What Anime Should I Watch?

[Belle]

For light comedy and a lot of silly martial arts action, try Ranma 1/2. It's classic, probably Rumiko Takahashi's most well-known work.

For sports, you're kind of spoiled for choice. Hajime no Ippo is a boxing series that has been around longer than most people on this site have been alive. The anime is very short compared to the manga, but it captures those high points very well. I've never watched Prince of Tennis, but it's apparently also pretty good, and insane with how they portray some of the moves.

For Shonen series, I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend One Piece. It's simply a fantastic anime. The only minor critique I can level at it is that it takes a while to get started. I feel that the series doesn't really get its formula going until Luffy has four crewmates, which takes about twenty episodes. Arlong Park is the first big arc, at episode 30. I wouldn't call the series bad before then, it's just that there's a lot more comedic potential once there's more characters to play off of. In the scope of things, though, that's an extremely minor quibble. The anime is something like 700 episodes long at this point and it's been a fucking blast. I really can't recommend it enough.

If you know anything about magical girl shows, Madoka is pretty cool. It's a series that deconstructs the tropes of the genre and asks: what would creatures that press little girls into fighting monsters really be like? What if violence wasn't taboo, but a fact of magical girl life? There's all kinds of dark twists and turns in this story, and at just 12 episodes long, it's a modest investment of one's time for what is one of the best stories to come out of Japan in years. Only advice I can offer is that you should watch to the end of episode 3 before making a judgment. That candy-coating opening that might make you slightly uncomfortable to watch at points because of how cliche it is? That's deliberate.