General Discussion

Not sure if this counts as anime or not, but I'd recommend RWBY! Once you get past the occasionally awkward art style and animation, you're in for one hell of a ride. All the lead characters except for 2-3 specific ones are female, along with a fair amount of side-characters and villains being female as well. What I love about it is that each character feels real, unique and have their own struggles that aren't overshadowed or ridiculed in any way. I also LOVE the grey morality of some characters later on- are they a good guy, a misguided hero who uses less-than-favorable means of achieving their goal or truly a villain in disguise after all? I can't really give away much of the rest of the plot without accidentally spoiling something, ahah... You can watch it on Youtube or buy the DVD/Blu-ray from RoosterTeeth's website and currently it's 4 seasons long, with a 5th one in the works.

I also second Ghost in the Shell and Noragami!

@rukka do I have some recs for you!

Tsuritama is the story of a boy who has pretty bad social anxiety and is terrible at making friends as he moves around a lot, saving the world with friendship and fishing! Very colourful and unique, it's only 12 episodes long.

Princess Tutu is a magical girl anime from 2005 that combines famous ballets into a wicked story. Character development doesn't happen until the midway point. 25 episodes long.

Big Windup is great as well if you're into sports anime, this one also stars a anxiety ridden boy, but his dream is to be the best pitcher and to form a great battery with the umpire. Character development, of course. Two seasons, 25 episodes each.

An anime from this day and age, Yuri on Ice!!! is about a figure skater who's dream is to skate against a world skating star - only to have his dreams dashed and sparked again by that very figure skater! It's pretty gay, but you gotta squint and read the subtext and the director's interviews, because the publishers will censor just about everything.

If you liked A Girl Who Lept Through Time, you're gonna love the other movies by this director! We have Summer Wars, Wolf Children Yuki and Ame and The Boy and the Beast. All are fantastic films that I highly recommend with my whole heart. Each feature family themes and I guess varying degrees of furry characters.

Also Naruto, if you're into super long fight scenes but eh, in this day and age, Naruto is an acquired taste that you can only get by having liked it prior to it's completion and the sequel's serialization. We're a bunch of sour crones that take the canon and mold it to our liking tbh.

Your lie in April. Seriously this anime has remained a top favourite of mine since I watched it. It has dynamic characters, good development, beautiful scenery, a gorgeous soundtrack and the musicians in the show play absolutely amazing scores. [center] [img]http://www.fandompost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Your-Lie-in-April-Kimiuso-Hulu.jpg[/img]

@rukka

I haven't heard of it but I can certainly look into it.

Madoka Magical is super painful and sad. It's cute as all heck in the art and characters though. And if that isn't enough for you when you finish, you can see the movies.

The dub is pretty good, since I prefer watching a show over reading it. So either you want to watch will be good.

The music is also AMAZING. I love the music. The opening theme is pretty, the OST's are so fitting and nice to listen to. Definitely another strong point. Character themes are unique, and there's even a language made up for the songs, made to sound like a mix of Italian, Japanese and Latin (if I remember rwding correctly.)

I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it. I had thought it was fairly popular.

@rukka

Your very welcome :)

Its a bit weird trying to explain since the setting it starts in episode one is very drastic to how ends up becoming due to spoiler spoiler spoiler on ep 1 with how you expect it to go but it differently has drastic character development (with at least a few moments of refection of how she started to who she is now and what her new morals/mindset is)

But the setting (and artwork *-*) is nice since its kind of like old (Chinese?) setting with old frame world so the outside is nature-y with rulers and villages and is pretty cool.
The plot is good, though its not very plot heavy (all that comes up later on in the manga unless it gets a season 2 >.>) so while the plot getting them going the direction they are going, its more the characters interaction/development you see more on how they reaction to current things going on.

Trust me, Haku is a hilarious joker with his antics (and mostly light/comedy atmosphere with everyone having some funny moments in general).
Plus there are several main characters (some you meant earlier then others) that all have different personalities, so you will probably like at least 1 of them, if not all of them :)
I swear yona gets better.

Plus! The 'bad guy' at the very least, has a very grey feeling were they arent doing things out of 'I am all powerful and want to rule the world' and instead they are doing these things, but it has the whole 'for the greater good' feeling. (I find that a huge plus personally. We dont know the whole thing but it feels like they have a huge plan...... Now just tell me what it is in the manga >.>)

I checked before recommending it and the dvd are selling? But anyway good luck finding anime to your style and enjoy watching them :3

@rukka Usually whichever catches your eye is the best place to start. They line out into a few different continuities:

-Manga. Just the Manga. You should give this a gander sometime, but it has less of what you're looking for.
-Ghost in the Shell movie+Innocence. The original movie is known as a classic for plenty of good reasons, since there are only two these don't take a huge amount of time to watch either. Prepare for some naval gazing.
-Stand Alone Complex+2nd GIG+Solid State Society. That's two ~24 episode TV series and one movie. Honestly if you ask me these end up the most accessible out of the two, they tend to deal with some delicate content that is pretty darn relevant these days too. Heck the second season has a refugee crisis.
-ARISE, also split up into 3 OVAs. Still worth watching, but I don't think it's as good as the two above. I'm not too sure about the physical availability of these in English either.
-Cop Runner *Ba dum tish!* Treat this as a Hollywood popcorn flick. Don't expect much of anything you'll see from anything above in this.
-There's been an announcement of yet another adaptation in the works by SAC's director and the guy behind Appleseed Alpha. Nothing else beyond that has been mentioned, this was talked about in April.

Outlaw Star is in space, but not bounty hunters. They do fight bounty hunters though!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya. It's a ghibli film but the animation is different than what they usually put out. The painted scenery and landscapes are breathtaking. It's based off of a folktale and it's absolutely gorgeous. Also - very cool female lead!! [img]http://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Kaguya-3.gif[/img] My other recommendation is: Castlevania has just been released on Netflix, and it's fantastic. Hand-drawn animation too. It's a short four episodes right now and pretty bloody and gory, but tolerable IMO, nothing worse than Attack on Titan and it's certainly not the focus. I also have to second the suggestion for [i]The Boy and the Beast[/i], I adored that one. [i]Kimi No Na Wa[/i] was just released to astounding reviews. And [i]Koe no Katachi,[/i] much more slice-of-life/drama but still gorgeous animation and an interesting story focused on a male lead.

@rukka Setting? Well it's kind of modern, I guess you'd say. But the main character(Yato) uses a regalia(sword), as do a bunch of other characters.