Another year over, and another year where we get a little older. In real life, I’ve since got a qualification as a TEFL teacher; now I just have to find a way to use it. I’ve also had some pipe dreams of reinventing my old gaming business, but we’ll see about that. In terms of anime, a lot of the big franchises decided to put out shows this year, and there have been a few shows I’ve been hyped for that have delivered in the end. I also got to go to Scotland Loves Anime for the first time and Edinburgh is now my new favorite pretty-city-to-look-at. While I have missed out on a few shows, here are the ones I managed to catch that have impressed me the most.
5. Kaguya-sama: Love is War
(A-1 Pictures – available on Crunchyroll/Funimation)
This show from the Winter cour was, initially, something I was very reluctant to watch for no particular reason. I eventually watched it as one of my out-of-season shows in my regular Otaku Theater column. Two high-ranking school kids who work together in the student council who both have fallen in love with one another, but are actually fighting for which one will confess first, is something that’s both original and unoriginal at the same time. Kaguya-sama: Love is War was both a simple show to review and a tough one. At times I just knew what was going to happen, and some others were moments that came out of nowhere…and that is precisely what I liked about the show.
A lot of school romantic comedies have come out in the past years, but it’s the laugh-out-loud comedy and wonderful character designs that make Kaguya-sama so unique, and what makes it stand out from the others. The fact that this ‘war’ of theirs (on who will confess first) requires a narrator with a booming and epic voice reserved usually for action/fantasy shows is great in of itself. I haven’t even touched on how marvelous the show’s third character, Chika, is.
4. Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu
(C2C – available on Crunchyroll)
Shows that talk about social anxiety are shows that I jump to immediately. Social anxiety was something that affected me greatly in both middle and high school, and ended up affecting my future social and academic skills. My epilepsy diagnosis at the time only made it worse, and I ended up having to start my social life all over again in college…but enough about me…
Hitoribocchi is a very simple show about a young girl, Bocchi, who is afraid of everything, and feels betrayed when her closest friend Kai cuts ties with her, in an attempt to give her some tough love. It is this tough love, though, that opens up a whole new world for her, when she meets other classmates who feel outcast/different, just like her. People like Nako, who despite being incredibly polite and respectful, gives off a delinquent aura…or Aru, who despite winning over the whole class with her upbeat charm, is in fact a very unlucky loser…or Sotoka, a transfer student from Europe who feels she has to become a ninja…or Kurai, who feels the only way to survive in the world is to live by herself, despite secretly welcoming any extended olive branches, mostly from Bocchi.
I could talk so much about this show, as it has tackled the very touchy topic of social anxiety extremely well. Unlike Watamote, which made main protagonist Tomoko a vile and ungrateful laughing stock, Bocchi wants to live a happy life with the people around her, making her someone we as the viewer want to protect and cheer on. At her lowest moments in the show, like for instance, when she is shunned by Kai when she bumps into her at a karaoke bar, the show decides to turn her social anxiety issues into a serious matter, as opposed to making it all into just one big uncomfortable joke.
I’ve had my eye on the newbie studio C2C for a good year now. I was very impressed with their show from last year, Harukana Receive, which was just the perfect show to air in the summer season. Considering how well they tackled social anxiety here in Hitoribocchi (not in such a vulgar manner like in Watamote), one thing I know for sure is that C2C are going to make some solid shows in the future.
3. Ride Your Wave
(Science SARU – due for Western theatrical release in 2020)
This was a tough one to call. You see, Promare was originally going to feature in this top 5, but the more I dwelt on it, the more I knew that Ride Your Wave was better off in this list. Don’t get me wrong; Promare is an amazing movie, and deserves an honorable mention, but the topics touched on in Yuasa’s new movie got to me on a whole level of its own.
Ride Your Wave is marketed as a romantic comedy, but tragedy plays just as big a role. Some of us can be inconsolable when it comes to close people we lose, and the movie’s main protagonist, Hinako, is a good example of this. A college student and surfer who doesn’t really have a direction in life, meets trainee firefighter Minato when her apartment catches fire. The two eventually begin dating and become inseparable, in every aspect. However, when Minato goes surfing alone in a storm, he drowns when rescuing a fellow surfer.
As someone who was popular in the small coastal town this movie is set in, his passing affects everyone, but no-one more so than Hinako, who becomes inconsolable and unwilling to accept the truth. Then one day, as she sings a song the two of them loved, his image appears in a pool of water. While everyone else, including his family, see this as Hinako still unwilling to move on, she decides to interact with this apparition. However, it’s only later when she, and in turn we, discover that he is unable to break free until she can accept his death and find a direction in life.
When I saw this at the Scotland Loves Anime event in Edinburgh in October, this movie won over a lot of the audience, but it ended up becoming overshadowed by other movies on the schedule, Promare and Weathering With You. I suppose, as someone who has lost a close family member too in recent years, Ride Your Wave is a movie I can relate to. When my father passed away, both my sister and me ended up living a whole year of “what if”‘s, and were struggling to find something to do with our lives that didn’t make us think about what we could have done.
The movie itself is something I think stands out from the other equally-great movies that came out this year; its vibrant colors and good character design are all things to commend, and I admire its devotion to stick to this one topic of finding direction in life after a tragic event, instead of turning it into one big Science SARU-branded fantasy. Ride Your Wave however received some criticism for being ‘too normal’ for a director like Masaaki Yuasa, who has been a part of some very surreal works in the past, but I disagree. I don’t think Yuasa is obliged to one particular style of film making, and this movie deserves a lot more credit than it is currently getting.
2. O Maidens In Your Savage Season
(Lay-duce – available on HIDIVE)
Unlike some of the other shows I’ve seen this year, I had a hunch that O Maidens In Your Savage Season was going to be something special…and it had nothing to do with the fact that Mari Okada was responsible for the story. Heck, I only found out she wrote the manga for this until after I picked it.
As we watch slice-of-life shows with a school setting, we often get the impression that boys are naive, idiotic and very horny. It only takes a show like this when we realize that teenage hormones can just as much affect girls too. Main protagonist Kazusa has known Izumi since they were little; they lived next door to each other after all. As part of the school’s literature club, she finds herself reading all sorts of works with all sorts of themes to them, and when mysterious fellow club member Niina brings up the topic of sex, this causes ripples in the club, who are all initially very reluctant to even mention it. This only gets worse when each club member finds themselves meeting people they have feelings for, and this show highlights the actions and consequences of each of these relationships, both good and bad.
Niina learns about Kazusa’s feelings for Izumi, but ends up falling for him herself. Club president Rika ends up shedding her prudish manner when a classmate announces to the class how pretty she is, fellow club member Hitoha breaks her own rule of not finding love when she looks for sexual experience with the club advisor, a male teacher who is pursuing a relationship of his own with someone his own age, and a close friend of Kazusa, Momoko, suspects she might be gay when she feels disgusted with the thought of a boy touching her. These, among other highly detailed mini-stories, are all things that have made O Maidens In Your Savage Season something that stands out from the other school comedy shows, and puts it firmly in the new sub-genre of mature school romance, along with other shows like Scum’s Wish, Love & Lies and this year’s Domestic Girlfriend. Coincidentally (or not perhaps…), all of the shows mentioned ended up being licensed by Sentai Filmworks and shown on HIDIVE or Amazon Video.
1. Carole & Tuesday
(BONES – available on Netflix)
This show, though, by Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo creator Shinichiro Watanabe, is firmly at the top of my top 5 of 2019. I had heard about this back in 2018 when it was announced, and didn’t even care that Netflix had immediately secured the rights for it.
A mixture of sci-fi, musical, comedy and drama, this show is set on a terraformed Mars, where music made with actual instruments is a thing of the past. Orphaned immigrant Carole and sheltered rich girl Tuesday meet and decide to make ‘old-fashioned’ music together after discovering they both share a common goal. All the while, famous model Angela decides to pursue a musical career of her own, despite not being able to sing.
Notably, the show’s producers made a very big thing about marketing Carole & Tuesday as ‘the first anime to feature an all-English soundtrack’, and with known artists like Keane, Flying Lotus, Cornelius, Nulbarich and Kings of Convenience all contributing in part to the songs in this show, it certainly sets a landmark in making anime more…international.
To my surprise, I noticed the English dub is much better than I anticipated, with voices for all the main characters very well performed. I also took the time to write a full-length review of Part 1; here’s a link to that post. Part 2 came out recently as well (December. 24), so that’s something to check out too.
Honorable mentions for me this year include the movie Promare, Endro~! (which I also reviewed here), Astra Lost in Space, and the still-not-quite-finished Kandagawa Jet Girls (purely down to how ridiculous it is…).
I’ll leave you with this, which is my favorite song from Carole & Tuesday. See you in 2020.
So, 2019 has been a pretty hectic year. Next year will see me go to my final UK anime con, Minamicon, in Southampton in March, as well as return to Atlanta in September for Dragoncon. As for what kind of shows I’ll end up watching in 2020…well…just wait and see. Has 2019 been a cool year for you? What have been your favorite shows to watch and geek over? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below!