[Awards] Anime of The Year 2024

As I sit here, writing the intro last, it's the 31st of March, I'm down to the wire to get these "of the year" posts out within the first 3 months of the year. That's already too late really, but what are you gonna do? Get them done earlier next time? Huh? I'm not gonna do that!

 

Anyway, I watched a good amount of anime last year, both new and old. I spent a bit too much time re-watching shows, but I did at least make my way to some stuff I hadn't seen yet. That was a lot more interesting than the new shows this year, what a surprise, but there are some good ones there too, including another series I'm now really invested in. 

 

But we gotta get to the other stuff first, before we can get to the awards part. I did watch a bunch of old stuff, after all.

 

So first, we'll go over some shows I re-watched.

 

Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero!

 

 

I decided to finish off the third season of Yuuki Yunna which I originally dropped due to, mostly, a misunderstanding of what it was; See, I thought it was a retconning of the original ending, basically saying nope everything's back to how it was, and also just focusing on totally different characters for some reason. In reality, it's that it started after the end of Season 2, but then cuts to an adaptation of one of the spin-offs. I was annoyed because I didn't realize this, and thought it was just some made up characters out of nowhere who are also fighting the Vertex and I thought it was stupid. But I'll wait on what I think of it now, because I also just rewatched season 1 and 2, as well as watched some shorts and the movie versions of the prequel story(the best part), Washio Sumi is a Hero.

So for the uninitiated, what is Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero, aka YuYuYu(JP title is "Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de aru)? Well it's a dark magical girl anime for otaku instead of little girls, and is heroic tragedy story about young girls chosen by the gods to do battle and, shock of all shocks, become sacrifices for the greater good as young girls chosen by the gods often are. It does a good job at justifying why it's 14 year old girls honestly, classic "virgin sacrifice" stuff. These young girls must fight the forces of the Vertex, monsters from another dimension(or so they tell you), who will eat away at the world tree, their faith's god Shinju-sama, and if they do, the world will be destroyed... there are a lot of twists and turns about this, even them being sacrificial is meant to be a secrete, but it's a core part of the story and it's appeal. This tragedy of these heroic young souls being cut short in the name of not even defeating the enemy but just staving them off. It's a story where the eventual triumph comes after many great sacrifices, a victory that couldn't have come without the efforts of those who came, and fell, before them. A great heroic soul who's heart is stirred by this suffering, making her will so strong she can achieve a miracle and end this conflict.

And also a lot of stuff about fun cute girls doing cute girl stuff. It's a great balance of that, they're funny silly and cute characters who mess around most of the day, and then have their peaceful lives torn away from them by the cruel hand of fate, so you care all the more about it happening and would love to stop the tragedy. Which they do, admittedly, go back on a bunch of it so the main girls can end up fine, but bad shit happens in the prequels and is not undone so they kinda make up for it. The girls are all members of the "Hero Club" and at first it seems like they're just a club who does community service stuff, and even after becoming magical girls they still don't neglect helping people in more mundane ways because that too is an important part of being a hero. The protagonist, Yuuki Yunna(psst, yuuki means "courage"), exemplifies a hero in many ways, having a headstrong and selfless nature which is the source of both her greatest strengths and weaknesses. She's great. All the girls are great, there's Wasshio Sumi/Togou Mimori(Wasshi/Mimorin), Fuu and Itsuki Inubouzaki, and Miyoshi Karin as the main characters. They're all really great, but I think Karin is my favorite. She's a typical but very well executed tsundere, starting off very standoffish and haughty and ending up being the one who cares about her friends the most. She also gets a cool scene where she makes her last stand and says "Witness me as I, Miyoshi Karin, go on a once-in-a-liftime rampage!" A true hero, I think all the girls deserve the the status of Legendary Hero by the end of both seasons.

 

The first season is an original project and ends... kinda stupid, a half-assed forced attempt at a "happy ending" so that we can end on a positive note, even if everything's still fucked and they basically just ignore it. The second season made up for it a lot, but before that there were light novel adaptations and spin-offs. One of them eventually got adapted into 3 40-something minute "movies" that were eventually recut into 6 episodes for the first half of season 2, which then had 6 episodes of an all-new sequel, in which the conflict was finally ended. It was great, it makes up for almost all my issues with the ending of the first season and has it's own, amazing, fantastic ending. The climax is one of the coolest I've seen in an anime with a very cool and stylish "the color cuts out from how INTENSE it all is" attack set to some awesome music, and the end of the story is a great and optimistic one in which everything isn't fixed, we have a lot to still work on and it's gonna be a long road, but one that we will walk together. It's great, like I said, true heroes. Speaking of the music, it's good to mention that the music in general is great, it's the guys at Keiichi Okabe's MONACA studio, who do the music for Yoko Taro's games and it's the same style. There is indeed some Emi Evans chaos language in here, all over the place, it's great and lends to the kind of mythical feel of the story despite it's contemporary setting. Both these seasons are really great, I love the characters and I feel for their struggles and am moved by their triumphs, it's a great show with a lot of fun slice of life stuff as well as great action stuff, with a fantastic balance of the two like I said. There are better stories with better animation and better characters in anime but I think this one is done really well, it's not in my top favorites but it's still a favorite, and depending on my mood it might be in the top lol. I highly recommend it.

 

But what about season 3? Well, if you really liked S1 and 2, I do recommend it, but keep in mind what it is. The first part is an adaptation of Kusunoki Mebuki is a Hero and it's a story about some heretofore unmentioned group of sentinels who also kinda defend against the Vertex but with piddly guns instead of big magic swords and stuff, a lot of them die. It's not, in my humble opinion, very good. It's whatever, knowing what it's meant to be. Works as a greater piece of the story and all the more reason we must end this senseless sacrifice, but still it's whatever. Next though, they do a... sorta adaptation of Nogi Wakaba is a Hero, which is about an ancestor of one of the characters who was the first to become one of the Heroes. It's got a lot cut out of it and starts in the last 3rd of the story where one of the girls is going crazy. I really like what I saw but it was clear I only got a snippet of the story, just one that seemed good. If it wasn't tragic enough for you, if the burden this placed on the girls wasn't unfair enough, well here you go. They actually improved the Hero System since then lol. After that it's an expanded version of the end of S2 but with some stuff that ties into the other stories and explains some things that were something you had to say "Oh okay I guess that's happening." about in the original, not a plot hole but seemed kinda convenient and too magical, maybe. I think the expanded finale is great and really impresses upon you the idea of all this sacrifice leading to this point, similar to something like Final Fantasy X, leading to it being all the more satisfying when we put an end to it. Then, there's a time skip epilogue to when they're older and are doing some [spoiler] related stuff and it's a great little addition to the story and great for someone like me who is really invested in them and wanna see what becomes of them. The Hero Club duties expand and change after everything, and it's great to see our heroes once more. 

Overall I think it was worth watching but it ain't that great, it's definitely only for if you're already a big fan. I am, so it was mostly enjoyable, but if you watch those first 2 seasons and don't think really highly of them, don't watch S3.

Railgun + Railgun S

 

Couldn't find a good picture of either series' key arts, so here's a fan arts.

 

I didn't see either season for a while so I decided to re-watch it. I did my DVDs for the first season and my BDs for the second. 

So what do I think? Well I still really like season 1, but I'm actually not as hot on it as I used to be. I think S is definitely the better season and by a decent amount. But I still think Railgun S1 is a fantastic anime, just maybe not as much as I used to think. I got bored at a couple points, wow! But overall it's not boring at all, it's still funny, endearing, and exciting. 

If you don't know, A Certain Scientific Railgun is a spin off of A Certain Magical Index, which now has a billion spin offs and actually Railgun has like 2 spin offs too. The series as a whole is fucked and I'm not into it. I have seen 2.5 seasons of Index and it's bad, there's some good stuff in there but overall it's just a sub-par light novel story, at least for the time it started lol as far as light novels go now it's a masterpiece compared to them. I know fans say the light novels are better but I've read some of them and not really. The only good one is volume 8, which is about a Railgun character and kinda feels like a Railgun side story. Speaking of, I need to read the Railgun spin-off light novels short stories. 

Railgun though, the first 2 seasons/2 arcs in the manga, that's some good shit. It's a sci-fi action/slice of life show set in Academy City, which is full of teenage ESPers. Which goes as well as you'd expect. The show follows Misaka Mikoto, the 3rd ranked Level 5 psychic, the highest level, who is the strongest electromaster with amazing electricity/electromagnetic powers. She has lots of shenanigans and as well as incidents along with her friends, Level 4 teleporter Shirai Kuroko, Level 2 thermoregulator Uiharu Kazari, and Level 0(no powers) Saten Ruiko. Mikoto being a headstrong tomboy who wears shorts under her skirt, with a short temper, a strong sense of justice, and a big heart. Kuroko is a more cynical and haugty but still very justice oriented member of a student police force which is mostly supposed to find lost children and/or cats and report crimes to the real cops, but she oversteps her jurisdiction all the time to do some crimefighting. She's also a pervert who is in love with Mikoto, trying her best to get physically intimate with her despite the feeling not being mutual. Sometimes the show goes a bit too far with that for the sake of comedy and you have to forget what she's done in serious scenes, but I can do that. Uiharu is your typical moe blob, voiced by the same woman as Yui from K-On, but is kind of a nerd. She does computers and is a gamer, and is also secretly The Goalkeeper, a renowned counter-hacker hacker who protects the servers for Judgement, which she and Kuroko work for. She's unaware of her reputation. Saten is kind of an average everygirl who likes hot singer guys and stuff, but she's smarter than she seems and has a love of urban legends(all of which turn out to be true, they're always true in this series). Various incidents occur, in between messing around in the city and being students, and they gotta do stuff about it.

It's got a similar appeal to Yuuki Yuuna, what with it being fun moe slice of life stupid stuff half the time and cool action the other half. While Yuuna has higher stakes, I tend to like Railgun much, much more, because of something it does that the other show doesn't. This ties into why I think the anime is better than the manga. The anime, the first 2 seasons at least, has a second anime-original arc. I know what you're thinking, "ew, filler!", but no. They actually finish off the dangling threads that the manga left, for example the first arc has a well-meaning antagonist who really is doing what she's doing for a good cause, in the manga the tragedy she's trying to rectify is left as-is but in the show, she returns in the second arc and this time works with Mikoto so they can fix things without hurting anyone. The manga has the upper hand in terms of style, I like the way the characters look and their expressions much more in the manga than I do the anime, it looks good but it's got a totally different artstyle. The manga reflects it being in a shounen magazine with it having maybe a bit of classic shounen influence, and I like it a lot. The anime's look does kinda reflect that it's got a bigger focus on the slice of life, but I really think it woulda been fun to see those scenes with the manga's artstyle. But the show has that upper hand of caring more about the characters because you see those other sides of them and wanting them to be able to return to normalcy, but also because it does what I call "character compounding", because I dunno if this has a term. It's when character traits are reiterated so as to "compound" them, the more the established traits are displayed the more you feel they're "true"; if a character does something once, it's established they're a certain way, but if they never do it again, it doesn't feel as "real" as if they consistently do. The character in turn, even if they're unrealistic, feels more like a "real" person, aiding in suspension of disbelief and their believability. This can be overdone to the point of repetition, or worse a character can become flanderized when a well-known trait is exaggerated while others are discarded, but if done right it can make characters you're more invested in than someone more complex. I think Railgun S1 actually overdoes it just a little bit now, but only a little. It does have great and important things, which S2 also has, in anime-original scenes and episodes that further develop the characters, another reason why I like it more than the manga, though the manga also adds some of these(right before it goes bad) later on. Like, after the first arc which Saten is a key part of, it goes into episodes that show more of her perspective on what happened and how it affected her, and how she will try to change from then on. It makes the story very character-driven and expands upon the story's themes in a great way. In the end, Railgun S, the second season, is still better than season 1 which I think has more of that, but it's because of the higher stakes. Season 2 sees our heroine in a struggle that traumatizes her, and places great physical, mental, and emotional burden on her, ending in a damn nervous breakdown and a genuinely fantastic dramatic scene near the end of that arc. The build-up to the higher stakes is done so well in the anime, because we start fairly low stakes in arc 1, arc 2 ups them a bit, then the 3rd really hits you with the heavy stuff. Railgun's first season is important to the enjoyment I get out of the second, seeing this character who we've been endeared to through fun scenarios and more serious scenarios faced with such a dark one and having to deal with it hurts all the more than if we just had the first setup arc. The dark secrets of Academy City are also well built up, with the second arc of the anime helping do that even more. The manga honestly just kinda jumps to it. The anime also then has the lighter arc which once more goes over characters' feelings on the situation as well as follows up on both anime-original characters and the previous arc. I think it's second arc is worse than the first season's second arc, but all the good really outweighs the bad and it's only a few aspects(the antagonists mostly) that are worse. Both Railgun and Railgun S are my favorite anime, I was glad to watch it again. S is definitely exactly as good as I remember it.

Kill la Kill

 

 

Another anime about an angry yelling tomboy that came out not too long after Railgun S, I also re-watched Kill la Kill. 

This was Studio Trigger's first TV anime, and was their only good one until Dungeon Meshi and that's an adaptation. As for original work, what do they got? Darling in the Franxx? SSSS. Gridman and Dynazelon(not checking if the second one is the correct name)? Oh well.

Gurren Lagann is still the best Hiroyuki Imaishi anime, but Kill la Kill is up there. 

Kill la Kill is an anime heavily inspired by good old classic crass anime like Cutey Honey, tokusatsu shows like the live action Sukeban Deka, and also apparently a manga called Kakugo no Susume which was turned into the ill-fated Apocalypse Zero OVA which got canceled early. It's a... I guess it's a fanservice action show, very very old shounen in it's structure and storyline, basically a distillation of that combined with a lot of sexual humor in a very Go Nagai fashion. It follows Matoi Ryuko, the girl with the scissor sword, looking for the owner of the other scissor, as she is the one who killed her father. Kill la Kill of course becomes far more complicated than this, but I don't wanna say how because watching the story slowly evolve from a bad guy of the week getting taken care of by big Fist of the North Star on-screen attack name text attacks to, well, what it becomes by the end is something you need to experience for yourself. I love this show, watching it again has cemented it as one of my favorites, I don't care what anyone says. You get used to the copious amounts of blatant and trashy fanservice and sex jokes, eventually it just becomes white noise; it's how the setting operates and it's not like it's not aware of how dumb it looks. It is really tied to the themes of the show, and I don't mean the whole excuse of oh you gotta master your embarrassment and be bold enough to stand half-naked without hesistation to properly utilize your skimpy power-clothing. That's still just an obvious excuse, on the level of "Well, Quiet breathes through her skin." It's more that the nature of that excuse is part of the whole thing, it gets very interesting with those ideas later on, as silly as talking about whether or not clothes are friends can sound. It's all metaphorical and allegorical, and it's tone is aware of how over the top everything is in the same way Gurren Lagann was, once you see past that there's a lot of depth there. Far more in Gurren Lagann, but Kill la Kill has some great characters.

On her revengeance quest, Ryuko meets Senketsu, a sentient sera fuku who is actually a "kamui", originally localized to "god robe" by the main fansubbers though weirdly, the aniplex dub keeps all of these terms in their original japanese. The official "english" name for "thread stripper", her signature attack, is the japanese "sen i soshitsu", so that's what the voice actress says. The videos I downloaded for this had dual audio so I checked the dub a couple times. This results in the well-known stripperiffic outfits she, and her rival Kiryuin Satsuki wear, being just called "kamui" too. Senketsu is such a great character, which is weird to say about an article of clothing. He sticks by Ryuko with fierce loyalty, he is her clothing, and he sticks to that. The two have a great friendship/comradeship and a good chemistry with each other, as well as having it build up very nicely. One of my favorite of his scenes is when he protects her from an antagonist of one episode, a recurring and important character, and bonks his "head" onto the guy's so he can telepathically communicate that the dude's gonna have to go through him. He's a total bro, and a true friend. Senketsu is great.

The rival, Satsuki, is also great. Her and her 4 captains are amazing, she rules the school with an iron fist as the head of the Disciplinary Comittee, her totalitarianism just one thing that Ryuko wants to overthrow in her quest for revenge. Her motives for doing so may be a bit different than originally thought, she starts out as a great villain but the more you learn about her the more complex she becomes. Her resolve is so strong they made memes about it, she's a cool, elegant, and strong willed character who is so compelling to see. Her 4 henchman are also really fun, though much more simple. We got the ex-delinquent kendo team captain who goes through an excellent arc of self-improvment in order to defeat Ryuko, which doesn't work out but he really does improve himself and become a fantastic and wise warrior. We have the dorky computer guy, who has no arc but is still really fun and cool. Equally static but it feels more intentional there, we have the band club captain, the only girl, who is a tiny little smug bitch who's really fun and fights with music. Then finally there's the best guy, big as fuck Gamagori Ira, who's in charge of discipline and who's power is that he's actually a masochist so he can actually channel all damage he takes back towards you because he likes the pain. It's pretty funny. He's great, and also he ends up with a crush on Mako, Ryuko's friend. Personally I think she's overrated, she's a goofy weirdo who's totally spastic and people love her the most, but I think she's whatever. She's got some good episodes and helps form the emotional core of the story and further the themes, but ehh.

Ryuko herself though is great, she's actually a fairly simple character. She's a yankii girl through and through and because it's an anime this means she has basically two modes, angry raging firebrand who rolls her Rs and speaks super rudely and insultingly, and more laid back kind hearted big sister. Despite her hot temper she is a pretty caring person who wants to protect those she's close to, and being split between this and her revenge comes up sometimes. Her arc is mostly about giving in to the better nature side of her and softening up that angry side, learning to mature a bit and hone that anger and determination in the right direction instead of just being an unfocused hurricane. Well, except for one part of the story but, spoilers. It's in the end, despite all the crazy stuff that happens, just a coming of age story. But it's a really damn good one. The story was written by the same man who wrote Gurren Lagann, Kazuki Nakashima. He also wrote the Goro Taniguchi directed Back Arrow that I mentioned before, as well as Kamen Rider Fourze which is the second best Kamen Rider I've seen so far. He also wrote Kamen Rider W, so I guess I need to make sure to watch that one. This shows here, as well, as a lot of the qualities that make those stories so good are here as well. 

The show has some cheap animation sometimes due to it being their first TV anime, they didn't get much of a budget for it and they saved money and time wherever they could, but luckily saved that all up for the biggest moments which make the well-animated fights really well choreographed and exciting. When the show looks good it looks good, for sure. This really helped elevate the story as the feelings and tension were well conveyed by it's stylish action animation, even if sometimes they reused a lot of shots lol. One area of the presentation that also helps elevate the story is the score, which they didn't cut corners on at all. There are a ton of tracks on the OST and most of them are great, even the more generic action filler tracks are at least good. This is probably Hiroyuki Sawano's best soundtrack, followed closely by his work on Attack on Titan. Unless I'm forgetting something, either way it's definitely top notch and a big part of what makes the show so good. It also has a great insert song by Eir Aoi called Sanbika, which I love. The show is really great, Ryuko and Satsuki are actually two of my favorite characters by the end with the arcs they go through, I wish I could tell you more about both of those. They're endearing, the action's cool, I love the style of the show, the story goes crazy places, evolving over time, and is just so much damn fun. The show's only a 10 and my favorite if you include the great send-off OVA episode Goodbye Again, it's a fantastic ending to the show that wraps a perfect bow on it and has some great action scenes as well. I really love Kill la Kill, it's great. 2014 might have been the last truly great year for anime. Well no, Diamond is Unbreakable aired in 2016...

 

Alright, that's done, so we'll now move on to stuff that isn't re-watches.

But first there's something a little out of the ordinary, we got a show I actually finished watching instead of re-watched, or watched for the first time.

 

Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken

 

 

 

I originally stopped watching Dai no Daibouken at around 75 episodes in cuz it just kept going, season after season, and I had a bunch of other shows to watch so I put it on hold. There were 100 episodes it total so it could have been worse, but yeah this is a long ass show. So last year I watched the last 25 episodes and they were all really good. I should have finished it before because it's great, very good adaptation of an old "battle shounen" from the 80s, a spin off of the Dragon Quest games, and it's just a really fun story. It has the appeal these kinds of things had before they got all bogged down with dumb shit, it's just a solid good story about a young boy who becomes a hero and there's all sorts of battles along the way, and maybe some bad guys become good guys and friends. It has two really good ones in Crocodine, a big orange crocodile man, and Hyuncle, the slightly more edgy and brooding one. There's also the great rival character with the Dragon Knight Baran, and the more you learn about the demon king Vearn the more interesting he becomes. Plenty of fun bad guys in general and a lot of great fights, it's a really solid fantasy adventure series. I really would say to check it out sometime, but it's gonna be a while at 100 episodes. Either way I'm happy I finally got around to finishing it off, the ending was really good!

 

But how about some shows I've never seen before? Here's some new-to-me anime:

 

Ai Mai Mi: Mousou Catastrophe:

I've seen the other seasons of this but oddly not the second, this is the second. 

Ai Mai Mi is a surreal gag comedy series by Choborau Nyopomi, a weird female otaku who makes weird comics like this and Magical Somera-chan. I can't... really describe Ai Mai Mi. Even saying it's a spastic surreal gag show where weird shit is happening every few seconds doesn't do it justice, you have no idea what that really means. I can say that there's a girl who licks an axolotl, but that just makes it sound "lol so random." You really have to see it to understand it yourself. So uh, here's an episode subbed in spanish so you can see what it's like: https://youtu.be/sfH0eaSiUds?si=PyQdJyqJ_WfVK61Q

 

Season 2 is actually my favorite season, I watched the other two since they're also very short to confirm and yeah, it's the best one. At the end there, that was the creator's avatar arresting someone for not having any Ai Mai Mi goods, btw. It's seriously funny, I love how weird, rapid fire, and goofy looking it is. It's seriously great, I love it, and I even added it to my favorites list because honestly it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I recommend all 3 seasons as well as Magical Somera-chan, and also Jakusansei Million Arthur, another silly weird short series she worked on made for the Million Arthur phone games. I dunno the characters in the gacha game, only her series lol, but it's very funny too.

 

Black Lagoon: Roberta's Bloodtrail

 

 

I also finally got around to watching the Black Lagoon OVAs.

 

If you don't know Black Lagoon, it's an american and hong kong action movie inspired series about a normal Japanese business man whose boat gets attacked by modern day sea pirates in a poor part of eastern china, the mercenary/criminal group who lives on the Black Lagoon boat. These scoundrels include Rebecca "Revy Two-Hands" Lee, which she's called because she tends to dual wield Beretta 92FS's, a big black guy named Dutch, and a white guy with glasses who's more dangerous than he looks called Benny. The businessman, Okajima Rokuro, ends up having to work with them and ends up nicknamed "Rock." He ends up corrupted by the underworld life he ends up roped into, because of his attempts to stay uncorrupted no less, and ends up being just as crazy in a different way as all these crazy people he ends up with. This is on full display in his these OVAs with his crazy convoluted plan which while working towards a good goal, is suggested by multiple characters to be self-motivated, which he has a hard time denying. In the show, it's lots of one off episodes and small arcs about them trying to make illicit money while you learn more about the characters and those with arcs progress. Other side-characters include Balalaika, a russian mob boss woman with scars all over her body, who is a fan-favorite, but also Roberta Cisneros who is a maid for a rich family and is also OP as hell. She's most known for being a Terminator 2 reference in her first appearance where they have a hell of a time shaking her off. This OVA is all about her, and her trying to get revenge for her master's death with her young master unfortunately getting involved. I really liked it, it's a story about someone with a hard, violent life who found a more peaceful one where she could act as a guardian instead, but lapsing back into that old life and devolving more and more as she goes on drug fueled murderous rampages and almost entirely loses herself and the new life she'd built in the process. This gets dark, and that's saying something for Black Lagoon considering it's generally pretty dark. The other characters do play an important role in the episodes, but it's primarily a character study of Roberta and I really enjoyed it. I feel like the ending's a bit rushed and convenient but I don't wanna go into it for spoilers, you should see it on your own. If you haven't seen the show, watch it, and if you have but haven't seen OVA check it out too. I think it's really fantastic, on the level of the show though a different kind of story and appeal. Both are very, very violent but this one is a heavy revenge story that while reveling in the violence isn't meant to be as cool, and meant to be more sad here. So definitely check out the show for more "haha these guys are assholes who shoot people" and this one fore more "oh no this crazy lady is shooting a lot of people..." Both seasons and this OVA aren't in the top tier but they're still on the lower end of my favorites.

 

Texhnolyze

 

 

This is one of those shows that the stereotypical MyAnimeList elitists from the early-mid 2010s always had on their favorites list and jerked off over while lamenting that dumb meatheadded shounen shows were popular and not smart, nihilistic sci-fi like these. I remember several of them being so assmad that Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was the highest rated anime on MAL for a while and that kinda sums those people up. I was averse to actually watching this because these people are annoying and my friend doesn't like it, but I decided ehhh, who knows, it could be good I mean plenty of the stuff they like are actually good like hell I'm sure they like Paranoia Agent a lot and that's one of my favorites.

 

This one not so much. I was honestly kinda bored by most of it. The first episode is terrible. It starts off well with smart, subtle visual storytelling by wordlessly communicating important character and story details to you but then it goes off the rails with obnoxious pretentious editing and long ass scenes of people standing around not saying anything because that's what art is. It picks up after that but I was rarely that enthralled, there's lots of interesting ideas for sure. The setting is cool, which is slowly unveiled to you what it's nature is. It's an underground world with an artificial sun, which leads to some nice shots/imagery later, and everyone in there are descendants of prisoners. It's a kinda lawless world ruled by organized criminals, and it's a very, very rough place full of people with hard lives who still find hope and rebel against the awful situation they live in. That's a core part of the story and themes, it's more existentialist than nihilistic, with the end result being the idea that pushing forward and living regardless is important and meaningful, even if you fail and die in the end. At some point they go to the surface and it's full of people who've entirely given up on life, they have no struggles but they have no spirit, no energy, no drive. They're not living, they may as well be dead. And all that shit's interesting, but a lot of it's boring. The action scenes when they have some are not well done, they're weirdly edited and not exciting. The characters are... fine? They're too subdued, just not the kind I'm into, they have interesting enough aspects about them, but they all act so emotionally subdued and don't talk a lot and it's just, I dunno. Not interesting. Sometimes it is, sometimes it looks really cool, I like how things slowly unfold and the ending is crazy and thought provoking, but... but themes and imagery and shit like that's great and all, but I need to care enough about the base story to think hard about it and care. For some people "it's deep" is enough, but not for me. It's not bad, but it's not that good either, maybe you'll like it more but I just wasn't that into it. Sorry, Texhnolyze fans. 

 

Haibane Renmei 

 

 

I did, however, really like Haibane Renmei, another "le philosophical" anime that pseudo-intellectual anime fans really liked and proclaimed is what should be popular and not Naruto... well with this one I definitely agree. This is the last of the early 2000s Yoshitoshi Abe trilogy. Texhnolyze and Serial Experiments Lain are ones with his character designs, but are written at least partly by Chiaki Konaka, while this one is also written by him. I think that's why I liked this one, though Lain is great too. It's based on what was a doujin property of his, starting off as a simple set of concept art, and then a short story that was re-adapted into the first episode of this series. I read the doujins before this, just to see, and I enjoyed doing that as well. Before he got far into his story, somehow he ended up getting an anime deal! So he wrote the screenplay for the anime, which is the full realization of his idea.

 

It's a story where young girls who grow wings and are given halos that grow and hatch out of big eggs and are taken care of by sort of a dorm complex. They are called haibane, and they aren't allowed to leave the walls of the city they are in. They're born mostly grown, usually, but have only feint snippets of memory of who they are at best. They start in a dream, and that dream they had is the basis of their names in this world. The protagonist is Rakka, who dreams of falling and a feeling of guilt she can't place, so she is named Rakka because that means "falling." There are several other girls, but the most important is big sister Reki, or "small stone." 

It's made pretty obvious from the start, though it's never directly stated, that this is some sort of purgatory and these girls are all dead and here to deal with their life's regrets before they can pass on. I like that it's obvious but not stated, it trusts you to figure it out and if you don't well it's not gonna spell it out for you. Texhnolyze is maybe a bit too far in that direction to the point some of it's totally interpretive. I prefer this kind of thing when you have to interpret it but there's a small range of possibly valid interpretations, no matter what certain people might tell you. That's what it's like here, and I enjoyed that. It's definitely clear this is what's going on, as at one point one of the girls leaves and her halo is left behind, as if she'd finally taken care of her unfinished business. It's about that sort of thing, it's a very simple story at it's core told in a unique and interesting, and very cryptic way. In the end it's just the story of some people trying to overcome their hardships and regrets and move on, with the added bonus that they may have to leave their new friends getting in the way of it because I mean... if I do, that means we won't get to see each other anymore? They're like a family to each other so this hesitation often prevents growth and mental healing, which is just interesting as well. Sometimes you have to leave people you love for your own sake and they need to understand this because they care about you, it's sad but true, and it's kind of a rare thing to see in anime which usually say no you absolutely have to stick with your friends and family forever unless they betray you and even then you should try to get them to come back to your side through a hot-blooded fight. This show's 12 episodes long, doesn't have many characters, is somewhat vague and mostly consists of slower paced slice of life episodes and dealing with capital S Stuff. So I don't have a lot to say, it's a short enough story that talking about it more than this is just telling you what happens. I'll say the animation/visuals aren't amazing but there's some pretty nice stuff at times to the point I specifically noticed that even lower budget 2000s anime had better animation and directing than modern lower budget anime. There's nice music and a good atmosphere here, and a very simple but appealing art and character design. It's a nice and laid back kind of drama about dealing with your problems and demons, which is fitting because you would want purgatory to be kinda nice to live in actually. A quiet little town where you do simple little jobs to earn your keep where you can comfortably take your time remembering and overcoming your past life. The characters are all quite nice, with most of them being rather simple aside Reki and Rakka, and there are some fantastic dream sequences and other surreal moments surrounding the two remembering their lives and confronting them as well. Their relationship is very compelling as well, pretty moving and I was happy for them in the end. All this works really well and makes for a great show and I really recommend it if it sounds good to you at all. I like this, probably more than Lain, but that's because I barely understood what was happening in it lol. 

BONUS! BONUS! BONUS!

MANGA I READ 

I also read some manga this year, finally. I know, right? I do not do enough of this, I dunno why I don't every time I actually read a manga I really enjoy it. I do like anime more in the end, but I do really like how manga convey their story through artwork and paneling and everything. It's really interesting when you sit and think about it, plus the art's usually better in the manga. It helps that I really prefer reading physical manga, scans just don't do it right because they're drawn considering what page you'll be on and how you'll likely be moving your eyes across the pages, rather than you having each page in an image viewer one by one on a screen where you can easily see it all at once. This is something I thought about reading a physical omnibus of:

 

Rumiko Takahashi's Memaid Saga: 

 

I've only read half the story because my library only had one of two omnibus volumes of it, but I really enjoyed the half I read. It's an anthology series about two immortal people who got that way from eating the flesh of a mermaid. The man actually is seeking out a way to become mortal again so he can finally die. One of the stories actually takes place long after an old love of his has died. I think it's a bit too quick-paced, with a lot panels just jumping right to the next action without any in-between motions, which I'm used to there being a bit more of in more modern manga. I think that's just how 80s manga are, as shown by the next thing I'm gonna talk about. As for this, I can't say that much more about it. It's really good, just different vignettes across different points in time, usually shown out of chronological order. All sorts of different little tragedies play out and they're all really interesting and moving, I enjoyed it a lot. Lots of melancholic stabs to the heart here, gives a really good kind of downer feeling. There's beauty in that sometimes and I think Takahashi-sensei did a good job with that. It's hard to talk about cuz I don't wanna give details, plus I forgot a lot of them cuz I just do, but you can tell it's the work of a "master." I really like it and I'm happy to get more familiar with such an influential mangaka's work. Speaking of!

 

Junji Ito Short Stories: Sensor, Remina, and Lovesickness 

 

I read some more Junji Ito, also physically. The first is a story about... well I mean it's about a bunch of different stuff, and it's one of those evolving stories where it's completely different from what it initially seems. It starts with a woman being taken to a village covered in "angel's hair", volcanic glass that's hair-thin. There's some disturbing rituals and all sorts of messed up stuff happens, but yeah it's like... I mean it gets fucking weird. Junji Ito stuff always gets really weird. The ending is so high concept like, it gets into metaphysical stuff and the universal fight between good and evil. It's nuts. And it's great because of that! I really liked it, really compelling and strange story with a really interesting ending. The art was pretty good, and included some amazingly big and detailed drawings it must have taken forever to make, which is what there usually is in these. I recommend it! The second one is about a girl a scientist names a star after. But when that star, Remina, starts barreling towards earth, people start blaming her and father for the oncoming destruction. What follows is the apocalypse, society breaks down and descending into chaos, cults pop up that say the star wants us to sacrifice her to appease it, all sorts of messed up and "human nature commentary"-y goes on here. There's definitely a lot of that, and it really delves well into the way people act when order has been lost and there's a major threat; people act irrationally as is, they go nuts when things go bad. Can't say I blame them, I nearly have a panic attack when I can't find my phone or something, so if this were happening who knows what kind of blood sacrifices I'd be trying to fix it! Still, that's what people are like. Worth noting Ito-sensei in real life is not a misanthrope at all and is very humanistic. Sometimes we need to acknowledge our bad parts to love humanity, or we'd just delude ourselves into thinking our negative traits are positive. This works on an individual level as well, obviously. And the story acknowledges the good in people as well, like the man who tries to protect Remina from the mob, which leads to a ridiculous and over the top scene where gravity has gotten fucked up by the Demon Star's Descent and so we're all just flying around the fucking earth at insane speeds with nothing making us fall or assaulting us with Gs, some crazy shit ends up happening some people end up going SPLAT it's great. It's a great story with a totally schizo ending, don't even wanna give it away. Definitely check it out. The last is a more grounded story, mostly, called Lovesickness. This one was my favorite, it's all about twisted love done way better than any stupid yandere story could ever do. There's this thing the kids are doing, see? It's called Crossroads Fortunetelling. You stand at an intersection in one of Japan's many pedestrian paths when it's foggy out(it often is in this town), cover your face when someone comes by, and ask for your fortune. The other people is meant to tell you about your love life, and usually they say if you keep working at it. However, when a tall bishounen shows up and you get your fortune from him, he'll tell you it's... not gonna work out. Our protagonist, who has a secret related to something really similar to this Crossroads Fortunetelling stuff, sees a young girl ask this boy and get told that. The next day, she has apparently killed herself.

 

Don't wanna tell you anymore from there, but the story progresses and gets into some good stuff about guilt and psychosis and bein' a stalker, lots of fucked up stuff. It gets really dark and graphic, with a few really viscerally drawn suicide scenes. It's cool and goes into some interesting ideas and character things, though it ends quite tragically despite our protagonist's efforts. But man, is it good. Things really do not go well, in a very compelling way, the kind I like a lot. It's a really damn good, well made and paced psychological horror story with a nice helping of blood and death. It's some good shit! Really glad I read it. 

 

I'd recommend all of these, and I'm again glad to read more Junji Ito. I've read a lot of the big ones and the ones that inspired Silent Hill, but I definitely wanna keep reading more. He's a big name obviously. You know who else is a big name? Osamu Tezuka.

 

Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight

 

 

So far this is the only Osamu Tezuka manga I've ever read. The only other Osamu Tezuka thing I'm really familiar with is Rintaro's adaptation of Metropolis(little relation to the silent film), which was good. I appreciate Tezuka but I don't care for much of the way his work looks, including like this. It's from the era where manga was heavily, heavily influenced by western comics and cartoons. And though this is actually a remake of a slightly older manga, this retains that 30s and 40s Disney-esque style I don't care for. But I do appreciate his work and it's massive influence, being a big, big step towards anime and manga becoming what I think of as "anime and manga" in the late 60s/early 70s. I just don't know that I enjoy it that much, though I wanna check out that 2000s Astro Boy anime cuz it seems real good. This manga is okay, partly due to it being that very cartoony stuff I was talking about, the way it's drawn and the humor largely doesn't work for me unfortunately. Part of that's probably the terrible overlocalized translation which I can tell it has even without checking anything, cuz I guarantee that Tezuka wasn't writing some of these "jokes" in the 60s. But I did mostly enjoy it, especially just as checking out a piece of manga history. It's one of the first shoujo manga supposedly, and I'm a guy who enjoys myself some shoujo sometimes. It was cool to see so many of the tropes I'm familiar with in newer shoujo here, I suppose this might be the originator! The misunderstandings, the secondary bad boy love interest, crossdressing girls, all sorts of that stuff that would be in later shoujo might have got it's start here, for better and for worse. Princess Knight follows the story of a princess named Sapphire who pretends to be the prince, as women cannot inherit the throne. This works so well because due to a mix up, she's born with both a Boy Heart and a Girl Heart. As the story goes on she has to choose which heart is her true heart and sort herself out, which I see as much more of a tomboy metaphor than what it's likely interpreted as these days. Sapphire, because of her boy's heart, is as courageous and strong as she is elegant and feminine. Sometimes the bad guys even take away one of the hearts in order to lock her into certain states. There's an evil duke who wants to put his own son in charge of the kingdom and keeps trying to assassinate her, though the main enemy changes by the end of the story. It's a solid fantasy action fairy tale sort of story, and I think it's pretty enjoyable at that. There aren't any complex characters or deep themes, it's a simple kids story but a fairly effective one. I could see this as being helpful for young girls reading it, knowing they don't have to choose between being girly and being boyish and that dual nature may in fact be who you truly are. Uh, spoilers that's kinda how it works out. I thought the characters were all pretty fun and again, it was cool seeing all these tropes I know on display here. I can see why Tezuka's influential and important even if it doesn't do all that much for me, and I'm glad I read through this. It was fun!   

But now it's finally time for the anime that actually came out in 2024!

 

Winter 2024

 

Most Disappointing Award:

Metallic Rouge 

 

 

Metallic Rouge was an interesting and promising anime original project rather than being an adaptation of something, which is really for the best as every medium needs a good amount of it's own things to be healthy. It's not necessarily a bad thing like, The Godfather's one of the best movies and it's a book adaptation, but you really gotta have things that first exist purely in that medium. I always wanna support original projects because not only are a lot of them some of the best anime out there, it's just good for something to be standing on it's own and not coasting off of good source material. If there aren't people making good shit entirely from themselves, can we really say there's talent in the industry? Well, we still can't here, because this didn't go well. The show went through a bunch of production issues and apparently was cut down from the 24 episodes it wanted to the 12 episodes it got. Which kinda shows, part way through the pacing ramps up and boy is the story rushed to get to the finish line. The story's about an android who hunts rogue androids and there's a whole organization of it, several of whom are killed between episodes after we jump from one storyline to the next abruptly, and that was pretty early on even. Not to mention, production value takes a nose dive after the first few episodes as well, and only picks up a little near the end. I don't even have much to say about it, it's just mediocre and basic. The chemistry between the two leads is quite good, but it doesn't carry the show at all. It's all the same basic "Does robots is can has feelings???" stuff you've seen in these stories, Rouge doesn't really wanna keep hunting other robots but the bad guys wanna go too far for robot independence so we gotta stop 'em, one of them betrays his guys cuz they go too far, all sorts of standard stuff. If the show had twice the length to tell the story, it wouldn't have been so generic I'd imagine as they'd be able to go into more detail about all this stuff, expand the themes and not be such a basic execution of this concept. Two very similar stories can exist at the same time, the framework matters less than the meat, but most of the meat had to be cut away with the fat in order to fit this down. I'm assuming, it's just what I heard, maybe they just didn't have an original story for this original story and couldn't tell it well, but either way it's not like that's fundamentally bad that I've seen it before... it's just I've seen it so much better before, even from not that great stories. So you don't have particularly good characters, or animation for the action scenes, or a good plot, or good themes and ideas, it doesn't really have much. The character and mechanical designs are good and the show feels like a 2000s anime in a good way, but it's a big let down. 

Slightly Less Good Sequel Award:

Urusei Yatsura Season 2

I'll keep this brief because for the most part, it's just more Urusei Yatsura, which I really liked. It's funny, all the characters are kinda shitty assholes but in a fun way that's very entertaining and funny. Funny... that's kinda why this is the slightly less good one. Previously when the story got all serious and actually focused on Ataru and Lum's relationship and whether or not they really love each other, I got bored. Because I don't care, they're both lousy people. Lum is a terrible friend and can be really selfish and stupid, but she does deserve better than the hopeless womanizer Ataru, who even when he actually does come to love her keeps trying to cheat on her with other women! Why do I care about their relationship? And that's what the finale focuses on, and it's like I hope they actually do break up, I hope Lum finds someone better and Ataru gets smacked by more women. They're very funny and enjoyable to watch as comedic characters, I find Ataru's nature to be endearing and fun... when it's not serious. The more seriously you take a character like that the less likeable they become. Not to mention, and more importantly, the comedy is really what I'm here for. I think this is a rare opinion, but I don't think the dramatic parts of Urusei Yatsura are even that good! But it doesn't really impact it that much, there's still tons of comedy, it's just that focusing on it for so long and as the finale made me like it a bit less. But it's good still, and if you did like the serious parts and wanted to see more of that especially, definitely check it out. I'm sure you already did if you watched season 1 though lol.

Overhyped But Still Good Award:

Dungeon Meshi

 

 

Yeah, it's not great, but I like it. It's similar to Urusei Yatsura where I'm just not here for the serious parts of the story, but it's not like they're particularly badly done.

 

Dungeon Meshi, if you don't know, is the story about a bunch of fantasy characters going into a crazy deep dungeon and subsisting on monsters instead of spending a ridiculous amount of money on rations which will probably still run out before the bottom. Their reason for doing this is that they want to save the protagonist, Laios's, sister Falin, who ended up being eaten by a dragon when their previous party got wrecked and disbanded. You see, inside the dungeon, you can still be revived if you died and we have all your pieces whole, due to a weird hex placed on the place because the mad wizard who made it wants people to challenge it and get to the bottom. So we're hoping that she's still revivable, but we don't have enough money for food after our ass blasting. Now obviously, there's already some serious aspects to the story but I think the appeal for me is the slice of life stuff. I enjoyed the show the most when all the storytelling was character development and worldbuilding, just doing an episode about this monster and fighting it and then cooking it up. That was fun, enjoyable, interesting. They still make time out for that during the more serious part of the story we're in, but I still feel like it's a lot weaker now that it isn't the focus. I just am not as interested in the serious part of the story as much, especially with how much it feels kinda generic. It feels like it's trying to be a "real" story now, as if it wasn't before because it wasn't focusing on muh plot and muh stakes. Luckily I enjoy all the characters and their serious sides are better to me than the serious sides of the Urusei Yatsura, and I think the does do the serious story a bit better, so it still works out, but I'm also still a little disappointed since it's not what I came here for anymore. But hey, I am actually invested in the characters so, I gotta see it through I guess.

The animation is really good, barring one episode I hated the look of, I'm glad Trigger finally made another show I'm into that looks good. The animation is somewhat inconsistent in style but I think the overall look manages to stay overall consistent aside that one episode, which is nice as the different animators and animation directors can do their own thing and not worry about everything looking exactly the same and get creative and expressive, without everything looking totally different and being jarring. The way the show works is definitely a plus in it's enjoyability, and I think both serious and non-serious scenes are pretty well directed. 

 

I guess I don't have too much to say I suppose, it's not nearly as good as the common anime fan made it out to be, but even really good flavor of the month shows these kids freak out over are treated as the second coming of christ lol. Don't let them ruin it for you if you did, check it out sometime because it is pretty good, I just don't think it's amazing or anything.

 

Shows from Fall 2023 That Finished In Winter

Frieren & Apothecary Diaries

Not much to say about these cuz I already talked about them and I don't really have much more to say then there! Frieren is my favorite of the season and one of my favorites of 2023, but I think it let me down a tiny bit at the end what with it ending on an exam arc, besides it ends on an "the adventure continues" ending because well, it does the manga's not over. It's great though, I really enjoyed it. I don't care how hyped up or overrated or whatever it is and how much it's a normie show, it did get popular for a reason and it's great. Apothecary Diaries is also really great, less so but still great, and it's got a leg up because there's another season airing right now! They're both good series, check them out. That's all I gotta say! I suppose Frieren kinda wins the Best of Winter 2024 award, since the 3 ones that started then aren't as good and I like Apothecary slightly less.

Spring 2024

 

First, we start with the Shows I Dropped.

Yuru Camp Season 3

It's very simple, I dropped this one because I think the new character designs are such a massive downgrade. I noticed something was off but I wasn't sure what, but comparing the new ones to the old ones they're so much worse. They don't look bad, but they look totally generic. I like moe anime, but I don't like it enough to put up with slop, which is kinda what these new designs are. The old ones weren't the most amazing visually, but they stood out some and had a unique look to them, these new ones don't and that genuinely impacted my enjoyment of the show. I just didn't wanna watch it, so I didn't.

 

Spice & Wolf

This show's not bad and is also apparently more close to the light novels, but though it's to a lesser degree it's the same problem with Yuru Camp, with it just looking worse than the previous adaptation. Generally it's less well directed as well, when Holo's not around I was honestly pretty bored, like it's very flatly done and blase about it. I dunno if I'll actually ever finish it. It's just unfortunate and shows the state of the anime industry at this point in time.

 

Wind Breaker

A promising first episode quickly gave way to a kind of boring and basic execution shounen story and I thought most of the characters were actually kinda lame and boring and just, I dunno it wasn't doing it for me. I should enjoy this, I always enjoy me a story about some delinquents and stuff, but I think for this kind of story the whole "our delinquents are actually good boys" is also kinda lame. In addition, I didn't find the humor particularly funny, in fact that might be why the characters felt lame lol. I don't really recommend it, but it was just mediocre so I quit.

 

Kaiju No. 8

This, too, was just mediocre and a very basic and boring shounen story from what I'd seen. I think the guy's monster form looked pretty dumb and it just seems like it was gonna be a pretty standard story, the first episode didn't work too well for me and I gave up. I think if this was what it was at the start, just about a guy who has to clean up kaiju corpses, it'd be a lot more interesting than what this is, which is instead that standard shounen story except this guy is actually my age this time. Wow, what a difference! 

 

Vampire Dormitory

I was looking to see another reverse harem show but 1. I think the way this show looks is kinda unappealing, a little too glossy looking. 2. It's another fairly generic show from what I saw and 3. I thought this reverse trap character was, as you'd expect, a boyish girl with short hair, but her short hair is actually a wig and under she has wrapped up long hair. Lame! I dunno man, this is no Ouran High School Host Club and I don't even know if I was a woman that I'd like this either, it's another whatever mediocre thing and episode 1 didn't do much for me so I didn't continue.

 

Kaii to Otome Kamikakushi

I tried this show out cuz it seemed kinda fun and had this big ass big titty woman as it's protagonist, who they made a ton of porn of. This is the best show I dropped but it wasn't good enough I wanted to keep going. I picked this up mid season and once I caught up I just didn't wanna continue, it was just alright. Lots of weird perverse fanservice stuff lol I think that's it's priority. It 100% comes off as something made by some otaku to fill it with the stuff he likes, which is fine and all, but I think maybe with some better production value this would be better but as is it just doesn't have too much to keep me hooked. I do like the girl but they do that thing where even though we know she's designed to be appealing to it's target audience, they treat her like she's fat and ugly and she's a huge butt of the joke all the time. It's fine that she's a loser, but she's a hot loser and the show pretending she's not is a bit annoying. So uh it kinda balances out into not a plus or a minus. Ah well. If you wanna check it out, it's a mostly episodic series about this loser like 27 year old woman and the guy who works at the same convenience store she does who actually turns out to be a guy who solves paranormal occurrences, so it's lots of japanese urban legends and supernatural belief stuff. The woman has the interesting thing of being a failed writer, being successful and winning awards when she was young but as she got older her work became less and less impressive to people. No idea where that complex about being a failure goes but I bet it's interesting enough. 

 

Sentai Daishikaku

This has the dual problem of, like the last one, having weak production value that takes the wind out of my sails during many of the big moments because it's just not excitingly animated or directed, but also just not seeming like that great of a story as-is. I think this kind of thing of like, what if the super sentai team was actually a bunch of shitty sociopaths instead of actually justice loving heroes is kind of a lame subversion. Maybe if I'd seen more than like, one crossover between one of them and Kamen Rider Gaim, I'd be more into it, but ehh. I think what's lame about it is they're mostly just hypocrites, it could have been either a straight up "from the villain's perspective" story or taking the idea of hard core justice lovers to it's logical extreme making them total authoritarians. They're basically just the kind of bad guys you see in anime and tokusatsu with them being more might makes right. This is a series about the invading aliens already having been beaten, but they enslave them and make them pretend to still be fighting them for a variety of reasons. Thing is, from what I remember they skipped an important step that'd make it interesting. They view themselves as justice, because they beat the aliens, therefore they can do this to the aliens. That's boring, they think they're right because they're the strongest, never seen that before! More interesting would be them just believing flat out that they are just regardless, and because the aliens came here to invade, anything they do in retribution is justified forever. There's a little bit of that, but they do a bit too much of the might makes right shit and I feel like that's to make them more flat out "the bad guys" instead of letting more nuance in there. The aliens did come here to invade and enslave themselves, it feels like in order to make you still side with the protagonist who's tired of the treatment of him and his people, it's side-stepping a lot of the nuance instead of making something actually challenging. That's just a small part of it, I dunno about the characters and again the animation is whatever. There's a lot of good and interesting parts to this story and honestly, yeah I did root for this guy emancipating his people and I really enjoyed the true hero, a pacifist who wants the aliens and people to co-exist, but the good parts just weren't enough. I dunno. It's not bad though, if it sounds good, check it out.

 

 

Oof, I really dropped a bunch of shows this season! That's how it goes, I don't waste my time with stuff that's just "okay" most of the time, and I sure as well won't waste time on something that's flat out mediocre or worse. Sometimes, stuff just doesn't work for me and I'm gonna use my time on stuff that does. I think a lot of people need to do this, you really don't have to give stuff a chance, there's probably something that you won't even need to give a chance you could be spending your time on instead. Can't believe people still abide by the "three episode rule" lol.

 

Alright, finally, we got the uhhh, two shows I actually finished from Spring lol. I really did drop a lot

 

Second Best Show of Spring 2024

Ooi! Tonbo(and also Season 2)

 

 

Ooi! Tonbo is a simple show, a standard sports story about a young savant who needs to learn the fundamentals, and if she does, she'll be unstoppable. It's a standard story, but with a pretty good execution that really works. It begins with Igarashi "Iga-Iga" Kazuyoshi having to stay on this little island, which he's not too happy about, but then he meets the titular Ooi Tonbo and ends up in the island's secret golf course, where she does some incredible and daring shots because it's just how she learned to play. This makes him certain she needs to leave this island and compete. It's part slice of life, messing around on the island leading to main characters' development, and part sports series about learning the fundamentals and getting a taste for competition. Tonbo comes of age and eventually leaves the island, and she changes as she experiences things and competes against a pro golfer, but some parts of her don't change at all. Even in season 2, she doesn't compete so much to win but to play the game she loves well, to test herself, and to go up against good opponents she can not only push herself to outdo but watch do their best as well. She's always cheering on her fellow golfers and feels for them when they mess up, she's good natured like that. Her strange techniques lack of a fear of losing, which she gained by doing risky shots next to a cliff overlooking the sea to which she lost a lot of balls making her see it as no big deal, always shocks others and even rubs off on her. She eventually does leave the island to go compete, which she doesn't want to do as it's where her parents lived and died, and where her grandpa now lives, after realizing that even though it's her home, leaving it doesn't mean leaving it behind. Iga-Iga of course learns valuable life lessons as well, reflecting on his actions and his lousy treatment of his son, and growing as a person after spending time on such a humble island and with such a ray of sunshine as Tonbo. It's a good show about life and golf, even if you're not into golf you should be able to enjoy it as I also am not into golf. That saddest thing about both seasons is their production value, which is pretty low. I think the writing and characters make up for it unlike the other two I mentioned where it did not, but it's still unfortunate they couldn't put talent/money into this project. Occasionally there will be a good bit of animation and/or directing but mostly it's pretty flat, and I think that's sad because it really deserves better. In a lot of ways it's a pretty standard sports drama anime, but it sets itself apart in execution, especially in it's very charismatic lead. There have also been 3 different recap episodes, but each season's been 13 episodes so far. It's really just such a shoddy production and I wish it had a better one. But the show's good though, and I recommend it. It's got a laid back kind of whimsical feel to it, nice to chill out to.

 

Season 2 aired in fall, so I won't talk about it then.

 

Best Show of Spring 2024

Train to the End of the World 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, this one's definitely the real best of the season, even if it's the only other show I finished lol. I definitely really liked it, I only rated it 7/10 but it was good enough I still kinda miss it, and it's been almost a full year! 

It's an interesting and inventive show about 7G Apocalypse. They have finally developed 7the generation cellular network technology, but as the lucky winner chosen to unleash it upon the world does so, the world is irreparably changed, in all sorts of weird ways. Maybe everyone will become characters from an edgy magical girl show, maybe everyone will become a mushroom hivemind, maybe everyone will become zombies. In our protagonists' hometown, everyone becomes an animal when they get old enough. Before this happens, the main character wants to go out and search for her lost friend, despite having no idea what strange things have been reality warped out in the world, due to her eventually explained guilt about why her friend left. She gets the opportunity to do this when she puts the conductor's cap back on the head of the resident weird old man who for some reason isn't an animal like everyone else. When put on he, very briefly, is able to regain his original form and mental state, so he's able to set up his train and tell her about the person who did this to him and that it's all tied to what happened to the world. Our lead decides to take that train to find out about that and more importantly, go find her friend. So her friends end up coming along with her to help, and their journey begins. 

 

We have Shizuru, our headstrong protagonist who often doesn't think things through. Nadeshiko who is, as her name implies, nice and demure and always tries to calm everyone down. Reimi, the laid back and air headed gyaru. And finally Akira, who is kinda weird and likes smart people stuff, like old books. Oh and their dog, Pochi. The characters are extremely simple and don't have complex arcs, but what they do have is great chemistry and background with each other that makes them really endearing and enjoyable to watch. Very good moe characters, with enough there to make them work for drama and adventure as well. They're also of the type of not-pure moe characters they've made recently, which I like. Reimi obviously knows about sex and believes herself to be sexy, Akira has read rather sexual books and is also generally pretty cynical, Nadeshiko has a kind of unhinged and violent side, and Shizuru did something pretty fucked up to the friend she's looking for named Yoka. Actually in one episode we learn they all did something they're very not proud of. In general they all have more real flaws than a classic moe girl, which is important for a character. I like me some moe anime but K-On! is kinda the only one I like where none of the girls have real flaws, and are pure & virginal characters so as to let the otaku waifu them more easily. This is a good way to do it and I'm glad it's caught on more, as it's the way I prefer. They're still cute and overall good girls but they aren't the completely idealized kind that while nice, can get boring especially if you've seen them a billion times. More than that, though, they're just really fun to watch even at times they're at each other's throats. I like them a lot and they're one half of what makes the show good.

 

The other is just that it's such a creative and visually interesting show, each area they travel to is fucked up in some interesting way. For the first part you have the great visual of them traveling along the flood tracks with ocean in every direction, reminding me of that part in Spirited Away, and even after that they keep going to such interesting places it's a lot of fun. It's not maybe as creative and wild as you could get for this sort of thing, the most interesting places you get are only seen for a little and most places are just towns and forests where something is weird. But still, even if "Gulliver's Travels Town" isn't that creative, it's really fun. It does get pretty creative and weird often, especially towards the end, and it always has something interesting to look at. This show's got a lot of ideas. And generally it looks good, well directed and decently animated, it was certainly the best looking show of this season and I was always excited to watch the next episode. Pretty dang good show, I really do recommend it. The actual plot mostly kicks in at the end, but it's pretty good, even if it's kinda dumb. The show knows it's kinda dumb, and leans into that while still getting serious sometimes. It manages to balance comedy and drama quite well, being genuinely funny when it means to and keeping me invested when not. Recommend!

 

Summer 2024

 

First up, Dropped Shows:

 

Akaneko Ramen

It's a show about cats who make ramen, but I dropped it because it's 3DCG, and pretty low budget too. Unfortunate, it seemed kind fun otherwise.

 

Dungeon People

This one was just not that interesting, very bland and flat directing, bland and flat characters. Tries to take itself seriously too often with it's dumbass mary sue character, who works during the comedy bits but not so much during the more serious moments, though honestly I don't even know if that's right? I vaguely recall something like that and complaining about it, but I barely remember any of what I saw. It was mediocre.

 

Oh, that's all the shows I dropped! The exact opposite of the previous season, I watched a bunch of shows this time.

 

Almost Good Adaptation:

Elf-san wa Yaserarenai

I like this manga, it's not great but it's fun. It appeals to my taste, which is tastefully overweight woman fanservice. It has chunky elves, pig girls, and also a couple muscle ladies. It's about an elf who has come to our world, so it's reverse-isekai, so that she can eat our food because her low-tech world doesn't have good seasoning and stuff, especially not for non-meat dishes which she of course has to eat because she's a vegetarian. This means she's here for french fries... a lot of french fries. I mean, a lot of french fries. Often. So she gets fat. Well, for the manga, I'd classify it as mostly chubby, starting on the low end and going to the high end. In the anime, she's fat the whole time, but on the low end of it. She's not flat out obese, but she's definitely fat. But because of her weight change, the gate she came in on won't let her back through! So she goes to a health specialist, our protagonist, who helps her with dieting and exercise to slim down. And she succeeds! She goes back home... then she comes back and 2manyfries and gains again. So she's gotta keep at it! Again! We meet all sorts of fantasy creatures who have similar problems, so he's gotta help them too. This show got you covered regardless of your tastes, unless you like particularly thin girls because none of them are that. It's also, basically a harem, since all the women do kinda like the main character, but it's a very soft one where I don't think most of them have any real feelings for him, it's just he gets to hang out with a bunch of hot chicks.

 

Well, not so much in the anime. It doesn't not do it for me, but I would describe the girls in the manga as more plump. Just particularly plump. The dark elf works fine cuz her gimmick is that the ass is fat, but even Elfuda(haha, Elfu da? That means "she's an elf!")  is kinda done wrong with her having a very round belly that's done more in a jokey way. So it retains all the fat jokes, that part still works, but it's not so great at the fanservice part. Compare some screenshots of the anime to Methonium/Synecdoche's artwork. Obviously it's not gonna stack up against a professional erotic comic artist's work, he's a great artists who really knows how to accentuate the meat in an appealing way, but it's a big old step down. I feel like they didn't know how to do this and just kinda decided not to bother, and lean into the humor.

 

That stuff works just fine, the humor is funny enough and the characters are all fun, if sexy was all it had I wouldn't do more than skim the manga. This isn't a great adaptation and I'm pretty sure it's heavily truncated to fit into 12, 10 minute episodes. But I mean, if you like the manga, it's fun to check out. But I'd recommend checking it out instead if you're not yet fan, but might like to become one. It's funny, fun, and has sexy girls if you're into that sort of thing. 

Worst Best Show:

Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan

Shikanoko, as I'll call it from now on, is a surreal gag comedy show that starts off great and gets less good with each 3rd of it. The first 3rd is absolutely hilarious, I laughed out loud plenty of times at the dumb weird ass jokes. The second 3rd is less funny, it's wearing out it's welcome a bit and the jokes are less strong and the scenarios less funny. The last 3rd is kinda boring, the jokes aren't great and the scenarios are boring, it's already kinda played itself out. This results in a show that's "okay", worth it for the first 2/3rds, but yeah. That's what I have to say really.

 

But I will tell you it's a story about a dear girl named Shikanoko aka Nokotan, who is the boke of this manzai duo, and her tsukkomi, Koshi Torako aka Koshitan(much to her chagrin). Also a bunch of other weird girls, like Koshitan's yandere sister who believes Nokotan's a threat to her because they're gonna lez out, and she wants to lez out. Yeah, with her sister. There's all sorts of nuts characters like that, and they have nuts scenarios. Like when said sister puts on an impromptu Koshitan Trivia Game Show at their school to fight over her. This kinda show is hard to describe, but it's one of those sorts of weird ass weird humor shows. In one episode, Koshitan gets attacked by some delinquents, as she is a former delinquent who has cleaned up her image and become the popular head of the student council(hence why she puts up with Nokotan's antics). Nokotan then tries to help by using her antlers, which she takes off and tosses. It ends up on the roof, where it explodes, spontaneously. That never comes up again if I recall. It's that kind of thing. But, lots of anime has done this sort of thing before, much better, and much more consistently. I know a lot of people hate 100% of this show, finding this kind of humor totally obnoxious. The zoomers kept calling it "brain rot." Some people normally like this kind of humor but feel like it's poorly done here, but I only felt like it was by the end. That's why this is the "worst best show." It started as my favorite, and ended up the least favorite one I finished. Oh well. There are a lot of great goofy ass faces and shots in this that also make it worth watching but yeah, it's not that good. Apparently they tried to astroturf this into being a big meme thing, paying people to hype it up and stuff, very forced and fake. That's unfortunate, I bet that contributed to a lot of the hate, but I don't like it enough now to defend it too much.

Best 6/10 of the Season

Shoushimin Series

 

 

This is a slice of life mystery series about late teens high schoolers who have tried to turn their lives around since middle school. The boy was a kind of egotistical jerk who solved simple mysteries and felt he was superior to people due to his intellect, but people started kinda ostracizing him because of his attitude. Nobody wanted to hang around him anymore, so he eventually decided to try and remodel himself into someone more milquetoast and easy to get along with so that he can be liked. The girl though, she used to be a ruthless delinquent and so she wants to pretend to be just a normal  girl, much simpler. Both of them however keep getting tempted to lapse back into this nature. Lots of little mysteries show up and so the boy keeps solving them, because he has that drive and desire to unravel these logic puzzles. He just can't help himself, he tries to stay out of it but then the clues are in front of him, he can't help but try and put them together. The girl on the other hand can't help but want to get righteous vengeance when people sleight her, no matter how hard she tries to be the normal, demure and shy girl. These two things come up often as they struggle against it. That's all really good, interesting and complex enough characters, themes of trying to change and figuring out whether or not you should, or just give in to your nature. The problem is the presentation, not only is the cinematography quite literally cinematography, the tone is so dry. The shots are all very grounded, they spice things up by showing characters in locations they aren't currently in, in an artsy way that symbolizes the feeling of their conversation, but most of the time the shots are all the kinds of stuff you'd see in a real TV show. It's simple, realistic, all possible within the space they're in. They're trying to act as if this animation is a live action TV show, including doing shots that would be impressive and good if done in physical space, but are not when you have total control. These kinds of shots work best when they're a larger part of shots that take more advantage of the medium of animation, which this show's look really does not. The acting, too, is so very subdued, like they're meant to be live action characters and not animated characters. Actually, I've seen live action japanese stuff with more emoting. It's not stilted acting, its just dry as I said. I know why they did this, it's based on a novel series, so they were probably trying to cater to people who read serialized books and not people who watch anime, but it results in the show being a tad boring. But, the mysteries are interesting enough, it's a good episodic show that still has character progression, and I do enjoy the characters enough. I just think this could be given a bit more energy. But it is pretty good, and I will watch the second season, I'm just not that enthusiastic about it.

 

"Maybe the Visual Novel is Better"

Atri -My Dear Moments- 

 

 

Atri is an anime adaptation of a romance visual novel, and it's such a standard and basic visual novel story. I've quite obviously seen a lot better ones than this, but it's alright. It's a story in mid apocalypse, the ocean levels have risen and most people have left to the mainland, to the point that areas near the ocean(which didn't used to be) are rundown and practically lawless. They have no infrastructure or electricity, they got shady merchants, broken up buildings, etc. Some people just don't have the money to go move there, so they stay behind. We follow some people who could move to the mainland, but don't want to. One needs to unearth the secrets of his grandmother, so he stays behind, and another is his childhood friend who is staying there to be with him. I imagine in the game, she was a romance option, but that doesn't happen here. Our protagonist has one lost leg, which he lost during his Traumatic Backstory where his mother died. This has made him salty and cynical and it's... you know how it is, it's that kind of character arc. He's angsty and brooding about everything but meeting his love interest, the android named Atri who he finds in the ruins of his grandmother's lab, slowly changes him and makes him more open and he bonds with people, especially her. There are a lot of good things to this story, lots of different characters with different traumas, losses, and/or baggage they're struggling with and it has plenty of good moments and little story arcs. But it's a standard visual novel story, you've seen it before. It's the same kinda thing as a Key story, just without the supernatural twist and honestly, much less melodramatic about everything. And less interesting, honestly. Part of this is because it's not even 24 episodes, but 12 or 13. I bet the visual novel did all this better, because it's solid story on its own, I just think it needs more fleshing out, more details and time spent on these characters and the themes. The execution of the whole "does robit is have soul?" stuff is honestly not any better than Metallic Rouge's, it's very basic. I made the observation that the story feels allergic to actual drama and consequence, for example they're worried she really was just faking having emotion with her programming for all of one episode, next time the drama's over and they've realized no actually yes she does :^). A lot of things like that happen, you think something will really happen but it never really does. There's a bad guy and they almost do some shit but they're beaten really fast. Again, I imagine this is the time constraint. This all results in a show that's just okay, it has a lot of good moments, some good music too, I know what it's about in a literal and non-literal sense, the characters ain't bad, and there's a comfort food appeal to seeing this kind of story again, but it's just not that well done. I would recommend it cuz yeah, there's plenty that's good here, it's just that you've seen it done better before. You wanna see it done competently enough again? Watch this. There's a fun part where they restore power to the half-flooded school that the childhood friend girl teaches the kids of the town in the upper floors in, with hydroelectrics. One of those kids is homeless and lives on the roof. The guy lives in a little houseboat. It's not very good, but it's not bad.

 

Best Animation of 2024

Elusive Samurai

 

 

 

Elusive Samurai isn't the best anime of summer 2024, but it's the best animated of summer 2024, and of the year as well. Of this decade, honestly probably since the 2000s. M-most of the time, sometimes it has these terrible CG dolls, but it's all in service of saving up for bigger and more artsy moments that are really well animated. The show looks really good, there's this scene where a guy beheads a bunch of other guys fluidly and effortlessly and it's conveyed in this really artsy way that's hard to describe, that sounds pretentious but it absolutely works because it's part of the whole strange and unnerving feel of the scene. He's otherworldly-y good at this, this guy who sees it is so horribly shocked while everyone else praises and venerates him. Everyone's acting crazy in the eyes of this guy and we're seeing things how he's seeing it, this strange red scene that feels alien to him because why can't anyone else see how terrifying this samurai, who's overthrown the previous leadership, is. That's just one thing, all the action scenes are really well choreographed and animated, lots of great dynamic poses and fluid movements, impressive motions in both the characters and the camera. It's got great action, fucked up looking violence, and also just really good looking colors. There's only one other show that I think looks even close, especially in the color department, that aired this year and it's still not as good. 

Now if only the story this nice animation was conveying to me was good. 

I mean it's alright, but it's not really my thing. It's a mostly comedic action shounen series, emphasis on the shounen as a particularly girly looking shota is our protagonist(which I don't mind, mind you), and aside from that there's not a ton to appeal to me here. Well, I do enjoy the historical angle.This takes place in the kamakura era and unlike Ghost of Tsushima, it's more honest about how shitty and brutal samurai were at that time, no honor whatsoever. A young man of the Hojo clan, named Toshiyuki, who's family is killed by insurgents who hate the current shogun. He flees with the help of a man who claims he can see the future, and that he will be an important historical figure. During this exodus, we discover that while he's terrible and traditional samurai techniques, he is adept at evading danger and outrunning his opponents. This is earlier displayed at his highly athletic shirking of his training and running from the soldiers in charge of teaching him. Also, he leaps into the arms of this prophet and makes some bedroom eyes at him, displaying where the author of the manga's priorities lie lol. I think that's actually one of the issues with it, the whole scene is portrayed very lightly despite a village full of innocent people having just being raped and pillaged. That's the tone of this series, it rarely gets serious. I kinda want it to get serious and dramatic about you know, this story where a young boy's whole family is murdered by insurrectionists, but it's done pretty comedic. This guy who he really trusted totally betrayed him and it's funny. I mean, it is kinda funny the way it's done, guy's an asshole in a way that made me laugh. But I feel like most of the humor is kinda tryhard, I dunno, it just wasn't working for me. Some of it does, and the characters are likeable enough, but it's also a show where a guy is straight up a pedophile in-universe and you're just supposed to be okay with it. I never can get past that, it happens even in really great stuff. The shota fanservice is fine but I just don't like that I like the guy clearly wanting to fuck this little boy, even if samurai did that a lot back then lol. Ah well, not a big deal but still, I honestly found him kinda annoying too. I could have taken some more taking all this violence and death more seriously, unless we're gonna just go fully comedy gag manga over it. It's not unserious enough to appeal to me, and not serious enough to work either. It's not bad or anything, it's a perfectly decent story about fighting edgy sociopaths while learning to be good at the thing you've discovered you're good at. Toshiyuki is supported by others who want to see him become a dangerously good warrior who gleefully dances around his opponent, and he learns how to kill while doing that and enjoys defying death. It's fun seeing him enthralled by the thrill of narrowly escaping decapitation, but if it weren't for this good ass animation I wouldn't be even a fraction as stoked about it as he was. That absolutely elevates it, but it only elevates it to "good" status. I'll watch more if they make more, and it's definitely worth checking out for the visuals.

 

 

Best of Summer 2024

Mayonaka Punch

 

 

 

I really like this, it's another case like Train to the End of the World, where I don't think it's great or anything, but I really liked it. This has some decent animation as well, but it's all very comedic animation. The last show was comedic but had a lot of action, this is just pure comedy. Well, some drama too.

 

Mayonaka Punch is a fun ass original anime about a youtuber who had a falling out with her youtube friends, and wants to break out on her own. Unfortunately, she's been #Canceled so nobody wants to see her. She tries to figure out something that will get her some views, so she decides to go do some urban exploration at this old hospital that she and her friends did their first video at. While there, she encounters the vampire Live. Live recently had a dream in which a girl who looks just like this girl, who's name is Masaki aka Masakichi, who vowed to let Live suck her blood. Masaki, after finding out she's a vampire, offers to let her suck her blood if she helps her get 1 million subscribers. You know, cuz she's a vampire and that shit will rake in the views. They start off doing crazy shit that only a vampire could do, which eventually gets someone who represents Mother, the Vampire Queen, really pissed at them. Their channel's shut down and deleted, but they get her to agree to let them do this as long as they don't do anything that will reveal the existence of vampires to people. So, they start up a personality-based variety channel called Mayonaka Punch, which live comes up with totally randomly. Mayonaka means midnight or late night, and they're only up at night cuz vampires, and I don't even remember what her justification is for punch lol. HIJINKS ENSUE!

It's a pretty episodic, with some plot near the end, type of show where they just make dumb video ideas. Episodes are split between them coming up with video ideas, filming them, and whatever drama surrounds that. Sometimes it will get serious about the characters, sometimes it won't, sometimes they'll do something which gets their guardian angry like in one epside they had to delete all their footage and toss the video idea. What makes the show work is all the characters are really likeable even when they suck as people(like the one with a gambling addiction), and have a great chemistry with each other. That's the whole appeal of their channel in-universe! Seeing them play off each other and even bicker with each other is fun and funny, so they're fun to watch. I totally would watch their channel if it was real. No wonder they get the subs! Of course a lot of the show is them struggling too get views and subs and trying to figure out how to get more, eventually realizing it's that chemistry and not any dumb gimmicks. There's not much more to say other than that, unless I wanna start explaining episodes to you. It's fun and the characters are fun! That's why I like it, and I really recommend watching it. I like that everyone is flawed in some way, the best one as a person is Fuu, everyone else has some massive character flaw, even if it's as simple as Ichika kinda being retarded. Check it out if you want some fun times with charismatic, heavily flawed characters who are funny because of that. The characters include the aforementioned Live, a girl with short scruffy pink hair who really, really wants to suck Masaki's blood and is kinda stupid and lazy. Aforementioned Ichika, a shortie with blond twin tails, who became a vampire as a little girl but is the same age as everyone else, she's just really stupid so she acts a lot like a kid, but she's very family oriented and makes meals so everyone can eat together so they can bond since they don't need to eat anything other than blood. There's Fuu, the best girl, with short light greenish-blue hair, who's flaw is just that she's too timid, she's nice and kind and wants to be a singer, though that's difficult to do since she's a vampire and all... She has a sad backstory about that and a relationship with a girl from long ago, it's a pretty good episode. Tokage, a tall lady with long purple hair in a ponytail with  big tits who dresses kinda slutty but also punk-ish, is the gambling addict, and she's generally pretty selfish and dumb but in a "absolutely doesn't realize it" way, she's kind of a bitch and has one of those bitchy laughs, but in a fun way. She sucks but it's funny watching her mock other people's misfortune before having it befall her as well, usually having to do with her gambling. She's even lazier than Live. She's great! Masaki aka Masakichi has short brown hair, and is selfish, starts as only wanting to further her own career, and has big temper issues and way too concerned with troll and hater comments. They kicked her out of her original youtube channel for a good reason, and she has a lot of growing to do, which she does. They're all still likeable despite this kind of thing, I guess you say it's like anti-heroes but for comedy. Well, comedic animated characters all used to be like that, everyone likes Daffy Duck, and he's an asshole! Good show! Watch it!

Fall 2024

Shows What Continued on into 2025

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth & Dragon Ball Daima

I'll talk more about these when I do my anime of 2025 post.

 

One is a seinen drama about people who are researching the currently heretical theory of heliocentrism, rather than the church approved geocentrism, in medieval Poland. They come up against this inquisitor, try and figure this "earth revolving around the sun" thing, etc. etc. It's... alright. I enjoyed the first 2/3rds more. But, more on that later. Much later.

Dragon Ball Daima's a Dragon Ball spin-off that Dragon Ball fans take way too seriously instead of considering it a fun little self-contained thing. As a fun little self-contained thing, it's alright! I had some fun watching it. I mean that's really all I got to say, but hopefully I'll have more to say about it a year from now.

 

Best Initial D Sequel Part 2

MF Ghost Season 2

This one's easy to talk about, it's season 2. It's still not as good as Initial D but it's still pretty good, it's most of the same thing it's just Kanata working at getting better at driving and competing in races, lots of races. Well, a couple races, they just have a lot of episodes of it. It's very race focused, though there's plenty of off track drama as well. The races are cool and the music is boppin', it's what you'd expect when you hear "Less good but still good Initial D sequel." That's really it man, check it out out an season 1 if you liked Initial D.

 

Most Hard to Sit Through

Nina The Starry Bride 

I like shoujo anime because they tend to have likeable and charismatic leads with strong wills you wanna see succeed in things, and likeable and charismatic love interests with interesting complexities to him or them, both good characters and both very attractive. They have interesting storylines and explore interesting themes, and have nice little romances you can cheer for. The best of them are even more than that, in the end they're far more than just female fantasies for the sake of women self-inserting and imagining "What if I won over the really hot guy?"

 

The problem with this one is it's kinda of just "What if I won over the really hot guy?"

 

This is supposedly a josei but I think that's because it deels so much with ye olden times politics and that's considered too stuffy for younger girls, but it's the same kind of story as a shoujo romance.

 

Nina's an orphan who's tricke by people she thought were her friends and kidnapped by some agents of the king so she can be a replacement for the princess who fuckin' died, the only thing she has that actually resembles the princess is her eyes, which are a brilliant blue. Some time passes as she pretends to be the princess and she starts to fall for prince Azure, the man in charge of the ruse and other military secrets and such. But it's tragic cuz he's gotta live his life in servitude of his country and the king sucks and blah blah blah I didn't really care.

 

Later, Nina ends up having to be betrothed to the prince of another country to protect her own, and this guy is just a fucking total sociopath. But he's HOT.

 

You're getting the problem here? I feel like that's really all the show has. It's too much and not enough. Too much obvious pandering female fantasy with the guy who fucking kidnapped her being actually a really kind man who she falls in love with and he falls in love with her but then uh oooooooh, now she's gotta be with this other guy who she starts to fall for too because even though he's a sociopath who has straight up killed some of his other fiances, because he goaded them into attacking him to justify invading their countries via mental abuse/torture, he's got like, a totally sad backstory and he like, is totally a good dude deep down he just needs the love and warmth he's never been shown before! I can fix him, you don't understand. It being an obvious female fantasy isn't the problem, it's that's all it is and it's a bad one that makes for a bad story. Just make a porn doujin if you're gonna neglect sense that much. In Fruit's Basket, we got a bad boy with a heart of gold as the one she gets with, but it's not an "I can fix him." situation, she's not trying to fix him, she sympathizes and she wants to show him that people can be good and see past his big dumb curse shit. This inspires him to fix himself. More importantly, the guy isn't a flat out abuseive sociopathic murderer! I simply don't really wanna see that you know, I realize I'm not the target audience for this, but how many people out there really are? Like I'm sure plenty are into this, but in this normal little drama series, is that what they want? All I know is, I really don't, it kinda sucks. 

Cuz it's not like that guy's even a good character, he's not, none of them are but he's the lamest. I was enjoying this show enough when it was Azure because I got it right like, he's gotta do this shit he's in servitude. Like her, he was actually taken when young and put in place of the prince who died. They bond over this, the confide in each other, they know each other's true names and have this thing where only they ever say them, when they're alone with each other. She wants to protect him and her country and she'll do whatever it takes! They're not that interesting of characters, but that's some good stuff!

 

Then it becomes time to fall for white hair red eyes mcnutjob and I'm just like please stop just go back to the romance I was actually invested in. I don't care about his generic tragic backstory where he was an orphan raised by this insane cultist dude who abused him then killed himself so he can't believe in the world or the good in people ohhhh his soul is so blaaaack but maybe with my love I can be the one woman he doesn't abuse and kill :^). Or I dunno, maybe she wants that, the author at least probably does lol. It's just dumb, man, it's dumb and I don't care about what was going on or their relationship. Then you add in his dumb brothers who are all lame and I just, man I kept getting bored.

 

This show isn't even really bad it's just it got bad as it went on is what happened, getting bored happened a bunch. I became kind uninterested in the later episodes' storylines especially when they revealed the king of this other country was actually this big warrior woman. I was just like "then why the fuck ain't she called the queen? wouldn't a warrior woman matriarch of all things call herself a queen?"

 

To prove that's not the issue on it's own, I mentioned on twitter there was nothing wrong with the part where Azure and the other guy literally fight over Nina with swords and shit. That's fine, it's a cool moment and makes sense for their characters and the circumstances, and it absolutely is cool, it's also just very obviously "It would be hot if these hot guys fought over me with swords." You can do both, it just rarely does. Or it's trying to, but the first part's not working so all we have is a fantasy I just don't share.

 

Thus, it's just a mediocre show.

Best Rumiko Takahashi

Ranma 1/2

 

 

Not a ton to say here, it has a similar appeal to Urusei Yatsura(and on that note, Kyoukai no Rinne as well, if you like either of these, check that one out too.) though it's a bit less well made because it's not DavidPro. It's still pretty good though, I thought it was enjoyable, and I will totally watch more of this adaptation when more comes out. 

 

Ranma 1/2, for the uninitiated, is a romantic comedy anime about Saotome Ranma(presumably no relation to Professor Saotome), a martial artists who falls in one of many cursed springs while training in china. The cursed spring area is a really funny gag, there's just a fucking billion of them and half the characters are people who fell into one of them and become different things when they get wet. Ranma is cursed to become a girl, and he (un)fortunately becomes a pretty cute one when he does. His dad becomes a panda, his rival who intially wants to kill him for flaking on their duel turns into a little baby pig(awww). That guy btw is mad because Ranma left after waiting for him to arrive for like, 3 days or something, because the dude gets so fucking lost to even his own challenges it took him longer than that to find his way to the meeting spot. There's lots of silly ass gag shit like that in there, as well as a budding romance between Ranma and Tendoa Akane, one of the daugthers of the family Ranma's currently staying with, and a fellow martial artist. Akane constantly has to deal with guys at school challenging her to fights in the hopes if they win she'll date them, even though she's never said anything to this effect or of that sentiment ever. In fact, she hates getting beaten by a guy, as shown by how angry it makes her when Ranma beats her. Though... she also seems to have started falling for him. Even though she previously had a crush on an older doctor, who in turn has a crush on her older sister. Oh, the drama!

 

Speaking of that romance, boy am I more invested this time. The characters are much better as people this time around while also having plenty of comedic flaws that make them very funny. Ranma's not the most mature or intelligent guy around, but I'm far more interested in whether or not he hooks up with Akane than I was whether or not Ataru really loves Lum. Akane similarly is pretty immature and is very "unreasonable anime love interest" with him but she's a nice girl with a lot of dedication to her martial arts and I sympathize with her unrequited love. I think the show over all isn't as well done or as funny as Urusei Yatsura, but that aspect is better done, so if you're looking for the romance part as much as or more than you are the comedy part, I think this has you covered. 

 

The structure is 1 to 2 episode mini arcs while characters and relationships develop over the course of them, very similar to Urusei Yatsura and other romcom anime, at least the older style a lot of them these days tend to take a more ongoing narrative approach. I promise I'll watch the original which I imagine has even more episodic-ness to it considering it's like 150 episodes long. Or, maybe, I'll read the manga. Anything other than just this modern adaptation, which just ain't gonna be as good in a lot of ways. But this one's still good, I'd check it out! 

Oh and one final note: For some reason, they censored some stuff from the manga by just taking out the nipples that were originally there. It's so weird, I can't even be that upset because I don't get it. Ranma's tits are still out plenty, there's just no nip. What a strange way to do that.

 

Best Slice of Life Comedy/Drama 

Negative Positive Angler

 

 

This is one I was a lot more positive on at first, but I never became negative towards it. Hahaha. No but seriously I was loving it at first but as time went on I thought more critically about it and decided it wasn't quite as good as I was thinking at first. It's not because, despite being a slice of life comedy, it starts to get more serious and focus on the bromance while neglecting what seemed like the romantic love interest subplot, I actually really enjoyed that and thought it was well done. They sprinkle that seriousness throughout, and I definitely liked the protagonist's relationship with his friend a lot, so it works out. There's always a shadow hanging over the show that's in the back of your mind, you think about it often and it clearly relates to the shows theme.

 

See the main character is supposed to die in like, I think it was 2 years tops. He's got some vague, non-specified terminal illness because what it is does not matter and has never mattered in any story ever(and if you still care to this day, I hope you grow out of it). At the start of the show he's evading debt collectors and cuz he's stopped trying to repay his debts, due to being a dead man walking. He eventually decides to just kill two birds with one stone and jump from this bridge into the ocean. However, some hip young fishermen and fisherladies see him while on the boat taking them to a nearby breakwater, so he wakes up there and sees them fishing. With nothing to do while he waits for their boat to come back so he can leave, he takes an interest and even tries fishing for himself, catching a decent fish for his first time. He is now, hooked on fishing. 

 

So he starts hanging out with them, eventually they like totally tear down the apartment he was living in so he ends up living with this guy called Takaaki, who he becomes bros with, and before the starts working at the convenience store that the others, including the funny goofyball Hana and strange normally-super-deformed-but-sometimes-not thai girl named Ice, work at. 

 

Takaaki seems at first like he might not have known what was going on with our protagonist, Sasaki, but in truth he kind of did. Early on our understandably angsty hero has a fairly unreasonable angst-out and Takaaki chases after him, at the end of this there's hints to a tragedy in his past which tells you he might have been through something fucked up as well, and be equally acquainted with Death, though in a different fashion. Takaaki knew Sasaki wanted to die that night, and this might be why he's taken a liking to this, honestly not too likeable guy. Sasaki is socially awkward, small, scrawny, and not very bright(he mentions like blowing lots of money mobages and he lost tons of money in I believe forex trading). But, he learns and grows and while his head gets a little big at first he eventually becomes a pretty competent fisher and a more mature person, and he developes a really great friendship with Takaaki and ends up returning the "not giving up on you" favor by the end. The theme I think is a tried and true, simple but good idea of making the most out of your life while you can. Sasaki wants to have fun and fish and hang out with friends, misfit and kinda fucks ups though they may be, before he inevitably dies. Though this ends up coming back to him before the end, I won't go too much into that. I've already spoiled enough really, its best to see it unfold yourself. I think it's really good and does a good job at that.

 

For the funny part, the characters are just fun. Hana is an airheaded weirdo who only cares about fishing, while Takaaki pretends to be an airheaded weirdo but is actually more complex than you might think. But most of the time, he's funny. There's the aforementioned Ice-san, there's this weird little middle aged midget guy(he is just always in super-deformed mode), just a bunch of different funny characters. Hana often goes into SD form, which in this show kinda has that bean-mouth face shape from the bean mouth cartoons, but I think it's done well here cuz it's not just how everyone looks. It's supposed to look stupid and silly and be the less detailed mode, rather than "no this totally looks fine for the whole show, guys". The characters are generally fun, but grounded, little goofballs, who are nice to watch fuck around or fish. I also learned a ton about fishing, as these kinds of hyper specific otaku interest shows tend to do. The reason I'm putting this on the level of Train to the End of the End of the World and Mayonaka Punch is because I found some of the scenes and such actually kinda boring, I started losing focus. Sometimes it's a bit too laid back and uneventful, so I start to check my watch lol. But the show is quite good, the second best show of the season, maybe of the year. That also might be why I feel this way, incomparison to our next show, it's clearly not on the same playing field.

 

 

 

Anime of the Year

Dan da Dan

 

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T GIVE ANIME OF THE YEAR TO LE FLAVOR OF LE MONTH SHOW!!!!

 

I can and I will. Frieren and Apothecary Diaries are the runners up! All the most popular shows are my favorites of the year neener neener.

 

Dan da Dan's also a comedy focused shounen with a lighter tone, but I feel like it works better for me because for one, it's not set during a samurai coup with all sorts of death and destruction, and another I just like the characters' personality and dymanics with each other more. 

 

It's a supernatural mystery action comedy romance series about an occult otaku named Takakura Ken and a yanki-gyaru named Ayase Momo, who we will refer to as Okarun and Momo-chan from now on because the latter is cute and the former is his nickname because Momo-chan doesn't want to call him his real name, cuz it's the name of the hot action movie star that she likes and it's awkward having this nerdlinger share the name. In actuality, it's because she's started to fall for him and it's just making her confused. 

The two meet when, after getting pissed off because her previous boyfriend who was a piece of shit dumped her, she defends him when some guys are mocking him for being into the occult. He gets the wrong idea and chases after her, thinking he might make a friend and kidred spirit who Believes. It turns out, he was mistaken. She... she... she believes in ghosts, but not in aliens! OH GOD NO! 

She believes in ghosts because her grandma's a spirit medium, but fuckin' aliens? Are you kidding me? Those ain't real! 

He's the opposite of course; Aliens? Plenty of evidence they exist. Ghosts? Literally none! 

So they get pissed at each other, making all sorts of fun and expressive poses that really give them a lot of character, and decide to try and prove whether or not ghosts exist by going to a couple very haunted locations.

 

Long story short, uh, they encounter some ghosts. Okarun is attacked by Turbo Granny, a youkai who is an old woman who runs real fuckin' fast, who hilariously wants this young man's dick. There's like, a lot of sexual jokes in this show. Spoilers, Okarun ends up with a supernatural power, but unfortunately during the process he ends up losing his balls. So they gotta go find them, they're filled with spiritual energy. When they find them, they're little gold balls, playing on the "kintama" term. Pretty funny, not since Gintama have I seen humor of this calibre! Anyway, uh, the old bitch chases him and he doesn't exactly manage to get away. Meanwhile, Momo-chan encounters aliens, who try to "probe" her, with their very long probing devices that come out of their crotches. Well, they're in facades that... uh, kinda resemble humans but not really, so who knows where that is on their real body. Who knows, man! Luckily, Okarun comes to save the day but, he's kinda become cursed by Turbo Granny, which is how he's able to come help. What follows is a fantastic, cool ass well-animated battle scene in which Momo-chan also discovers she has psychic abilities.

 

Through this experience, the two of them are now friends, bonded over the battle and their shared belief in both ghosts and aliens, and also have the task of un-cursing Okarun. Because at first, he's missing his whole dick too! Well I mean, you gotta get that back, right? 

 

Additionally, they also start falling for each other, and I really like that aspect of the show. Maybe it's silly and wish-fullfillment-y to have this pretty and cute gyaru fall in love with this dorky nerd, but it's a silly and unrealistic show to begin with. Everyone's some kind of silly goober and so I didn't think too much of it. The romance is really nicely done, it develops slowly and even though they clearly want to date each other, it feels natural as to why they aren't yet while other romances can feel transparently dragged out when it's like, they really should be dating by now. Okarun likes her but wants to be friends because he's not had a friend before and doesn't want to ruin it, plus doesn't imagine she'd actually want him anyway. Momo-chan is also happy to find someone who doesn't think her psychic powers are weird, as she was made fun of as a kid for having a spirit medium grandma and for the weird little charms she had her wear, so she doesn't wanna ruin it either and is also not sure about her feelings. Though most people already figured out they like each other and don't seem to mind, she herself, as nice as she is, seems like she's a little wary of getting with some nerdo. Besides, it's her first real crush, so she's nervous on top of that. The way they like each other is so cute though, you can tell how much they do. Okarun gets jealous when her "childhood friend" shows up, even though he really doesn't need to because the guy's a sperg and she doesn't like him that way, and in fact barely likes him at all. She keeps wanting to hang out and adventure with him and has this adorable scene where she's trying to pantomine "see you tomorrow" to him and get him to say it, cuz she always hopes to see him at school the next day and hang out. It developes nicely and is adorable, I hope it works out!

 

The action's great as well, it's not as well animated as Elusive Samurai, but it's definitely one of the best animated recent shows I've seen in a while. The expressiveness of the characters really displays a lot of personality as I said, and the action animation is dynamic and fluid and makes things really exciting, lots of cool angles and poses and choreography. Some of the shots are so well planned out, lots of stuff going on all at once which would be hard to sync up so well even with it being animated. Plenty of really cool visuals and good use of color, to convey a wide range of things and feelings. There's one episode, one where the story gets pretty serious, that's very well animated in a more grounded way. I'm not actually 100% sure how I feel about it, since it's really manipulative. Now, 90% of stories are, it's how they make you feel what they want, rare is a story that just presents you with something and expects you to figure out how to feel about it. But it's pretty obvious here, and is a pretty cheap tactic. It's one of the ghosts' backstories and it's really dark, but I think it might be a little too dark for this show. I mean it involves human trafficking, I don't know that it's for the best to establish that such fucked up, real-world sort of thing happens in this setting. Most of the time it's too light hearted and cartoony to believe such awful things happen here, I'd rather the cause of people's suffering in this world be the supernatural stuff. Luckily it tended to not really be in the back of my head by the end, so it's fine I guess.

 

As for stuff I didn't like, I thought Okarun's edgy transformed form when he activates his curse powers looked pretty dumb. Do not care for it at all, though I kinda like he speaks in sexual euphemisms like saying shit's "making him wilt" while in it. There's definitely a "hormonal teenager" angle to this show, I think it doesn't overdo it and sucessfully makes that a theme. We gotta get his dick and balls back so that he can get with the girl he likes and hopefully, you know, do the thing you wanna do with girls you like. I like that part, but I don't likethat it ends on a cliffhanger. Like straight up. It ends on a "there will be a second season" as well, but still. I wish they could have ended it on a less literally in the middle of getting to the good part note, but it could be worse.

 

So yeah, I really really liked it! Forget Frieren, this is my current favorite current series. I love these characters, their chemistry with each other, the jokes, the action, the animation, it's all so much fun and everyone's so endearing. Definitely looking forward to more, I wanna spend some more time with these really likeable characters and see the romance develop, and also some more sick action. What a great time this was. I'm glad I'm getting at least one of these a year now, what with Frieren and Tengoku Daimakyou. It was rough for a few years there. Man I hope they make more of those two soon as well...

 

This is my anime of the year, it's a great show and I'd highly recommend it. If you watch just one show from this, make it this one, it's a winner.  

Alright, there we go! I did it! I got the anime post done on time! Aren't you proud of me? No...? You're not, because you're not my mom? I should have gotten it done before? Wow, you're pretty harsh, guy who doesn't exist. 

Anyway, that's for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe got some good anime recommendations. 2025 is off to a good start with Season 2 of Apothecary Diaries and a show called Medalist, and soon a cool looking adaptation of a manga by the Dectective Conan guy(or was it gal) with the same animation director as Fullmetal Achemist: Brotherhood will air, and that's looking to be a great time. But you'll have to wait 'til probably this time next year to hear about those lol. Maybe anime's improving again since we're halfway through the decade? I dunno, I doubt it, considering Sony's closing in on owning way too much of the industry(or did that happen already?) and there's a lot of foreign pressure to conform. All we can hope for is some good shows sneak their way in. 

Tune in next time, same dumbass time, same dumbass channel!