Animes, an overview.

I was thinking about animes I've watched, after seeing a post by Owen KC Stephens​, and thought that I could stand to bring up a few of the ones that I've enjoyed recently, and at least a little as to why. Names of the animes are bracketed so they're easy to pick out.
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[The Irregular at Magic High School] contributed structure and inspiration for the "My life at Magic High" campaign I'm running. It has decent pacing, interesting characters and a somewhat intelligent magic system that actually blends magic and technology.

I enjoyed [Tokyo Ravens], though it was very heavily steeped in cultural mysticism so I didn't catch everything that was going on. Overall it had a good story and actually moved me emotionally a few times.

[Maoyu] is an amazing anime. It's about a fated hero who arrives to kill the demon king, only to find out it's actually a queen and she requests that he join her. This one was good for not focusing on the things I would expect of a fantasy, demons vs. humans anime, and actually has a decent story that mixes ingenuity, trade, and human spirit.

Speaking of trade, [Spice and Wolf] manages that quite admirably, and managed to keep my attention throughout the whole two seasons that are out. Of course, there's a frequently naked wolf goddess in human form, but that's OBVIOUSLY just incidental... yeah.

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Now to list the ones I refer to for the development of my game Lost Server:
[Dot.Hack//SIGN] Will forever remain one of the strongest memories of animes that came at you from multiple mediums. The original anime was also a game that was 4 installments long, and the anime had good story, powerful themes and I have to say a memorable soundtrack. Aura's theme still echoes around in the back of my head every once and a while. This game inspired Lost Server's 'Frag' mechanic, where fragmented data could cause all sorts of trouble for players who mess with it.

[Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari] is not an anime that I've found yet, but it should be. Also called 'Rise of the Shield Hero' it's about a normal guy who gets summoned to a distant world with many video game elements, and gets sucked into being seemingly the most useless of four heroes who need to save the world so they can go home. I've read the Light Novel series through to the end, and this story gets really interesting and has many, many, interesting characters. This setting helped inspire me to build a world where Lost Server made sense. I was also able to learn much about a follower system from this series.

[Sword Art Online] Is a very well animated series about a kid trapped in a death game with thousands of other players on the first day the MMO 'sword art online' released. This game opened up my understanding of 'full immersion' games that hadn't clicked for me when playing and watching Dot.Hack. The setting really hammered home the way that people tried to make a life when trapped in a virtual world. Though the anime seemed to ignore the rules of the game world at seemingly random moments, overall it was a very entertaining show. I actually drew inspiration from SAO to develop the mechanics in Lost Server that allow players to 'push' the system in subtle ways.

[Log Horizon] was a much more structured anime about a MMO world, and I actually found a lot of the themes in the show to be interesting, but only mildly so. However, the core mechanics of the game world were strongly adhered to. I was able to draw inspiration for the way I handle classes as well as a few flavor pieces for the world of Lost Server.

[Overlord] is perhaps the newest anime I've seen of the 'VRMMO' style of animes, and this one definitely has many merits. This is well animated, has some funny moments, and has an interesting story I want to learn more about. From the get-go, the main character of this anime is overpowered as can be, but with good reason based on the premise of the story. The main character of Overlord could be easily portrayed by a highly experienced player in Lost Server, though it doesn't have the robustness of Overlord's races.