>>363507>now that I have a steady income I can afford to check some out.I'd recommend pirating until you're sure you like anime, otherwise you could spend a lot of money on something you're not sure you like. Anime can get expensive as a hobby if you don't pirate. For just trying stuff out streaming stuff is fine, but if you find you really like anime torrenting is the way to go for longterm frugality. I pirate most of the anime I watch, but I buy manga and BDs and other merch for series I really like.
>I notice that many of the suggestions here are based on a manga - should they be read first, or are most anime 1:1 adaptations of their manga?Anime is rarely a 1:1 adaptation of its source, simply because the change in format necessitates reworking some things. I'd guess that what most people call "faithful adaptations" are generally like at least 80% faithfully adapted from their source.
But as to that, if you're willing to read manga then I'd definitely say read Dragon Ball's manga. I recommended you the anime Dragon Ball Z, which is an anime version of only part of the Dragon Ball manga, but it's the version that's more popular among westerners. The Dragon Ball manga has several anime adaptations, but the manga is superior to all of them.
With the rest of what I recommended the anime/movies are fine without reading the manga. With Cowboy Bebop it would be backward actually since it's anime original and the manga was made after it. Nausicaa might be worth a read after seeing the movie though, and Ghost in the Shell: SAC is a long and famous franchise with many installments. The original manga series isn't really "adapted" by any of the GitS anime/movie series, it's more like each adaptation storyline pulls events, ideas, characters etc from the manga to create its own separate continuity. There's three main GitS continuities, the TV anime one that's GitS:SAC and 2nd Gig is probably the most entry level, but the original 1995 movie is also fantastic.
