#1 – Kai Byoui Ramune

Please head over to YouTube to check out this year’s #1 series video “write-up”!

 

#2 – Nomad: Megalo Box 2

I’m going to start with what may seem a rather odd declaration in context – Nomad: Megalo Box 2 was probably the best series of the year.

2021 was a funny sort of year for anime, and not a particularly good one.  At least for me.  I’ve vacillated more on the top spot – and the list generally, probably – than in any other year.  Normally this post is effectively the reveal of the #1 too, but it was such a weird year that may not even be a given.  There were three series in serious contention, and as I mentioned yesterday two of them involved a kind of heart vs. head conflict in my that almost allowed the third (SSSS. Dynazenon) to sneak past them both.  I’ll leave you to guess which one Nomad was, though I suspect it’ll be pretty clear through my post.

Another thing I’d note is that if you’d asked me after six episodes, I would have said I’d be very surprised if Nomad wasn’t the eventual #1 show of 2021 The first half was truly spectacular, certainly the best six episode run this year, and better than the first season (which was my top series of 2018).  I went into this with a certain skepticism about its need to exist at all, but it totally won me over.  Even in what was quite a strong season (it totally dominated this list, that’s for sure) Megalo Box 2 stood head and shoulders above the rest.

You’d think I’d have learned not to be surprised by such shifts, though, because in anime as in most narrative fiction, endings are hard.  And there’s a too-neat symmetry with this show, whose title was very much truth in advertising.  The first six episodes were Nomad – a very different series than the original thematically and tonally.  Then it was as if a switch had been flipped, and it became Megalo Box 2.  Two anime for the price of one, maybe.  And while both were very good, I found Nomad to be a meaningfully better show than Megalo Box 2.

That as much as anything is why I’m talking about this show today rather than tomorrow.  The original Megalo Box was already a #1 series for me in a down year, and it would have been no stretch whatsoever to have Nomad follow the same path.  Objectively, it probably was the best anime of 2021.  But unlike the first Megalo Box, this one ended somewhat anti-climactically.  The final seven eps, in fact, had a bit of a recycled feel to them.  They very much walked the same thematic path as the first season, which I thought did a marvelous job of bringing those themes to a dramatic and intellectually valid conclusion.

As I noted in my series review post, though, Megalo Box 2 only suffers because you’re grading it on a curve, and Nomad was so profoundly great.  Chief’s story was magnificent in its own right, taking the story in an unexpected direction.  Through it Megalo Box was able to explore the third rail topic of immigration in Japan by changing the faces and the setting, and it did so in a profoundly humanistic way.  But what really set Nomad apart was the way Chief’s arc was used to further Joe’s, to take his character to places one never imagined it would go.  This part of the series was a masterpiece, no question.

Lists like this are nothing if not personal, and I long ago learned the futility of trying to justify one’s subjective opinions about art.  If I started this whole process over I might just put Nomad or even Dynazenon on top, but I’m comfortable with where things settled.  This was one hell of a great series, a sequel I didn’t know I needed until I started watching it.  Like Mars Red (and indeed Megalo Box S1) it’s a testament to what anime can do when it doesn’t constrain itself with the artificial limits the production committee system places on it.  May there be many more series like it in our future (as unlikely as that seems).

#3 – SSSS.Dynazenon

Now we reach the point in the list where the shows I seriously considered for the top spot reside.  And in this year more than any other before, there was some serious consideration.  To say there was no obvious #1 for me would be an understatement.  In point of fact, the spreadsheet I use to tentatively rank the top 20 still has a “1” in the Dynazenon row – that’s how close this series came to grabbing the top perch.  In effect that came down to a sort of heart vs. head battle (as the next two days will show), and SSSS.Dynazenon represented a sort of bridge between the two.

This is a fascinating entry for any number of reasons.  It’s the first original series on this year’s list, although technically one could call it a loose adaptation of the old Tsubaraya Gridman franchise (like its predecessor SSSS.Gridman).  It’s the first Trigger series to ever claim my #1 ranking – not surprisingly, as Gridman was the first ever to even make the Top 10 list.  But more so than Tsubaraya or even Trigger, it’s Gainax that most permeates this production.  And no doubt that’s one of the reason I love the two entries in the Gridman universe as much as I do.

More than most anime, I think SSSS.Dynazenon is very much defined by the people who created it.  Amemiya Akira was a relatively minor player at Gainax (his age alone pretty much ensures that) but the fact that he spent his formative years there seeps from the very pores of his work.  With these two series but especially with Dynazenon, he’s managed to create something that’s both retro and fresh.  Working with some of the best young animators in the business Amemiya has created a visually arresting masterpiece that recalls the glory days of hand-drawn anime like few other series do.  He’s a director with a singular and unmistakable personality.

Between the two shows, I prefer Dynazenon to Gridman (which I ranked #8 in 2018, a similarly soft but slightly better anime year).  In my series review post I oversimplified by design in stating that Gridman was plot-driven and Dynazenon character-driven, because I think that captures the distinction between the two series fairly accurately.  As much as I admire Amemiya and writer Hasegawa Keiichi for making Gridman distinct from its Tsubaraya roots, I admire them for blazing a new stylistic trail with Dynazenon.  It’s a much warmer series emotionally, more hopeful and idealistic.  Gridman did some of the heavy lifting in establishing the mythology for a new generation, something Amemiya and Hasegawa were able to take full advantage of in its sequel.

Now, of course, we have the Gridman x Dynazenon project to look forward to – though it turns out to be a movie rather than a third series.  It will be fascinating to see how these two somewhat discordant styles are merged together.  Given the franchise’s popularity in Japan I certainly wasn’t surprised to get more anime, though its relatively low profile in the West is a bit puzzling.  Maybe most of the western anime fans it would speak to just aren’t anime fans anymore to the extent that they are in Japan.  Gridman and Dynazenon have managed to reach that audience while also tapping into a younger demographic no doubt enjoying it largely for different reasons – something Trigger always seems to be trying to do, but rarely this successfully.

#4 – Blue Period

As usual I don’t feel I need to elaborate so much on why a show is on the list when it’s a Fall series that’s just concluded.  You’ve read my series review post after all (or at least, had the chance to, if you wished).  Blue Period is a series whose charms are going tp be quite apparent if you’re part of its target audience, I think.  It’s smart, it’s deep, it respects the audience.  It asks fundamental questions about the creative process and adolescence, and doesn’t pretend that there are easy answers to them.  The equation of its success is about as straightforward as it gets.

I’ve never been an artist, so the fact that Blue Period’s musing on that side of its story resonates with me is testament to its universality (at least if you’re creative).  I have been a teacher, though, and that side of the series speaks to me on a very personal level.  Teachers show up in manga and anime fairly often of course – these are mediums obsessed with high school as a setting.  But rarely do you see them celebrated the way they are here – not romanticized (well, not much) but celebrated.  Celebrated or the impact a good one can have on a young person trying to find themselves and their path in life.  The two teachers in this series are very different, but both profoundly shape Yatora’s journey towards becoming an artist.

Blue Period isn’t an adaptation that dazzles you with lavish production values or radical changes to the source material.  Like the manga itself it plays it pretty straight, and I think in some eyes that dulls some of its luster.  It also exists in the context that in adapts what’s basically the prequel to the main story.  I get that it doesn’t feel quite like a masterpiece for those reasons, but there are a lot of small details director Masunari Koji gets spot-on.  The anime also finishes with by far its best work – the second of the series is one of the finest 6-episodes stretches of any series this season.

I haven’t totally given up on Blue Period’s future as an anime.  It has (somewhat surprisingly, at least for me) a non-trivial merchandising presence, and the manga continues to sell very well.  As a seinen. I’m frankly grateful it’s gotten an adaptation at all.  Entertainment for its own sake it perfectly worthwhile, but I have a special place in my heart for anime that are really about something.  Especially when that something is the complex enigma that is the human experience.  And it really doesn’t get much more universal than that if you’re open to a little introspection.

#5 – Mars Red

There are sleepers, and then there are sleepers.  Not only did I have Mars Red in the bottom tier of my Spring preview, I didn’t even have it listed as a sleeper.  This one flew under my radar like Major Kong, but in hindsight there were some clues there if I had just noticed them.  At the very least it was clear that this series was not a mass produced model, which should have been enough at least enough to spark my interest more than it was.

Mars Red is a lot of things.  It’s a vampire story, a period piece, a tragedy.  Vampires are no less popular in anime these days than they have been in most entertainment mediums, but this is my favorite vampire series since Shiki.  It threw us a lot of misdirections – including a classic false main character scenario with Maeda-san.  Having the vampires effectively be the victims in the story (to a degree, anyway) was a very interesting twist.  Seeing them as sad relics of a bygone era, slowly fading away to extinction, was surprisingly poignant.  Not to mention a take I haven’t seen in anime (and almost never anywhere) before.

The cast here is phenomenal, as is the music (by cellist Muranaka Toshiyuki).  And while neither of the directors are big names, Mars Red is a shining example of how to deliver a visually arresting series on a minimal budget.  If I were to pick one element that really stands out, though, it’d probably be the sheer theatricality of the piece – fitting, as it’s based on a staged reading by playwright Fujisawa Bun-O.  It shares a certain dramatic grandeur with Zetsuen no Tempest (another series with a huge performance by Sawashiro Miyuki), that very few anime – even great ones – call to mind.

Bun-O has stated that he believes the reason for the timeless appeal of vampires is that among monsters of the night, they’re defined by their weaknesses as much as their superpowers.  By choosing to focus on those weaknesses and effectively making vampires an underclass discriminated against by humans, he took a very unorthodox approach and succeeded gloriously.  And anime, by adapting a material from a highly unusual source, did the same.  Mars Red represents a reminder of what anime is capable of when it unfetters itself from the creative strait jacket it’s chosen to wear.

#6 – Kemono Jihen

Every year lately seems to have a series where the lack of a sequel utterly infuriates me.  In 2020 it was Jibako Shounen Hanako-kun – that being a one and done still baffles me, as the manga is insanely popular.  This year it’s Kemono Jihen, the wonderful adaptation of Aimoto Shou’s shounen manga.  I’d hoped that the series getting a stage (albeit virtual) at this year’s Jump Festa might signal an impending announcement, but in my heart of hearts I wasn’t really expecting it.  With that I think the ship has pretty much sailed.

And what a shame it is, too, because this underdog punches like a heavyweight.  It’s blessed with a wonderful main character in Kabane, one of anime’s great cinnamon rolls, and a fantastic supporting cast.  It can succeed with a wide variety of tones and shadings, and isn’t afraid to go almost Hunter X Hunter dark when the mood strikes Aimoto-sensei.  And the anime did a terrific job adapting the manga (skipping only one chapter I really liked) despite a couple casting choices I wasn’t absolutely on-board with.  It started with a note-perfect adaptation of the manga’s superb introductory chapters, and never looked back.

What’s especially galling is that the anime basically adapted the series’ prequel.  It gave us origin stories for Shiki and Akira but didn’t dive into Kabane’s at all.  This manga is pretty popular, and got a nice sales boost from the anime.  Once upon a time a series like this would almost certainly have gotten 26 episodes to begin with.  It’s mainstream enough to succeed, and smart enough to appeal to curmudgeons like me.  It’s odd for a series I love this much to also be a symbol of what’s wrong with anime (and the production committee system) but it is what it is.

None of this changes the fact that Kemono Jihen is simply a really great shounen.  There are some distinctly Togashi-like elements for Aimoto is her own person, and breaks plenty of new guard.  The dynamic between the four principals at Inugami Detective Office is incredibly winning, and the supporting cast – especially the members of Inari’s circle – add a lot of comic and general appeal.  I’m glad to have had the chance to see it adapted, but Kemono Jihen is different from some of the other one-cour series on this list in that it feels like it should have been allowed to be so much more.  But if anything that makes me love it that much more.

#7 – Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 2nd Season

My list for this year is going to have a lot of unpopular choices, which I think is something of a reflection of the sort of year it was in anime.  But I doubt you’ll find much griping about this one.  Who doesn’t like Mairimashita! Iruma-kun, really?  Some will love it more than others of course, but it’s a series than engenders an awful lot of affection.  It’s one of the most popular manga franchises NHK has adapted, at least in the non-kids market.  And plenty of kids watch Iruma-kun anyway, which is part of its magic.  Any demographic can enjoy this series and get something different out of it.

What a long, strange trip it’s been for me with Mairimashita Iruma-kun.  From dropping it to picking it back up at RC, to putting the first season in my top 20 and the second in my top 7.  I sold this series short, which in my defense isn’t that hard to do.  As I said it can be enjoyed on multiple levels – and one of them is harmless lightweight fun, which was kind of my read on it at first.  But there’s so much more to it – this is actually a fairly deep series, though its denser themes are handled so subtly that anyone can choose to ignore them if they like.

If there’s a secret to success with anime comedy, versatility is a pretty good candidate.  Mairimashita Iruma-kun has a tremendous cast, each subset of which brings something different to the comedy.  But it’s also versatile enough as a series to do straight-up battle shounen and even fairly intense drama.  I probably like the episodes where Iruma-kun is innocently having fun with Azz and Clara the best, but the big set pieces can be pretty great too.

Ultimately it comes down to Iruma himself, who’s such a winning lead that he easily carries the series on his shoulders.  A good person being rewarded for being good is a surprisingly rare template for anime, but Iruma-kun executes it brilliantly.  Judging by its marketing presence and manga sales this franchise is probably more popular than ever now, and the much-welcomed third season next year probably won’t be the last.  Mairimashita Iruma-kun almost never gets talked about as one of the big guns in shounen, but it’s about time it should.

#8 – Kingdom 3

At last, an entry that’s straightforward (at least by 2021 standards).  Kingdom 3 may have had a rocky journey to get to this point – its full-year delay was probably the longest pandemic-related postponement of any series – but the product itself was exactly as advertised.

Most of this season was taken up by the “Coalition Invasion” arc, and it was one of the anime’s best.  Kingdom is a series that has an ability to showcase both spectacle and intimacy, and both were on display in this storyline.  As always I think this show is at its best when it narrows the focus a little and lets the character interactions shine, but it does big military campaigns exceptionally well too.  Obviously some historical liberties were taken here, but Kingdom’s storytelling is grounded enough to feel pretty realistic.

There’s a reason why Kingdom has sold some 85 million manga volumes – it’s one of the best historical epics the medium has ever produced.  It’s never made a top 10 list on LiA before, partly because the visuals have always been subpar.  That improved in S3 with the switch to Pierrot’s spinoff studio, Signpost.  Add to that a weak year for anime generally and the fact that this was probably Kingdom’s best season from a narrative standpoint, and you have its first appearance on the list.  A fourth season is set to premiere in 2022 (thank goodness the wait was much shorter this time), and there’s no reason to suspect it won’t continue to deliver the goods like Kuroneko Yamato.

#9 – Fumetsu no Anata e

You’ve heard me say it before (as recently as yesterday) – without a doubt, the hardest shows to rank are the ones with huge gaps between their best and worst episodes.  To some extent that’s a factor in weighing every series, but no question To Your Eternity presents the biggest challenge on this list.  The best episodes, like the premiere (especially), and the finale, were some of the best anime of the year.  The worst were decidedly average at best.  And what’s more, there were simply too many of them.

It’s a gross oversimplification, but if you had one series where every episode was a “6” and another where half were “9”s and half were “3”‘s, which would you rank above the other?  That’s a question that presents itself constantly with varying degrees of severity when ranking anime, but rarely as much as with Fumetsu.  It’s a very weird show, this one.  It had one extended arc that was superb (The Gugu arc) and another (“Jananda”) that was a complete throwaway.  The rest of it fell somewhere in-between, but it’s the extremes which really define this series in my mind.

Frankly, it’s hard to rationalize how a series that could deliver material as transcendent as Fumetsu’s heartbreaking premiere and elegiac finale could dish out six weeks of drivel like the Jananda arc.  But as sour a taste as the lows leave in my mouth, it’s the highs I really remember – those two slices of brilliance at either end, and the powerful and thoroughly engaging Gugu story in the middle.  That’s why, in a weak year, Fumetsu no Anata e sneaks into the top 10.  It has a sequel coming in 2022 (a full year after this finale so not a split-cour, thus making it eligible for this list) – let’s hope we get more of the sensitivity and gentle humor that defines this show’s best moments and less of the tiresome mediocrity that defines its worst.

#10 – Boku no Hero Academia Season 5

There’s no part of this years Top 10 list that’s easy.  That includes both the top and bottom (and the 11-20 list, for that matter).  While Boku no Hero Academia marks it a perfect 5-0, this was by far the closest it’s ever come to missing out.  And that was in a very weak year.  I don’t think sentiment played any role in it sneaking across the line – if anything I tried to be tougher on it to avoid that – but as always with such things, we’re the worst person to judge ourselves.

To be blunt, the fifth season was a mess. More charitably, inconsistent.  Once more it was afflicted by production pressures caused by a theatrical film under simultaneous production at Bones.  This time it also took a hit narratively, as it was forced into some re-arranging in order to accommodate the material in the film.  Some of the reordering was neutral or even beneficial, but not all – and there was some changes I would consider an unforced error (like not finding a way to give “My Villain Academia” the episode count it deserved).

So why is it here?  Simply put, because in spite of all the problems it was still very good, and because the competition was soft.  The Joint Training arc is among the series’ weakest (and could have lost a couple eps to make more time for MVA), but it had strong moments – and the rest of the season was very good.  I thought the anime did extremely well with the (moved up for the movie) “Endeavor” arc, which was about as character driven as HeroAca gets.  And while MVA was too short, what we got was top-tier shounen.  The best episodes of S5 were clearly elite – as always it’s a question of just how much to weigh that factor.

S6 is coming our way in Fall 2022 – which will likely make it ineligible for next year’s list, assuming it’s two cours.  But as tricky as Season 5 was to adapt, Season 6 should be among the most straightforward.  Nothing will need to be moved – it’ll basically be one long arc (“Paranormal Liberation War”) and it’s an outstanding one.  It should fit pretty neatly into two cours without too much rejiggering.  S6 may be fighting for resources again if there’s another movie announced, but in storytelling terms we should be back at peak BnHA.  And it’ll be a shock if it doesn’t make it 6 for 6 when the 2023 Top 10 list comes out.

 

 

Honorable Mention – Link Click (Shiguang Dailiren)

These honorable mentions have been an interesting mix of series over the years – some were ineligible for the top 20 for whatever reason, some simply didn’t make the cut, some weren’t series at all (like last year’s GOTCHA).  This year’s pick should surprise no one, as I’ve already talked about it quite a bit – China’s Shiguang Dailiren, known to most of the world as Link Click.

So what’s the dealio with a series being a 2021 Honorable Mention and in the Winter 2022 preview within a week?  Simple – Link Click isn’t anime, and it’s being broadcast in Japanese next season.  I briefly pondered whether to make it eligible for the top 10 list – which frankly could have used it – but there’s really no angle to look at this show from that makes it anime.  It has no Japanese connections in the production, including the original broadcast language.  Making it eligible would have been no different than making Avatar: the Last Airbender eligible – they’re both great, but this is an anime list and neither is anime.

The really interesting thing to ponder for me is just where Shiguang Dailiren would have placed on the list. It was (another) weak year, and it’s pretty damn special – I can’t say for sure, but certainly in the top 5.  It has everything, really – drama, romance, tears, humor.  It broaches themes anime rarely tackles (I can think of few anime that handle parent-child relationships so beautifully) but which are quite relevant to modern Chinese society (like the urban-rural wealth divide and corruption in high places).  If you haven’t seen it, you really should – and the Japanese dub premiering in January is the perfect opportunity.  We have a second season coming in 2022, and it’s one of my most anticipated series in any medium.

 

It’s that time of yet another year – a look back at the best of anime 2021.  I’m posting the “Honorable Mention” series a little earlier than usual so as to give folks a bit more time to make their picks for the top 10 contest.  If it’s anything like it was for me, you’re going to find it the toughest year yet to figure out.  To be honest I’m still not totally sure what my #1 series is even as I type this.  I’d honestly hoped it would be a better year, as production largely recovered from the pandemic delays of 2020, but to be frank it was another pretty mediocre year for anime.

As ever, you just have to hit it as it lies.  A reminder – once more I’ll be revealing the #1 series via an “Anime of the Year” video on the LiA YouTube channel (a video which I will of course link here).

 

A Refresher on Eligibility:

I’m going by the same eligibility standard I used for the 2012-2020 lists – that is, shows that finished airing during the year or split-cours that finished in 2020 are eligible. Split-cour series which finish in 2022 are not eligible for this list, but series that ended this year and weren’t officially confirmed as split cour when they did are eligible.  Shows that aired for the entire year (there weren’t any in consideration for me this year) are also eligible.

This means that in effect, the only shows not eligible for this list are the multi-cour series that began airing from Spring 2021 onwards and are still airing into Winter 2022, or true split cours that will finish in 2022.

As you know I always like to do a little contest, so here we go… The winner will be anyone that guesses my Top 10, in order. If no one does that, I’ll go with the closest guess. Guesses made by 2359 JST 12/21/20 will be eligible. Here’s the prize: same as last year, I’ll do a “Top 5” list on any anime theme or topic you choose. Dealer’s choice – you make the call.  Please post your guesses in the comments below!