TWENTY EIGHTEEN. HOLY SHIT.
For the last couple of years, I ended up sitting
down at the end of December to try and coalesce my thoughts, to hopefully come up with 10
solid recommendations from those particular years. Usually filling out those 10 spots
was a bit of a struggle, but I enjoyed the opportunity because I got to highlight some
lesser known anime that people don't talk about all that much.
This year? I sat down and had at least 18 titles on a list before I stopped to check
and see how many I had. 2018 has been, far and away, one of the best years Period. Best. Ever. Period. Whatever.
Of Anime that we've had in a long time. If 2017 was the year of Niche shows that I could recommend
to a select few people, 2018 is the year I can slap down a bunch of anime in a pile next to you and
be like, Here you go, this is your watch list for like, at least the next months.
In the Winter season alone we had at least half as many good shows as we did for
all of 2017, and I've been following more shows this past season then almost any
other season in the last couple of years for just how many stood out.
Needless to say that this video has not been easy to compile. What was originally a top
ten list has turned into just a straight top list, no number, no ranking, just pure awesomeness
as I try to summarize the greatness that aired in this year of 2018.
If you've not seen a list video of mine before here's how it's going to
go. Every show I mention here is not ranked. I usually say I'll leave the best for last
but for 2018 that cannot be done. I will be awarding Best of Year at the end of this video,
but since it's an understandably difficult, I will be mentioning all
the shows in question first, before actually presenting that award.
Of course I will only be discussing shows I have seen in 2018, I never got around to
shows like Planet With, Banana Fish, or Gridman despite people badgering me to finally sit
down and watch them, I still haven't made it to Part 5 of JoJo so that's why it's
absent, and I somehow completely avoided the meme driven mess that was Pop Team Epic, though
honestly I've probably seen 80% of that show on my twitter feed alone. Also beyond
this sentence you'll see high nor hair of shows like Black Clover, Attack on Titan,
and My Hero Academia, to be clear this is not because they are undeserving of
mention or praise, but since their mere existence will dominate a good number of other Top lists
and yearly awards from other people, I'm choosing to give up their spotlight in this video for some others
that might not get noticed otherwise. Plus I shouldn't have to tell you that those
shows are worth checking out at this point should I?
Nah.
Didn't think so.
So with that out of the way, and with a decent chunk of anime to discuss ahead of us, let's
get started. Ladies, Gentlemen, and others my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection
we are discussing the Very Best anime from 2018. Let's Jam.
Let's start with the one I've talked about most recently as it's fresh in my mind.
A Place Further than the Universe is a show that seems to top most people's list for
best of year, at least from many who I've talked to and for good reason! It's an entirely
wholesome, if in some ways grim take about a group of girls doing their best to somehow,
someway make it to the cold reaches of Antarctica. Their tale of friendship is what makes the
series memorable, their hardships, the challenges, and what they end up doing to overcome it
all makes it a stand out series from the year. It is a show that legitimately looked at all of
the challenges of placing our cast into Antarctica and did it's best to realistically
explain the possible ways for them to get there and what that experience might be like.
Pretty much every series I talk about in this video today is worth watching but this one
in particular is worth a gander. I'm deeply saddened that this show was not longer then
it was because it really deserved to be two cour, but hey what can you do.
Next up is Comic Girls.
This is one I regret not talking about when it came out, mostly because no one seemed
too do so and it deserved a lot of love. It follows a young 15 year old manga creator, struggling
with her art and what she wants to do with it. To help, her editor suggests she move
into an all-female manga artist dormitory, and the fellow artists she meets there and
lives with try help her to discover her own voice and artistic style.
This is a series with a well balanced mix of what all these artists of different genres face in both their
lives and careers, and it really does drive home that making this kind of entertainment
is not an easy thing. Though sometimes the show made me scratch my head when it tried
to portray just how bad Moeta had gotten with her art, bad enough I had to seriously question
how she got published in the first place. But her artistic anxiety about her work was
on a fully relatable level. So for someone who really does take pleasure in watching
these lesser known slice of life shows, it hit it out of the park with me. Apparently
people in Missouri might agree.
This one feels weird for me to put on this list because I first watched it in the summer
of 2017 when they premiered its first episode at AX, but ever since that time Violet Evergarden
has enraptured my attention with its outstanding animation from Kyoto Ani, beautiful soundtrack
by Evan Call, and breathtaking storytelling that has had me wanting more ever since the
series stopped airing. Evergarden takes a new stab at the kind of character archetype
made popular by Evangelion and Rei Ayanami all those years ago and makes this new character
Violet both one of the most human with her emotions, and the most machine with her hands
and skills. The way that this show was able to weave its episodic narratives each week
was a delight to watch, and it also contains one of the best single episodes of the year, able
to be watched and enjoyed with very little prep as it's not connected to Evergarden's
main storyline. There have been rumors floating around for a while about a potential second
season, and considering how much Kyoto Ani put into this series I'd like to hope that it will eventually
come out for us, but until then well, I'll just have to watch it, again and again.
Hinamatsuri is another series I regret sleeping on as far as making a video for it, because
from its season it was one of the shows I watched religiously every day a new episode
came out. It's about this alien like girl with superpowers named Hina who crash-lands
into the apartment of a leading Yakuza member: Nitta. Nitta, fearing for his prized antique
collections and other valuables that Hina threatens to break, as well as seeing her usefulness in his
job, begrudgingly takes her in. But that doesn't really explain what the show is about, just
how it started. Nitta is not the kind of guy you think about when the term Yakuza pops
up, nor is anyone he works with. We assume shady stuff is probably happening behind the
scenes but the show doesn't focus on that. Instead it shows a very irregular family,
and combines that with some of the most absurd humor of the year. This was a series that
was both heartwarming and hilarious, with most of its cast deserving of their own show
or at least arc. Seriously can we get an Anzu spinnoff? I'd love that, kthanksmuch.
Oh what a beautiful mess Franxx was. Despite that, I can't hate it. I love too much of
it to join the numerous amounts of people who bemoan this shows existence and what it
did during its run. Yes Franxx has a lot of problems, mostly involving it's final arc
and for some people the middle bit, getting so enraged that some people threatened the animators
over it. But personally, I only found the shows ending to be rather lackluster until
the last final moments. If I was to ignore those last few episodes the series would be
much more memorable for me, hell I'd have it as a best of year contender but even though
I'm not going to go that far because of the shows problems, it's takes on puberty and physical slash emotional
development of characters was extremely well done. All wrapped up in some stellar action
scenes to make the series a definite highlight of the year, even if not everyone enjoyed
it as much as I apparently did.
Megalobox is a few things, it's the holder of arguably the best soundtrack of the year,
depending on your tastes, I know Evergarden comes close, but hey this is a damn good contender.
and for oldtaku like myself it's a worthy successor to the 1970's anime Ashita no Joe. Megalobox
takes the old tried and true formula of a boxer down on his luck and combines with stylistic
choices reminiscent of Samurai Champloo and Redline to create this stunning wonder that
is visually impactful. The narrative is not the reason why you watch this show, as it's not
really all that groundbreaking in and of itself, but oh man can it lean into it's own hype. Just have our Man joe
gear up for any bout and UMMMMMM YES you got yourself some quality entertainment
here. You don't even really need to know jack about Ashita no Joe to get into this
series which is great because accessibility could have been a big problem with it. But
in the end it's a sports anime, and your own enjoyment will largely depend on how excited
for the sport this series can make you. For me it did a stellar job, but it might not
be for everyone
Ahhhhhhh Yuru Camp. This one caught me by
surprise when I first started watching it. I turned it on once because it was supposed
to be the cute new slice of life of the season so I sat down enjoying my lunch of cup noodles
and began to watch. Only for the episode to proceed with the characters themselves having
cup noodles. I never before felt like an Anime was specifically catering to me personally
more than I did in that moment. But Laid Back camp is not a series with some grand plan, the girls
were not trying to better themselves at manga like with Comic Girls, nor were they on an
expedition to the Antarctic. This series was just like HEY, WE LIKE CAMPING. JOIN US WOULD
YA? And so we did. Few shows pull off the ability to pull off
so much with so little. All of the girls are unique enough not to feel trite and overused,
but not so out there to feel unrelatable or heaven forbid, uninteresting. There were several
shows that fall under the banner of Iyashikei, or healing anime this year. But considering
how many times I ended up re-watching Laid Back Camp for that specific kind of feeling, this
one was far better than most.
Now at the time of this video Slime has not
completed its run. While normally that would disqualify it from being mentioned here I
could not skip over it because of just how freaking entertaining the series has been
so far. Few shows have made me decide to re-watch it several times, in both languages while
it is still airing because I am so desperate for the next episode and Slime has achieved
this. It's a breath of fresh air for the isikai genre that all too often has come to
lean in on the same of tried and true tropes before eventually becoming a quazi harem series.
Sime has yet to do that for which I am eternally grateful. The only problem Slime has is how
quickly every episode goes by. It's pacing is wacked in the head which will only be a
detriment while the series is still airing. Having to pump the breaks on the story after 20 minutes because
the episode is over has never been this difficult for me all year, and it's really my only
major problem I have at the moment at least. Perhaps it'll get worse by the end, but for now it's been
one of my favorite shows to round out the year.
Bloom Into You is the best romance series of this year for me. And honestly I could
see an argument that it's not even a romance series at all. Saying something is a romance
series has particular connotations to it that I don't think apply here. This is not the
story of a character that falls in love with someone and then pines over them hoping that they
will reciprocate. Or maybe it is, just from a different point of view.
In Bloom into You our protagonist Yuu is stuck on the wrong side of a one sided
romance with the student council president and she herself has zero idea about how she
feels about it. The series is about her challenging her own conceptions about love and romance
and desperately trying to sort out her own feelings while also dealing with the advances
of her senpai. It's the kind of story that I have yet to really see be told in this way
and with luck, this series won't be the last.
But if it is, man, this one's been a good one.
A standout from earlier the year Aggretsuko is a showcase of the modern troubles of working
a desk job in Japan. Despite the culture swap between Tokyo and the western world the struggles
of this young red panda resonates with everyone who has held a similar position and dealt
with things like shitty bosses, gossiping co-workers, and almost every day day being
more horrible than the last. Considering that she's a Sanrio character and the company
has historically been very careful about the nature of their content and characters, Aggretsuko
has gone far beyond a simple marketing ploy and this short
2 and a half hours' worth of this heavy metal singing panda is a wonderful experience
that I would highly recommend to anyone who has worked in these industries at all. You
will enjoy this, I promise.
After that of course you can go and check
out an ever shorter series called Skullfaced Bookseller Honda-San. Honda-san is to retail
what Aggretsuko is to deskwork, the only main difference is how they handle it. While Retsuko
was the kind to bottle of her feelings and let them explode out every night at a karaoke bar, Honda
is much more timid, and passive. He doesn't have any obvious outlet for his frustrations
but rather chooses to wallow in a pit of despair while on the clock. Which is relatable in
its own way. The only problem I have with Honda is that it's short, like real short.
Each episode is only about 11-ish minutes long which isn't all
that much in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps we'll get another season down the line but
even if not this has been a enlightening ride into the life of a retail worker from Japan.
Golden Kamuy is a series that's hard to really nail down. On the one hand it's a
fantastic adventure series about finding a map to a lost treasure, and the map happens
to be tattooed onto the skin of a bunch of formerly death-row inmates who escaped prison.
On the other hand the series is also part cooking series, comedy, murder mystery, and
whatever the hell this scene was about.
Despite its genre defying narrative the series still manages to keep some level
of cohesion about it, enough to be a fully enjoyable experience.
The chemistry between the characters is good enough to be worth watching for that alone,
and honestly I've reached the point with this series that I don't even care if they
find the gold at the end of it. I just don't want the series to end. Which is some
of the highest praise I can think to give it.
Everyone and their dog have referred to Cells at Work as Osmosus Jones the anime, including
me! But mostly because it's kind of true. The show is an educational look into the workings
of the human body during various different kinds of invasions by bacteria and other viruses,
staring anthropomorphized versions of bodily cells. For the most part it's fairly accurate
in its depictions of what goes on, if not exaggerated slightly for narrative effect.
For what it is, it's an extremely fun monster of the week type show with some well-explained
learning moments all made by the same production studio that gave us JoJo's Bizzare adventure
of all things. It has this charm to it that made me excited to see the further adventures
of the red and white blood cells and how they would continue to work and live and complete
their jobs. Defiantly worth your time, if for nothing else then to see some of the cutest
characters of the year bravely completing their job doing only what they can do.
How do I sell you on Bunny Girl senpai? Well for some people, the title will be enough.
Bunny girls are a rare breed and this one is particularly well done. For others I can
say that this series is as close to a modern version of the same kind of wacky mysterious
happenings that made Haruhi popular all those years ago. And if either of those doesn't grab
you, I can say that despite the circumstances of how or why the events of this show occur,
the resulting development of its characters has been a treat to watch. Don't believe
me? Watch its first three episodes. Those are a kind of closed loop story that could really
just be a short film and as the first arc to this series it does an extremely good job of
showing us the world and how things work while also displaying an amusing romance between
our leads that I enjoyed watching every second of.
I have a love hate relationship with Idol shows. Generally speaking I love the girls
the shows end up showcasing but ultimately hate that most of what I watched was a bunch
of interconnected stories about the girls without really presenting a collective narrative.
Or maybe that's just Idolmaster. Zombieland Saga is mostly the best of both worlds, on
top of one of the better OP's of the year. Bring a bunch of skilled girls back from the
dead to join together and save the prefecture of Saga. It's not entirely clear how a bunch
of Zombie Idols will help the situation, but giving these girls a second chance at life
in a way, and allowing them to have a happier continuation to their tragic ends was rather
sweet, with most episodes focusing specifically on one girl at a time. As the greater narrative gets told.
Now if you JUST GIVE US THE BACKTRIES TO YUGIRI AND TAE YOU COWARDS.
If I could get one second season for ANY show.
this would be it. Because this is the one that I feel most bitter about leaving where it did.
So now that we have showcased each series
individually, we need to talk about the best of year. Because it's a tie. I'm not going
to leave it at a tie, but I want to stress just how difficult it is to pick any of the
shows mentioned here today as best of the year over any of the others. Every show I've
talked about has its own awesome quirks that made them memorable to me, made me excited
to watch them, made me happy that I did. I have never had a harder year to give a
"Best Of" Frosty too then this year of 2018. So let me tell you what the tie is.
I have a tie between 4 anime this year, and they are: A Place Further than
the Universe, Violet Evergarden, Bloom Into You, and Laid Back Camp. Again to be clear,
all of these shows are certified frosty, I would consider all of them to be the best
anime of the year, but if you force me at gunpoint to pick one as my absolute favorite,
I'd have to go with Laid Back Camp. From the very beginning of this year this
is a series that I have constantly gone back to for comfort and enjoyment, I have watched
it in its entirety more times than I can count and will probably do so even more as 2019
starts to ramp up. Evergarden is more beautiful, and has the best single episode of the year,
Bloom Into You I've found to be more relatable and has one of the best dubs of the year,
A Place Further Than the Universe makes me feel things that I cannot properly
describe. But sometimes, I don't need the best animation, or relatable characters, or to
have my heart overflow. Sometimes I just need a warm drink, and a calming view of Mt.Fuji.
And Laid Back Camp is the show that has that. There can be many favorites from 2018, it
was an absolutely fantastic year, you can have a different favorite and shout it from
the rooftops! I would not begrudge you for doing that one bit. But this one, this one is mine.
So with that done, and with 2018 sadly over I'd like to thank you all for taking the
time to watch this video and I hope I have sufficiently added to your watch lists as
2019 kicks in and we get even more awesome anime to watch and enjoy. The new year has big shoes
to fill and with luck it'll do it nicely. I'll still be here making videos about them
Until then, ladies, gentlemen, and others, Stay Frosty :)
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