Welcome to my other segment on this site that should have been up a week ago. That’s right, it is time for my Top Ten Anime of 2013 list. Anyone wondering why this is going up days after the new year began, honestly, I figured my First Impressions review should have gone up first, so I was kind of focusing on getting that done first. We have had quite a year, haven’t we? Filled with… stuff, and… more stuff. Okay, maybe not such a good year for anime in retrospect. I mean, it’s certainly not saying anything good about the anime this year when I effortlessly cut the entire list of it down to only sixteen titles in less than fifteen minutes. Those sixteen were a lot harder to choose between though, because there were some serious gems among the crap. So before we start, a quick mention to shows like Log Horizon (otherwise known as Not Sword Art), and Hataraku Maou-sama that just barely missed the cut. Very entertaining shows, but there were still better. Now, let’s dive right in, and take a look at the top shows of last year.Special Mention: Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai 2
This show gets a special mention for one reason and one reason alone, for making me rage at it like I have never raged at an anime before. The ending was just that bad. From enjoyable show, to something I have directed more curse words than a season of South Park at, this show devolved into something completely different in the final few episodes. It’s like the creators went out of their way to destroy all that they had built up in the first season and a half, and then decided to chicken out of their own ending at the last second. This gets a mention simply for making me rant about it as much as it has. Not good ranting by any means, but if getting people to talk about it was one of their goals, then mission complete.
Special Mention: Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru
Another Special mention for a show with an incredibly similar title to the last, and this time for a far more positive reason. For a harem series, this was actually an incredibly well written, endearing harem series, and for as tired of a genre as this is, that’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Making you feel bad for one of the girls when he picks someone else is one thing, making you feel bad for all of them, now that deserves a medal. A well done series that made even a genre I’m tired of seem interesting again, definitely worth a mention, if not a place on the main list.
10. Nagi no Asukara
What can I say about this show? The writing is solid, aside from a bit of a shaky start, the character development is well executed, and the visuals are breathtaking. For a series that very few people have even heard of, a hell of a lot of effort went into this. Rarely have I ever been this invested in what was going to happen to a set of characters, not an unlikable one in the bunch. Hell, the break in the series for the holidays is absolutely killing me. That’s the mark of a good show. It took a few risks, but they paid off wonderfully, and I recommend everyone take a look at it and spread the word about this amazing anime about discrimination, love, and being forced to grow up far too fast.
9. Kill la Kill
I don’t want to go into this too much here, but I will say this. This show is pure fun. The art style draws you in, and you just have fun watching. It feels like a return to how anime was when I first started getting into it, and I think that nostalgia value is why the older crowd gets so into it. Studio Trigger are some amazing people to have put this together, and I hope to keep seeing awesome stuff like this from them in the future. Sure, it didn’t rank as high here as I know some people were hoping, but the fact that it stood out this much is a feat in and of itself. Then again, standing out in the crowd is what this show is all about. Throw as much hate at it as you want, I will still be sitting here enjoying every minute of it.
8. Golden Time
Just as with the above, I don’t want to dwell on this show for too long, as I just went over it in my first impressions review a week or so ago. An endearing, and at times almost heartbreaking romance anime that has captured many people’s hearts as of late. I rank it so high despite only being half done because it tried something new and succeeded. It took an old cliché like the protagonist with amnesia and made it into something fresh and new. Now, that’s an accomplishment. The writing and direction play off it really well too, making you feel for the poor guy, and representing it in a way that makes what he’s going through obvious, without having to resort to longwinded explanations. Not to mention that the main relationship feels natural. You understand why these two are together, they’re both incomplete human beings who complement each other, and make up for the other’s weaknesses. It’s refreshing, and brings to mind other older anime like Toradora. I look forward to this show so much every week, there was no way I could have avoided putting this on my list.
7. Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai 3: Megami Hen
This one may just be more of a personal choice, but I think it deserves a spot on this list. If you know anything about this series, The World God Only Knows is a series where a master of dating sims is forced to try and woo real life girls with dating sim logic. One would think that this would make it a very strange, unrealistic series, and quite often you would be one hundred percent correct. However, it is while watching the wind down in between story arc that this show has always shined. The protagonist Katsuragi Keima, is quite possibly one of the most realistic, and blatantly human anime protagonists I have ever seen. Every time he succeeds in one of his missions, the girl he was attempting to conquer completely forgets about him. No matter what happened between them, it would never go further than a single kiss, and then it was back to square one again. Other characters in the show chide him for being detached, unfeeling, and a terrible human being, but it is exactly the opposite. At the end of each arc, you can see it gets to him. A momentary lapse in his facial expression, a moment spent staring in their direction, he cannot simply forget any of it. After spending all that time around them, getting to know them so well that he can predict their actions, after seeing them look into his eyes, completely in love with him, he can’t just stay detached. He is very human, he has his faults, his obsessions, and his weaknesses. The things going on around him, the repeated instances of these girls not remembering him after everything they went through together, are absolutely killing him, but he bottles it all up inside and puts on a façade. It is the only way he can continue to help them, he has to be the strong one, or else he will fail. This season brings that to the forefront more so than the ones before it. He drives himself to the brink, mentally, physically, and emotionally, all to try and protect those girls who should not remember him anymore. It all just piles up until one final straw breaks the proverbial camel’s back, one thing that was not part of any of his predictions, something that by all his calculations should have been impossible. At the end of the season, once everything has been settled, he is a broken man. Even his façade seems to be in tatters. This season has officially made me want to pick up the manga, just to see what happens from there. That’s how good the ending was, I need to see the rest. This is why it made it onto this list.
6. Kotoura-san
Notable more for the gigantic baseball bat it takes to the audience’s emotions than anything else, this show manages to make its way into my top ten. This series managed a nice balance between endearing, funny, and soul-crushingly sad. It was endearing and made you like everyone, was funny when it could manage it, and yet still managed to knock you down a few pegs emotionally whenever it had the chance. All in all, it was a good story about a likable character stuck in an unfortunate, if not completely avoidable, situation. I mean, seriously, all she needed to do was keep her mouth shut to avoid most of it. No one can say she didn’t know any better either, she had been dealing with this issue since kindergarten. You would have thought she would have figured it out by now. Anyways, that is the one issue the series had, and it’s a small one that you can easily overlook.
5. Free!
Hear that? That’s the sound of countless male fans closing the browser window and raging that this even got included on this list. Hear me out though. Despite all the male fanservice, and the fact that this was obviously intended for a female audience, this is actually a really well done show that most of you will never give a shot simply because of the premise. It is a really solidly written sports anime, not too different from some of the more popular Hollywood sports movies in its execution. The characters are flushed out and interesting, the writing is excellent, and the animation is fluid, vibrant, and detailed. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s obviously advertised as male fanservice, and all the fan hate it managed to garner for that, I think this would have been given a place beside some of the more well-known sports anime like Eyeshield and Prince of Tennis. On top of that, you can almost tell that Kyoto Animation did this series just for the irony of it. The directorial style, the shots used, they are exactly the same as all of their more popular anime, like Haruhi, and K-On. Yet somehow, the moment this is applied to a male swimming team instead of a set of high school girls, the otaku community is all up in arms about it. I personally find the drama hilarious, and did not let it stop me from appreciating this show for what it is, a solid anime about a sports team made by a director who was parodying his own studio’s style. I honestly believe we need more studios to flip convention on its head like this, no matter what the fan reaction is. Kudos to Kyoto Animation for doing this, though, having seen their usual sales numbers, they were probably the least at risk to fail in doing so.
4. Suisei no Gargantia – Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet
I think it’s becoming obvious that I cannot avoid putting anything Urobuchi Gen had a hand in writing on these lists. An awesome fish out of water series about a soldier from space finding himself stranded on the previously thought destroyed Earth, which his people had abandoned hundreds of years prior. This series keeps you glued to the screen for the better part of its run, with three tiers of cultural misunderstanding between the inhabitants of Earth, the soldier who struggles to understand their very different way of doing things, and the cold hard logic of his AI companion. All in all, Urobuchi’s usual style of writing (Read as: Killing off major characters left right and centre and leaving not much in the way of a happy ending) does not make itself too well pronounced in this, but then again, he was not the original writer, he only adapted it for television. However, it still manages to hold your attention, and draw you in regardless, just like his other works. A great series, and I can’t wait for season two… though I have no idea how the hell that’s even going to work considering...
3. Kamisama no Inai Nichiyobi
Yet another of the best shows that you have never heard of, because oddly enough, the usual hype machine that should follow stuff like this remained silent. The epic journey of a young girl through a world abandoned by God, this series left off a number of episodes on an absolutely haunting tone. It features the rarely seen Post Zombie Apocalypse time frame, something I personally have never seen anyone attempt before. Well written, well directed, with stunning visuals that I’d put up there with Nagi no Asukara. There are just so many good characters in this show, it’s hard not to enjoy every moment of it, and I really want to see a second season. However, considering most people never even realized that this show existed while it was airing, the chances of that seem slim. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should really give it a try.
2. Shingeki no Kyojin – Attack on Titan
I think everyone knew this had to be on this list. I mean, do I really have to say anything about this show? Everyone watched this already, and if not, they know enough about it that they still would not question this. This show is amazing on so many levels. The fact that it makes you care about so many of its characters despite you knowing full well that they are all likely to die terrible, gruesome deaths is a sign of damn good writing. The animation is fluid and well done, distracting you effectively from any issues the show might have, the voice acting sells every line, and the musical score is breathtaking. A lot of time and money went into this, because they knew it was going to be big. How could it not be? I won’t even get into the opening theme right now, because even if you haven’t seen the show, you’ve heard it a million times anyways. There was no question that this would be on this list, but why number 2? Well, in my mind there was something that I looked forward to more than this every week, and considering what it was, that’s something of an accomplishment.
1. Chihayafuru 2
My number one spot has to go to the show that consistently kept me on the edge of my seat, and in a few cases, holding my breath in anticipation. Never before have I seen an anime quite like this, with an atmosphere that has you hanging on every small movement in the animation. The tension in most of these episodes was so thick, it almost made the air around you heavy while watching it. You watched breathlessly in suspense during every single match to see who would come out victorious, and for a show about a card game that involves the memorization of classic poetry, that’s quite the feat. This show proves, hands down, that atmosphere is everything. It can take a really boring premise for a series, and turn it into something absolutely amazing. Things were so tense, so suspenseful, that single matches turned into multi-episode epics, and it felt completely natural and necessary. I find it incredible that a show about Karuta has managed to run for a total of fifty episodes, and I personally hope it goes on for fifty more at least.
Thank you for reading through my top ten of the year, and for not stopping at number five like I expected most people to. Once again, I apologize that this was so late going up, and I will return again in the next few weeks with my first impressions of Winter 2014. I promise it will not be as late as Fall was… I hope.
