana: Hugely marmite, but you've enjoyed some other series that I consider so previously (F/SN, Angel Beats), so I decided to mention it anyway. I consider it the definition of simple done well: It has pretty standard plot elements, but the execution of them is very strong. I also think of Shana herself as one of the strongest Tsunderes in Anime, although that opinion isn't a popular one, and while the rest of the cast are adequately effective I don't think they're as well - done. Still, I think of it as overall enjoyable (The only absolute major flaw I would say it contains would be it not exploring the more interesting parts of it's world enough), and it does have some similarities to F/SN, so I allowed it a mention.