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Honorable Mentions 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You By far the silliest anime I watched this year. Still a horny harem anime, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't snort milk through my nose when watching this. Gene of AI The anime that I most enjoyed in the Summer season. More reflective than dramatic, but I thought its takes were comparatively reasonable in the ever-crowding realm of AI fiction. Skip and Loafer Absurdly charming, with well-realized characters. The reason it didn't make my top five is because it leans more into the slice-of-life side of things, which I am biased against. Ragna Crimson First episode was bad. Don't get me wrong, the later ones are still firmly in the realm of anime trash, but drat if it isn't an entertaining kind of trash that isn't afraid to heap up the bodycount. I enjoy the metafiction aspect of "ok so you went through some traumatic events, it set you on the typical heroes' journey, you became absolute badass, and you won in the end. Ok. Cool. Now, can you win without losing absolutely everything and stranding yourself in a ruined world?" The magic crystal 8-ball says: Outlook Not Good. Undead Unluck Still airing, so it stays off the top 5, but the setting allows for some absolutely crazy shenanigans that the author has peppered in foreshadowing for. I watch it the day it comes out. Frieren Like Undead Unluck, not eligible because of the only-if-finished rule. That rule exists for good reason. Even so, the absolute craft that went into making this is absurd. Even mundane actions are given top-tier visual treatment. Pair it with an amazing OST and a story that balances wistfulness and levity and you've got a winner. Expect to see this in the 2024 AOTY thread. And now, we move on to our AOTY entries! #5: Ippon Again Another poster levied criticism against this anime about how all of its teams ultimately felt cut from the same cloth, with similar motivations and character roles within each. To me, that is its strength: its girls aren't here to free their grandpa from the shadow realm, or to bask in the wailing tears of their opponents, or to win prize money to save their orphanage, or to influence the fate of Japan. They're here because they want to be. They want to compete, they want to have fun, they want to struggle, they want to win. And they recognize that, for as much of a source of anxiety and frustration that their opponents prove to be, they are the same as them in the end. A good-natured sportsmanship flows throughout the time we spend with these girls, and while I'm sure that any continuation will feel the need to up the stakes, the competitive camaraderie will remain. Also worthy of note is the character design; in an era of fighting anime where most female combatants could double as waifish models before they unleash their bankai and crush a guy four times their size, these girls are refreshingly stocky. They actually look like they could take, and would counter-deliver, a goddamned punch. Another season, please. https://i.imgur.com/gSeXJEx.mp4 #4: Heavenly Delusion Often, I have a lot of difficulty ranking the anime I watched and liked. A simple rule of thumb I've come up with is: if a continuation were announced tomorrow, how eager would I be to watch it? Heavenly Delusion's intentionally-discomforting sexual assault scene cost it a few spots on this list, but when it comes down to it I absolutely do want to find out what happens next. I will happily go on another road trip through Post-Apocalyptostan (formerly Japan) with this crew, as much as I'm dreading the fates of the Science Lab kids. Hopefully at least Mimihime survives, but I wouldn't place money on it. Really, my chief complaint against anime as a whole is that it struggles with the horror genre in ways that live-action movies don't. I consider it basically the last frontier for anime to breach. Heavenly Delusion's chilling scenes get closer than ever to that thin line separating success from failure, and I want to see more of it. https://i.imgur.com/wH3LfD3.mp4 #3: Pluto The detective-noir format worked well here, and the English dub actors for Gesicht and Brau both did a great job. Usually super-robot-type-anime have me rolling my eyes, but Pluto is the exception, where a civilization dipping its toes in realms of technology approaching sorcery in their sophistication is as much a cause for hope as it is for dread. I find it immensely cool that the robot least equipped for combat was also the one who could've solved the plot first had not the others messed things up. The only things holding it back from my higher-tier placings is some of the dialogue (which came across as a bit too basic) and the absurd demise of one minor villain. And as much as I'm loathe to admit it, Netflix' involvement here was undoubtedly a good thing. Getting eight hours of animation was just the right pacing for what it was going for, where a more typical TV anime cour would've only had about five and a half hours' worth. https://i.imgur.com/vTf7t9C.mp4 #2: Oshi no Ko I'd known of the acclaim the manga had received beforehand, but only knew the vaguest details of the story hooks: that there would be Japanese pop idols involved, that someone somewhere gets reincarnated, and that the main idol doesn't love you (the reader). So imagine my surprise when I was treated to a supernatural murder mystery drama viewed through a critical lens of the pop entertainment industry. And that? That's only episode one! Normally I avoid idol shows like the plague, but this is the only one to break through that mental barrier and have me slavering for another episode, no, another season! It's incredible that an anime that leans so heavily into the supernatural managed to have one of the most real plots I've seen this year. I also have to give a shout-out to studio Doga Kobo for creating the anime with the sharpest character design and greatest overall visual splendor in the same year that Frieren was airing. Really, the only criticism I can levy against this title is that it is clearly part one of a much larger story. I am much looking forward to the continuation. https://i.imgur.com/9kVx4TU.mp4 #1: Vinland Saga S2 Back when the first season of Vinland Saga came out in 2019, it ultimately made my top 5 of the year, but only barely. It had come billed to me as a masterpiece and ended up merely enjoyable, a classic victim of hype. I expected the same of season two. What I found instead was a follow-up that not only went off in a bold new direction, but thematically complemented its first season perfectly. I get it now. It lived up to the hype manga readers had been clamoring over for years and was my absolute favorite anime of 2023. You don't even have to agree with its stances or philosophies to see the beauty therein. The fact that we received forty-eight episodes of this historical greatness in an age when most manga adaptations are lucky to get twelve is the icing on the cake. https://i.imgur.com/l5VC5n0.mp4
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Jan 3, 2024 08:07
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Guess I'll watch MyGo then. We'll see if it can get past my intense aversion to 3DCG anime.
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Jan 18, 2024 10:12
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