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I'm trying to finish Vivy before the end of the year, so it might manage to slip in here, but from what I've watched, this was the best year for anime since 2018. Definitely a much more interesting pool to deal with, and having movies next to shows kind of makes it a pain to narrow down to 5. Still, running away this year of all years is right out, so let's get going. Shows only: 5) The fifth spot is pretty hard to choose. Vivy's a fun action series with time travel and AI nonsense, Super Cub is a really calming ad for Honda... but ultimately, I'm going with Heike Monogatari, a show that feels like it should go somewhere on a list, even if it's too uneven to be number 1. It was a show of amazing moments that didn't quite come together, but somehow they worked anyway, coming to a satisfying conclusion. 4) Attack on Titan the final season. Not final, and the way the manga ended left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but it's still an incredibly strong arc, even with the sometimes awkward animation. 3) 86. The second season's not done yet, so we'll see how that lands, but right now it's one of the stronger mech anime in a year overflowing with them. The fights are uncommon, but they're some of the best CG combat around 2) SSSS Dynazenon. The semi-sequel to Gridman, my show of 2018, it pretty much lived up to expectations. The structure of the reveals in the first show was stronger, with more surprises that make perfect sense in hindsight, and fewer unexplained events just kind of sitting there, but that didn't seriously harm the show overall, while seeing Knight again and the wider protagonist dynamics helped make up for it. A weaker year, this would be number 1. But it's not a weak year. Nowhere close. And number 1 shows that pretty clearly. 1) Odd Taxi wasn't a show I was planning to watch at all, and people talking it up like everyone needed to watch it didn't do that much to change my mind. But eventually the talk about the snappy dialogue and clever plot made me catch up as it finished, and I'm glad I did. Great voice acting, smart plotting that paid off what it set up over and over, good humor, interesting characters... It's just a really good show, and one that's pretty easy to recommend on top of that, with very few of the caveats a lot of anime need. And that's leaving off even more shows I enjoyed watching, from Rumble Garrandoll and its mecha parody to Nomad's gritty recovery story to the variety of Star Wars Visions to Pui Pui Molcar being, well, itself. My actual votes put Shin Evangelion at 1 and Hathaway at 3, which could be a short essay on its own, but yeah. This was (mostly) a good year, anime-wise. Of course, there's still going to be plenty to talk about in the negatives, but that's another thread.
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Dec 31, 2021 23:31
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So, when are we getting the terrible anime thread? Because looking over the good makes me ready to talk about the bad, even if I feel like I could say more about Odd Tax, and Eva, and Dynazenon... Yeah. Lot of good.
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Jan 3, 2022 09:59
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Omnicrom posted:
The main competition hasn't even showed up yet. I feel one-note sometimes in how often I bring this series up, but Chainsaw Man, which has an anime coming out this year from the same studio as Jujutsu Kaisen, was the closest rival when they were both running in Jump. Starting from similar base premises (an organization of questionably sane monster hunters going after monsters formed from human fears) and with similar broad strokes outlines for the core group (the usual post-Naruto trio setup), they both went in very different directions and managed to carve strong niches in Jump, with the two mangaka involved (Tatsuki Fujimoto and Akutami Gege) complimenting each other's work. (including Gege being amused that they both had very similar panels one week... and that Fujimoto's work kicked his rear end.) Chainsaw Man as an anime is still an open question, despite an absolutely killer first trailer, but as a manga, it's something very special. It's one of the few manga to break a million sales a volume on average before an anime. Fast paced, with great characterization, killer action, and some of the funniest gags I've seen in Jump, I think it has a solid shot at anime of the year this year if Mappa's putting the effort into it that the early evidence suggests.
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Jan 10, 2022 07:15
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