Retsam

Wikipedia only has it listed as 10 episodes and an OVA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_an_MMO_Junkie - apparently the OVA is on Crunchyroll.

I'm a big fan of the original anime. I've taken a few stabs at the manga in the past, but never got very far. Manga is generally just not my thing, I found the Trigun manga a bit hard to follow when I tried it, and I've gotten the general impression that the parts I liked most about the anime were much smaller parts of the manga. I also was fairly disappointed by Stampede - though I've started rewatching it and I'm enjoying it a bit more - it probably helps that I started rewatching it in the middle, with the episode that I remember liking the most, and some of it is probably the magic of lowered expectations.

It's pretty good - not perfect, but a solid thriller and a complete story in 12 episodes which is always nice. TBH, not sure there's much else I can say without spoilers. Though, speaking of opening themes, it's rare because the opening theme was an existing song before the anime came out, (most opening themes are made for the anime nowadays) and was actually a song I had listed to a lot - Asian Kung Fu Generation was the first band I really got 'into'. Was very weird getting to the end of the first episode where it plays and being like... wait, what?

I really like it - it's the sort of show that's all over the place tonally. It's heavy in some places, but also very funny (especially, IMO, the English dub), the main leads have really good chemistry; the time-travel plot actually largely makes sense (eventually) and has some really good twists and turns, and it has a really satisfying ending. It can be divisive - a lot of the characters are flawed and a lot of people find the main character a bit difficult (but that's even more true in-universe: that's kind of the point of his character), and there's one particular plot point that annoys a lot of people. But still, I've seen a lot of stuff, and it's pretty high on my list. I used to be able to rattle off a "top-5 favorite anime" but at this point it's probably changed quite a bit and I'd have to figure out what to keep and what to bump... Steins;Gate is definitely pretty high up though.

OP means opening theme, ED means ending theme. As opposed to "OST" which is just the general soundtrack for the show. e.g. Frieren has a great OST ("Zoltraak" is probably the most popular/famous track), but OST it's not usually what people mean by "anime songs". Though there are also "insert songs" - vocal songs in the middle of an episode - like God Knows which Eluvianii mentioned. --- Of the list earlier, I think Unravel is my favorite musically; ended up liking the song a lot more than the anime Tokyo Ghoul, and ended up listing to it (and various remixes/alternative versions) for ages afterwards. But it's hard to judge because a lot of times how much I like the song is influenced by how much I like the anime. (e.g. I love Hacking to the Gate, but that has to be a least partially because Steins;Gate is a top-5 anime for me)

If you mean OP/EDs, r/anime did more-or-less yearly "best opening" and "best ending" tournaments for awhile, their results were: "Again" from FMAB "Hacking to the Gate" from Steins;Gate "Unravel" from Tokyo Ghoul "Flyers" from Death Parade "Cruel Angels' Thesis" from Evangelion "Tank" from Cowboy Bebop "Renai Circulation" from Monogatari "Guren no Yumiya" from Attack on Titan "99" from Mob Psycho 100 "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" from Ya Boy Kongming! "Idol" from Oshi no Ko It's a pretty good list of some of the top-of-all-time OPs.

I had fun with Yumi because it was like... page 12 where I clocked "oh, this is Sanderson's take on Your Name". Funnily enough, I was so distracted on the Your Name parallels, I completely missed the FFX stuff, until it was mentioned in the afterward, which is a bit surprising as that's my favorite video game story of all time.

I'm not normally much into sports anime, but I really enjoyed Turkey: Time to Strike! a lot which aired in the last year. Kinda hard to describe what makes it good; it's one of those anime where it's worth giving it an episode or two and seeing if it's your thing or not.

Yeah, it just depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to be educated about Japanese culture and language as a higher priority than experiencing the story as it was originally intended, then a literal subtitle is better. But I think for most people, (and hence the general approach that most translations take), the goal is to give as close to a native experience as possible which often means a less literal translation and more of a "thought-for-thought" translation. And the reality is somewhere in the middle on both - if you go too far on the "thought-for-thought" translation you end up with "Eat your hamburgers, Apollo", but if you go too far on the "word-for-word" translation, then everything goes "according to keikaku". --- I actually have a little formal background in translation - studied biblical translation in college (though not to the point of a degree) and it's the same general ideas - more literal word-for-word translations are good if you're really trying to dig into some technical meaning of the original language... but less literal translations (while still accurate to the original idea) tend to be better for everyday usage.

I think part of it is that that used to be more true - I think older dubs tended to be lower budget and often worse; but anime is a bigger business in the West now and dubs are a lot better. Also if you go back far enough you get into the era where "hiding the Japaneseness" was a goal. (Eat your hamburgers, Apollo) But that really hasn't been true for awhile. Nowadays? I legitimately struggle to remember the last time I ran into something that I'd really call a "bad dub". I can name a few voices that I didn't care for (e.g. one character in Mushoku Tensei, despite my overall preference for that show's dub), but that's also true of subs (e.g. there's one character I dislike in 86, despite my overall love for that show). (For context, I watch quite a bit of both subs and dubs - my default is subbed, especially since dubs are usually delayed, but I often end up rewatching shows dubbed with a friend, or I sometimes watch things dubbed in the background when working which doesn't work with subs) I think there's some truth to this - but I think an argument in favor of dubs is that dubs can sometimes give you closer to the original experience better than a sub. The true "original experience" is to watch it in Japanese while being completely fluent in Japanese language and culture, and that's... tricky to pull off. (I should know, I've been studying Japanese for quite awhile now) Failing that, a good translation can be better than a more literal one. Comedy is the most obvious example: if you want to have the "original experience" of watching a comedy anime, you should laugh, but often the way to make a Western audience laugh is not to tell the exact same joke. That's what I mean about why, e.g. Steins;Gate is such an amazing dub - it replaces a bunch of Japanese nerdy cultural references (e.g. 2chan) with Western equivalents (Dr. Who, Star Trek) because the point is that the protagonists are huge nerds, not the specific references being made, and Western references bring that across better than things that going to fly over the head of most of the audience. (Strictly speaking this is mostly about the literalness of the translation, but "sub = more literal translation, dub = potentially more localized" is broadly true - my understanding is dubs generally have actual writers who decide how to localize it while subs have translators who really aren't empowered to make meaningful changes)

My view is generally "good dub" > "good sub" > "bad sub" > "bad dub". You're much more 'in-tune' with your native language so you can both appreciate good acting more, but you also notice bad acting a lot more, too. Plus, I find comedies work better when you hear the joke with proper timing and delivery rather than reading the punchline on screen. Sometimes it's just carried by a specific voice actor: Trigun, as mentioned, is a classic example (Johnny Yong Boshe), (shame that Tristamp Vash was mostly too depressed and angsty to really show of JYB's abilities). I'd also put Code Geass in the same category for the same reason. (Johnny Yong Boshe) Sometimes it's the localization: e.g. Steins;Gate and Kaguya - not that English voices aren't good, but it's really the localization that carries it - the dubs add or modify jokes to work better to Western viewers ("You're such a Wesley", or the Spongebob joke in the Kaguya dub). Other miscellaneous shows where I liked the dub better: FMA, Planetes, Mushoku Tensei (I don't really count Ghost Stories - yes it's great, but it's IMO closer to an abridged series than an actual translation)

I try to stick to English names, but I spend too much time online and so it varies from show to show. I do wish more shows just gave things short, simple English names, like "Erased" instead of Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (literally "the town without only me"). "Rascal does not dream of bunny girl senpai" for example is a phenomenal romance/supernatural show, but has an incredibly awkward title. The upcoming season being called "Rascal does not dream of Santa Claus" is not better. (Unrelated, the whole "bunny girl" aspect makes it seem ecchi but it's really not - it's just a plot point in the first arc)

"Dungeon Meshi" is the Japanese title (yes, including the English word "dungeon") - anime fandoms tend to be very split about using Japanese titles vs. using the official English title. Sometimes because the series gets popular before there's an official English title, sometimes because the English title is just awkward - (way easier to say "Oregairu" than "My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected", for example) - and sometimes because anime people are just weird like that.

Shame that it's not really available for streaming - I tend to recommend people try the 2003 version first. Not necessarily because it's better, but because it's different and it's different in such a way that if you watch the 2003 version first you can still enjoy Brotherhood, but if you watch Brotherhood first, it's harder to appreciate the 2003 version. FMA2003 does a lot better with the shared material: it's got a better introduction and a better (slower) pacing through a lot of the earlier plot. Brotherhood moves quickly through some plot stuff and it just doesn't hit as hard, and even skips some stuff, which it awkwardly addresses with a flashback later. If you watch FMA2003 first you don't mind that Brotherhood speed runs the same material, but I don't think it works as well in reverse. I think this is a pretty common opinion - a lot of people who like Brotherhood more overall think the original handles the early stuff better. ... but honestly I'm not one of those people, on the whole I actually just think the 2003 version is better. Yes, Brotherhood is "more faithful to the manga" but that's not the same as "better". Brotherhood is good, and the plot is more coherent in some places, but it's a lot more of just a shonen battle anime in the end, while the 2003 version stays a lot more focused on the themes and philosophy of Equivalent Exchange and keeps a much stronger melancholy tone throughout the show. The main downside is that the ending of 2003 isn't great - the show's ending as a whole is good, but a cliffhanger, and the movie that resolves it is underwhelming (and a bit dated visually). But still, journey before destination, and I like the journey of 2003 better.