Month: December 2020

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 4

Before we get started, a brief reminder to check out the Introduction post and the previous 3 parts of the list before you read this one. Don’t wanna spoil yourself, y’know?

In any case; there were plenty of anime I liked in 2020, some of which I liked quite a lot. There were not nearly as many that I truly loved. But of those I did, they fall into one of two categories. Either they are sharp, questioning, and political. Or they are joyous reaffirmations of how art can affect us, and how it can carry us forward even through the darkest times of our lives. The two are dissimilar, but complimentary. The former is grounded in realism and the latter in escapism. They tend toward the pessimistic and optimistic, respectively. I think that reflects the character of the year–and I suppose, of myself–quite well. Hopefully you agree. On to the final five!

#5: DECA-DENCE

Not since Kill la Kill has a studio produced an original anime debut so immediately sharp and arresting. I have to admit, I turned that statement over in my head for literal days before committing to it, but it’s true. Nut Co. Ltd. have done TV anime before, but aside from an assist on the polarizing FLCL sequels, their most well-known work before Deca-Dence was The Saga of Tanya The Evil, which, whatever one may think about it, was a manga adaption that stuck fairly close to its origins.

Any flaws aside; Deca-Dence feels very much like a wholly-realized singular artistic vision, from start to finish. The sort that is fairly rare in commercial arts fields (which TV anime certainly is). What’s more, it is nakedly political, with a witheringly on-point cross-examination of the evils of capitalism and its dire endpoints as exemplified by its very setting; a post-apocalyptic world which is exploited as a “real life video game” by the ruling class. Which would maybe make it a slog if the show weren’t so damn fun. Visually, Deca-Dence pops with bright colors, steampunk-inspired machines, and a design sensibility for its robot characters that feels inherited from Kaiba, one of the all-time great anime of this sort. Narratively, there’s enough action and compelling character drama to keep things from getting stale or feeling preachy. Deca-Dence exists in solidarity, not on a pedestal.

The unified artistic vision that is largely a positive does, on the flipside, unfortunately mean that it has a few notable flaws. Its chief sin is a bait-and-switchy treatment of its two leads, which would be less of an issue if one were not a young girl and the other an older gruff man narratively empowered by her pain. It’s a mistake this kind of thing should be able to avoid, and that is primarily why it rounds out the bottom of the Top 5. So it goes.

Still, if Deca-Dence is any indication of what future Nut Co. productions, or those of director Yuzuru Tachikawa or writer Hiroshi Seko will be like, there’s a lot to look forward to.

#4: Kaguya-sama: Love is War?

For two years in a row; Kaguya-sama: Love is War! has been raising the bar for anime romcoms. What it may lack in innovation it more than makes up for in technique and heart, Love is War?, the confusingly-titled second season of the series, is top-to-bottom hilarious. Except of course, when it’s busy being surprisingly heavy instead.

It’s not entirely fair to put Love is War on a pedestal, but I really struggle to think of anything else in recent memory that works in this space so well. Original mangaka Aka Akasaka‘s technique of starting with a familiar archetype and then “filling them in” over the course of the story has kept Love is War‘s character writing consistently interesting. This holds true both when exploring the school-day trauma that Ishigami still suffers the aftershocks from and when breaking down the surprisingly complex character of the moralistic, blustery Miko.

But those are strengths equally attributable to the original manga. What puts Love is War the anime near the top of its bracket is the way the visuals elevate and enhance this storytelling. From a comedic perspective, the visuals breathe new life into jokes manga readers have heard before and really make them pop for newcomers. At times, new gags are even made up wholesale, often leaning on the visual element alone. Scenes like Kaguya randomly breaking into vogue, Hayasaka annoyedly bursting into Kaguya’s classroom, and even random visual asides referencing Dark Souls and Peanuts give the entire thing a wonderful, absurd edge.

On the more serious side, these techniques are instead turned toward invoking empathy. Faces have their visual features erased to signify disassociation, crowds coalesce into shadowy masses to project anxiety. Visual effect enthusiasts are given quite a bit to pour over in Love is War.

You might rightly ask why you should care about any of this, since at its core Love is War still is very much a “will they or won’t they” sort of love story. The sort that anime has seen many times before and will see many times again. To a point, that very question has kept it from an even higher spot on this list. But conversely, I would argue that resonant artistic depictions of the anxieties and absurdities of youth will never lose their place in the artistic canon. Not for anime, and not for anything.

#3: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

If this list were ranked solely by how much the anime on it made my heart sing, Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club would hold a comfortable #1 spot. Earlier this year I began an earnest dive into the girl group idol anime genre after only idly (haha) poking at it for most of my life. My opinion that 2011’s The Idolm@ster is the genre’s gold standard remains unchanged. But I did not expect it to receive an even close to worthy contender to the title this year. But here we are, and I do genuinely think that Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, the latest entry in the rival Love Live franchise, makes a damn good showing of it. Why? Because of the sheer effort the series go through to convey to you one simple fact; these girls are born entertainers, and they love it, through and through.

The ways in which they love it vary wildly, and if I had to pin a single weakness on Nijigasaki it would probably be that its gargantuan cast size (eleven main characters!) means that some of the girls do only get cursory development. The flipside though is that almost every single one who does get some focus is so magnetic that the passion they have for singing transfers almost directly to you. In its best moments, Nijigasaki feels like holding a live wire of artistic inspiration. Without a doubt; the anime is best experienced by checking any cynicism at the door and just throwing yourself in, arms wide open.

And part of the reason it succeeds is how easy it makes it to do that. Nijigasaki‘s great writing triumph is how quickly and snappily it establishes each character within each arc. Part of this is down to sharp visual design; things like Setsuna’s pyrotechnic stage setup, Rina’s iconic digital “faceboard”, Shizuku’s black and white dress, and so on. But the show’s laser focus when it comes to establishing why each girl wants to become an idol and how she goes about doing so is an incredibly convincing argument for this genre in this format, proving you don’t need two cours here. (Not to say an extra 13 episodes of this would’ve been in any way unwelcome.) The final arc, where group manager Yu and idol Ayumu have a near-falling out over the former’s desire to become a composer proves that the series can also work in more delicate emotional shades, which (as with many things this high on the list) makes me hope for a second season.

In a broader sense; from Setsuna’s matchstick strike of a guerrilla concert in episode three to the blazing monster of a festival that closes out the series, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is a celebration of communal art and performance in a year where, to paraphrase music critic Todd Nathanson, the very idea may as well be science fiction. Being so fantastically escapist emphatically does not hurt Nijigasaki, it is the very core of its strength. What makes it wonderful is how it is borderline utopian; a vision of a place where everyone’s dreams come true.

#2: Tower of God

I try not to think about these kinds of things too much when I write, but I suspect if there’s a “controversial” pick this high up on the list, it’ll be this one. Tower of God stands as one of 2020’s most polarizing and, in my opinion, most misunderstood mainstream action anime. Tower of God is two primary things: for one, it is a kickass battle shonen set in a truly unique fantasy world inherited from its source material, a sprawling webcomic that effectively wrought the Webtoon movement from the ground with its bare hands. For another; it is an absolutely dialed critique of systems of arbitrary merit. If you’ve been waiting for me to bring up capitalism again, wait no longer. Frankly I don’t need to, Tower of God does it for me. It’s not like characters having to pay off their own medical expenses within the Tower is exactly a subtle analogy to real life.

Tower of God‘s attitude towards its source material–adapt the interesting or the relevant bits, skip everything else–can definitely leave it feeling a touch hard to follow at times. But Tower of God makes its intentions clear in its final few episodes, where deuteragonist Rachel does exactly as the Tower incentivizes her to, and betrays protagonist Twenty-fifth Bam. And why wouldn’t she? Every detail of the Tower’s worldbuilding portrays it as a ruthless meritocracy where only looking out for #1 at the expense of everyone else is rewarded. Bam never understands this because he never has to. His natural talents; his vast reservoirs of shinsu (mana, effectively) and propensity for making allies, are rewarded in a place he has been deposited into by what is more or less random chance. Essentially, he’s privileged. Rachel, who has no such talents, understands it intuitively, hence her betrayal.

But Tower of God‘s critique of these systems goes both wider and deeper. It’s foreshadowed much earlier by minor character Hoh betraying his team during the “Tag arc” that takes up the show’s middle third. Elsewhere, the series touches on misogyny (there is something truly–and intentionally!–offputting about how it’s spelled out to us that the King of Jahad ties the powers of his “princesses” to their virginity) and frame-ups (whatever happened with Khun and his sister). Through it all, its central point remains sharp; the Tower’s world is fantastical, but the principles it operates on are very much like our own.

It is true that the show’s setup basically begs for a second season, one that’s yet to be confirmed. But even if it were to end here, with Bam washed down to the bottom of the Tower, the show has made its point. All of us are climbing, and the Tower still waits.

So with how high my opinion of Tower of God clearly is, what could possibly be better than it? Well, if you know my tastes, or indeed if you’ve simply studied the banner closely, you can probably guess. Scroll down to find out, and raise a hand if you saw this one coming.

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#1: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

Fundamentally, my taste in anime hasn’t changed much since I first discovered the medium over ten years ago. I have a hazy, sun-blurred memory of watching the dub of foundational school life comedy Azumanga Daioh chopped up into pieces and uploaded on Youtube. Azumanga Daioh and Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! are, very loosely, in the same genre, despite otherwise not being particularly similar. I bring the former up because I marvel at the many strange and wonderful shapes the school life comedy has taken over the past decade and a half. And Eizouken! certainly has the hallmarks of the genre. It is set primarily in a high school, centers around the activities of a small group of students, and uses the pitfalls of coming of age to set up relatable comedic skits. But it’s also more than that.

I place Eizouken! firmly in an emerging movement of anime that increasingly combine this genre with more serious and reflective elements, a logical step from its origins. (It’s not like AzuDaioh couldn’t be reflective when it wanted to be, after all.) I would happily shuttle it right up next to the post-apocalyptic melancholia of Girls’ Last Tour, or the contemporary but more adventure-oriented A Place Further Than The Universe, my own favorite anime of the 2010s, or the funny, wrenching dramedy of O’ Maidens In Your Savage Season! But its place within that movement is interesting, because while many of its genrefellows seek to perhaps evolve past the school life descriptor entirely, Eizouken! reestablishes why it matters in the first place. How it does this is pretty simple; it has perhaps the most well-considered thematic core of any TV anime to air this year.

History will probably peg Eizouken! as an “anime about anime”, but that’s looking at it narrowly. Eizouken! is an anime about the creative process in general, about what it means to be passionate about something, about turning that passion into reality, how that can be very hard, but how it is almost always worth it.

Our three leads correspond to an aspect of the inner world of art. Midori Asakusa, short, behatted, and kappa-like, is the pure ambition and the font of ideas. She spends the series half-adrift in a sea of drawings and daydreams, in love with flying machines and walking logos. Tsubame Mizusaki, of average height and with a sharp haircut, is the strive toward the perfection of technique, the desire to capture One Perfect Movement as cleanly as possible. (This is why it is she who expresses that she cares about animation, not anime. Contrast Midori who cares very much about anime-the-medium.) Finally, there is the tall, tombstone-toothed Sayaka Kanamori. The brains of the operation, someone for whom practical knowledge and the pursuit of money is a means to her and her friends’ collective happiness, a sort of person vanishingly rare in the real world. Alone, they’re incomplete. Together, they’re unstoppable. I’ve seen many anime whose casts compliment each other well, but Eizouken! might have one of the most well-oiled character dynamic machines in recent memory.

Eizouken!‘s beauty is in how it does not need to really explain itself at length. The series is an argument for itself. The skeptical may be inclined to ask the question back at Eizouken!; “what can sticking to your passions really accomplish?” And, well, the answer is Eizouken! Admittedly, as someone who writes for a living, I am predisposed to like themes in this general realm. But by the same token, pretending that Eizouken!‘s deep understanding of how the creative process functions, the diversity of motivation as to why people want to make art, and its celebration of the two didn’t move me would be disingenuous. I would simply not be doing my job as a commentator on the medium.

The show celebrates many kinds of people in general, really. Sometimes this is even surprisingly literal; Eizouken! stands as a still-rare anime that has a fairly racially diverse cast even though its leads are still Japanese. The series’ near-future setting seems to imply both a Japan and a larger world that is more heterogeneous (in every sense) than today, but this optimism shouldn’t be taken to be naivety. There is conflict in Eizouken!, the optimism comes from the resolution of that conflict. Short films are premiered, audiences are blown away. “We are all different, but truly great art can bring us together” seems to be the final message of the series. It’s a thesis that is so optimistic, almost utopian, that it can, to some, scan as corny. Whether Eizouken! “earns it” or not is where people are split on the series, but I think I’ve made damn well my case that it does.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! premiered at the top of the year, in the Winter 2020 anime season that now feels a lifetime ago. Yet, throughout this long, dark, bizarre year, I found myself continually turning it over in my head. I think it’s likely that I will be for years to come. If I may make take back one thing from my original review that predates this blog, it’s this; Eizouken!, with the benefit of distance, feels like it’s not really from this, or any, specific year. It feels like it’s always been there. And from now on, it always will be.

And with that sign-off by way of what is in my estimation the first truly great anime of the ’20s, that concludes our little journey over these past few days. To both old friends and new readers, I wish you the best possible in the new year. Hold each other close, and in all things help one another. Magic Planet Anime will see you in 2021.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 3

The middle-top of the list, where we run into more things that I more like than don’t like but which may or may not have various caveats and so on and so forth. This was the hardest part to have anything interesting to say about, can you tell? As with Part 2, most of these shows could be arranged in any order and I’d have no real complaints. Honestly, plenty could also switch places with those in Part 2 as well. Perhaps I’m just too easy to please?

Make sure you hit up the Intro post if you’re new here, so you can read Parts 1 and 2 before this. Anyhow, on with the list.

#9: Kakushigoto

Months on from its ending, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Kakushigoto. (My opinion on it has admittedly muted a bit from when it ended and I originally reviewed it, though not by too much.) Two shows for the price of one, is one way to look at it. On the outside, Kakushigoto is a goofy slice of life comedy about a bumbling father who draws dirty gag manga for a living and is absolutely desperate to keep his young daughter from learning that fact. On the inside, it’s an oddly melancholy examination of what we lose when we grow up. Somewhere in there is a pretty compelling defense of manga as a medium itself. There’s a lot going on here, and not all of it works.

So what does work? Well, the comedy in this thing is mostly pretty damn funny. There are a few notable places where it’s really not (a bizarre Desi stereotype character being the most egregious) but in general when Kakushigoto sticks to the inherently amusing dynamic between Kakushi (the aforementioned father) and Hime (the daughter) it’s really charming and hilarious. A lot of the bits here are standard slice of life fare bent just enough by the father/daughter relationship to feel fresh again. Some–such as Kakushi’s ongoing feud with an annoying editor–rely a bit more on industry inside baseball, but those are generally pretty good too.

And then there’s the frame story, which is in many ways a different beast entirely, and deals with Hime at age sixteen, after her father has, as we eventually find out, suffered an accident that renders him amnesiac. With the benefit of hindsight I think Kakushigoto would’ve benefited from leaning more into this side of its story. (And there’s a theatrical recut of the series scheduled to premiere next year, so perhaps it eventually will.) In its best moments, the frame story taps into a universal, melancholic summertime nostalgia, and if I seem to have less than might be expected to say on Kakushigoto it’s only because that kind of ephemerality speaks for itself. There’s a lot to like about a series that revolves around familial ties and the passing of the artistic torch from one generation to the next. And Kakushigoto also certainly holds a special place for having perhaps the most memorable ED of the year. Putting an entire generation onto Japanese pop godfather Eiichi Ohtaki is no small feat.

#8: Assault Lily Bouquet

Assault Lily Bouquet is a lot of things. It’s kind of a mess, for one. For another, it’s an entry in a sub-strain of the battle girl genre with some not-entirely-flattering unifying characteristics. Like Katana Maidens, The Girl in Twilight, and Granbelm before it, Assault Lily Bouquet leans heavily on proper nouns and invented terminology. It is extremely coy, often directly toying with audience expectations, sometimes to its own detriment. It’s also stuffed to the gills with tonal back-and-forth, often yoyoing between the comedic, the tense, the saucy, and the genuinely romantic at the drop of a hat. This all could rightly be called a lack of focus. There is indeed a part of me that intensely wanted to dismiss Assault Lily Bouquet as a series that didn’t know what it wanted to do and wouldn’t know how to do it if it did. To a very limited extent, I actually still kind of think that’s true.

Some of this isn’t the fault of the anime itself. Picking up a pre-premiere hype train comes with a lot of expectations. That Assault Lily Bouquet picked up the nickname “SHAFTogear” off the strength of just some teaser trailers may well have put it at an unfair disadvantage. Indeed, Symphogear this is not. (It is an obvious acolyte of that series, but that’s the norm for the genre nowadays.) If you’re inclined to drop an anime off the back of things like a surface-level ridiculousness and the aforementioned lack of focus, Assault Lily Bouquet will not make it difficult for you to do that.

But, here’s the thing. Two things, even. First; Assault Lily Bouquet has some of the best single episodes of the year, from a long, summer-drenched slow-burner centering around ramune soda to a peppy uptempo miniature school festival arc, the series is definitely at its best when it channels all of its energy into doing one specific thing. Second; there’s the finale.

Assault Lily Bouquet‘s overarching plot is….strange. It’s mostly delivered in fairly dry expository dialogue between four characters who otherwise don’t matter much. As mentioned, it leans really heavily on a lot of corny terminology. (Terrible idea; make a drinking game based on how often the phrase “Rare Skill” is used. You’ll be out like a light by episode four.) And what exactly it’s trying to say is fairly inscrutable until the very end of the series. Assault Lily Bouquet‘s core thesis is an unfortunate combination of under-articulated for most of the series and unusually complicated.

In general, the show explores shades of love, loss, feelings of inadequacy, how they might be overcome, etc. How people move on from relationships that have been broken and how they form new ones from the ashes of the old. Along the way, it briefly touches on how male-dominated infrastructures fear powerful women, militarism, and even environmentalism. To say you have to squint to see a lot of this is putting it mildly, Assault Lily Bouquet is maybe the most tongue-tied anime of 2020.

Still, at the end of the day it’s just really hard for me to dislike an anime that ends with two girls in love fighting a giant monster. Has it done before? Yes. Will it be done again? Certainly. But as the battle girl genre continues to grow and multiply, I find myself compelled to defend basically every one of them, because I really do just love them all that much. It’s perhaps my favorite modern genre of TV anime.

Time will tell what, if anything, is in store for the future of Assault Lily Bouquet. The success of the wider Assault Lily franchise which started life as the rare modern TV cartoon directly based on a toyline and now includes this anime, a manga, and a mobile game is probably what will dictate if we ever see Riri and Yuyu again. But I hope we do, Bouquet can dress it up in terms like “Schutzengel” and “Schild” to duck conservative watchdogs and add an air of chuuni-ness to things all it wants, but I know a power couple when I see one.

#7: Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle

Sometimes, all a comedy anime needs to succeed is to take a truly silly premise and run with it. Thus is the case with Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle, one of the year’s premiere entries in a sort-of genre I like to call “idiots in a jar”. In an “idiots in a jar” series, all you need is some exceptionally dense characters and a reason for them to interact. Sleepy Princess has the titular princess, the Demon King who’s kidnapped her and is imprisoning her in his castle, and the latter’s horde of minions. And the reason? Well, hostage she might be, but our heroine needs a good night’s sleep. Preferably a fantastic night’s sleep, since there’s not much else to do in the Demon Castle.

And the rest….just sort of flows out from there. The specific parody fantasyland that Sleepy Princess takes place in has in many ways become a sort of cliche setting in its own right nowadays, and comedy anime like this have become more common than the action fantasy anime they once spoofed. Yet, Sleepy Princess‘s implacable-yet-lazy lead works well with its silly and often surprisingly inventive fantasy world. From monsters like Quilladillo and a man made of scissors to item designs that would fit in only the silliest D&D campaign, Sleepy Princess has a knack for invoking its fantasy trappings precisely when they add an extra kick to the joke. All this makes it stand out above many recent anime that are trying to do similar things. And it all feels very well-crafted and deliberate.

There’s also a certain coziness to the series, fitting for an anime about sleep. The Princess’ relationship to her ostensible captors grows closer over its twelve episodes, capping with the finale, which is open enough to leave the prospect of a second season tantalizingly probable. In fact, as far as shows that are simple, warm joy from start to finish, Sleepy Princess really only has one contender from 2020….

#6: My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life As A Villainess is a magic trick. It’s an isekai series, it’s a harem series, and it’s one of the many 2020 anime that are a blast to speed through in a few evenings. Even having seen it, Villainess (also known semi-officially as OtomeFlag and Bakarina. This is the series with the most titles on the list, certainly) doesn’t feel like it should work. Die-and-reincarnate isekai premises are, appropriately, done to death, and the harem genre has arguably never had a good reputation. Yet, by simple virtue of having a likable female lead, and the small-stakes character writing victories that follow, Villainess manages to turn lead into gold. (And its maddeningly catchy, genre-unto-itself opening theme doesn’t hurt.)

The anime centers around the titular Katarina Claes and her life after she’s reborn into the world of an Otome game. This would be easy to milk for cheap drama, but Villainess is unconcerned with such things. Instead, to avoid the fate of her game counterpart, Katarina aims to be the nicest person possible. By dint of just being an irrepressible ray of sunshine, every single one of her game equivalent’s rivals end up falling for her. As a result; Claes can certainly claim the largest bisexual harem of any anime protagonist of the past year.

What takes Villainess beyond being just cute is a running through-line about relationships that persist across lifetimes. The show heavily hints at, and eventually outright reveals, that Katarina’s friend (and one of the many, many people crushing hard on her) Sophia is herself the reincarnation of one of Katarina’s classmates and close friends. Is this entire subplot super sappy? Absolutely, but I’m a sucker for this stuff, “I Entered A Dangerous Dungeon….”, in which we learn of Sophia and Katarina’s past relationship was one of my favorite episodes of the year, and sticks with me even now.

And I wasn’t the only one so taken with the show, evidently. A second season has been definitively confirmed to be on the way. My hope? Only that Katarina continues breaking the harem genre over her knee like a twig.

That’s all for the (slightly abbreviated) Part 3. See you tomorrow for the Top 5 in Part 4!

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 2

The middle parts of a list are always the weirdest ones to figure out. Not hardest, that’s the very top, but the weirdest, definitely. Because you end up asking yourself to compare shows that are incredibly dissimilar and that you like about equally. By the way; if you’re new here, you’ll want to check out the Introduction first, and read Part 1 before hitting this up.

Frankly, every entry on this part of the list could probably be freely swapped with each other and I’d have very few complaints. Still, all of these anime are ones that I think did more right than wrong and in some cases I think they did a few specific things very well. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

#14: Wave, Listen To Me!

Whatever else you may say about it, never accuse Wave, Listen To Me! of following trends. Very briefly, Wave is about a loud-mouthed restaurant worker who ends up getting her own graveyard-shift radio show hosting gig at the local station. Without a doubt, it’s one of the more singular premises of the year.

Does it live up to the potential in that premise? Well, yes and no. Like its seasonal contemporary Gleipnir, Wave has a tendency to get in its own way. When the series allows Minare, our heroine, to do her job and let loose with the full force of her personality in the radio booth, it’s amazing. Lead voice actress Riho Sugiyama is as important to Wave‘s general composition as anyone else, and with an actress less capable of fully embodying Minare’s spirit the show would fall apart.

So it’s rather frustrating that it sometimes does anyway. Much of Wave is about Minare’s off-air life. Sometimes these stories work and sometimes they don’t, generally following the pattern that whenever Minare feels like the butt of a joke, they’re not very good. Making things worse is an abundance of off-color-in-a-bad-way humor, most notably about a half-dozen gay jokes that feel woefully forced. Wave is perhaps the anime from 2020 that I’m the most internally divided on. Its highs are high, its lows are low. It ends on a pretty good note, and I’m hoping against hope for a followup. I’d like to see Minare given the opportunity to do more.

#13: BRAND NEW ANIMAL

This was the first of several anime on this list where I had the visceral reaction of “wait, that aired this year?” But yes, this Yoh Yoshinari-directed, Kazuki Nakashima-written synthwave-colored furry urban fantasy series was a product of 2020. BRAND NEW ANIMAL occupies a weird place on this list, in the wider cultural zeitgeist, and for me personally. I actually really quite liked this show, so why isn’t it higher on the list?

Well, to a point, most of Nakashima’s anime scripts are….well, “similar” would be the generous way of putting it. Most of his scripts center around ideological conflicts between the individualistic and the communal and tend to end with both sides coming together to fight a common foe. That last bit has often (and not incorrectly) been flagged as a weakness, with his scripts’ formulaic story beats, and a corresponding lack of nuance, as the other main problem. These are fair criticisms, but I’d argue that what Nakashima’s writing lacks in its ability to propose solutions the world’s problems more specific than “come together”, it makes up for in its faith that we, in fact, can come together.

But of course Nakashima is a scriptwriter and an anime’s script is nothing without, well, the anime. Yoshinari and his team turn in an aesthetic feast with BRAND NEW ANIMAL. I mentioned synthwave earlier, but the blue and pink shadows often do bring that specific subgenre to mind. The fluid, popping animation that defines the best parts of the TRIGGER back-catalog and, because of the distinctly fuzzy cast, a wonderful array of animal-person designs are present too, they really tie the whole thing together.

Ultimately I suppose my main issue with BRAND NEW ANIMAL is simply that it isn’t either a bit longer or a bit more focused. For how clumsy it occasionally is, BNA does sometimes step into surprisingly sharp social commentary (“Dolphin Daydream”‘s jabs at fairweather allies and the harm they cause sticks out most clearly to me), but just as often its swings go wide. It’s an uneven experience, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it the whole way through and would instantly hop on any further material in the show’s universe.

In lieu of that….maybe greenlight two cours next time? Please?

#12: Dorohedoro

You know what I’ve always thought was an underrated quality? Knowing exactly what you want to do and just doing it. That’s about how I’d describe Dorohedoro, an adaption of Q. Hayashida‘s long-running bizarro seinen. It’s one of the better things Netflix has thrown money at in 2020 (other highlights include listfellow BRAND NEW ANIMAL and The Great Pretender, which is only not here because I haven’t watched the final arc), but much more importantly it’s a really good piece of genre fiction in a genre that doesn’t get a lot of rep in mainstream TV anime.

And that genre is….weird splatterpunk grungy fantasy I guess? If Dorohedoro feels hard to put in a box it’s only because seinen anime are fairly rare. But there’s still definitely something unique about a series whose main selling point is that it’s the adventures of a big lizard-headed guy on a quest to find out who turned him into a big lizard-headed guy, and his companion, an equally-buff woman who’s also a master gyoza chef.

Dorohedoro cruises by on its stylish ultraviolence, colorful cast, and its truly weird setting. The only real reason it’s not higher up on the list is that the manga is even stranger and the anime adapts only a pretty small part of it. Dorohedoro is an anime with basically no problems, but its strengths only go so far. It’s definitely worth checking out, but make sure you hit up the source material at some point, too.

#11: Princess Connect! Re:Dive

Breaking news: local action-comedy-fantasy isekai Princess Connect! Re:Dive makes the rest of those obsolete; KonoSuba found weeping in a trashed hotel room. OK, that’s a wild exaggeration, but you have to give it up for something as unassuming as PriConne managing to do so much with so little. This is a series in which the main character is effectively mute, and he still has more personality than your average Protagonist-kun.

I don’t think anyone would deign to call PriConne laser-focused, exactly, but the unifying element, weirdly enough, is cooking. Female lead and secret actual protagonist Princess Pecorine’s food obsession provides a tie-line through the series. It’s more than just comedic (though it’s certainly that, too), as the comfort of a shared meal comes to represent the family ties that Pecorine has lost. The other two primary protagonists have their own things going on, with Karyl’s secret double-agent status being the runner up as far as which is most interesting.

Did I mention this thing looks great, too? That’s not always a given for seasonals, although mobage adaptions seem to have slightly better luck than most. Princess Connect! Re:Dive features some of the most purely flashy animation of the entire year. Something that is downright impressive for a series that really did kinda seem to come from nowhere.

Honestly the only reason it isn’t even higher on the list is because of its fairly limited ambitions, which is really only a flaw in the most abstract sense. And with a second season on the way that seems poised to put focus on the dimension-spanning plot that lurks in PriConne’s background, it may not remain a criticism that’s true for very long. Don’t be surprised if this thing’s second season ends up a good five or ten places higher next year.

#10: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Gaiden

Yeah, this is another one that feels like it aired a lifetime ago.

Magia Record is a curious thing that seems like it was made for nobody. But I actually think, in this odd little anime’s case, that that’s not just a positive, but most of the reason it’s good. Magia Record is a spinoff / possibly-a-sequel-it’s-kind-of-hard-to-say of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, one of the most important, widely acclaimed, and successful anime of the 2010s. To say it has big shoes to fill would be a massive understatement. Indeed, MagiReco entered to no small amount of skepticism. Being a spinoff of a spinoff (it’s based on a mobile game), a lot of folks were of the opinion that the series was little more than a soulless, hollow cash-grab. But if Magia Record is a cash grab, it’s a fucking weird one.

In fairly sharp contrast to its illustrious predecessor, Magia Record explores some four or five largely unrelated miniature arcs over the course of its run. (Almost all of which concern various supernatural rumors. Something the series seems to have inherited from a different SHAFT property; Bakemonogatari.) This structure is deeply interesting to me, because it seems to me that Magia Record is of the opinion that Madoka Magica’s intangibles; its themes, aesthetics, the way it explores its parent genre, and so on have been so thoroughly strip-mined by other anime that engaging with them is no longer a goal it wants to pursue. Instead, Magia Record seems to treat itself first and foremost as a vehicle for expanding the pure text of the Madoka series. It’s a book of “Madoka stories” before it’s anything else.

When familiar elements do show up, the context is altered, strange, and unfamiliar. Not unlike what the original Madoka did with many trappings of the magical warrior subgenre in the first place. The original Puella Magi are the most obvious example; Mami reappears, but as a villain. Kyoko dips in and out of the show’s narrative, and is markedly absent for the finale. Sayaka is only present for the finale. Madoka herself appears only in a brief flashback. Homura is not even mentioned; a ghost among ghosts.

So those “Madoka stories”, where Magia Record seems most like a “normal” magical girl series, become the show’s lifeblood. They definitely have their ups and downs, and the best of the lot are front-loaded. (Rena’s arc, an examination of a truly deep-seated self-loathing, might be the overall peak of the series.) But that it is so disconnected from what the fanbase in general “wants” from a Madoka series is absolutely fascinating to me, and I like it for that reason. This interpretation of MagiReco is controversial (I have seen many who simply read its structure as inept), but I stand by it. A second season is in the wings that promises a return to a broader, overarching narrative. More than any other anime on this list, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from MagiReco, and I love it for that.

And that’s humble Part 2. Tomorrow we get into the top ten, uh, nine, so I’ll see you then for Part 3.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 1

It’s always a weird thing to have to write about why you didn’t like something. I’m a big believer in the idea that positive criticism is both more important and more difficult than negative. Yet, the format of the list means that we’re starting with several anime that I consider the very worst of the year (and indeed these first two entries are….not what I’d call favorites, we’ll put it that way). It admittedly makes me a bit nervous, because negativity is not my preferred mode of criticism.

Yet, at the same time. I think that even bad anime can expand one’s frame of reference and provide interesting insights into the medium in general. My hope is that this first part of the list does the same for you.

#20: The Day I Became A God

As I write this, it’s been about half an hour since I finished The Day I Became A God. This is the second-to-last anime I needed to finish for this list (the entire thing, all four parts), and I really, genuinely did not think I’d be adding something this far down this late in the game. I have to rewrite the opening sentence of my next entry, which in its current draft now-falsely claims that it is the only anime on this list to make me genuinely angry. That’s no longer true! Frankly, The Day I Became A God‘s final three episodes are so far and away the worst television period that I have watched this year that it’s made me see every subsequent entry on this list in a better light.

To talk about the latest from Jun Maeda and his colleagues at Key, we need to talk about how it starts. Because understanding how The Day I Became A God transforms from a pretty solid slice of life comedy with a supernatural edge into one of the most galling, maudlin, hacky attempts at a make-you-cri-everytiem love story that I have ever seen requires understanding how we got here. Or rather how we didn’t.

The Day I Became A God concerns Hina, alias Odin. It feels like a lifetime ago that the character was introduced to us as a blithe esper with the power to know anything. The first two thirds of the series chiefly concern her adventures with Youta, the inoffensively bland everydude protagonist. They do fun things like cheat at mahjong and help a ramen restaurant turn its fortunes around. It’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s good fun, and if that were what we were discussing here this series would be assured a comfortable spot somewhere in this list’s mid-section with all the other solid genre anime.

Jun Maeda’s signature as a writer–so I’m told, anyway–is to build up the relationship between the characters and you, the audience, with this kind of every day life fun. Then, near the series’ end, some sort of Sword of Damocles will drop, the drama will hit, and tears will flow. Indeed, I knew this going in to The Day I Became A God, and am familiar with the device from the only other work of his I’ve seen–Angel Beats!, an anime I actually like quite a lot. The show even appears to foreshadow this; the anime’s other core premise is that Hina can sense that the world will end in thirty days.

So, fair play, right? Why am I mad?

If only this show dealt with something as interesting as apocalypse. Instead, for its final third, through a series of plot contortions so mind-bogglingly ridiculous that I will not recount them here, Hina is abducted by a shadowy government organization and has the source of her powers, a machine in her brain, removed. It’s revealed to us that, actually, Hina was severely physically and mentally disabled this entire time. (Because of a fictional Anime Illness, of course. God forbid you give your disabled characters any actual condition.) It was only the sci-fi magic of the machine that was allowing her to do what she did with Youta and friends, in addition to being the source of her omniscience. Are you crying yet?

The Day I Became A God‘s final three episodes are not just bad, they’re slimy. I actively felt repulsed by 11 and 12 especially. I absolutely loathe calling things “cringey”, but I physically winced at the screen during scenes in which (through another series of plot contortions) Youta, woefully-unqualified, tries to return her to his home where she lived for most of the series by posing as a physical therapist. These episodes go through great pains to portray Hina as pitiable because she is largely nonverbal and physically handicapped. In a particularly insidious twist, the show frames Youta’s generally ridiculous actions as being somehow, secretly, what Hina “wants”. It is a framing that cannot help but feel gross, ableist, and exploitative.

The finale, in which her actual doctor lets her return with Youta and the gang watches a student film they shot during the series’ first half (pointedly, when Hina was still verbal and able-bodied), feels like having this nonsense rubbed in your face. One has to go back a solid ten years, to 2010’s Occult Academy, to find a series that suffers a drop in writing quality this precipitous in its final 90 minutes. Even then, I think this example is genuinely worse.

I am left to wonder; who is this for? I make no secret of the fact that I am a massive sap, but the tearful reunions in the final episode of The Day I Became A God did absolutely nothing for me. My eyes remained dry, my fingers drummed in irritation on my desk, and I could only feel relief that the show was over.

Maeda has said he intended to create “the saddest anime ever” with this series. The only thing he succeeded at was making one that is profoundly frustrating, disappointing, objectionable, and, frankly, insulting to its audience. I considered cutting this series some slack with its placement here; after all, those first two thirds do still exist. But I actually think that they make the finale even worse. By the end of The Day I Became A God, all of my goodwill and any endearment I felt toward any of its characters had been sandblasted away by one of the most colossally inept TV anime endings in recent memory. All involved can–and should–do better.

#19: Sing “Yesterday” For Me

The operative word for Sing “Yesterday” For Me is “unfortunate”. This is another one with a promising start that slowly careens into an unsatisfying finish. It’s not quite a worst-case scenario for adapting old material into new anime, but it’s close.

But let’s start with the positives, because despite what that sentiment might imply, I can easily imagine why people who aren’t me might like the series. “Yesterday”‘s earthy, grounded visual style and accompanying soundtrack give it an aesthetic sense that is a genuine treat. Plus, it helps make the show’s slow narrative go down more easily than it might otherwise. It also has its moments of self-awareness, such as in an episode about a photographer whose obsession with one of the female leads, high school girl Haru, parallels protagonist Uozumi’s own.

So what’s wrong with it? Nothing and everything.

“Yesterday”‘s entire premise rubs me the wrong way. What is markedly worse is that through no one’s fault but my own, it took me the entire length of the series to realize this. (You can find material on this very blog where I praise the series, in fact.) Saying I have something of an irrational grudge against this anime wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“Yesterday” is ostensibly the story of the aforementioned Rikuo Uozumi, a young adult working a dead-end job, and two potential love interests; Haru Nonaka and a former classmate who is now a teacher, Shinako Morinome. To its credit, both Haru and Shinako feel like fully-fledged characters. While their relationship (or lack thereof) with Uozumi does dominate their arcs, it dominates the entire plot, so that only makes sense. The real issue is pretty simple; Uozumi is a college graduate, and while Shinako is his age, Haru is a narratively-convenient eighteen. After much hemming and hawwing over the course of the series, Uozumi and Haru kiss in the final episode. Roll credits.

Fundamentally, even if you don’t find age gaps creepy, the way Uozumi treats Haru until the closing fifteen or so minutes of the final episode gives every indication that he’s going to end up with Shinako, despite what is framed as a somewhat childish fixation on Haru. But if this were merely a case of bait-and-switch or of one’s preferred Best Girl not winning, it’d be a minor gripe at most. The back half of the show’s final episode throws everything the narrative has been building toward wildly out of whack. The series’ real, actual problem then, is that like so many romance anime, it ends where it should begin.

The idea of a college grad who is finally starting to pursue his photography dreams after waking up from the torpor of the layabout life while having to juggle a relationship with someone years younger than him is wildly interesting. It’s also arguably super weird, but that’s an angle a story can work with. Why does Sing “Yesterday” For Me take so long to get to what is by far the most interesting development in its story, and then just end?

There are no answers, at least none for me. I have spoken to others who enjoyed the series and a common view I find is that the series is about building up to lifechanging moments, to sudden pivot points from which there is no return. More power to the folks who can find it in them to read the series this way, but I cannot. Thinking back, I find myself craving a more properly developed drama. I can only consider “Yesterday” a disappointment.

#18: The God of High School

I’m genuinely not trying to be meanspirited with these first few entries, because I fully acknowledge that making any anime requires an immense amount of talent from many people all working in concert. It’s a process I could never be involved with and I do genuinely respect anyone in the industry grind, no matter what the end result is.

So with all that said; what on earth do you say about something like The God of High School? The God of High School is not really what I’d call a bad anime, and despite its abundance of hyper-compressed shonen cliche I’d say it’s still fun enough on a moment to moment basis. But it really is the sort of series that one struggles to describe not because it’s particularly inscrutable but because anything you could say about it also applies to many other, better-known (and just better) anime. For instance; I could tell you that it’s a tournament arc-heavy series where the protagonist lacks much characterization beyond a desire to fight and is loosely based on Sun Wukong, but you might then assume I’m talking about Dragon Ball Z. Other aspects of the series similarly feel so heavily indebted to its predecessors that saying anything positive (or even neutral) about it that couldn’t easily be mistaken as praise for Dragon Ball or Bleach or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or almost any other shonen series is extraordinarily difficult.

The issue is just that The God of High School feels very much like what it is, which is an animated adaption of a webcomic written by a shonen junkie. Consequently, while it’s fun in the places where it truly lets itself cut loose (such as the more out-there fight scenes), it feels dreadfully anonymous much of the rest of the time, and even when it is firing on all cylinders the breakneck pace of the adaption means it’s generally for only a couple minutes at a time. There are worse things to be than a decent way to burn six hours, but as it further recedes into the rearview I’ve come to realize I cannot imagine I’ll ever watch even a second of it again. And more than any other show on this list, I can even less imagine what a diehard fan of The God of High School would look like. If this is more indicative of the quality of what’s to be produced under the Crunchyroll Originals banner than a certain other Webtoon adaption that shows up elsewhere on this list, that is really not a great sign for future CR Original material. I would like to think it’s an outlier.

#17: 22/7

Maybe it’s unfair to call 22/7 disappointing. Yet, looking back on it a few months removed from its airing that’s the adjective that first springs to mind. 22/7 seemed poised to offer something interrogative and worthy of thought; early episodes gave the impression of building up to some kind of grand reveal, positioning the series as something of a would-be Madoka for the idol girl group anime genre. Whether through deliberate misdirection or just too-high expectations on some part of its audience, it never got there. Instead, as weeks stretched into months, it simply gradually ran out of steam until limping across the finish line at the end of its season.

Even setting that aside though, 22/7‘s command of character writing is pretty limited. Every character arc is hamstrung by the show’s bizarre editing, which likes to cut backward and forward, interweaving flashbacks with scenes of the present day. It seems likely that this is supposed to draw a deliberate contrast; how our idols got from where they were to where they are. Instead, it generally makes episodes thematically and tonally incoherent. Even the best of them (such as Jun’s focus episode) are often hamstrung by dicey writing. At its worst, as in episodes revolving around more minor and frankly less-interesting characters like Reika, it hauls in hoary sexist ideas of what an idol should be that feel stuck in the ’80s. It’s impossible to prove that these somehow stem from the involvement of industry oldguardsman Yasushi Akimoto, but his presence in the background of the series’ production does not incline me to charitable interpretations of the 22/7‘s flaws.

The show does have its positives, of course. It’s generally nicely-animated and sometimes well-directed, especially in the case of the aforementioned Jun episode, and it has solid character interactions even if the arcs are not particularly strong. But I think if 22/7 the series survives in the collective cultural conscience at all, it won’t be through the lens of the show itself. 22/7 is also an actual idol group, and their music ranges from solid to, at its best, fantastic. The melodramatic cloud of black smoke they turned in for the show’s opening theme–a cheery number about how life is hard and no one understands each other called “Muzui” or “It’s Difficult”–remains one of my favorite pop songs of 2020, and I found myself returning to it many times over the course of this difficult year. Far more time than I ever spent appreciating the series it’s a theme to. 22/7 the group have a bright future. 22/7 the anime is best left in the past.

#16: Burn The Witch

Burn The Witch is a weird one, for one several reasons. It’s not a TV series, for one thing (the only such entry on this list), and it’s in the odd position of being the adaption of just the first few chapters of its source material. Something that would likely have never happened were the writer of said source material not Tite Kubo. The man most famous for the polarizing–but undeniably very successful–Bleach. Burn The Witch has a lot of things going for it. It’s animated by Studio Colorido, and being made as a three-episode special means that it’s never less than great to look at, and the fights in particular here are superb. The worldbuilding is goofy but in a fun sort of way; you know that things are off to a good start when we get a made-up statistic about dragon-related deaths in London right off the top. Our two protagonists, Noel and Ninny, are also quite fun to follow, each in their own way. Even the show’s magic system is a good time, more anime could stand to experiment with goofy horn-guns as their weapons of choice.

So all that said, why isn’t this higher up (or, well, lower down, one supposes) on the list? Well, not to repeat myself, but Burn The Witch has a man-shaped millstone hanging around its neck.

It’s really hard to overstate how much of a problem male lead Balgo Parks is, as a character. He’s sexist, he’s obnoxious and he’s everywhere. He completely kills the fun any time he’s on-screen, and he’s on-screen all the time. It’s a terrible, terrible problem for an otherwise solid OVA to have, because every second he’s there he’s cutting into the actually enjoyable parts of it, and ultimately, he ruins it. Time will tell if this applies to any further adaptions of Burn The Witch we get (and it’d be surprising if we didn’t get at least a season or two of a TV series), but I certainly hope it doesn’t.

#15: Gleipnir

Grisly, grody, sometimes flat-out exploitative seinen adaption that’s a mess from top to bottom. I feel like if I were a more “respectable” commentator on the medium I’d hate this show. But I’m not, so I don’t. I wouldn’t say I like it either, exactly, but it’s definitely the entry in this part of the list I have the most nice things to say about.

Gleipnir‘s been a part of my life for an unusually long time compared to the rest of the entries on this list. I first read the manga (which I markedly did not care for) back in 2017. When I heard of an anime adaption premiering this year I was curious to see if it’d be improved at all by the change in medium, and, admittedly, I was hoping that if it didn’t, it’d at least be a fun thing to riff on with friends.

To a point, that is exactly what I got. Gleipnir‘s idiosyncrasies too often fall on the bad side of good taste for me to really call it great. There are too many offputting shots of the show’s female lead in her underwear covered in fluid, weird problematic or just straight-up uncomfortable elements (a centipede demon from the show’s 2/3rds mark springs to mind as an example) for that to be the case. And its male lead is the kind of shonen-protagonist-but-edgier that just doesn’t leave you with a ton to work with most of the time.

But nonetheless, there’s just something about this series. Maybe it’s the surprisingly good action direction and atmosphere, which is certainly a credit to both director Kazuhiro Yoneda and his team at PINE JAM in general. The man has episode direction credits on the grandfather of 2010s trainwreck anime; Code Geass R2. While I can’t prove that the experience somehow uniquely equipped him to deal with Gleipnir‘s ridiculously up and down source material, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Over the course of its single cour Gleipnir manages to, in spots, eke out some surprisingly affecting character writing, has a downright haunting final few episodes, and, as mentioned, some great fight scenes. An example in the final episode might still be one of my favorites of the year as it unites both the show’s literal reality and its thematic core of relying on others to compensate for your weaknesses and confronting your demons in a way that it otherwise struggles to articulate. Gleipnir‘s central issue is its tendency to get in its own way, but that’s hardly a rare problem for the medium.

I don’t know if a second season would fix (or even mitigate) that problem, but Gleipnir is the only anime in this part of the list where if one were released I’d be interested in watching it. That must count for something, surely.

And thus we finish the “unpleasant but necessary” part of the list. Still, even among these unlucky few there is not a single one among them I actually regret watching, not even The Day I Became A God. I have said many times that part of what draws me to anime as a medium is its infinite capacity for surprise. That surprise is not always pleasant! But you take the bad with the good.

Speaking of the good, I will see you in Part 2 when it goes live. Happy Holidays!

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Introduction

Before I start, let’s take a moment to breathe.

What a year it’s been, am I right or am I right?

I think I speak for a lot of my readerbase when I say that 2020 has been the most taxing, challenging, and just flat-out exhausting year of our lives. Finding the time and energy to devote to experiencing, thinking about, and talking about art this year was not always easy. But by the same token, I’d say that a lot of the reason I’m handling it as decently as I am is because of said art. This is hardly unique to me; many critics, commentators, bloggers, and journalists have spoken about the importance of their medium(s) of choice this year.

To that end, rather than simply doing a Top 5, or a “Best and Worst”. I decided I would rank the anime I’ve seen in 2020, from worst to best. I’ve only seen twenty shows this year, which is not that many, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s enough that writing just one article was…not feasible, and as such, this post here will link to the four articles constituting the four parts of the list. Why worst to best? Well, I think it makes for a better dramatic arc, mostly. But also because even the shows I liked the least this year played a part in helping me keep myself together. It’s not an exaggeration to say that anime has helped my emotional state this year more than it ever has in my life.

I tried not to sweat the minutiae of placement too much; while last and first place are definitely where they belong, some stretches in the middle are occupied by shows that I’d say I liked about equally. So it goes!

Not present are non-serial anime (with apologies to music videos like “Ruru’s Suicide Show“ and “Study Me“ and shorts like Puparia) and, obviously, things I didn’t see or didn’t finish. (Which, those range from Akudama Drive to Healin’ Good Precure and everything in-between.) What it does include are 21 20* shows that, despite everything, I believe all have some merit, and are all worth talking about. Some of these writeups are short, a few are very long, some are more informal, and for others I endeavored to look at them through a more focused lens. Some lean heavily on personal experience, others, uh, don’t. Variety is the spice of life.

And of course, we’re required to use terms like “worst” and “best” because for a critic it is generally expected that one use the language of objectivity. I don’t really believe in that in the arts, and I don’t think most of my readerbase does either, but I feel the need to clear up any possible misconception nonetheless. This whole list is, obviously, of course, only my own opinions, thoughts, and observations. As says the disclaimer at the bottom of every Magic Planet Anime article.

But enough beating around the bush. Here is the list, divided into four parts for your reading pleasure. In order to stagger things out (and because I’m not done with some of the writeups on some of the better anime here), I’ll be rolling out one part per day over the next several days, starting with Part 1 today (December 27th, if you’re reading this in the future). Hopefully I will be able to finish by the new year! I hope, also, that you find some tiny crumb of insight, interest, or just plain enjoyment from these walls of words.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

*I made an embarassing fencepost error when writing up the list, which is why not all four parts of the list have five entries each. I think it’s been fixed now. Whoops.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) Sakae Esuno Has a BIG ORDER

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

What is a “bad anime”, exactly? If it’s an anime that fails at being something it’s trying to be, I find it difficult to stick the label on Big Order. Because on the one hand, the 2016 manga adaption seems to know exactly what it wants to be. On the other hand, maybe a “bad anime” is an anime whose very aims are somehow defective. Being a case where “what it wants to be” is arguably somewhere between “bad for the medium” and “reprehensible”, Big Order‘s a bit of a hard one to evaluate. Too beholden to a wide slate of action-anime cliches to be truly unique. Too weird to be rightly called generic. Big Order largely succeeds in its aims, but that very same success makes the series impossible to defend. Speaking less roundaboutly; this show sucks and you probably shouldn’t watch it unless you have a fascination with shows that suck.

Very broadly, Big Order is about people who have superpowers based on “wishes” they had at the time a disaster called The Great Destruction (yes, really) hit, circa ten in-show years ago. This ostensibly-kinda-interesting premise means very little, because in practice these powers–called Orders–can just kind of Do Whatever in all but a few cases. Our protagonist is Eiji Hoshimiya, a chuuni’s dream. In a more self-aware show, the similarity of his first name to the word “edgy” might be deliberate. Eiji accidentally killed billions-with-a-B people when he got his Order, causing the Great Destruction in the first place.

If that seems like an odd fit for a protagonist, it’s here where we have to break out our critical lens. Because very little about Big Order makes much literal sense, and internal logic phases in and out at the story’s whim. However, considered through the prism of a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the stereotyped ideal anime-watcher (that is to say, a young straight man), everything clicks into place perfectly. In this way, Big Order is a bad anime, but an excellent peek into the mind of the kind of person who thinks good anime begins with Code Geass and ends with Darling in The FranXX. Which is to say it is also a ten-car-pileup of barely-disguised fetish plots, some more objectionable than others. A large chunk of Big Order revolves around Eiji’s desire to save his sister from her Incurable Anime Disease. If you guessed that they’re also hot for each other, put your chip on your bad anime bingo card.

Along its ten episodes, Big Order manages to hit stops that include Eiji accidentally (but only temporarily!) impregnating a girl by touching her fake bunny ears.

This is a real screencap.

There’s also a man with a sword that can cut through time and space. A final episode plastered with an awful-looking monochrome filter in what I dearly hope is not a misguided attempt to homage Gunbuster. And the entire character arc of Rin; who enters the series in episode one trying to murder Eiji for killing her parents, and by the tenth minute of episode two has been mind controlled by Eiji’s ill-defined powers and wants to hatefuck him. I’m not normally this crass when writing on this blog, but no other language exists for Big Order. It is a crass anime.

This is to say nothing of the anime’s ugly thematic heart. Much ink has been spilled over the otaku persecution complex, a phenomenon that has given us many of the worst light novels, manga, and anime of recent years. It feels fair to say that it’d be hard to top Big Order, though. Eiji’s responsibility for the Great Destruction becomes public knowledge early on, and by consequence, the entire world hates him. Combined with his near-omnipotent powers and you have a character who has both the ability and moral license to do whatever he wants. He uses it, too. The above example with Rin is just one of several. The show’s entire premise reeks of repressed straightboy nerd “I’ll show them for making fun of me!” rage. This kind of dynamic has sexist echoes throughout the entirety of art, and it’s certainly no knock on anyone if they’re plainly sick of it.

You are at this point probably not surprised by there being a harem in this show.

Yet, I remained strangely fascinated with the show as I watched. All of this would ruin Big Order if there were anything to ruin. What prevents Big Order from falling into the lowest rung of mainstream TV anime is that it is a bizarre combination of astoundingly incompetent, yet tightly-edited. Things just kind of happen, but often in very entertaining ways. Episode four remains the show’s most infamous, featuring the aforementioned plot point of ear-pregnancy combined with Eiji and co. running to and ‘fro throughout a war-torn city and trying to come up with a way to stop it from being nuked. The entire series is this level of unintentionally hilarious. In a more self-aware show, it would seem deliberate, but Big Order‘s full-tilt commitment to its own inane thematic core makes it impossible to believe it’s anything but accidental. In this way, the show is enjoyable if you like seeing an anime fall apart at the seams when its premise and plot are put under the slightest bit of scrutiny. For whatever reason, I kind of do.

On the whole, Big Order is the rare series I’d say has fully earned the term “guilty pleasure”. It’s a kind of bitterly ironic that despite Big Order being a financial flop, the only project animating studio Asread has worked on recently is the similarly-reviled Arifutera. I’d say “you reap what you sow”, but the complex dynamics of how a studio picks up a show to work on render that moot. Besides, no one deserves to work on Big Order-quality projects forever, it’s simply too cruel.

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