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[Great Rumbler]

For every Lain, there is a thousand Dragon Ball Z's. For every Azumanga Daioh there is a thousand borderline anime pornos, so while I haven't seen these particular movies it only makes sense as they're in a sea of krap and have to be discovered.

Oh come on! It's like that in American as well! For every Batman Begins or Revenge of the Sith there's a Stealth or Dukes of Hazard or Undiscovered or Fantastic Four [a fun movie for what it's worth, but with many flaws]. That's just the way it works. I can name off a long list of VERY good anime series, yes I had to dig through Dragon Ball Z and Inuyasha and a ton of generic harem animes, but good series and movies are there, waiting to be found.

Movies: Patlabor the movie 1-3, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Royal Space Force, Princess Mononoke, The Place Promised in Our Early Years, Millenium Actress, Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Voice of a Distant Star, Jin-Roh, Nausicaa, and Tokyo Godfathers.

Series: Kino's Journey, Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Last Exile, Rahxephon, Cromartie High School, Azumanga Daioh, Excel Saga, Fooly Cooly, Someday's Dreamers, Planetes, Now and Then Here and There, Niea_7, Blue Submarine #6, Saikano, Gundam 08th MS Team, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, Fruits Basket, and Gunslinger Girl.

All of these are pretty good, though for different reasons.

but I have seen hundreds of anime movies and TV shows

Could you name some of them?

About flashbacks, they're a crutch used for weak story telling.

I agree to an extent, but I've seen a few examples where they have been used well. For one thing it needs to be sparringly and not "Hey remember when...? Oh yeah! *Flashback!!*" and it should be used in conjuction with the actions of the characters in the present and to give insight into a character that has already been developed through their actions. A good example would be in Haibane Renmei. It has one flashback around the middle of the series and was very important to what was happening in the series, providing insight into motives that weren't yet fully understood. It worked there, but certainly not always.