Ah, the second 10.  Always an interesting list, often just as telling about a year in anime as the first.  For me the very top of the table is the most crucial element in any year – I’ll take masterpieces over depth, given a choice.  Really good years have both, really rough neither.  2020 was not a good anime year (suffering extensive pandemic-related production delays didn’t help), but it was decent at the very top of the leaderboard.  The top two series would probably have been my #1 show of 2021, but the picture gets hazier after that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the circumstances, 2020 got weaker and weaker the deeper you looked.  2021 was largely unaffected by production delays, as denial took over as the lynchpin of Japanese pandemic policy.  It was another weak year, but on balance I think it fares better against 2020 the farther down the list you look.  On balance I’d rank the top 10’s pretty evenly; the second group is certainly stronger this year (2021).  It’s not 2016 or 2012, but it’s a decent enough batch of series to cast 2021 as having at least a bit of depth.

The last show cut out of each least is always a tough call, but maybe even more this one since there’s no next tier to collect the series you cut.  While there are no glaringly obviously tiers for me in 2021, I do find that the top half of the #11-20 list is a lot better than the bottom half – even more than you’d expect it to be.  Here’s hoping 2022 breaks us out of the troubling pattern of anime mediocrity and delivers a year of broad quality – it certainly has a head start with the sequels already announced.

11. Godzilla Singular Point – This was in contention for the top 10 for a long time.  In the final analysis I think there was a bit too much lag in the middle.  And while it’s hardly untraditional for Godzilla flicks, for my taste there was too little of the big guy himself.  Nevertheless Godzilla S.P. nailed the epic moments and delivered a really interesting and original take on the Godzilla mythology. It also had a fantastic soundtrack, from the classic franchise tracks to the gorgeous (and plot-critical) “Alapu Upala“.  Netflix remains inconsistent as a producer of anime, but Godzilla Singular Point shows it is making progress.

12. Beastars 2nd Season – Orange’s adaptation of Itagaki Paru’s challenging manga lost a bit of steam for me, especially in its second half.  The finale, especially, had some logic holes and was centered around an event that was a bit of an anti-climax.  I would have liked a lot more Haru, too (she was largely AWOL all season).  But Beastars is still Beastars.  And that means it’s still fascinating, dark, and a showcase for some of the best CGI TV anime has ever produced.  I see no reason to think we won’t get a concluding third season of the anime, and I’m keenly interested to see how Itagaki chooses to resolve this story.

13. Odd Taxi – I imagine this will be the most divisive entry here – not for its presence, but its absence from the first 10.  Not that I have to defend myself, but I like Odd Taxi a lot, and the fact that it was undoubtedly the most surprising hit (a movie is forthcoming) of 2021 is a good sign for anime.  It’s a clever piece of work (and its marketing campaign even more so).  For me it’s sometimes a little too clever for its own good and never really connects emotionally as well as it does intellectually.  There are also some holes in the central conceit that get papered over for plot convenience.  I may not buy into the hype with Odd Taxi but I certainly appreciate it, and I hope we see many more unconventional anime like it.

14. Horimiya – It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Horimiya being here is a pretty big disappointment.  Director Ishihara Masashi faced a no-win situation in having to adapt this series in 13 episodes, but for me the choices he made exacerbated the problem.  As I noted in my finale post it was as if he went to a grand brunch buffet and loaded up on bread and mediocre pizza, leaving the carving station and the waffle bar ignored.  Horimiya is not a flawless manga but it has some truly spectacular moments.  It’s at its weakest as a conventional school life romcom, and that side of it is what Ishihara chose to accentuate. A good anime, but more notable for how much better it could have been.

15. Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi – Senpai ga Uzai may not have been the most ambitious show of 2021, but it was among the most successfully realized.  A straight-up romcom about a group of generally nice people – a very simple formula, very well-executed.  The lead couple wasn’t the most compelling pairing in the cast, but that’s hardly unusual for this sort of series, and the supporting cast was uniformly excellent.  Another sleeper pick that panned out, Senpai ga Uzai no Hanashi was easy to like and consistently brought a smile to my face, which was exactly what I was hoping for.

16. Sonny Boy – Superficially very different from Odd Taxi, but a series that engendered a lot of the same feelings in me.  I enjoyed Sonny Boy, a true auteur work (the auteur being Natsume Shingo) – something that should always be welcomed.  It was often stunningly imaginative both visually and narratively, but never really managed to make me care about the characters or what was happening to them.  Like Odd Taxi I also found it too clever by half at times, in a very self-aware way.  As with OT a case for me of liking a series very much but not really buying into the hype.

17. Mashiro no Oto – At its best Mashiro no Oto was very good indeed.  The music sequences could be wonderful, and the sibling relationship was one of the most nuanced and interesting in anime for a good while.  But the mother was a dumpster fire, and there were a lot of plot developments that just fell flat.  It also dumps a classic “read the manga ending” on us, though you can hardly blame the anime for that.  Ultimately a “B” series that was comprised of a fair number of As and Fs.

18. Tenchi Souzou Design-bu – In my mind I love to bracket series, and I think of Tenchi Souzou Design-bu as a much more winning alternative to the tiresome Cells at Work empire.  This is a class of series (albeit a manga adaptation) that anime has always been good at producing – quirky, fun, a cheeky twist on a timeless subject.  I thought Heaven’s Design Team brought enough real-world science to its comedy (not surprising given that one of the mangaka is an evolutionary science professor) to give it authenticity – indeed, I felt like I was learning something every week.

19. Shakunetsu Kabaddi – One cour slots just aren’t a good thing where sports anime are concerned, but Shakunetsu Kabaddi did admirably well with what it was given.  Kabaddi is a strange sport to most Western (and I suspect Japanese) audiences, but that’s never been a deal-breaker with me.  I enjoyed learning a bit about the game, and I especially enjoyed the sneaky-smart exploration of the psychology of top athletes.  Burning Kabaddi could do no more than offer a taste of the story it was adapting, but it was quite the winning appetizer indeed.

20. Osomatsu-san Season 3 – As they all have been, this season of Osomatsu-san was seriously inconsistent.  But on balance I found it the most introspective and thoughtful, and the focus on the question of whether the boys might actually have been right all along is a fascinating one.  Listen, this is a screwball comedy, I get that.  But the Matsuno sextuplets do prompt some reflection on the matter of conformity, which is a religion in Japanese society.  I enjoyed this somewhat more serious side to Osomatsu-san, and if there were to be a fourth season (while not a kaibutsu any longer the franchise remains very popular) I certainly wouldn’t complain.