My kinda annual "what's your favorite anime this year?" thread

Hey y'all. I wanna check some out but I don't keep up. What's hot this year? Any new shows? I'd prefer a new show over a long running one. Movies would be good too.

What's the best anime of the year? What's your favorite?

Thanks in advance!

Saw "Carole and Tuesday" on Netflix recently. It was pretty good. Very nice animation, catchy soundtrack if you like pop songs. Really my only complaint was the arc that dominated the second half of the 12 episodes. I guess it needed to some kind of structure to get to a mini plot resolution, but it wasn't as fun as the previous stand alone episodes. It's kind of a problem I have with television these days where a show can't just be episodic, but I digress.

I finally started watching anime over the last year and a half, so I've just been burning through a lot of amazing shows. I've actually been keeping a running tier list of what I've seen for fun.

In terms of stuff that actually came out this year, I have to say The Promised Neverland is my favorite. I love the characters, and the show is just unbelievably tense and scary. I read the manga as well, and I'm so excited for the show to continue. It might not be as unique going forward, but I love where they go with the themes.

Mob Psycho 100 II, Demon Slayer, and Dr. Stone have also been fantastic. Kaguya-sama is really fun too.

I'm not a huge anime fan, but I'll second the Carole and Tuesday recommendation. The soundtrack is super fun, the animation is good, and the story is short enough not to waste your time. Later episodes slow down a bit, but not enough to ruin the fun.

I think it might actually be from last year(?) but Violet Evergarden is also really good. I love its premise and sense of restraint (and it's also nice and short).

Mob Psycho season 2 is a pretty clear winner for me, given that the second season has probably shot it up to my second favorite anime of all time.

I can't think of any new anime that left nearly as strong of an impression on me (I didn't actually finish much anime this year, thinking back), although I did overall enjoy Demon Slayer and Kaguya-sama: Love is War.

It's been a fairly lean year for non-action focused shows but Run With The Wind was a fantastic show about the joys of running, self-improvement and friendship. The movie I Want to Eat your Pancreas was also pretty great and isn't a horror show unlike what the name might suggest.

I'll second Mob Psycho also just being good in general.

In no particular order:

• Carole & Tuesday: Two teen girls on Mars trying to make it big as singers. A Studio Bones and Shinichiro Watanabe joint so it's got great music.
• Kimetsu no Yaiba: pretty good shounen story about a boy training to slay demons and find a cure for his sister.
• Dororo: an adaptation of a very old Tezuka manga from the late 60s but it works pretty well, about a boy whose life was basically sold to demons by his shitty father and left to die, but thanks to the kindness of a few strangers and the titular moral anchor in Dororo he slowly recovers his body by killing demons across the country.
• Vinland Saga: Waited for this to get animated, and even though it shuffles the order of the story arcs from the manga it doesn't disappoint. A historical fiction about a kid who's basically pressed into a band of Viking mercs after one of them kills his father. Set around the rise of Cnut the Great.
• Cop Craft: Yes the studio was way out of their depth and had the animation budget of about 1000 Yen and a bus pass, but the story was a fun buddy cop show where a streetwise human cop and his new not!Elf partner have to work together to take on crime in a big city.
• Granbelm: A town full of magical girls in mechs fighting each other in a battle royale at night.
• No Guns Life: Cyborg with a literal gun for a head works as a private eye in a cyberpunk-ish town. Also note that the studio used the Unreal Engine for the lighting in multiple scenes.
• Beastars: Bipedal herbivores and carnivores trying to coexist in a "normal" world when one of the former gets murdered and eaten at their school.

I may be behind but I recently started watching Silver Spoon and JoJo. One is your slice of life farm school comedy/drama and the other is of course one of the most popular anime’s currently. Since the holidays are coming up I’ll probably rewatch Full Metal Alchemist.

@wmoyer83: Fun Fact: Silver Spoon is loosely based on Hiromu Arakawa's life growing up on a dairy farm in Hokkaido, and she began writing/drawing it shortly after finishing Fullmetal Alchemist. They're both great for different reasons.

From the aforementioned, I would second (and third) Mob Psycho 100 II (drags a bit here and there but my shonen-adverse wife enjoyed it!) and Demon Slayer (some typical character archetypes but stunning animation and setting that evokes medieval Japan).

Fruits Basket had a reboot season this year! The first season finished airing this summer and is basically an update of the original airing, but what's exciting is next year's season 2, the second half of the manga that was never animated almost 20 years ago. If you've seen the original airing and don't need a refresher, you can skip most of the first season; if not, look forward to a sweet, innocent slice-of-life shoujo that'll leave you with warm, fuzzy feelings!

Boogiepop and Others is a really cool, offbeat anime that ramps up the philosophy and the action in equal parts. Having not seen Boogiepop Phantom (and now interested in tracking it down), the restraint shown in thickening the tension in the viewer to the breaking point before shit hits the fan - the alternative being violence for violence's sake - is very effective. The "urban legend" theme has been on my mind a good bit as I play through Control, and this Japanese take on it is very well done, typical of Bones.