By anime, do you mean animated ? If yes, the last one I watch and enjoyed was Ratatouille

1) Sailor Moon (for sentimental reasons)
2) Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuutsu
3) Tenshi na Konamaiki

1) my hime
2) Death note
3) Vampire Hunter D

I can't narrow it down to 3. But Hellsing was in there somewhere.

Cool nice lists there you all. Has anyone seen "Elfen Lied"? hearing some positive things about it but have not seen it...

I dont know if it can be classified as anime or not, but I like Avatar.

I am not familiar with Avatar, will do a google for it now.

Elfen Lied I thought was really good. A lot of gore and lots of sillyness. Not a top three spot in my book, maybe a top ten. If there was a forth spot it would have to go to Fate Stay Night.

Cool, thanks for the input madduckyduck I am relatively new (ish) to anime (into it for about 8 months )so an aspect of this thread was to get some recommendations for rentals. I agree vampire hunter D is a great film, very atmospheric and quite gritty. I might check out some of the ones you and Narue mentioned but a lot of these films are quite rare so it might not be that easy to rent them (I live in UK). Any ideas where I could (legally) get hold of some without shelling out £15 odd for a DVD I might not like. I heard that some anime was available for free (and more importantly legally) as a download for promotional purposes, any pointers on that?