I had a strong affinity for Dragonball Z when I was a kid (as I suspect most in this thread did) - every day at 5:30pm after school on Cartoon Network.
Even now I still listen to clips when I'm working out in the gym:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH_CcJ-uBWI
Those screams at 3:50 really get me going on the treadmill.
From that I became aware of anime and mange at large.
Several years ago I was given a copy of
.hack: Legend of the Twilight and it appealed to me as having elements from the Matrix interwoven with the main narrative.
Unfortunately it suffers from the staple cliches of friendship helping to overcome adversity and the power of belief bla bla bla.
The anime adaptation was faithful for the most part but as seems standard suffered from horrible ending syndrome.
One series that I enjoyed reading was
Death Note.
It's got quite a large following and was recommended by several friends.
I absolutely adored the moral ambiguity as the series progressed. The protagonist develops a not-so-acute case of megalomania but for the most part I found myself agreeing with the majority of his reasoning and arguments. True, his implementation was sometimes flawed and in some cases tricky to follow, but was nevertheless compelling.
It reminds me of the ROK article about how we always root for the villain.
However, I don't find much time for either these days.
After having attended comic conventions I found that there's a veritable library of titles of indulge in and weeks that can be lost watching series.
If I'm suggested something by lots of people that's verified as the greatest thing since sliced bread I'll give it a try, but I prefer to put my time towards something a little more productive like exercising or work.