2018 may not have been a banner year for quality in anime, but there was still plenty of brilliance to praise.  And the winners are:

Best Song: “Ref:rain” by Aimer  – Koi wa Ameagari no You ni ED

After the Rain was a series filled with great music start to finish, opening to ending.  And in a very good year for ending songs Aimer’s ED gets the nod for the way it perfectly sums up the feeling of the story itself.
Honorable Mention: “Flashback”  by MIYAVI vs KenKen (Kokkoku OP), “Buntline Special” byVickeBlanka (Double Decker! Doug & Kirill ED)

Best Soundtrack: Koi wa Ameagari no You ni

Every year there’s a category or two that stand out as the biggest no-brainers, and in 2018 both of them fell to Koi wa Ameagari no You ni (which I suspect I still ranked too low in the Top 10 list, even after moving it up).  Yoshimata Ryo delivered easily the most beautiful soundtrack of the year.  It’s a fittingly theatrical score given that every episode of this series felt like a self-contained movie.
Honorable Mention: Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san, Mahoutsukai no Yome

Best Original Screenplay: Megalo Box

Unless this reboot of Ashita no Joe really was penned by two writers with absolutely no anime resume, it’s very likely the work of a committee.  Whoever wrote it, they did a fantastic job – preserving the essence of a beloved but well-worn franchise and injecting with new life.  They also delivered probably the bravest ending of the year in anime.
Honorable Mention: Planet With, SSSS.Gridman

Best Adapted Screenplay: Miira ni Kaikata

As usual the far more competitive writing category, for obvious reasons.  Miira no Kaikata may seem like an unusual choice, but I went with the superb Akao Deko’s script here because more so than the higher-ranked series this past season, she had to significantly tweak the source material for anime purposes.  Miira no Kaikata is a wonderful manga too, but it’s very episodic and in some ways reads almost like a 4-koma.  Akao’s script gave it flow and considerably more heft, and that helped make the anime the success it was.
Honorable Mention: Koi wa Ameagari no You ni, Kokkoku

Best Art Direction: Takeda Yusuke, Mahoutsukai no Yome

A loaded category this year – both the runners-up could easily have taken the nod, and there were other excellent examples as well.  For me Mahoutsukai was at times almost heartbreakingly beautiful, and the worlds Takeda-sensei created – both fantastical and mundane – were indelible and spectacular.  There’s no point in even delving into the legendary Takeda’s C.V., he’s worked on so many masterpieces through the years – it’s just more evidence of the care Wit put into the production side of this series.
Honorable Mention: Megalo Box, Koi wa Ameagari no You ni

Best Animation: Mahoutsukai no Yome

There was no series that knocked the visual categories out of the park the way Made in Abyss did last year, but Mahoutsukai no Yome sweeping these two is an indication of just how impressive it was.  There was a couple of hiccups over the course of two cours, and I did consider its Wit stablemate Koi wa Ameagari, but in the end I think cinematography and general directorial brilliance were that series’ strongest visual suit.  There were so many lovely moments over the course of this series, though the episodes with the dragons in Iceland especially stand out.
Honorable Mention: Koi wa Ameagari no You ni, Boku no Hero Academia Season 3

Best Character Design: Iwakura Kazunori, Planet With

As usual this is a tough one, because so many of the shows that display fine work are really being faithful to manga designs for the most part. This year certainly had some of those, but not an example where a character designer dramatically reinvented original designs for the better. That’s one reason I went with (Planet) “With” here, because while Mizukami-sensei clearly had some input, these were more or less created from scratch. And these are excellent and memorable designs too – the humanoids have a great 90’s anime look to them, and the Nebula Beasts were deliciously weird in a totally Mizukami way.
Honorable Mention: Miira no Kaikata, Hinamatsuri

Best Supporting Actress: Hondo Kaede as Mishima Hitomi (Hinamatsuri)

I did toy with recognizing Hirose Yuuki as Koharu in Hi Score Girl here, but in the end I really believe that’s a lead performance. The one I went with comes damn close too, but ultimately I do think Hitomi is a supporting character in Hinamatsuri – but what a supporting character she is. Hondo-san turns in a comic tour-de-force here (the entire voice cast is worthy of praise), as the hilariously unhinged Hitomi often steals the series from under the leads’ noses.
Honorable Mention: Murakawa Rie as Anzu (Hinamatsuri), Fujiwara Natsumi as Shigeno Daigo (Major 2nd)

Best Supporting Actor: Ohtsuka Houchu as Lt. Tsurumi, Golden Kamuy

This was a really loaded category again in 2018. I was very close to naming Miyake Kenta as a repeat winner here, as he’s certainly superb again and he’s integral to the year’s most riveting story arc and individual moment in anime. But All Might was also largely a non-factor for long chunks of Boku no Hero Academia’s third season. And damn, Ohtsuka Houchu is amazing as Lt. Tsurumi in Golden Kamuy. This is a fascinating and complicated character – incredibly charismatic, presenting starkly different sides of his damaged personality from moment to moment. In a series full of great performances, this may just be the best.
Honorable Mention: Miyake Kenta as All Might (Boku no Hero Academia Season 3), Ohtsuka Akio as All For One (Boku no Hero Academia Season 3)

Best Actress: Watabe Sayumi as Tachibana Akira (Koi wa Ameagari no You ni)

Very, very strong contenders in this category for 2018.  I wavered between two very strong performances by relatively unknown actresses in relationship-driven series, but settled on Watabe Sayumi’s nuanced, heartbreaking performance as Akira in Koi wa Ameagari no You ni.  In many ways she has the more thankless of the two lead roles here in that Akira keeps a lot of her feelings bottled up, but it’s in the art of portraying that where Watabe really excels.  Hirose Yuuki was wonderful in Hi Score Girl, and I would be remiss in not calling attention to Anzai Chika for a very different sort of performance in Kokkoku – especially in the series’ gripping finale, she’s wonderful.  But by a hair I have to give the nod to Watabe.
Honorable Mention: Hirose Yuuki as Koharu (Hi Score Girl), Anzai Chika as Yukawa Juri (Kokkoku)

Best Actor: Hirata Hiroaki as Kondo Masami  (Koi wa Ameagari no You ni)

Along with soundtrack, this was the easiest call of the year for me, and it’s yet another statuette for After the Rain.  This was a deep category as ever, and that’s no disrespect to the runners’ up (and a few others great performances too).  But given the particular nature of the premise of this series, the portrayal of Masami was absolutely critical – and this is one of those rare instances when I can honestly say “I can’t imagine anyone else playing the role”.  What a magnificent seiyuu Hirata-san is – so rarely mentioned when the all-time greats are discussed, but he should be.  Perhaps the issue is that his characters tend to be humble, decent and decidedly lacking in flash – and Masami certainly fits that bill.  No actor in anime can convey the qualities of gentleness, kindness and quiet determination like Hirata Hiroaki, and without him Koi wa Ameagari would surely not have achieved the same heights of bittersweet transcendency.
Honorable Mention: Hosoya Yoshimasa as Joe (Megalo Box), Ochiai Fukushi as Bonda Natsunosuke (Gurazeni)

Best Director: Amemiya Akira, SSSS.Gridman

The easiest thing to do in this category would be to simply award it to the director of the #1-ranked show – and Moriyama You certainly wouldn’t be a bad choice. With anime, though, I think one can at least try and parse the contributions of the various principals who work on a series. And for me, SSSS.Gridman is the one where I can most clearly see the director’s hand in making the show succeed. Amemiya’s unmistakably Anno-influenced style is this series’ signature – simple, clean, eerily reminiscent of vintage Gainax without being bound by it. I think Gridman more than any other series (certainly any Trigger series) has successfully created something post-Gainax for a new generation, and that’s an achievement of historical significance in anime.
Honorable Mention: Watanabe Ayumu (Koi wa Ameagari no You ni), Moriyama Kou (Megalo Box)

Best Romance: Hi Score Girl

This one was really, really close. And ironically so, since the two main contenders were a series that started out looking like something else and increasingly became a romance as it progressed, and one which started out looking like a romance and increasingly became something else. I went with Hi Score Girl here because it’s quite simply one of the best adolescent romantic comedies anime has ever produced, and features one of the best love triangles. All three mains are outstanding characters, fully fleshed-out (even Akira I would argue) and treated respectfully by the writing. The experience of being young has rarely been captured by anime (or mnga) with such authenticity, and HSG is certainly more than just a romance. But as a romance, it’s a near-masterpiece.
Honorable Mention: Koi wa Ameagari no You ni, Wotaku, Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii)

Best Comedy: Hinamatsuri

Like all the genre categories, this is a tricky one because genre lines can be very fuzzy (which is why I kind of don’t love these categories so much).  The winner here is Hinamatsuri, but that’s as much as anything a reflection of where I drew that arbitrary line – there are shows I ranked higher which could credibly be argued to be comedies (Miira no Kaikata most prominently).  But I chose Hinamatsuri because while it has serious moments (mostly involving Anzu) and handles them well, comedy is a bigger part of the series core appeal than with any of my top 2018 series.  And make no mistake, this show was really, really funny – most of all Hitomi, but not only her.
Honoroable Mention: Miira no Kaikata, Hoozuki no Reitetsu Sono ni

Best Drama: Megalo Box

See above…  Megalo Box was my top-ranked series of the year, and I do think it’s quite dramatic much of the time so the genre fits well enough.  Exactly what sort of drama Megalo Box was it did a very good job hiding right up until the ending, but it provided a ton of old-Hollywood style character drama each and every week.  The more I reflect on this show the more it puts me in mind of 91 Days – it would have been very interesting to try and comparatively rank them if they’d been released in the same year.
Honorable Mention: Koi wa Ameagari no You ni, Mahoustukai no Yome

Best Series: Megalo Box

Always the least surprising category, for obvious reasons.  While on the whole Megalo Box may be the weakest #1 series in my 8 years of compiling these lists, it was still great. And all the more so for me since it wasn’t a series I would necessarily have expected to be in serious contention for a top 5 slot going in. Looking back on my top-ranked shows, they were almost all series I had huge expectations for – either because I knew the source material or because they were follow-ups to existing series. Megalo Box was a different kettle of fish – sure it’s a follow-up of sorts to Ashita no Joe, but only loosely, and frankly I was’t remotely expecting it to be as good as it turned out to be.
Honorable Mention: Boku no Hero Academia Season 3, Hi Score Girl

Best Picture: Boku no Hero Academia: Two Heroes

This may have been an even weaker year for theatrical releases than TV anime. But it’s also true that there are several very promising 2018 anime movies that I’ve yet to watch, preferring to wait for subs (Natsume Yuujinchou, Penguin Highway, Kimi no Suizōou o Tabetai et al). It’s also a year when among anime’s titan directors only Hosoda Mamoru released a film (Mirai no Mirai), and I frankly found it a bit lacking by his high standard (it disappointed at the box office, perhaps not coincidentally). That left Boku no Hero Academia: Two Heroes pretty much unopposed, so it’s fortunate that it was excellent. By the standards of such movies it’s among the best, benefitting I think from having Horikoshi-sensei involved in the planning. Somewhat unusually – and again because of Horikoshi’s involvement – it’s now officially part of BnHA canon as well.