My Anime Winter 2019 ranking
As before, whatever isn’t on this list is probably even shittier than the lowest ranked anime. If not, change my mind! Note: I wanted to put Kakegurui xx on my plate too, but I haven’t finished the first season yet...
Top Picks
Yakusoku no Neverland I think this is objectively the AotS. Just like with JoJo, I already know everything that’s going to happen because I read the manga (and they’ve kinda jumped the shark in the current arc), but at least for the first two seasons it’s gonna be really great if the animation quality and direction continue this way. Kind of a bummer actually, that I’m already spoiled... but what a blessing to anybody who gets to experience this in anime form. The scary bits are a little more grotesque in the manga, but otherwise the art is better in the anime, which is kind of a rare thing. Big props to the voice acting and sound design too.
Mob Psycho 100 Another very strong contender for the AotS - a feat that is usually impossible for a second season to achieve. Personally, I already like the new season more than the previous one because the action is getting much bigger and wilder as the cast expands more and more. The biggest GET in my opinion is that the OP is way better than the first one. Why did everybody like it anyway? Owait, because it had some sakuga in it that made no sense.
Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru Continuing from last season. It’s still great, but the other Best shows are better. In other words: Winter 2019 is already a better season than Fall 2018.
Dororo I can’t really tell how well it compares to the original series since I’ve never gotten the chance to read an Osamu Tezuka manga because they’re never available. But so far, I am very pleased with the style translation and the action. It may not be the AotS but it's up there. At the very least, it’ll serve as a perfect appetizer for Sekiro in March. Btw the OP and ED are really stupid.
Good Picks
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure ~ Part 5: Vento Aureo Continuing from last season. We're finally getting to the good parts here. I forgot just how graphic some of the injuries get, but that’s when JoJo’s best. Like, maybe even amp it up some more! I’ve been looking forward to the Greatful Dead arc for a while because it’s one of the most iconic setups in the series. Now that that’s over, I can’t wait to see King Crimson and how his effect will look in animation (and also how he’ll fuck up the final Opening????).
Ueno-san wa bukiyou This is kinda similar to a story that I've written before, so I appreciate all the ideas they come up with to get these kids into vaguely sexually embarrassing situations. If I had to make up a new genre title, I'd call it Screamer Comedy and put Asobi Asobase into it too. The humour is kinda similar, but the character dynamics are completely different. Perfect for a 10-minute-format. Otherwise, I'd expect Ueno-san to be a side character in a bigger series where her love interest had something more to his personality than just being her designated straightman.
Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai A clear winner over Kemono Friends or Kemurikusa, if we're only ranking 3D CG shows. I'm not really into dogfights or airplanes in general, but I really appreciate all the details they put into this show, like the creaking from the machinery, or the pressure marks from their goggles. Some of the facial expressions are pleasantly dynamic too. Kotobuki doesn’t reach Houseki no Kuni in technical excellence, but as far as 3D CG goes it's surprisingly good. Especially when you find out that this is the studio that fucked up the most recent Berserk. To be fair, most of the time you only get to see the airplanes. And there’s some visual incoherence when the main cast who are 100% 3D models are in the same shot as side characters who are drawn by hand. Still, pretty good!
Okay Picks
Tensei shitara Slime datta ken Continuing from last season. Isn't Rimuru already the most powerful being all around? He absorbed an almighty dragon, an almighty fire summon and an almighty demon king. It's already a cakewalk for him, but from here on out it should be even easier. Makes it hard to build any kinda tension... unless you introduce a new cadre of demon kings whose Dragon Ball power level numbers are sooo much bigger. It’s pretty annoying how we always have to go through the same spiel of “why would anybody serve a lowly slime” whenever a new character is introduced, even though the status quo of the situation should tell them enough about Rimuru’s dragon energy. It also pisses me off how not only the Ogres, but now even Gabil’s sister just evolves into a regular normie human when they had way more interesting designs before. Someone in the production committee gets a huge kick out of serving monster fuckers a delicious meal and then pouring mayo all over it. At the very least, it’s mildly satisfying when Rimuru’s nation makes progress towards a more functioning society.
Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita! This is the lolicon fodder anime du jour, but contrary to Uchi no Maid ga Uzasugiru it almost doesn’t paint the pedophilia in a negative light. Instead, it infantilizes the adult big sister and pretty much pretends that she’s just a confused pure maiden herself who is simply awakening to her budding lesbianism. If you can go along with that characterization, it would be a halfway decent show. It would probably be a better show if the entire cast was little girls like in GochiUsa. To its artistic merit, the stylization and voicework of the small girls is definitely cuter than in UzaMaid. But since I’m not into lolis or lesbians, I’m missing another attraction, like the muscles from UzaMaid to get me pumped for this. I’m only ranking it above the next Okay Picks because of its higher production value.
Domestic na Kanojo What if Evangelion, but without the robots or the apocalypse, and also Shinji accidentally had sex with Asuka just to spice things up. The fact that they fucked is indeed VERY spicy! And it’s refreshing how oldschool dreambabe the teacher is (Re: Misato). I do like the side cast, like the dad and the fat otaku friend. The OP is very strong too. But not even the fact that became siblings can get my boner popping. In the end it’s just a pretty standard soap opera.
Hinomaru Zumou As far as sports mangas go, I've finally come to the verdict that Hinomaru is nowhere near as well-written as Eyeshield 21, but the sport itself has the potential to be very entertaining, and Hinomaru did the one thing to make it palatable to us philistine shonen brats: replace the dumb chonmages with cooler hairstyles. Other than that however, the attempts to fit the sumo square into the formulaic sports manga round feels kinda disingenuous to me... most of the character introductions and plot developments are just too by the numbers.
Endro! Even though the setting is fantasy, this should probably be categorized in the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre. There were a few gags in between that were mildly funny, and I appreciate how Mei (best character btw) literally says “Doya!” after her puns, but I’m overall kinda bored. Dragon Quest style fantasy RPG references are sooo tired these days, plus the comedic timing is pretty bad, like some jokes should’ve taken more time or even a slomo, while others would’ve benefitted more from a jump cut while someone’s still talking instead of the other person’s full “d’oh!” reaction. All of the girls have a mildly scummy streak, but it definitely would’ve been funnier if they were bigger assholes. Just from the setting, the loli demon lord should’ve been the main character and they should focus way more on her schemes. But I guess by the end of episode 2 they completely scrapped that plotline. On that note, I’ve grown to find it annoying to hear Misaki Kuno and other loli VAs talk in the old folks dialect with washi, onushi & janou. This is probably a show to turn on when you’re winding down from work and want to clean your thoughts. For that, I can’t really rank it as a disappointment, even though I would’ve wanted it to be more like KonoSuba or Teekyu or even Last Period. I don’t know where else to fit this point in, but it’s noteworthy just how shitty some of the backgrounds are.
Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan The director and animation style changes every episode, which is super cool in concept. But the actual anime is only 3 minutes long, and the rest of the episode is just live action footage of the director and voice actress talking about how they created these 3 minutes. I guess you must've read the manga to really get Ekoda-chan's melancholy... at least I can see myself getting into it. Apparently they already made this kinda show 8 years ago but nobody watched or liked it. With all these different attempts, it's really a mixed bag.
Disappointments
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Someone took the tired old isekai genre and aaaaalmost made something super generic, but then managed to turn it around into something really interesting. The starting point of the Punished hero is a cool concept, I like the idea that the heroes all came from parallel universes, and the quasi-daughter relationship with his slave girl is something I would have loved to see explored more. Unfortunately, I read the manga a little further ahead and know that the author fucks it up by magically aging her up until she’s old enough to fuck. And then, because there’s no more loli in the maincast, he adds a chocobo mount who also magically turns into a human loli who doesn’t come with the trauma baggage so she makes no qualms about wanting to fuck Naofumi right from the start. And the people who wronged him quickly devolve into Team Rocket-type villains. I was hoping that this was just the direction the manga was taking for some reason, but by episode 3 it’s going exactly that way. Unless this doesn’t get significantly better later on, I’d say watch only the first 2 episodes and then stop.
Boogiepop wa warawanai I honestly don’t know how to rank this properly. I haven’t watched the old anime, haven’t read the novels, absolutely no attachment to the franchise. All I know is that Digibro loved the novels as a small babychild, that it kicked off the lightnovel trend, and that it was influenced by JoJo. Dunno where that influence is though. After 6 episodes I’m still waiting for the whiff of a Stand. I can tell that the anime isn’t covering all of the events and ideas from the original because the way everything is presented feels like they’re just covering all the basics to visualize how stuff would look like as an anime. Maybe it would’ve helped if they just showed everything in chronological order instead of jumping back and forth like Lost. Very confusing!
Kemono Friends 2 We were already prepared for Kadokawa to drop the ball on us after they fired Tatsuki and decided to reboot the series for no reason. As Kemurikusa proves, Tatsuki isn't a guarantee that your shitty CG anime will become good, but it's safe to say that they robbed Kemono Friends of its soul and left it as an empty husk that's trying to walk the old footsteps of its predecessor. Caracal's existence is unnecessary. What's the point of Armadillo and Pangolin if Raccoon and Fennec are in the show? Serval forgetting about Kaban was a slap in the faces of all fans. The replacement of the clumsy, yet free-moving bus with a lookalike monorail is almost symbolic of their current direction. Kyururu's design is a disgusting malappropriation of Kaban. Why were they running away from the Cerulian at the train station, risking the destruction of their new vehicle, if they’re perfectly capable of killing TWO Ceruleans with ease, as shown in the beginning of the episode? It would've been so much better if one of them had fallen into the crevice, or if Kyururu had just stepped over it as if it was no big deal, just to highlight how stupid the animals were for being afraid of it and for jumping way too hard. If they're already rehashing the old idea that animals don't know what glass is, they should've used that old joke properly by having Kyururu know how to open the monorail door. Now she's just as stupid and worthless as an animal. The only good thing so far were Kyururu's baby drawings. Like using a series of pictures as stepping stones to regaining your memory aaalmost makes the tired old amnesia plot device bearable. But of course they already exhausted that the sketchbook by the end of the first episode.
Virtual-san wa miteiru For one thing, I’m glad that they’re giving these youtubers their own tv show, but on the other hand, it’s a really really bad show and I couldn’t possibly recommend it to anyone. The main problem is that you need to know the characters to really understand some of the jokes. The only vtuber that I’m following is Nekomiya Hinata who’s completely out of her element here, though I’ve watched a little bit of Siro, Mirai Akari and Tsukino Mito before, so I’m kinda familiar with what their deal is. It would’ve been better if they had only used those three and sat them down for an animated podcast without dumb skits like oh no our classroom is exploding what do we do, guess we’ll just die. Hina and Hime seem to be the disruptive elements in the main lineup. They constantly thrash around, and it looks like the others are trying to play along and mimic their behavior. Coupled with the shaky camera, it gives off the impression of some cringey children’s stage show. No wonder Kizuna Ai and Kaguya Luna wouldn’t have any part in this... I mean, other than getting a paycheck for the OP.
Straight up Bad Picks
Manaria Friends I only dipped in because it’s Cygames and the characters have a cameo in Granblue Fantasy. But at the end of the day, this is just Rage of Bahamut garbage so I actually shouldn’t bother with it. I already skip through all the Mysteria Academy events in GBF anyway. I’m getting some weird 90s vibes from this adaptation, but not in a good way. The camera angles are almost Agent Aika level fanservicey, and the overt lesbianism is pretty pandering too. Grea reminds me of the pink haired elf chick from Viper RSR (I guess that could be counted as a plus?), but her ugu ugu shyness is the type that should’ve been buried with the Anime Club Cringe Compilations from eons ago. Nobody acts like that in real life and if they did it’d piss everybody off. The other characters besides Anne and Owen have pretty oldschool designs too, but on that note wtf is going on with Owen’s hair??? That’s not what I expected from his in-game artwork in GBF. Despite the episodes only being 10 minutes long, it actually feels longer than 20. Maybe I’m just tired to death by the magic academy setting.
Hulaing Babies The artstyle is pretty funky, but there's nothing else to write home about here. It’s commendable that they tried to come up with a theme that hasn’t been done before, but the direction is just too wonky to maintain a steady plot structure that can keep you concentrated on what’s going on. Kind of a shame.
Kemurikusa I actually didn’t even want to dip into this because it looked so crappy, but when I found out that Tatsuki was the director I gave it a chance. Too bad, however, this anime is complete shit. There’s absolutely no shandification; the girls consider themselves human, yet there’s no explanation to what they eat or where their elaborately designed clothes come from in this post-apocalyptic world. Even Kemono Friends explained that, and Kemono Friends is for babies. On top of that, they’re asshole idiots who should’ve started trusting Wakaba at least 5 times already. But they keep repeating the same dialogue about how he’s a bug over and over again, even though he looks human, speaks, doesn’t get killed by the bug-killing energy blasts, in fact gets healed by the anti-bug energy, takes damage in the bug spawning mist, helps the girls as much as he can, and is otherwise completely harmless. He doesn’t even argue that they’re being irrational, he just accepts his fate like the whiney little bitch he is. As someone who would’ve written a shitty character like this when he was a teenager, I can confidently say that he’s a Mary Sue of someone with an inferiority complex. Exhibit A: Rin falls in love with him immediately, and also he has amnesia (my kryptonite). It would make more sense to continue distrusting him if he gave them any reason for it, for example if he was a cocky asshole himself, or if he challenged their logic and then they just pick on him out of spite. At least show us that he he brings something to the table as a genuine human, like Kaban did in Kemono Friends. Her human intelligence immediately lead to progress. I find it really hard to endure this plot that’s regurgitating the distrust issue without making any progress, or at least sharing any of the lore. I guess that means Tatsuki was a hack all along and Kemono Friends being a good show was just an accident.
