Thing is, it’s really difficult to judge anime. If you judge it the same way you judge literature, it’s not gonna come out right, ‘cos they’re too different mediums. Manga is another good example- you’re using visual storytelling, which means show, not tell. Then there’s the pacing, storyline, paneling, inkwork, details, etc, to consider..

On the other hand, if you mean Canon as in the really good, old stuff like Cowboy Bebop, Monster, and such, I completely agree.. all I require, really, is for anime and manga to touch people’s hearts, as any good piece of art should do.

I think a “canon” need not degenerate into an exercise in elitism, and could serve the new anime enthusiast well.

As I mentioned on 2DT’s site (which directed me here), when I first became obsessed with anime, I found my way to a few big review sites (I’m a bit nostalgic to find that some of them are still around, though none of them are as actively updated as they were a decade ago). They were quirky and charming, brief, and clearly marked by their creators’ tastes.

These sites helped me find my way to important (and treasured favorite!) anime series I might never have found otherwise. I suppose sites like MAL might serve a similar purpose, but I don’t see quite the focus there.

Omoikane did not mention it, but there’s an interesting project in this discussion thread and curiously dated predecessor. It’s easy to see how such a thing could be extended to the blogosphere, though it would be nice for it to have a home.

From what I can see the thing most important to the development of anime really aren’t always going to be the kind of thing you can recommend to just anyone – innovation (particularly in animation technique) strikes me as something of interest to academics and total completist anime-obsessives but more or less useless to the vast majority of people looking to watch a cartoon or to connect to the majority of fellow anime fans.

That is, Citizen Kane may not be laugh-a-minute stuff, but its security in the cinema canon isn’t just down to original cinematography – it’s outstanding storytelling, well-acted, and emotional hefty. Which means that it is canonised by a combination of technological innovation and the continued love of contemporary cinephiles. It’s canonised because watching Kane pulls you into a larger community.

I suppose, in the end, I prefer to think of informal canon’s than of concrete lists: to encourage the idea that something can be re- or de- canonised by each generation. That might lead to anime having a stunted canon (at least for now), but I think it more accurately reflects the significance of developments in animation technology over the past half-decade to the modern viewer.

The thing is, if you’ll let me speak in cliches, the inmates can’t run the asylum. To set this project apart from being another MAL/Anime Suki/2chan flame war, popularity/fan polling has to be de-emphasized or separated from the selection process. I’d suggest to start by making a tentative plan.

Step 1: Collecting X number of people with high levels of knowledge, authority, and experience of the medium, through blogs, work in the industry, influence in the community, whatever, and start the discussion there. This group can always be expanded/shrunk, but most important thing to do is find these people, which seems to be part of the purpose of this post.

Step 2: Among this collection of peer experts, set the criteria. Industry influence? Fandom influence? Quality? Because person X or studio Y was involved is title Z automatically given consideration? Whittle down the traits that are going to be the most important, most valued.

Step 3: Make an early list. Lists can always be changed, but make one just to get the ball rolling. It gives the rest of us a better idea of what to look for.

I would hold off on building an essential episode list. Handling that sort of minutiae at this point in time seem more nightmarish than it’s worth.

Oh, and here’s an idea: Kate Dacey just recently posted an article (http://mangacritic.com/?p=1785) about the process of picking a “manga canon,” a topic which overlaps in many ways with your idea. Would it be worth it to modify this croudsourcing mechanism to fit both anime and manga into the system? (Obviously sectioned off into different canons.)

You could watch maybe one or two of these to get an idea of what a “typical” episode is like, but if you can’t devote yourself to watching almost 200 episodes of this, then you pick the ones that stand out for whatever reason.

If you want to talk about “narrative structure” between an older work and a later work, the only tangible string connecting the two are the creators who produced the said later work. I don’t think fans would be who you are looking to poll (although they are still a wonderful source of labor/crowdsourcing and information)