Well, can you sell me on any of those options without spoiling me too thoroughly? What kinds of issues or questions do they raise? I only have the vaguest sense of what Evangelion and Hellsing are about, and I haven't heard of the third one.

We had an all-ages combined class until around two years ago, though we didn't let kids start until they were five. It was *brutal* trying to come up with lesson plans that could incorporate the needs of all those ages, especially when we didn't know week to week exactly who would be there. I kind of hated teaching that class, but I took my turn once a month like a good parent *g*. But as soon as we got enough kids attending regularly to split them up, I jumped ship for the junior high class immediately!

The first thing we did was read Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I only knew what happened in the first section of the series, but people told me that Nausicaa had to make a decision about genocide at the end, so that sounded promisingly meaty. The kids loved it and the discussions were fantastic, but we had a lot of problems with getting everyone to keep up on the reading, so we did an anime next, so that we could all watch the episodes together.