2009 anime: A year in review

2009, the first full year of anime blog­ging in my life and also the first year where I’ve reached the end know­ing that I’ve watched pretty much everything of worth that sea­son. So I feel pretty damn cap­able of provid­ing a proper review of the year this time round, where as last year I did the post before watch­ing both One Outs and Detroit Metal City. In fact, there is only one anime from this year that I haven’t given a proper look at: Phantom. I watched the first three epis­odes, really enjoyed them and then stopped watch­ing. I have no idea why and I’ve been mean­ing to go back but never got around to it. Oth­er­wise, everything else has been given at least one epis­ode to prove its worth. A quick note though, the only anime I’m includ­ing are those that began in 2009. Right, lets do this shit!

Warn­ing: If you are view­ing this post in Inter­net Explorer than the pic­tures will end up all stretched out. Go get Firefox

Best Anim­a­tion:

This was actu­ally a dif­fi­cult cat­egory since there were no real shows that blew me away animation-wise this year. Third place went to Eden of the East, for some of the most gor­geous and detailed back­ground art­work I’ve ever seen, although that was a bit of a cop-out choice amongst many other well-animated shows. Ride Back takes second spot for one of the very few instances where CGI was integ­rated to phe­nom­enal res­ults. I drooled at those Ride Backs for the entirety of that show. First place goes for a movie I haven’t actu­ally seen yet. The Kara no Kyokai movies bore me, I mean really bore me, and yet I’ve watched 5 of them. Why? Because I have yet to see bet­ter anim­a­tion in my life. If the last Kara no Kyokai movie is at the same level the it eas­ily outscores any­thing else this season.

Top Open­ing Songs:

This was really tough to cut down and I felt ter­rible leav­ing out the first FMA open­ing but even­tu­ally third spot went to that epic Umineko open­ing song. It was per­fectly OTT with all the yelling and dra­matic music fly­ing about every­where, man I loved that open­ing. Second place went to the Zoku Nat­sume Yuujin­chou open­ing, which never failed to plaster a big grin across my face. First place was insanely obvi­ous though. You could spend ages dis­sect­ing the mes­sages in that open­ing song (and people sure did), what with all the now fam­ous imagery of the Sele­cao num­bers and Noblesse Oblige. Eden of the East, Fall­ing Down by Oasis.

Top Clos­ing Songs:

Ah, the humble clos­ing song. Never as great as their open­ing coun­ter­parts and con­stantly looked over. And for good reason, they’re never as good as the open­ings. But hey, I’ve picked out three I cer­tainly enjoyed from this year. The Spice and Wolf end­ing I actu­ally enjoyed even more than the engrish ear-worm from last sea­son, a mighty achieve­ment indeed. There doesn’t seem to be any­one out there who doesn’t like the Bake­monogatari end­ing and I’m not about to buck that trend. How­ever my favour­ite end­ing goes to the other Shaft series that every­one sorta for­got about. I love that Natsu no Arashi end­ing, such a damn funky tune. Shame the second sea­son sucked.

Best Insert Music

Now this was a tough cat­egory except this time it was because this year just didn’t have that many mem­or­able soundtracks, espe­cially com­pared to last year (although, as I said at the start, I need to watch Phantom). I’ve always liked the music in Spice and Wolf, although it’s hardly amaz­ing. Eden of the East gets the nod for second place, mainly because of that song when Tak­iz­awa was shoot­ing down the mis­siles. The win­ner was insanely easy to pick. I watched Hell­sing this year and Yas­ushi Ishii’s work on that series was fant­astic, but it doesn’t com­pare in the slight­est to the Darker than Black soundtrack. I know people out there dis­agree with me but damn did I love every single chord of that soundtrack.

Best Male Character

Not many great male char­ac­ters this year. Guin was in with a shot here but I ended up giv­ing Roy Mus­tang third spot thanks to a com­bin­a­tion of the gradual col­lapse of the Guin Saga anime and Mus­tangs epic per­form­ance in epis­ode 19. Second place goes to my favour­ite expres­sion­less char­ac­ter, Azuma from Cross Game. My win­ner is a bit of an unortho­dox choice con­sid­er­ing he’s prob­ably only the 4^th most import­ant char­ac­ter in the series, but Xer­xes Break stole the show every time he was on screen in Pan­dora Hearts. There was so much to this guy going on behind the scenes that everytime he appeared you found your­self won­der­ing what on earth was he think­ing now.

Best Female Character:

Oh lordy was there ever a buck­et­load of fant­astic female char­ac­ters this year, so much so that I can’t give any­thing to Hime from Sora no Man­i­m­ani or Min­ami Chiaki bar a passing men­tion. Alice from Pan­dora Hearts takes third spot. Pan­dora Hearts had a mul­ti­tude of fant­astic char­ac­ters, not least my favour­ite male char­ac­ter of the year Break, but Alice was the best of the lot. I was as fas­cin­ated as every­one else was by Sen­joga­hara. She’s made it into my top 10 anime char­ac­ters of all time and in any other year I would’ve laughed at the pos­sib­il­ity that any­one else would top her per­form­ance. But no, this year had Horo. And noth­ing beats Horo.

Best Action:

A genre that didn’t get enough love this year, mainly thanks to the pain­ful lack of mecha, but still pro­duced some damn mem­or­able pieces. Ride Back takes third spot, mainly for that fant­astic res­cue scene in epis­ode 4, which was mem­or­able for more than just the hope­less aim­ing abil­it­ies of those sol­diers. Second spot goes to Full Metal Alchem­ist. The truly epic fights may only show up every 4–5 epis­odes but they are cer­tainly worth wait­ing for (epis­ode 19, again, deserves a men­tion). The win­ner is obvi­ously Darker than Black. The com­bin­a­tion of excel­lent cho­reo­graphy, clear-cut anim­a­tion and some ingeni­ous twists that is inher­ent with those bizarre con­tract­ors made every battle in DtB a huge amount of fun to watch.

Best Com­edy:

My two favour­ite genres. Action and Com­edy. Thank­fully, com­edy got a much bet­ter deal this year com­pared to last year, where the only com­edy anime worth not­ing was Kan­nagi. Third spot here goes to Natsu no Arashi, for doing a little bit for mak­ing me dis­like Shaft a little bit less after the dull Maria Holic and total sat­ur­a­tion of Say­on­ara Zetsubo Sen­sei series. Bake­monogatari took that slight dis­like for Shaft and turned it into full-blown love with the bril­liantly witty script writ­ing and the con­stant stream of uber quot­able dia­logue between Sen­joga­hara and Arar­agi.  But the win­ner was easy. Hetalia Axis Powers, for being one of the few anime that can make me fall out of my chair from laugh­ing, trumps everything else this sea­son com­edy wise, even if it is a bit inconsistent.

Worst Des­cisions:

A year of dumb decisions don’t you agree. I’m torn between giv­ing third spot to either the first epis­ode of Mazinger Z (who the hell thought it would be a good idea to provide a mish-mash of everything to come as a first epis­ode?) and the choice to leave Cenco­roll as just that one-episode anom­aly when it clearly needed a proper air­ing to get any­where close to its poten­tial. Second place goes to the com­bined intel­lect of Shaft decid­ing to announce that they would air the final three epis­odes of Bake­monogatari on the inter­net when they hadn’t anim­ated them yet…yeah, really smart there Shaft. First place is pain­fully obvi­ous. End­less bloody Eight.

Most Mem­or­able Quotes

3^rd place:

I sealed it with fire!

I think I’ve men­tioned this epis­ode of FMA twice before already but who cares! It deserves even  more. Epis­ode 19 of Full Metal Alchemist:Brotherhood was the turn­ing point of that series. No longer did it live in the shadow of the ori­ginal. Finally it had pro­duced some­thing far bet­ter than even the first sea­son could achieve. One of the best epis­odes in anime his­tory, with one awe­some scene after another until the sheer awe­some­ness exploded with this line. Mus­tangs GAR shot through the roof and FMA:B was never the same again.

2^nd place:

It would be great if that became popular

What?

Sen­joga­hara Fascination

Some­times when watch­ing an anime you find your­self won­der­ing whether the cre­at­ors do this stuff on pur­pose. It’s as if they knew exactly how pop­u­lar Sen­joga­hara would be and knew all they needed was a handy catch­phrase. Anime Fan­dom had been enthralled by this char­ac­ter and noth­ing said it bet­ter than this quote. And it did become pop­u­lar, oh boy weren’t we all fas­cin­ated. I never said it when it aired but I fully sup­port the Sen­joga­hara Fas­cin­a­tion Movement.

1^st place:

Noblesse Oblige. Please con­tinue to be the Messiah

There are some quotes in anime his­tory that become syn­onym­ous with the anime itself. All you need to do is say that quote and every­one in the vicin­ity will nod in uni­son as they remem­ber the awe­some­ness that was the anime in ques­tion. Even so, I’m strug­gling to think of one bet­ter than Juiz’s fam­ous line in Eden of the East. Whether you’ve just asked for mis­siles to hit Japan or just to make the Prime Min­is­ter say ‘uncle’, the response will always be the same. Order received. Noblesse Oblige.

Hey, where is that anime?

I fall quite nicely into the moe-haters cat­egory. That said, I don’t think K-ON deserved the amount of abuse it got from cer­tain sec­tions although that doesn’t change the fact I thought it was dull and repet­it­ive. Shojo is not a genre that has ever inter­ested me and I totally fail to see the appeal of Kimi ni Todoke. Com­bine cute­ness and shojo together and you could prob­ably guess that I didn’t like Kobato. Canaan was ter­rible and any­one who thought that was a good show needs their head examined. Maria Holic looked pretty but never made me laugh. Umineko was enter­tain­ing, although for the wrong reas­ons more often than not. Sum­mer Wars is actu­ally a decent movie and prob­ably the best anime that didn’t get a men­tioin in this post.

Wish for 2010

Well my wish for 2009 was that Shangri-la would be a hit and turn Gonzo back onto the trail of glory…errr…yeah, that didn’t turn out so good. Because of that, I’m a bit wary of mak­ing some wishes for 2010 but here it goes. First, I hope that Crunchyroll will improve its sub­titles and at least equal the qual­ity of fan­sub­bers. I hope that Brains Base’s first foray into mak­ing an anime 24 epis­odes, Dur­arara, will sell well enough to make them into a true big­wig in the anime industry and hope­fully for Shaft to fol­low suit and also make longer series. Mark my words, these two will the the next two great anime stu­dios. Finally, I hope that Break Blade will be a suc­cess and more com­pan­ies will fol­low the Kara no Kyokai route of mak­ing these uber-long, straight to dvd epis­odes as the reign of the tv anime slowly dies out.

Over­all Best Anime:

1o: Cross Game

To be quite hon­est, I think some people are over-rating this anime slightly to show off their elit­ism by pro­claim­ing their love of an obscure series. Now that’s not to say this isn’t a good anime. I’m really enjoy­ing watch­ing the char­ac­ters per­son­al­it­ies bounce off each other, espe­cially the best tsun­dere of the year Aoba. Her­self, Azuma, Kou and the rest of them, ah I’m really going to miss them once the series ends. It’s slice of life done right and it’s a real delight to watch. But please don’t go around flaunt­ing your know­ledge of this anime as if you’ve unearthed an abso­lute gem. It’s a very well-made series but no masterpiece.

9: Hetalia Axis Powers

In some quar­ters of anime fan­dom, 2009 has been the year of Hetalia. In fact I’m not sure if many people real­ise how big an impact this series has made. From the realms of an obscure online web­comic, Hetalia has risen to become one of the top-selling dvds in Japan over the course of the year, with a third sea­son and a movie just announced, and that’s not even get­ting into the realm of the copycat series. It isn’t the most con­sist­ent anime (under­state­ment of the cen­tury) but when gets it right it is the fun­ni­est anime ever cre­ated. At least, that’s my minds telling me when I’m curled up on the floor in pain from laugh­ing so hard.

8: Ride Back

Yes, the end­ing was a total let-down and really over­shad­owed the rest of the series. I keep hav­ing to remind myself that when I was watch­ing Ride Back for the first 3/4 of the series, I found myself hon­estly think­ing that I couldn’t see any other series this year top­ping it. I drooled at the anim­a­tion and more than any­thing in the world I wanted one of those Ride Backs for myself. It awakened a fan­boy inside me that I never knew exis­ted. A fan­boy of motor­bikes with arms!

7: Pan­dora Hearts

One of the best cast of char­ac­ters ever. In fact, the only anime I can think of with a bet­ter cast is School Rumble. Alice, Break, Gil­bert, Oz, ah I loved them all. And that’s just the main char­ac­ters! How could any­one for­get the most fab­ulous char­ac­ter of the year, Jack Ves­salius, or the slightly crazed char­ac­ter of the Chesire Cat. Another anime that ended on a bit of a whim­per but boy did I enjoy the ride it took me on.

6: Trapeze

I’m unsure what title I should give this anime. Should I call it my sleeper hit of the year? Or the totally incor­rect pre-conceptions of what it would be about (I was really expect­ing some depress­ing stuff). In fact, I think the most suit­able title for this anime would be the feel-good anime of the year. Never did an epis­ode end without suc­ceed­ing in plas­ter­ing a giant smile across my face. I wasn’t able to give it any awards, although I was sorely temp­ted to give Irabu one of the best male-characters award. That guy is such a total nut­ter. Or maybe Fukkui­chi. He was awesome.

5: Darker than Black: Met­eor of Gemini

This sea­son of Darker than Black eas­ily matched its pre­de­cessor. The lin­ear storyline suited the pace of DtB bet­ter than those double-episodics. How­ever the biggest dif­fer­ence was the change in Hei. I never liked Hei last sea­son. I thought he was a prick being por­trayed as someone we should look up to and that never sat well with me. This sea­son he was a prick, shown to be a prick but did the whole ‘gradual heal­ing and gain­ing respect’ pro­gress that when he finally turned back into nor­mal Hei, I found I had grown extremely fond of the guy. Shame the end­ing was a bit…yeah…wasn’t a great year for end­ings was it.

4: Spice and Wolf II

I didn’t think my love for Horo could grow any­more. Pfft, in comes Brains Base, know­ing a busi­ness oper­tun­ity when they see one, and make this fant­astic sequel to the first anime I ever watched as it aired in Japan. I could watch Horo and Lawrence flirt away in their unusual, bick­er­ing way for another 10 sea­sons and not get bored. I’d prob­ably just love Horo even more than I already do. And here’s a sur­prise, an anime with a good end­ing! So join me folks as we pray for yet another sea­son of Horo…and Lawrence too I guess. It’s not that I don’t like you Lawrence, I think you’re a great char­ac­ter in your own right. But face it, you’re in an anime with Horo. You never stood a chance.

3: Bake­monogatari

I had never really loved a Shaft pro­duc­tion before. How­ever I could see the poten­tial in there and I knew it would be only a mat­ter of time before they pro­duced some­thing I loved. Every sea­son I looked at the most recent Shaft pro­duc­tion and thought ‘will this be it?’. It wasn’t Maria Holic, it wasn’t Natsu no Arashi, and then came Sen­joga­hara and I was hooked. Such intel­li­gence and wit in the writ­ing, I’d never seen any­thing like it before. We were all fas­cin­ated. Well, I cer­tainly was and if you weren’t well then sucks to be you. Mwa­haha, go my biased views go!

2: Full Metal Alchem­ist: Brotherhood

Have I men­tioned epis­ode 19 yet? Like, sev­eral times? Before that, FMA:B was just not needed and, while still cer­tainly enter­tain­ing, never really in with a shout of being remembered with much fond­ness. But then in came the story that we had yet to see, the pacing finally slowed the fuck down, and we were treated to Broth­er­hood. I’m going to stand my ground on this one: Broth­er­hood is equal to the ori­ginal. No bet­ter and no worse. Quite frankly, that is one of the highest praises you could give an anime.

1: Eden of the East

Not really a sur­prise this is top of the list is it. If you are sur­prised then you haven’t read the rest of the post yet so go back and read it now. If you had read the post and were still sur­prised to see this up here then you need to drop everything and go watch this now. For Eden of the East is the best anime of 2009. Noblesse Oblige. Please con­tinue to be the Mes­siah. Now bring on those movies!