[Awards] Anime of The Year 2019
Greetings, it is time once again. I have emerged from my mysterious and dank cave, as I do once every year, to bring you my thoughts on the Japanese Animations I have viewed whilst holed up in the deepest depths of the earth. Please do not speak to me, for I am not used to human contact.
As always I watched a lot of anime this year, I'm not gonna go over all of them but mention the most notable ones giving them awards, and then announce the top 3 anime of the year. Are you ready? Here we go! Let's PAAAARTY! PUT YA GUNS ON!
First and foremost, the easiest one:
Best Still Airing Show:
Chihayafuru Season 3
Do I need to explain it? It's Chihayafuru! A great series that I started watching I believe early this year, or maybe late last year, in preparation for this 3rd season. Chihayafuru is a josei(a series meant for adult women) about a girl named Chihaya trying to become the Queen of Karuta and lead her Karuta team to victory. What's Karuta? Well, technically, karuta are just cards, but the characters often refer to the game they play as Karuta. The game they play is technically called Hyakkunin Isshu, or "100 Poets", and is a game in which you try to touch a card with the second half of a poem to the first half read by a card reader. At low levels, players will listen to the poem and try to remember what the second half is and find it on their or their opponent's side of the field. At high levels, in real life as well as the anime, players memorize the poems and their positions to the point at which they can get to the card after just 1-3 words, sometimes no more than 3 syllables. The idea is that you can know that when you here some combinations of words, or just some words entirely, that the card absolutely has to a certain one. If no other card starts with, say "I look towards", then no other second half of the poem card could be the one you need. Because of how the game works, a lot of hard work, skill, and a good grasp of how the game works is required. It's a show about people trying to be the best, needing to work hard to be good at the game in the same way you would to be the best at a sport. Except it's better than a sports show, because it's about classy shit like poems and it's also a character drama(okay some sports shows are character drama). I spent so long explaining the game because you kinda need to know what you're getting it, that I don't have time to sing many praises. I will say it has lots of tense "battles", really great characters and development, lots of actually emotionally touching moments, and is a pretty nice looking show to boot.
Honorary Anime of the Year:
Kamen Rider Gaim
I decided, quite recently, to start watching Kamen Rider Gaim. I've kinda wanted to watch a Kamen Rider show for a while now, and this is the one I was most interested in due to it being written by Gen Urobuchi. It's significantly more anime than I was anticipating, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I wasn't expecting what is essentially a live action anime. So I'll give it my "honorary anime" award and say you should check it out, it's pretty cool, and it's actually pretty easy to tell it's something written by Urobuchi even though the tone is by far much different from any of his other works.
Oh and uhhh, this came out in 2013. I just wanted to talk about it on here really. Since it's not an anime, it not being from 2019 shouldn't be an issue.
Most Surprisingly Good Anime:
Tensei Shittara Slime Datta Ken
This is a somehow not totally shit isekai anime. Like it's not great, I got kinda bored with it by the end, and I won't pick up a second season, but compared to the other "I died and went to/ended up in another world" anime it's pretty alright. That's all I got to say about it really.
Now, we'll take a look at some more non-standard awards, things that are really just an excuse to talk about notable shows.
Weirdest Show:
Dimension High School
Dimension High School is barely an anime. The animated side of is a cheap CG anime, the other half is a live action comedy drama thing. It's fucking weird, this could almost go in honorary anime because it's not even really one. It's about a group of totally not 25 year old high school students who get transported to the world by Spudio, who was sent by Oedipus, to the 2D world to fight for the Sphinx in order to save the 3D world from destruction. They do this by answering riddles, cuz it's the sphinx. It's a really stupid and silly show with some fun plot twists and it's just so weird. A goofy anime and a somewhat goofy TV drama all in one.
Most Wild Ride:
The Girl Who Chants Love at the End of the World: YU-NO
Make no mistake: YU-NO is a bad show. It's probably a bad adaptation of probably a bad remake of a probably a not very good but very influential old eroge VN. Basically stuff like Steins:Gate or hell, my personal favorite, Ever17: ~The Out of Infinity~ probably wouldn't exist without this story, since it came first and was popular enough in japan to not only get several ports, but an old anime(think the original Kanon anime) and a remake and an anime of that remake. Now, this story is fucking stupid and badly written, but it's also fucking insane and has a lot of great crazy concepts and integrated a lot of theoretical science and religion into it's story, which is something I always love. I don't wanna give too much up, but halfway through this story it switches from a typical SF VN where you try to solve problems by going through different character's routes, to a weird fucking Fantasy show where there are monsters and elves and the MC starts fighting with a sword. It's ridiculous, too abrupt, and too different from the original tone and genre. But I fucking love it. I can't give away the truth I mean it wraps back around to sci-fi by the end but so much of the runtime is just a totally different show and it's nuts. The ending is some 2001, practically End of Evangelion level shit. Check it out some time.
Most Interesting Ideas with Boring Execution:
Shoumetsu Toshi.
Not even gonna put down a key image here. Afterlost, or Shoumetsu Toshi(Annihilated City), is a an adaptation of a phone game. It has a lot of great and unique ideas and there were genuinely cool parts. This is an incredible concept but it's done boringly. It's a story about a courier on a vespa transporting an important magic girl to help her escape from an evil organization and go to a interdimensional crater in the middle of tokyo where a city, that disappeared in an event called "the lost", in order to unlock its secrets and to stop the organization from getting whatever power is there. They are attacked with what are essentially Stands but they're the souls of those who were killed in The Lost, and have powers representative of what they did in live. The girl's, well, Stand, is her late bodyguard Akira and he uses shitloads of guns as his power. There are so many high concepts in this, alternate dimensions, time travel, weird pocket dimensions where people can get caught in their last regrets, 4 dimensional beings, harnessing the power of the souls of the dead, and other such things. It'd be the wildest ride if it wasn't so boring. There's one episode, entirely one, that is genuinely really interesting and deep and the show woulda been great if it was all like that. Instead it's boring, it's like a generic anime you'd watch in the early 2000s because it's all your local anime selling store had.
It's OP is fucking great though:
https://youtu.be/SYMNL0dIfx4
Runner up: Bablyon, Fairy Gone
Most Jojo Jojo of the Jojo:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
I dunno if this counts it did start airing in 2018. Oh well, I just mostly wanted to use this to say Part 5 is maybe my least favorite Jojo so far. It's still real good, just not as good as the others, even part 1. Part 1 has some charm to it, and Dio, and Dio kicking a dog.
Most Funnest and Cutest Character of the Year:
Clara Valac(Mairimashita Iruma-kun!)
Clara is one of the 3 main characters of Mairimashita Iruma- kun!, along with Iruma, and Asmodeus. She is one of the funnest, cutest, and silliest characters in a long time.
She's absolutely adorable, totally innocent and childlike, a total ditz, a big weirdo, full of energy and always having fun. She's great!
Take note of her features: 1. Adorable sheep horns. 2. Her fun, vibrant eyes. 3. Shark teeth. 4. Cute little heart tail. 5. Adorable pockets with faces, which she can make anything come out of. 6. Cute weird slippers, named Connor and Murf. 7. Slippers with socks. 8 Constantly going off model to make fun smushy faces.
And guess what? There's something even BETTER.
She lives in a A BIG SHEEP HOUSE. LOOK AT THAT HOUSE.
And she has a FAMILY. A cute mama with fun hair and big boobs, 2 fun younger siblings, and 2 even younger little smusher siblings! They're so CUTE!
CUTE!!!
All the girls in this show are pretty good, but my favorite aside Clara is this purple demon girl with hidden eyes who I want to fug.
The show overall is pretty good too, it's a comedy series about a kid who gets his soul sold to a demon by his shitty parents, but luckily that demon just wants a grandkid to dote on. So he starts living with one of the literal kings of hell, and going to Babyls, a demon high school. He pretends to be a demon even though he doesn't look like one, and accidentally gets the men to respect and be loyal to him, and the women to all pretty much fall in love with him. Where the /ss/-time doujins?
Now, we move on to the bad stuff.
Worst Anime of the Year that wasn't Biggest Disappointment:
The Promised Neverland
I couldn't find a good size image of the key image so here's a dead kid. That about sums up this show and why it sucks. This isn't biggest disappointment, because while it's a big waste of potential at least it shows its true colors pretty fast and just goes downhill after that. The show spends all of 2/3 of the first episode pretending to be subtle, buildup tension, and act as if there is any mystery to this at all. It doesn't even pretend that this suspiciously utopian orphanage they live at doesn't have some ulterior motive. While there are still questions left at the end, most of the more interesting mysteries are not only explained quick but super abruptly and unceremoniously, and a big one is dumped on you at the end of the very first episode. This girl gets "adopted" and she left behind her teddy bear, so they try and take it to her before she leaves, but at the gate they discover this very pale and edgily drawn little girl corpse like it just fucking SMASHES it's way into the show like BAM look at me IT'S EDGY. So that explains what happens to the kids when they "get adopted" thanks for giving it away already and in the most unsubtle way you could. Then a couple monster men literally just come out and explain it to the audience anyway because it's a shounen jump show. Oh, yeah, there are demons. Spoilers they're all being raised like human cattle to be eaten by demons. That isn't even explained to you near the end it's near the beginning. You could argue that this isn't a mystery it's a dark mind games thriller. And yeah sure, but it treats itself as much mysterious than it is, acts as if it's at all subtle, and wants to be shocking and unexpected. Except, I can expect the majority of the twists and turns, and they're shown to me so haphazardly that I just can't feel the impact. It's so unsubtle and edgy, all of the dark stuff is so poorly handled. And god damn, that black woman is terrible. The characters try to have nuance while also basically having none. There are so many missed opportunities for good storytelling. And god dammit, I don't care how much you tell me they intentionally raised these 3 to be smart because smart kid's brains taste better(which is dumb btw what if they become smart enough to escape. We don't raise smart cows), I can't believe they're as smart as the show wants me to believe. Which is a dual problem, because they're actually not as smart as the story would have to believe anyway. I double don't buy it!
Runner up: Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator, Index Season 3
Biggest Waste of a Fun Idea:
Houkago Saikoro Club
No image for this one who cares. It was a fun idea, a show about girls who join a board game club and play board games after school. Sadly, rather than playing, you get an explanation of the rules(a bad one), and a few shots of a few events in the game, and then the end of the game. I realize board games take like an hour at the least to complete but I mean jeeze, show me that for at least 15 of the 20 minutes. The rest of the show is just some love live tier character development and drama and it sucks. This should have been a short, they already play the game for like 5 minutes total. Should have been: Introduce game and rules > show highlights of playing > show winner > end. Or maybe teach you more about the game and it's rules, like other hobby education anime. This just sucks.
Probably Worst Anime of the Year:
Psycho-Pass 3
No image for this one either, it doesn't deserve it. Pyscho-Pass 2 was already terrible, the only good thing out of Psycho-Pass was the movie and it was just okay, because it was written by Urobuchi like it should be. 3rd season is just a continuation of the shitty 2nd season and the shitty spin-off films. There's no reason to watch this, I guarantee you it's shit.
Runner up: Dr Stone.
Biggest Disappointment(Returning Series):
You don't know how much this pains me to say, but: JC Staff did not do a good job.
Okay, well, it doesn't pain me that much. They have an A team and B team, and this was clearly their B team. This show looks bad, like when nothing is moving, as long as it isn't made of metal and thus CG, it looks fine. Hell, the animation is fine even if it's kinda stilted, it's just that compared to the first season it's a huge fucking step down. You never have that crazy kinetic energy anymore, there's a lot of still images with wildly flailing tertiary parts but never the big stuff and motion from before. And the CG on Genos looks like ass. But, that's just visually. This is a disappointment because the story is bad too. I dunno, I guess the parts of OPM we got to see before were the good parts, because the story of this season is super lame. There is, I shit you not, a character who's motivation is unironically "when I was a kid I always felt bad for the monsters in superhero shows and they made fun of me so now I'm gonna be a monster to show why being evil and strong and shit is the best and that heroes are lame", in One Punch Man. Not a parody of that concept not a joke, they actually want you to feel an emotional connection with this character and concept. I mean, maybe this is JC Staff's team just not knowing how to do the style of satire that OPM does, and have botched the tone the manga was going for. Because, wow.
Runners up: Danmachi S2, Bananya S2
Biggest Disappointment(Worst Anime of The Year:
Fire Force/Enen no Shouboutai
Wew lad. What a shitshow. Holy shit, I couldn't even finish this. This is biggest disappointment and most wasted potential and worst anime of the year all rolled into one steaming log. This show had a lot going for it, it really did. The first episode was phenomenal, the directing, the acting, the animation, the story, the setting, the characters, the intensity, the drama. About the only thing I didn't like was the generic sound design. Anime have been having a sound design problem recently and I feel like I'm the only one who cares, they all use the same stock sound effects for pretty much anything. Impacts and explosions are especially bad and all sound the same. At least HeroAca doesn't seem to use them.
Episode one sets up this series as being potentially, for me at least, the next Full Metal Alchemist. The world is great, the protagonist has a deep and tragic origin and a unique design and character trait to him, the concept of people who spontaneously combust and turn into horrible fire demons that need to be put down is fantastic. I love that first episode, hell I loved it for like 5 episodes. After that, it just starts getting worse and worse. Each new episode introduces some dumb new plot element, some poorly done concept, some obnoxious character that would be laughed off of Naruto, or just some other inane bullshit. My least favorite is maybe the guy who repeats the same word literally like 30 times in a row while a badly composited zoomed out shot of him shows his model completely stationary except for very undetailed impossible arm movements of him hitting a guy with a cane 500 times a minute. This show is shit, what a fucking waste of time, money, and potential. I don't even have that much else to say. Did you know there's a guy who is able to use his fire magic to... heat people's skin to the point it becomes malleable enough to transform into another face, which includes changing the person's entire facial structure, rather than just fucking burning it? Did you know they use this for the lamest and most contrived "I think you're the bad guy because the bad guy was disguised as you!" plot point I've ever seen? This show just sucks so many balls. All of it's good points are outdone by a new thing that makes me upset or makes me not give a shit. What trashfire.
Oh, but now! Now we're finished the bads, it's time to move on to the goods.
Best Music & Best Shounen & Best Animation:
Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZf4BzmTrNc
Boy, that's a lot of awards! I would give "Best Shounen" to Jojo, or HeroAca season 4, but that's still airing, I'll probably count it as a 2020 anime, and Jojo was as I said the weakest of the series. Kimetsu no Yaiba was probably the best shounen, even if I did have some problems with the writing and plot points later on, in part due to it's fantastic music and animation(most of the time) by Yuki Kajiura(and the composer of Code Vein) and Ufotable respectively. I hope to see more but they announced that a fucking movie will be the continuation, so I can't wait to wait until the movie is subbed while the second season is potentially be airing without me able to watch it cuz I haven't seen the actual sequel! Or for them to end up never making a second season anyway...
Best Short:
Joshikausei
Not a lot to say about this. Just a fun short episode show, but with a twist! There's no dialogue, no one talks, it's all delivered nonverbally. It's a simple story so it's not that impressive but it's a fun idea that's done well. It's a slice of life show, various stuff happens, and it's really cute. That's all you need to know, I recommend checking it out.
Runner up: Tejina-senpai
Best Sci-fi:
Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh/Boogiepop and Others/Boogiepop wa Warawanai
Does Boogiepop count as sci-fi? I mean I think so there's some fantasy in there too but sure. I mostly just wanted a place to put it since it's not in my top 3.
Boogiepop is great. I didn't think it was amazing, but it was great. I feel like there are some parts they didn't adapt so well, and you can on some level tell this is an older story, but it was done really well and it's really good. Boogiepop is a show about a girl who is inhabited by some being from a higher plain of existence, who comes out whenever something that threatens reality emerges. Because of this, one of her enemies seems to be some strange metaphysical being that straight up wants to change reality, called an "Imaginator". If I had to theorize about it, I'd say it was some kind of congregation of the wills of several people who wanted things to change and maybe even committed suicide, as it appears in the form of a girl who jumped from a rooftop. One of the entities she claims is not her enemy, not inherently, is the Towa Organization, which is fairly evil but doesn't threaten existence, as their goal is to control evolution in the hopes ensuring humanity's survival in what the believe is an inevitable evolutionary war. So, that's the kinds of concepts Boogiepop employs. This time around there's a much less dreamlike feeling than the older anime, which wasn't a straight adaptation, but it's still there especially in many scenes. It has really good music, atmosphere, and directing, and covers a variety of philosophical, psychological, metaphysical, and scientific concepts, often in very obtuse ways that require taking a part, thinking about, and putting back together in order to even understand what exactly it's saying. While Boogiepop Phantom was much more David Lynch about it, this one still requires some thought to fully understand. I recommend it and the older show if any of this sounds interesting to you.
Runner up: Kanata no Astra
Best Fantasy:
Endro!
Endro! was a fun and cute slice of life comedy/fantasy anime! It's highly themed after the ideas and conventions of JRPGs. Even the name is taken from "End Roll", which the credits are generally called by the japanese. It begins, even, at the end of a JRPG story where the moe hero defeats the big bad Demon King and then goes on home, which credits playing and fun fake credits for various game design positions. The "story" kicks off with said Demon King reverting to the form of a small horned girl and being sent back in time instead of being sealed away, cuz there hero is a dummy, and formulating a plan to defeat the hero before she defeats her/him(?). She does this by... well she becomes their homeroom teacher. Silliness, cute stuff, and JRPG based humor ensues. It's a great show and you should totally watch it if you didn't. Even if you're someone like me who can get burned out on more generic moe anime but still likes moe anime, you should check it out! It's a good one, that may have gotten lost in the sea of tossed together cute girl shows.
Runner up: Fukigen na Mononokean: Tsuzuku!
The "I have nowhere else to put this" Award:
Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban Season 2
I just wanted to say the Ace Attorney anime is good and I think people who hate it are just adaptation purists and also are upset the budget isn't that great. I knew the anime wouldn't capture even half the feeling you get when you successfully corner and defeat your foe in Ace Attorney. The parts the anime can't do the same were designed around it being a game and are just not replicable in other mediums. I think it did a good job finding a replacement, and overall did a great job adapting the story of the games.
And!
Fruits Basket First Season
It was a good if not far too faithful remake of the original show. It's basically the same until it gets to the manga-only content. But still, it's Fruit's Basket
Best Comedy:
Wasted Lives of High School Girls/Joshikousei no Mudazuka
Really nice Azumanga Daioh style slice of life comedy. Main girl is basically Tomo but more of a shitty person, the humor in this can be really rude and dickish and I love that. It's a great and very funny comedy, for sure the best of the year, and maybe the best in a while. I have a soft spot for shows like this of course so I'm biased, but it's still a really good one and you should watch this instead of fucking Nichijou I swear to go- Anyway, lots of great fun characters, funny jokes, good episode gimmicks, lots of goofy shit, just an all around old school feeling anime that I like quite a bit.
Runners up: Dumbell nan Kilo Moteru?, Hataage! Kemono Michi, Africa no Salaryman
Finally, we're down to just 3. The top, 3, anime, of, the, year, comma, period.
Number 3:
Vinland Saga
Soon to be "Farmland Saga" apparently. This show is fantastic. A dark, serious, realistic and gritty show about a dark and violent period of human history that is fairly historically accurate and not very edgy about it, despite having themes and content that would be significantly edgier handled by anyone else. A story about a young boy whose father is killed by pirates when he's drafted to go fight in a Danish war against England, the boy follows the man who killed his father in order for a chance at revenge. He has the chance to do so, but turns it down, as he would have had to kill him out of combat. Due to his father's dishonorable death and how he was raised, he decides to git gud at killin dudes in order to kill the man and avenge his father properly. The story continues with him working for him for many years until he's a teenage. It's a dark, depressing, and incredibly well done character drama with some great nuanced and well fleshed out characters and I absolutely love that. I've seen many people who have Askeladd as one of their favorite characters on MAL and I can see why. Go check this show out.
Number 2:
Attack on Titan Season 3 part 2
You probably know what AoT is by now so I won't explain it. Hell, you probably know what happened this. I hope you understand why it's here. All the waiting, all the fucking about, all the mystery, all the hints, everything pretty much culminated and converged this season. I understand now, it all makes sense. The only thing I don't know is what's going to happen next. AoT has gone from an already unique world steeped in lore to something even more unique and steeped in lore. It's so good I barely mind that the story has decided it now wants to be a character drama and really delve deep into these people and it only sometimes works, or that they undid a main character death. Like you can't make this stuff up, you can't take away from it, some shit has gone down. Some shit has been revealed. Consequences will never be the same! No seriously though, everything is different and it's great. I wanna see what happens next I can't wait man, I can't. I might end up reading the manga.
Number 1:
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo
This is one of the best dramas in recent years. There were a couple missteps near the end that prevent it from being a 10/10 for me, but it's damn near close. I love this show, it's really good. It's a deep and emotional, well written drama that manages to not only handle sex as a theme, but the sexual desires of teenage girls as a theme, incredibly well and maturely. This is something I have a hard time ever finding, something that handles sex in an actually mature manner, as a core idea and not as a supplement to your story that you think makes it mature. All too often sex is handled immaturely, or is added into a story for the sake of it being "gritty" "real" and "mature", without being handled well and with the idea that "sex = maturity". This is a mature show, that understands puberty, sexual desire, its relation to love and romance, and the negatives and positives of sexual desire. It's about a group of good girl nerds who are just now understanding sexuality and puberty and are struggling to fully understand it as an aspect of human nature and society, and come to terms with it. It's a coming of age story that isn't metaphorical, it's a much more real and relatable coming of age story that might actually help a young person understand themselves better. This isn't a show for otaku to jerk off to JKs that wanna sex it up, it's not a faux mature story by a pretentious idiot, it's a good coming of age drama that handles the material incredibly well and is just a good story. I highly recommend it and it's my Anime of the Year!
Which means, it's over. It's done. It's time to end this! I use my final attack, "Finishing the Post!"
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, I'll have a game of the year post up sometime... uhh, well before the month is over probably.
As always I watched a lot of anime this year, I'm not gonna go over all of them but mention the most notable ones giving them awards, and then announce the top 3 anime of the year. Are you ready? Here we go! Let's PAAAARTY! PUT YA GUNS ON!
First and foremost, the easiest one:
Best Still Airing Show:
Chihayafuru Season 3
Do I need to explain it? It's Chihayafuru! A great series that I started watching I believe early this year, or maybe late last year, in preparation for this 3rd season. Chihayafuru is a josei(a series meant for adult women) about a girl named Chihaya trying to become the Queen of Karuta and lead her Karuta team to victory. What's Karuta? Well, technically, karuta are just cards, but the characters often refer to the game they play as Karuta. The game they play is technically called Hyakkunin Isshu, or "100 Poets", and is a game in which you try to touch a card with the second half of a poem to the first half read by a card reader. At low levels, players will listen to the poem and try to remember what the second half is and find it on their or their opponent's side of the field. At high levels, in real life as well as the anime, players memorize the poems and their positions to the point at which they can get to the card after just 1-3 words, sometimes no more than 3 syllables. The idea is that you can know that when you here some combinations of words, or just some words entirely, that the card absolutely has to a certain one. If no other card starts with, say "I look towards", then no other second half of the poem card could be the one you need. Because of how the game works, a lot of hard work, skill, and a good grasp of how the game works is required. It's a show about people trying to be the best, needing to work hard to be good at the game in the same way you would to be the best at a sport. Except it's better than a sports show, because it's about classy shit like poems and it's also a character drama(okay some sports shows are character drama). I spent so long explaining the game because you kinda need to know what you're getting it, that I don't have time to sing many praises. I will say it has lots of tense "battles", really great characters and development, lots of actually emotionally touching moments, and is a pretty nice looking show to boot.
Honorary Anime of the Year:
Kamen Rider Gaim
I decided, quite recently, to start watching Kamen Rider Gaim. I've kinda wanted to watch a Kamen Rider show for a while now, and this is the one I was most interested in due to it being written by Gen Urobuchi. It's significantly more anime than I was anticipating, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I wasn't expecting what is essentially a live action anime. So I'll give it my "honorary anime" award and say you should check it out, it's pretty cool, and it's actually pretty easy to tell it's something written by Urobuchi even though the tone is by far much different from any of his other works.
Oh and uhhh, this came out in 2013. I just wanted to talk about it on here really. Since it's not an anime, it not being from 2019 shouldn't be an issue.
Most Surprisingly Good Anime:
Tensei Shittara Slime Datta Ken
This is a somehow not totally shit isekai anime. Like it's not great, I got kinda bored with it by the end, and I won't pick up a second season, but compared to the other "I died and went to/ended up in another world" anime it's pretty alright. That's all I got to say about it really.
Now, we'll take a look at some more non-standard awards, things that are really just an excuse to talk about notable shows.
Weirdest Show:
Dimension High School
Dimension High School is barely an anime. The animated side of is a cheap CG anime, the other half is a live action comedy drama thing. It's fucking weird, this could almost go in honorary anime because it's not even really one. It's about a group of totally not 25 year old high school students who get transported to the world by Spudio, who was sent by Oedipus, to the 2D world to fight for the Sphinx in order to save the 3D world from destruction. They do this by answering riddles, cuz it's the sphinx. It's a really stupid and silly show with some fun plot twists and it's just so weird. A goofy anime and a somewhat goofy TV drama all in one.
Most Wild Ride:
The Girl Who Chants Love at the End of the World: YU-NO
Make no mistake: YU-NO is a bad show. It's probably a bad adaptation of probably a bad remake of a probably a not very good but very influential old eroge VN. Basically stuff like Steins:Gate or hell, my personal favorite, Ever17: ~The Out of Infinity~ probably wouldn't exist without this story, since it came first and was popular enough in japan to not only get several ports, but an old anime(think the original Kanon anime) and a remake and an anime of that remake. Now, this story is fucking stupid and badly written, but it's also fucking insane and has a lot of great crazy concepts and integrated a lot of theoretical science and religion into it's story, which is something I always love. I don't wanna give too much up, but halfway through this story it switches from a typical SF VN where you try to solve problems by going through different character's routes, to a weird fucking Fantasy show where there are monsters and elves and the MC starts fighting with a sword. It's ridiculous, too abrupt, and too different from the original tone and genre. But I fucking love it. I can't give away the truth I mean it wraps back around to sci-fi by the end but so much of the runtime is just a totally different show and it's nuts. The ending is some 2001, practically End of Evangelion level shit. Check it out some time.
Most Interesting Ideas with Boring Execution:
Shoumetsu Toshi.
Not even gonna put down a key image here. Afterlost, or Shoumetsu Toshi(Annihilated City), is a an adaptation of a phone game. It has a lot of great and unique ideas and there were genuinely cool parts. This is an incredible concept but it's done boringly. It's a story about a courier on a vespa transporting an important magic girl to help her escape from an evil organization and go to a interdimensional crater in the middle of tokyo where a city, that disappeared in an event called "the lost", in order to unlock its secrets and to stop the organization from getting whatever power is there. They are attacked with what are essentially Stands but they're the souls of those who were killed in The Lost, and have powers representative of what they did in live. The girl's, well, Stand, is her late bodyguard Akira and he uses shitloads of guns as his power. There are so many high concepts in this, alternate dimensions, time travel, weird pocket dimensions where people can get caught in their last regrets, 4 dimensional beings, harnessing the power of the souls of the dead, and other such things. It'd be the wildest ride if it wasn't so boring. There's one episode, entirely one, that is genuinely really interesting and deep and the show woulda been great if it was all like that. Instead it's boring, it's like a generic anime you'd watch in the early 2000s because it's all your local anime selling store had.
It's OP is fucking great though:
https://youtu.be/SYMNL0dIfx4
Runner up: Bablyon, Fairy Gone
Most Jojo Jojo of the Jojo:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
I dunno if this counts it did start airing in 2018. Oh well, I just mostly wanted to use this to say Part 5 is maybe my least favorite Jojo so far. It's still real good, just not as good as the others, even part 1. Part 1 has some charm to it, and Dio, and Dio kicking a dog.
Most Funnest and Cutest Character of the Year:
Clara Valac(Mairimashita Iruma-kun!)
Clara is one of the 3 main characters of Mairimashita Iruma- kun!, along with Iruma, and Asmodeus. She is one of the funnest, cutest, and silliest characters in a long time.
She's absolutely adorable, totally innocent and childlike, a total ditz, a big weirdo, full of energy and always having fun. She's great!
Take note of her features: 1. Adorable sheep horns. 2. Her fun, vibrant eyes. 3. Shark teeth. 4. Cute little heart tail. 5. Adorable pockets with faces, which she can make anything come out of. 6. Cute weird slippers, named Connor and Murf. 7. Slippers with socks. 8 Constantly going off model to make fun smushy faces.
And guess what? There's something even BETTER.
She lives in a A BIG SHEEP HOUSE. LOOK AT THAT HOUSE.
And she has a FAMILY. A cute mama with fun hair and big boobs, 2 fun younger siblings, and 2 even younger little smusher siblings! They're so CUTE!
CUTE!!!
All the girls in this show are pretty good, but my favorite aside Clara is this purple demon girl with hidden eyes who I want to fug.
The show overall is pretty good too, it's a comedy series about a kid who gets his soul sold to a demon by his shitty parents, but luckily that demon just wants a grandkid to dote on. So he starts living with one of the literal kings of hell, and going to Babyls, a demon high school. He pretends to be a demon even though he doesn't look like one, and accidentally gets the men to respect and be loyal to him, and the women to all pretty much fall in love with him. Where the /ss/-time doujins?
Now, we move on to the bad stuff.
Worst Anime of the Year that wasn't Biggest Disappointment:
The Promised Neverland
I couldn't find a good size image of the key image so here's a dead kid. That about sums up this show and why it sucks. This isn't biggest disappointment, because while it's a big waste of potential at least it shows its true colors pretty fast and just goes downhill after that. The show spends all of 2/3 of the first episode pretending to be subtle, buildup tension, and act as if there is any mystery to this at all. It doesn't even pretend that this suspiciously utopian orphanage they live at doesn't have some ulterior motive. While there are still questions left at the end, most of the more interesting mysteries are not only explained quick but super abruptly and unceremoniously, and a big one is dumped on you at the end of the very first episode. This girl gets "adopted" and she left behind her teddy bear, so they try and take it to her before she leaves, but at the gate they discover this very pale and edgily drawn little girl corpse like it just fucking SMASHES it's way into the show like BAM look at me IT'S EDGY. So that explains what happens to the kids when they "get adopted" thanks for giving it away already and in the most unsubtle way you could. Then a couple monster men literally just come out and explain it to the audience anyway because it's a shounen jump show. Oh, yeah, there are demons. Spoilers they're all being raised like human cattle to be eaten by demons. That isn't even explained to you near the end it's near the beginning. You could argue that this isn't a mystery it's a dark mind games thriller. And yeah sure, but it treats itself as much mysterious than it is, acts as if it's at all subtle, and wants to be shocking and unexpected. Except, I can expect the majority of the twists and turns, and they're shown to me so haphazardly that I just can't feel the impact. It's so unsubtle and edgy, all of the dark stuff is so poorly handled. And god damn, that black woman is terrible. The characters try to have nuance while also basically having none. There are so many missed opportunities for good storytelling. And god dammit, I don't care how much you tell me they intentionally raised these 3 to be smart because smart kid's brains taste better(which is dumb btw what if they become smart enough to escape. We don't raise smart cows), I can't believe they're as smart as the show wants me to believe. Which is a dual problem, because they're actually not as smart as the story would have to believe anyway. I double don't buy it!
Runner up: Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator, Index Season 3
Biggest Waste of a Fun Idea:
Houkago Saikoro Club
No image for this one who cares. It was a fun idea, a show about girls who join a board game club and play board games after school. Sadly, rather than playing, you get an explanation of the rules(a bad one), and a few shots of a few events in the game, and then the end of the game. I realize board games take like an hour at the least to complete but I mean jeeze, show me that for at least 15 of the 20 minutes. The rest of the show is just some love live tier character development and drama and it sucks. This should have been a short, they already play the game for like 5 minutes total. Should have been: Introduce game and rules > show highlights of playing > show winner > end. Or maybe teach you more about the game and it's rules, like other hobby education anime. This just sucks.
Probably Worst Anime of the Year:
Psycho-Pass 3
No image for this one either, it doesn't deserve it. Pyscho-Pass 2 was already terrible, the only good thing out of Psycho-Pass was the movie and it was just okay, because it was written by Urobuchi like it should be. 3rd season is just a continuation of the shitty 2nd season and the shitty spin-off films. There's no reason to watch this, I guarantee you it's shit.
Runner up: Dr Stone.
Biggest Disappointment(Returning Series):
You don't know how much this pains me to say, but: JC Staff did not do a good job.
Okay, well, it doesn't pain me that much. They have an A team and B team, and this was clearly their B team. This show looks bad, like when nothing is moving, as long as it isn't made of metal and thus CG, it looks fine. Hell, the animation is fine even if it's kinda stilted, it's just that compared to the first season it's a huge fucking step down. You never have that crazy kinetic energy anymore, there's a lot of still images with wildly flailing tertiary parts but never the big stuff and motion from before. And the CG on Genos looks like ass. But, that's just visually. This is a disappointment because the story is bad too. I dunno, I guess the parts of OPM we got to see before were the good parts, because the story of this season is super lame. There is, I shit you not, a character who's motivation is unironically "when I was a kid I always felt bad for the monsters in superhero shows and they made fun of me so now I'm gonna be a monster to show why being evil and strong and shit is the best and that heroes are lame", in One Punch Man. Not a parody of that concept not a joke, they actually want you to feel an emotional connection with this character and concept. I mean, maybe this is JC Staff's team just not knowing how to do the style of satire that OPM does, and have botched the tone the manga was going for. Because, wow.
Runners up: Danmachi S2, Bananya S2
Biggest Disappointment(Worst Anime of The Year:
Fire Force/Enen no Shouboutai
Wew lad. What a shitshow. Holy shit, I couldn't even finish this. This is biggest disappointment and most wasted potential and worst anime of the year all rolled into one steaming log. This show had a lot going for it, it really did. The first episode was phenomenal, the directing, the acting, the animation, the story, the setting, the characters, the intensity, the drama. About the only thing I didn't like was the generic sound design. Anime have been having a sound design problem recently and I feel like I'm the only one who cares, they all use the same stock sound effects for pretty much anything. Impacts and explosions are especially bad and all sound the same. At least HeroAca doesn't seem to use them.
Episode one sets up this series as being potentially, for me at least, the next Full Metal Alchemist. The world is great, the protagonist has a deep and tragic origin and a unique design and character trait to him, the concept of people who spontaneously combust and turn into horrible fire demons that need to be put down is fantastic. I love that first episode, hell I loved it for like 5 episodes. After that, it just starts getting worse and worse. Each new episode introduces some dumb new plot element, some poorly done concept, some obnoxious character that would be laughed off of Naruto, or just some other inane bullshit. My least favorite is maybe the guy who repeats the same word literally like 30 times in a row while a badly composited zoomed out shot of him shows his model completely stationary except for very undetailed impossible arm movements of him hitting a guy with a cane 500 times a minute. This show is shit, what a fucking waste of time, money, and potential. I don't even have that much else to say. Did you know there's a guy who is able to use his fire magic to... heat people's skin to the point it becomes malleable enough to transform into another face, which includes changing the person's entire facial structure, rather than just fucking burning it? Did you know they use this for the lamest and most contrived "I think you're the bad guy because the bad guy was disguised as you!" plot point I've ever seen? This show just sucks so many balls. All of it's good points are outdone by a new thing that makes me upset or makes me not give a shit. What trashfire.
Oh, but now! Now we're finished the bads, it's time to move on to the goods.
Best Music & Best Shounen & Best Animation:
Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZf4BzmTrNc
Boy, that's a lot of awards! I would give "Best Shounen" to Jojo, or HeroAca season 4, but that's still airing, I'll probably count it as a 2020 anime, and Jojo was as I said the weakest of the series. Kimetsu no Yaiba was probably the best shounen, even if I did have some problems with the writing and plot points later on, in part due to it's fantastic music and animation(most of the time) by Yuki Kajiura(and the composer of Code Vein) and Ufotable respectively. I hope to see more but they announced that a fucking movie will be the continuation, so I can't wait to wait until the movie is subbed while the second season is potentially be airing without me able to watch it cuz I haven't seen the actual sequel! Or for them to end up never making a second season anyway...
Best Short:
Joshikausei
Not a lot to say about this. Just a fun short episode show, but with a twist! There's no dialogue, no one talks, it's all delivered nonverbally. It's a simple story so it's not that impressive but it's a fun idea that's done well. It's a slice of life show, various stuff happens, and it's really cute. That's all you need to know, I recommend checking it out.
Runner up: Tejina-senpai
Best Sci-fi:
Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh/Boogiepop and Others/Boogiepop wa Warawanai
Does Boogiepop count as sci-fi? I mean I think so there's some fantasy in there too but sure. I mostly just wanted a place to put it since it's not in my top 3.
Boogiepop is great. I didn't think it was amazing, but it was great. I feel like there are some parts they didn't adapt so well, and you can on some level tell this is an older story, but it was done really well and it's really good. Boogiepop is a show about a girl who is inhabited by some being from a higher plain of existence, who comes out whenever something that threatens reality emerges. Because of this, one of her enemies seems to be some strange metaphysical being that straight up wants to change reality, called an "Imaginator". If I had to theorize about it, I'd say it was some kind of congregation of the wills of several people who wanted things to change and maybe even committed suicide, as it appears in the form of a girl who jumped from a rooftop. One of the entities she claims is not her enemy, not inherently, is the Towa Organization, which is fairly evil but doesn't threaten existence, as their goal is to control evolution in the hopes ensuring humanity's survival in what the believe is an inevitable evolutionary war. So, that's the kinds of concepts Boogiepop employs. This time around there's a much less dreamlike feeling than the older anime, which wasn't a straight adaptation, but it's still there especially in many scenes. It has really good music, atmosphere, and directing, and covers a variety of philosophical, psychological, metaphysical, and scientific concepts, often in very obtuse ways that require taking a part, thinking about, and putting back together in order to even understand what exactly it's saying. While Boogiepop Phantom was much more David Lynch about it, this one still requires some thought to fully understand. I recommend it and the older show if any of this sounds interesting to you.
Runner up: Kanata no Astra
Best Fantasy:
Endro!
Endro! was a fun and cute slice of life comedy/fantasy anime! It's highly themed after the ideas and conventions of JRPGs. Even the name is taken from "End Roll", which the credits are generally called by the japanese. It begins, even, at the end of a JRPG story where the moe hero defeats the big bad Demon King and then goes on home, which credits playing and fun fake credits for various game design positions. The "story" kicks off with said Demon King reverting to the form of a small horned girl and being sent back in time instead of being sealed away, cuz there hero is a dummy, and formulating a plan to defeat the hero before she defeats her/him(?). She does this by... well she becomes their homeroom teacher. Silliness, cute stuff, and JRPG based humor ensues. It's a great show and you should totally watch it if you didn't. Even if you're someone like me who can get burned out on more generic moe anime but still likes moe anime, you should check it out! It's a good one, that may have gotten lost in the sea of tossed together cute girl shows.
Runner up: Fukigen na Mononokean: Tsuzuku!
The "I have nowhere else to put this" Award:
Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban Season 2
I just wanted to say the Ace Attorney anime is good and I think people who hate it are just adaptation purists and also are upset the budget isn't that great. I knew the anime wouldn't capture even half the feeling you get when you successfully corner and defeat your foe in Ace Attorney. The parts the anime can't do the same were designed around it being a game and are just not replicable in other mediums. I think it did a good job finding a replacement, and overall did a great job adapting the story of the games.
And!
Fruits Basket First Season
It was a good if not far too faithful remake of the original show. It's basically the same until it gets to the manga-only content. But still, it's Fruit's Basket
Best Comedy:
Wasted Lives of High School Girls/Joshikousei no Mudazuka
Really nice Azumanga Daioh style slice of life comedy. Main girl is basically Tomo but more of a shitty person, the humor in this can be really rude and dickish and I love that. It's a great and very funny comedy, for sure the best of the year, and maybe the best in a while. I have a soft spot for shows like this of course so I'm biased, but it's still a really good one and you should watch this instead of fucking Nichijou I swear to go- Anyway, lots of great fun characters, funny jokes, good episode gimmicks, lots of goofy shit, just an all around old school feeling anime that I like quite a bit.
Runners up: Dumbell nan Kilo Moteru?, Hataage! Kemono Michi, Africa no Salaryman
Finally, we're down to just 3. The top, 3, anime, of, the, year, comma, period.
Number 3:
Vinland Saga
Soon to be "Farmland Saga" apparently. This show is fantastic. A dark, serious, realistic and gritty show about a dark and violent period of human history that is fairly historically accurate and not very edgy about it, despite having themes and content that would be significantly edgier handled by anyone else. A story about a young boy whose father is killed by pirates when he's drafted to go fight in a Danish war against England, the boy follows the man who killed his father in order for a chance at revenge. He has the chance to do so, but turns it down, as he would have had to kill him out of combat. Due to his father's dishonorable death and how he was raised, he decides to git gud at killin dudes in order to kill the man and avenge his father properly. The story continues with him working for him for many years until he's a teenage. It's a dark, depressing, and incredibly well done character drama with some great nuanced and well fleshed out characters and I absolutely love that. I've seen many people who have Askeladd as one of their favorite characters on MAL and I can see why. Go check this show out.
Number 2:
Attack on Titan Season 3 part 2
You probably know what AoT is by now so I won't explain it. Hell, you probably know what happened this. I hope you understand why it's here. All the waiting, all the fucking about, all the mystery, all the hints, everything pretty much culminated and converged this season. I understand now, it all makes sense. The only thing I don't know is what's going to happen next. AoT has gone from an already unique world steeped in lore to something even more unique and steeped in lore. It's so good I barely mind that the story has decided it now wants to be a character drama and really delve deep into these people and it only sometimes works, or that they undid a main character death. Like you can't make this stuff up, you can't take away from it, some shit has gone down. Some shit has been revealed. Consequences will never be the same! No seriously though, everything is different and it's great. I wanna see what happens next I can't wait man, I can't. I might end up reading the manga.
Number 1:
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo
This is one of the best dramas in recent years. There were a couple missteps near the end that prevent it from being a 10/10 for me, but it's damn near close. I love this show, it's really good. It's a deep and emotional, well written drama that manages to not only handle sex as a theme, but the sexual desires of teenage girls as a theme, incredibly well and maturely. This is something I have a hard time ever finding, something that handles sex in an actually mature manner, as a core idea and not as a supplement to your story that you think makes it mature. All too often sex is handled immaturely, or is added into a story for the sake of it being "gritty" "real" and "mature", without being handled well and with the idea that "sex = maturity". This is a mature show, that understands puberty, sexual desire, its relation to love and romance, and the negatives and positives of sexual desire. It's about a group of good girl nerds who are just now understanding sexuality and puberty and are struggling to fully understand it as an aspect of human nature and society, and come to terms with it. It's a coming of age story that isn't metaphorical, it's a much more real and relatable coming of age story that might actually help a young person understand themselves better. This isn't a show for otaku to jerk off to JKs that wanna sex it up, it's not a faux mature story by a pretentious idiot, it's a good coming of age drama that handles the material incredibly well and is just a good story. I highly recommend it and it's my Anime of the Year!
Which means, it's over. It's done. It's time to end this! I use my final attack, "Finishing the Post!"
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, I'll have a game of the year post up sometime... uhh, well before the month is over probably.
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Ey watchu think mang?