Jesus, why would you recommend Mahou Sensou? It's -blam!-ing horrible.

It's a decent base anime from which to work up in the "magic" genre. Though considering the trainwreck list you offered up, I'm not sure your opinions of anime are anything to take seriously.

No, it's not. It was one of the worst shows of last season. If that's seriously one of the shows you recommend to newcomers, you need to watch more anime.

[quote]Though considering the trainwreck list you offered up, I'm not sure your opinions of anime are anything to take seriously.[/quote] Mahou Sensou is a perfect base anime for building the genre. To be very precise while the story and mechanics behind the magic aren't the best, the progression of events as well as the base for individual magics coinciding with personality is great as an introductory to the category. And if anyone needs to "watch more" it's not me. My anime/manga/novel list exceeds my memory, even if I were to waste time with MAL or hummingbird I'd not even have a fourth of what I've seen.

[quote]Mahou Sensou is a perfect base anime for building the genre. To be very precise while the story and mechanics behind the magic aren't the best, the progression of events as well as the base for individual magics coinciding with personality is great as an introductory to the category. [/quote] No, it's not. It's heavily considered to be one of the worst shows of last season; there's a reason why it is so lowly rated on MAL. And if you go "hurrdurr who cares about MAL", places like /a/ and /r/anime also agree that it is incredibly mediocre. My list exceeds my memory too, it doesn't really mean jack shit. Even if you have seen a lot of anime clearly you have extremely shit taste. It's funny how you hate on shows like SnK and SAO, yet you recommend absolute shit like Mahou Sensou. And you do realize I was kidding with my recommendations, right? I surely hope you aren't that dumb.

The fact that you can't even make sense of what's being said only shows your lacking, not mine. Just like SAO and SNK, it's easy to get in to and easy to experience. It's a starting point for the most basic concepts of the magic genre. The action is fast enough and there's not much left to wonder about in the story beyond the silly explanation of the shows in and outs. In other words, an easy show to use to introduce someone. Much like To love RU for the Harem genre, or Tayutami: KoMD for the deity genre. The show itself is mediocre, as I've said regarding the story. And the characters relations to each other are often skewed back and forth unnecessarily. The point being, that just like anything, the easiest way to slip in somewhere is to start with something that you can just mindlessly watch. But you seem to have difficulties even latching onto that simple notion.

But that isn't how you get someone into something. When getting someone into games, you don't recommend something like Superman 64. That is what you are doing here.