Ask John: What Were John’s Favorite 2012 Anime?

Question:
With 2012 coming to a close what’s your overall opinion on anime that have aired this year? What were your favorite anime this year, and what anime are you looking forward to in 2013?

Answer:
If I may be so indulged, I’m a bit happy to have an opportunity to address a question like this. I now have virtually a tradition of annually nominating my selections of best anime series of each year, but I get to identify my personal favorite annual shows much less frequently. Best of the year shows certainly get my respect, but not always my affection. Quite commonly, the shows from each year that I personally find myself most engaged with – the shows that I most enjoy watching – are not necessarily the technically superior titles but the shows with unique personality, humor, and charm.

Regrettably, since it’s literally nothing more than a conventional, slice-of-life school romantic comedy, I can’t rationally call Acchi Kocchi one of the most exceptional anime of the year, but it’s easily my personal favorite show of 2012. The characters of Acchi Kocchi feel like a hybrid of the casts of Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh, coming across just a bit less mature and serious than the AzuDai cast and just a bit less self-conscious & smarmy than the Lucky Star cast. The catlike Tsumiki Miniwa is tremendously adorable, in part because she’s tsundere without her personality quirk getting exploited as an over-obvious gimmick. The show was warm-hearted, good-natured, and just crazy enough to stay surprising throughout. Acchi Kocchi was certainly the charmer of the year.

Inu x Boku SS succeeded by utilizing many of the same characteristics. Reminiscent, in fact, of what Kimagure Orange Road did, the supernatural aspects of Inu x Boku SS along with protagonist Ririchiyo’s tsundere personality are present but subdued, providing a novel backdrop for a core focus on character relationships and personality building. The inclusion of a bit of uncertainty and a bit of witty teasing, especially late in the show, helped distinguish the series from other more conventional romance anime that feature predictable, conventional relationships between couples. Inu x Boku SS actually felt like it brought a different, unique approach to the standard romance anime story.

Like many viewers, I was tremendously surprised to discover that the AKB0048 television series had much stronger character development and a more interesting, complex story than I’d anticipated. For a show inspired by a real-life pop group, I expected something relatively insubstantial and cliché, like Goulart Knights, Examurai Sengoku, CAROL, and Weiss Kreuz. However, AKB0048 turned out to be lushly drawn and very nicely animated, and turned out to have an interesting, dynamic yet believable cast diversity and an engaging narrative.

More than once I’ve expressed my disappointment with Black Lagoon. For a hardboiled gunplay action series, it spends far too much of its time on macho posturing and thugish threats than actual gunplay action. Ironically, Jormungand is ostensibly a criminal drama about the exchange of military weapons at the fringes of legality, yet it includes more frequent and more satisfying action-movie excitment than Black Lagoon does. Main character Koko Hekmatyar may not be quite the overtly dangerous character that the narrative describes her as, but she is a fascinating, unpredictable character surrounded by a likeable cast of rogues. Furthermore, any current anime that’s observant enough to reference Five Guys hamburger joints, the American Guantanamo Bay military facility, and political provocateur Julian Assange is fascinatingly relevant.

The follow-up to Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei wasn’t as wide-ranging in physical scope, but any anime that manages to frequently work in gags to sources as varied as Ikuze Gen-san and director Neill Blomkamp’s movie District 9 gets my attention. In a first-half of 2012 typified by an eclectic variety of anime genres and approaches (which also included the highly unconventional and interesting Chouyaku Hyakunin Isshu Utakoi), Joshiraku is a particularly unusual stand-out. The very fact that the show included a gag reference panning the widely criticized Infinite Stratos anime series reveals just how satirically cynical Joshiraku dared to be. Although watching an entire series of “talking heads” is a bit of an endurance test, the wit, satire, cynicism, and absurdity prevelant in the show made it highly unique and tremendously rewarding to watch.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I appreciate cute anime girls and assault weapons, so combining them in a way that’s both gratuitous and intelligent couldn’t possibly deter me. The narrative development of the short Upotte anime series left a bit to be desired. The mid-series wargame was exciting and suspenseful. The series’ concluding battle felt under-explained and artificial. The very concept of anthropomorphizing firearms as people seems like an idea that only manga & anime could come up with. The extensive discussions of weapon histories, characteristics and attributes, and battle tactics were interesting and presented in a fun way. Upotte can be easily dismissed as kitschy trash, but it’s also exactly the sort of smart, creative entertainment that draws otaku to anime.

I have to admit honestly that all of the early 2013 anime that I’m most eager to see are sequels: Chihayafuru 2, Minami-ke Tadaima, Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Bride, AKB0048 next stage, and the return of Senki Zesshou Symphogear. With the exception of Amnesia, which looks like a ridiculous mess of bishonen style without cohesive substance to me, the January 2013 anime TV season looks solid but not promising. I don’t see evidence of particularly bad shows, but I also don’t see evidence of anything exceptional, either. I am hoping that Maoyuu Maou Yuusha turns out to be stylistically and narratively closer in tone to Okami to Koshinryo than Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu or Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita. I’m also mildly eager to see Yama no Susume, if only because I miss Ichigo Marshmallow. So rather than anticipate an uninteresting or disappointing season, I’m instead hoping that one or more of this month’s new anime will surprise and unexpectedly captivate me.