In many respects, the #11-20 anime of any given year is as revealing a list as as top ten.  And in some years it’s an even tougher list to compile – though 2017 is not one of those years.  If there’a any upside to a year being on the soft side, it’s that the omissions don’t hurt quite as much.

The toughest part of this year’s #11-20 to decide was definitely the beginning, because the first couple of series just barely missed making the top ten – I just didn’t have a big gap between the shows that made it and those that didn’t, and in fact I wavered over those selections right up to the last minute.  Taken as a whole, this is a group of anime for which I feel a lot of affection, but not as collectively impressive as this group is in most years.  It’s not a bad second ten, not a great one – but if I did a #21-30 list, I think that’s where 2017’s shortcomings would really become stark.

In 2016, the strength of anime was the sheer depth of good shows as opposed to simply having a few great ones at the top.  This year was just the opposite – the top few series could hold their own with any year, but things thin out much more quickly as you widen the net.  That said, these ten series are near and dear to me – a more personal list than most, maybe, but that’s a function of the sort of anime year 2017 was.

11. Shoukoku no Altair – Criminally disrespected and widely ignored (thanks in part to disgruntled manga fans), Shoukoku no Altair provided one of the best historical dramas in recent anime history.  The second cour was considerably better than the first, and on its own would certainly have cracked the Top 10 – the show missed out by the merest hair’s breadth as is.  In hindsight of course it should have made the Top 10 anyway, because Hoozuki no Reitetsu’s second season ended up being a split cour, which would have made it ineligible if that announcement had come a few days earlier.

12. Ballroom e Youkoso – Ballroom e Youkoso was another series that may have suffered some from inflated expectations by manga readers, though not as badly as Shoukoku no Altair did.  There’s a sense that Mahoutsukai no Yome was the best and brightest from Wit in 2017, but the truth is Ballroom is probably the harder series to adapt.  I don’t agree with all of the choices the studio made, but for the most part I think the series worked very well – like Altair, the second cour was stronger than the first.  Competitive dance remains something of an enigma to me, but the dots finally started to connect in the final arc.

13. Nana Maru San Batsu – Nana Maru San Batsu is one of those shows I feel a particular connection to, since this site tends to be the only one in English that pays any attention to them at all.  In 7O3X’s case, there’s also the fact that I did competitive quizzing for a while, so the subject matter is especially interesting for me.  But the main thing is that Nana Maru was just plain good – really good.  With minimal budget and only 12 episodes to adapt an ongoing manga, it coherently and entertainingly told its story with great skill.  The art of quiz bowl was depicted in detail and with great accuracy, the the characters shone as distinct and interesting kids.

14. Kabukibu! – Another broadly-ignored LiA special, Kabukibu! was a lot like Nana Maru San Batsu in many respects.  This time around the subject at hand was Kabuki, one of the most important Japanese traditional arts, and Kabukibu! attacked it a bit like a sports series.  As with 7O3X we had a terrific protagonist to follow here, and this show was the beneficiary of having a supremely assured and gifted director and writer.  I don’t know much about Kabuki (in that sense this series was more like Ballroom than Nana Maru for me) but it’s a fascinating topic, and the series did a great job making it approachable.  Kabukibu! also gave us one of the best final episodes of the year.

15. Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun – Ibid, really – here’s another series that Western fandoms (even the one here, sadly) pretty much ignored, and missed out on something really good in the process.  It took a while for this story about a germaphobic high school soccer star to really find its stride, but once it did this was one of the funniest and cleverest series of 2017.  My favorite elements of Keppeki Danshi were the small things, the subtle touches that gave the series that extra spark of genius.

16. Net-juu no Susume – I didn’t cover Net-juu no Susume, but don’t take that as an indication that I wasn’t extremely fond of it.  One thing I’ve discovered over the past couple of years is that I really like having one series every season that I enjoy immensely but don’t blog – it doesn’t always happen, and it’s never something I plan out consciously – when it pans out, it’s because something really good slipped under my radar.  And that was the case with this 10-episode romantic comedy about a 30-something MMO junkie who’s left her job and become a NEET.  Net-juu is a fanciful series with too many coincidences to really be taken seriously, but its take on its characters is really sharp and there are some sly observations about the state of love and romance in modern Japan here.

17. Yowamushi Pedal: New Generation – The third TV season of Yowamushi Pedal (the fourth is coming this Winter) was probably the weakest on-balance, but it was still highly entertaining.  There just wasn’t enough focus on the main cast for my taste, the graduated third-years were really missed, and I just didn’t find Teshima to be compelling enough to carry the story as a protagonist (which is effectively what “New Generation” turned him into).  But I still love Yowapeda, and I fully expect the upcoming “Glory Line” to be a return to form.

18. Onihei – Onihei was the debut series for Maruyama Masao’s M2 Studio (the third he’s founded, after Madhouse and MAPPA).  This historical drama about a kind of Edo Period rogue cop was a bit uneven (as highly episodic shows tend to be) and lacked a real ending, but at its best offered a couple of the best anime episodes of 2017.  Blessed with a supremely experienced staff an cast of anime veterans (when Maruyama calls, very few people say no) Onihei also featured a few bouts of truly astounding art and animation, though that was by no means a weekly occurrence.

19. Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou – There’s a definite theme to this #11-20 list, and Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou represents it as well as any series. So many of these are little-noticed, quirky shows whose primary appeal for me is personal, and as a result even if this isn’t objectively a group that’s all that impressive, it is a distinctive one.  Youkai Apato is one of the better light novel adaptations of 2017, very much disinterested in telling its story in conventional fashion, more than anything else a series about the role adults have in teaching adolescents how to be citizens of the universe.  Even for me this series was pretty under-the-radar for most of its run, but its best moments were genuinely powerful and it always managed to worm its way into my thoughts.

20.  Atom: The Beginning – Atomu was another series I didn’t blog – at least not all the way to the end – and in a better year, it wouldn’t have been a show I necessarily thought of as a Top 20 entry.  But while this Astro Boy prequel (based on a manga co-written by Tezuka Osamu’s son, Makoto) was uneven to be sure, it made the list on the strength of its final arc – and it was indeed a strong one.  The series finale was, in fact, one of the best final episodes of 2017 and convinced me to pick up the manga, which is a decision I don’t regret for a moment.

In case you’re curious, probably the last two cuts from this list were Gamers! and Mahoujin Guruguru (two more series I didn’t blog – it was just that sort of year).