lol action anime, thats why people hate anime, watch berseker that has a lot of action and big swords and stuff, i would recommend more deeper and inteligent stuff, but for me it is better to tell you to never go into a anime forum(a real anime forum not that american inuyasha, bleach, naruto fan forums) atleast if you wanna save all the bashing.

Elfen Lied and Trigun! :) I'm sure you'll like them.. (Trigun technically is 1998 I believe, but close enough!)

Try Fooly Cooly, it's not big on action but there are some fighting scenes, but it's just a must watch for anime lovers, the whole series is sadly only 6 episodes.

Let's recap.

Elfen Lied
Haruhi
Bebop
Ninja Scroll: The Movie
Trigun
Death Note
Evangellion
FLCL
Spirited Away
Berserk
Trust and Betreyal OVA
Hellsing
Claymore
Macross Plus
Golden Boy

You should watch them back to back, and in that order.

As my personal non action references, I recommend Chibi Vampire Karin and Love Hena.

Bleach, DBZ, Naruto, stuff like that are for people who have already seen those other shows and want more.

Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, Claymore, Gundam Wing/Seed/00 (Seed's really overrated though), Full Metal Panic and it's 2 sequels, Monster (if you liked death and code geass mess with your head style anime), Trigun (horrible ending though), Chrno Crusade, Wolf's Rain, Fate/Stay Night.

Not all action anime, but still very entertaining.

Double post, but quick reply is faster than edit.

Here's a good list. They aren't all action, but I'd say that any anime fan would love at least 100 of those anime (not necessarily the first 100).

http://animenfo.com/statistic/top.php?type=anime

BASILISK= NINJA AWESOMENESS

i don't like these thread at all but here i'm gonna help you:

www.animea.net

theres a humongous(really its the biggest i've seing) list of anime so you can download, the only way your dissatisfied is that your looking for hentai which saddly is nowhere to be seing in the site.

Elfen lied, GaiRei Zero, Macross Frontier, MazinKaiser, Mazinkaiser vs the Great General of Darkness, Shinkon Gattai Godannar, Gunbuster 2 (DieBuster),

still airing:
Toaru Majutsu no Index (my favorite this season)
Casshern Sins
Chrome Shelled Regios
Gundam 00

... hmmm.. maybe your too young for Elfenlied & Gairei Zero..

Oh yeah, I forgot about INdex, that's another great one.  Still sad that they changed the OP, that song was great, not as sad as I am that the music for Toradora changed though ; ;