Endorph posted:

1: Houseki no Kuni/Land of the Lustrous: The best anime ever made, except for Symphogear. Incredibly well animated, gorgeous music, great use of CG, wonderful direction, incredibly endearing characters, great voice performances, funny, sad, exciting, interesting. literally my only complaint is 'a couple of individual shots look weird' and 'where they choose to end the episodes can sometimes feel a little forced to make a cliffhanger.'

2: Little Witch Academia: Funny, good animation, really expands on a pretty charming cast of characters. A couple of the episodes in the first half were kind of dull and a few of the side characters could have used more development relative to how much emphasis the show seems to place on them at times, but it's a good, well-made show.

3: Symphogear AXZ: The plotting is a little slapdash due to a need for fights to happen every episode, a couple of the episodes looked bad, and a few of heroes' character arcs were weird or kind of wasted, but it had excellent animation in other places, great music, and probably the best villains of any anime I watched this year, both the Illuminati Trio and their character arcs and Adam and his complete scumbaggery. Heck, I even felt a little bad for Tiki by the end, and she had like twenty lines. Not the best the show has to offer, but definitely above and beyond GX, and a good continuation.

4: New Game!!: A comedy that knows just how much drama to work in to make things compelling without feeling overwrought. The new additions to the cast were a little hit or miss the show was pretty obvious about which characters it actually cared about, but the characters it did care about got really satisfying arcs, and there were some good gags in there. Plus it dug into the game development side more than the first season did, since Aoba's there from start to finish.

5: KiraKira Precure: It started out a little weightless and weird, but by about episode 12ish the characters were really, really enjoyable, and it was fun to just hang out with them week to week. Plus, rad baking tips.

Honorable Mentions
Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: I liked it as I was watching it, but it seemed like for every funny joke or sincere character moment there was a criminally unfunny joke or some weird thing that really didn't need to be there. There were some good moments, though, and KyoAni's as strong a studio as ever.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie: Likeable and warm, but the romance never really felt as natural to me as it could have.

Love Live Sunshine Season 2: I liked Season 1 a lot, I just haven't gotten around to this show. I'm sure I'd like it. TBH If I had watched it there's a decent chance it would knock off KiraKira.

Ancient Magus Bride: I like the manga a lot, but I didn't touch the anime. so hey.

Shion no Ou: This didn't air this year but I watched it this year and it's insane in a good way. A mute girl plays shogi to avenge her parent's murder but mostly everyone just sits around talking about how sexist the culture around shogi is. the op is a weird grunge rock song. please watch this show.