The first anime I have to show you is a truly irresponsible anime. It kidnaps you one evening and drags you around on this dank dusty starship, and only after a few hours lets you have a slight breather before it drags you back to save the universe from yet another pointless war.

The irresponsibility of this anime must come from the captain of the ship Soyokaze. With its gentle breeze, you would think it’s a ship that old men are sent to retire, but No, it’s a ship that they put all of the misfits and trouble makers of the whole fleet…. It is odd that misfits to other people may just be interesting among their fellow misfits and could actually make a good crew under an irresponsible captain’s command. Captain Taylor showed me that you don’t have to act like other people to be good at what you do. You could act like a complete buffoon and still get the job done.

You might want to get out of the way for the next anime on the list, because you might get pulverized in the stampede that it will cause in your room. Well, I can’t blame Vash for that, because he is wanted by most of the world for destroying a town one dusty summer night. It also doesn’t help his case when he puts his mark on the moon as well. But under all of the trouble that goes on around him, I can’t really get mad at the guy. He lives his life while trying to help others and keep his twisted brother from causing too much trouble. Even if it cost him misery, Vash tried his best to do what was right. In the light of the world’s misery, you have to keep going and hold true to your values.

Well, I knew it would come to a point that I would get the blues… I can’t think of a good one liner to match the opening with something in Cowboy Bebop. If you haven’t already seen this space cowboy show, then where have you been for the past 17 years? One of the most popular anime to ever hit the airwaves is all about this crazy cowboy who hunts for his food… literally, if he doesn’t hunt bounties he doesn’t eat.

But now that I am thinking about the original launch date of Cowboy Bebop, I am thinking how old I am… I should start taking up bonsai tree pruning. But, I can also think about the 17 years and look out at the night sky. Who knows, something out there can be watching this epic anime and acting like cowboys. It takes a lot to live a life of freedom. Spike, Jet, Feye and Ed showed me what it would take to live such a life. It was not always easy and they didn’t always eat steak but it was truly a life worth living.

We are getting nearer to the end of this list, but please don’t panic. Just because my top anime is almost done, doesn’t mean that your favorite anime will soon end. Trust me on this one. But, if you are worried, trust in this crazy military freak of a high school student, Sagura Sousuke. He is more than your average student, he is a specialist able to pilot an Arm Slave and come to the rescue, as he has done many times for his fellow classmates when they were in a tight situation.

I guess I should give you a little more, when Sousuke isn’t studying for a test, he in the field with the secret organization MITHRIL, saving another life while putting his own on the line. It wasn’t until the end of the second… third season that I truly got what Full Metal Panic was trying to teach me. That you need to live a life outside of duty and responsibility.

The last anime on my short list of favorites is truly a great anime. If you haven’t heard of it, which many haven’t, stop reading this and go find it, Great Teacher Onizuka. I’ll be waiting here when you’re done. See you in a few days.

Welcome back. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I was telling you about my favorite anime, the one that actually got me into teaching. GTO shows what a teacher should be and not how society has formed most of us. Onizuka goes out of his way to help his students, and his lessons don’t take place in a classroom, they take place where it matters.

It could be on the back of a motorcycle that is going off a bridge or sneaking a kid into his room, so he wouldn’t have to tell his parents that he got beat up by a group of girls. Onizuka is truly a slice above the rest when it comes to teaching and life in general.