Anime 2015 Highs and Lows

Taste in anime is so subjective, and the variety of genres is so wide, that trying to pick a Best and Worst list is almost pointless. So I will do what I did with my nerd TV list — pick two anime shows that were the biggest good surprises and two that were also big surprises, just not so good.

Like most anime roundups, the show has to have wrapped up in 2015 (at least, one complete season even if it started in 2014) so the excellent Mobile Suit Gundam: Orphans doesn’t qualify. Let’s start the list with the Biggest Good Surprises.

The Good
Anybody who knows me knows I love science fiction anime, action and plenty of ecchi or fan service. So my first choice has none of those — My Love Story!! This anime is a romantic comedy, and it isn’t even the typical “when will they hook up” type. The main characters — the almost inhumanly large and tough Takeo and the tiny and girly Yamato — fall for each other pretty early on and the rest of the series is them progressing their relationship through ups and downs. Sounds terribly boring but it is wonderfully funny and throws a few tropes on their heads along the way. Takeo seems like the stereotypical oblivious male anime character, but is actually much more observant and smart about what is going on around him. But Yamato is the gem in this show — a girl who is terribly embarrassed about her own growing need for intimate contact with her troll-sized boyfriend.

There isn’t a moment in this series that drags, even with the seemingly stereotypical high school romance storyline. And even when the show uses Takeo’s massive size and strength to help resolve some conflict or problem, it takes that just far enough to be funny, and not into the realm of superhuman excess.

Next up is a series that started in Summer 2014 but wrapped up this Spring, and it should be familiar to anyone who has read my anime reviews — Aldnoah.Zero.

Like the new TV series The Expanse, this anime sets up its super science and then sticks to it, keeping the rest of the science in this science fiction anime solid and honest. Somehow it manages to nearly completely avoid the single biggest problem with almost all action anime, the deus ex machina. This is spoofed in the popular Internet meme “This isn’t even my final form!” Always having a more powerful form in your back pocket is just bad writing, kids, sorry.

Also similar is the conflict between Mars and Earth, the political intrigue and the well-written and complex main characters. I won’t go into the story background (as interesting as it is) since you can read that in my previous review. I will quote myself, however: “The direction is sharp, the pacing is exciting and very well done, and the animation is superb. But what stands out is how smart the writing is.”

Honorable Mentions: SHIROBAKO; Parasyte – the maxim; GATE; SCHOOL-LIVE!; Noragami Aragato.

The Not Good
It held so much promise right out of the gate — beautifully designed characters and a world setting that was clearly based on Meso-American civilizations like the Aztec and Maya. In other words, very innovative and deeply creative. But Rokka – Brave of the Six Flowers squandered that initial creativity with irregular pacing that seemed inspired by Dragonball Z (OK, not that bad — no pacing is that bad) and internal conflict drama that made the big evil the seven main characters were brought together to fight seem like an interruption (“don’t bother us, demon, we’re fighting ourselves here!”). There were hints at good storytelling, like the flashbacks to the training of the main character Adlet, but those elements went nowhere beyond explaining why he is so unflappably cheerful. Ultimately, getting through all episodes was a slog, and that is the kiss of death for an ongoing series.

Moving on, few animes this year got as much good buzz among my social media friends than YuriKuma Arashi, and on paper I can understand why. The story is about a world in which a giant wall has been created, but not to keep out massive human-eating titans, but cute (and surprisingly scary) human-eating bears — who happen to represent the potential for homosexul desire.

Alas, the episodes were amazingly redundant, wasting nearly a quarter of each one with the same judgement/sexual awakening scene (OK, with minor variations based on what the character was being judged for). At times an episode would barely seem linked to what happened in the previous episode. And the use of human voices doing a supposedly bear-like “grrowl!” sound as the bears was likely intended to be cute, but was mostly just jarring every time I heard it. Even the animation style seemed like it was trying too hard to be artistic in the way Madoka was, but without that genius sense of watching an anime based in a multimedia and decoupage world, as Madoka evoked.

Dishonorable Mentions: Actually, I Am; Log Horizon 2 (I loved the first season — this one made no sense); PUNCH LINE.