2018 is now over, and it honestly feels like it flew past, anime-watching-wise. As well as awkward mecha romance by Trigger, the Winter season gave me Citrus and the ramen-obsessed girl. Spring gave me anthropomorphic horse girls racing to be idols. The Summer season nearly drove me up the wall with mentally unstable badminton players and pretentious theater fighting. I’m sure 2019 will be just as strange…but before starting, let me wish you all a very Happy New Year.
Every other show I picked had ended, except for Bloom into You, which ended not quite what I was anticipating.
Instead of focusing on the play itself, this final episode chooses to focus on Touko, where she begins to panic-think on what she is meant to do when she has ‘surpassed’ what her sister did in the student council. This became a “now-I’ve-done-this-what-do-I-do-now?” moment for her, and it’s come just in time as Yuu & Koyomi are finishing the rewrite of the script. So, just before they are due back to school, Yuu chooses to take Touko to the local aquarium, on a date/not-date.
If this were aired at any other point in the show, then this would be dismissed as a dull filler episode straightaway, but because Touko is suddenly at this crossroads, we can sort of see that Yuu is sort of trying to lead her on a path that she can choose, and not her sister.
Bloom into You ended not in the way I thought, but I am very pleased with the result of the show nonetheless, and this, along with SSSS Gridman, have brought back my faith in new shows. If you read this column, then you’ll know I hated the Summer season. Only Harukana Receive was able to save me that season, and so I’m glad that I was able to find some highly enjoyable shows for this Fall season. I swear, I will be doomed with this summer curse forever…
…and so that was my Fall season, and my year of anime. It’s now time to list what shows rocked my boat this year, and I’ve actually noticed a bit of a pattern this year: while I have been watching shows with complex plots, the shows I’ve enjoyed the most have been far more easy-going.
#5: Harukana Receive (C2C – Available on Crunchyroll)
Set in Okinawa, city girl Haruka moves in with her cousin Kanata, learns the wonders of beach volleyball and decides to get into it herself. This show was actually very soothing to watch whilst I was watching and reviewing the mentally draining Hanebado!; colorful animation, decent soundtrack and a no-nonsense plot. This was the perfect summer show; Harukana Receive just would not have worked in any other season.
#4: Aggretsuko (Sanrio/Fanworks – Available on Netflix)
The fact that a show like this caught the eye of some of my friends who normally don’t even like anime must be some kind of sign that Netflix are doing something in anime, despite what all the naysayers are proclaiming. This short show follows Retsuko, a red panda office lady who vents her anger with the help of death metal. This is the kind of Sanrio mascot that older people can warm to straightaway, as while this was an all-ages show, it had a lot of jokes only us adults could understand.
I reviewed this show for another group blog I wrote for (Japan Curiosity); you can check out the review here.
#3: SSSS Gridman (Trigger – Available on Crunchyroll)
This show has only just ended and yet it already landed in my top 3. Trigger certainly spent a good amount of time to get this show right, and it paid off…since they had to please the tokusatsu fans as well as us weebs. This presented a unique story yet showing references to the original live-action show here, there and everywhere.
As I said last week, Trigger took a huge risk in using the original theme song in this show, and as I have been talking non-stop about it for 3 months, here is the original theme:
#2: Yuru Camp (C-Station – Available on Crunchyroll)
This show became a replacement show for the column, to replace Takunomi (which at the time, I was unable to watch), and I don’t regret it one bit, as if you’re looking for just one easy-going show to watch for this year, then let it be this one. Yuru Camp follows Rin and Nadeshiko, one who enjoys camping solo, while the other wants to learn more and go camping with friends. The two couldn’t be more different, and yet they are both able to warm to each other. This is the kind of show that we want to have a second season for, but we know that it would probably ruin it at the same time, almost how season 2 of New Game! wasn’t as great as the first.
#1: Dragon Pilot: Hisone & Masotan (Bones – Available on Netflix)
My top award goes to this though, which we all had to wait for patiently thanks to Netflix. Blabbermouth Hisone joins the Air Force (because she can’t think of anything else to do), where she discovers the secret of OTFs (Organic Transformed Flyers, or Dragons) and finds herself picked to be a pilot of one. This original show mixed a lot of oddball comedy with a good script, unique animation and great character designs, as well as introduces a subtle message of misogyny in the military – people can praise Mari Okada for the script perhaps.
I reviewed this show for Japan Curiosity as well; you can check out the review here.
No top 5 list of anime would be complete without some honorable mentions, and I have a few of those:
Violet Evergarden (Kyoto Animation – Available on Netflix)
Bloom into You (Troyca – Available on HIDIVE)
A Place Further Than The Universe (Madhouse – Available on Crunchyroll)
This season’s Bloom into You impressed me bigly (haha – didn’t think I’d use that word!), as it did a lot of people, while the Winter season gave us two very interesting shows with great animation and script. I wrote a review for Violet Evergarden on Japan Curiosity here, while I was casually watching A Place Further Than The Universe whilst reviewing my Winter shows, and have decided to re-watch it over this holiday period.
I know that I missed out on a lot of shows, and they may well be ones that I choose to catch up on at another time, or they may even crop up as an out-of-season selection. Well…my Winter 2019 shows have already been decided, and the preview post for that is coming soon. In the meantime…
…how was your year of anime? What was the show you loved the most? What was the show you hated the most? Loads more shows have cropped up on Netflix (good ones too), so do you think they did right? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below…