PREAMLBE

Over 2021 I cataloged every piece of decent-to-good media I consumed in my phone’s notes app.

I mean everything. Podcasts. Movies. TV shows. Music. If I didn’t hate myself for wasting time afterwards, it went in the list.

Starting January 1st, 2022, I began writing little reviews concerning each piece with the intention of turning my thoughts into a simple 10 minute video. But the more I went on, the less and less interested I became in actually making the video itself. It was fun to write the list, reminisce on the past year, but I didn’t really want to edit everything down into something consumable for other people. It was just, kinda, for me?

So around February I ditched the whole idea of making a video, and here we are.

I’ve decided to share my thoughts with you dear reader, but in order to get to the good stuff, you’re going to have to READ! Mwhahahahaha!

Thank you for giving even a half ounce of care in regards to my opinions on these things. And here we goooo!

Attack on Titan S4

I did a full rewatch of Attack on Titian last year, and jeepers creepers there was SO MUCH I missed in this show the first time through. Stuffed with foreshadowing, top tier action sequences, and some of the deepest worldbuilding money can buy. If pork was storytelling mama mia that’s a one spicy meatball!

The writing is really intricate, rich with subtext and experimental in structure. A lot of parallels and juxtapositions are being made even when you, the viewer, would have no way of knowing they’re being made!

Do some of the characters get annoying? Um, yeah. Can’t deny that. Especially if you’re watching the dub like me.

In fact, if you hate this show - I get it. The first time watching I was hot off ATLA and decided to give the series all my weeb friends were so jazzed about a try. It did not go well. Gave up after all the anime gasping in episode 1.

BUT! After I had gotten my feet a little bit wetter in the japanamation pool, I went back. And whala! It’s here on my list!

Also this is the best theme song in the show. Fight me weebs.

My Hero Academia S5

My Hero Academia is about a powerless kid born into a world where most of the population has super abilities. Despite this, he still strives to be a hero. And with a bit of luck, the right friends in his corner, and an insatiable drive, he inches closer and closer to his dream while attending Japan’s premier school for superhero training.

I’ve been watching this show for almost as long as I have been watching anime, and at this point, the characters feel like a warm blanket. I can always count on something good from the new My Hero Academia season. It’s got a great art style, writing that’ll surprise you, a fantastic score (Fantastic.), and some of the most wholesome relationships I’ve seen in media.

Season 5 wasn’t like, a life changer of a season exactly. (That honor goes to Season 2 holy crap) But it was still full of flavor and got me amped for things to come.

Chihayafuru S3

I love this show so much. Probably top 5 anime of all time for me.

Chihayafuru is a coming of age tale, a cultural exploration, a sports drama, and a GOOD romance.

Centering on a young girl’s experience with a Japanese card game called Karuta – which is kind of like extreme slap jack but with poetry from the 16th century – our hero tries her dead level best to become the #1 player in the world.

And I know that premise is sort of a hard sell for a lot of people, but y’all, ITS FANTASTIC. The music is layered and dynamic, the tension builds with the best pacing I’ve ever seen in anime, and it’s so easy to get invested in.

Like, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, even the teenage love triangle is good! That trope exists in HOW many shows? THOUSANDS?! But Chihayafuru actually does it right, giving you protagonists who are deeply engaged in many aspects of life, but also carry the unfortunate problem of probably being hopelessly in love with their best friend. Probably. Definitely.

Every conversation has subtext. Every action has multiple motivations and ramifications further down the line. And it EARNS its REVEALS!

The side characters are all so lovingly crafted! Normally if you watch a competition show like this there are boatloads of dull throw away characters used as stepping stones to show just how powerful the lead is. But if someone new gets introduced in Chihayafuru? You know they’re gonna get personality and backstory and stakes! It doesn’t matter if they’re around for 1 episode or 30, the characters all matter in this show.

My favorite B player has to be the chubby guy nicknamed Porky though...

Yes! A dude named FREAKING PORKY is my favorite side character! He’s 3 dimensional! I promise you! WATCH THE SHOW AND TELL ME YOU DON’T LIKE PORKY! I DARE YOU! PORKY RULES!

And I haven’t even touched on the visuals yet. My. Lord. Amateur animators watching Chihayafuru must want to quit after. As an outsider to the medium, it can feel herculean. The coloring here is stunning, light but not washed is such a hard look to pull off but the show feels like it was painted in watercolor. The backgrounds are interesting and peppered with little human details. Layered window designs. A tiny desk in the corner. Other people playing matches. It roots every scene with a tangible sense of place and enhances the insanely technical perspective shots that are peppered throughout each episode. And perhaps most surprising, the CGI effects don’t take away from the hand drawn stuff! Much like Treasure Planet, Chihayafuru uses 3D to accomplish a sort of mixed media effect rather than using computers as a crutch for hyper complicated scenes.

I swear to god y’all, these folks make a game about hitting cards more visually engaging than 90% of action epics. And the entire time they’re drawing Moving! Realistic! Hands! Do you know how hard that is?!! UNREAL!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you’re not watching Chihayafuru you’re a punk sucker who should be. (Okay I’ve never said that and reading it back seems a tad harsh. But kinda funny right? Lol, I’m leaving it.)

One Piece

I just did the math, and apparently, I spent approximately 1 week of my life in 2021 just watching One Piece. Over 160 hours. Soooooooo it kinda has to be on this list? (I might have actually spent a little bit longer than that too because I didn’t always skip the recaps. Embarrassing I know.)

Now, is One Piece a good show?

Maybe? I think so? I don’t know.

There is so much I love about the series. It has this imaginative world, bursting at the seams with adventure and fun. The characters are unapologetically weird and cartoony but have very tangible motivations that humanize even the more bizarre caricatures. It never rests on its laurels, tossing the protagonists again and again into new situations, building upon multiple decades of backstory. The tone is SHOCKINGLY CONSISTANT for something started in 1997, never forgetting its roots as a playful action romp, but trying out new ideas constantly.

I can very easily say One Piece is unlike any media I have ever consumed. The plots are generally pretty smart. The action is punchy. The 15-minute runtime is additive. I'm obsessed with this anime!

One Piece can also be… bad. Like mega bad. And for every mega bad moment there is a high, but offa doofa, some of those moments are MEGA bad.

The pacing can be downright painful, turning moments into hours and hours into SEASONS. At times One Piece’s snail like intensity is kinda nice. It allows the viewer to really take in all the little details and side characters. You may have to muster through a 5 episode arch where the gang literally walks down a staircase, but afterwards you realize, “oh they did a LOT of tension building and character work in that staircase.” But then you take a macro view and wait, WE JUST SPENT 5 EPISODES IN A STAIRCASE?! WITHOUT ADVANCING THE PLOT? UGH!

The visuals go through big ups and downs both in terms of animation quality and character/background design. One second, you’ll be looking at this stunning fight sequence - completely hand drawn across these beautiful seaside vistas. And then, during a scene that matters way more to the overall story, we’ll get static shots on a blank white void. UGH!

The social politics of the show are sometimes pretty problematic. And I’m not sure if that’s just because I’m in America and there’s cultural stuff going on that I don’t fully track with, but wowzers, this bs gets hard to watch.

For example, Oda, the original manga writer/artist, only draws female characters with comically large boobs. He tosses in a few old crones and children occasionally, but the standard woman in One Piece comes with some serious back pain.

The thing is, because of the give and take nature of One Piece, Oda will often provide these disproportionate ladies with super interesting character motivations. Nico Robin for example is a pirate archeologist looking for the answers to a century that somehow has been erased from all recorded history. From the moment she shows up, Robin is always integral to the plot and balances the rest of the crew’s personalities so well. There’s a lot of respect given to her expertise both as a thinker and as a fighter…she just also come with a slew of misogynistic panty jokes :/ UGH!

And I haven’t even touched on stuff like the cliffhangers that sometimes mean NOTHING, the time skip redesigns that are equally cool and total barf, Bon Clay and Ivankov (who I love)… there are over a thousand episodes of this thing y’all. It’s complicated.

There is plenty not to like about this show. I would totally get anyone not liking this show. Maybe I shouldn’t like this show? But still, I kind of love it? I think? Sorry.

Also Chopper and Usopp the best characters ever I love them so much and I just have to say that really quick.

School-Live!

I can’t say anything about the plot on this one or I will spoil everything good about it. But this show was surprising and weird and a lot of fun. Maybe not the masterpiece people claim it as but give it 2 episodes and you’ll watch the whole thing.

Haikyu!!

“UGH, not another anime revolving around sports and FRIENDSHIPPPPPPPP?!”

HEY!

…

yes.

BUT HAIKYU IS GOOD!

Following the “too short for sports” lead Hinata and his motley crew of underdogs it becomes clear from episode 1 that Haikyu cares much more about its characters coming together as a team than the results of a high school volleyball circuit. These characters all have flaws, dreams, and they never conquer an obstacle without sacrifice and effort. What the show certainly lacks in terms of originality, it makes up for with these earnest moments of vulnerability, fantastic pacing, and interesting interpersonal dynamics.

From a technical perspective the art is incredibly clean and the sound design is SO VIVID. The squeak of a shoe, the smack of a ball, the bounce of the net, it’s a symphony that places you right there with the guys. So much detail goes into these unseen bits and in my opinion, it really pays off when the plot goes for crescendos.

Are there better sports anime than Haikyu? I think so. Ping Pong and the previously mentioned Chihayafuru spring to mind. But honestly, not much else I’ve seen beats it. This is the kind of show that is the pinnacle of its genre. It only does the thing you expect it to, but it does it so well that you don’t really mind. And hey, sometimes it feels better to reach for the well-crafted pocket knife than screw around with a Swiss army.

Megalobox 1+2

The lone troubled fighter walks a path to the biggest fight in the world, facing down their life of regrets and well of ambition, while the public jeers against them. Rocky, Ali, freakin’ Real Steel. If you’ve seen anything with a boxer in it you’ve already kind of seen Megalobox. In fact, its not even unique in terms of anime – as Megalobox is a remake of a 70s classic called Ashita no Joe.

TRULY I TELL YOU, I COULD NOT CARE LESS! THIS! SHAZZ! RULES! I LOVE IT! GO WATCH!

The hand drawn visuals crackle with energy and texture, the tension is well paced/earned, and the dialogue drips with the casual draw of old cinematic cowpokes. “I don't mind dying as long as I know that the faith I had in myself was real.” WHEN DID JOHN WAYNE ENTER THE ROOM?

Season 1 is good but Season 2 is completely next level. Thematically layered with phenomenal character development and constant surprise. PLUS THAT FINAL SONG HOLY CRAP! What a treat.

You want originality? There’s plenty of that elsewhere on this list. You want a great story well told? Meglaobox is your ticket.

Jujutsu Kaisen & Demon Slayer

I’m putting these together because both shows are gorgeously animated, wildly popular, paranormal beat em up anime, that have somehow risen to success at the exact same time. While neither show is exactly my favorite thing in the world, I totally get why they’ve accrued the massive fanbases they have.

Characters with clear motivations, a setting that feels fresh, and a bizarre sense of humor that’s just the teensiest bit macabre, all makes for good eaten! The tone in both of these shows is a bit more mature too – things are scary, fights have consequences, the good stuff.

But which is the better show? Well, in my opinion, Demon Slayer by a mile and a freaking half. It has better pacing, a cooler premise, interesting character dynamics that I haven’t seen 600 times before, more intimate stakes, funnier bits, and way way way better villains. Like, the only thing Kaisen beats it on is maybe the fight choreography. Like MAYBE! It’s close! They are very stylistically different in that area!

I’m not saying Jujutsu Kaisen is a bad show so don’t hear that. There are plenty of moments that I really liked! I already mentioned the fight choreography, the opening and ending songs are rad, big fan of the girl who fights with her hammer, top drawer for sure. But if we’re comparing here - come on? Gotta be a knock out for Demon Slayer. K.O. Both anime are only in season 1 so my tune could change as the story develops, but straight up, I’m betting money on the checkerboard kid.

Love is War S1

In Love is War two prideful wunderkinds realize they have fallen for each other at the same time. Refusing to confess their feelings, they both engage in Spy vs Spy style mind games to try and get the other to admit the crush. It’s good ol fashioned, campy, rom com fun. Skews very high school but its so self-aware, with quality humor (the narration is so funny), and leads that were actually engaging! Hurray!

Fair warning, season 2 was a big letdown. This sucker just goes on and on and on with 0 progression. They introduce all these new random characters that distract from what makes the show funny in the first place and I almost dropped it a couple times. But for some reason its way higher reviewed on the My Anime List app? So maybe I’m just wack?

They’re making a 3rd season that’ll premier later this year. Enter at your own risk.

So I'm a Spider So What

So I'm a Spider So What is kind of standard fare if you’ve been deep into anime for a while, but to a casual viewer, the premise I’m about to describe will seem absolutely bonkers.

Okay. So our quirky nerd girl protagonist gets reincarnated into a video game world as a low level monster (read: spider) and must learn to cope with her newfound abilities by murdering other creatures to level up. With each level she gains new abilities and forges new relationships. Again, not a video game. Just a tv show about a character who is a spider in a video game world. There’s actually a whole genre of shows like this – I’m about to talk about a lot of them – they are mostly very bad – roll with it.

In the background we learn that the quirky nerd girl is actually part of an entire high school class who was all killed at the same time and teleported into the video game world with her, though most of them reincarnate as humans, and are all miles and miles apart from one another. The non-spider characters try to embrace their newfound RPG-ness and learn the secrets behind their reincarnation.

All in all, this show is trash. Defo not a starter anime, and for the initiated, a pretty B- isekai. Especially all the non-spider content. YAWN! Towards the end I started fast-forwarding past all the human gutter muck.

BUT! The spider girl is very endearing! A cool design matched with a hyper positive personality makes Kumako easy to root for. The fights/super powers are creative dumb fun and the dorky sense of humor being brought to the table is pretty unique for a show like this.

The ending songs where the “multiple brains” of our protagonist sing a pop-metal ballad about the tribulations of being an arachnid is my kind of crazy! If it gets another season I’ll probably watch it…despite my better judgement telling me to run for the hills.

BONUS

The Saga of Tanya the Evil

A sociopathic Japanese businessman challenges god (?) moments before death and is therefore reincarnated as a poor orphaned baby girl at the start of magical World War 1. The pulpy nihilism of the 90s parody antihero lives on in The Saga of Tanya the Evil. Ya like Spawn? Blade? Venom? I can go on? You’ll probably like this show. Does it have all the problems associated with content like this? Yes. But sometimes I just like to jump headfirst into a pool of edginess and see if I can float. And with Tanya, there’s enough going on to justify me giving it a casual recommendation. Just don’t be shocked if you hate it.

Ascendance of a Bookworm S1

Ascendance of a Bookworm is like The Saga of Tanya the Evil’s good twin sister. In this one a reading obsessed college student dies in an accident and is reincarnated as a 5-year-old medieval peasant girl with a chronic disease. Now she quests to become a librarian, hide the fact that she has somehow taken accidentally taken possession of this sickly body, and help provide for her ailing family.

The visuals on this one suuuuuuck unfortunately. Ugly color combos, dopey character designs, its not good. The second season ruins a lot of what I liked about the characters in season 1 and I’m not sure if I’m going to pick it up again if more episodes are made.

So why is it on this list? Well, first off I felt like if I was going to put Tanya on this list I had to put his show too. In tandem with each other I think they make for a really interesting thought experiment. Also the world is really well developed and interesting to explore, the lead is incredibly likeable and struggles with unique problems, and there’s a tonal ease to the whole thing I found very enjoyable.

If you’re willing to take a chance of something, go for it! But I didn’t exactly LOVE it. Ya know. Actually, kind of the opposite.

Tokyo Revengers

A 29 year old dude teleports back and forth into his 14 year old body, navigating mid 2000s Tokyo gang life, in order to save his first ever girlfriend from being brutally murdered in the year of our lord 2017.

The writing is bad. Like soap opera bad. Maybe worse. But the world is so textured and cool. I am OBSESSED with the leaders of the Tokyo Manji gang and kinda wish the whole show was from their perspective rather than the protagonist.

There’s something so rad about noble punks – these dudes who really want to make their community a better place but do so through intimidation, violence, and cool jackets. They’re young and misguided and its all sort of tragic, but weirdly, a little admirable too. I dunno.

I’m not kidding about the writing. This almost didn’t make the list. It’s worse than Bookworm but I probably liked it just as much? I should have ended this section with Tanya but now I’m in too deep. Actually, I probably should have ended with Demon Slayer. Why am I doing this at all? So many pages! Will anyone read it all?!

If you have, thank you and I’m sorry.