Well, what a year. This top five list might just possibly be the only one out there that won’t have Chainsaw Man in it. The main reason is because I just haven’t watched it yet. I’m sure I will someday, but I think I’d rather enjoy a show like that at my own pace, as opposed to having to cover it weekly. But that is the least of things affecting me this anime year.
I’ve covered a lot of shows and movies here on The OASG, both on Otaku Theater and in review posts. But 2022 is easily the most topsy-turvy year for me. It’s weird too as I’m certain that it’s been absolutely fine for others. You’ve all found the shows that have really gelled for you, and stuck with them. As the seasons went by, I felt like I was struggling to find something I genuinely wanted to enjoy. While I did find some really fun shows to watch, it still felt like my poor/mediocre picks outshone the good ones. In this Fall season alone, I’ve had to drop a 2-cour show because of I was frustrated with how the story was told and how the characters were portrayed. And then there’s that harem show that I thought was a good idea to watch.
We’ll get to that one later though, so let’s get started with the five shows this year that I loved the most. It seems that by sheer coincidence perhaps, this has been Cloverworks’ year in my eyes. How exactly, and why? Read on and see…
5. Call of the Night
(Liden Films – available on HIDIVE)
This Summer season’s Call of the Night stood out for a lot of reasons. Vampire stories have long been known to have their own aesthetic, relying a lot on gothic styles and the colors red and black, representing death, danger and excitement. We didn’t get a lot of that here though; the red and black colors were replaced with bright neon lights of a midnight city. The experience of director Tomoyuki Itamura really shows here. A SHAFT alumni who helped direct many of the Monogatari series episodes, we were able to see many similarities, although it was also clear to see that Call of the Night wanted to be something of its own, and not some Monogatari clone.
Chronic insomniac Ko Yamori has started to skip school and venture out into the streets at midnight, without much regard to his health and safety. On the streets he encounters the young vampire Nazuna Nanakusa, who holds the belief that people can only truly relax when they let go of all their inhibitions. Yamori then goes on to fall in love with not only her, but the idea of living the midnight life. While it keeps to this main narrative, the show goes on to discuss topics such as loneliness, the need for social interaction, as well as how humans (and vampires, to that extent) aren’t the greatest people in the world.
The show also made sure to put the emphasis on both main characters, instead of just one of them taking the baton. Take Nazuna, for instance. She enjoyed showing off to Yamori, that the midnight life is so much more exciting than the day life. That all sorts of new things happen that can never happen in the daytime. But over time, she begins to realize that she is lying to him; once all of this becomes a norm, it begins to get extremely boring. Sure, there are midnight pool parties to crash and drunks to laugh at, but for Nazuna, 99% of time has been spent mining for diamonds in a game that is definitely not Minecraft.
But it was the visual aesthetic and mood of the show that made it stand out among other shows in 2022. The nighttime is presented as both mysterious and alluring, instead of something to be feared. This is the kind of world where one can release their inhibitions, as opposed to nighttime environments in some other vampire stories, where characters fear for their lives. While the story starts off rather slowly, as more people are introduced (both human and vampire), we start to feel for all of them and understand their plights. Yamori’s human friends begin to worry that he dove into the deep end, while Nazuna’s vampire acquaintances wonder why one of their own would want to spend so much time with a hapless and despondent young human boy and not make him her ‘offspring’.
There was quite a bit of hype for this show, and I’m glad that the hype worked out in the end. The end of the show leaves room for a potential second season, which I’m sure a lot of viewers would welcome, myself included. Only a part of the manga was covered in this adaptation, and potential antagonist Anko Uguisu appeared in only the final episodes. On top of this, there is plenty of room to add more stories and sub-plots. A sequel to this show will be something people on social media will be screaming for, almost as much as they were screaming for Crunchyroll to make a second season of Tower of God.
4. Spy x Family
(Wit Studio/Cloverworks – available on Crunchyroll)
This was another show that had received a lot of hype, but when it came out in the Spring, I initially dismissed it and decided not to cover it for Otaku Theater, instead choosing to watch it in my own time. With part 1 being in the Spring and part 2 in the Fall, Spy x Family was the kind of show I felt at the time I needed to get really invested in. Unfortunately, the shows I did cover for Otaku Theater ended up taking up more time, and so this one was something I had to catch up on later on in the year. Something I eventually did do, and something I’m 100% glad to have done.
Set in a mirrored Cold War time, a well-renowned and experienced spy from Westalis, Twilight, is sent on an undercover mission to rival nation Ostania to spy on the leader of a political party. There he is to build a family so as not to arouse suspicion in what is already a very paranoid country. He creates the alias of a psychiatrist named Loid Forger, marries civil servant Yor Briar, and adopts the orphaned Anya. Unbeknownst to him though, Yor is a highly-trained assassin who goes by the name Thorn Princess, and Anya is a skilled telepath with an unknown background.
Spy x Family is a very unique look at a dysfunctional family, combining fun spy action with laugh-out-loud comedy and heartwarming segments. These three people come from different environments and yet learn to become one loving unit, even if it is all meant to be for a mission. And just as these three people learn about each other, they learn more about themselves too. Loid initially dismisses the nuclear family life, as he has devoted all of this time serving his country in the shadows. Yor adores her younger brother, and got into the assassin business to make money so they could both live comfortably, and while Anya is the only one who knows both of their secrets, she decides to keep quiet about it for fear of being abandoned, like she has been many times before.
Read a story like that and one may be forgiven for thinking it as rather corny, but the original manga was able to pull off a fantastic job of combining action, comedy and family drama, and all of that was reflected well in this adaptation. This kind of reminds me of the 1994 movie True Lies, where Arnold Schwarzenegger lies to his wife about being a globe-trotting secret agent. The balance between action and comedy in that movie felt really odd, but it’s done so effortlessly here in Spy x Family. The show’s aesthetic was also something that hooked me in; of course Westalis is absolutely not meant to represent West Germany, and Ostania is absolutely not meant to represent East Germany.
There is so much enjoyable stuff to take from Spy x Family that it feels such a shame to put it as number 4. I don’t often do rewatches these days, but this has become a show I have decided to rewatch and binge. I’m going to take some time in 2023 to really absorb myself into the whole thing, now that both cours have come out.
3. Bocchi the Rock!
(Cloverworks – available on Crunchyroll)
Another show I am more than happy to rewatch and binge is this most recent one, which stood out alongside the big-name shows of Chainsaw Man and the latest season of My Hero Academia. Like with Call of the Night, it did very well not to be a clone of an older and more well-known franchise.
Main lead Hitori Gotoh (or Bocchi) has really become an adorable muffin we all wanted to protect in the Fall season. She was able to pick up the guitar and start her own very successful Youtube channel, yet had no experience in being a part of a band, or even socializing for that matter. It’s only when circumstances come about when she meets drummer Nijika, who is looking for people for her own band. Hitori’s journey from non-social worrywart to…umm…a less non-social worrywart is a really wonderful one to watch, and Cloverworks did not mess around when it came to animation and art direction. They were able to let all of their creative juices out in picturing an anxious and panicking Hitori picturing various scenarios of rejection and despair in her head. But the wild art direction didn’t stop there.
The four girls in Kessoku Band each had their own personalities and journeys, with bassist Ryo desperate to act like the cool but broke rocker, and singer and rhythm guitarist Kita keeping up her extroverted and outgoing personality that differed greatly from the others. While it was at its heart a ‘cute girls doing cute things’ show, it knew when to turn off the comedy. They all attend different high schools and still need to make money to maintain the band. They have to work on putting out memorable gigs, so they won’t have attendees who don’t bother to pay attention (who are the worst kind to have). They set themselves a goal, but know that the road to the Budokan won’t be a bed of roses.
Bocchi the Rock! was a show that came out of relatively nowhere and was almost obscured by the mighty hype of Chainsaw Man. Not only was it able to move its way up to the big competition, but was able to stay there and occasionally do better. It did this well because of how everything just seemed to work. All the characters were people we wanted to cheer on, the crazy animation we saw suited every mood on screen, the original music gave it even more energy, and no doubt we’ll be seeing poor Hitori in many a meme to come in the future. Heck, you can actually buy that pink tracksuit she always wears now.
The manga is a 4-koma, and the studio were able to take a lot of what originally came from there and expand further, letting stories run on and letting character designs be expanded some more. Given how well it was received, a second season would be something many many people would welcome; I know I would. So as you can see, Cloverworks really did a number on me this season, in a year where I really struggled to find shows to enjoy.
2. Akebi’s Sailor Uniform
(Cloverworks – available on Crunchyroll)
When Akebi’s Sailor Uniform came out in the Winter season, I looked over it as I had picked another Cloverworks show instead. Over the months however, I had read all the good press it had received, and wondered why this one stood out among other ‘cute girls doing cute things’ school shows. Well, it ended up in an out-of-season poll, and a heck of a lot of people wanted me to cover it, and so here it is at number 2.
Komichi Akebi wants only two things as she begins middle school: to wear a sailor uniform, and to make lots of friends. When she is accepted into a local private school, she jumps for joy when she hears about their uniform…only realizing that the school fazed out the sailor uniforms recently, meaning she is the only one wearing one while the other girls around her are in their new blazers. And while her sailor uniform is seen as a gimmick in the show, it is not by any mean the central one. In her classroom, Akebi is able to bond with everyone and become a stand-out character. While indulging in her own hobbies, she learns so much more about everyone else. All these girls have their own stories to tell, and have just as much screentime as main girl Akebi does.
Where this show really excelled is in its visual storytelling. We get to see amazing background shows, well-animated models, and even the tiniest of background items (eg. wood marks on a school floor, or strands of hair) are empathized. But beyond that, the girls are not presented as two-dimensional, which is awesome to see. This is middle school, and these girls are going through puberty at their own levels. For instance, Tanigawa, in the photography club, is enjoying how her body is forming, and has an overjoyed Akebi cheering her on. On the flip side, we get a story about Shijou, in the tennis club, who is panicking that her body is growing too quickly and is gaining weight. These are young girls who are presented as authentic humans with authentic problems and worries. Authenticity is something I really noticed here in these characters. We don’t get any major cattiness or backtalk between them all; they all complain about homework and their after-school stuff, and the fact that most of them live in dorms far away from home, but they all get along.
I think some people were put off by some of the earlier episodes, which featured a lot of unusual foot fetish shots. Maybe some people wrote it off as that as a result. Well I can say that the show as a whole is far from that, and very quickly became both a well-written and well-presented treat to watch. The writers did a great job to make the show into an upbeat and motivational one, but not make it sickly or saccharine. But even with all that praise, it didn’t quite make it to my top. Instead, that show went to:
1. My Dress-Up Darling
(Cloverworks – available on Crunchyroll)
When this came out in the Winter, I initially did not think that it would be the kind of show that would reel me in hard. I liked the idea of cosplay being the main theme of the show, and some romance sprinkled into it as well, but before the show started, I thought that that would be as far as I would go. But My Dress-Up Darling did an extremely good job in making me think that it was just going to be another non-descript school romcom.
Wakana Gojou is devoted to making Hina dolls and helping his grandfather at their workshop, and doesn’t really think about casual high-school life. He’s a boy who is content with the way he is. This is sadly something other high-schoolers take advantage of, as they see him as an absolute pushover who is fine with doing the class duties that they cannot be bothered to do. It’s only when the most popular girl in school, Marin Kitagawa, enters his life when it all changes. She keeps a secret from the people who know her; she wants to become a big cosplay artist. So with Gojou able to put his sewing skills to good use, the two are able to strike up a close relationship.
As the episodes went by, and Marin’s costumes got better and better, My Dress-Up Darling showed itself as a very innocent romance between a quiet shy guy with an unusual hobby and a popular girl who is able to bring out the best in him. What I especially liked in the show was that there was nothing in the way of blackmail between them. Blackmail is something that is used in a lot of other shows similar to this to bring a boy and girl together, and it annoys the heck out of me because it can sometimes bring out bad traits in both parties. Marin wanted to be a better cosplay artist, and Gojou was happy to oblige as he wanted to get even better at sewing. He is still extremely insecure about his hobby because of how unusual it is, and so meeting the closeted otaku Marin is just what he needed to open up and feel more positive about life.
The two work incredibly well together and bounce off one other as the show progresses. Her nonchalance and his naivety brings out a lot of humor. What’s also great is that he is not the atypical horny guy a lot of other romcoms rely on to keep stories going. Marin loves poking and prodding (the ecchi and fanservice throughout is something we can’t exactly ignore), but often times, he doesn’t budge. He is polite and sometimes overly formal, while she is chatty and hyperactive. And it’s because of these traits that Marin and Gojou have that make them perfect for one another, both as sharing a hobby and as more than that.
My Dress-Up Darling could have gone down a completely different road; it could have ended up becoming a really corny show, with silly jokes and full to the brim with cringeworthy fanservice. But the studio did a very careful job in making each character (even the secondary ones we see towards the end of the show) someone we were really able to relate to. Even the fanservice scenes we do get aren’t put in randomly out of nowhere; they are given real context and meaning. Marin’s growing crush on Gojou becomes a big part of what keeps the show together, but it is not the biggest one. We are treated with watching both of them go on a journey of self-discovery and finding self-esteem. A second season of this was greenlit all the way back in September, so I guess that something I’ll definitely be looking forward to in the future. But with Gojou remaining almost completely oblivious still, how would Marin be able to poke him into taking the hint? I guess we’d just have to wait and see.
It’s quite remarkable how Cloverworks ended up dominating my entire top 5 list, and I swear to God, it is by pure coincidence. Can’t deny though that, despite all of the stuff we hear every now and then about overworked staff and production issues for some of their shows, they have put out some remarkable shows. This is the studio that has given us The Promised Neverland, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, and co-produced Darling in the Franxx with Trigger. Hard to think that the studio itself is only 5 years old (technically – they were originally a part of A-1 Pictures).
Other things, my honorable mentions, have caught my eye this year of course; some of them I covered for Otaku Theater, while others I caught in my own time. Netflix got my attention once again this year, with three shows by them that I enjoyed immensely. Season 2 of Komi Can’t Communicate was just as awesome as the first one, and had what I call the best single episode of the entire year. I can write an entire post about the school trip episode where Komi meets and befriends fellow classmates Sasaki and Katou; I thought it was great to have our adorable little muffin Komi be able to reach out and take the initiative herself to find new friends, instead of having Tadano or Najimi hold her hand to do it. And it felt all the more better to watch somehow because both Sasaki and Katou were portrayed as ‘normies’ of the class, compared to the complete weirdos, misfits and outcasts Komi’s class is typically full of.
As well as this, the much-hyped Cyberpunk: Edgerunners really did deliver. As much as people wanted to call the show damage control for what happened with the poor release of Cyberpunk 2077, Trigger was the only studio who could pull off such a insane, gritty and visceral show. Another Netflix show, The Orbital Children, was a fascinating watch too. From the guy behind Dennoh Coil, it is about a children’s trip to an orbiting space station that turns into a tale of survival when space debris hits the station. It also hit the viewer hard with philosophy as well as a strange fear that the technology we see in the show could well happen in the very near future…especially considering now how quickly space programs want to return to the Moon, and then head for Mars.
But as the anime community is continuing to pour praise on Chainsaw Man to this day, they are pouring an equal amount on one other show that came in the Summer season: Lycoris Recoil. It didn’t make my top 5 purely because I found other shows more entertaining, but I can definitely see why people loved it so much. The hype and praise was 100% justified; even one of my non-anime friends recommended the show to me. It’ll also be one of those shows I’ll probably rewatch in the near future too.
This year did give me some fun shows to enjoy, but it has also given me a lot of lessons for the future. I said to myself way back when that I wouldn’t mention this show again, but I feel I ought to here considering things. In the Winter season, I chose World’s End Harem because I thought the sci-fi story looked interesting. The idea of a virus killing off half the planet meaning a broken world had to put together a population control system sounded cool I suppose. Okay yes, I knew that the show would be very risqué, but I still held hope that that wouldn’t affect the story. Oh how wrong I was.
Outside of the frequent & heavily censored intercourse and nudity, the show went off in two different tangents, and gave us a main lead that we just didn’t care about. And then when the ending came, those of us who were foolish enough to keep on watching just had a…non-ending instead. The ‘antagonists’ in the show didn’t lose, and our protagonists just went carried on to another day. Were the studio expecting people to like it enough to warrant a second season? Well, even they stopped caring by the time it ended, as we saw several moments where animation and sound just fell apart, so we won’t be getting that second season thankfully.
I think I just wanted to ‘expand my horizons’ for 2022. I wanted to watch some shows that I didn’t normally pick out instantly for Otaku Theater, in the hope that I could get into other shows like them in the future. And while that has worked for Raven of the Inner Palace, which I was really able to enjoy, it didn’t for shows like Yurei Deco (leftfield science-fiction/anti-establishment essay) and The Eminence in Shadow (dark satire on the isekai genre). I don’t want to keep carrying on picking out the slice-of-life/school comedies though; I want to take much more care in the shows I cover for Otaku Theater in the future. That way I hope I won’t repeat what I went through this year. I have my Winter 2023 picks set though, and I’m very happy with what I chose. So bring it on, I say.