When I looked at the prospects for 2017 in anime a year ago, I wasn’t overly optimistic, despite the fact that we were coming off a very solid 2016.  The first half of 2017 just didn’t look very encouraging from a distance, and Spring usually sets the tone for the entire year.  So how did it turn out?

Well – probably about as expected, I’d say.  2017 ended up being a thoroughly mediocre year, but we did get (as I asked for in last year’s wrap-up post) one or two really good series per season, plus the occasional sleeper.  Spring wound up being once again the deepest season (4 of the top 10 shows premiered in Spring), and Fall added some much-needed depth.  Winter (as predicted) and Summer were threadbare as hell. but the one show each chipped in to the Top 10 list was at least an elite one.

What we saw in 2017 (and there’s at least circumstantial evidence suggesting it will continue this year) was a stratification of anime.  The year was very strong at the top but the level dropped quickly.  Maybe this is coincidental (2016 was certainly deeper) or maybe we’re at a point where isolated great series will still be made, but the creative pool with anime gets shallower and shallower.  The production committee system encourages this – only series which develop somewhat independently of it (be that due to foreign funding, a super-popular source material, or whatever) seem to be able to break free of the increasingly narrow paths the system allows.  Certainly, we see Netflix and Amazon series tend to show more creative ambition than “regular” anime, not just more budget – but there’s no reason to think that a sizeable percentage of series produced will eventually be funded this way.  These shows are still very much the exception rather than the rule.

2017 was pretty much a typical modern anime year – it was 2016 which seems to be the outlier.  Most of the best series were manga adaptations; a few original series made an impact.  We certainly saw a rebound in the number of light novel adaptations, though at least this year a couple of them turned out to be good.  Seinen and Jousei made up a very small percentage of series produced, but where disproportionately prominent in the Top 20.  In the Top 10, at least, there was a respectable genre diversity – romance, sports, sci-fi, drama, action and fantasy were all represented.

Here’s the breakdown on the Top 10 list:

By Season:

• Winter 2017: 2
• Spring 2017; 4
• Summer 2017: 1
• Fall 2017: 3

By Studio:

• Bones: 2
• Deen: 2
• Kinema Citrus: 1
• .feel: 1
• P.A. Works: 1
• Shuka: 1
• Pine Jam: 1
• Madhouse: 1

The nicest part of this for me is that we had no less than three studios – Kinema Citrus, .feel and Pine Jam – achieve their first entry in the Top 10 list.  And all three gave us reason to hope there might be bigger things to come from them in the future.  Bones and Deen are regulars on this list of course, and it’s great to see Madhouse back.  The only studio that had appeared on every one of these lists, A-1 Pictures, saw that streak end in 2017.  And notable for their absence was Studio Pierrot, who’s been prominent on several Top 10s over the years.

By Source Material:

• Manga: 7
• Original: 2
• Novel: 1

Once more we have two original series, this time with Tsuki ga Kirei and Just Because. Manga dominated as always, but 30% of the Top 10 having non-manga origins is a relatively high number.  And two light-novel adaptations (Kabukibu! and Youkai Apato) cracked the Top 20.

What of 2018?  Winter looks pretty rough, to be honest – as soft or softer than Winter 2017 did, and that turned out a very weak season apart from Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu.  Spring is almost always better, and that should be the case in 2018 too – there are a few high-profile adaptations of well-respected manga (like Golden Kamuy) on the way.  But as best as we can tell from here, 2018 has the feel of another middling anime year at best – the proportion of formula and recycled feed corn is as high as its ever been.

On the theatrical front, the big ticket is probably Hosoda Mamoru’s latest, Mirai.  There’s no reason to suspect it’ll be the monster hit that Kimi no Na wa. was (few films are) but Hosoda is the only one of the industry’s commercial giants scheduled to release a film this year.  Miyazaki Hayao has un-retired from feature films again, of course, but we won’t be seeing his new one for a few years yet.

One more note: as to the Top 10 contest, no one got more than 7 of the 10 correct this year, and that was a many-way tie at that.  So rather than pick a winner more or less at random, I’ll open the floor up to suggestions: give me your idea for a post about any anime airing in Winter 2018 written in the voice of any anime character from a series I’ve covered start to finish, and I’ll go with whichever one strikes me as the most interesting.

That’ll do it for the wrap-up post – the 2017 series poll and the LiA “Oscars” will be following along shortly. As always, my sincerest thanks to everyone who reads and comments here at LiA, and especially those of you that help the site out financially. You make all this possible, and you make it worth doing. May 2018 be a better year for all of us.

有難うございます!

Enzo