this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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Just a heads up, Attack On Titan is very, very, very, very, very fascist. Not only does it have a character directly inspired by a Japanese war criminal (Commander Pixis in the anime), it makes the viewer root for a military coup, have a lot of nationalistic imagery and aesthetic, specially in some of the openings, paints genocide as the only viable option for the main character to do, and much more problematic stuff. It is genuinely awful in its messaging and I would only recommend to watch it with a very critical look on it all. (This is a very condensed warning, I can expand on it if needed)
Now for recommendations, I see it was already suggested, but Dungeon Meshi and Frieren are genuinely great and can be enjoyed by basically anyone, they are both fantasy stories, the first focusing on making food out of dungeon monsters and the second one about an elf that has lived for a long time in her journey of remembering her footsteps/adventure with her old group of heroes that has now mostly passed way.
Since your daughter likes Shounen anime, she might like Jujutsu Kaisen (about hunting curses/spirits that wreak havoc on the world) and Sakamoto Days (John Wick if his wife never died, but much more light story-wise). I can also recommend Megalobox (about boxing with exoskeletons) and Mob Psycho 100 (about a kid with extremely powerful psychic powers tied to his emotions, I don't remember much but it is super fun). Also One Piece is absolutely incredible but very problematic in it's depiction of women and queer characters, some are amazing, others feel like a caricature, but in general politics-wise it's absolutely amazing, Luffy would free Palestine in a heartbeat.
There's also Little Witch Academia, although not exactly Shounen, it is protagonized by a group of cool witches. There's a famous episode about unionizing! I would steer clear of other anime by Studio Trigger/Gainax for a while, even tho I absolutely love their works, they tend to be much more mature in content, this one is an outlier.
For older anime, I can also recommend Trigun and the recent remake Trigun Stampede, which is about a cool and messy bounty hunter in a hostile planet, there's lots of comedy in the old one too, tho the newer one is much more focused in the story/lore.
If she wants to dab into Chinese animation (Donghua), To Be Hero X is really good! I'm only 9 eps in, but so far it's very cool and it's about super heroes working for these big corpos where their powers is directly influenced by their popularity and reputation.
For a horror/suspense recommendation, The Summer Hikaru Died is great and it's about this teenager Hikaru being replaced by a creature and learning to live among humans, specially with Hikaru's best friend, Yoshiki. It's also very gay!
For a more light hearted anime, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is amazing and it is about animation. I never finished it, but I loved it a lot.
If she's interested in more competition based stories, Welcome to the Ballroom is great too. As the name suggests, its about ballroom dancing. I absolutely love this one!
For movies, since Ghibli has already been suggested, Wolf Children and The Boy and The Beast are pretty cool. The first one is about a single mother of two half-wolf children that goes to live in the countryside of Japan and the second one is about a boy that stumbles upon a place full of beasts and starts interacting with them.
Also another warning, Dan Da Dan does have a couple of problematic scenes, the most egregious one so far being right at the first episode, but outside of that it is genuinely a cute shounen/romance anime. So you might wanna take a look into it to weight in if you feel like you need to.
I appreciate you giving more of an explanation than others about what makes AoT bad, but calling Mob Psycho 100 "about superpowers" is like saying that A Christmas Carol is about ghosts. It's technically true, but extremely misleading in basically the same way, as the ghosts and superpowers only exist in their respective works as vehicles to facilitate a story about emotional development.
Yeah you're right. I was very tired when I made the comment so I ended really simplifying some of the descriptions I gave lol. ~~I'll update some of them when I can.~~ Just updated it!
Also thanks for appreciating the brief AOT explanation I gave. It is rather simplified too and there's more I can explain/expand upon if you or anyone else is interested.
Hey! I've been at work all day but I wanted to take a second after work to say thanks for the answer. That's well thought out and you took some time out of whatever you were doing to respond. I really appreciate it. I also appreciate taking some time to tell me why to avoid AOT. She's been watching the first season this week and I'm going to get her started on The Alchemy Diary, she chose this to start first.