My list of new-ish (from the last six months or so, let's say) shows that kick butts of all shapes and sizes:
BLACK CAT: Based on a Shonen Jump manga, yet oddly feels very unlike a Shonen Jump manga (no long fights, for one.) In the world of the show, there's a secret organization called Chronos run by seemingly godlike beings who send out assasins to kill those who displease them. The leaders of Chronos appear to be completly above the law. And their greatest and most feared assasin is Agent Thirteen, AKA Black Cat. For years, he's carried out his assingments without compassion or remorse-until a chance encounter one night fills him with doubt. At the same time, a man named Sven, a bounty hunter and self-described "gentleman" whose left eye can see the future, is hired to rescue a girl being held captive in a local crime lord's mansion. Sven considers the girl his friend, and the job to be personal. What he doesn't know is that Black Cat is also on a mission to find this girl-and kill her. And when the three of them meet, a chain of events will unfold that will change all of thier lives.
PARADISE KISS: Yukari is a girl with no direction in life. All her life she's done what her parents want her to do, not because she wants to, but because she has no idea what she wants to do with herself. But one day she stumbles upon an out-of-the-way hangout called the Atlier, the headquarters from a group of fashion design students who together design clothes for an amatuer fashion label called Paradise Kiss. The four members of the group are eccentric, energetic and free-spirited-everything Yukari is not. Before she knows what's happening, she's drafted into the group as the offical model for their clothes. Yukari doesn't know what to make of this odd group of bohemians, but little by little she begins to grow attached to their odd way of looking at life-and she begins to grow more and more attracted to Paradise Kiss' handsome leader, George.
ARIA: Akari is an "undine"-a gondoleir who ferries people around the beautiful city of Neo-Venezia, on the planet Aqua. As she trains to become a full-fledged member of the Aria Gondolier Company, she meets many people who she takes from place to place on her gondola, and shares in thier problems, hopes, and dreams.
EYESHIELD 21: Sena is a puny, timid little high school kid who has been pestered by bullies since he was little. His only friend is Mimori, a girl he has a crush on who grew up with him. But on the first day of high school, Hiruma, the half-insane punk known as the most dangerous kid in school, and Kurita, the loveable giant given to passionate emotional displays, discover something interesting about Sena-he's the fastest runner they've ever seen. All those years of running from bullies have given Sena an ability to run at amazing speeds for short distances. With that, Hiruma tells Sena that he is now the running back for the school's football team, and if he argues, Hiruma will feed him to his pit bull. At first Sena hates football, but as the team grows and they begin to play in games, he becomes passionate about the game, and about having a circle of close friends for the first time in his life. There's only one problem-other high schools want to recruit the mysterious new superfast running back. To keep this from happening, Sena adopts a secret identity unknown to anyone outside the team. Off the field, he's a timid wimp, but on the field, he dons a visor that hides his face, and is known only as Daimon High School's secret weapon: Eyeshield 21.
ANIMAL YOCHOKO: Ami and her family just moved into a new house. But there's a weird door in Ami's room that leads to a secret place called Animal Alley, and from it come all sorts of weird talking animals. Ami's new friends, Issa the Panda, Iyo the Rabbit, and Kenta the Bear, just want to have fun-but having fun with them can get a bit weird, what with their tendancy to turn even the most mundane activities, such as playing a board game or baking a cake, into gigantic unintentional disasters. Plus, Iyo has an annoying habit of dying whenever someone says anything even slightly rude to her (but don't worry, just apologise a whole lot before her body starts to decompose and her soul will hop back in. Probably.) and something awful will happen if anyone ever finds out about Ami's animal friends, because they know a terrible secret: their whole lives are just a TV anime and also a dream, so it's like, doubly fictional. Don't tell anyone, though!
MUSHISHI: Ginko is a traveler, journeying from place to place investigating the "Mushi"-mysterious beings who defy all classification-they are not plants, nor fungi, nor animals or even micro organisms. They exist outside all scientific laws, and only a few humans know they even exist. As a Mushi investigator-a "Mushishi"-Ginko searches the world for these beings, and meets many people along the way whose lives have been touched by them. This show is bloody GORGOUS and must be seen by everyone, everywhere, all day long, right now.
WEED: Actually, this show is really terrible, but I highly reccomend the manga it's based on, because it's about 8 million times better. They totally changed the entire story for the anime, and ruined it in the process. So Weed is an orphaned dog on a quest with some other dogs (all of who talk, but their lip movements don't match what they say, cause it's translated barking, see? Barking is actually a language! Or something.) to find a place called "Dog's Paradise" where they can be free. But another group of evil dogs wants to stop them. This leads to a series of superpowered martial-arts battles...between talking dogs. Don't miss Weed's special attack, where he rolls up into a ball and launches himself at his opponent. It can do all sorts of neat things, like EXPLODE BEARS FROM THE INSIDE. Kooky! This show sucks.
