Top 5 Anime of Winter 2016

This has been the first season of anime that I’ve actively kept up with. Generally, I pick and choose a few series to watch the first episodes of, then I’ll watch the ones I enjoyed in full after the season closes. This time around, I decided to watch each and every first episode (or at least everything that had an ounce of promise) and chronicle my thoughts. As with before, I still don’t much like watching an anime as it airs each week, because I have to reinvest myself in the series every episode, which takes upwards of 5-10 minutes. As such, I found myself catching up with each series after all the episodes had aired.

Overall, Winter 2016 was a season of surprises and disappointments, which I’ve come to expect from every season. There were some garbage shows that I tried to trudge through (Phantom World and Shoujo-tachi) because I thought there was some promise, but I was pretty quick to drop the shows that didn’t interest me beyond the first episode. I’d like to stress first that there is a pretty large gap in quality between the top three of this list and numbers 4 & 5. Anyhow, the following series are those that stood above the rest this season, providing some quality entertainment.

Winter 2016 – First Impressions (Week Two)

The first week of Winter 2016 was fun, but very few anime (aside from the charming shorts) stood out as great. Oftentimes this is because first episodes are meant to create a world and establish its inhabitants, so the fact that there were seven anime which showed promise makes me hopeful for this season. As mentioned last week, my standout favorite was Boku dake ga Inai Machi, which holds true through this week as well, being my favorite first episode of Winter 2016.

This week I will cover anime which premiered from Sunday, January 10th, to Friday, January 15th. This means that I will not be covering anime whose second episode aired during this period, rather only those whose first episode premiered.

Winter 2016 – First Impressions (Week One)

Another season of anime is upon us and I’ve decided to join in on seasonal anime coverage. I’ve stuck it through to the end of the first wave of anime, watching an episode of everything worth noting.

I would like to mention that as I was waiting for the Winter 2016 season to begin, I blasted through Shirobako in the span of two days and wanted to express somewhere that it was an incredibly captivating and brilliant anime. I will not be doing a full write-up, but it felt wrong not to mention that I loved the show.

Without further ado, let’s get on with my thoughts.

Noragami, Noragami Aragoto – A Look at the Other-Worldly

Again, I did my best here not to spoil any part of either series.

Noragami is far more rooted in comedy than I had anticipated when beginning the series. I oftentimes anticipate the ‘feel’ of a show through its key visual, and more often than not I am wrong in my initial assumptions. Noragami isn’t as serious as I would have liked, but the comedy doesn’t necessarily fall flat nor dampen my experience too much. It works for the most part, but comedy usually isn’t what keeps me coming back to a show. I found most episodes to follow the same relative formula of a comedic first half and a more serious second half interspersed with goofy moments. With such a focus on comedy and considering the series begins with little more than mere hints at something more than an average show – namely the introduction of Phantoms – I was certainly wary. The first three episodes of the first season of Noragami lack intrigue. What is provided was enough to keep me going and the setting created is a few steps away from generic, but it was another series where I struggled to become interested.

Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, Nekomonogatari: Kuro – The Saga Begins

I will do my best not to spoil any plot points of the series, but rather discuss my thoughts as someone who had to struggle to begin enjoying the series.

My history with the Monogatari series is rather minimal despite having started Bakemonogatari in 2013. There are a number of anime that I’ve started and had little intention of returning to, Bakemonogatari included. After sitting through 4 episodes with little connection to any character and more distracted than fascinated by the art style, I felt rather bored and stopped watching altogether. Over a year later, I finally picked the series back up for another disappointing run, this time only 2 episodes further than the first watch. Firmly situated nearly halfway through the series, I left Bakemonogatari on the shelf for another full year. Last week or so, I decided to give it another chance, not expecting to make much progress again. It was as if my eyes had been opened, or, more accurately, I finally began to care.

Hachikuji a cute.

On rewatching.

Although naïve, I’ve always felt that rewatching an anime would be rather pointless as the options are manifold and making time to watch everything I’d planned on is already difficult. Alongside that, I’ve felt that my rather good memory would lead to great retention and upon my second watch it would feel as though I knew everything that would happen and I’d simply end up bored. This is, as I’m obviously leading to, not the case.

I’d first discovered this in playing Batman: Arkham Asylum for the second time on a different difficulty. Now, it’s not as if I didn’t know replaying, rereading, or rewatching were available to me, but I did feel that I wouldn’t gain anything from it. Since then, I’ve replayed games and rewatched movies, but it hasn’t been until this past week that I’ve rewatched an anime. In attempts to forcefully ‘culture’ a friend of mine, we decided on Cowboy Bebop. Pretty standard fare for gateway anime, but more than that, I wasn’t really much of a fan of the show in my first watch. I’ve always attributed this to the fact that I’m really shitty at watching anime. I end up making games or rules for myself, such as only watching one anime at a time or using a randomizer to determine what I’ll watch next. While it’s initially fun, it generally ends with me trudging through the anime without ever really getting invested. I’d say I’m somewhat better now, but I still have trouble fully immersing myself in what I’m watching.

So, I watched Bakuman.

It was kind of a blast. God, I wonder how long ago it was that I read the manga. I feel like it was 2011 or 2012, but I guess I won’t ever know. I also probably can’t say that I read the manga, because I ended up dropping it about a hundred chapters in. After having read Bokurano, Gantz, and Battle Royale, I was accustomed to manga having more leeway in regards to story and getting darker than any anime I’d seen. That said, Bakuman simply covering the struggles of mangaka strangled me with boredom. Maybe I wasn’t old or weathered in Japanese media enough, but I regardless feel the anime did a better job drawing me in. Ha.

 

Bakuman volume 5. This scene was in the opening too but I remember it in neither the anime nor the manga. It probably happened.

The story itself was cute and it was great that there were a few failures and bumps along the road. It was your typical “follow your dreams, get rich, marry young, and be the number one JACK artist” story. I think what made Bakuman an especially delightful experience for me was disliking it from the manga then having my opinions completely changed by the anime. It was a fun show and I spent most of my free time over the period of three weeks watching through it. If you haven’t seen it, I’d say give it a whirl. If you find yourself bored, maybe give it a few years and try again.