The first episode of Black Lagoon gave a nice glance at the scenery in the South China Sea. Black Lagoon in general goes pretty far with lavish scenery all the time. Just most of it is the craptown of Roanapur rather than the South China Sea, but it's still full of incredible detail.
Blame! is a unique version of this trope. It obviously lives and breathes Scenery Porn, but it is much less "pretty backgrounds" and more amazingly-detailed, gritty, futuristic architecture... and it works.
Le Chevalier d'Eon. The animators in this series like to use many types of cinematic shots and camera pans that are more associated with live-action than anime, and it results in many GORGEOUS shots of Paris and Versailles.
Uta Kata has a lot of emphasis on the Japanese town of Kamakura, with its historic sites and pretty beaches. The dream sequences are also beautifully rendered.
The Macross universe as a whole has this. Macross Zero, Macross DYRL, and Macross Frontier are standouts.
Macross Frontier did it wonderfully with the first several episodes showing off the beauty of the Frontier fleet. One episode is mostly Sheryl exploring the fleet in amazement at gorgeousness that rivals her own. But over the course of the series and their conflict with the Vajra, those shots steadily turn into Scenery Gorn. The last scene in the series, of their new home, is full of Scenery Porn though.
AIR, where the beautifully rendered sea and blue sky with white clouds serve as symbols in both the game and the anime series. The town is also depicted with great detail.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya pays a surprising amount of attention to its backgrounds, a small city and the local high school, despite the fact that these locations will initially seem mundane. The locations were inspired by Nishinomiya. Sharp-eyed viewers will also witness the five planes of motion illustrating such exciting activities as Kyon walking to school and the background in the Asakura vs. Yuki fight.
Kanon and CLANNAD were also inspired by real-world locations and are depicted beautifully.
"K-On!" takes a leaf from other Kyoto Animation works and features spectacular scenery, whether it be the sunsets and sunrises the girls see, or local parks and rivers.
Melody Of Oblivion's watercolor-style backgrounds are very beautiful, although because of the rich symbolism, they often are important to the plot.
To be fair, a number of anime JCStaff worked on (things like Honey And Clover and Nodame Cantabile to name a few) have that great watercolor background going on. Sometimes, it goes to the detriment of actual animation quality, but the backgrounds are plain beautiful.
The scenery in From The New World is nothing short of beautiful. It's clear that A 1 Pictures puts a lot of time, money, and effort into the series, as every bit of detail for the village and its surroundings are well illustrated.
Kimini Todoke's anime adaptation is saturated with beautiful, pastel-colored backdrops.
Kamichu! has a lot of shots of Onomichi, the seaside town where the main characters live, emphasizing the hilly landscape and shoreline.
Blue Drop contains many beautifully animated sceneries, usually involving lots of seabirds or Hagino's spaceship standing in for a submarine.
Masashi Kishimoto of Naruto has become a master of this in recent years. From the panoramas of Konoha, to the other villages, to various battlefields.
See (don't worry, it's Work Safe) the title page◊ from one of his early doujins. Yes, he even puts Scenery Porn into actual porn.
Mahou Sensei Negima! is infamous for its beautiful backgrounds which were made on a computer. Most of the tankoubon volumes actually have appendices showing off the models, and listing the real-world architectural influences they draw upon. Many people complain that they look out of place, what with the character models being simplistic to the point of Only Six Faces, although they certainly add a great deal to the atmosphere, especially once the MagicWorld arc gets started.
While it isn't as advanced or as noticed, Ken Akamatsu's previous series, Love Hina, had its backgrounds similarly developed.
ICE contains a quite a few pretty shots of the dystopian future world it tries to warn against.
Kara No Kyoukai may be a subversion, as it features incredible artwork and attention to detail, but in a very gloomy, run-down city setting. Not the second movie though, you get a very beautiful city for at least a good half.
Gankutsuou was known for this, regarding specially the psychedelic patterns
Mouryou No Hako has lovely background animation with vibrant colours and gorgeous shots of flowers, trees, riverbanks, picturesque little villages and the like.
The works of Katsuhiro Otomo, such as Akira, whose formal education was in the field of architecture, is known for his painstakingly rendered urban landscapes. You will say holy shit. This is noticeable even in his earlier works, which take place in a city in the seventies and not in any magnificent Neo-Tokyo.
Seirei No Moribito has the lush Ghibli Hills of their "real world" and the strange, spectacular Spirit World, both shown in eventless, lingering shots and accompanied by the proper soundtrack. Moribito's Scenery Porn might as well be X-rated. It's that damn good!
In Mokke the characters are often placed in shots that offer a good view of the hilly surroundings around the main characters' village. Yes, the Japanese really love their hills.
Arguably a lot of Yotsuba&! is devoted to stunningly realistic and gorgeously detailed drawings of Yotsuba's ordinary Japanese suburb, including several beautiful shots of the surroundings.
Diamond Daydreams is rife with beautiful shots of Hokkaido, Japan's northern-most island—so much, that it sometimes feels as if show has been sponsored by the Hokkaido Tourism Organisation.
The city of Alto Mare in Pokémon Heroes. Based on Venice, Italy and absolutely beautiful. Hell, you could say this for all the Pokémon movies. Every one of them opens up with a gratuitous, sweeping shot of the environment, and every one of them has some kind of ridiculously epic set piece that will probably get messed up pretty bad. It's become a joke among fans that the studios use research for movies as an excuse to go on a vacation.
CLAMP have made some good manga examples of this, which may or may not carry over to the animated adaptations. Present more or less in all their works but mostly in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, where some of the background art is truly spectacular (Rekort, Outo and Piffle, anyone?).
Dragon Ball is also rife with breathtaking establishing shots (that more often than not get blown up in the course of fight scenes) — it helps that Toriyama has a small army's worth of assistants to draw in all the windows of a skyscraper.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is positively awash with it, both in the manga and in the anime. There is no chapter or episode without some beautiful landscape thrown in, and there are a lot of chapters consisting of NOTHING ELSE than Scenery Porn. It is also should be considered as epitome of the grass Porn.
In Amanchu!, Kozue Amano again showcases her ability to draw lovely backgrounds, which was already the trademark of her highly successful other work, ARIA.
Binchou Tan blends the moe-aesthetic with lots of lovely shots of the hill and the town at its foot. Whether this is a match made in heaven or hell is up to debate.
Hayate the Combat Butler has some pretty stunning scenes. Sakura petals, cityscapes, giant Ferris wheels... pretty much all of the background work (of the manga) is impressive.
Yu Yu Hakusho has a nice moment of this, when, during a tournament held on an island, one fighter flies (he's one of the few in the series who can) up high over the island to get a good look at the ocean and feel the sunshine and the breeze; understandable, he's from the Demon World.
Scenery Porn, in combination with the fact that Kentaro Miura doesn't use assistants, is largely responsible for the snail's-pace at which chapters of Berserk are released.
Eiichiro Oda's detailed drawings of backgrounds and buildings in recent volumes of One Piece (especially the Thriller Bark arc) may qualify: although they don't distract from the story or the foreground, careful attention is still paid to them and they are one of the reasons for the more cinematic quality of the anime of late. Also, whenever the characters visit a new locale in the manga, a good page and a half is almost always dedicated to giving readers a good view the place.
Osamu Tezuka, the grandfather/deity of manga and anime, loved to do this. Many of his serious works, like Buddha and Phoenix, devote a noticeably large number of pages to showing gorgeously drawn vistas and photorealistic architecture. His works often devote entire pages to such beautiful scenery for nothing more than an establishing shot. There is also a huge contrast between Tezuka's simplified and cartoony character designs and the detail put into the full-page landscape art; it creates an effect that makes the characters stand out by visually separating humans and animals from inanimate objects and greenery.
Real Drive wallows in it, to the point of completely abandoning the plot just to show some lovely scenery.
Revolutionary Girl Utena has one of the most unbelievably beautiful schools ever. Both versions are extremely unlikely, but the quality and gorgeousness of the scenery makes it well worth it. Amazing in that Utena was a budget series.
Monster has a good bit of this, with many Real Life locations being painstakingly drawn.} To some extent this can be said for every Manga written by Naoki Urasawa. Pluto is especially fond of this as well.
Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has this in spades, with some of the most mind-blowing scenes also beautifully rendered.
Kenichi Sonada's Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats (both anime and manga versions) are set in Chicago. Sonada took a tour of Chicago before Gunsmith Cats was drawn, and took copious photographs and notes. As a result, it's not only possible for natives of the city to pinpoint where the action sequences take place, but also when, as Sonada happened to be visiting the city during a major face-lift being given to the Field Museum—and his animators faithfully reproduced the scaffolding that framed the building for a significant period of time.
Dennou Coil has beautifully rendered shots of the town and the virtual environments mixed with it.
Mononoke (not that one) has very detailed, stunning backgrounds similar to ukiyo-e art, particularly in the earlier arcs.
Although "that one" is no slouch in the scenery porn arena, either.
Noir does this for some of its locales, in particular Paris◊ and the Alps.
Any manga written by Ueshiba Riichi largely consists of Scenery Porn. You can spend hours examining all the details he put into backgrounds.
While Mysterious Girlfriend X is loved by many, the only reason most can form into words is the beautiful backgrounds.
Ah! My Goddess has a spectacular amount of this. Kosuke Fujishima is a huge fan of highly-detailed, perfectly-rendered buildings, often drawing vast scenes of a town market or technological district, not to mention Keiichi and Belldandy's amazing Temple/House. It extends to his love of vehicles as well.
Sora No Woto is.... Just... Look. Look I brought you a PV
Tekkon Kinkreet is chocked full of these. Nearly every background, inside and out, are painstakingly detailed, yet still manage to retain a soft, hand-drawn appearance. This even applies to scenes that incorporate CGI, which also uses textures that are hand-drawn.
Nurarihyon No Mago always does sweeping shots of their massively detailed scenery. The shot often also moves into the main house as though a camera were gliding through. Add in the impressive CGI cherry blossoms that sway in the wind magnificently and you can see that this show is fueled by this trope. Both of the opening credits are also amazing in this respect.
Kurozuka does this with everything from flowers to blood and dystopian cities.
Hell Girl, particularly at Ai's house and in the psychedelic scenes.
Hanasaku Iroha is very, very beautiful to look at, with the background almost reaching movie level. Many of the scenes are so photo-realistic that screen captures taken into photo shop and adjusted with the automatic "levels" tool don't change at all!
Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes this to Up to Eleven not just with the breathtaking shots of a futuristic Japan (just look at Madoka's house in the first episode!), but also with the witches' barriers, which combine Deranged Animation and Design Student's Orgasm to make for some surreally beautiful environments.
The Inazuma Elevenanime has extremely detailed backgrounds. And with the camera revolving around Endou or Tachimukai whenever either of them uses God Hand, the shots are redone with a new background every time it's used in a new location.
Danball Senki is led by the same team (Level 5 with OLM) as Inazuma Eleven and it shows, although the CGI is a bit more conspicuous (likely an intentional stylistic choice, since it's a futuristic sci-fi series).
The Wandering Sonanime. Even for all its faults with the manga fans, you can't help but notice how high-quality and gorgeous the anime is. There's not a moment of Off Model, the anime team payed attention to detail, and the series overall looks like an anime movie rather then a Twelve Episode Anime. It's especially noticeable at the end of the first episode, with the Sakura◊ Blossom◊ scene.
Every Kekkaishi volume cover is breathtakingly pretty in some way, to say nothing of the scenery within the manga itself.
In the Saint Beast anime there is a lot of time spent panning over the peaceful scenery of heaven.
Rebuild of Evangelion, being a retelling of Neon Genesis Evangelion using modern computer-rendered animation and CG, has a fair share of this. One notable example is an Establishing Shot in 2.0 depicting the day-by-day movement of Tokyo-3 in a calm morning. The shifting buildings, the moving solar-power thingies, train lines and such, all well animated and scored by a fitting soundtrack. The original series also has its moments, specially every time Shinji runs away.
Both OVA series of Ai No Kusabi go out of their way to beautifully depict the sci-fi futuristic world of Amoi. The 2012 OVA especially with all of it's CGI shots of the landscape and sky.
Arashi No Yoru Ni never disappoints with the shots of the mountains and the plains, it's so idyllic and peaceful, makes you want to live there forever!
Eyeshield 21 and pretty much anything drawn by Yusuke Murata is sheer artistic smut.
Adekan is this taken Up to Eleven. It's ridicolously rich in detail, beautifully drawn and makes the reader want to fall straight through the pages right into it... Then again... maybenot...
