Guest Column: Pocari Sweat’s 2013 Anime Top 10 List

Pocari Sweat (who already contributed via Paypal) came through by signing on as a Patreon patron, so as promised – the floor is yours!

Without further ado, here’s Pocari’s top 10 list.  I’ll refrain from commenting so as not to potentially spoil my own…

10. Pycho Pass
9. To Aru no Kagaku no Railgun S
8. Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru
7. Shingeki no Kyoujin
6. Minami-ke Tadaima
5. Watamote
4. Uchouten Kazoku
3. Kyousougiga
2. White Album 2
1. Shin Sekai Yori

Pocari, feel free to use the comments to elaborate on your choices.  And my sincerest thanks for supporting LiA!
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17 comments

  1. p

    Am I supposed to post something here?

  2. e

    'Feel free to elaborate' . Seems so if you're so inclined 🙂 …
    There are a few titles I haven't watched among your choices and some are not in my top 10 (I'm still pretty undecided as I have two of my candidates yet in the 'not finished watching ' pile in any case ) but the ones I know among yours seem pretty reasonable or solid choices especially your top 5.

  3. Exactly – feel free to elaborate on your choices if you like, or not.

  4. i

    I can understand why 9/10 of those animes would be on a top 10 list but SNAFU I don't. I thought it was pretty cliched and with too many imoutos. Care to elaborate?

  5. p

    I think SNAFU's 2nd episode and last episode was quite mediocre but the rest of it felt like a "smarter" less pandering version of Boku wa Tomadachi fused with Hyouka-lite. Anything that reminds me of Hyouka is a plus in my books, though it was not as graceful in its execution.

  6. Z

    @ishruns SNAFU only has one imouto, and it's a really acceptable imouto (a.k.a act like how RL imouto acts most of the time). And I think SNAFU's main protagonist could carry the show alone to rise above the average LN romcomdrama… And I think we can't even define it as a romcom since it doesn't has many romance elements, mostly about social commentary (although the romance subtext is there, but pretty subtle).

    I guess I'll add it to my top 10 this year as well.

    As for Railgun S2, I agree that it's personally the best arc for the entire To Aru franchise so far. One of the best material in the franchise adapted with good director, budget and time slot. Adaptation for Index is still a disaster though (and yes, didn't appreciate the bad LN tropes either)

  7. m

    i'd really like to hear a small review as to how and why u chose them as your top 10 please 🙂

  8. p

    To be honest, I didn't finish a lot of series this year. I didn't finish Silver Spoon, Rozen Maiden S4 and I haven't started series like Chihayafuru S2. I also never gotten far into Hunter x Hunter, Uchuu Kyoudai, Zetsuen no Tempest or Space Battleship Yamato remake.

    There is actually a somewhat large schism between the top 5 and and the next 5. The top 5 I would consider a solid 8 to 9/10, whilst the other top 5 a 7-8. It's more of the issue that I've haven't finished much series this year, or finished series that were good but not great. I could chuck series Suisei no Gargantia, Hataraku Maou-sama or even Sakurasou into the mix and replace some of the bottom end of the top 10. In the end I just went with whatever was more entertaining rather than good when deciding those.

    This is not the case from Watamote and onwards though. These series are legitimately great series from a critical point of view and also from an entertainment point of view.

  9. H

    Well since everyone else is doing it, I might as well give me own top ten:

    1. Psycho-Pass
    2. Shin Sekai Yori
    3. Gin no Saji
    4. Monogatari Series
    5. Suisei no Gargantia
    6. Hunter x Hunter
    7. Chihayafuru 2
    8. Zetsuen no Tempest
    9. To aru Kagaku no Railgun S
    10. White Album 2

    Honourable Mentions:
    Uchouten Kazoku
    Space Brothers
    Kakumeiki Valvrave

  10. FTR, the one head-scratcher for me on the list is Railgun… But that's me. So many LN cliches.

  11. p

    I'm not a big fan of LNs in general, so I do find it surprising myself that I added in 2 on my list.

    Nonetheless, Railgun S (2nd season) is a completely different beast to the other 3 Index/Railgun series. I'm in a no way a fan of the two index seasons as they were your typical high budget cliche mediocre supernatural/shonen LN series. I was also not impressed with the first Railgun series as about half that series was filler.

    The sisters of arc of Railgun S though (which comprised of 16 out of 24? episodes) is, without joking, one of the best "shonenesque" action arcs I have seen in anime. I initially wasn't going to watch it, but many of my AS colleagues told me that it was legitimately great and it was. It's definitely one of my top surprises of the year.

    Unfortunately, the last third of the series wasn't as good or else it may have ranked even higher.

  12. If you told me Kuroko wasn't in that arc, I might be willing to watch it.

  13. m

    The only thing worse than normal Kuroko is English dub Kuroko saying "sissy" instead of onee-sama…But yeah she's arguably the most obnoxious/pointless character ever. At least in Index, never watched railgun.

  14. e

    Yeah, the second season of railgun was far better than the first. The entire sisters arc was surprisingly intense and well-directed and it contained what was, for my money, one of the best anime episodes of the entire year. (episode 15)

  15. m

    Its hard to put a show like HunterxHunter in yearly rankings. Obviously it's been done brilliantly, but to an extent any show that runs for that many episodes will be better than any short show as long as it is down reasonably well. Maybe not from a visual standpoint, but anytime you have a much longer story you're able to do so much more with it and develop the characters more. That's probably my biggest issue with anime in general: the lack of length of most series. 12 anime eps is 6 episodes of a hour long Ameican series that generally have 14-24 eps per season. With the sheer quantity of episodes available if HxH was done only half as well I'd say it would still be the best anime of the year bc it has more depth to the storylines.

  16. I don't completely disagree, but I think the opposite point can also be argued – it's easier for a short series to maintain a high standard because it has to maintain it for less time. Long series have more opportunities to screw up. How many long-running shows don't have major, major lulls?

  17. Z

    It would indeed be desirable if they would go back to a 24(+) episode standard. 12 episode limitations are fine for comedies and simple stories, but the meaty stuff needs more.

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