Are newer fans of anime missing out on old anime? I consider such anime as Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Serial Experiments Lain, and even FLCL (although a little more modern but still under the radar from most newer fans) to be essential, classic anime viewing. Most anime fans today are into Attack on Titan, Madoka Magica, Kill la Kill, Angel Beats, etc. Do you feel that it's important that they watch some of the older anime series? I absolutely think so. A lot of those anime like those I mentioned tend to touch intellectually on a deeper level.
Yes...yes they are. And it's not really their fault in any way. For one, there are very few old school animes other than Cowboy Bebop from 1999 that get much modern exposure and online streaming runs. Well okay, there are actually plenty of older animes that you can find for free from Nozomi, FUNimation, and TMS on Youtube official channels. But beyond that, very few older animes have found their way on Netflix, Hulu, and perhaps even Crunchyroll. I'm not sure how far back Crunchyroll's catalog goes in terms of age. However, unless you know that older animes exist (like, you are actually aware that there must be some decent ones that are 20-30 years old), then you're going to have a very hard time stumbling across them, and an even harder time finding out how to watch or obtain them. So many really good and fairly good ones are out of print and are hard to track down. I own quite a few myself, since I was lucky to grab them before they got incredibly expensive. But by this point, unless some of these shows get re-releases in the near future, very few newcomers will have a chance to enjoy them. Things like The Slayers Film and OVA series, Hyper Police, Gate Keepers, Urusei Yatsura (everybody always wants Ranma. Nothing but Ranma. Can't we have Urusei Yatsura on Blu-ray please?), Gokudo (that's really hard to find), and a few others. Some shows like "Irresponsible Captain Tyler" have gotten reprints, and Magic Knight Rayearth has a new DVD and Blu-ray coming from Discotek Media. The Dirty Pair TV show and Films are all in reprint editions from Nozomi. Same with Space Pirate Mito (that was a cute and exciting one) and Lost Universe (not so good, more meh.) Many many more out there. Things like Dragonball and Dragonball Z, though, will always have reprints till the end of time. So not much need to worry about that. – Jonathan Leiter9 years ago
The term "Anime Starter Set" or "Gateway Anime" are very relevant to this case. The main problem being that whatever a person see first is what their anime experience is circled around. Usually if asked by a friend what anime to start off with, I try to base it off what regular series they enjoy since it helps give them a familiar area: sometimes old series and other times new. But usually they stick around that area instead of exploring beyond their safe zon. If you can, try and get a survey going of what a person's first independently watched anime as well as what they consider an anime starter set. – Kmo9 years ago