A few months ago, I told a friend I was getting back into watching seasonal anime. Although it’s something that sounds a bit like a joke, I was serious. After about a year and a half away from the seasonal grind, I finally found the desire to watch things again—and how I was rewarded!
These are the best anime of the summer 2022 season.
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!
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.
It was a simple question—”Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon?” But simple questions don’t always have correspondingly simple answers, and so it is with Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?‘s ridiculous titular query. And why? Because Danmachi, in specifically calling attention to the issue of how one ought to interact with girls met in a dungeon, actually intiates a strange sort of dialogue with the question. Now, really, watching Danmachi for the answer to the question of whether or not it is morally permissible to attempt to hit on and/or physically pick up girls while traversing the depths of a monster-filled dungeon isn’t necessarily the way I’d suggest watching it, but it does provide an interesting lens with which to view the way the show.
The spring season is effectively over, with only two shows left to have their finale episodes (Sound! Euphonium later today and Blood Blockade Battlefront on Saturday). So, time to recap what ended well and what didn’t and what didn’t actually end and how I felt about all of it.
Holy cow, is it that time already? Two shows ended this week and the rest of them will be done next week, mostly. I will admit that I like the endings of seasons better than the beginning of them—if only because of the satisfaction that comes from moving shows from the “Currently Watching” section to the “Completed” section of my Hummingbird account. Anyways, with the season winding down, my backlog watching is ramping up, which is fun and cool!
Huh?!? The season’s almost over?!?
I feel like I’m barely watching anything these days, but post ideas are starting to pop into my head and the reduced “I have to watch this now!!” stress is really helping me actually feel like blogging. Of course, this also means I feel weird saying things like, “This was a good week,” because my anime week this week consisted of watching exactly six episodes, thanks to Blood Blockade Battlefront taking a week off for a recap. That being said, I did think this was a pretty good week, at least for what I saw.
I’m kind of wondering to myself if this is the new normal for me—will I never feel as to blog and writer as I did before the real world came? I’m hoping it’s just the transition affecting me more than I realize, but it’s a bit upsetting how much of a non-positive effect I feel the move to the real world has had on my blogging. I’m gonna keep at it, though! There are shows that must be championed, even this late in the season!
Well, I’m in the midst of finals week (although I guess I really only have one left, so…), but I’m getting my anime watched. And, after that, it’s graduation—my blogging status immediately post-graduation is up in the air right now, but that’ll be another post entirely. As for this week, I made a little tribute to why I really do love this season a whole bunch. That particular element might not be reflected in the blurbs below, but remember that it’s true!
I’ve been thinking lately about the difference in my personal response to the first couple episode of Danmachi (aka Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) from the reaction of the wider anime-watching public. If you’ve been pretty much anywhere online where discussion (or, in this case “discussion”) about anime happens, you’ve probably seen the Hestia fanart craze that blew up pretty much from the moment the first episode of Danmachi finished airing. The reason? Her, uh, unconventional method of supporting her breasts—known around the fandom as the “boob string.” But, for me, the blue ribbon encircling Hestia’s torso was never something that really caught my attention before the fanart craze and meme running started and I found myself actually a bit peeved by the intense focus on a relatively inconsequential element of a show I liked for other reasons. But why should this be so?
Mage in a Barrel 
