I’m gonna be honest, I thought going into Winter 2023 that this was gonna be a bit of a dump season. One of those seasons where anime just kinda sits around farting and we all wait patiently for the actual Good Shit to start coming out again while pretending to catch up on our backlogs.
That... has not been the case.
Bofuri Season 2: Seriously, how does this show get so many incredible action cuts?
Buddy Daddies: Look, it’s probably not gonna be gay, but Spy x Family meets Tiger and Bunny is something we all need in our lives, okay?
Campfire Cooking in Another World: Couldn’t even last a full episode of this one before my eyes glazed over. Dropped.
Endo and Kobayashi Live: Now this is pretty charming! Pity the animation’s such garbage, though.
Giant Beasts of Ars: It’s a damn good season for fantasy anime, y’all.
Handyman Saitou in Another World: Could actually end up a halfway decent isekai SOL if it stops being so goddamn terrible at structure.
High Card: This is exactly my brand of Anime Bullshit(tm) and I am so on board.
Ippon Again: An actually great female-led sports anime? With major A Place Further Than the Universe vibes? Do not sleep on this one, y’all.
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea: Damn. Good. Season. For. Fantasy. Anime.
Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible: As far as Takagi-san knock-offs go, this one is pleasant enough.
The Magical Revolution of the Oh Fuck It These LN Titles are Impossible to Remember Just Call it “MagiRevo”: Buckle up, folks, we might just have another Actually Good Isekai on our hands.
Malevolent Spirits Mononogatari: It’s Noragami but shit. Dropped at 1 episode.
Nagatoro-san Season 2: Yeah, turns out I’m still not above the occasional well made trash.
Nier Automata: Genuine question, is this gonna be an acceptable substitute for the game or will I just be spoiling the experience for myself?
Onimai: I fucking hate the Mushoku Tensei studio so much and I hate myself even more for deciding to stick with this one.
Reborn to Master the Blade: This one might be soon for the chopping block, but I’m holding out hope that its story can overcome its middling production values. We’ll have to wait and see.
Revenger: GEN UROBUCHI’S BACK BABY YEEEEEEHAW
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale: Take notes, Every Isekai: this is how you explore slavery in a fantasy setting.
The Tale of Outcasts: Feels like a 13-year-old’sedgy Ancient Magus Bride fanfiction. Honestly, though? I kind of really dig it.
Tomo-Chan is a Girl: LET. TOMBOYS. BE. TOMBOYS. WITHOUT. SHAMING. THEM. FOR. IT. Dropped at episode 2.
Tokyo Revengers Season 2: At this point, I’m just watching out of morbid curiosity of how bad the manga’s ending supposedly was.
Trails of Cold Steel: The Northern War: Easily the weakest fantasy anime of the lot. Giving it one more episode to impress me, otherwise it gets the drop.
Trigun Stampede: Y’all are buggin, the CG here is incredible.
Tsurune Season 2: Good god, the glow-up from season one is nuts. KyoAni just does not miss.
Vinland Saga Season 2: Okay, manga readers, let’s see if watching a bunch of sad men farm is as incredible as you say.
It’s the end of another year, and that means it’s time to reflect on my favourite anime series that I watched in the past twelve months! As usual, I offer you a fun buffet of genres: some coming-of-age stories here, some action-packed sci-fi there; a bowl of historical fantasy over yonder, and a platter of slice-of-life comfort right nearby.
As in previous years, some of these reviews are adapted from my seasonal recommendations for AniFem, so be sure to check out those articles for more from me and my hard-working co-staffers, and be sure to check back for all of our end-of-year and end-of-autumn recs. For now, read on for my personal list of series that got me heart racing and made my brain happy in 2023…
ok, who was going to tell me that a new sports anime is airing that has girls as main charas and they're training judo and they're not sexualized?????? AND IT'S REALLY GOOD AND FUN SO FAR!!
really if u haven't watched "Mou Ippon!" then give it a chance!! we really need more sports anime with women in it that's just normal and fun
This season had plenty of shows we liked, but only a handful that stood head and shoulders above the rest.
How did we choose our recs?
Participating staff members can nominate up to three titles and can also co-sign other nominated shows. Rather than categorizing titles as “feminist-friendly” or “problematic,” they are simply listed in alphabetical order with relevant content warnings; doing otherwise ran the risk of folks seeing these staff recommendations as rubber stamps of unilateral “Feminist Approval,” which is something we try our hardest to avoid here.
The titles below are organized alphabetically. As a reminder, ongoing shows are NOT eligible for these lists. We’d rather wait until the series (or season) has finished up before recommending it to others, that way we can give you a more complete picture. This means we also leave out any unfinished split-cour shows, which we define as shows that air their second half within a year of the first.
Here’s what the team thought—let us know your picks in the comments!
I already did a massive review of The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, check it out here! Highly rec'd show.
So here are the reviews of the other two shows I watched last season! (I also watched BOFURI season 2 but it's experiencing delays because of COVID and isn't finished yet. Also, I'm not caught up. Basically it's a fun relaxing show, though). Now onto the reviews!
Ippon Again!
Ippon Again! follows Michi, who plans to quit judo after middle school, but then the very girl she lost against in her last tournament gets her back in the game! From there, a scrappy high school girls judo team goes for the gold!
It always feels like a miracle when we actually get a sports anime focused on girls that takes them seriously as athletes and doesn’t sexualize them to hell and back, and Ippon Again is one of those miracles. It’s an all around really solid sports anime with lovable characters. It does an especially good job fleshing out the rival team members just as much as our protagonists and making you really root for both of them- and the amount of attention paid to the opponents can make the matches feel genuinely unpredictable.
The show doesn’t really explain a lot of the judo terms, but they’re easy enough to pick up from context. It’s clear the show doesn’t have all the resources in the world from its reliance on freeze frames, but it has smart directing that knows how to cut corners to keep it looking good, and they do whip out some nice looking fluid animation for big moments like the fight in episode four and the fights in the final episodes. I did find the characters a bit hard to distinguish in the early going due to the show’s muted palette and character designs, but I recognized them all eventually.
Like most sports anime, it’s really gay but all the gayness is relegated to subtext (Michi likes to constantly mention she wants to get a boyfriend to the point where it feels almost like a parody, but it’s pointed out she’s never going to look for one because she cares about judo more). I do like the handsome lady that acts as team coach. Another thing I really appreciate is that there are heavier characters on the opposing teams at times, but no disparaging comments are made about their weight- in fact, it’s noted as an advantage.
Overall, it’s a good series that I’d recommend to any sports anime fan, especially ones hungry for sports anime that respects its female characters and pays attention to all the competitors!
Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte
Kobayashi is a huge fan of the villainess character in an otome game, Liesalotte. The villainess is in love with the prince, but she’s such a tsundere that her feelings never get across to him! (When it comes to love, she lies a lot. Do you get it.). Tragically, Lieselotte’s inability to communicate her feelings leads her to die in almost every ending of the game. Kobayashi decides to sit down with her friend, Endo, and they do some live commentary on the game as they play it. Then they discover that the prince inside the game can actually hear their commentary! These game fans are determined to use this new found power to give their fave villainess the happy ending she deserves, and so they slowly start to change the plot of the game…
This is a clever twist on the villainess isekai genre and it’s pretty fun at times! (The prince's confusion over "tsun de rais" is great).
However, the production is noticeably struggling. I read a chunk of the manga alongside this out of curiosity, and the contrast between the two made this especially apparent. The animation is barely hanging in there and is much less expressive than the manga’s art, and the story suffers from skipping over a lot of moments that flesh out the characters in the manga in order to fit into the twelve episode runtime. Unlike with Magirevo, almost everything the anime omits is pretty necessary to help the characters feel fully rounded- for instance, one character realistically get angry that a parent lied to her in the manga, but the anime has to cut that for time, so she just seems to roll with it and feels less like a person with reasonable emotions as a result. The manga's story is just much better paced than the anime, and it looks really good and gets both the comedy and badass moments across a lot better.
There’s also a few sexist, heteronormative or just plain offputting moments/lines and moments in the anime aren’t in the manga (and it’s not just a matter of translation, because the art reflects it in one case).
All that said, the anime does complete the story while the manga is still ongoing. So if you want to know the end (and don't read light novels, since if you can't tell from the title, it is a light novel adaptation!), the anime's still a decent option.
As for the story itself, it’s pretty tropey but cute. I wish the commentary angle was implemented more, and I feel the show could have benefited from being willing to delve into the experience of fandom and the contrast between the two worlds a little more too. It’s worth noting that in-story games’ original love interests for the teenaged "heroine character" include a teacher and a pre-teen kid, though in the storyline of the actual show they both get with age-appropriate love interests.
I was also pretty annoyed that a very combat-capable female character who is initially put off by her love interests constant declarations he’ll protect her suddenly (and conveniently!) reveals that she hated physical fighting all along and wants him to be stronger and bleh. She’s given an in-story reason for this, but it feels very contrived to place her in an “appropriate” feminine role. But then she still physically fights in the finale anyway?? (and so does Liesalotte) (and there’s a minor girl character that explicitly wants to be a knight who physically protects her fragile mage boyfriend even if the anime skips over most of that plotline) so…I guess that mollifies things a bit?? But why did it need to be there?
(It’s even weirder in the manga btw, because there’s a moment the anime skips over where she actually tells him to stop saying he’ll protect her and that they should protect each other and he agrees, which was a very sweet and good resolution! But then they go and undo it!)
All my caveats aside, the ending of the anime was just so completely ridiculous and full of fannish wish fulfillment I couldn’t help but be endeared. You have an absolutely bizarre reinterpretation of Adam and Eve, a flip on the premise that brings everyone together in a fun way, a scenery chewing villain who’s dealt with in an unintentionally funny way, and it’s just a feast of pure cheese.
If you want to watch something goofy and earnest and fun and don’t mind a clunky production and slightly rushed story , you could do a lot worse than this show. And hey, if the anime’s too threadbare for you, the manga’s getting published in English and it has great art! So you can always give that a look.
