I just watched "Vampire Hunter D" for the first time. It rules, I can also see its influence in a lot of other anime, scifi, and other cool nerd shit. It's really a shame I have never sat down and watched it until now. It fuckin' rips!.
I need more animated films of that era that aren't made for the selling of toys. Doesn't have to be anime but really any sort of sleeper/underrated animated films from the 80s and 90s. I need more animated cinema.
Wings of Honneamise has gorgeous animation, when you boil the plot right down it's a bit "we live in a society" but it's still good
Metropolis came out in 2001 but it's got even more gorgeous animation
The Last Unicorn is an excellent film - it's western, but the animation was done by a studio that would later be hired by Miyazaki for Nausicaa
It might be cheating to keep mentioning Ghibli-adjacent films, but I also really love The Castle of Cagliostro
The Birdy the Mighty OVAs are pretty good, short and sweet - the TV anime is fine but kinda long and doesn't really add much (banging soundtrack though)
On the subject of OVAs, you gotta watch Gunbuster if you haven't yet, you will cry at the ending
The Patlabor OVAs and films are great, beautiful mecha animation and political intrigue (the OVAs+films form one continuity while the TV series and later OVAs form another)
That's all I can think of for now, although this lot should keep you busy for a while!
Just re-watched Metropolis and I love it a lot more than I did back then. Fantastic film with only a little bit of dated 3d animation, but the 2D stuff is gorgeous and definitely captures the feel of an earlier style.
Mentioning Patlabor feels like cheating lol. The third movie, WXIII, is worth pointing out that it's kind of a totally different thing. It's a detective story set in the Patlabor setting. It's incredibly mid and kinda trashy, so it almost evokes the vibes of watching a goofy 80s OVA
Going from Patlabor 2 to 3 had me fucked up.
spoiler
Going from 2 hours of Oshii goodness to "it's a girl lizard monster because it has boobies" lmao
Yes! I mean it was okay as a movie, interesting setting of course, 5 second Labor cameo at the end, but... damn
All of these except Patlabor are going on the watch list. Patlabor is MAJOR to my understanding of mecha anime. I seen them all and I love them all. All these others sound rad.