So I gave anime 9 chances to impress me. Here's what happened.

I watched about 270 minutes of anime this evening and took notes on as many impressions as I could. Here are 9 key takeaways:<br><br>- **Attack on Titan** is a story about giant humans (and the regular humans who try to kill them) that's very reminiscent of the movie *300*, but this show has way too many Caucasian-looking dudes, and the pace is kind of slow. The action scenes were the only exciting parts of the show, but they were pretty rare.<br><br>- **Lupin III** is an older series about a thief (think about the movie *Inside Man*) that's based on a French book. The show has a really funky vibe, but the "anime" style was so subtle that I genuinely didn't even realize I was watching anime for the first 5 minutes or so. The story was super confusing and it felt really dated and low-budget.<br><br>- **Kill la Kill** is another show about a kid trying to fight an evil government or something, and it had some weird pseudo-hentai stuff. The plot and characters were pretty confusing/non-existent, but it had some pretty cool clothing designs and the action scenes were alright.<br><br>- **Neon Genesis Evangelion** bored me to tears. It was 20 minutes of some whiny kid complaining about how much he hates his life and his dad.<br><br>- **Death Stranding** is another dreary/slow show about some post-apocalyptic world and I honestly have no idea what's going on. It's just a dude walking around and talking to people and then occasionally there's an action scene. It's honestly so boring it was hard to keep watching.<br><br>- **Dragon Ball Z** was probably the worst of the nine shows and was almost laughably bad. It was 20 minutes of two dudes staring at each other and talking about how they're gonna fight each other and they literally don't fight until the very last 2 minutes of the episode. The voice acting was also really cringe.<br><br>- **Ghost in the Shell** was the most promising of the nine so far. It was based on a Japanese comic book too, which is cool. It's about this cybernetically enhanced police officer and it has a really cool futuristic vibe. The story seems pretty interesting and the voice acting was pretty good.<br><br>- **Hellsing Ultimate** was a fun one, it's like if *The Boys* was an anime. It wasn't really as gory or messed up as I was expecting, but the action scenes were cool. It's pretty much just a cartoonish war between vampires and humans. The voice acting was alright but the dialogue was super cheesy.<br><br>- **Fullmetal Alchemist** was probably the best of the nine. It's about two brothers who are trying to find the Philosopher's Stone so that they can restore their bodies after a ritual went wrong. The story is already really interesting, the voice acting is really good, and the dialogue is pretty funny.<br><br>Alright, so those are my impressions. The most common themes I saw were 1. Government vs. Citizens (as in, who has more power/rights/etc.) and 2. Identity (for example, what does it mean to be human), and 3. Morality (war is bad, revenge is bad, etc.).<br><br>Only one of the shows I watched wasn't made in Japan. Some common character archetypes I noticed were the "faceless drone" (usually seen in Army/Cop settings) and the "overly powerful boss" (often the main antagonist). Pretty much every episode I watched included these two archetypes.