31–60 Favourite Anime

I made my top 30 anime post about 2 years ago. How­ever, as I watched more anime, more star­ted to enter the list, which inev­it­ably caused oth­ers to drop out. Instead of los­ing what I wrote about them forever, I cre­ated a ‘those who just missed out’ page, devoted to hold­ing those that got kicked out of the top 30 in favour of newer, shi­nier stuff. But that list was start­ing to show its age itself. I was start­ing to watch anime that were not quite good enough to make my top 30, but bet­ter than those that had since dropped out. So to finally give those anime the credit they deserve, I decided the best method was to simply extend the top 30 fur­ther. So now you have this: 31–60.

60: Fire­ball

The ori­ginal Fire­ball series is only 13 epis­odes, each one no more than 3 minutes long each, and yet it packs more laughs than most com­ed­ies could dream of. A bril­liant back and forth between the only two char­ac­ters, pos­sibly the only anime where the CGI fits so per­fectly it doesn’t even cross your mind to call it CGI, a bril­liant satir­ical edge to some of the self-referential lines. It’s about as good a half hour as you will have in anime.

59: Memor­ies

Stu­dio 4° occa­sionaly release the OVA com­pil­a­tion pieces where they bring together vari­ous incred­ibly tal­en­ted staff to cre­ate a few short pieces. They’re usu­ally a mixed bag, includ­ing Memor­ies itself, which has the less than stel­lar Can­non Fod­der final seg­ment. But I’m includ­ing it any­way for the first two pieces: Mag­netic Rose and Stink Bomb. They are as fine example as any of how the script writer can dic­tate the feel of a show. Mag­netic Rose, writ­ten by Satoshi Kon, is like what if he dir­ec­ted an epis­ode of Cow­boy Bebop, while Stink Bomb, writ­ten by Kat­suhiro Otomo, is his clas­sic dark sense of humour in which a nor­mal gorm­less salary­man becomes this unknow­ing har­binger of com­plete destruction.

58: Domin­ion Tank Police

There was a trend in the late 80’s and early 90’s of OVAs about a police force fight­ing cyborgs in a smoggy mega­city set per­man­ently dur­ing the night. Most of them are fairly for­get­table, but Domin­ion Tank Police stands far above the rest. The adapt­a­tion of Masamune Shirow’s manga has an edge to it that makes it mem­or­able. From the wild raunchy humour to the incred­ibly well-developed world set­ting, its biggest sur­prise is that it man­ages to com­bine both this goofy light-hearted tone while tack­ling some deep themes of search­ing for mean­ing in your exist­ence. Oh, and it has anti-tank penis mines.

57: One Outs

One Outs is tech­nic­ally about base­ball and how one mys­ter­i­ous Amer­ican pitcher pro­pelled a strug­gling Japan­ese base­ball team to greater heights. What it’s actu­ally about is Tok­u­chi Toua, the chain-smoking anor­exic spawn of satan, men­tally assault­ing vari­ous muscled men until the col­lapse at his feet. Tok­u­chi car­ries this anime like no other. It’s his put-downs, his men­tal cal­cu­la­tions, his ter­ri­fy­ing stare, that keep you riv­eted through­out. It does have some pacing prob­lems, and does lack any real depth, but makes up for it with Tok­u­chi fuck­ing Toua.

56: Den­nou Coil

There’s a little fal­lacy in anime fan­dom that fillers are bad. Epis­odes that don’t advance the plot and serve only as con­tained stor­ies are inher­ently bad thing. There is no greater example of how wrong this can be than Den­nou Coil. Hon­estly speak­ing, I didn’t care much for the plot nor the char­ac­ters, the world they inhabit is such an ima­gin­at­ive and well-invented place that I loved any epis­ode that explored the pos­sib­il­it­ies in con­tained. This meant that the best epis­odes were the ones that acted as stand alones. Nuc­leur war­fare beards. Pleiso the shadow ser­pent. The giant fish that ate the town. It really does have pos­sibly the best real­ised set­tings in anime.

55: Tatami Galaxy

While I’m not quite as big on this as many of my fel­low Yuasa-philes (screw you guys, Kaiba is bet­ter), Tatami Galaxy is still an incred­ibly clever story. Like Ground­hog Day meets Honey and Clover, it’s the way it plays with its for­mula that makes it so good. The jux­ta­pos­i­tion of each plot ele­ment with each epis­ode, shed­ding new light on the incid­ent each time, made for an incred­ibly reward­ing exper­i­ence. Sure it has more unne­ces­sary anim­a­tion quirks than any­thing even Shaft/Shinbo have put out, but it’s witty, sharp and has such a bril­liantly con­struc­ted story that its pos­it­ives far out­weigh the negatives.

54: Trapeze

Speak­ing of auteur anime dir­ect­ors, lets move from Yuasa to the equally bizarre Kenji Nakamura and his incred­ibly strange Trapeze (or Kuuchuu Bur­anko if we feel like wee­aboo­ing for a bit). The story is about crazy psy­chi­at­rist and his solu­tions to deal­ing with vari­ous patients in a trippy envir­on­ment where any­thing that isn’t polka dot is shunned for dis­gra­cing its fam­ily. Not all the crazy anim­a­tion tech­niques work, such as the live action faces, but it’s how all these epis­odic heart­warm­ing stor­ies come together into this great over­rall pic­ture that make it spe­cial. Try it if you really want some­thing different.

53: Jelly­fish Princess

Three Noit­am­ina anime in a row, but while the last two were artsy stuff that anime hip­sters cite as their favour­ites, Jelly­fish Prin­cess is josei at its goofi­est. Fol­low­ing the story of a bunch of hope­less female shut-ins, devot­ing their lives to some of the strangest otak­udoms, from trains to old men, it’s about how one par­tic­u­lar jelly­fish otaku finally grew out of her shell and star­ted to do some­thing worth­while with her life. But what really stands out is how well-directed the com­edy is. It has the bril­liant way of tim­ing events that makes what should be oth­er­wise fairly stand­ard com­edy stuff become utterly hil­ari­ous material.

52: Seto no Hanayome

Seto no Hanayome sounds awful on paper. Gen­eric teen­age boy gets saved from drown­ing by a mer­maid and, accord­ing to mer­maid law, he now has to marry her. It’s when you real­ise they are actu­ally the mer­maid mafia that the real heart of this series comes out: A ball to the wall bonkers com­edy. Some of the jokes don’t work, but it fires off so many and doesn’t linger on any that it’s tol­er­able, and some of the jokes are inspired in how they defy your expect­a­tions. A hus­band and son try to sneak away some mer­maid porn, only to real­ise it’s just a video of a fish flop­ping about a bit. Our mer­maid idol bursts into a lul­laby song, only for it to be a ridicu­lous off-tune parade of la-lee-ho’s. It’s not a par­tic­u­larly clever anime, but damn is it ever funny.

51: Cas­sh­ern Sins

Mad­house are prob­ably my favour­ite anim­a­tion stu­dio, because no other stu­dio is will­ing to attempt the stuff they do. Robot Hunter Cas­sh­ern was ori­gin­ally a gen­eric super­hero anime about a cyborg dude Cas­sh­ern and his pet robot dog. Cas­sh­ern Sins, on the other hand, is a post-apocalyptic depres­sion fest in which our tit­u­lar char­ac­ter wanders around a des­ol­ate land­scape with his fab­ulous 70’s hairdo, meet­ing vari­ous people in states of dis­ar­ray and gen­er­ally doing a lot of angst­ing. What makes it spe­cial is how each epis­odic story sur­round­ing these char­ac­ters has a ray of hope to each of them. Highly ambi­tious and exper­i­mental, while also being a touch narm-y at times, it’s an anime that has a remark­able amount to say, and one that I’ve grown to appre­ci­ate more over time.

50: Crest of the Stars

While all of the Ban­ner of the Stars series are good too, the ori­ginal is the best con­struc­ted of the lot, and the only one that remains com­pletely focused on the true core that makes this series spe­cial. The story of how Jinto and Lafiel grow from merely travel com­pan­ions to hav­ing to rely on each other when thrust into vari­ous life-threatening scen­arios. What makes it stand above its peers is how well craf­ted it all is. It has a level of depth to the science-fiction world that rivals Star Trek, and actu­ally uses this inform­a­tion to build up a more inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship between the two lead char­ac­ters rather than just for tech­nobabble (OK, there’s a bit of point­less tech­nobabble, but not much). For two such reserved per­son­al­it­ies, Jinto and Lafiel stand above their peers as one of the best duos in anime due to how real their feel­ings and inter­ac­tions feel.

49: Spice and Wolf

Speak­ing of fas­cin­a­tion char­ac­ter duos, Spice and Wolf is Crest of the Stars except set in medi­eval Europe and with more sex appeal. While Jinto and Lafiel are reserved, Horo and Lawrence have this bril­liant flir­ta­tious back and forth, as though they’re try­ing to find the most round­about way of get­ting the other to con­fess their feel­ings, com­pli­ment­ing each other without the other per­son real­ising it. It makes for end­lessly enter­tain­ing banter, only occa­sion­ally broken up by oblig­at­ory plot and eco­nom­ics chat. The eco­nom­ics stuff isn’t bad, but it does feel like you sit through them just to give bet­ter set­tings for Horo and Lawrence to start flirt­ing again. Oh, and if lov­ing Horo makes me a furry, then I shall yiff along with the worst of them, but she truly is walk­ing sex.

48: Gintama

Gintama is to anime what Simpson is to Amer­ican tele­vi­sion. A satire of a pop­u­lar genre (Simpsons it’s the fam­ily sit­com, Gintama it’s shounen) that occa­sion­ally devolves into the very thing it’s sup­posed to be sat­ir­ising, but when it doesn’t, it man­ages to be incred­ibly funny. Rife with mock­ing par­ody, prob­ably their greatest strengths is how they man­aged to remain funny for so many epis­odes. I’ve only seen 100-odd epis­odes of Gintama, so maybe it too like the Simpsons starts to lose its comedic edge, but from what I’ve heard from those 250 epis­odes in, it’s still as funny as ever. I should prob­ably catch up sometime…

47: Bunny Drop

I hate using words ‘charm­ing’ and ‘lovely’ to describe any­thing, because it implies that the piece in ques­tion is so con­cerned with being sickly sweet that it has no bite to its mes­sage, which is abso­lutely not the case with Bunny Drop. The story is about par­ent­ing and how dif­fi­cult and yet reward­ing the exper­i­ence is, tack­ling sub­jects from single par­ents to the dif­fi­culty in earn­ing money to prop­erly raise the child. It man­aged to single-handedly change my entire per­spect­ive on par­ent­ing, and it does all this while being, yes, charm­ing. And maybe lovely too.

46: Roujin Z

I’m a massive fan of Kat­suhiro Otomo. He has this won­der­fully cyn­ical, dark sense of humour, bring­ing out some of the best black com­edy in anime (a medium not par­tic­u­larly known for its black com­edy). He wrote the script for Roujin Z, a story about how an old man in his con­tain­ment facility/caretaking machine goes ber­serk, prompt­ing a massive mil­it­ary oper­a­tion to try take it down. It brings together some great themes of the dehu­man­isa­tion of senior cit­izens and the import­ance of human inter­ac­tion, all in this incred­ibly enter­tain­ing piece. It’s an unsung gem that’s much more access­ible and fun than my descrip­tion could pos­sibly give it credit for.

45: Haibane Remnei

I feel a bit mean some­times for not rat­ing Haibane Rem­nei higher than I do, because it really is a flaw­less piece. It has this won­der­ful old-fairy tale vibe to it. Not in the Dis­ney sense, but in the Broth­ers Grimm way, in that the strange yet slightly fright­en­ing fant­astic ele­ments come together in this almost eth­er­eal pack­age. One of the things I loved about Haibane Rem­nei was there was this massive world out there to explore, parts of which were slowly told through­out the story, but we were only con­cerned with this small human story sur­round­ing these two char­ac­ters. I guess it didn’t quite give me the same thrill I want from my favour­ites, but for what it’s try­ing to do, it really is perfect.

44: Time of Eve

Time of Eve is like one of those indie movies that do incred­ibly well on the movie fest­ival cir­cuits, throw­ing away mod­ern con­ven­tions with a unique take on cam­er­a­work and dia­logue deliv­ery with some off-beat humour while still deliv­er­ing ulti­mately the same story that makes it con­nect with people. It has this won­der­ful flow to it all. The lines run into each other and the swoop­ing cam­era angles give this effect that there’s so much going on at once that you are only catch­ing snip­pets of these char­ac­ters lives. It made me a per­man­ent fan of Yas­uhiro Yoshiura and Stu­dio Rikka and I can’t wait to see more from them.

43: Bake­monogatari

What’s funny about the amount of crit­ical acclaim Bake­monogatari (and its sequel, Nise­monogatari) gets is that it’s ulti­mately a wish-fulfillment fanser­vicy harem, com­plete with girls fall­ing for the main char­ac­ter because he’s a Nice Guy, and a cam­era that is on near per­man­ent perv-mode. But the art­work is so pretty, the dia­logue so sharp and cut­ting, the char­ac­ters so well-developed and hil­ari­ous, the story so care­fully woven into these flirt-fests, that you come away massively enter­tained by the whole she­bang. It may be artsy smut, but it’s incred­ibly clev­erly writ­ten artsy smut.

42: Lupin III Castle of Cagliostro

Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro is the only Lupin III piece I have really loved. Not neces­sar­ily because they tampered with the for­mula or any­thing. Yes, Lupin is more good-natured and the tone more whim­sical than some of the darker, edgier Lupin stuff. But what makes this one work is how fant­astic the dir­ect­ing is. Every ele­ment comes together with per­fect tim­ing, the cues with the music swinging per­fectly in rhythm with the char­ac­ters actions. Some of the best scenes in the movie are when the char­ac­ters are just dick­ing about on rooftops. It’s such a hugely enter­tain­ing film, it’s only down­side being no Lupin prop­erty after this will love up to it.

41: Steins;Gate

One half sci-fi mys­tery, one half ball-busting time travel thriller, Steins;Gate was the anime that forced me to change my opin­ion that everything that came out of Visual Novel land that wasn’t eothir porn or melo­dra­matic crap. The story builds up to cer­tain key moments, crank­ing up the ten­sion with each epis­ode, while never los­ing the sense of humour at its core. And then there’s Okarin. Pos­sibly the greatest main char­ac­ter in anime, his grand­stand­ing and desire to be this great Mad Sci­ent­ist drove this show, turn­ing his whole world upside down, break­ing him and even­tu­ally build­ing up a man who became his own per­sona. El. Psy. Congroo

40: Hell­sing

Not Hell­sing Ulti­mate, that OVA that did away with the dev­il­ish style and char­ac­ter charm that char­ac­ter­ised what I love about Hell­sing and replaced it with sad­ism and overkill. No, this is that 2001 much-maligned Gonzo ver­sion of Hell­sing, where the story just sort of drops off. But I love it regard­less because it has a style like no other. This sort of dan­ger­ous suave charm, com­plete with some bril­liantly strange rela­tion­ships between the char­ac­ters. From respec­ted fear to con­trolled awe, between Alu­card and Integra and Vic­toria, there was so much unsaid yet left implied that made it work.

39: Pale Cocoon

As far as short movies go, Pale Cocoon is the best. No, shut up, I don’t want to hear. Pale Cocoon is bet­ter than that. It was the second short movie Yas­uhiro Yoshiura made, after Aquatic Lan­guage, and told this amaz­ing story about a civil­isa­tion that had given up hope, all while focus­ing on no more than 2 key char­ac­ters. The end­ing rev­el­a­tion stands up there as the greatest single shot I’ve ever seen in anime. Yas­uhiro went on after this to make Time of Eve, an improved ver­sion of Aquatic Lan­guage. If his new movie, Sakasama no Patema, is sup­posed to be the improved ver­sion of Pale Cocoon, then holy shit will it be some­thing special.

38: Red­line

Red­line is an exper­i­ence. It has a rather stark lack of depth, and the plot is noth­ing spe­cial, but it does have this incred­ible atten­tion to detail with each little char­ac­ter and ele­ment. Each touch tells a story about each of these char­ac­ters. Little asides that give this pic­ture of a much lar­ger world this char­ac­ter inhab­its. You get the feel­ing that there’s a story behind each little scratch on JP’s car. That is what I love about Red­line. Well that, and the fact that it’s a thrill­ing, exhil­ar­at­ing jour­ney through thump­ing soundtracks, massive explo­sions and swear­ing aliens.

37: Dur­arara

If you’ve been read­ing this post, instead of just glan­cing down to con­firm the anime, you’d notice a few reoc­cur­ring trends. I like a suave style, a cast of char­ac­ters with much lar­ger stor­ies than is told in the anime, and a focused story that centres on human emo­tions rather than grand plot ele­ments. Dur­arara is all of that, to the point that you almost want to hate it for its own self-confidence, sash­ay­ing through char­ac­ter devel­op­ments and plot twists, so assured of its own charm that you can’t help but be drawn along with it. It’s a shame that the arc they ended the first sea­son on (and there WILL be a second sea­son) was the poorest, because at its core, this is such a damn fine anime.

36: Kino’s Journey

Kino’s Jour­ney is like Aesop’s Fables: The Anime. Each town and story that Kino vis­its and explores doesn’t make much sense on a sur­face, logical level. It’s the story beneath the sur­face mean­ing that’s import­ant. How, through his prob­ing ques­tions and stan­doff approach, Kino draws out the thought pro­cess and belief sys­tem that cre­ated such a bizarre scen­ario as the one he had just vis­ited. It’s one of those series you keep com­ing back to, real­ising how sharp it truly was, and how much of it applies to real-life ser­i­ous issues. It’s unique in that sense, I’ve never seen any­thing else come even close to achiev­ing what it did.

35: Nodame Cantabile

This is another one of those series that get by almost entirely on the strength of its main duo. What’s unique here is they work fant­ast­ic­ally on their lone­some too. Chiaki is the uptight, dev­il­ishly hand­some work­aholic, whose harsh put-downs and per­snick­ity atti­tude (always wanted to use that word) make him a hugely enter­tain­ing char­ac­ter in his own right. When paired together with the air-headed, dopey ball of moody energy that is Nodame, the two com­bine to cre­ate the ulti­mate enter­tain­ment pair. Gyabo!

34: Moy­ashi­mon

Moyashimon’s bizarre and eccent­ric char­ac­ters and take on col­lege life is, coun­ter­in­tu­it­ively, prob­ably one of the most accur­ate takes on how strange a small col­lege life exper­i­ence can be. The world is filled with young adults with attempt­ing to cre­ate alco­hol in their rooms, trans­gendered people try­ing to find them­selves, cov­er­ing them­selves in dirt and grease for the sake of sci­ence. Oh, and bac­teria float­ing around in the shapes of cutesy inch-high creature. Well OK, maybe that last point isn’t quite so realistic.

33: Arri­etty

Ghibli have a few aspects to their movies that repeatedly bug me, but most of the time it comes down to how their magical worlds become too strained under the weight of what they’re try­ing to achieve and turn to deus ex mach­ina and barmy town. Arri­etty avoids this by keep­ing the focus tight and let­ting the dir­ect­ing, as good as Ghibli’s dir­ect­ing has ever been, tell the story. By doing this, it allows its magical ele­ments and woven themes to shine all the brighter for it. What’s encour­aging is that this was a dir­ect­orial debut for Hir­o­masa Yone­bay­ashi, prov­ing that Ghibli has the tal­ent behind it to sur­vive bey­ond the days of Miyazaki.

32: Detroit Metal City

Detroit Metal City single-handedly ruined all music for me. Not just heavy metal music, with its tear­ing back of the jokes sur­round­ing the desire to appear edgy and dan­ger­ous, but also in its mock­ery of other music types. The fal­lacy behind cheesy love songs. The ridicu­lous­ness of the myths told by over-enthusiastic fans. In one single stroke, I can­not take any music per­so­nas ser­i­ously any­more. I’m not sure whether to love it or hate it for that.

31: Porco Rosso

My favour­ite Ghibli movie, it does many of the same things that made Arri­etty work. Porco Rosso is strangely down-to-earth, with very human char­ac­ters and desires, telling a neatly com­pacted story that hints at a much more bey­ond what was told in this snip­pet. In a way, it’s a les­son in restraint. The lack on fant­ast­ical ele­ments means that the one scene where they do embrace the magical, it’s made all the more mem­or­able because of its brev­ity. That scene with the planes fly­ing out of the clouds, leav­ing Porco behind. No other scene in any other Ghibli movie made quite the impact that shot did.

Con­tinue to 30–1