The Best Anime of 2017

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > The Best Anime of 2017

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

The lack of early votes for Kemono Friends and the surprising lack of overlap with Land of the Lustrious votes has me thinking there is some recency bias, but I won't vote until I finish watching the latter.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2017 22:04

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 20:00

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

70 voters so far, 1 show is the clear frontrunner, but all the rest of the rankings are still up for grabs.

There are lots of invalid votes too. Please make a new post to make a correction if desired, as opposed to editing your original, tia.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 03:20

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Kytrarewn posted:

Can you be more clear about this? Are you actively discarding any vote with an "edited" tag, or just not going back to recount votes if someone had edited his post (which would have been nigh impossible if you're just adding tickmarks to an excel sheet or something).

I ask because I don't believe that I've changed my actual vote... but I have added additional content to my post and added names to by HM list, neither of which should affect your actual tally.

I started checking votes on 12/29, and I'm not going back to check for edited posts. I will make a compilation post as voting closes indicating which individual votes were not counted. And as always I will post the entire spreadsheet so you can check your individual scores to make sure I interpreted your votes correctly. My raw data is somewhat timestamped, to make sure no one tries to cheat and add more votes, etc.

Also all honorable mentions are being recorded just for curiosity, so they do affect the tally.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 22:49

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Also in general, if you used vote(s) on a movie feel free to add an "official" top 5 vote for something else instead if you want. None of the movies got enough votes to give it an exception, so they will be treated the same as unlisted/invalid series.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 23:04

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Srice posted:

It's right there in the OP that movies are fine if they're from this year!

I mean, you can vote for Cory in the House if you want and that's fine.

Ok, how about this: I will collect all the movies that got top5 votes along with their vote count just for reference, and if y'all think they got enough votes to matter I'll custom add them to the bottom of the valid shows list.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 04:43

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Like last time I've ranked all shows that I gave a 10/10 this year, with the top 5 being my votes:

1) March Comes In Like A Lion S1 - Bias is bias. The trials and tribulations of a semi-pro grinder and his interactions with his fellow competitors and the 1v1 game they all play strikes too close to home for me. Throw in some of the most heartfelt family relationships infused with brilliant character drama on top of a base not afraid to tackle the subjects of depression and self-esteem, all wrapped up in that value-added sleek Shaft style and we get the #1 show of 2017.

2) Kemono Friends - This is about to be a lot of words for the #2 show, but it truly deserves it. I had to contemplate this for a long time, but I finally figured out why Kemono Friends was so good, described by these 3 things that are core to anime:

Anime is not and was never about just looking good, i.e. trying to be a Disney/Pixar clone. It's about building an aesthetic, and doing the most with as little as possible. Sure the 3D is janky, but it has style and heart and they stick to their guns all the way through.
Anime is great because it is a multi-media experience. The fan-art, the music tributes, the videos, everything was simply incredible for this show.
This show reminds me that it's OK to just have fun with anime, to be entertained watching a bunch of fun characters do stuff.

All that alone would be more than enough to make my top 5 list, but it doesn't stop there. The zoo cross-promotional events were one thing, and sure it was cool to learn about the characters' real-life animal counterparts, but how about the saga of Grape-kun the otaku penguin wooing the cardboard cutout of Hululu? Has anything like that ever happened in the history of anime? Like, just read that again:

This show made a real life actual penguin fall in love with an anime penguin waifu until the day it died.

I still can't believe it when I think about it today, and the fact that it touched so many of our hearts that people still argue whether this waifu love was a good way for the old sick penguin to spend it's last days or whether the stress on being unable to woo her accelerated his death. Absolutely crazy.

And it's not even done there! The controversy of creator vs producer was certainly something, with the unfortunate outcome of any season 2 on such a goldmine being tossed in the dumpster, a baffling conflict of pride and capitalism for the public to watch. Since we're pretty sure that what we got is probably all we're going to get, we can look back at the magic that took place all in 2017 that was Kemono Friends. Like if that all wasn't enough to be one of the best animes of the year for me then I don't know what the gently caress.

3) Girls' Last Tour - Once again, aesthetic is king, as the minimalist style mashes with the wideface blobs to create a brilliant juxtaposition in this neat chilling chillax thought experiment on human extinction.

4) Land of the Lustrous - "Yet another" post-apocalyptic introspection with "janky looking cgi", but this show delivers off the strength of its world-building, characters, and almost hilarious attention to mineralogy details. As someone who has attended multiple gem and mineral conventions, I'm surprised I didn't watch this show as it aired, but I guess the hype and marketing about it didn't catch for me. Additionally, the front-loaded exposition was as dry as an over-cooked turkey.

But this show did some important science in the year 2017: we can talk all about characters and aesthetic and action scenes and such all we want,

but ultimately the only thing that matters is anime hair.

Because my God what a brilliant loving idea to leverage that jank 3D into absolutely stunning visual effects on each character's hair. I have a history with amethyst, having mined for them by hand at one point in my life, and the moment I saw Amethyst's hairstyle I knew I was ranking this show in my top 5, because seeing it for the first time immediately triggered complete thoughts and sensations of... well, amethyst. The hairstyle designs (in addition to all the character designs) are brilliant. And things just kept improving from there, as more animation (and plotlines) started becoming more fluid, to the point that I wondered if they created a customized physics engine just to produce this show. Package it together with top-class storyboarding, an incredibly effective blend of 2D and 3D, a well-deserved CGI grand prize, and a hilarious way to average 5.108 detached limbs per episode.

Also it sucks that the genderless discussion and the pronoun discussion had to be constantly rehashed, it really saps the energy out of the series. Sometimes I just closed my eyes to the subtitles and listened to the Japanese words because holy poo poo @ everyone.

Ironically, the above also made the show's exploration on what makes a human human even more interesting on yet another layer.

5) How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend .flat - Not trying to be a hipster for the sake of it, I swear! The ranking of this show surprised me too. This second installment builds off the first and delivers a fantastically juicy character drama with meta-comedy done the right way. The relationships were rich and complex, and the show never felt like it treated the viewer like they were an idiot, something that I value really highly.

6) Saga of Tanya the Evil - What an absolutely dumb premise, but wow was it executed almost flawlessly. Enough comedy when it needed to be funny (supplemented by the shorts after each episode), a pinch of philosophy edging the brink of edginess, mixed well with a good dose of batshit crazy military and magical antics to get the adrenaline rushing.

7) Kobayashi's Dragon Maid - Kyoto Animation does it again, taking above-average source material and turning it into gold. Obviously they had to compromise with the Lucoa stuff, but wow did they take care of business otherwise. Having both the OP and ED be so goddamn catchy was a sensory overload. Good gay dragon show.

8) Attack on Titan Season 2 - This followup season was very good, and I even liked it more than the first season (LOTS of the shounen bullshit and pacing were trimmed to much leaner levels). It's just too bad it came out like 2.5 years late after the hype died.

9) Sagrada Reset - Props to David Production for stepping out of their JoJo money-printing wheelhouse to try and produce this school mystery supernatural drama, and it worked. Using two inherently boring main characters without letting it be actually boring to watch was double the difficulty, make that quadruple with all the timeline/time travel antics. But SaeKano was just better imho.

Honorable Mention: 12 series this year got a 9/10 from me; rather than point them out I'll give a mention to the only one that has not been mentioned so far:
Cleanliness Boy! Aoyama-kun - A fun comedy about our soccer star who just wants things to be clean. It is baffling and amazing that they stretched this concept across 12 episodes and made it consistently funny throughout.

Best movie:
1) Your Name - No explanation needed. Worth the theater ticket.

2) Kizumonogatari III - I'm no -monogatari fan, but this 3rd installment to this series was a brilliant spectacle. Everything good about the series is amped up to 11, and everything bad about the series is minimized or just not part of the movie. Good job Shaft, this was an incredible watch, with one of the most interesting and fun final battles I've ever seen.

Remember this for this next year's vote:
1) March Comes in like a Lion S2 - obviously. But if they make Land of the Lustrous S2 or Made in Abyss S2 I will watch those shows weekly.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 04:50

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Homura and Sickle posted:

the poster counting the votes made invalid votes... wild...

This is technically true, since the list of shows to vote for only includes "Land of the Lustruous" but my spellchecker changed it to "Land of the Lustrous".

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 09:12

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

(click prior to reading this post)

Josuke Higashikata posted:

You add too many rules to this.

Just count the nominations as they are and if it means something from 1995 wins the 2017 anime of the year, so be it, it meant 2017 sucked.

actually sometimes

rules are good

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 10:02

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Josuke Higashikata posted:

rules for an anime popularity contest that aren't actively being explained to the people voting and are only going to inform the people who have broken them long after they probably care to fix them with arbitrary disqualifications for movies or whatever

are not the good type of rules.

actually I don't have to do poo poo, and I'm not informing anyone of anything new, I just happen to see which votes are invalid because I count them up, and am happy to do the extra work to give people a second chance to vote because it's always so close.

Everyone is perfectly capable and allowed to vote for things that aren't on the list, it's just bad data, and I wouldn't be a statistician without knowing how to deal with it.

And just to be clear, it wasn't arbitrary disqualifications, it was me asking all of you to reduce the amount of work I have to do, because now I have to validate every single one of your movie/ova votes (and figure out what you're even voting for in the first place since I don't know all the names and nicknames and japanese titles of all the movies) but now I'm doing that work anyways, so maybe just be happy about it or suggest some improvement.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 19:09

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

littleorv posted:

I'm sorry I voted for an OVA my friend.

Nah it's cool, I personally respect the statement. Hell I used a vote on SaeKano, but how I feel is how I feel.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 19:44

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Josuke Higashikata posted:

Here's my improvement: Drop the stupid anal rules, accept votes as they are posted.

anal rules? It's literally one rule

quote:

- Pick up to 5 series from the list.

I don't make the rules, I just enforce them. Go whine about Dragonball Super to someone else that actually matters.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 21:48

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Happy New Year ADTRW!

Voting isn't over. (I assume the poll close date will be given soon). But just for informational purposes here is the list of unlisted movies/OVAs that received Top5 votes:

3 Kizumonogatari III 2 In This Corner of the World 2 Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower 1 Night is Short, Walk on Girl 1 Lupin the Third: The Blood Spray of Goemon Ishikawa 1 Yoake Tsugeru Lu no Uta 1 Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2202: Ai no Senshi-tachi 1 Kubikiri Cycle: Aoiro Savant to Zaregototsukai 1 Your Name 1 Napping Princess

Just for reference, reaching the top 10 of the year takes at least ~15 votes.

And here is the list of total movie/OVA votes and mentions combined:

5 Night is Short, Walk on Girl 4 Kizumonogatari III 4 Your Name 3 Yoake Tsugeru Lu no Uta 3 In This Corner of the World 2 Napping Princess 2 Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven's Feel - I. Presage Flower 1 Lupin the Third: The Blood Spray of Goemon Ishikawa 1 Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2202: Ai no Senshi-tachi 1 Kubikiri Cycle: Aoiro Savant to Zaregototsukai 1 Blame! Movie 1 Koe no Katachi

Add them to the list or not, I'm ready either way.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2018 05:58

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

And here are the votes that weren't counted (original posts quoted for convenience), you may change or keep them as you wish:

Ccs posted:

Houseki no Kuni/Land of the Lustrous:
Brilliant show. Incredible character growth, animation, music, pacing, and design. It's also the first anime to get CG right to the point I could show it to people without them realizing it was CG.

Osomatsu Season 2:
Almost as funny as the first season with a lot of great jokes. They go the extra mile in the animation to push the humor. 50,000 SUMMA

Little Witch Academia:
Fun series with good designs. Was easy to watch an episode out of order, but the lack of strong plot through-line discouraged me a bit.

Ancient Magus Bride:
Good characters and visuals overcome the strange premise and lack of strong plot.

Ccs, your 2nd vote of Osomatsu Season 2 was not counted.

Ignis posted:

1. MMO Junkie (mostly what this guy said)
2. Gintama Slip Arc (a great year for Gintama overall in most departments imo)
3. Tsuredure Children (the manga is the most adorable thing, the anime didn't disappoint even though it got really compressed at points)
4. Pingu in the City (noot noot motherfuckers)
5. Osomatsu-san 2 (more of the same but there ain't nothing wrong with that)

Ignis, your 4th and 5th votes of Pingu in the City and Osomatsu-san Season 2 were not counted.

jon joe posted:

5. Youjo Senki: Saga of Tanya the Evil cool

4. Osomatsu-san 2 funny

3. Made in Abyss pretty

2. KonoSuba 2 funnier

1. nothing because I haven't watched Land of the Lustrous yet, apparently

jon joe, your 4th vote of Osomatsu-san Season 2 was not counted.

jon joe posted:

i had left my #1 spot open but I'd like to fill it with An Extremely Goofy Movie

Done!

kayakyakr posted:

1) Shokugeki No Soma: 3rd Plate - Strong season 3 from an epic show about cooking. I will have to go back and watch the first two seasons soon.

2) Magical Circle Guru Guru - 1 and a half episodes to go. I think I find it funnier than the girlfriend, but she's more attracted to the cuteness of it. Some excellent satirical, parody, or meta humor, including in the translation.

3) Recovery of an MMO Junkie - I'm really bummed that the source material is missing, but am sorta hoping that they continue the story anyway. I want an actual ending to the series!

4) Ancient Magus Bride - Enjoyable, nicely arted

5) Little Witch Academia - Watched this on my own in the spring. It was OK.

kayakyakr, your 1st vote of Shokugeki no Souma: San no Sara should be counted and that show should be requested to be added to the list of 2017 shows.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2018 06:01

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

We're "missing" about ~20 votes (compared to last year), and it's like effectively a 6-way tie from 2nd to 7th.

Please vote if you haven't yet!

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 05:57

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

MMania posted:

I spent ~1/52nd of this year watching anime, yet somehow I still haven't watched a bunch of the shows that have shown up on many of the thread's top 5s. I'm sure some of them would make it to my 'real' top 5 but these are my picks for shows I've finished.

This has been mentioned a few times now, but it is totally ok and even desirable as it produces higher quality data without the baggage of anchoring effects.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 20:24

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

superLINUS posted:

This stupid thread got me watching the stupid rakugo show, and it's not at all engrossing. AT ALL.

I dug the first season and every character, could barely stomach 3 episodes of the 2nd. YMMV.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 19:08

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Cake Attack posted:

I'm finally watching anime again and I watched land of the lustrous and have deemed it good enough to be added to my vote, thus giving its inevitable high ranking any real significance

Added as your vote #3!

# ¿ Jan 12, 2018 03:58

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

1st place has a landslide victory, but the remaining voters can still shake up the 2nd through 13th(!!) places

# ¿ Jan 12, 2018 05:01

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

superLINUS posted:

I've watched 2 list-worthy anime since I did mine, can I resubmit?

Do what your heart desires~

You followed the rules and your votes are fine, so imo just ride it out until tonight.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2018 19:54

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Wark Say posted:

My Hero Academia's 2nd Season just has way better material to work with. It's a pretty fun ride!

Animegataris goes down a weird rabbit hole, but I mostly enjoyed it.

Gamers! is cute, but more important than that, it's INCREDIBLY DUMB. Endearingly so.

KonoSuba has a few skeevy aspects, but it's so dang funny. My recommendation here is to wait for the whole "party" to be properly introduced (coincidentally, episode 3), and if you still feel no need to go on, it's totally understandable.

Little Witch Academia Is not very innovative as far as themes go, but it's an absolutely endearing and dynamically alive show when it comes to visuals. Like LotL is a breath-taking show, but LWA is playful in ways that few things are.

I'm double checking my data, and you almost got away with making this post as a 2nd set of votes lmao

# ¿ Jan 13, 2018 05:22

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Metadata:
- 116 voters, 537 votes
- 69 of the 205 different series got Top5 votes

:siren:

The Best Anime of 2017: :siren:

1. Land of the Lustrous - 42

Woooo yea ok we all saw that from a mile away, let's move on to the more interesting results:

The Gauntlet:
2. KonoSuba 2 - 32 T-3. March Comes In Like A Lion S1 - 28 T-3. Little Witch Academia - 28 T-5. ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Department - 27 T-5. Made in Abyss - 27 7. Girls' Last Tour - 26

What a bloodbath! But the KonoSuba faithful came through with a late push that cemented them in 2nd place. All of these places shifted through the last day of voting.

The Special Mention:
8. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju: Sukeroku Futatabi-hen - 24

Just a little less voting oomph than the group above, but a solid showing for this second season.

Just Made the Cut:
9. Recovery of an MMO Junkie - 22 10. My Hero Academia Season 2 - 21

The Snubs:
11. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid - 20 12. Princess Principal - 19 13. Kemono Friends - 18

This entire section of results also flip-flopped until the end, what a great year for anime.

In other words:

More Data:
As always, spreadsheet is open to viewing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y8yxmgercB2wTKG09jE04-121Irs8ByuCgv8bMR3QQ0

- Full list of results are on the FinalScores sheet along with other metrics such as what the results would look like if we weighted votes.
- Raw vote tallies are on the RawData sheet, i.e. how I interpreted all of your posts and words into numbers.
- And the voting visualizations are again on in the AdvancedAnal sheet, for example:

March Comes In Like A Lion S1 (Avg: 4.143) 11111111111111 2222222 3333 444

vs

Land of the Lustrous (Avg: 3.860) 11111111111111111111 22222222 33333333 444 5555

vs

Girls' Last Tour (Avg: 3.500) 11111 2222222222 3333333 4 555

vs

KonoSuba 2 (Avg: 3.344) 1111111 22222222 33333333 4444444 55

etc.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2018 07:10

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

GorfZaplen posted:

Nice.

I'm almost positive darkgray did it for the memes, because it was at 68 for a long time until a new vote for Tsuki ga Kirei came in

# ¿ Jan 13, 2018 07:23

AnacondaHL: Feb 15, 2009; I'm the lead trumpet player, playing loud and high is all I know how to do.

Oh, right I was gonna ask about that: I still have the structure in the spreadsheet to do the studio tally like last year, I just needed a list. Gimme a sec~

# ¿ Jan 13, 2018 19:04