Looking back on 2018 in anime, what I pretty much see is “the same, only more”.

Both in terms of my personal profile and anime in general, 2018 saw a further evolution of trends that have been pretty much consistent since 2013 (with 2016 being a lone – and somewhat inexplicable – exception).  Hereabouts manga adaptations continued to dominate the year-end lists, with a few originals rounding out the table and nary a LN or game adaptation in sight (though 2018 did see a couple of decent ones).  In anime as a whole game adaptations continued their increase in market share, and LN adaptations spiked once more after a modest flattening-out (though certainly not a decline in share) for a couple of years .  Most troubling to me is the continuing thematic homogenization of anime, the pace of which unfortunately shows no signs of slowing down.

Honestly, from my perspective I can’t point to any one element of the compiled year-end lists and say it represents a strength, but if anything it’s the mid-range that’s pretty decent – while both the Top 10 and #11-20 lists would be among the worst I’ve compiled, if there was a #5-14 list it would be pretty close to average.  2018 lacked masterpieces at the top, and it lacked sheer volume of good series (I can’t recall blogging fewer shows over a half-year than I did for summer and fall).  But it had quite a few in that “very good” range, which made the lower half of the Top 10 the most competitive part of the lists.

If I’m going to look for positives here, the one thing that stands out is that while the number of excellent-to-great series being produced is certainly still declining, the ones that do see the screen seem to be faring mildly better commercially.  Made in Abyss and Golden Kamuy are clearly money-makers for their production committees, and Hi Score Girl seems not to have been a complete disaster either (let’s not talk about Megalo Box or Planet With).  Perhaps it’s the relative rarity of these “literary” shows that drives their success – with so few to choose to spend their money on, fans of these sorts of series have more to spend on the outliers that do survive the harrowing production committee process.

What of the much-discussed rise of Netflix and Amazon as part of the production and distribution model?  Well, it’s still out there (and it’s doubtful something like a 7seeds adaptation would happen otherwise, so thank goodness it is), but I’m not seeing a profound impact on the way anime is made.  The vast majority of new series still have to run the same production committee gauntlet in order to get funded, and the few others (mostly Netflix now) are a sort of gated community – everyone living in the city would love to have that life of luxury but the high walls keep the masses out.  That means most of the animators who create our anime are still basically wage slaves – working in unspeakable conditions for ridiculously low incomes.  This is an intolerable, inhumane (and ultimately unsustainable, I hope) situation – perhaps the biggest existential threat to anime as it currently exists – and it stubbornly resists the efforts of those few inside the anime industry who are trying to change it.

Here’s the breakdown on the Top 10 list:

By Season:

• Winter 2018: 2
• Spring 2018: 4
• Summer 2018: 2
• Fall 2018: 1
• Fall 2017: 1

By Studio:

• Wit: 2
• J.C. Staff: 2
• TMS: 1
• 8bit: 1
• Geno: 1
• OLM: 1
• Trigger: 1
• Bones: 1

It’s an interesting breakdown, to be sure.  Spring is generally the best season for anime, even if the main reason for that is that it’s the biggest – as often as not, it produces more Top 10 series than any other season.  It’s worth nothing that in hindsight Fall 2017 was damn good, as it produced 3 of that year’s Top 10 in addition to Mahoutsukai no Yome on the 2018 list.  As for studios, Bones is the only carryover from last year.  That’s notable in that it’s exactly the studio you’d expect to do that (and they’re a common presence on this list), and because I believe that’s the first time only one studio has managed the feat.  Geno had a very promising debut year, and 8bit is in the midst of a pretty impressive run – they may be close to making the jump to the top tier, based largely on their excellent choice of source material.

By Source Material:

• Manga: 7
• Original: 3

Seven manga again, same as last year and very much in line with recent trends (the only change being last year also featured a novel adaptation in the Top 10).  For the record, the Top 20 this year was 15 manga adaptations and 5 originals, again very consistent with recent history.  Not a LN or game adaptation in the bunch, which I suppose just supplies further evidence that the gulf between my tastes and those of the commercial anime audience is growing wider every year.

Looking ahead, is there reason to believe that 2019 will buck the downward trend and be a better anime year than 2018?  There’s reason to hope, anyway, though I wouldn’t stick my neck out any further than that yet.  There are probably a couple more genuinely interesting series on the horizon than there were at this time last January, though they look plenty isolated.  It’s also notable that Winter 2019 is the smallest anime season I can recall in terms of the number of new series – it’ll be very interesting to see if that’s part of a trend or just a blip.  While more shows means more theoretical chances for great ones, my instinct tells me a smaller production load would be a good thing for an industry that can’t logistically handle the number of series it’s been producing.

The big news on the big screen is the release of the newest effort from Shinkai Makoto, Tenki no Ko: Weathering With You.  With Ghibli sidelined until whenever Miyazaki Hayao’s next feature film arrives, it’s really Shinkai and Hosoda Mamoru who represent the box office titans of theatrical anime, and the performance of Hosoda’s Mirai was somewhat disappointing.  Kimi no Na wa was a huge international hit, of course, which means Shinkai must deal with the expectations involved in following up a blockbuster.

One more note: on the Top 10 contest, the very first guesser, Alonom, is the winner – having pegged a very impressive 9 out of 10 shows.  Not only that, 8 of the 9 were within 1 place of their final ranking!  Very impressive, Alonom – so you take the prize, which is to commission a “Top 5” ranking on any anime-themed topic you choose.  Congratulations, and please post your request in the comments.

That’ll do it for the wrap-up post – the 2018 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 stepped up to become LiA supporters and those of you that were already supporting the site. You make all this possible, and you make it worth doing. May 2019 be a better year for all of us.

有難うございます!

Enzo