What finally getting a job does to a guy. Most of my anime watching this year was spent failing to complete show rewatches and forgetting to follow my seasonals. 
A fine adaptation that makes the manga seem so much better than it actually is.
I love Dragon Ball. No other anime is quite like it. They already redefined 2D animation in DBS Broly, so they next went on to redefine 3D animation. Centring the story on the Gohan family (including Piccolo) made the narrative incredibly endearing, the soundtrack had a bunch of standout melodies – and the animation was a Dragon Ball film. It’s spectacle all the way down, especially in the moments told from the Red Ribbon army’s perspective since it really highlights how destructive a single Z Fighter can be. It was a real love letter to DBZ, with little details like Piccolo’s house having the demon king’s chair. The new transformations were a little silly and to be quite honest I am not laughing when Shenron is used for jokes now (though having his most stunning theme yet), however I was pleasantly surprised with Cell Max. My initial reaction upon hearing of its existence was to cringe at DBS recycling yet another classic villain, but turning it into a mindless kaiju gave Cell Max a very unique presence. I do love my kaiju, and DBZ always tends to them really well.
Good art and animation, strong soundtrack. Great characters + designs (that this shares its adaptational character designer with Fate/Extra LE and Nyaruko catches my eye). Kisara’s swordplay and the way Sharon fought with kicks were really cool. Plus an Urusei Yatsura flair to it in how yandere demon girl Kisara and ex-girlfriend Ayano compete for a guy who is ostensibly a scumbag. Fate-style sexual mana transfer is big dumb every time it shows up, but they don’t hard-commit to it here since Kisara is only taking his memories via kiss.
Had already seen last year, but will never turn down the chance to rewatch an anime flick in actual theatre. For Eva in particular to pass it up would feel like passing up a defining moment of media history. This was every bit as powerful as the first time, and getting to have Beautiful World wash over me through a cinema sound system again in the credits was a high I’d probably been chasing since attending the Evangelion Marathon event seven years past. The first act is heartwarming, as Shinji finally taking time for himself and then managing to say “I’m all cried out now” is equally the most subtle and overwhelming character moment in this whole franchise. The second act where they dive deep into Impact space is Rebuild insanity finally let loose to its full capacity, and when the newly-confident Shinji moves helms Instrumentality in the final act there is an unrivalled catharsis. Final Impact having the Shinji take Rei’s EoE mediator role to instead be the one who walks the other characters toward reconciliation feels like media reaching a state of perfection. It is a healing which only Evangelion, so perfectly linking its plotline, setting and mechanics back into the directorial experience, is capable of portraying. It is a love which only Evangelion, dragging the characters through extravagant hells in order to detail the most delicate insights into their emotional state, is capable of creating. Pain, agony, trauma. But the world keeps turning. Fear, loneliness, self-hatred. But humans will still come together. If you’re meant to be alone, then what is your hand for? If you aren’t meant to love, then what is your heart for? If you aren’t meant to exist, then why are you here? At the core of every character in Evangelion is just the human desire to be loved, and here is where they finally realise that they are. You just have to cry when it’s time to cry, and then rise to meet the day. The rush of emotions that cap off in Beautiful World & One Last Kiss are something you can’t get anywhere else. Like an old friend finally saying that he’ll be okay now. This is great. I love Evangelion.
Hell Girl sure is upsetting, huh. Like, that’s the whole point, and I knew that when I went into this rewatch. It’s high quality and I do rate this series accordingly. They do a lot of interesting things with the main cast’s immortality while everything rapidly ages around them, and it explores its episodic format to the fullest extent it can. In terms of presentation I find its characters designs and focus on the early 2000s internet have a surprising amount in common with Lain too, which is near impossible to find anywhere else. But like man. Upsetting. Sure is hard to watch. It’s almost like choosing to watch an episode is like saying “yeah, I’m enjoying my day too much, time to be miserable”.
Fun.
Good production does a good film make. The characters varied from ham-fisted to insufferable as one would predict of the genre by this point, and the writing didn’t fare much better either – neither in narrative or in dialogue. But the heavy action sequences in the final act, frankly, made up for it. The soundtrack was great, the fight scenes were brilliant, and I had a good time watching this. The decision to cast Megumi Ogata as the lead almost felt as if it was in direct response to the (allegedly) final closure of Evangelion, since Yuta was functionally-speaking just Shinji translated to a different world. The amount of shot parallels that cropped up as his social systems began to collapse and his haunting by the monstrous female were not lost on me.
Something which I should have a lot to say about since Narusegawa is such an integral inspiration for Toradora and Nisekoi going forward, but I simply haven’t reopened the notes I took during my watch to arrange them into something presentable yet.
Better art quality but inevitably becoming an ecchi parody of itself. Pretty much what you’d expect from an OVA of this era.
In my reflection of Superstar S2 I fixated upon Wien’s sudden intrusion into the lineup finally providing a much-needed representative for Aqours’ paradigm, rejoicing at how she escalates the symbolic presence to more familiar levels. It’s a key step as Superstar evolves through the phases of a Love Live series, where the real interesting review points start to appear. For Nijigasaki however, that is more of a little bonus applied to one specific subunit’s aesthetic. Granted seeing R3BIRTH symbolically engage with Aqours was the most exciting part of S2 for me, but still, the rest of the show is straightforward slice of life. Unlike the others, reading the thematic connections to its prequel is not something which this entry necessitates. Rather what’s always most engaging in Nijigasaki is actually in how much it favours School Idol Project over Love Live. It kind of becomes reverse-experimental by being a simplified take on Love Live’s usually experimental approach to the anime idol genre. This is surely the definitive ‘school idol project’ of the series. Its narrative is super light compared to any of the mainline entries, but that’s because they specifically choose to not attempt any of it. A huge amount is crammed into the runtime of the main trilogy since they have to breach the actual Love Live competition, probably a long-running drama arc, as well as finding a way to leave some kind of lasting cultural transformation for the inevitable next entry while also building up nine main characters. Mind you I do think that Love Live does this incredibly well and the fact that its mad design somehow actually works is the defining triumph of this franchise, but since Niji steers clear of all that, the tradeoff is that they get to go full-steam on the leisurely episodic character content and phenomenal performance visuals instead. Bright colours, impressive dance moves and low-key harem antics. It’s simple, undiluted fun which provides a much-needed breather in between the heavier storylines of the other three.
Still phenomenal.
Because I have all of LLS + the μ’s movie on my phone I tend to just sit through them any time I go somewhere on holiday. Still phenomenal.
Me: “Hmm, Aqours have been a bit quiet this year.”
Aqours: Announces a collab with the Hatsune Miku IP the next day and then a new spinoff anime soon after.
The first season was already quite good, but the presence of Wien elevates this so high. She arrives with such impact and wields all of Aqours’ traditional symbolism in order to establish herself as the completed form of Chika’s ‘monster’. This season subsequently becomes understood as a thematic battle between μ’s and Aqours, as well as establishing Superstar to be a counterpart series to Nijigasaki in the same manner that the originals were. It finally hits home the realisation that we’re in the next phase of the Love Live storyline, and that they are continuing to build forward from the message in the prequels.
Great visuals. You just don’t get this sci-fi tech aesthetic anymore.
Nice seeing Ranka grown up.
I knew it – “Lady Megaroad-01”. It was ultra obvious considering it’s sort of Macross’ main standing mystery, but still I knew we had to finally get the Megaroad in this film, to the extent that I was genuinely half expecting the enemy Macross to blast it and get repelled by Minmay’s song in the Fold System. But I suppose that would have bordered on tasteless. It’s the Megaroad-01, whose presence has been defined by the mystery of the original trio its entire existence. It isn’t explicit, but thematically it has to be linked to SDF. My main question was if it was going to be them or their kids, but I can totally buy the glimpsed silhouettes being captain Misa and Minmay so maybe time dilation subspace nonsense just kept them young while the rest of the universe sped around them. The only immediate discrepancy is that in Flashback 2012 older Minmay cut her hair before getting on the Megaroad, but idk, maybe it just grew back since that’s her iconic design silhouette. I do find it interesting that they didn’t take the chance to link it to wherever characters like Sara and Alto keep disappearing to though. In fact the accompanying Frontier short seems to have established that as an entirely separate story thread, since the light was pointing to real coordinates instead of subspace. But by touching on that and a few other things, Zettai Live positions itself as a culmination of Macross imagery thus far. So cool to see it pull in everything from the past series: The Sharon Apple system and the Ghosts, Max and Exedol, and of course finally getting to touch upon the all-important Megaroad (even if it ultimately just amounted to taunting us since it vanished again). Plus the little symbolic nods such as Mirage doing the hand plane, or Walkure repeating Minmay’s countdown from before DYRL. They were all much appreciated pieces of fanservice.
Beyond all that, I’m just glad to see the finale of the Delta storyline. This was my first Macross, my favourite Macross, and the one that has been on promotion for my entire six years with the franchise. Walkure will continue to release bangers, but it’s nice to finally receive closure on the anime. Bittersweet, seeing I still wanted to believe Freyja would survive somehow, but I guess Macross has never quite been one for happy endings.
Always good for a quick rewatch.
One Piece will always be One Piece so that was fine enough, but the parts where it was Macross Plus were really cool. Sharon Apple-style musical terrorism is always the secret best anime plot, and this time around came with some of the highest spectacle idol performances I’ve seen. The structure of the film and its actions were as standard as a shonen film can get, the pacing bordered on incoherent, and I feel it an immense waste that Uta didn’t survive to be a continuing character in Shanks’ crew. But the film was nonetheless such spectacle that I’m left overall satisfied with this being my first real One Piece outing since Skyipea.
Cool seeing all the different art styles.
Hugely disappointing for a series calling itself “the hallowed god”. Sloppy, off-model lineart, strange decisions with Brock’s hovership + going shirtless, and just not doing enough to make Arceus seem powerful. That is genuinely its reigning god right there…but the pokemon anime doesn’t really have the right storytelling capacity to make Arceus as big a deal as it should be.
The art style was quite nice and it was great to see Amami’s crush on Inoue presented without any particular hesitance.
Tekken’s story content is surprisingly sparse so it’s awesome to see the characters interacting in an anime series.
In late 2019 I sat down to watch the Tenchi Muyo OVAs, got distracted before the end of the OP and then watched Idol Defense Force Hummingbird instead. Since then they’ve been something high on my interest list, but which I always felt it was never the right moment to tackle. With the new Urusei Yatsura project however, I figured it was finally time to get back to them, since even without watching it was always apparent these were going to be one of the most major offshoots of UY. Incredible, is what I would say. The first episode is such a potent representation of man vs the unknown (like Predator), and the rest uses fascinating sci-fi imagery. It seems the baseline is that every fighter in Tenchi can freely manipulate matter/energy, so the fight choreography ends up really unique. Pretty immediately it has the aura of a sci-fi classic. High art quality too.
The mountainside setting is gorgeous.
More Tenchi, which is fun in itself. But that outrageous finale really blew me away. It was some glorious mix of Shin Megami Tensei and Evangelion. A genuine planet-buster villain who can obliterate planets with a mere wave of his hand fighting against multiple higher-dimension goddesses was not where I expected the power scale of this series to go. What a spectacle that all was. When conflicts go so large as to deal with genuine omnipotent gods and the abstract visualisations of all their ritualistic, incomprehensible power, I find it uniquely enchanting. That kind of divine imagery and jargon is one of my favourite aesthetics.
Really well animated. Like the Urusei Yatsura or Megami-sama movies, these movie specials with their upped production qualities are always a treat.
Hoo boy, trying to follow anything at all in OVA 4 is a serious undertaking. It seems to have foregone the prior anime content for novel-exclusive canon instead and keeps making reference to abstract events that I then have to look up on the wiki to understand. And trying to comprehend the Masaki family tree by this point is impossible. Looking for a cheat sheet has just confused me further…and that’s before you expand it to encompass the entire Jurai royal family. They’re pulling characters from every substrata of the series and asking me to try and place them. I thought this was just supposed to be a fun alien romcom. Then before you notice, the OVA already over. This entry was really just four episodes of the show knowledge-checking you with references to the subseries and nothing else. It’s nice to see the characters in digital HD, but I feel like I would appreciate that a lot more if I could switch my brain off and stop wanting to actually follow this canon. Ryo-Ohki seems to be wanting to unify the entire timeline with this entry. That’s incredibly ambitious after how far this series expanded its lore over the years. But also I ain’t read all that stuff man.
Where have the zany space harem antics gone? How does this even happen. Season 4 and 5 barely qualify as a show. They’re just rapid references to Tenchi subseries and the Masaki girls sitting around a table ambiguously discussing Kenshi’s future the entire time.
The unluckiest man in existence, huh. What’s this – a weapon to surpass Mihoshi!? GXP was a lot of fun on its own merits since the setting is flexible and most of the cast are very endearing. However its placement in the Ryo-Ohki timeline is problematic, and makes it difficult to approach in earnest. It’s a 26 episode series with different characters that sits between OVA 3 and 4, which unfortunately does discolour the watching experience with a perception that it’s a roadblock to overcome in order to get back to Tenchi and Ryoko. If you start with the OVA series (which one should, since it’s the original + main) then it means you end up spending more time on GXP than the rest of it. It’s a cool spinoff to expand the universe (especially the god robot near the end – god robots are always sick) but steps on the toes of the main cast as such.
A cozy cohabitation romcom with a very down-to-earth setting despite its outlandish character quirks. It’s refreshing to see an anime of this style that isn’t a harem
Great characters + Urusei Yatsura-lite.
Twin Star Exorcists, for better or worse, is comparatively addicting to watch. Even though the quality is in total flux. Even though it’s hard to give the anime a solid score due to the numerous shortcomings. The aesthetic it creates through the tinted colouring in Magano and the electronic battle themes is unique, and rewatching it I’m realising that the soundtrack was not only good but also incredibly memorable too. Yet more than anything the watching experience gets held up by such strong deuteragonists. Unlike contemporaries in the arranged marriage genre such as Okusama ga Seitokaichou or Kanojo no Kagi, whose scorn in the later parts is simultaneously a signal of how they veered and a testament to just how captivating the early part was, Twin Star Exorcists (the anime at least) knows to keep its leads front and centre. And the way in which the two conflicting personalities come to acknowledge each other has some quality particular to it that makes it more engaging than Nisekoi. Consistently fantastic characters while every other part of the production is so inconsistent. Rokuro’s curse arm is overpowered, yet it simply doesn’t offend me as much as most other things like this do and he has a lot of great emotional exploration. The same applies just as much to Benio, with an additional side of best girl faces.
There aren’t a lot of battle shounen series like this that have caught my attention, but I would say that I am a fan. Naruto, DBZ, Hitman Reborn and Twin Star Exorcists. That’s me sorted with shounen, really. So it’s a shame that there isn’t an unequivocally ideal version of this series. In contrast to the anime’s stuttering, the manga has really high quality art. It’s one of the series that really shows action manga can function imo. But then at the same time, it kind of misses the appeal because Benio gets left behind for a ridiculous amount of time, to the point that when she reappears at long last the artist had visibly forgotten how to draw her which loops back to making the anime more enjoyable.
Fairly fun.
Urusei Yatsura is usually more about the town of Tomobiki, but every now and then it gets these space-faring adventures that let the environmental design become so creative. There are a bunch of great sci-fi sequences in this film.
This film rocks. Urusei Yatsura’s flexible, episodic setting that lets its cast go down so many different genre roads is an experience unmatched. So many fascinating, experimental plots and dreamscapes. Despite their common comparison tipping in favour of Beautiful Dreamer, the symbolic weight is much lighter than Lum the Forever. So although it displays a similar artistry there isn’t much to decode, but rather that it’s pertaining to its aesthetic, all directorial flair.
The secret best film in the lineup. Lum’s friend group play to their strengths really well in this film. Particularly Ran during the Galaxy Curse Organisation section. This concept of Lum vanishing and the town losing its cartoony magic gets repeated so often in Urusei Yatsura that it starts to become mundane in itself, however I do believe that this is that plot’s best incarnation. The emotional notes of her disappearance hit hard here.
This film rocks. It is kind of interesting from an analytical standpoint though because for as ambiguous it is, it’s hard to glimpse any proper reasoning behind that form. Unlike your Serial Experiments Lains and Be Invokeds which have clear messages concealed within their excessive aesthetic, Lum the Forever feels like it wants you to make it say something, not quite that it has something to say itself. For the longest time my Anilist comment was ‘full of densely symbolic imagery and ambiguous dialogue that must mean something but i’m too lazy to figure it out’. I suppose it feels somewhat similar to Flip Flappers in that regard. You wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in saying that Lum the Forever is confusing purely for the sake of being confusing, or that there isn’t a message. Reading it at the surface level the production ultimately just leads to the conclusion that everything which happens does so in order reiterate the single, universal truth that Lum is the bestest of best girls wtf Lum so cute such a babe Lum all day every day forever and ever let’s all love Lum. The imagery doesn’t necessarily enhance the message in any capacity, and indeed with all that stripped away this is merely yet another version of a plot we see time and time again throughout the franchise. Anyway that sounds overly critical but I love this movie. On this rewatch I finally made some headway into understanding it, or at least contextualising the imagery into a personal reading, and I think somewhat on the right track with regards to those.
While most similar works fumble in these areas, Urusei Yatsura is unique for having the drama in its finale actually be a high point. The enmity between Lum and Ataru in Final Chapter feels like a natural boiling point between them, which works because it hinges on the impressive amount of character subtleties they’ve been building for the prior 200 episodes. While the characters in Urusei Yatsura may look like a static slapstick cast at first glance, everyone does grow considerably over the course of the show. It’s simply that their character development is too slow-burn for many to pick up, but Ataru and Lum explore and redefine their relationship many times. Final Chapter is where those nuances are finally dragged into the open, and in this way the film’s melodramatic tone is actually a long-running plot thread come to fruition. It especially warms my heart in the denouement of the film where Ataru and Lum are drawn mirroring each other’s facial expressions, showing how this too was ultimately just a form of communication and romantic affirmation between the two most stubborn people in the universe.
I believe Ataru is much the same kind of character as Nekki Basara. They have totally different personalities and interests, but the way they’re written is honestly quite similar. Ataru is a character who presents a pretty contradictory performance, and by the end leaves you wondering if he’s the simplest character in the series or actually the most complex. He doesn’t compromise for anyone or anything, and despite saying everything to the opposite his actions show that he takes his relationship with Lum more seriously than anyone else. The shape of his affection is simply unusual and easily misinterpreted.
Given that this was originally the final piece in Urusei Yatsura’s animated content it serves as a sort of last hurrah to the series. The art quality and animation in this film are incredible, while the plot is one of the most rambunctious events thus far. Everyone plays to their strengths and Itsudatte My Darling is resultingly one of the highest quality showings in an already high quality project.
The OVAs are nice seeing all the dramatically different art styles in each one.
Rewatched this twice, since I went back to it on its own and then later decided to do a full OVA + movies rewatch. It’s still very good and I’m so thankful we got to see the classic art style in HD, given that the new series uses a different one. Fumi Hirano and Furukawa are legendary for their roles in the original Urusei Yatsura, but if I’m being honest most the returning cast really sound tired in this 2008 special – and that was 14 years ago! It made me anticipate the new series and fresh voice actors even more.
Fun to see the characters in a modern version of the OG art direction. Especially so now with the 2022 remake using a separate style.
A fun little snippet.
Obligatory post-Love Hina rewatch. Still a pretty fun series, though the best characters are so much further down the line.
Anime of the Year
I didn’t really watch enough 2022 anime to do a whole list. In general I felt my passions suffered quite a bit this year, because the monotony of work lead me to not watch as massive an amount as I would usually. So I’ll just point to AOTY:
Which, for me, is both obvious and difficult because there were two different Love Lives to pick from this year. Second seasons for both Nijigasaki and Superstar. But I reckon I’ll give it to Nijigasaki 2. Both are fantastic because it’s where each branch has finally started to respond to the message/culture from SIP and Sunshine, but I’ll say Niji just ekes it out for its unexpected evolution of the blue bird (Aqours) imagery across R3BIRTH’s character arcs. Acting upon its position as sequel it once again receives a symbol from the previous entry to transform it into something new, using the blue bird to finally give context to the aoi canaria. Which is a link I had been pondering upon since that song’s release in late 2021. On its own I feel it presents a more complete picture to think and write about, which secretly is the true appeal of Love Live. Whereas in comparison Wien from Superstar, and what reaction she inspires in Kanon, somewhat hinges on having an understanding of Lanzhu to first contrast her against in order to fully appreciate her role within the series. I like Love Live. That’s just good anime. When I made my top anime list a couple years ago I cut out a line saying “I feel the only thing holding Love Live Sunshine from being #1 is time” because saying that within the actual piece would have thrown the whole structure into contention, but at this point I can say that Love Live is my favourite anime series. It’s not without fault (debilitating fanservice shots and borderline plagiarism from iM@S and Aikatsu in places), but the way in which each entry interacts on the thematic and symbolic level is just so good.
Worst thing I watched this year would Pokemon: The Hallowed God Arceus. That’s genuinely its reigning deity right there yet the episodes were more focused on Heatran and Brock taking his shirt off. Why?
skapbadoa 