Rankings

The Top Anime of 2016

iblessall 7 Comments

At long last, it’s here! To be completely honest, I found myself a bit wearied at the prospect of embarking on the great voyage that creating these posts always is, but once I actually got to the writing of it I found myself swept away by the sheer fun of remembering how much I like each of the shows I talk about. That, my friends, is a sign of a good list.

To see how things shook out during the year, check out my final rankings posts for each season.

Winter 2016 | Spring 2016 | Summer 2016 | Fall 2016 (TBD)

And with that, let’s get to it! As per our tradition (three years strong now!) here’s the Best Girl of 2016 to kick things off!

Konosuba

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The Best Anime of Spring 2016

iblessall 16 Comments

Spring 2016 was ridiculous. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched 10+ shows in a season, but this season made me do it. In addition, the top level of shows this season were ridiculous. We had basically two competing AOTS shows (fortunately, only one actually ended this season). In short, I had a whole bunch of fun—my weekly schedule this season felt like coming home each time I started in on it.

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The Top Anime of 2015

iblessall 5 Comments

In my humble opinion, it’s always best the let the year sink in a little bit before making a list that declares the top anime of any given year. And so, that’s exactly what I’ve done—allowed my favorites of the year to pickle in an aging pot for a while before taking them out and shipping them off to be sold…err, sorry. Too much Harvest Moon these days. Anyways…

To see how things shook out during the year, check out my final rankings posts for each season.

Winter 2015 | Spring 2015 | Summer 2015 | Fall 2015

So, without further distraction, I present my top anime of 2015! Here’s the Best Girl of 2015 to kick things off!

KanColle

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Top Summer 2015 Anime: Final Ratings

iblessall 33 Comments

Another season has passed. Despite being a rather slow season and mostly lacking in shows I would consider worthy of serious superlatives, I was generally amused, entertained, and engaged by the stuff I ended up watching all the way to the end. As always, there were some up weeks and some down weeks, but on the whole I’m pretty happy with the way this season ended up. It certainly won’t go down as one of the best in anime history—but when you come away from a season with an episode of a bubble dropping on Lelei’s head, how can you really complain?

GATE

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Top Spring 2015 Anime: Final Ratings

iblessall 32 Comments

The start of this season found me scrambling around in the middle of my final semester of college, and the close of the season finds me a couple months into my first full-time job. The beginning of this season feels like it was forever ago, but not simply because of the huge life changes I’ve gone through in the interim. This season also saw me drop what was probably a record number of shows, including a bunch of shows that fell out of favor midway through their runs. But, for all that, the top tier of this season was exceptionally good—which really makes up for a weak middle tier and a pretty distinct lack of super-engaging trashy entertainment.

Blood Blockade Battlefront

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Top Winter 2015 Anime: Final Ratings

iblessall 51 Comments

It was a good season of anime. I realize I’m closing the season on a pretty small selection of shows and that a number of those shows are leftovers from the Fall 2014 season, but even so…this was a good season of anime. I don’t actually know what more to say beyond that. It was good, I really enjoyed it and felt blessed to be watching what I was watching quite a lot, and I’m sad many of these shows are over. And that’s that. Here are the best anime of Winter 2015. Are you ready, Koharu-chan?

[Management: I’ve decided to rename the “Best Animation” category the “Best Visual Aesthetic” category. The idea here is to condense character designs, background art, and general visual appearance into a single category. I’m not really qualified at this point to discuss the actual technical merits of animation, but I can at least tell you what I thought looked good. Additionally, the caption awards have morphed into something a bit different than “the was the best action” show; rather, they’re now more along the lines of “this show had the best romance/action/etc.”]

Your Lie in April

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The Top Anime of 2014

iblessall 18 Comments

Well, it has been a year, hasn’t it? 2014, as a whole, was a pretty disappointing year in anime. This has been the first year that I’ve actually watched simulcasted seasons for the entire year, so perhaps there’s some of Sturgeon’s Law in effect, but overall I felt that 2014 was far inferior to 2013 in terms of top level quality, mid-tier depth, and low-tier hilarity. To be completely fair to 2014, I did end up watching a lot of 2013 shows this year, but, by way of comparison, shows like Chihayafuru 2 and Monogatari Series: Second Season only served to further expose the weakness of this year.

But it’s more fun to talk about the good things that happened this year, so that’s what I’m going to do. Unlike last year, I’m not going to do caption awards. I’ve already done that with each season, so if you want to see which shows were notable in certain areas, check out those posts:

Winter 2014 | Spring 2014 | Summer 2014 | Fall 2014

So, without further distraction, I present my top anime of 2014! Here’s the Best Girl of 2014 to kick things off!

Nisekoi

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