Huff

Here's what I watched in 2018:

 

New Stuff:

Yuru Camp

Mitsuboshi Colors

Pop Team Epic

A Place Further than the Universe

Aggrestsuko

Hisone to Masotan

Cells at Work

BNHA 3

Jojo Part 5

Zombieland Saga

 

Dropped:

Wotaku nio Koi wa Muzukashii

Asobi Asobase

Kakeguri

Grand Magus' Bride (might pick back up sometime??)

 

Older:

Clannad

Clannad Afterstory

K-On!

K-On!!

K-On! Movie

Sword of the Stranger

Prison School

Girls' Last Tour

Non Non Biyori Repeat

Konosuba OVAs

Cowboy Bebop

Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip OVAs

Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

MMO Junkie

 

Like a few other people here, Sora Yori aka Yorimoi is my AOTY. I think I gushed about this earlier in the year in Anime General, but I'll still ride off of Wulff's reviews. It's an anime original, appeared out of the fucking blue to cinch it as the first airing show of the year, and blew me away. The characters all feel real and are relatable on different levels and their problems feel like yours. You laugh, cry, and learn to grow up alongside these girls. I can see faults and aspects of myself in each of them, so that's probably partly why I love the drama and emotional focus given to them, but they're complex enough that everyone should be able to connect. Speaking of emotions, episode 11, holy shit. One of the biggest emotional payoffs I've received from an anime besides maybe Your Name. But yeah, the music is  incredible and the animation and art are very good as well. Great show, one of my favorite anime of all time. 10/10.

 

As stated, I think Winter was the strongest season in 2018, a fantastic year in itself. I watched Yorimoi,  Yuru Camp, Pop Team Epic, and... Mitsuboshi colors. It's mostly strong because Yorimoi was killer, Yuru Camp was pretty great (probably my 3rd place for new shows), and Pop Team Epic had some good shit. I think all that needs to be said about Yuru Camp has been said. Comfy and good, the atmosphere is god tier and the fake season 2 announcement was the most hurt I've been this year! The other two shows need a little more said about them.

 

Pop Team Epic was a fucking meme juggernaut earlier this year, and has some momentum left there even if I don't see it as much lately. I like the comics and bkub's art and sense of humor remain very unique. The thing is just that the experience of the first episode was way too fucking good and couldn't prop up the rest of the show. The confusion of the episode replaying itself twice with different VAs and slightly different jokes, the male voices in general, the insane art twists, the fakeout Girldrop OP, the FUCKING fidget spinner (those were a thing this year????? 2018 was long). I was laughing my socks off and couldn't wait for more, but unfortunately while still mostly funny, the rest of the show just didn't hold up for me. A bunch of the half-episode skits fell flat for me, likely because I didn't get the pop culture references, and there was nothing as crazy as the first episode afterwards. I liked it, but the only part of the show to really impress me after that was the Hellshake Yano segment, which was some good as hell animation. Let's Pop Together was good too tho.

 

I don't want to give Mitsuboshi Colors much of my time. I know I'm gonna catch hell from someone here for this but I fucking hated this! Only watched it to see what pair of glasses pops was going to wear next and it was fun to shoot the shit with Silent and Facade while we watched. I was interested because it was by the same studio that produced Non Non Biyori but nah this show blows. The backgrounds have that cute watercolor photo filter effect tho. Oh, and the OP was cute! Points for that.

 

I watched three shows in Spring: BNHA season 3, Aggretsuko, and Hisone to Masotan aka Dragon Pilot.

 

Dragon Pilot is the standout, and my second favorite anime of the year, as well as another all-time favorite. Another show that came out of nowhere, I found this one by seeing the ED as wella s "haha dragon vore anime anime sure was a mistake wasn't it my fellow funnymen :^)" on tumblr. Thankfully, it is a very good show! It has some issues, namely in pacing and certain characters being underutilized, but it's very unique and was an exciting journey through a setup I'd never have dreamed of. Please give this a watch! The characters, especially the protagonist Hisone (who is literally me) are really endearing and I think the modern military setting is woefully unexplored. Good show!! I want a second season!

 

BNHA S3 was good, all that needs to be said. I remember becoming kind of disillusioned when I tried watching this live back earlier in the year because the first 2-3 episodes of the season are weak as hell. Thankfully the rest wasn't weak at all. Except for the All for One fight. Echoing my past self and Wulff above, the villains are the weakest part of this show. Also Ragdoll deserved better :(

 

Aggretsuko was nice and cathartic, but being a retail bitch instead of an office drone didn't allow me to connect fully. Still a good watch, looking forward to s2 and I need to watch the special. Liked how realistic the whole crush thing was at the end.

 

I watched Cells at Work during the summertime. It was simple and I enjoyed my time with it, but in the end it was cute edutainment, nothing spectacular. I liked seeing the designs of all the different cells and a show starring Kana Hanezawa always has my vote. What the FUCK do basophils do????

 

In winter I watched Zombieland Saga and Jojo part 5. Zombieland Saga was another show I watched because of tumblr, drawing me in with screencaps and gifs of the show as it sputtered terminally ill-sounding coughs. I thought it was going to be another low quality meme anime but wow, it was really good! Like Wulff said, the last half was a little less exciting since the first half was genius with its slapstick and trope subversion, but I've never watched an idol anime before so I enjoyed the played straight stuff. Interested in the future of the series, Tae is a great character and props to the studio for getting Kotono Mitsuishi to growl and groan like an idiot for a full season. Tae's one of the best characters of 2018. Also Lily was handled well is is top tier as well, my only complaint being that her hair decoration is fucking dumb.

 

Jojo is Jojo. Don't like it as much as parts two or four yet, like it more than parts one and three so far. There's potential here and I'm excited to see where the bullshit takes us. I like the gang so far and the setting is comfy and unique for anime. The torture dance was unexpected and one of the coolest pieces of animation this year.

 

Wow, that was a short review of all the new anime I watched!

 

...I'm gonna do short reviews of the older stuff I watched tomorrow. For now you can have that little taste of the top three older shows I watched up there.

 

Like I said earlier, Hisone is a great character and a large part of why I loved Dragon Pilot as much as I did. Rin's a good girl with a good sense of humor, the Pops are fucking insane, and Retsuko is nice and realistic. Giorno had potential to get an HM too but he didn't do enough yet. 

Hinata's the best girl!! In a show full of best girls what the fuck!!? In a year full of amazing girls?????!?!?!? I love her and she is perfect and Yuka Iguchi is a goddess. 

As much as I was criticizing Pop Team Epic earlier, it has my favorite OP this year. The song is a bop, the visuals and references perfectly match the show's style, and the mixed media art was slick as fuck. Good stuff. Shiny Days is pure distilled joy and the ZLS OP is stylish and really well done, esp. the horror movie shots.

Dragon Pilot's ED was the trigger for me watching the show. It's a cover of "Au Temps de la Rentrée", a 60's pop number by France Gall, sung by the voice actresses of the main cast and set to shots of them doing silly dances. It's really good, please watch it! In an extremely close second is yorimoi's ED "Koko Kara, Koko Kara" by Saya. It has my favorite song of the show in it (rivaling Sora wo Miagete), is drop-dead gorgeous, and is the best example of the show using little doodles supposedly drawn by the girls to spice up promo material. Give it a look!

Like I said earlier, my top 3 shows this year were shows that came out of nowhere and didn't betray their true natures at first glance. Yorimoi looked like a regular-ass CGDCT slice of life, ZLS looked like a meme idol show, and I didn't know what to think about Dragon Pilot. All big and good surprises.

Jojo's ED fucking sucks, that's all I need to say. After Part 4's great song choice and cool visuals, Part 5's is garbage. Where is Gangster's Paradise? I already leveled my issues with Colors and PTE.

Ok the girl there is a character from Yorimoi who does something very mean. But if there's ever a season 2 I'm sure she'll get development to make the pain less. The yellow Colors is fucking shit and the type of child character I hate. I disliked the blue one too but not as much. Red was the only bearable one. Good thing I watched Non Non Biyori Repeat so I got my helping of the best child character in fiction, Renge Miyauchi.

Like my chart says, Chiaki isn't a bad girl at all. But she's in a show of REALLY good girls all around her so she loses out a lot by comparison. As Shimarin said as well, I don't much like her.

Dogs were good. I'm sure Alex will show me up with how many I forgot by putting like seven more on his chart tomorrow.

Kotaro was fucking great and Mamoru Miyano's performance was incredible. Didn't see his twist coming, hope to see it expanded upon. The exec girls are a nice spot of hope in Retsuko's bleak life. Wait fuck I forgot a character for this category! Nao Kaizaki from Dragon Pilot got kind of cucked in the story, shares Kumiko Oumae's VA, and was a bro after a while so a belated HM to her. Here's a gif of her dancing!

 

Stay tuned till tomorrow when I gush about Clannad and Cowboy Bebop!